“Carol & The End of the World” Teaches Us How to Survive the Apocalypse
This essay contains mild spoilers for Carol & The End of the World
Carol & The End of the World is an apocalyptic workplace dramedy that asks a single existential question: “Was it worth it?”
The Netflix Animated Limited Series takes place in an alternate reality, where the world is ending not due to the threat of climate crisis or global fascism, but because the planet Keppler 9C is set to crash into the Earth seven months from the first episode. Through the entire series, the cosmic horror hangs omnipresent in the sky, a physical reminder of everyone’s looming mortality. The show’s protagonist Carol, an unconfident, monotone, middle aged woman (voiced by Martha Kelly), tries to continue the mundane operations of her daily life while society fractures around her.
The story starts after the initial wave of societal redistribution and destruction has subsided. Normal day-to-day interactions occur against the backdrop of abandoned parking lots and walls covered in existential graffiti saying Die Free and Death is Just the Beginning. Laws of a centralized government seemingly no longer exist, but order is maintained through their base forms: social contracts and the threat of violence, specifically through the heavily-armed soldiers who have been reassigned to work as clerks at the grocery store. They also defend property, such as the abandoned Applebee’s Carol frequently visits with a wistful yearning for a world that no longer exists.
While using an apocalypse story to critique our own dystopia isn’t a novel concept, Carol & The End of the World is unique due to its radically honest approach. It shows how people whose lives have been made hollow by capitalism find joy, meaning, and authenticity when these central frameworks no longer provide purpose and stability.
From the moment we enter this fictional world, it’s clear many have abandoned the constraints of our heteronormative capitalistic society to focus on joy and pleasure in their final months. Queerness and sexuality at large is so normalized it exists within the world of the show without comment. (A statement unto itself.) While some people, like our protagonist, desperately cling to normalcy, we are consistently reminded that society’s arbitrary rules have lost their value — ie Carol’s casually nudist parents who’ve entered into a consensual throuple with their live-in caretaker. They, like many others who can, travel the world and indulge in bacchanal-esque raves where substances and sex flow freely.
Our protagonist will not allow herself to indulge in any of this hedonistic pleasure-seeking — for no other reason than it will not bring her the joy and comfort that she so desperately craves. Though Carol’s parents are deeply concerned that she is squandering the time she has left by maintaining her mundane routines, the show itself doesn’t frame either option as preferable. They are simply different methods of coping with The Horrors of reality. As the story progresses, and the end times approach, we watch as Carol and the other characters discover the people they could have been in the old world, and who they want to become in this new, fleeting one.
Carol finds solace and purpose through work. In the world’s impending end she becomes an administrative assistant at a company called The Distraction. The Distraction exists as an accounting firm operating on a single floor of an abandoned office building. This dystopian corporate institution has perfectly replicated the cubicle-based lifestyle that has sustained late-stage capitalist society for decades. No one knows each other’s names, no one knows how The Distraction functions, but they go into work Monday through Friday regardless.
Mirroring the systems of our own slow-rolling apocalypse, The Distraction’s HR describes friendship as an “existential threat to the office” and attachment between coworkers as a “virus that threatens to destroy [it].” And those who work there are content to keep it this way. Despite the active alienation The Distraction engenders in its employees, Carol attempts to foster genuine human connection as the series progresses. She has not simply gone to work to find distraction, but to find herself — and for that, she needs community.
Carol bakes banana bread to share in the break room, connecting with two other employees, Luis, a gay man who traveled the world alone and still has not found meaning, and Donna, a middle aged single mother of five who realizes she’s missed the lives of her children by spending her life working. After fostering genuine friendships with the two of them, Carol breaks the rules and learns the names of every person who works in their office.
“When your name is spoken a type of intimacy is created,” The Distractions head HR person describes. “You are no longer a stranger or a coworker, you are an acquaintance, with the possibility of more.” In an explicit satirical critique on how small acts of community care can disrupt the individualistic drive of capitalism, the character goes on to say, “Potlucking is a gateway to comradery. A simple potato frittata could make someone feel more loyal to their coworker than to their duties.” And isn’t that what every company wants? Our loyalty to them over the humans we collaborate with?
While many apocalyptic shows offer the idea that love is salvation, they often focus on romantic love. Carol rejects that idea, discarding a desperately lonely potential love interest in the first episode. The show focuses instead on the love that is all around us: from family, to friendship, to the love we must foster for ourselves.
In Carol’s largest act of defiance, she, Luis, and Donna restore the abandoned Applebee’s and host weekly happy hours, creating a sense of community that leads to the show’s most devastating scene. In the series’ finale, we watch a collective eruption of grief overtake the office, as people realize the bonds they’ve created in the office are doomed by the very apocalyptic nature of its existence. Regardless, they continue to hold dear to them, as the joy their community provides is the only thing that gives their finite lives meaning.
Carol & The End of the World is a hopeful, if melancholy, meditation on finding meaning in being ourselves and loving other people — because at the end of the world, it’s all we have left.
This is where the show diverges from our world. We still have hope. Our planet is not yet doomed, but The Distractions of our world want to convince us it is. The powers of corporation, fascism, and neoliberalism hope to alienate us, to keep us focused on survival and production.
Community isn’t the only thing we have left, but it is the only way forward.
Carol & The End of the World is now streaming on Netflix.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” Episode 1604: Sadder Gay Night Live
Live from New York it’s… me writing a recap of that awful episode of Drag Race. But there’s something kind of refreshing about an episode of Drag Race being bad because of the performances and outcomes and not because anything morally reprehensible occurred. Small blessings.
But first! In the aftermath of last week, Geneva is still convinced she shouldn’t have been in the bottom. She says if the other queens want to play the game, she can play the game too. By “the game” does she mean “doing good drag” because she really should’ve started that in episode one. I kid, I kid. But I do think it’s a bad sign for a queen’s ability to improve if they’re delusional about weeks they do poorly. The first step to getting better is being able to take critique!
It’s a new day in the workroom and the queens are doing a sketch comedy challenge called RDR Live that’s a riff on SNL. As a kid of read all 800 pages of Live from New York: The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live experience, I feel it is my right to say that even during its best years, SNL is a show that is not funny more frequently than it’s funny. But the Drag Race comedy challenges make The Californians look like Wayne’s World. Making a comedy challenge based on SNL? Let’s just say I’m having a good time… not.
There’s some drama as the queens cast their roles. Sapphira and Mirage both want to host. Sapphira lets Mirage take the part and Mirage quickly regrets it. And then Plasma and Dawn both want to do Weekend Update. Dawn, Amanda, and Q have formed a little clique and want to do that sketch together. Dawn, fairly, points out that the other available role is a Barbra Streisand impression. Clique or no clique, of course Plasma should do Streisand! Plasma is upset that she “can’t sit at the lunch table” and I am begging adult queers to understand we are not in high school anymore, we’re all faggots who were bullied, and you’re not always the victim.
Anyway, the roles are cast and Ru and Ross come around to talk to the queens. Xunami, Morphine, Geneva, and Mhi’ya admit they’ve never done sketch before. They talk to Mhi’ya about needing to open up, desperately trying to craft and arc that may or may not arrive.
As the queens get ready for the sketches and runway, Mirage talks about being Apache and performing at Indigenous Pride. Xunami and Geneva then bond over being Dreamers as they talk about DACA. On the other side of the workroom, Dawn is asking about OnlyFans and Amanda says that her day job is ghost writing messages for straight girl creators.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is the guest judge!! The writers — likely the same ones responsible for the sketches soon to come — have Sarah say, “I’ve been slaying bitches for years.” Um… “I’ve been slaying for years” was RIGHT THERE.
The first sketch is about the world ending and has Geneva playing Lindsay Graham even though she clearly did not know — and failed to ask — who he is. Mirage is hosting and stumbles over her words. Then Jane and Megami do a sketch about selling decks filled with dick jokes and it’s at least slightly less awful. Then Ru is the musical guest singing a song where she says “giddy up” a lot. Amanda and Dawn host weekend update with a series of painful “jokes” and Q on as “the brick from Stonewall” in a performance I would describe as… adequate. Finally, Nymphia, Sapphira, and Plasma are three members of a Barbra Shop Quartet which has no jokes other than that pun. Plasma, does in fact, shine — relatively — in this role.
The runway is Everything Every Cher All the Time and it is a RELIEF after those “comedy” performances. I am so horny for Morphine in Cher’s 1989 Academy Award look. Nymphia as Egyptian Goddess Cher and Sapphira as 2017 Vegas Residency Cher are both stunning as well.
The tops are Jane, Q, and Plasma. The bottoms are Mhi’ya, Geneva, and Mirage. They make Sarah Michelle Gellar lie and pretend like any of the performances were good. Mhi’ya does a bad Cher impression that makes Ru laugh and maybe factored into her being safe.
Plasma wins, because her performance was the best and because they’re trying to Jan Q. Mhi’ya is indeed safe which means Geneva and Mirage are lip-syncing to the Buffy theme. Mirage wishes. No, they’re lip syncing to “Dark Lady” by Cher which has a lot of words and Mirage knows none of them.
It sucks because Mirage is a good dancer and is still more fun to watch than Geneva even if there is no sync to her lips. But I understand they couldn’t let Mirage stay when she didn’t know any of the words. Personally, I think it should have been a double elimination.
Mirage is distraught and can’t even bring herself to say an exit line. All the other queens are crying too. It’s awful. Almost as awful as those comedy sketches.
Teleport Us to Mars!! Here Are Some Random Thoughts:
+ They may be friends, but I love that as Q was painting herself to look like a literal brick, she said she was painting herself to be Amanda.
+ I maintain that RuPaul Charles has earned the right to do her little musical numbers whenever she would like.
+ During Untucked, Mirage chugs a drink and then tells a bunch of people she doesn’t know the words to the song. I wonder if that’s why Ru and the producers had her perform. Because, sure, she wasn’t good, but nobody was… and her runway was way better than Mhi’ya’s.
+ Queen I’m rooting for: Morphine, Sapphira, Nymphia
+ Queen I’m horniest for: Morphine
+ Queen I want to go home: Geneva
Boobs on Your Tube: In Its Final Season, “La Brea” Finally Gives Us a Queer Couple Worth Rooting For
It’s the end of another week, here’s what happend on your screens: First off, Valerie promises that Hazbin Hotel is a musical extravaganza about a bubbly queer princess of hell (which is quite the descriptor!!), don’t miss her review and she also has more details for you below. We also interviewed Hazbin Hotel showrunner Vivienne Medrano (aka VivziePop) on her favorite musical and giving people second chances! Hell princesses for everybody! The latest episode of Drag Race had some mommy issues. Meanwhile, on a different reality show, The Traitors had a killer move.
Love on the Spectrum failed to give its queer woman the dates she deserved. The Hot Lesbian on “LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland” absolutely should have won! And Hightown unfortunately fails to fulfill its potential in its final season. This week in our anatomy of a queer scene series, Drew and Kayla revisisted a classic: The Sex in Bound Changed Our Lives (and did!!). We updated the 60 best queer and lesbian Netflix TV Shows. And did you happen to miss this year’s Oscars nominations? Don’t worry, Drew has you all set.
Don’t miss Autostraddle’s Sundance coverage!
Drew has also been spending the week covering the best in queer film from the Sundance Film Festival, so please catch up! In particular, you don’t want to miss her review of In the Summers — which just won the grand jury prize!! A huge deal.
Notes from the TV Team:
+ I haven’t updated on Raising Kanan in a couple of weeks, but just know that I still have my eye on Jukebox and Iesha. Last week Kanan took Iesha on a date and acted like a total ass, and when Juke got word of it she promptly showed up to whoop some sense into him (metaphorically, of course). There’s some underlying tensions brewing between the cousins anyway, ever since Kanan has fallen deeper into the drug game. Making matters more sticky, Juke’s father, who is right now her biggest advocate, is a #1 suspect in a crime ring by the feds. And to top it all off, the U.S. military recruitment process is still swooping around Juke like a bad habit that I wish she’d quit. I’m still feeling optimistic that it’s darkest before the dawn, but that’s where we are for now! — Carmen
+ No Alice or Malika on this week’s episode of Good Trouble but I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that this week’s episode was directed by Mariana Adams Foster herself, AKA Cierra Ramirez. It’s her first time behind the camera and follows in the footsteps of her TV mom, Sherri Saum, who directed episode #512. — Natalie
La Brea Episode 303: “Maya”
Written by Valerie Anne
This would have been a very cute first kiss and I’m sad they balked!!!
In its third and final season, La Brea is finally giving us a queer couple worth rooting for. (Sorry to the singular queer woman who was briefly on screen and had a dead wife.)
In last week’s episode, when Izzy and Leyla first met, they immediately butted heads, so obviously I immediately started shipping them. Leyla’s mother forced her to give Izzy bow and arrow lessons, and I rubbed my hands together maniacally, excited for the enemies-to-lover storyline to commence. And it happened even faster than I anticipated! This week, they start flirting while going out on a boar hunt, and then Leyla falls into a tar pit. While Izzy tries to find a way to get her out, they bond about feeling like outsiders and being underestimated. When Izzy finally gets her out, they get attacked by a boar, but they take it down together, and almost hug until they realize Leyla is still covered in tar. Instead they smile shyly at each other and Izzy wipes a little tar off Leyla’s chin.
Later that night, Leyla finds Izzy by the fire and thanks her again for caring about her. She asks if she’s right, that Izzy cares about her, and Izzy beams and confirms that she does, indeed. Izzy takes Leyla’s hand and they almost kiss but they’re interrupted so they decide against having their first kiss out in the middle of the chaos of camp but keep holding hands and smiling at each other. It’s very cute and it will definitely ease the brain-ache the time travel in this season causes me.
Hazbin Hotel Episode 105 & 106: “Dad Beat Dad” & “Welcome to Heaven”
Written by Valerie Anne
There are also so many adorable moments where they cut to Vaggie and she’s just beaming at Charlie. TOO CUTE.
Two more episodes of the adorable Hazbin Hotel dropped, and they are just as deliciously gay and fun as the first four.
Vaggie wakes up to see Charlie missing from her side of the bed, and goes to the lounge to find her with a murderboard trying to figure out why the hotel hasn’t worked yet. Vaggie suggests asking Charlie’s dad for help and Charlie is resistant at first, but when she realizes her dad could get her a meeting in Heaven with someone other than Adam the Asshole she calls Lucifer, who is voiced by Jeremy Jordan.
Charlie works up the nerve to ask him for a favor, Vaggie close by her side and holding her hand the whole time. Lucifer comes to the hotel and Charlie introduces her to Vaggie as her girlfriend. Lucifer has the most dad reaction ever; “You like girls, we have so much in common!” He hugs Vaggie and laughs nervously saying she’s so pretty. After a little song-fight with the Radio Demon and some bonding with Charlie, Lucifer agrees to get them the meeting in Heaven. Charlie tells Vaggie they’re going to Heaven and Vaggie is a little stressed about the plurality of Charlie’s statement.
The next morning (and the next episode), Vaggie tries to get out of the trip but she can’t lie to Charlie. Charlie says, “You’re my partner, I need you there with me,” so Vaggie agrees.
Is “Bubblegum Princess Melts Ice Queen” a trope because if it is it’s one of my favorites.
They head up to St. Peter (Darren Criss). He welcomes them to Heaven and introduces them to Sera (Patina Miller) and Emily (Shoba Narayan), the Seraphim angels. Charlie is hype about heaven and wants to explore, but Vaggie stays back in their hotel room. While she’s alone, Adam and his sidekick Lute show up and reveal that Vaggie was once an Angel Warrior. Which, if I may toot my own horn, I called early on. I noticed no one else had the same X over one eye besides Angel Warriors, and I’m very happy to be proven right. Though it turns out the X over the eye is part of an Angel Warrior mask that they wear, and when Vaggie was caught letting a scared little demon go, her fellow angels took her mask, plucked out her eye, and left her for dead. That’s when Charlie found her and took care of her and they fell in love.
Adam tries to blackmail Vaggie into helping him, and she refuses, so he leaves her with the threat that if she doesn’t, he’ll tell Charlie the truth.
Everyone meets up at the trial where they are going to decide if a soul can be redeemed and move from Hell to Heaven. They watch Angel Dust being a good person, and seeming to meet all the criteria of heaven, but also he didn’t get poofed up to Heaven, so everyone is confused. That’s when Charlie realizes no one in Heaven actually knows what it takes to get into Heaven. Charlie and Emily start to plead with Sera but then Adam brags about the Extermination. Emily is horrified, and to distract the blame from himself, Adam outs Vaggie as an ex-angel warrior. Charlie falls to her knees and Vaggie runs to her side.
Sera puts an end to the chaos by declaring that souls can’t be redeemed and sending Charlie and Vaggie back to Hell, Adam shouting a threat after them that the Hazbin Hotel will be his first stop in the next Extermination. Emily calls after them to not give up hope but once the portal closes, Sera warns Emily that if she pushes this too far, she’ll end up fallen, too.
Death and Other Details Episode 103: “Troublesome”
Written by Valerie Anne
Anna was so busy in this episode, it made ME tired.
This week on the murder mystery boat, Leila tells Anna she’s going to the pool and Anna offers to meet her later, but she has business to attend to first. When Leila is gone, she confesses that she lost six more pillows to a listening device sweep that morning. But Anna can’t focus on her wife’s paranoia right now, she needs this deal with the Chuns to go down or she’s going to lose her business before she even officially inherits it. After a little round of bossing people around, she goes to find her wife at the pool, but her ex Eleanor is there and says she hasn’t seen Leila all day. (Also she’s hooked up to the B12 IV that we’ve seen the governor get…the governor who is now coughing, separate of her allergic-to-her-tryst sneezing…) Before she runs off after Anna again, Eleanor asks her why she didn’t wait for her, all those years ago. Anna is appalled; she tried to wait, she would have done anything for Eleanor, but she left. Eleanor says “I’m here now” but Anna points out she has terrible timing and goes off to find her wife.
