‘Joe vs. Carole’ Goes Where ‘Tiger King’ Didn’t by Diving into Joe Exotic’s Big Gay Origin Story

Thank god for all the gays. Seriously — if you’re a gay person struggling with your identity or how others respond to your authentic self, you have plenty of people to look up to. I have Charles Nelson Reilly and Victor Garber, and I’m sure you also have your icons, fellow homosexual male. RuPaul, George Takei, Neil Patrick Harris, Billy Porter, Daniel Levy, Elton John, Billy Eichner, Pete Buttigieg, Ronan Farrow, Lil Nas X, Tim Gunn, Gus Kenworthy, Tituss Burgess, Zachary Quinto, Bowen Yang, Adam Rippon, Nathan Lane — there is a gay role model out there for every gay!

That wasn’t always the case. If you think back to the 1990s, the gay community had to really stretch in order to find icons. This Entertainment Weekly cover from 1995 is a crystal clear example of that. There were so few out gay people in the public eye that Timon and Pumbaa counted as queer representation. I think that that the variety of gay public figures available for us to celebrate today is one of many reasons why Joe Exotic was not automatically carved into the Gay Mount Rushmore when Tiger King became the biggest pop culture moment of 2020. In fact, his homosexuality was just one character trait in a… colorful… menagerie of character traits to be, uh, fascinated by. Joe Exotic is a tiger-owning, mullet-sporting, polyamorous, gay, republican redneck with a passion for country music and vengeance. Since we can have our pick of gay icons, Joe Exotic can just be… Joe Exotic. Also, lord, 2020 was a bizarre year.

This is where Peacock’s Joe vs. Carole, a dramatization of the battle between the aforementioned king of tigers and big cat conservationist Carole Baskin, sets itself apart. John Cameron Mitchell, himself a trailblazer in the queer community thanks to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, plays Joe Exotic in all of his unhinged, vindictive, charismatic, and campy mania — but he also gets to play someone we haven’t met before. He gets to play Joseph Schreibvogel.

Joe vs. Carole’s second episode, titled “Sanctuary,” could also be titled “Joe Exotic Begins.” In it, we see the man who would be tiger king — and he is surprisingly sympathetic. In this take on Exotic’s “origin story,” if you will, we find him in a rehabilitation center in Florida. The year is 1982, and Schreibvogel’s recovery has plateaued following a car accident. He ain’t getting worse, but he ain’t getting better. And then he encounters a form of therapy that he didn’t know he needed; a fellow patient’s boyfriend brings in some animals from his job, including a tiger cub, and something clicks within Schreibvogel on two levels. First, he connects with this tiger cub, a critter that he can care for (temporarily) while he himself is undergoing treatment. And second: he sees two men in a healthy relationship living openly and honestly.

This sequence of events lays a foundation for Joe Exotic the character that Tiger King never really gave us for Joe Exotic the man. At the lowest point in his life (the car accident was a suicide attempt so he could get out of being with his girlfriend), Joe found purpose. Tigers, queerness, identity, confidence — they’re all tangled together for Joe Schreibvogel. Just as the tiger cub he’s holding will soon grow into a fierce creature, Schreibvogel himself will grow into Joe Exotic — the cockiest gay cowboy in Texas.

That’s who emerges from rehab, a Joe who’s no longer willing to hide. Hiding nearly killed him, and now he wants to do the opposite of hide. He wants to strut into a Texas gay bar with a tiger on a leash.

If you can forget that Joe Exotic becomes an abusive manipulator who has a dicey idea of how to care for animals and even shadier ethics when it comes to people, Episode 2 of Joe vs. Carole gives you the kind of inspirational gay lead that absolutely would’ve made the cover of that EW issue. For example: later in the episode, Joe and his partner Brian Rhyne (Nic English) open a pet store together — one that proudly flies a rainbow flag in Texas in the early ’90s. That is bravery, and so is standing up to their bigoted landlord when he tells them to take the flag down. And since push has come to shove, Joe and Brian strike out on their own and buy land where they can fully be themselves. That land ultimately become’s Joe Exotic’s tiger emporium, and this explains why the guy takes it so personally when Carole Baskin comes for it.

And then Joe vs. Carole’s Joe Exotic becomes the Joe Exotic we know from Tiger King and, well, he is who he is.

But if Joe vs. Carole does one thing to justify its existence, especially since Tiger King already comes way closer to being a chaotic soap opera than a serious doc ever should, it’s this: it shows us the man Joe Exotic was before he was pushed too far — albeit a fictionalized version of the man played with equal parts pathos and power by Mitchell. The real Joe Exotic is by no means a role model (what with the animal abuse and his hiring an assassin to kill someone), and neither is the TV version (since he also does the same things). But at least the scripted series Joe vs. Carole does what the doc didn’t do: it takes a guy who was one of the biggest punchlines of 2020 and makes him feel like a person.

Stream Joe vs. Carole on Peacock