When Leila isn’t in her room, she goes to ask her mom if she’s seen her, and instead gets an eyeful of her mother and Father Toby having shower sex. Mom insists Anna can keep a secret, but the pastor is a little shaken.
Anna’s next stop is her dad, who she tells to stay quiet in the meeting because she’s the only adult in the family and also she’s willing to sell her soul to save her company. She ends up going to the Chun meeting alone.
While looking for clues, Imogen spots Leila swipe a knife so she decides to follow her. She watches discreetly as Leila swipes rope, duct tape, and another knife before seeming to disappear down a dead end. She pokes around a bit (literally) and finds a secret door. She goes down into the bowels of the ship..where Jules appears and presses his hand over Imogen’s mouth. At this same time we learn that Jules isn’t who he seems to be, so our heroine might be in some deep…ship.
“Hightown” Fails to Fulfill Its Potential In Its Final Season
This review contains mild spoilers for Hightown season three.
Jackie Quiñones should’ve been on top of the world.
The Fisheries Service Agent turned Narcotics cop had finally caught her white whale: Frankie Cuevas (Amaury Nolasco) was on his way to prison. She’d finally gotten justice for Daisy. She’d helped arrest Charmaine Grasa (Imani Lewis), shutting down the pipeline of carfentanil onto the Cape. Things between her and her on-again, off-again “girlfriend” were seemingly on again, as Leslie (Tonya Glanz) admitted to having real feelings for Jackie…something Jackie wanted so desperately to hear. Things were good. But then — as is Jackie’s wont — she fucked it all up…again.
Charmaine escapes as Jackie and Leslie are transporting her to the women’s prison. The mistake threatens to ruin both of their careers but Leslie insists the fault lies entirely with Jackie. This blindside ends both their personal and professional relationships. Then — again, as is Jackie’s wont — she makes a bad situation worse by drinking, relinquishing the tenuous hold she’d had on her sobriety, and beginning her downward spiral. Jackie calls her partner, Ray, and admits she screwed everything up again. She begs him to tell her what to do.
“You go home, you go inside, and call me tomorrow,” he instructs. Ray assures her that everything will be alright. But all Jackie hears is “go inside” and so she does. Jackie ventures inside the home of her father’s lecherous drug dealer. That’s where we left Jackie — in the foyer of Petey’s drug den, worried she’d give in and trade sex for drugs — when Hightown‘s second season ended, 755 days ago.
For nearly two years, Starz has kept the fate of Jackie Quiñones a mystery. It’s a curious delay: the network renewed the series back in March 2022 and the third season went into production shortly thereafter. Seemingly, by mid-August 2022, the cast had wrapped on the third season. So what happened that Hightown, ostensibly, sat in a drawer for a year? I’m not sure we’ll ever know…but given the way we’ve seen networks and studios treat LGBT content recently — abruptly cancelling it, disappearing it from streaming services — it’s both disconcerting and noteworthy.
But even with its prolonged absence, Hightown hasn’t changed, much to my chagrin.
Jackie reappears on our screens, lying passed out in the dunes. She’s nudged awake by some curious kids but she can’t recall where she is, how she got there, or anything that’d happened in the preceding day. Jackie is rudderless: without a big white whale like Frankie Cuevas to chase, nothing excites her anymore and she fills that empty space with drugs and alcohol (which she gets — thank goodness — without sleeping with Petey, despite season two’s inference). Jackie goes through the motions at work, having kept her position with the state police thanks, no doubt, to her friendship with Ray. (Leslie, on the other hand, has been demoted to highway patrol.) Even the prospect of taking down the drug kingpin responsible for the carfentanil flooding the Cape doesn’t excite her. She shows up to the bust out of obligation and high as a kite, the call having interrupted a night of dancing, flirting, drinking and snorting coke.
(That no one seems to notice that she’s high…well…that doesn’t speak well to the capability of the Cape Cod Interagency Narcotics Unit.)
Throughout its run, Hightown has been skilled at showing that the gap between the police and the policed isn’t nearly as wide as the world would have you believe. The hypocrisy of the police — Jackie using drugs just as she’s about to raid the home of the kingpin who may have provided it or Ray’s harboring of a criminal even as he tries to lock others up — is on full display. The show reaffirms that how we police is a choice. Newly sober, Jackie is forced to ask herself what kind of officer she truly wants to be: one who skirts the rules or one who plays by the book. It is the central question for her character this season.
But where the show falls short, consistently, is engaging with the racial dynamics of drug use and policing. Little time is spent reflecting on who gets arrested and who gets treatment or which victims warrant police attention and which don’t. In the absence of directly grappling with those issues, Hightown makes its own statement, however unwittingly: making people of color (and, particularly, immigrants of color) — Charmaine, Osito, Jorge and Frankie Cuevas — responsible for the mostly white overdose deaths on the Cape. I’d hoped that the introduction of the Farleys this season would seek to reset that narrative but, clearly, Hightown does not want to be that show.
At times, season three’s Jackie feels like a regression: the non-stop partying, the drug and alcohol use, and the interactions with Provincetown’s LGBTQ community feel like callbacks to the first season version of Jackie, as if the character hasn’t evolved at all. Much like in season one, when Jackie fixated on Sherry Henry and finding the person who killed her, she fixates this season on Veronica, the girl she bedded but can’t remember, whose bloody shirt she finds in the backseat of her Jeep. Jackie remains, as she always has been, the patron saint of lost causes.
Monica Raymund’s Jackie has always been Hightown‘s most compelling character. Raymund charms as Jackie. Even as she’s in the throes of her latest attempt at self-destruction, Jackie never feels irredeemable. There’s a point, midway through the new season, where Jackie finally hits her rock bottom. She confesses to Ed — her surrogate father from her Fishery days — that she’s a screw-up but she doesn’t want to be like this anymore. She hurt someone and she cannot abide being that person (read: being like her father). It’s a masterful performance from Raymund but I found myself remiss it’d come so late in the series. In hindsight, it feels like evidence that Hightown never fully appreciated the complexity that Raymund brings to the character. In her review of the show’s first season, Kayla noted, “sometimes it feels like Hightowndoesn’t know what its own strengths are,” and that remains true in its final season.
Given the opportunity to focus on Jackie — to build out her world, to deepen her connections with others — the show has always opted not to; instead, they just bring on more men. This season, in addition to storylines for feuding police officers, Ray and Alan, and rival gangsters, Osito and Frankie, the show adds Owen Frawley and his uncle, Shane (Michael Drayer and Garret Dillahunt), South Boston transplants looking expand their territory into the Cape. This show did not need more people. What’s more: the characters are siloed — each operating independently, rather than working together — so their stories require even more screentime. With those demands, it becomes virtually impossible, even with the best writers and a talented cast, to tell all those stories well. There just isn’t time.
Hightown could’ve been something more. The potential was there, particularly with Raymund as the show’s lead. But instead, it wraps up its three season run as entertaining but middling fare and as a show that never understood how good it could be.
Hightown season three premieres tonight on Starz.
The Traitors 205 Recap: A Killer Move
The fifth episode of The Traitors season two picks up in the turret, where we last saw Phaedra getting really mad at Parvati for implicating the Housewives, broadly. After Parvati confirms she was only trying to get out Larsa (which she did!) and apologizes for implicating Phaedra in any way, Phaedra seems to forgive her. Dan, again, is there! (I’m starting to think this is his strategy, actually, to outwardly be so passive.)
Parvati offers the choice of murder to Phaedra, since she picked their last victim (Ekin-Su). Phaedra settles on Tamra Judge — a choice that suggests she really has buried the hatchet with Parvati, since Tamra is herself a Housewife. It also really protects Phaedra, because she has just shown her loyalty to the Housewives — if a Housewife is then murdered, the Traitor couldn’t be Phaedra!
The next morning, when everyone walks into breakfast except for Tamra, it causes chaos, as always. Alan Cumming gravely retorts, “A real Housewife lost her real house life,” which makes me remember just how great of a host he is. I love these odd, dramatic one-liners he delivers with such aplomb every dang time. Alan Cumming also reveals someone new will be joining today. Who will it be!!
At breakfast, CT is extremely suspicious of Dan, who has essentially refused to ever state a suspicion of a single person being a traitor. CT is pushing him really hard to make one single guess, and Dan, adhering to what I have to believe is his strategy, continues to refuse. He’s sort of a brick wall, revealing literally no information. (Sometimes when I play the game One Night Ultimate Werewolf, there are people whose strategy is to simply not talk. Sometimes it makes them look suspicious, but most of the time, you simply stop engaging with them, because if you can’t get any information from them, you worry you’re wasting your time. I think Dan is approximating this strategy.) It seems the tides are turning against Dan, and I don’t know if this is admirable or silly, but he seems to do anything but panic! For me, it’s a little infuriating. It’s like, dude, do something!
After breakfast, it’s clear the tides are turning against Dan, as many others are suspicious of him (Janelle, Trishelle, Bergie). Only Kevin is absolutely convinced that Janelle is a traitor.
This episode’s challenge involves the team splitting up, one competing outside (with access to winning the two shields in play) and one competing inside (with no access to the shields in play). After some back-and-forth about the teams, determined mostly by which players are insisting that they get a chance to win the shields, the challenge begins. It’s actually a very funny challenge involving all of them running around and imitating bird calls. Tonally, it feels very different from the funeral march last episode, and for me, it’s a welcome reprieve, if a bit boring.
Trishelle and Bergie win the shields, and Peter comes up with an actually interesting and strategic idea: If Trishelle and Bergie don’t reveal they won the shields, every person on the outdoors team can be protected. Peter reasons that if the Traitors don’t know who of their six has the shields, they won’t want to target any, because they won’t want to waste a vote. As far as I know, Peter is from The Bachelor, and I was impressed to see him ratchet up the game play by employing a pretty nuanced strategy. If he can pull it off, that is.
Back in the house, after the challenge, Peter intensifies his strategy by telling Dan, privately, that he and Janelle won the shields. Peter tells Parvati, also privately, the same thing, thinking that if either of them are the Traitors, (1) this might protect him and Janelle from getting murdered and (2) best case scenario, they believe him, and choose to murder Bergie/Janelle, who actually has the shield, effectively wasting a murder, and revealing themselves as Traitors. Sneaky sneaky, Peter! I love it.
Janelle is still really gunning for Dan. Once again, the best thing Dan seems to come up with is going to Parvati and getting her to handle it for him. Generously, maybe this is his strategy. Parvati reasons that if Janelle is coming for Dan this hard, they’ve got to get Janelle out, to protect Dan. This isn’t the first time I begin to wonder if Dan would protect Parvati like she is seemingly willing to protect him. Despite being labeled so often as a villain, I don’t think Parvati plays dirty; she decides who’s on her team and who isn’t and cleaves to those boundaries. It seems Parvati sees both Dan and Phaedra as her team, at least for now. Dan, on the other hand, seems to be a team of one, and I worry how this could affect both Parvati and Phaedra moving forward….
Inexplicably at this point, we learn who the new player is going to be, and it’s the iconic Kate Chastain, a fan favorite from season one of The Traitors and a whole lotta seasons of Below Deck!! I’m excited to see how she shakes things up; you can always count on Kate to say exactly what she’s thinking, and that’s always a rollercoaster to watch. Alan Cumming, wearing a shirt seemingly made only of feathers (love), brings another chair to the roundtable, and in walks Kate.
Kevin steels himself and delivers a formal accusation of Janelle, which really gets under Janelle’s skin. She, in turn, says she thinks — nay, is sure — the Traitors are Dan (right!), CT (wrong!), and Sandra (what??). Her choice to accuse beyond Dan baffles me, especially considering CT and Sandra are close allies (they will rally against you), from competitive reality TV shows built on kicking people out when they show you can’t trust them. I really wish Janelle had just stuck to Dan!
Dan’s defense, unsurprisingly, is to provide no defense. I actually think I see his strategy begin to work here. It’s like, how could someone react so calmly if they really were the Traitor?? Wouldn’t they be freaking out? But that reasoning actually holds no water, for me. Because he is a Traitor, he can stay calm, because of course he can prepare for this moment, because it is a reasonable accusation, since it’s based on truth. For Faithfuls, getting accused of being a traitor is an unreasonable accusation, because it’s not based on truth, so of course it sends people into a tailspin! Peter and Janelle push Dan to say a name, any name, and he says… Janelle, again, sidestepping making any choice for himself. He aligns with the majority every single time.
When the votes come in, they’re split between Janelle and Dan. But at the end of the day, Janelle gets the majority of the vote. I can’t help but remember literally earlier in the episode, when CT was absolutely gunning for Dan! But of course, saving his own life in the game became more important than eliminating Dan — Janelle was a much more immediate threat to his continued presence on the game. In all reality competition shows, emotion plays a bigger role than I think most contestants would like to admit — but maybe in The Traitors more than anything else, because getting accused of being something you’re not is just…really emotion-inducing!!
Janelle goes home, and some of the people at the table — namely Bergie — see this as confirmation Dan is in fact a traitor. It’s hard for me to see how Dan will clear his name at the next roundtable.
Back in the turret, the Traitors discuss their next target. Parvati reveals Peter told her, in confidence, that he won a shield. Dan reveals he did the exact same with her. Parvati, in true Parvati fashion, immediately knows Peter must be lying. I stood up and cheered!! Parvati’s biggest asset has always been her extremely sharp emotional IQ; that gal simply knows when people are lying! Poor Peter has no idea who he’s dealing with! Parvati reasons that because they don’t know who has the shield, they should murder someone who wasn’t on the outside team — also because then it’ll imply to Peter that Parvati and Dan are NOT the Traitors. Seems like a great plan to me!
Dan, on the other hand, thinks Peter couldn’t be savvy enough to strategically lie (??) and believes him. Dan reasons that because Phaedra got to decide the last murder (Tamra) and Parvati the one before (Ekin-Su) (which remember, was only because no one else could execute the poison murder), he should get to decide this one. This reasoning doesn’t sit well with me, because Dan is implying both Parvati and Phaedra asked for and wanted to decide the last murder victims, which neither of them did. Two women and a man, and only one seems to feel entitled to make decisions for the group…interesting!!!
Dan seems to think the best choice (for his life in the game) is to murder Bergie — a.k.a. to fall right into Peter’s trap. Which, as Parvati realized in about one second, is indeed a trap!!! But Dan seems to believe it’s worth the risk of wasting a murder, which I find unstrategic and shortsighted, to say the least.
I’m nervous that Parvati and Phaedra choosing to go along with Dan, even though they KNOW it risks wasting a murder, could be really bad for them, ultimately. Here’s what I’m afraid of happening: They murder Bergie, and he is saved because he has the shield. This, to Peter, confirms Dan and Parvati are both traitors. Dan, to save his own life, decides to go full-throttle on…Phaedra, which would make no strategic sense, since she has arguably been playing the best game of all three of them.
But I just don’t see Dan throwing Parvati under the bus. Maybe I’m wrong! What do you think will happen??
The Hot Lesbian on “LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland” Should Have Won
This review contains spoilers for the first season of LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland.
I think we can all agree that Ireland is having a moment.
From the country’s unwavering support of the Palestinian people to the scrumptious success of Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott, and Cillian Murphy to the mistaken yet correct absorption of Ayo Edebiri into Irish culture… Ireland is certified hot.
But, the question remains, is Ireland funny? To find out, I slabbed some Kerrygold butter onto my father’s homemade Irish Soda Bread, poured myself a glass of whiskey, and binge watched LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland.
I’d like to preface this review by saying I am not a reality TV guy. I don’t even watch Drag Race and I am very, very gay and trans. I am, however, a big comedy guy, otherwise known as a comedian. And I’m Irish! I may only be half Irish, but I’m also only about half funny, so it feels appropriate. Disclaimer over.
Sláinte!
LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland traps 10 comedians in a room and gives them two tasks: Make others laugh and don’t laugh yourself. A bunch of comedians desperately trying to get people to laugh while also not laughing themselves? They should have just filmed a Brooklyn open mic.
Contestants are allowed to bring their own props with them to set and there’s even a rule that if you ring the cowbell, you can put on a performance and everyone else has to watch you. Outside of the performances, contestants have to do their best to make the others laugh by singling them out.
The elimination system in place is not dissimilar to that of soccer, or football, I should say. Your first laugh earns you a yellow card; laugh again you get a red card and are eliminated from the game. Eliminated contestants spend the remainder of the competition in the control room with Graham Norton, which feels more like a reward than it does a punishment. Oh, and by the way, smiling counts as laughing.
As a general rule of thumb, I avoid straight white male comedy at all costs. Mostly because it’s bad or stolen from women or queer comics or written at my expense. So, to make it through three hours of really bad prop comedy, including an all-too-revealing green screen suit, I focused on the reason I was watching in the first place: the lesbian comedian in a pantsuit and hoop earrings.
Catherine Bohart is an Irish comedian, actress, podcaster, writer, and, in my opinion, the winner of LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland. In true lesbian fashion, Bohart became nervous when a beautiful woman, older than her and wearing a blazer, walked into the room. There’s just something about seeing representation on television that makes me emotional, you know?
She may not have won in the traditional sense of “successfully completing the objective” but she did win, in my eyes, for not actually laughing at anything anyone was doing. Instead, she received her yellow card for half-laughing at something Graham Norton said to her on the game telephone (valid, understandable, queer kinship) and her red card for slightly smiling while hollering for an on-stage cat performance (valid, understandable, lesbian behavior).
Bohart and I both managed to get through the 6 hours without laughing at anything and that feels correct and gay. As a queer comic myself, I often find myself in rooms with straight comics who could not physically tickle a laugh out of me let alone get one with a punchline. That’s not to say that Bohart does not respect and admire her peers as I’m sure she does, but it was all too delicious to watch her bypass any desperate attempts at a laugh. Instead she just kind of… hangs out?
Since the show has no rewards for getting laughs and only dishes out penalties for laughing, I’d say she played the game like an expert. When she did mine for laughs, it was through a polished demonstration of vaginal anatomy, forcing other contestants to “Pin the Tail on the Pussy,” which, again, is so gay. Bohart’s other gag was to exchange the hoops she started the game with for much larger hoops in the dressing room and re-enter the game as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, the white men in the game are putting on latex, strapping sausages to their faces, filling their pockets with beans, wearing a dick-nose on their face, and rolling around on the ground in desperate attempt to get the laughs they have grown accustomed to getting from other straight, white men. It was almost cathartic to watch them scramble for laughs and quite literally not get any. Could the next LOL be filmed at a Manhattan comedy club? Please?
LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland proves that the only time reality TV and comedy should mix is when masc comedians date femme reality stars. Am I just sour that the one lesbian on the show didn’t win? Maybe. But I’m mostly upset that the show took comedians who are otherwise funny, I’m sure, and put them in an environment where it’s impossible to be funny. My girlfriend, who is also a comedian, caught a glimpse of one of the episodes where a contestant is using a hand puppet to try (and fail) to get a laugh, and said, “If I was doing ventriloquism at someone and they weren’t laughing, I’d kill myself.”
She’s not wrong. To be fair, the contestants were given an impossible task. As comedians, it’s incredibly demoralizing to perform to a crowd that is not allowed to laugh. In fact, I think most comedians I know would rather be on a show that encourages heckling than a show that prohibits laughter. It’s also so incredibly frustrating when your planned, written material doesn’t hit but something you improvise or do by accident does well. Overall, it seems as though LOL tortures its comics as much as it does the audience, leaving the question, “Who is this for?”
Because the nature of the show doesn’t allow contestants to really tap into their skill sets, I found it frustrating to watch as a comedian. LOL might be more for fans of comedy rather than comedy fans… you know? I think LOL is perfect for folks who are not entirely plugged into comedy or, more specifically, stand up comedy, but do enjoy a laugh. The funniest parts of the show took place when production brought in big names like the musical duo Jedward, journalist Anne Doyle, broadcaster Ray D’Arcy, and musician Chris De Burgh to get the contestants to crack.
I’m curious what appearing on the show does for a contestant’s career. I wonder if it gains them new, unindoctrinated fans or if the opposite happens and viewers only see and judge them in the context of the competition. I hope it’s the former and that the show serves as an introduction to each comedian rather than a representation of their skills. If the latter is true, I’m afraid that going on Last One Laughing is a net-negative to a comedian’s career.
But one thing I know for sure is Catherine Bohart has gained at least one new follower and fan.
LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland is now streaming on Prime.
“Love on the Spectrum” Fails to Give Its Queer Woman the Dates She Deserves
This review contains mild spoilers for the queer storyline of Love on the Spectrum season two.
I received my autism diagnosis last year, but I’d suspected it for a long time. And, like many autistic people with fewer visible support needs, I’d spent some time working with adults with disabilities, including autism, who had a diversity of support needs. We had a saying we’d repeat to new trainees, that “if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”
Autism’s a spectrum disorder, and really, is a cluster of symptoms and characteristics that can manifest in an individual person in any endless unique permutation. And, of course, everyone is an individual with their own personality on top of that. So, I went into the new season of Love on the Spectrum with no expectations or ideas about what its promised queer subject might be like — just excitement.
And I was a little disappointed! Not because Journey — a bubbly, bright and caring young Black woman of 18 — was anything but a sparkling delight. She’s a highlight of the season! I was disappointed because there was so little time spent with her. That, and the logic behind the matches producers set her up with was difficult to parse.
Journey doesn’t appear until the fourth episode, by which time we’ve seen a lot of other dates where participants have had various levels of success. As soon as I saw Journey, I said to myself this has to be the queer person. I’d certainly been waiting! By the time Journey appears halfway through the season, the only queer representation had consisted of two gay uncles and a hair stylist (who were all cool in their own ways, but they weren’t the stars).
Journey is an aspiring pastry chef with ultra high femme style. She has an array of pastel pink decor, shows us her love for Hello Kitty, and wears a baby pink top with delicate white polka dots and frills around the collar. Her aesthetic is the height of a femininity distinctly not for the male gaze. Journey’s known she was a lesbian longer than she’s had her autism diagnosis (only one year at the time of filming), and, on both counts, her family’s been supportive.
Journey says she never had to come out — she just talked about her attraction to girls and no one in her family ever had an issue with it. She’s affable, but inexperienced — she hasn’t been on a date before — which isn’t at all surprising considering her age. Plenty of neurotypical queers also haven’t had their first dating experience by 18, so she’s certainly not alone. But Journey seems excited by the prospect of dating. “It’s finally my turn,” she says.
We learn that her dad tried to set her up on a date with a boy in the past. When her mom tells her that “boys gravitate toward you romantically,” she blithely responds, “Well that’s embarrassing for them, isn’t it?” To which, everyone laughs. She is funny, which is why I have to ask, why is that all we get from that scene?
Before Journey heads out on her first date, we catch a glimpse of her sister Stevie coaching her on the in’s and out’s of flirting. It’s cute, but much like my fellow viewers over in the Love on the Spectrum subreddit, I’m curious as to why we don’t see a professional coach step in to give her more dating advice, especially considering her inexperience.
From a conservatory to a cute-as-heck picnic, Journey goes on a total of three dates this season, with two separate women. On the one hand, her dates are cute and friendly and Journey gets along well with them despite her nerves. The show even managed to find two different gothy bisexuals, leaning into the Princess Bubblegum/Marceline the Vampire Queen queer relationship dynamic that occurs just often enough to make for a cute meme.
But you can see the problem with the creators’ decisions almost immediately. When Journey tells her first date, Kara, that this is her First Date Ever, Kara’s voice goes high-pitched with a surprised “Ooooh!” She vows to make it an “awesome date,” but as time goes on, it becomes apparent that the two are mismatched when it comes to their experience and maturity level. Kara’s been in multiple relationships before, and though she says that she would be open to seeing Journey again, they do not go on another date. Oddly enough, there’s no real explanation given.
With other contestants, we get a phone call or a discussion about the dynamic of choosing to continue or not continue pursuing someone, but if those scenes exist, they were left out of the final edit. At least we know Journey was delighted to have finally gone on her first date, which, at minimum, is going to be a confidence builder.
Journey goes on two more dates, this time with Talia, who is also more experienced and who, like Kara, also appears to be somewhat older than Journey. While I was happy for Journey to be able to date, it felt like she was denied the opportunity to have age and experience-level appropriate encounters with someone who felt more like a peer, someone she could mutually explore with.
Still, there are some sweet moments. When Talia pulls out Journey’s chair for her at a restaurant, it leads to a brief but welcome discussion about queer relationships, roles and making your own rules. I just wish we had more of that.
We don’t get a lot of follow up with Journey, which is truly saddening, because I’d have loved to spend more time with her and her family. I wanted to see more discussions and to watch her really unpack her dates in the way that other participants do. The last time we see Journey, she and Talia are taking a lakeside walk. The camera zooms out, and that’s it. No post-date interview, no scene back with her family, no analysis or assessment of where she could work on growth.
Journey’s not the only queer on the show — Dani shares that she’s pansexual and heteroromantic — but she is the only one shown to be interested in queer dating. She’s also the only Black participant.
While perhaps schedules or other factors may have played a role in how much of Journey’s story is shown, it feels like it was given far less time than either Journey or Netflix’s queer audience deserve.
Love on the Spectrum season two is now streaming on Netflix.
60 Best Queer and Lesbian Netflix TV Shows
Why simply marathon a good television show when you could marathon a good lesbian show on Netflix or a show with some element of lesbians, trans people, bisexuality, pansexuality or queerness within it? Netflix’s original programming is chock full of LGBTQ-inclusive TV shows, lesbian series and wlw TV shows, and although they also host a variety of content produced by other studios and networks, this list is focused on TV series developed by or in partnership with Netflix, because those are the shows you can mostly expect to find on Netflix channels worldwide and indefinitely. Because we are a website for LGBTQ women and trans people of all genders, that’s the type of representation we’ll be highlighting here, today.
The Queerest Netflix Original LGBTQ Inclusive TV Shows:
These LGBT Netflix TV Shows and lesbian series have LGBTQ+ women and/or trans people either playing lead characters or simply in abundance and in general de-center cisgender heterosexual stories. If you want queer and trans stories front & center, these shows are for you!
Dead End: Paranormal Park
2022 // 2 Seasons // 20 Episodes
Barney Guttman (Zach Barack) is the lead character of this delightful comics-inspired animated series, playing a Jewish queer trans boy who lives in a haunted house and has a crush on his best friend, Logs. The show follows his adventures with his other pals Norma (who is pansexual and autistic) and Norma’s girlfriend, Badyah (Kathreen Khavari).
Everything Now
(2023-) // 1+ Seasons // 8 Episodes
Courte
15-year-old protagonist Mia Polanco (Sophie Wilde) returns home after spending many months away for inpatient eating disorder treatment. Her friends have changed — they’re drinking, doing drugs and having sex, and Mia angles to catch up in this series full of messy teenage queers stumbling their way through it all.
Everything Sucks!
(2018) // One Season // 10 episodes
We fell hard for this ’90s throwback lesbian Netflix TV show centered on a tomboy coming out to herself and the world (and crushing hard on an alternateeen drama queen played by Sydney Sweeny) — you can marathon the whole thing in a night and lament that it got cancelled.
The Fall of the House of Usher
2023 // Limited Series // 8 Episodes
I love them, your honor.
Mike Flanagan’s final project for Netflix is his most epic, precise and haunting: a limited series that weaves multiple Edgar Allen Poe stories into one grand tale of the Usher family: Roderick is the head of a major pharmaceutical company responsible for an addiction epidemic that has made his family very rich. Then, one by one, his children begin to die — and he has six of them, by five mothers, and at least four of them are queer, and there are other queers, too, you will see.
Feel Good
Channel 4 // (2020-2021) // 2 Seasons //12 episodes
Mae Martin is VERY cute and funny in this delightful little queer Netflix TV show in which they play Mae, a recovering cocaine addict and stand-up comic who falls for a straight girl in Season One and crawls out of a relapse in Season Two. It’s so smart and sweet and perfect.
First Kill
(2022) // One Season // 8 Episodes
This “sweet (and sometimes bloody) story of firsts — first times, first kills, and first loves” only lasted one season at Netflix, but for that one season we had ourselves a lesbian protagonist and a central narrative of a vampire from a legendary lineage falling for a human girl, much to the chagrin of everybody else.
Glamorous
(2023) // One Season // 10 episodes
The protagonist of Glamorous is a gender-non-conforming non-binary makeup artist (played by trans actress and social media star Miss Benny) working for makeup maven Madolyn Addison (Kim Catrall) in an office crawling with homosexuals and bisexuals, including her designer Britt, a Black masculine lesbian played by Ayesha Harris, and Britt’s crush Valentina. It’s a very queer show even if lesbians aren’t centered, but it’s also pretty mediocre!
Gypsy
(2017) // One Season // 10 episodes
We got one entire season of this uneven, generally terrible yet still somehow totally addictive psychological thriller that starts Naomi Watts as a bisexual therapist who gets wrapped up in a thing with a girl she’s stalking for reasons too convoluted to get into here.
The Haunting of Bly Manor
(2020) // Limited Series // 9 episodes
Ah the classic gay pinky link.
This follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House is entirely centered on Dani, the (bisexual!) live-in nanny for a weird family living in ye olde haunted manor. Housekeeper Hannah is played by queer actress T’Nia miller, and there’s also a very gay gardener in overalls, Jamie. The story between Dani and Jamie inspired Valerie to note that this show “isn’t a ghost story, it’s a lesbian love story — with ghosts.”
Heartbreak High
(2022 – ) // 1+ Season // 8+ Episodes
In this Australian series we are once again confronted with the reality that everybody is gay now! We’ve got the autistic and queer Quinni (played by austistic actor and disability rights advocate Chloé Hayden), the mixed-race and nonbinary Darren (played by nonbinary actor James Majoos), lesbian lothario Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran), her Indigenous and queer best friend/ex Missy (Sherry-Lee Watson) and there’s even an (oh-so-rare) asexual male character. In her review, Kayla noted that these identities are used “not to check boxes but to paint a vibrant and varied world that covers the trials and tribulations of high school from the low-stakes shit like crushes and clique drama to much higher stakes conflicts like unsafe living conditions, sexual assault, and violence.”
Heartstopper
(2022 – ) // 2+ Seasons // 16+ Episodes
Would you like to have your heart warmed to its very core by an adorable British LGBTQ+ romantic comedy series based on a webcomic/graphic novel by 27-year-old aromantic asexual writer Alice Oseman?? Now you can!!! Trans TikTok sensation Yasmin Finney plays Elle, one of Charlie’s best friends. Queer couple Tara (queer actor Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell) are also featured in the story! It’s a gay male couple at the forefront of the tale, but honestly they both have a lot of lesbian energy?
I Am Not Okay With This
(2020) // One Season // 8 episodes
For Sydney (Sophia Lillis of Sharp Objects), the surly self-described “boring 17-year-old white girl” at the center of the lesbian Netflix series “I Am Not Okay With This,” her feelings of powerlessness around her father’s death have become augmented by something else she isn’t sure how to name, but the friend she confides in about it is quick to refer to it as “superpowers.” Also she’s in love with her best friends.
Master of None (Select Episodes)
(2015 -2021) // 3 Seasons // 25 Episodes of which 14 include a lesbian character and 7 are 100% focused the lesbian character’s story
COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2021
So the thing is that overall, Aziz Ansari’s critical smash Master of None is not a 100% lesbian TV show. BUT it’s possible to watch JUST the Denise-focused episodes and make it into your very own 100% lesbian TV show. Season One featured out lesbian writer/comic/actress Lena Waithe as Ansari’s lesbian pal, Denise, and although Season Two had less Denise overall as Aziz frolicked overseas, it also had one of the most important episodes in lesbian television history, “Thanksgiving,” for which Lena Waithe made history as the first Black woman to win an Emmy in Comedic Writing. The final season of Master of None, called “Moments in Love,” focuses entirely on Denise and her relationship. You can watch just “Thanksgiving” and Season Three and you won’t feel lost at all.
Orange is the New Black
(2013 – 2019) // 7 Seasons // 91 Episodes
One of the first-ever Netflix original series was also one of the first lesbian TV shows on Netflix: Orange is The New Black has like a billion queer characters, including a bisexual protagonist as well as rampant misandry, a nearly all-female cast, and racial diversity for days. We’ve got a trans woman of color playing a trans woman of color (Laverne Cox), we’ve got queers playing queers (Samira Wiley, Lea DeLaria, Ruby Rose, Vicci Martinez, Taylor Schilling), a not-so-hidden agenda to expose the draconian absurdity of the prison-industrial complex, and situations that’ll make you laugh, sob, and fall in love. With a television show. Until Season Four, which ends in tragedy and heartbreak and is highly problematic and, well, it might turn you off the show forever!!! If you’re willing to forge forward, which many understandably were not, the show eventually regains its footing and adds more queers every year.
Ratched
(2020-) // 1+ Seasons // 8 episodes
“[Ratched gives us] Sarah Paulson in all her dyke drag queen glory… this eight-episode series — that is supposedly season one of a four season arc — is absurd in its very existence and delicious in its classic movie concoction. There is so much to chew on, so much to celebrate, so much to critique, and yet the whole thing feels so completely Ryan Murphy it’s hard not to just delight in its very existence.” — Drew
The Sandman
(2022-) // 1+ Seasons // 11+ episodes
“The Sandman crafts a fantastical world where dreams are as real as the ground under your feet, where feelings are gods and rubies can make wishes come true, where nightmares walk among us and where everyone, it seems, is at least a little bit queer.” — Valerie
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
(2018 -2020 ) // 5 Seasons // 52 episodes
“Not everyone is queer at the end of the day on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power — but almost everyone is! There’s Bow’s gay dads, there’s longterm lesbian couple Netossa and Spinnerella, there’s non-binary Double Trouble, and, well, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there’s four more queers by the time this ragtag squad of rainbow rebels defeats fascism and restores Eternia to it’s pre-colonized natural state. But the queerness of She-Ra isn’t contained to the romantic storylines. There’s the joy and healing of found family, the trauma of being different in the families we’re born into, there’s pathways out of evangelical fascism, there’s guilt and shame and redemption, there’s mental illness, and good heavens the rainbows! Mostly, though, in some really dark days, there’s hope. Come for the ’80s nostalgia, stay for the storytelling that is as captivating and well-plotted as all the best stuff non-animated stuff you’re watching.” — Heather
Sense8
(2014 – 2018) // 2 Seasons & 1 Movie // 25 episodes
If you like ambitious, sprawling sci-fi epics with enormous budgets, assorted racial stereotypes and a refreshing transgender female character in an interracial lesbian relationship with another woman, then this show is for you. The show creators have confirmed that every character is pansexual and there’s also a a gay male couple. Season Three was wrapped up as a movie event that bestowed a very happy queer ending upon us all.
Tales of the City
(2019) // One Season // 10 episodes
Picking up quite a bit of time after the original groundbreaking series left off, the Netflix reboot of gay Tales of the City, helmed by lesbian showrunner Lauren Morelli, returns to San Francisco and finds trans matriarch Anna Madrigal still played by a cis actress (although she’s played by trans actress Jen Richards in a flashback episode, one of the season’s strongest, which also features trans actress Daniela Vega) and surrounded by new and returning characters. One is Shawna, played by Elliot Page, and other residents of 28 Barbary Lane include a maybe-breaking-up couple comprised of Margot (May Hong), a queer woman, and Jake (Josiah Victoria Garcia), a trans man.
XO, Kitty
(2023-) // 1+ Seasons // 8 Episodes
You might think that this show is kinda gay but it’s gayer than that, believe it or not! This spinoff of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before finds Kitty moving to South Korea to attend the same school her mother did and reunite with her long-distance boyfriend — only to learn he has another girlfriend, but their relationship is not exactly what it seems to be.
More Gay, Queer and Lesbian Netflix TV Shows
These Netflix shows all have major trans, queer or lesbian characters, although they might not always be out from the first episode.
Arcane
(2021 – ) // 1+ Seasons // 9+ Episodes
ARCANE (L to R) : HAILEE STEINFELD as VI, ELLA PURNELL as JINX in ARCANE Cr. NETFLIX © 2021
“I’m not quite sure what I expected Arcane to be, but I didn’t expect it to be an epic sci-fi adventure about found family, queer badasses, and underground rebellion. And yet, to my delight, that’s exactly what it was.” — Valerie
Atypical
(2017 – 2021) // 4 Seasons // 38 Episodes
Atypical is about a teenage boy named Sam who’s on the autistic spectrum and his family. One of those family members is his younger sister, Casey, who plays mostly a supporting role in season one. However, in season two she moves to a new school and starts getting her own storylines, one of which is queer, and it just keeps getting better from there!
Baby-Sitters Club
(2020-2021) // 2 Seasons // 18 Episodes
Netflix’s reboot of The Baby-Sitter’s Club is about as wholesome as you’d expect, but without veering too corny, and is full of the “girls can do anything” energy that made the book series a classic for decades. In the first season, Mary-Anne babysits a young trans girl in an standout episode. In the second season, we’re treated to two teen coming outs: one via a casual mention from a BSC member and another in a much more substantial plot from Claudia’s big sister, Janine.
Bienvenidos a Eden / Welcome to Eden
(2022-) // 2+ Seasons // 16+ Episodes
A bunch of attractive, stylish, hungry teenagers are lured to a mysterious island under the guise of it being the most exclusive influencer event ever, only to find themselves amid a terrifying murderous cult. Zoa (Amaia Aberasturi) is the bisexual daughter of an absent father and an addict mother, Bel (Begoña Vargas) is a badass lesbian in braids and Mayka (Lola Rodríguez) is a trans woman, hacker and DJ who discovered Eden’s existence all on her own. According to Into, “all the greatest characters —who support the rebellion and help people escape— are queer.”
Big Mouth
(2017 – ) // 7+ Seasons // 51 Episodes
The majority of Big Mouth‘s queer content is focused on queer male characters, but it’s a beloved program by the community. “The series doesn’t turn into a hopeful after-school special just to validate its characters’ identities,” NBC Out wrote of this cartoon that aims to personify the creatures that drive puberty inside the teenage brain. “Rather, it commits to presenting their lives in full, complete with dick jokes and anxiety monsters and characters who are deeply problematic alongside characters who are kind and wise. Yes, they are LGBTQ, but at the end of the day, they’re teenagers — and teenagers are messy as hell.”
Boca a Boca / The Kissing Game
(2020) // One Season // 6 Episodes
This Netflix LGBT TV Show from Brazil follows teenagers in a small ranching town who are falling ill, seemingly from a “kissing orgy” at a wild dance party held by a local cult. The lead character, Frances, is queer and has a crush on her friend, Bel, who is the first student to get sick.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
(2018 – 2020) // 4 Seasons // 36 Episodes
“Given that Part One features actual cannibalism, it’s wild that CAOS’s Part Two is darker, bloodier, and more unsettling than the first, but this show loves to outdo its own extremities. Theo transitions in Part Two, and Sabrina fights for gender equality in the premiere, but the series does occasionally struggle with its own mythology and with uniting both sides of its storytelling, which whiplashes between grounded character work and sheer chaos. There are even magical orgies on this show, featuring the brilliant villain Prudence as well as Sabrina’s quippy cousin Ambrose. Pansexuality is normalized at Sabrina’s school, but sometimes that queerness doesn’t permeate the show’s main storylines. But if you’re looking for something spooky and cinematic, this is your show.” — Kayla
Collateral
BBC Two // (2018) // 1 Season // 4 Episodes
Parisa Tag/Netflix
This British thriller spends four parts investigating a murder that only has one witness — Linh, who’s having issues with her immigration status and is dating a vicar who’s way older than her. As the detectives delve deeper into a criminal underworld, the realities of the crime reveal themselves in unexpected ways.
Control Z
(2020 – 2022) // 3 Seasons // 24 Episodes
This Mexican whodunit set in a high school where a hacker upends the social order by leaking students’ secrets co-stars Zion Moreno as Isabela de la Fuente (in Season One), a popular girl who’s trans status is revealed by aforementioned hacker. Samantha Acuña is Alex, a lesbian who struggles to fit in and make friends her own age.
Dead to Me
(2019-2022) // 3 Seasons // 30 Episodes
In Season 2 of “Dead to Me” Is Flirting With You Via Natalie Morales, Valerie sings the praises of this dark comedy series from lesbian showrunner Liz Feldman about the friendship between two women who meet in a support group after Jen (Christina Applegate)’s husband dies in a car accident. Judy (Linda Cardellini) ends up moving in with Jen and becoming a second Mom to her kids as they get wound up in some pretty sketchy and f*cked up shit! In Season Two, it turns out that Judy is queer when she starts up a thing with a chef played by bisexual actress Natalie Morales. THEY’RE GAY and it’s GREAT.
Dear White People
(2017 – 2021) // 4 Seasons // 40 Episodes
“It’s no secret that Dear White People has a checked history with its depiction of queer black women,” wrote Carmen, referring specifically to Season One’s problematic tropes. But Season Three saw this “incredibly smart and stylized” show finally “give us the nerdy Black Gay Girls we deserve.” After coming out in Season Two, supporting character Kelsey Phillips gets fully fleshed-out as a character and debuts a romance with Brooke, a media studies undergrad “whose main character traits up to this point have been: being nerdy, being very annoying, being an excellent student journalist.” But by Season 4, she’s gone!
Degrassi: Next Class
F2N Canada // (2016 – 2018) // 4 Seasons // 40 Episodes
Seasons Three and Four debuted in 2017, bringing with them a cute romantic storyline between a Muslim Syrian immigrant, Rasha, and Degrassi’s Latina lesbian student council president, Zoe. Season Four’s journey for Yael was maybe the first-ever televised situation a young assigned-female-at-birth person realizing that they are non-binary.
Derry Girls
Channel 4 // (2018 – 2022) // 3 Seasons // 19 Episodes
Derry Girls, a teen comedy set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles in the 1990, ended its first season with a great coming out episode for Clare and Season 2, while not really meeting our total expectations for exploring Clare’s sexuality, does give us one of the best lesbian prom episodes ever.
Elite
(2018 – ) // 7+ Seasons // 56+ Episodes
This delicious sexy teen soap set in Spain, where scholarship kids clash with the town’s richest citizens at an exclusive private school, is basically about blackmail, and also murder! There’s a lot of gay-guy stuff, but the gay-girl stuff for the first three seasons is pretty light. In Season 4, we finally get the (of course, tragic and complicated) sapphic romance we’d been waiting for.
Gentefied
(2020-2021) // Two seasons // 18 episodes
Gentefied is centered on three adult cousins — Chris, Erik, and Ana — as they work to keep their grandfather’s taco shop, Mama Fina’s, afloat amid rising rents. Ana, the queer youngest cousin, just wants to change the world through her art, continue her love story with Yessika, her girlfriend since high school, and keep the other two from killing each other with their macho pride. Gentefied is hellafied fun, smart, and has a lot of damn heart.
Ginny & Georgia
(2021-) // 2+ Seasons // 20+ Episodes
15-year-old Ginny, her brother who never talks and her hot Mom Georgia move to a New England town where it’s like, perpetual autumn. Georgia schemes. Ginny is surprised to learn that being smart and pretty will actually garner you friends — she’s never been very good at friends — and one of those friends (Maxine), my friends, is a LESBIAN.
G.L.O.W.
(2017-2019) // 3 Seasons // 30 Episodes
Season One of this smart, quirky 1980s Jenji Kohan project about the “gorgeous ladies of wrestling” was almost maddeningly not queer despite having gay men and a pretty gay premise. But Season Two delivered a romance to remember between two women of color, which hit some pretty interesting complications in Season Three.
The Haunting of Hill House
(2018) // One Season // 10 Episodes
“Based on Shirley Jackson’s iconic novel, this ten-part reimagining is noteworthy for its standout lesbian character: Theo Crain, wonderfully portrayed by Kate Siegel. Blessed (or cursed) with ESP, Theo can read minds and feelings with simply a touch. Her gift acts as a metaphor for any child who grew up in an abusive household and was forced to be hyperaware. She wears gloves that she keeps on even during one-night-stands. For Theo, sex is about distraction, not connection. She may not be the protagonist, but Theo is a relatable and deeply felt queer character that holds the whole series together.” —Kayla
Human Resources
(2022-2023) // 2 Seasons // 20 Episodes
This Big Mouth spin-off follows the workplace dynamics of the hormone monsters which include pansexual Love Bug Sonya (Pamela Adlon) and pansexual Kitty Beaumont Bouchet the Depression Kitty (Jean Smart) and trans teen Natalie (Josie Totah). Plus there are lots of male queer characters as well!
The Imperfects
(2022) // 1 Seasons // 10 Episodes
“If you like messy superpower origin stories, found family feels, comic-book-esque fight scenes, and slowly unraveling mysteries, with a bonus queer, asexual, South Asian woman, Netflix’s The Imperfects is the show for you.” — Valerie
La Casa de las Flores / House of Flowers
(2018 – 2020) // 3 Seasons // 34 episodes
Behind a family-run flower enterprise lies SCANDALS and SECRETS, and Instinct writes that it was “a turning point for modern-day Mexican television” that “features non-traditional characters and dives deeply into sexuality, gender identity, and dysfunctional families.” Eldest sibling Paulina is shocked when her husband comes out as a trans woman (unfortunately played by a cis male actor), María José, who eventually has a thing with their family’s lawyer.
Las Chicas Del Cable / Cable Girls
(2017-2019) // 6 Seasons // 42 Episodes
This period drama set in 1928 Madrid features a tight-knit group of women who work together at Spain’s only cable company (cable as in telephones, not television) — united for many reasons including their desire to work in the first place, which wasn’t a traditional desire for women at the time. One of the women, Carlotta, is bisexual, married to a man, and has feelings for Sara, another cable girl. The Dart describes it as “Netflix’s hidden gem.”
Lucifer
Fox // (2015-2021) // 6 Seasons // 93 Episodes
“Long before they moved to Netflix, Lucifer‘s title character, and his best demon bud Maze have been openly bisexual. But I’ve discussed here and there on this very website that Lucifer the show seems to have a questionable hold on what that means. But, the show’s shift to Netflix also gave us a shift in perspective on bisexuality, specifically as it related to Maze. In fact, Maze’s entire arc in Season Four was centered around her feelings from Eve (yes, THAT Eve) and trying to get them across, despite being someone who isn’t all too familiar with the practice of sharing her feelings.” — Valerie
Merry Happy Whatever
(2019) // 1 Season // 8 Episodes
When this charming if banal Netflix holiday sitcom opens with Kayla Quinn (Ashley Tisdale) and her husband Alan deciding to stay in different houses for the season in pursuit of an eventual divorce, and over the course of the season, Kayla comes out to herself and her family. “ashley tisdale playing a lesbian is everything i never knew i needed but is now the best thing in the universe,” tweeted one fan, which about sums it up!
Mindhunter
(2017 – 2019) // 2 Seasons //19 Episodes
This thriller about the early days of the FBI’s criminal profiling department starred the always delightful Jonathan Groff and received largely positive reviews when it debuted on Netflix this fall. Anna Torv played Wendy Carr, a psychologist with a scholarly interest in interviewing imprisoned serial killers to determine what the hell is going on there. Her lesbianism is sidelined in Season One but in Season Two, Wendy gets a VERY hot girlfriend who looks nice in a tank top, and queer storylines bubble back up to the surface.
Neon
2023 // One Season // 8 Episodes
“….how rare is it to see a queer Puerto Rican girl on television? Let alone one that is three-dimensional and fully realized instead of someone’s pithy sidekick or one-liner? But I’d imagine it’s impossible for anyone to watch Neon and not fall in love with Emma Ferreira’s performance. As a comedy, Neon is not exactly laugh-out-loud funny (more of a enjoyable chuckle and vibe), but in Ferreira’s hands Ness’ warmth and goofiness finds perfect home.” – Carmen Phillips
Never Have I Ever
(2020-2023) // 4 Seasons // 40 Episodes
Your mileage may vary on this coming-of-age comedy is centered on Devi Vishwakumar, a Tamil Indian-American teenager growing up in Sherman Oaks grappling with her father’s recent death and her burning desire to be cool. She’s got two best friends, and one of them is named Fabiola, and she’s an Afro-Latina and also SHE’S GAY.
The OA
(2017 – 2019) // 2 Seasons // 16 episodes
Vulture writes that The OA “gently, but insistently, weaves a queer narrative,” with its themes of chosen family and “a secret language they share together, something that feels akin to drag culture.” But it’s also remarkable for the character of Buck, played by 15-year-old trans actor Ian Alexander, one of the only trans male characters on television when this deeply weird, impossible-to-describe and wholly immersive sci-fi show premiered in 2017, heralded as “the future of trans visibility in Hollywood.”
One Day At A Time
(2017 – 2019) // 3 Seasons // 39 episodes
In addition to being charming as fuck and giving Autostraddle a mid-season shout-out, Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time makes the case for an old-fashioned style of show taking up progressive causes. Three generations of a Cuban-American family endure the slings and errors of everyday life, including a daughter who comes out as a lesbian mid-Season One and has her first queer relationship in Season Two.
The One
(2021) // One Season // 10 Episodes
In a loosely-constructed dystopian future, a corporation had created a DNA test capable of determining your sole perfect soulmate, and the temptation to find one’s “match” unleashes interpersonal chaos. Amid all this we have lesbian detective Kate (Zoë Tapper), investigating a murder that often muddles the far more interesting questions the show raises, whose soulmate gets in a car accident on her way to meet Kate and spends the series in a coma.
The Politician
(2019 – 2021) // 2 Seasons // 15 Episodes
Ryan Murphy’s first project for Netflix is chock-full of gay, even if we can’t decide if we actually like it or not. The wealthy and glamorous mother of the show’s protagonist, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, has a lesbian affair. Queer black actress Rahne Jones plays lesbian candidate Skye Leighton, who has an affair of her own. Trans actor Theo Jermaine plays one of Payton’s political advisors. Season Two brings a bevy of throuples and casual sexual fluidity. Also most of the guys are queer too!
REBƎLDE
(2022-) // 2+ Seasons // 16 Episodes
This series is based on a Mexican telenovela by the same name which was a massive hit, spawning an actual pop group that released nine studio albums. Netflix’s re-booted contemporary REBƎLDE follows a new crew of very hot and talented teen musicians enrolled at the Elite Way School. Amongst them is Andi (Lizbeth Selene), “a rocker at heart” and “a drummer who scoffs at any rulebook, from what she wears to whom she dates in between rehearsing for Battle of the Bands” who has a relationship with Emilia Alo (Giovanna Grigio), “the most popular girl at EWS.”
Sex Education
(2019-2023) // 4 Seasons // 34 Episodes
Come to have your life ruined by Gillian Anderson; stay for infectious teen drama laced with a very fun, weirdo sense of humor. Baby dykes learn to scissor, Gay Moms exist nonchalantly, and an awkward teenage boy who finds success walking in his mother’s footsteps by offering Sex Education to his classmates. As the show progresses, a lead character discovers her pansexual side all the way into a queer relationship and a Black non-binary character faces off against a new, conservative administrator. In its final season, basically everybody becomes queer and great fun is had by all.
Santa Clarita Diet
(2017 – 2019) // 3 Seasons // 30 Episodes
“Santa Clarita Diet is an absurdly dark comedy featuring Drew Barrymore as a suburban real estate broker who’s also a zombie (just go with it). Her neighbor, Lisa, comes out in Season Two and starts dating Deputy Anne (played by queer actress Natalie Morales). As a couple they’re super sex positive and hilariously vocal about it. Sure they are both sort of just funny side characters to the main plot, but Natalie Morales is an underrated comedic talent in everything that she does, and in Santa Clarita Diet she puts in some of her finest work.” — Carmen
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
2023 // One Season // 8 Episodes
Look at how CUTE everyone is.
“Despite its title, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is not about Scott Pilgrim, not entirely. It’s also about bisexual blader Ramona Flowers, who Scott Pilgrim wants to date — and her League of Evil Exes he has to contend with first.” – Valerie Anne
She’s Gotta Have It
(2017 – 2018) // 2 Seasons // 19 Episodes
Nola Darling, the pansexual protagonist of this contemporary remake of the Spike Lee original film that made waves for its portrayal of black female sexuality, has a relationship with a lesbian named Opal in Season One and that was cool except that also it kinda wasn’t. But then Season Two came along and gave Nola the bright light she deserved, although it’s unfortunate that so much of her queer love story happened off-camera.
Stranger Things
(2015 – 2023) // 4+ Seasons // 34+ Episodes
It takes three seasons to get there but once you do — this acclaimed and beloved ’80s-set series about mysterious forces and the children who battle them finally reveals a lesbian character — Robin, who Carmen describes as “the breakout star of a snarky teen nerd rebel.” The fifth and final season will air this year.
Survival of the Thickest
2023- // 1+ Seasons // 8 Episodes
Based on Michelle Buteau’s memoir and thenceforth also starring Michelle Buteau, Survival of the Thickest is a fun romp of a show about Mavis Beaumont, plus-size stylist rebuilding her life after a breakup. One of her best friends is a bisexual woman exploring the possibility of actually dating women for the first time, and Mavis is often surrounded by queer community, working with queer people and attending queer events, including noted drag queen Peppermint.
Teenage Bounty Hunters
(2020) // One Season // 10 Episodes
Jenji Kohan’s comedy about twins who become bounty hunters just to add a little bit of excitement to their lives has a gradually emerging bisexual storyline that hits a very sweet spot for us all.
Top Boy
(2011 – 2023) // 5 Seasons // 32 Episodes
Ali Painter/Netflix © 2022.
This British crime drama follows two drug dealers returning to London streets to find their pursuit of money and power threatened by a fresh new hustler on the scene. Jacqueline “Jaq” Lawrence is a masculine lesbian and a main character of the series starting in Season Three, as she moves from from number two to top dog. Her girlfriend, Becks, is played by model Adwoa Aboah.
Trinkets
(2019 – 2020) // 2 Seasons // 20 Episodes
Unlikely friendships and enemies to friends are extremely my jam, and this show has it all!
Brianna Hildebrand plays queer lead character Elodie, the shy new girl in town, in this show about teenage shoplifters. Of Season Two, Valerie wrote, “between the female friendships and sweet queer romance, Trinkets Season Two didn’t have to steal my heart because I gave it freely.”
Tuca & Bertie
2019 // One Season on Netflix // 10 Episodes
Xtra said of this popular and cancelled-too-soon-by Netflix adult animated series that it was “not just explicitly queer — though Tuca is canonically bisexual — but thematically queer in its embrace of non-normalcy.” Following two birds in their 30s (voiced by Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong) entering a new stage in their friendship, guest voices include queer icons like Tessa Thompson, Nicole Byer and Laverne Cox. After its first season at Netflix, it spend its next two at Adult Swim.
The Umbrella Academy
(2019-2023) // 3+ Seasons // 20+ Episodes
Elliot Page’s Viktor turns out to be the queer we hoped in Season Two and in Season Three, comes out as a trans man. The series, based on a comic book, centers on a dysfunctional family of adopted sibling superheroes who have reunited to stop the apocalypse and figure out how their father died. Its fourth and final season will air this year.
Warrior Nun
(2020-2022) // 2 Seasons // 20 episodes
19-year-old Ava wakes up in a morgue with a divine artifact all up in her back and proceeds to fight demons on earth while heaven/hell tries to control her. Her friend Sister Beatrice is openly gay. In Season One, Ava’s relationship with Beatrice was teased but in the second season, it was able to truly blossom and grow.
Valeria
(2020 – 2023) // 3 Seasons // 24 Episodes
This Spanish-language rom-com explores the sex lives and interpersonal drama of four best friends: the titular writer Valeria, who finds herself in an unhappy marriage, and Carmen, Lola and Nerea. According to Refinery 29, Nerea’s “lust for living as an out lesbian is one of the most important stories of Valeria (and adds some hot queer sex to the proceedings.)”
Why Are You Like This?
ABC Australia // 2021 // One Season // 8 Episodes
This Australian comedy import into the LGBT Netflix shows cannon follows “three best friends navigate life in their early 20s — including work, fun, identity politics, hookups, and wild nights.” Mia is bisexual and part of this Extremely Online trio that will provide you with a delightful few hours of queer TV.
Netflix Anthology Series With Notable LGBTQ+ Episodes
Black Mirror
Channel 4 // (2011 – ) // 5 Season Anthology Series // 22 Episodes //
This sci-fi dystopian anthology series tells a new story every episode, usually taking place in the future and with a focus on technology. In Season Three, Black Mirror gave us a beautiful gift: San Junipero.
Easy
(2017 – 2019) // 3 Season Anthology Series // 25 Episodes
Joe Swanberg’s character-driven series that uses Chicago as central throughline bounces between different people, providing intimate snapshots of their lives. The recurring queer women on the show — Jo and Chase — provide some of the best episodes, covering a sprawling gay relationship arc of coming out to breaking up.
Other good Netflix Original Programming with minor LBGTQ+ female and/or trans characters/stories: American Vandal, Archive 81, A Storm for Christmas, Beef, Bojack Horseman, Broadchurch, Chosen, Doctor Foster, Fuller House,Get Even, Grace & Frankie, Grand Army, Hollywood, House of Cards, How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast), Jupiter’s Legacy, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Manifest, Marcella, Midnight Mass, Raising Dion, Russian Doll, Self-Made, Shadow & Bone, Sky Rojo, Special, The End of the F*cking World, Tiny Pretty Things, Unorthodox
Other Medicore Netflix Original Programming with minor-to-medium LBGTQ+ female and/or trans characters/stories: 13 Reasons Why, The A-List, Altered Carbon, Anne With an “E”, Away, Cowboy Bebop, The Devil in Ohio, Godless, Hemlock Grove, Insatiable, Q-Force, Resident Evil, The I-Land, You
Looking for more lesbian TV shows you can stream right now? Here you go:
Vivienne Medrano (aka VivziePop) on “Hazbin Hotel,” Her Favorite Musicals, and Giving People Second Chances
VivziePop interview feature image by Matt Winkelmeyer via Getty Images
Within the demonic realm known as the internet, one indie animator named Vivienne Medrano (aka ViziePop) spawned onto the scene. Her crowdfunded animated pilot, Hazbin Hotel, instantly became a phenomenon when it dropped and pioneered a new wave for indie animation.
The 2D, hand-drawn adult musical comedy is about an optimistic queer princess of Hell opening up a hotel to rehabilitate sinners. It was surprising to see how well the plucky little short managed to bring theater geeks and animation nerds together with its naughty tone. (To this day, the video has racked up 96 million views.)
Given its idiosyncrasy and success, it’s no surprise that A24 picked it up to produce as their first animated animated series. An indie internet sensation adopted by undisputed indie production company royalty? Hell yeah.
Upon watching the first five episodes of Hazbin Hotel, I was delighted by the colorful detail in design, the raunchy humor, the worldbuilding, and the expansive range of show tunes brought to life by her Broadway cast — including Erika Henningsen, Stephanie Beatriz, Blake Roman, Amir Talai, and friggin’ Keith David.
Ahead of the show’s premiere, I chatted with VivziePop about bringing her helluva musical series to life.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Rendy: First of all, thank you for having Keith David sing “you’re a power bottom at rock bottom.”
VivziePop: Yeah, that’s a good lyric.
Rendy: I’ve been watching the screener for that episode again and again because the “Loser, Baby” number… I need it. It’s such a great song.
VivziePop: That one’s usually the favorite. It’s also the top song for most people behind the scenes.
Rendy: How does it feel to have this phenomenon of a passion project finally unleashed onto the world?
VivziePop: It doesn’t feel real. Production took so long, and then we’ve kind of had it done for a hot minute, so I kind of forget the world hasn’t seen it yet. The fact that it’s finally being released is unreal to me. I’m so excited.
Rendy: Between the pilot and the show, what differences arose having this bigger, larger production and a sort of new animation style?
VivziePop: Well, I learned so much from the making of the pilot because it was such a scrappy project. It grew as it went. It was, for lack of a better word, amateur. Because I was amateur! I was learning so much and I was very, very fresh. I didn’t really understand the pipeline. But it was so fun. We were a group of people working together to make something happen, even if it was a very uphill battle.
It was a completely different process when it came to the series. But I’d made another show called Helluva Boss in the meantime and that one taught me a lot about a more structured pipeline.
Every animated show is different and has different needs. There’s no way to just mimic another show’s pipeline. So it was still a big learning curve to figure out what those needs were for Hazbin. But it was really nice to have that experience making Helluva Boss, especially since it’s a similar show. I’m very thankful for the entire development period.
Rendy: What were some of your biggest influences for the musical numbers? I see you have a little bit of Beetlejuice, a little bit of Chicago, a little bit of Hairspray.
ViziePop: Yeah, the musical styles are all over the place. Sam Haft and Andrew Underberg, our writing team, were so good with any genre I would throw at them. The characters are diverse in their musical styles and their genres. If certain characters are singing, they’re not going to sing something that sounds like Broadway — they’re going to sing a pop song or a more contemporary ballad. It’s going to be different depending on the needs of the character and the scene. They were so good at doing all these different types of music while still having it work together as part of the same soundtrack.
Rendy: What other musicals have influenced you?
VivziePop: Well, definitely Chicago. That’s a show about a lot of villainy people. But also Little Shop of Horrors. That was a huge one for me as well. And then my favorite as a kid was Annie. I actually got to be in it as a kid and it’s just a classic with really good music. I based Alastor’s voice off of the soundtrack.
More recently, I really loved Something Rotten. It was a big influence as well, because its humor is so goofy. Beetlejuice came out after Hazbin, but it’s obviously so similar. That was less an influence and more just like, oh I eat this up. It’s perfect.
Rendy: How did you find the balance between the sincerity and the sinfulness in the show’s overall tone?
VivziePop: I think it was easy because we have characters like Charlie who are just so lovable and warm. She’s a very good person even if her kingdom is a nasty place in many ways.
The main theme of the show is redemption, which will always exist in a grey area. It varies depending on who wants to be redeemed and who needs to forgive and for what. It’s complicated, so I wanted the show to have a lot of heart and a lot of questions and a lot of emotion. I don’t want there to be easy answers. I want it to be kind of the thing the show is always thinking about and grappling with.
Rendy: How was it developing the relationships between your queer characters during the writing process? How did you delve into the complexities of these characters who are very damaged, but still seeking a sliver of hope?
VivziePop: I really love writing romance. It’s actually one of my favorite things to write. Romance and angst and tragedy. I feel like I’m better at that than humor, even though I really like writing comedy.
And I like doing relationships in all different forms. Vaggy and Charlie are a pre-established relationship, so I wanted them to be very domestic and normal and casual. They’re very comfortable with each other. I didn’t want it to be an “in your face kind of
honeymoon stage” because realistically, when you’re with somebody for years, you’re not necessarily doing that all the time. It depends on the kind of person you are, but for them, I felt like they were past that. They’re very comfortable with each other. They’re together and that’s their every day.
And then with characters like Angel and Husk, they start the story kind of at odds with each other. But, over the course of season one, we see their relationships start to develop. I’m really excited for people to see where that goes. It’s definitely one I feel needs a lot more time to see these characters evolve and get even closer to each other.
Rendy: What were some of your favorite sequences to direct?
VivziePop: Oh wow. Well, the easiest answer because it’s out, is the whole of episode four. I co-wrote that one. And it’s an episode that has existed since the earliest development time for the Hazbin series. While we were still making the pilot, I knew that was an episode I wanted to exist. It holds a lot of emotional weight. It’s definitely the most emotional episode this season and I’m very excited for people to see it.
Rendy: What role did music play in developing these characters and showing their relationships to one another?
VivziePop: Music is amazing when it comes to that. I mean, even the score accompanying a scene can create the emotions. The importance of music in any show is the same for musicals. There are so many musicals where the songs just make me sob. I love when music can do that. I was like, “Yeah, we need some moments that try to get people to cry.”
I love that. I live for that. I live for making myself cry. So when it works, I’m so happy.
Rendy: What was one of the biggest takeaways for you creating and developing this show over time?
VivziePop: Learning to let things go. I mean, that’s with both my series. I think every creator has an element of perfectionism. For me, I don’t feel like I’m a perfectionist in the sense that I need everything to be perfect or it won’t move forward. It’s more I don’t like to look back. I have a hard time watching my old work because I’m just like, “no.” I didn’t stop because it wasn’t perfect, but I’m not going to look back.
But I’ve learned to embrace the hard work everyone was doing and accept any kind of imperfection we weren’t able to fix. Ultimately, I’m so proud of what we accomplished and I can feel that pride as I watch it.
Rendy: What do you hope people takeaway from the show?
VivziePop: My big hope? I feel like the show is about redemption and second chances and about supporting and loving people and accepting flaws. That’s a sentiment we need more of in the world right now, especially the climate we have with social media especially.
I just feel like it’s a good thing for people to have in their life: a reminder that characters can be flawed and you can be flawed and you can also change. We can always grow.
The first four episodes of Hazbin Hotel are now streaming on Prime.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” Episode 1603 Recap: Mommy Issues
Finally some drama! After years of camaraderie — with maybe a villain or two — Drag Race has finally gathered together a collection of bitches. Thank God because Untucked was getting boring.
It’s the first post-premiere episode, which means our week two queens and week one queens are meeting. While I maintain that Jane is a bit too eager to embrace bitchiness without backing it up with wit and talent, her assessment of the week one queens was extremely accurate. Mostly that she says she’s a Morphine stan — they kind of have the same mom — and an Amanda hater — she doesn’t know her just based on vibes.
Meanwhile, Plasma flops even harder at bitchiness saying she knows Sapphira sang bass which feels kind of racist and kind of transphobic. Take a lesson from Jane: Don’t punch down identity-wise, do punch down talent-wise.
But Sapphira can’t be bothered, because along with Jane, she’s been gifted immunity potion for her win in the premiere. Ru explains they can use this potion for themself or for somebody else and that more rules will be explained later.
This episode is a ball! The mother of all balls! Look one is Mother Goose (an outfit inspired by a nursery rhyme), look two is Signifanct Mother (an outfit inspired by a famous mom), and look three is Call Me Mother/Father Eleganza (an outfit made by the queens out of menswear).
Another white twink makes the mistake of coming for Sapphira. She’s working on a denim gown which Dawn sarcastically calls groundbreaking. “You can be groundbreaking, I’ll just be stunning,” Sapphira fires back solidifying herself as one of my favorites of the season.
My other favorite Morphine has a little back and forth with fellow Miami queen Mhi’ya. Even after admitting she doesn’t sew — on season 16?? come on, babe! — she says she doesn’t expect much from Morphine because she only cares about being pretty. (It’s working!) Morphine meanwhile tells Ru she doesn’t know Mhi’ya, but she knows of her. “I’ve seen her perform a couple of times. I’ve given her a dollar,” she adds, a smirk on her pretty face.
Ru keeps things light(?) talking to Q about her grandma teaching her to sew but then disowning her. And then she tells Amanda she looks prettier without makeup. I agree?? Out of drag, I’m like oh Amanda you seem nice, you look pretty, I don’t hate you. It’s just her drag! But Ru picked her so I’m not sure why she gets to act surprised.
They’re doing rate-a-queen again, but this time someone is going home. Also they get to pick the top three and bottom three but Ru gets to pick the winner and which queens are lip syncing. Ever the chaos demon, Ru also leaves the results from the premieres.
Group 1:
- Sapphira
- Q
- Dawn
- Mirage
- Morphine
- Xunami
- Amanda
Group 2:
- Jane
- Geneva
- Nymphia
- Plasma
- Mhi’ya
- Hershii
- Megami
Morphine is mad that she’s ranked 5th and I’m mad on her behalf!
With talent and charm, Nymphia is the star of this episode. Not only are her looks great — more on that later — but while others are stressing she has time to flutter around the workroom being funny and chaotic. Morphine teaches her to say dirty things in Spanish to which she proudly declares herself trilingual.
The guest judge this week is Isaac Mizrahi along with Michelle and Carson. Without Ross and his botox, this panel is OLD. Good for them! I kind of like the vibe of elders dolling out advice and judgment to baby queens. Feels less absurd than last season when legend Sasha Colby was receiving critiques from peers.
There are a lot of looks this week so I’m just going to highlight some of them. For Mother Goose, Geneva is dressed as Miss Moffat which she describes as 1800s whore but feels more like 1980s sleeping bag. Jane is Pussycat by Fire but looks more like Rum Tum Tugger. The obvious standouts are Q with Man on the Moon, Nymphia with Little Boy Blue (she looks like Orlando!), and, my personal fave, Sapphira as Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.
The weakest category of the night is Significant Mother. Some of the looks were good, but none wowed me. I did appreciate the sentiment of Nymphia’s Angelina wedding look — personal notes and drawings on the back included. And Geneva dressed as Salma Hayek at the Magic Mike’s Last Dance premiere is an excuse for me to say that movie is very underrated.
The deconstructed menswear looks were much better. Even Mirage who was struggling the whole episode really managed to pull off something that was at least really hot. Morphine is also hot in a denim bodysuit with a witch hat which admittedly has little clarity of vision but is, again, very hot. The obvious standouts are Q with her sculpted collar and Nymphia with her windblown tie look. Outfits like these are why the balls are my favorite episodes.
It’s rate-a-queen and Jane puts Nymphia first to atone for her sins. The final tops are Q, Nymphia, and Sapphira, and the bottoms are Mhi’ya, Geneva, and Hershii. These feel correct.
If I’d been participating in Ru’s version of The Circle, my ranking would have been:
- Nymphia
- Q
- Sapphira
- Dawn
- Morphine
- Xunami
- Mirage
- Jane
- Plasma
- Hershii
- Geneva
- Mhi’ya
- Amanda
Nymphia wins making Q runner-up for the second week in a row. But, to be honest, there was no way Nymphia couldn’t win.
Mhi’ya is declared safe — Ru and the producers definitely want to see if they can get a quiet queen comes out of her shell storyline — which means it’s Geneva and Hershii lip syncing to “Maybe You’re the Problem” by Ava Max.
It’s not a great lip sync, but Geneva wins. It feels inevitable but I’m still sad! Hershii was so nice! Alas even Miss Congeniality needs to know how to sew.
Teleport Us to Mars!! Here Are Some Random Thoughts:
+ Once again wishing Jane was a bit better at creating drama. During Untucked, she insults Amanda, but there’s no shade to it! It’s just blunt.
+ Hershii worrying that going home means she won’t get more work and won’t be able to provide for her kids broke my heart.
+ Morphine calls Nymphia’s final look one of the best in Drag Race history and I have to agree.
+ Geneva saying she was only in the bottom because the queens were being shady has kind of turned me against her forever. I don’t like when queens lack total self-awareness! Also if that were true, Ru would’ve made her safe instead of having her lip sync.
+ Queen I’m rooting for: Nymphia, Q, Sapphira, and Morphine
+ Queen I’m horniest for: Morphine, my Instagram handle is my full name @drewburnettgregory
+ Queen I want to go home: Amanda, Mhi’ya, Geneva — let’s get some double eliminations started.
Boobs on Your Tube: After Five Years, Alice’s Finally Growing Into the Confidence of Her Convictions on “Good Trouble”
Look at you! You made it to the end of another week (and some weeks that is harder to do than others, so congratulations to you). The biggest television news this week is the Emmys, which had historic levels of wins by queer Black people and that’s bitterwseet, but great. Sai also interviewed the composers of The L Word: Generation Q’s musical episode about being Emmy nominated (they didn’t win, but it’s still pretty freaking cool!)
If you saw Mean Girls last weekend, you might appreciate a run down every moment that’s gayer than the original. Drew is still keeping you up-to-date on Drag Race, and she’s also got some feelings on Jodie Foster’s True Detective. On the reality tv beat, Anya is ready with your weekly recap of Traitors. Ted‘s got a queer cousin, crass humor, and I’m assuming still has a talking teddy bear at the center of it all? Valerie Anne’s got you covered. Valerie also watched Death and Other Details, and whew does it have a lot of queer women on its murderous cruise. And speaking of this trend, SkyMed has freak accidents and also a lot of queer characters.
Sort Of is back for its last season on Max and Drew wrote one of the greatest queer comedies we’ve ever seen a send off. Valerie watched Hazbin Hotel, a musical extravaganza about a bubbly queer princess of hell (what a description!!). Stef wants to talk about Emma Stone’s award-buzzy Poor Things and what it has to say about the monsters we all know.
And finally, AUTOSTRADDLE IS BACK AT SUNDANCE!! Drew’s going to have daily reviews for you, starting with Justice Smith’s I Saw the TV Glow, easily one of the hottest queer films at the festival this year.
Good Trouble 513: “Hanging by a Moment”
Written by Natalie
For the first time since he blindsided her by voting against the women’s center, Councilman Jack Hauss approaches Malika in the hall. She calls him out for lying about his vote and he takes great umbrage to her characterization. He chastises her for not understanding how things work and reminds her that she shouldn’t risk offending people whose help she might need down the line. Both Malika and I are annoyed by his smugness, but I’ve been around legislative politics enough to know that he’s right: there are no permanent allies or enemies. Still, the interaction grates on Malika and, with Hauss on the verge of becoming Council president, she sets out to derail his candidacy.
She sets out to expose Hauss’ real feelings on policing and turn public sentiment against him. She enlists Tracy in her efforts, who reaches out to an assistant in Hauss’ office to get his schedule. Because she’s the more senior of the pair, Tracy knows that their fingerprints can’t be on any effort to upset Hauss so, instead of approaching him directly at a local meeting, she recruits a friend to be their stand-in. Malika feeds the stand-in information and she holds Hauss’ feet to the fire. Instead of confronting Malika directly about her suspected antics, Hauss takes his complaints to Lucia.
Malika’s boss is far more forgiving than most would be in this situation. She insists that Malika’s vendetta against Hauss will only hurt them both, especially once he becomes president of the Council. Malika still approaches politics with the perspective of an activist — someone who can be pure hearted — but Lucia reminds her that, in politics, “sometimes have to bend [your values] to achieve the greater good.”
Later, Hauss crosses path with Malika again and offers her a deal: if she agrees to stop crashing his community meetings and “spreading untruths” about his stances, he’ll promise to push her women’s center proposal through once he becomes City Council president. Malika’s rightly skeptical of taking Hauss at his word — after all, he’s lied to her once before — but he commits to putting his promise in writing this time. If she backs off, she’ll have her women’s center in just a couple of months.
Meanwhile, Alice returns to the writers’ room with a new determination to show some brave leadership. She admits that they failed with the first draft of their script and that the network is in search of fresher jokes. Morrie, Murray and Morty are committed to the bit but, in the spirit of compromise, are willing to change all their jokes about gout to jokes about eczema or osteoporosis. Alice tries to test out some younger skewing jokes, as they make their way through the ferret clips, but none of her colleagues grasp her humor. The guys stubbornly cling to the style of jokes that built the show, but Alice reminds them that those same jokes might now cost them their jobs. Frustrated with their inability to compromise, Alice sends the team home early and ends up working on the script alone.
She returns to the writers’ room the next day having submitted all of her rewrites and, of course, the network loves it. Their boss touts the “fresh and funny” rewrite as exactly what the network is looking for and Alice accepts the plaudits on behalf of the team. Morrie, Murray and Morty seem just as annoyed as I am that, five seasons in, Alice still doesn’t have the confidence of her convictions. Morty insists that, in order to be a good leader, Alice can’t just step in and do everything on her own; she has to demand that the rest of them rise to meet the challenge. She does and the guys promise to follow wherever Alice leads them.
Hazbin Hotel Is a Musical Extravaganza About a Bubbly Queer Princess of Hell
Does the term “queer princess of hell” appeal to you? Are you looking for a show that will make you laugh and blush while also making you feel real feelings? Do you like adult animation, mind-blowing singing talent, and wacky antics? Well, come on down to the Hazbin Hotel, where the activities are chaotic and the people are eccentric.
Prime Video’s new animated series Hazbin Hotel started as a doodle and a dream. Bisexual creator Vivienne Medrano’s pet project, once a YouTube pilot in 2019, is now a full-blown extravaganza, jam-packed with colorful characters and a mega-talented cast. Perfect for anyone who enjoys shows like Harley Quinn — wild cartoons made for adults that center queer women. And before we get too far into it, in case you missed the word “singing” in the intro: This is a musical show. I just didn’t want you to get distracted by the opening lore drop with its biblically accurate angels, and then jump-scared by a song.
“There’s going to be singing, and it’s all going to be okay.”
The show is about Charlie Morningstar, princess of hell, who has started the Hazbin Hotel as a sort of rehabilitation center. She wants to help souls ascend out of hell and into heaven to solve their overcrowding problem in a less violent way than the angels’ plan of… extermination. Has anyone ever ascended from hell to heaven before? No, no they have not. Does this bright-eyed optimist still believe with her entire hopeful heart that it will work? Yes, yes she does. The first song in the series sung by Charlie (voiced by the Broadway legend Erika Henningson) is called “Happy Day in Hell” and it captures her glass-half-full attitude despite her demonic surroundings. With her on this journey are a ragtag group of misfits: Her girlfriend, Vaggie (voiced by bisexual icon Stephanie Beatriz), Angel Dust (Blake Roman), a porn star who says he’s just there for the free rent, Husk (Keith David), a bartender who likes to play the grump, Kniffty (Kimiko Glen), a tiny chaotic maid who loves pain and stabbing bugs, and their benefactor, Alastor the Radio Demon (Amir Talai) who is just a little terrifying.
I love her, your honor.
Other epic voices that show up throughout the series include but are not limited to Jeremy Jordan, Krystina Alabado, Jessica Vosk, Darren Criss, Shoba Narayan, Patina Miller, and THE Daphne Rubin-Vega.
In fact, in one of the first few episodes, Stephanie Beatriz and Daphne Rubin-Vega sing a duet which I found very exciting because they recently played girlfriends in the movie adaptation of In the Heights. It made my queer theater nerd heart sing (and option up).
Charlie is a great character, bubbly and joyful, whipping her long blonde ponytail around and wearing a cute red tux every day. Vaggie is more of a pessimist, putting on a surly demeanor, but still letting a smile slip when Charlie is being cute. They have one of my favorite dynamics, sometimes described as golden retriever/black cat. When the show starts, they’re already established as girlfriends, and even the most oblivious (and/or straight) person would know it by the time Vaggie was swinging around singing “I will be your armor” and “I’ll spend my life being your partner.”
“I’ll be your armor” is so gay I almost burst into rainbows about it.
The show so far is a blast with a large cast of dynamic and interesting characters. Nothing is quite as it seems in hell, and all the souls here are more than their sins. Also, all of the songs are next-level good. I’ve had “Happy Day in Hell” stuck in my head since I first heard it, and the song I mentioned that Stephanie Beatriz and Daphne Rubin-Vega sing is soul-crushingly beautiful. In the fourth episode there’s a song called “Poison” that’s another standout — for the visuals and the song itself.
I was lucky enough to be invited to the premiere screening of Hazbin Hotel here in New York. At the afterparty, some of the cast did performances, and it was truly amazing. What was even more amazing, though, is how much they all seemed to love each other. The last of the Hazbin team to perform was Vivienne Medrano herself, and the whole cast watched her with full heart-eyes. Some of them even shed a little tear as Vivienne sang “Rainbow Connection” as she reflected on this project finally coming to life. It’s a very Charlie Morningstar song, and there’s something really special about seeing people genuinely care about something they’ve created. And for this series, that love and dedication really shows.
Aggie. Will. PROTEC.
I spent my entire childhood — quite literally kindergarten through twelfth grade — in Catholic school, being force-fed narratives about how very easy it is to be banished to hell. They told us that every little misstep or mistake is a sin, and, of course, how being gay is one of those missteps. And so, it’s very healing to see the Princess of Hell be a happy-go-lucky queer girl, living her best life with a girlfriend by her side. It’s like my friends and I used to joke: Maybe we’re going to hell, but at least we’ll be there together. (Can a gay girl get an amen?)
So come on down to the Hazbin Hotel, where everyone is welcome, baggage and all. The lovers, the dreamers, and me.
Hazbin Hotel is now streaming on Prime Video.
The Traitors 204 Recap: Who Did Parvati Shallow Poison?
Episode four of The Traitors season two picks up right at the cliffhanger where we left off: wondering to whom Parvati Shallow gave the POISON CHALICE. This tactic is new to season two, and I haven’t decided if I like it. Forcing the Traitors to murder in plain sight surely puts the Traitors more on edge than declaring who shall die from on high in their turret. It seems like it gives the Innocents a leg up, because surely one of them will be able to remember someone giving whoever ends up being murdered a weird glass, right? RIGHT?!
In the previous episode, Phaedra Parks decided she didn’t want to involve herself in giving out the chalice, so it was down to Dan Gheesling and Parvati. Dan was supposed to retrieve the chalice from the library, and then Parvati would be in charge of surreptitiously convincing someone to drink it. Despite his fervent desire to be a Traitor, Dan couldn’t pull off moving a glass out of a room (…), so Parvati handled that, too.
I thought Parvati might flirt her way into giving the chalice to a man, because, well, it seems like that might be the easiest route. Parvati identifies her target, places the chalice down, says cheers, and just like that — her target drinks.
But it wasn’t a man! It was dear, sweet, trusting and silly Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu! Parvati targeted someone whom she loves, who would never suspect her. It’s the kind of cutthroat ruthlessness we’ve come to expect from such a strong game player. (It’s giving Amanda Kimmel’s commitment to Parvati in Survivor’s Heroes vs. Villains.)
Dan, quite literally right next to Parvati and Ekin-Su, doesn’t seem to notice that Parvati has finished the job he was supposed to start. Sorry Dan, you’re being upstaged by the very person you decided to bring in! Why am I not surprised?
After an odd and unexplained mention that Deontay Wilder has left the game “after the day’s events” (?), we’re on to another lavish breakfast of scones and endless orange juice. Dan, Phaedra, and Parvati arrive at the table first, and this is when Parvati reveals who she murdered. She explains that her choice of murder victim wasn’t particularly strategic — it moreso came from a place of pragmatism; who could she subtly get to drink out of a “rusty old cup”? Phaedra is not pleased with the choice; she’s worried that because she voted for Ekin-Su at the last roundtable, people might now suspect her (I don’t quite follow the logic tbqh).
But much to everyone’s surprise, every single remaining contestant ultimately walks through the door to breakfast — including Ekin-Su! Alan Cumming reveals that the poisoned victim will die at some point later today. Yikes!!
Before the challenge, Dan tells Parvati that he’s wondering if they should throw Phaedra under the bus, essentially to give the Innocents something. This is disappointing because it feels both mean and not strategic in addition to being the second time a Black woman has been targeted for no discernible reason this season. It’s way too early in the game to justify giving the Innocents literally any clue, in my opinion! (If anything, I think Parvati and Phaedra should team up and get rid of Dan — people already suspect him!!!) Disappointingly, Parvati seems to agree with Dan, but I’m hoping she’s just saying that to his face to keep him thinking she’s working with him, so that she can stab him in the back and betray him later! A girl can dream.
The challenge for the day is an extremely theatrical, preemptive funeral march/trivia game for the yet-to-be-identified poison victim. I’m not gonna lie, this challenge got really creepy, and I actually began to question if this might do a little psychological damage! The combination of the eerie black carriage, drawn by eerie black horses, with all the contestants dressed in black, led by the commanding theatrical force of nature that is Alan Cumming made this feel, at least to me, like… a little too scary! I do think that’s the point — I guess the line between horror camp and actual horror is pretty thin.
I mean, you’re not wrong, Alan Cumming!
By the end of the challenge, it comes down to three potential victims: Parvati, Mercedes “MJ” Javid, and of course, Ekin-Su. Everyone then votes for who they believe was murdered, and every single person votes for MJ, because strategically, she seems like a good target for the Traitors — she’s opinionated, outspoken, and not afraid to be a team of one. Alan Cumming reveals that Ekin-Su was in fact the actual victim and everyone — including Parvati, Phaedra and Dan — is like WHAT???!?!
Chaos ensues. No one can figure out why the Traitors would want to get rid of Ekin-Su. They seem to have forgotten that this wasn’t a typical murder — someone had to drink out of a weird chalice! Nobody seems to be asking, did anyone see someone give Ekin-Su a drink?? Such as, I don’t know, Parvati??
Back at the house, Larsa Pippen is rallying the housewives — including Phaedra — towards voting for either Chris “CT” Tamburello or Dan, because she is firmly convinced an “alpha male” is behind this. (Her belief that only a strong man could be making the choices to get rid of other strong men feels, well… somewhat outdated!). Parvati decides to take control of the narrative because that’s what she does; she plants the seeds that maybe Larsa is a Traitor. And her listeners fall in line, of course. Parvati makes it look easy.
It’s interesting to see how differently Phaedra and Parvati approach the role of Traitor. Phaedra seems to prioritize fitting in with her allies, keeping such a low profile that even I, a viewer who knows that she’s a Traitor, find myself thinking she’s innocent. Parvati, on the other hand, takes a more domineering approach, drawing focus away from herself by throwing it onto someone else (in this case, Larsa). I love when you get to see multiple strong players take completely different strategies! (As for Dan’s strategy… he seems to think he’s controlling the game when really all he did was engineer a situation where he could be close to Parvati. Give him a fedora and call him Russell Hantz!)
(I want to give a quick shout-out to Sandra Diaz-Twine, who seems to be playing this game like it’s a version of Survivor, and the roundtable is Tribal Council. She talks with everyone, feels out where the votes might go, and decides to rally people — before the roundtable even begins! — towards Larsa because she doesn’t want her ally CT to go home. Sandra doesn’t seem as concerned with identifying the Traitors as she is with remaining in the game, which could actually totally be a winning strategy.)
At the roundtable, Parvati again throws Larsa under the bus, saying that the Traitor is likely an actor, or…a housewife. Phaedra is noticeably perturbed by this, because it throws heat in her direction, as a fellow housewife herself.
After Larsa gets the most votes and goes home, the Traitors meet in the turret. Phaedra is extremely mad at Parvati (and Dan, because he’s there too) for implicating the housewives, and I see where Phaedra is coming from. She really lays into Parvati, saying no one likes her and everyone thinks she’s a Traitor! I wonder if this is true or if it’s coming from a place of anger. The editing hasn’t yet shown us people outwardly hating Parvati, but she’s certainly been unpopular in other reality TV shows she’s been on. She can be divisive!
I also could see how Parvati’s move to implicate the housewives could actually strengthen Phaedra’s game, because people would never guess that Parvati and Phaedra are working together. But that would require Parvati and Phaedra to trust each other wholly and completely, and unfortunately, at least right now, I don’t think they do.
This episode leaves us in an emotionally volatile moment: Will Phaedra and Parvati reconcile, or will each race toward cannibalizing the other first? We’ll see!!
“Sort Of” Season Three Reinvents the Transition Story
This review contains minor spoilers for Sort Of season three.
When I first came out as trans, I balked at more experienced trans people who argued against transition storylines. Of course, I understood the desire to have more stories about trans people settled in their lives, but transition stories mattered too! I mean, I was living a transition story and I wanted to see that on-screen.
But as the years passed, and I became a more experienced trans person myself, I understood the exhaustion with these narratives. The coming outs, the clothing shifts, the healthcare challenges — the same tropes with slight adjustments reducing trans people to a flattened portrayal of this one moment in our long lives.
The issue wasn’t just the focus on transition. The issue was how these stories tend to focus on transition. The third — and final — season of Sort Of shows how to do it well. Not only is the season a new kind of transition story; it also recontextualizes the entire show as a new kind of transition story. A sort of transition story, if you will.
At the start of the season, Sabi (show co-creator Bilal Baig) is still reeling from the death of their father — and their kiss with former boss/complicated friend Bessy (Grace Lynn Kung). And by reeling I mean keeping all of their complicated emotions bottled up and ignoring Bessy and her entire family. We’ve watched Sabi begin to embrace vulnerability over the past two seasons, but in times of crisis those walls shoot right back up.
Instead, Sabi decides — without telling anyone — to take steps to begin medically transitioning and start HRT. When their longtime family doctor questions their timing, they admit this probably isn’t something they would do if their dad was still alive. It’s not that it’s a rash decision born from grief like the cishet doctor suggests. It’s just easier to take these steps when the person whose reaction they’d dread most is no longer around.
Of course, Sabi has always been trans. (Medical transition does not make a person trans.) But from the beginning of the show, it’s been clear that Sabi wasn’t quite settled in their trans identity. And even people who are settled in their identity can change! This is the part that’s left out of the transition stories frequently told on-screen. Not everyone immediately changes from male to female or female to male or either to nonbinary. All of these words are more fluid; all of our experiences are more fluid.
And yet, medical transition is a big deal. The show honors the weight of this decision and change for Sabi. It doesn’t invalidate any trans person who doesn’t medically transition to acknowledge that moving through the world is often much different for trans people who do.
Sort Of has always been a show of uncertainty. Sabi was a nonbinary protagonist who could never quite commit to a decision. And so there’s something quite touching about watching Sabi make this one big decision — and to see how making this decision frees them to start making others.
The season deftly balances Sabi’s story with the supporting cast. Sabi’s mother (Ellora Patnaik), sister (Supinder Wraich), and best friend (Amanda Cordner) are all given their own moments of stagnation and growth. But Bessy, her husband Paul (Gray Powell), and their two children are the heart of this chapter in Sabi’s life. Many of the best moments of the season are quiet conversations between Sabi and each of them.
Toward the end of the season, Sort Of allows the threads of these supporting characters to remain loose as the show pivots squarely toward Sabi’s next steps. Transitioning isn’t just about coming outs and hormones — there’s also a freedom to feeling more like yourself that can completely reinvent your life.
I wish we could follow Sabi into their next chapter. Especially given the shifting television landscape, a show as queer and quiet and funny and artful as Sort Of feels like a thing of the past. But this is a fitting end to this moment in Sabi’s life and to a show centered around a period of grief and uncertainty.
While it may be time to say goodbye to Sabi, I hope Bilal Baig is just getting started. Given the nuance and artistry they brought to this transition story, I want every post-transition story they have to tell.
We deserve storytelling this wonderful for every moment in a trans life, every moment in a trans imagination.
Sort Of season three is now streaming on Max.
“SkyMed” Has Freak Accidents and A LOT of Queer Characters
This review contains minor spoilers for SkyMed season two.
I can always trust Canada to come through with a heavy helping of queerness in their TV shows, and that remains true for the emergency medical procedural drama SkyMed, whose second season recently dropped on Paramount+.
SkyMed has the same procedural formula as shows like Station 19 or 9-1-1: There’s an emergency that isn’t as straightforward as it seems, the team has to solve the problem, and they (almost always) save the day — all while experiencing ever-changing interpersonal drama. SkyMed‘s twist is that it’s about pilots and nurses who have to take planes to various accident sites and keep patients alive and stable during the flight to the hospital. And it’s all taking place way up in remote Manitoba.
I watched season one in the week leading up to season two, because a little birdie told me season two would feature some queer women. (The second season aired in its entirety in Canada before dropping in the US…the birdie was a Canadian goose.) Season one had plenty of gay boys, which was a delightful surprise, since often a show will choose between gay men and gay women. But SkyMed just started with one and doubled down with the other. In season one, I clocked ambitious pilot Lexi (Mercedes Morris) as potentially queer, while also hoping my favorite character, loyal and dedicated Crystal (Morgan Holmstrom), would be too — she sometimes has vibes with newcomer Haley (Natasha Calis)!
Season two wasted no time giving me my answer. New flight nurse Stef (Sydney Kuhne) immediately starts making eyes at Lexi in the first episode. Apparently Lexi being bisexual is not a secret, because her gay best friend encourages her to go for it, saying her type is, lumberjack men and girls like Stef.
The deal is all but sealed when an emergency breaks out and Stef springs into action, whipping off Lexi’s belt to use as a tourniquet. Stef is a major flirt and it leaves Lexi flustered in a very relatable way. They do eventually connect with more sincerity, but Lexi is hesitant because she doesn’t want any distractions to get in the way of her becoming a flight captain. Alas, the heart wants what the heart wants and sometimes what the heart wants is a romantic entanglement.
These two do a lot of forehead pressing, which is basically first base for queer women.
Lexi and Stef’s storyline is a major arc of the second season, but they also didn’t pull back on the storylines of the two gay men who are main characters (along with the gay men in their periphery who are secondary characters). PLUS there is an entire other queer character introduced in an entirely separate plotline.
Crystal is a First Nations flight nurse (Cree/Métis, specifically) who wants to become a doctor so she can serve her community. While trying to balance her duties as a flight nurse with her residency, she finds a mentor in Doctor Yara (Nadine Whiteman). As a queer Black doctor, Yara understands some of the struggles Crystal is going to face as the only Indigenous person in her med school class, and tries to give her tools she can use to survive the program. They end up teaching each other a lot, and we even get to briefly meet Dr. Yara’s wife in one episode.
Also worth noting that all of the queer women introduced this season were queer women of color!
One thing I think SkyMed does better than similar shows is contextualize the emergencies to its setting. A lot of medical dramas could be set in any city, but SkyMed is richer for being Manitoba-specific. Serving the Indigenous population — and understanding what that means — is a vital and integral part of the stories they tell. There are also unique complications people face when living in a rural, Northern Canadian area that requires a medevac for anything from chest pains to freak accidents.
And on that note, SkyMed sure does have some fun freak accidents. After they run through some of the basics (broken arm from a fall that SURPRISE was caused by a stroke, etc.), the accidents get more and more extreme. Also the cold open always subverts expectations — sure, that man on the wobbly ladder is stressful, but joke’s on you because that’s not why the SkyMed team is going to be called in. For slightly twisted minds like mine, part of the fun of these shows is trying to guess what the real accident will be.
Another fun game in this show, specifically, is one I like to call Canadian Bingo, which is really just getting excited every time you recognize someone from another Canadian show. In the main cast, this happened to me with Praneet Akilla who was in Motherland: Fort Salem and Nancy Drew (which aren’t strictly Canadian shows but film in Canada), Patrick Kwok-Choon from Wynonna Earp, and, of course, Aaron Ashmore, from Killjoys, Warehouse 13, and so much more. (Is a show even Canadian if it doesn’t have an Ashmore twin in at least one episode?)
The second season was also fun for Canadian Bingo, specifically Queer Canadian Bingo, because one episode included Elise Bauman, and another Dani Kind.
They were not both in the same episode but I wanted to get both of their perfect faces in this review so you’re welcome.
With all of this diversity in the cast, and the specificity of storylines about being Indigenous, about being mixed race, being adopted, being queer, and more, creator Julie Puckrin ensures her writers’ room reflects that. For example, for an episode focusing on an Indigenous patient’s pain being overlooked by a white nurse, Puckrin ensured there were Indigenous writers working on the episode, as well as a consultant who liaised with a council of elders. Same for the queer storylines; queer story = queer writers in the room giving voice and feedback to it. Puckrin once said, “It was really important to me that, in the writing room, there was someone that could speak to every experience. So anyone you saw onscreen, there was someone in the writing room that knew what that experience was like.”
It sounds simple but it’s alarmingly rare — especially on a procedural. And, in my opinion, that care and detail really shows. In that same interview, Puckrin calls SkyMed “a kissing show with airplanes” — which is both hilarious and also not untrue. Because at the end of the day, this show isn’t necessarily new or groundbreaking, but the care they put into telling stories well and authentically is evident.
By the way, this is Crystal, and I love her.
Sure, Lexi and Stef’s relationship runs the gamut in what seems like a short amount of time (especially if you binge the episodes like I did), but also I have to imagine working in high-adrenaline jobs does indeed heighten things and make relationships burn hotter and faster than others. And even if the timeline isn’t believable, the actual emotional beats of the story are honest, and that’s what matters most.
While coming out stories are important, so are “adults being gay and happy” stories.
The storytelling of the first season allowed me to trust the writers to do Lexi and Stef’s story justice. I wasn’t watching with bated breath, afraid that an overplayed, negative trope was going to happen at any minute.
Instead I could sit back, relax, and enjoy positive tropes like “let me sexily tend to this wound.”
Both seasons of SkyMed are now streaming on Paramount+.
“L Word: Generation Q” Musical Episode’s Composers on Their Fight for an Emmy
The Emmys finally aired this week after being delayed by the incredibly necessary strikes this summer and fall. One of the nominees for Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics came from a little show we all know called The L Word: Generation Q.
During Gen Q’s third and final season, the series delivered a musical episode. Those are hard to pull off, and a musical episode using original music and lyrics is an even bigger challenge. But the show’s music team rose to the challenge, creating original songs that told stories and brought each character further into their journey. Showtime unceremoniously canceled the show, and despite that, the composers of the musical episode — Heather McIntosh, Taura Stinson, and Allyson Newman — fought for their song, “All About Me” to get an Emmy nomination, the second in the history of The L Word franchise.
Over the summer, I got to sit down and chat with these three awesome women via Zoom. Below is our talk about how the musical episode came to fruition and how they snagged an Emmy nomination with no studio support. Even though they didn’t win, they did something really admirable and hard.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Sa’iyda: How did the musical episode come to be?
Allyson Newman: Marja, our showrunner, loves musical theatre, and has a background in theatre as well.
Heather McIntosh: Second season, we had a karaoke episode. And so Sophie, among other characters, got to show off their vocal chops. That was the first time we were like, oh gosh, we’ve got some real pipes on some of our actors here. We can really play with that idea.
AN: My recollection is that I got a text from Marja when I was on holiday in Australia at the beach, and she was like, wouldn’t it be fun if we did a musical episode? And I thought, yeah, that sounds so fun, thinking that’s never gonna happen. Cut to probably a couple months later, all of a sudden it was like, so about that musical. We were like, oh, it really is happening. I think it did ultimately come as a sort of surprise, but we probably shouldn’t have been that surprised by it.
But we were enthusiastically happy about it and excited.
HM: And then we had to think, how do we make said musical? How do we write said songs? How do we do this? And I’d known Taura for a while and always been such a huge fan of her work.
I thought, this is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to get together and sent a text to her. We started talking about it, and I was just so thrilled that you were up for it. And then we got to work kind of almost immediately, right?
Taura Stinson: Heather reached out to me — I think I even reached out to her like, Hey, how are you? Would love to work with you. And then she was like, you know what, this is just so serendipitous because I think I have something.
And then, within a couple of days, she called me and I was, to be honest, a little bit nervous. Ooh, a whole musical episode. And I don’t know much about the characters, and I have to do this deep dive. I fell in love with the characters. I fell in love with the show.
How did it work? Did you get a script and they were like, these are the characters we want to sing, go write a song for them? Or was it a more collaborative process with the episode’s writers?
HM: We had a general outline. We knew that actors were going to have certain touchstone moments in this arc. We knew the premise. We knew that there would be a trip, each person would be having this big turning point moment that would be revealed to them in the story.
TS: This is like a new relationship for me. I’m looking at all these people, following and falling in love. They’ve known them for a while. I just see all the good parts, so it was great to be able to introduce our perspectives.
AN: She was able to just see things in a very global kind of way. And that was very helpful for us, because she could really hone in on what those lyrics were doing, and she just had a way to bring those things straight away to the forefront, which was really important.
The nominated song, it’s an anthem for the character, it’s a space where Sophie is really stepping into herself, and it’s a huge catalyst for what happens in the second half of the season for her. How did you decide it was going to be a ballad?
TS: You just have to listen to what the song wants. And the moment was so perfect. I think we pushed the tempo just a little bit to give it a little bit more energy. I think there’s something to say about quiet strength where you don’t have to yell when you’re done. You just say, listen, don’t say anything else, because I’m going to say this and I’m going to go. I think we all agreed it would be the best approach. She also speaks, you know, having this rap in the middle of it where she has so much to say that we have to fit into this song.
I’m a big musical theater fan myself. So I get that when you have these kinds of things, it’s because the character just can’t speak anymore; singing is the only way. And I love the fact that it was original music, because you can also do a musical episode where it’s all covers. I think there’s more of a challenge when you have to come up with songs for these characters. Was it hard to get into Sophie’s headspace? Heather and Ally, since you had been living with the show for so long, was it easy to know where she was going and where she was coming from?
AN: I think we understood where the character was and where she was going, and this was a pivotal moment. I feel like Taura got fast tracked, but sometimes I think the way you think about it was actually helpful to kind of get us to where it needs to be.
TS: It’s always like, we want this and we want that and we want this. And then you kind of lose your voice in the process sometimes, but to be able to write a song, not only for the character, but for each of us who have felt that way. When we feel that we need to be able to use our voices and to say no sometimes, which is not a bad thing. I think we hit it on the mark, because it all resonated with each of us in different areas of our lives.
So now we’re in this wild time. The show gets canceled, which was a blessing and a curse and a bummer and a whole bunch of things depending on who you are and how you feel about it. Emmy nominations come. How do we decide, you know what, we’re going to go out and we’re going to campaign for this song and we’re going to try to make this happen? Because Showtime abandoned not just the show, but the franchise pretty quickly. So you have no support, you make this decision, what does that look like?
TS: I’m going to give this credit to Ally and Heather, because I honestly didn’t know what to do with it. I write a lot for film, and so I haven’t written for TV as much. And it was so heartbreaking for everyone, because we’ve come to love these people.
HM: When we got the call that we were actually being considered, we were all floored.
Ally: I know. I was like, I have to see this in print — I can’t believe this until I see it in black and white.
TS: You know, the show’s been canceled. But you know it’s an even bigger testament for what the song means to people because it’s our peers that are voting for it. Everyone that has come up to me to say, we voted for your song and we love it, because they’ve been listening to it. It stood on its own, on the back of the show, and all the work that these ladies have done all these years.
HM: We just really believed in it; we believed in the song, and we made a really crazy thing. It’s wild that we got to make this episode in particular, in this whole journey, and that we got to write these songs, and we’re just so proud. We produced these things together, all three of us. We orchestrated all this stuff.
We made something really powerful, and it just felt like a shame not to at least try to celebrate what we were able to do here, and this song seemed like the perfect version. It’s all in keeping with the message of this song, and to actually like stand in it and say, we made something really powerful and we want to share it with our community and hopefully it will resonate with them too.
AN: I also have to say something about Marja herself as a showrunner. Whether you like the stories or whatever, Marja is a person that has gone out of her way to hire women, to hire queer people in all these key positions.
A lot of us would never have had a chance to work on such a big budget television series. She opened a lot of doors for a lot of people, and I think she really needs to be acknowledged for that.
I will give you that. Did you all know this is only the second time The L Word has ever been nominated for an Emmy? The other nomination was for Ozzie Davis — he received a posthumous nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor for playing Kit and Bette’s father in the original. So there’s also something that you all should feel incredibly empowered by the fact that you managed to pull this off with, you know, very few resources.
AN: Now that we have been nominated, a lot of people have been asking, why can’t I see it? I’m like, Showtime, like, called everything. All our royalties get pulled off as well. It’s funny. We got a really nice gift from Showtime, which was nice to receive. It was a beautiful bottle of champagne with an inscription on it of The L Word and Emmy nomination. And I was like, this is awesome. I thought to myself, what would have been a better gift is if you put it back on.
It’s so difficult to get a show up at all, let alone a show about women, let alone a show about queer women. So to actually have that on the air at all is kind of a miracle. So it’s sad that it doesn’t exist anymore.
This Year’s Emmys Come With a Historic Wave of Black Queer Firsts
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images
“I accept this award on behalf of every Black and brown woman who has gone unheard, yet over-policed, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor. As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power. And, baby, Imma do it ‘till the day I die,” with those words Niecy Nash-Betts went home with her first ever Emmy win after over three decades in the business. Her win was a poignant highlight of a 2023 Emmys season that brought nothing less than historic LGBT (and most often, Black queer) Emmy wins, including wins for Ayo Edebiri, RuPaul Charles, Keke Palmer and GLAAD.
Nash, who won Supporting Actress in a limited Series for Netflix’s Dahmer, was escorted on stage by her wife, Jessica Betts, who face nearly broke in two from smiling ear-to-ear. The actor wore a simply gorgeous Black velvet gown with matching elbow-length gloves, screaming with joy “Mama, I won!” to her mother in audience before exiting.
Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images
In addition to Nash, Black queer talent swept the award show across the board.
Ayo Edebiri won for Supporting Actress in a Comedy series for her work in Hulu’s Bear, becoming one half of a duo marking the first time in Emmys history that Black actresses won both the lead and supporting Comedy categories in the same year (her partner in that historic milestone, Quinta Brunson, won lead actress in a Comedy for Abbott Elementary, becoming only the second actress to win that award in the show’s 75 year history. The last to do so was Isabel Sanford for The Jeffersons in 1981).
Photo by Monica Schipper/WireImage
Rupaul, once again, won both Reality Competition Program and Host of a Reality Series for RuPaul’s Drag Race. This is the fifth year the series won in the competition category, and RuPaul’s record eighth consecutive year winning as host. He is now also the most-awarded person of color in Emmys history (and if you include Drag Race’s wins on top of his individual ones, it’s not even close).
Speaking of reality TV wins, Queer Eye also won for Structured Reality Program, putting Karamo Brown among this year’s Black queer winners.
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
And last week, Keke Palmer made history becoming the first woman in 15 years (!!!) to win an Emmy for Game Show Host, for her work on Password.
Taken together, Niecy Nash-Betts, Ayo Edebiri, Rupaul, Karamo Brown, and Keke Palmer make the largest cohort of Black queer talent to win at the Emmys in a single year. That alone is breathtaking. It’s the kind of ceiling breaking that can feel at a loss of words. I find myself both bursting with pride at the feat, but also tinged with sadness. To paraphrase Viola Davis during her own historic 2015 Emmy win, we know that the only thing that stands between often marginalized performers and accolades like this is opportunity. It’s never been a lack of talent. It’s always been a lack of institutions willing to see that talent for what it is, when it’s plainly in front of them.
Adding in the wins for Beef (Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, for lead actor and actress in a miniseries, respectively), Abbott Elementary (Brunson), The Last of Us (Storm Reid as guest actress for playing queer role Riley Abel), and The Trevor Noah Show, this year’s Emmys ties the record for the most wins by performers of color in a single year. Last night alone, five of the 12 acting categories went to people of color.
Those wins came during an award show that also paid tribute to the casts of Good Times, Martin and Arsenio Hall’s work in The Arsenio Hall Show. Arsenio entered the stage with A Black Lady’s Sketch Show’s Robin Thede standing up and doing his signature dog pound salute from the audience, before quipping that all he ever wanted to be was a modern Johnny Carson, even though his success as the first Black late night host was often overshadowed by Jay Leno and David Letterman. The cast of Martin, dressed to the nines and sitting on their original set, made a bit out of the fact that, despite changing the trajectory of Black sitcoms for the next 25 years, they had never been invited to the award show before now. Given the historic wins for Quinta Brunson and Ayo Edebiri, it felt good for Martin’s Tisha Campbell and Tichina Arnold to be greeted with roaring applause (at least in my living room, I’ll admit cheering so loud that I can’t be 100% certain what happened in the auditorium itself).
Last night’s Emmys was produced by an all-Black production team, which I’m sure made a difference in allowing us to hold space for these uncomfortable truths to begin with. We can be overjoyed with long overdue wins, especially to talent that absolutely deserves them. We can also simultaneously be aware that these wins come on the backs of so many people of color who were never given their rightful day in the sun. There are many giants whose shoulders we stand on.
GLAAD won the 2023 Governor’s Award for their continued advocacy to change the ways that we tell queer and trans stories. Given the historic wins for queer talent and storytelling, the fruits borne of their labor, it felt like a crowning achievement to cap off the night. From the stage, GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis charged television creators in the audience that we urgently need more, fully developed, trans stories, noting that when polled more Americans have said they’ve known ghosts than knowing trans people and “when you don’t know people, it’s easy to demonize them. Visibility creates understanding and opens doors, it’s life-saving. Our community has achieved so much and yet, we are still being victimized and villainized with cruel and harmful lies. Sharing stories is the antidote.” Sometimes that can feel easier said than done, but we’ve also seen time and again how much that effort can make a difference.
Because this year’s Emmys ceremony, already full of Black joy (if not also Black yearning and wistfulness), aired on a Monday in January — it also happened to air on Martin Luther King Day. Emmys host Anthony Anderson closed the ceremony with a clip of his infamous “I Have a Dream,” recently voted by Academy members as one of the most impactful moments in television history. Of course, given everything we just saw, I was reminded of a different famous King quote: that the arc of the moral universe if long, even if it eventually will bend towards justice.
Feature image collage of Niecy Nash-Betts and Jessica Betts by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, Ayo Edebiri by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images, and Keke Palmer by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
All Aboard! “Death and Other Details” Has Plenty of Queer Women On Its Murderous Cruise
This review contains minor spoilers for the first two episodes of Death and Other Details, especially the gay bits.
Hulu’s Death and Other Details is a locked room mystery set on a cruise ship filled with rich people — including three queer women who find themselves on a long list of murder suspects.
Despite being set in the modern era, Death and Other Details manages to keep a noir vibe by setting it on a ship that was designed with old-timey sensibilities. In fact, almost everything used to decorate the ship was made before 1955, and often the guests’ outfits follow suit.
The main characters in our story are Rufus Coteworth, played by Mandy Patinkin, and Imogene, played by queer actress Violett Beane, who co-produced and directed Jasmin Savoy’s very queer music video “goddamnit”. Rufus and Imogene met when Imogene was young, when Rufus failed to solve the mystery surrounding the death of Imogene’s mother. They are reunited by another crime on the ship, and Imogene with her keen eye for detail becomes Watson to Rufus’ Sherlock. As a long-time Criminal Minds fan, it’s very fun to watch Mandy Patinkin talking about the psychology of suspects, and breaking down clues with his protégé.
The show found the perfect excuse to have people be dressed up all the time, which is fine by me.
It’s unclear as of the first two episodes that have dropped if Imogene herself is queer, but until then we have plenty of other queer characters to contend with.
First and foremost is Anna, an heiress to her father’s milling company, played by queer actress Lauren Patten (who once starred in the Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill). Anna is an an absolute boss, talking firmly on the phone to her colleagues. She’s confident in her ability to take over the company, but she also has a soft side, both with her loyalty for lifelong friend Imogene and her gentle patience with her wife.
If they don’t find an excuse to let Lauren Patten sing by the end of the season, I may have to go Orca some boats.
Anna is married to former “clickbait journalist” Leila (Pardis Saremi) who is a bit eccentric following a head injury that left her paranoid about things like hidden cameras and spies. Someone jokes that she’s afraid of 5G poisoning, but I think her paranoia is a bit more realistic. She’s worried about the sort of things a very rich and powerful family could potentially arrange for someone they deemed an enemy. While Leila often confines herself to their room, Anna still manages to spend lots of…quality time with her. (In just the first two episodes, they have some of the steamiest scenes I’ve seen in a hot minute.)
On this voyage, Anna is meant to be announced as her father’s successor, in conjunction with her securing a partnership with the Chung family — complicated by her romantic past with one member of said family, Eleanor (played by nonbinary actor Karoline). Eleanor looks at Anna with an intensity that suggests she might still be harboring some feelings.
Doesn’t this look like someone who could stir up some gay drama for us? Fingers crossed.
As someone who grew up reading Nancy Drew novels before eventually graduating to Agatha Christie, I love a good mystery. I want a dozen more installments in the Knives Out franchise, and the urge to solve the puzzle in A Murder at the End of the World kept me watching despite its slow pace. Death and Other Details is taking an interesting approach to the genre by emphasizing that humans are unreliable narrators of their own story. Being an eye witness doesn’t automatically mean you know what happened, and there can be multiple answers to the same questions.
Speaking of Knives Out, those movies and this TV show share a sprinkling of humor amidst the mystery worthy of the best Sherlock Holmes adaptations. Imogene is sarcastic and witty and has fun banter with multiple characters. She has an affable nature and Violett Beane is a star in this role.
Anna’s wife being a recluse and Anna’s ex being on board is probably going to lead to some queer shenanigans, and I’m not unconvinced Anna and Imogene don’t have a bit of a past as well. I’m excited to see how all that unfolds as they work to solve the murder on board. Also if I know anything about these types of stories (and I do), I have a feeling the first murder won’t be the only one aboard this luxury ocean liner.
The first two episodes of Death and Other Details are now streaming on Hulu.
The “Ted” TV Show Has Classic Crass Humor Plus a Queer Cousin
As the Autostraddle TV Team’s resident (former) Masshole, I felt obligated to be the one to take on the task of watching the new Ted series on Peacock when we heard it had a queer character. I became more excited about this task when I watched and learned that said queer character is played by Giorgia Whigham, who also played queer on Legacies.
Growing up as a New Englander, I’ve been familiar with Seth MacFarlane and his very New England characters since I was young. I was 12 when Family Guy came out, the perfect age for that kind of rude humor, complete with the comforting terrible accents the people I was closest to all sported. As I grew up and Family Guy didn’t, I stopped watching, because while there were still some good jokes sprinkled throughout, it didn’t feel worth it to wade through the minefield of jokes I found too offensive to be funny.
The Ted movies are similar. It’s Mark Wahlberg’s John and his best friend being rude slackers, and his best friend happens to be a walking, talking teddy bear. The movies have some funny jokes — among the homophobic, racist, fatphobic, and otherwise non-PC jokes, presented in such a way that you can tell the writers know they’re not PC and that’s why they want to tell them. That said, if you can push past the worst of those jokes, there’s a surprisingly heartwarming story under it all centering John and Ted’s friendship. (Personally I don’t think it’s worth all the wincing you have to do to get to the good stuff, but maybe that’s the SJW in me.)
The TV show follows suit, but with a notable improvement. Now instead of the politically incorrect jokes being said unchecked, there is a character who pushes back. Giorgia Whigham plays Blaire, John’s cousin who lives with him and his parents (and Ted), who is an open-minded, progressive, queer woman in college who doesn’t let her uncle, cousin, or her cousin’s teddy bear get away with not being called out. (Also Giorgia Whigham is stunning and incredibly talented; I know I might be biased because she plays the queer character but I genuinely think she’s the stand-out star in this show.)
This was the face I made through a lot of this show, to be honest.
On one hand, it feels like a cop out — an excuse to make the same offensive jokes because they’re couching it in criticism. On the other hand, I felt very represented by Blaire. I saw my teen and college-aged self in the scenarios where her uncle says something racist or sexist or homophobic in a thick Boston accent and Blaire calls him out, only to be yelled at for accusing him of being racist/sexist/homophobic. There used to be a running joke in my family when I was a teenager that you couldn’t say anything around me without me accusing them of being racist. (A joke I did not find amusing.) I had an uncle that used to start conversations with me like “I don’t want to fight with you but” then bring up a hot-button topic about which he knew we disagreed. My cousin’s boyfriend would specifically target me because I was “so easy to rile up.” It didn’t stop me from calling them out, but good lord was it exhausting. And I see that in Blaire. Blaire is living a similar experience, surrounded by Bostonians who are mostly harmless but every once in a while say the most out of pocket thing because they heard it on Fox News. Blaire is doing her best to drag them all into the future with her, despite the fact that her uncle is digging his heels in about it. Some people can’t be helped, but some people can be, and Blaire isn’t about to give up on her family.
Blaire is a great character, often being the only voice of reason in the room. She almost feels like an audience insert at times, or at least, me as an audience. It would have been easy to make her into an Angry Feminist Lesbian stereotype, but she’s much more nuanced than that. She has a casual air about her, a comfortable confidence. She stands her ground but rarely loses her temper.
We learn she’s queer after she reveals she’s dating her friend Sarah. (Sarah is Indian, a fact pointed out by Blaire’s aunt every time she introduces her, because Aunt Susan is basically Kirstin Wiig SNL character and is often saying ridiculous things in her strangely affected voice.) Blaire describes her sexuality confidently as fluid, explaining that she’s attracted to people regardless of their gender. Even in the face of her uncle’s initial outburst, she stands her ground and chooses to stay by her girlfriend’s side. To John and Ted’s credit, they do not care that she’s queer.
Also to the show’s credit, this was the most making out anyone did on this show, full stop.
Overall the TV show is much better than the movies in terms of insensitive jokes. It’s much clearer in the POV of the show that the things the uncle is saying are not okay. The characters seem able to grow and learn as the show goes on. It’s kind of weird when you have a prequel that seems to be more evolved than the movies that are set in the characters’ futures, but it’s a story about a talking teddy bear who loves to get high and spends one entire episode trying to figure out if he’s Jesus reincarnate, so I’m okay throwing logic out the window.
Almost all of the off-color jokes come from John’s father, who sounds like most Boston Republicans in the 90s…and also probably today. (I’ll admit, I don’t spend a lot of time around Boston Republicans anymore.) While not all of the Boston accents were on point, Max Burkholder did a great job of mimicking Mark Wahlberg just enough that he was a believable teenage version of him. And a lot of the show felt familiar to me, as someone who grew up in a suburb of Boston in the 90s. There are some city-specific jokes sprinkled throughout, and John’s mom is even reading VC Andrews. I don’t know if that’s a boomer mom thing or a Boston mom thing, but my mother almost exclusively reads VC Andrews to this day.
The Blaire storyline was surprisingly well done, and even though I don’t think queer people are the target audience of this show, representation in shows where we are NOT the target audience is important too. It might hold a mirror up to someone who was still holding onto some backwards beliefs. Or it will, at least, let them hear some pushback on some things they might say without feeling personally attacked.
The biggest difference between me and Blaire is that she’s brave enough to bring a girlfriend home into that minefield.
I can’t, in good faith, recommend that you watch this show if you’ve never seen or don’t like the Ted movies. I definitely wouldn’t have if I hadn’t heard there was a queer character, and I don’t think my life would have been worse for never having seen it. That said, going in knowing the type of humor that would be prevalent, I did have a pretty okay time, due largely in part to how much I enjoy Giorgia Whigham. It’s not like the whole show is crude humor; there are a lot of running bits where John and Ted will spontaneously go into an improv scene that makes me laugh. There were some funny callbacks to the movies, like John loving Flash Gordon, or the names of weed strains being hilariously aggressive. And the CGI for Ted is very well done and added to a lot of physical comedy.
It’s a buddy comedy at its core, and even though it’s not exactly my scene, it’s nice to be invited to the party.
Ted is now streaming on Peacock.
“True Detective: Night Country” Is a Mediocre Network Procedural Masquerading As Prestige TV
This review contains mild spoilers for True Detective: Night Country.
The theme song of True Detective: Night Country — the fourth installment in HBO’s once-hit series — is Billie Eilish’s “bury a friend.” Writer/director Issa López uses the song for its lyrical and musical resonance — a resonance already played out by people on TikTok four years ago.
There is more to storytelling than originality. Many genres return to the same well of tropes and conventions remixing them with new settings, new characters, and new forms. To be cliché is not to be bad, but clichés sure can make a bad thing worse. Especially when working within a genre seeped in propaganda, especially when those clichés reinforce the worst narratives in our world.
True Detective: Night Country is a cop show. If you thought a post-June 2020 True Detective would have anything to say about policing, you’ve mistaken the false promises of that summer as genuine. Once again, surface level identity politics won over meaningful structural change. More and more the cops on-screen abusing their power get to be women, queer people, and people of color. This is supposed to be a win.
But this Jodie Foster vehicle is not The Silence of the Lambs. It is not an expertly crafted piece of media soured by its messaging of police propaganda. As a work of art, it’s dull. This is often the case. Jonathan Demme’s 1991 classic is the exception not the rule — most media that traffics in these same narratives finds little purpose other than this perpetuation. There is little in True Detective: Night Country that’s compelling — not the narrative, not the characters, not the form. It looks expensive and has some strong performances, but that is not enough to prop up all the mediocrity.
True Detective: Night Country is about a police chief named Liz Danvers (Foster) who has been transferred to the remote Alaskan town of Ennis. Her hobbies include drinking, empty sex with men (yes, Foster is straight in this), being racist toward Leah, her Indigenous queer step daughter, being racist toward other Indigenous people in the community, and being the sort of Columbo super detective we’ve grown accustomed to on-screen. When a group of scientists at a remote research facility go missing, Danvers is forced to team up with Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), an Indigenous trooper (and veteran) with whom she has a fraught past.
When we first meet Navarro, she is arresting a guy for domestic violence. He calls her a pig. Later, she’ll tell Danvers that a possibly related case of a missing Indigenous woman went unsolved because of her race. Danvers will dismiss this with an eye roll. When Leah goes to a protest, one of the activists asks if she’s the police chief’s daughter. Leah starts to apologize and the activist assures her “all are welcome.” Danvers and Navarro often enter buildings without a warrant. They beat people up due to their own emotional problems. And then beat up other people to torture information out of them. (It works!) Again and again, the show reinforces the narrative of the damaged edgy cops who don’t play by the rules but get the job done. At one point, Navarro beats up another cop who was abusing his power at a protest. That cop is immediately suspended. You see, women cops are good. Men cops can be bad but they quickly face consequences. So says the world of this show and the media landscape in general.
Again, it’s not just that these narratives are harmful. It’s that they’re boring. Foster and Reis are both excellent, but their emotional struggles and outbursts of violence feel like something out of a cop show parody. Making them women doesn’t make them interesting.
The show is just as cliché in its portrayal of Indigenous people. The case of the missing scientists ends up being tied to the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, a topic that many seem to only care about as a storytelling device for their tales of hero cops and as an excuse to show dead Indigenous people on-screen. López has said it was important for this not to be a story of white cops saving the day. But the primary arc of the show is still Danvers learning to mildly care about the Indigenous people in her community — including her own step-daughter. Navarro and her family experience a lot of trauma related to their identity as Indigenous people, but again and again the show prioritizes Navarro’s chosen identity of cop. If her decision to fight back against the one cop abusing his power is meant to show a change, it feels hollow given all that precedes and all that follows.
Ultimately, I would rather a show where Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey swish around being chauvinist cops than one that uses MMIW and Indigenous communities being poisoned by oil companies as a mere backdrop for the same boring cop tropes. There’s nothing progressive about adopting real, urgent issues into the folds of conservative fantasy.
If you want to watch True Detective: Night Country and feel your brain massaged by the simplicity of heroic police brutality and detectives who have to go rogue when they get shut down by the higher ups, be my guest. Everything you watch doesn’t have to be ethical. But don’t slurp up that garbage and then pat yourself on the back because it pays lip service to issues that really matter.
Keep watching your cop shows. You don’t get to feel good about it.
True Detective: Night Country premieres tonight on HBO.