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What Is Your Damage, New “Heathers” TV Show?

In yesterday’s Pop Culture Fix, Riese let you in on the little secret that the Heathers reboot pilot is available on Paramount’s website. We’ve felt every sort of way since hearing that one of our most favorite ’80s movies was being remade with a genderqueer character and a black lesbian for teevee, so of course we devoured it immediately. But the original reboot had a queer director at the helm — director and playright Leslye Headland — which changed at some point in the development process. It looks like Leslye directed one episode, but showrunner Jason A. Micallef (writer of Butter, a pretty cool movie that Riese genuinely recommends) and four other men are credited with writing the show.

The original Heathers, of course, is a 1989 cult-classic high school comedy starring Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer, Christian Slater as “J.D.” Dean, and Shannen Doherty as Heather Duke. It’s an indictment of wealth and popularity and cliques. We went in to the TV show knowing the new Heathers were not going to be the be vapid, thin, blonde, white mean girls like the originals, but instead: a “fat Heather,” a “black lesbian Heather” and a “genderqueer Heather.” Which, you know, seemed kind of problematic right out of the gate. Making traditionally oppressed minorities into the persecutors of popular kids is an… interesting move in 2018.

Riese and I have both seen the original movie a lot, and we’ve both seen a lot of TV, and this was a new experience.

Warning: Spoilers for the Heathers pilot (and slightly beyond) below.

Riese: Okay, here’s my top two feelings about this show so far — 1. Heathers hates teenagers, 2. Has there ever been a moment that needed this version of Heathers less than the present moment?

Heather: Yep! The whole time I was watching the pilot I was thinking, “If you distilled the soul and songs out of Glee you’d be left with this caustic, highly stylized sludge and that sludge be the show Heathers.” There’s no affection behind any of the clowning on #youths, no depth to it. It’s just an acerbic, self-congratulatory rant.

And you’re absolutely correct about this moment in time. I mean this exact literal moment in time. As soon as I finished watching this pilot, I turned on CNN’s Parkland Town Hall where actual socially conscious teens had used the power of social media to force the country into paying attention to their calls for gun control. They spent hours speaking up and out and over these politicians and spokespeople who’ve sold their souls to the NRA. The look on Marco Rubio’s face last night: just one of countless politicians who wrote off and underestimated this generation of teenagers. Heathers feels as wrong about them as the GOP is.

Riese: And I get it — it’s girls like Heather Chandler that often make our lives upon this fair internet a living hell, they’re not wrong that people use social justice principles as an excuse to just be really terrible bullies. But I’m not sure what the point of that point is in this context at this moment. This show is punching down in a really nasty, brutal way. Having an amab genderqueer character kick women out of the women’s restroom? SORRY NOPE, NOT HERE FOR THIS while trans kids are being so aggressively legislated out of bathrooms every damn day. Heather Chandler’s bullying is also pretty absurd and not well thought out — like targeting the athletes wearing their high school mascot t-shirts instead of actually dealing with the school itself to challenge their employment of a racist mascot. Maybe that’s the point, her activism is more about “going viral” than it is about genuine change — but, and I guess I keep repeating this about Heathers, if that is the point then: 1. It’s not very clear, 2. WHY.

Heather: Right! There’s real truth in that one thing — the toxicity of purity tests and callout culture within social justice communities. And the thing where plenty of people do “build their brands” by exploiting that culture. But what’s the larger thing the show’s trying to say about it?

Riese: “KIDS: THEY’RE SO QUEER AND MISGUIDED BUT ON BRAND LOL SNAPCHAT MEMES CULTURAL APPROPRIATION HAHAHA ABLEIST”

Heather: So yes, that’s one miss. Just roasting teens for no clear reason. And another miss is the minority rep. There were already grumbles about this show casting “a fat Heather, a black lesbian Heather, and a genderqueer Heather” because the point of the original Heathers is that they were all straight white thin blonde popular assholes who made the lives of minorities a fresher hell than the already fresh hell that’s just the fact of being a teenager. I don’t usually see you get really mad about TV — we’ve both been doing this so long, there’s some desensitization — but you were fired up about the black lesbian Heather.

Riese: Right. I was stoked for a black lesbian character and it turns out that she’s… something else? After we broke that particular slice of news to the lesbian internet, I never saw it mentioned in subsequent showrunner-informed articles about the show and I couldn’t figure out why. Was that element of her character changed when they swapped showrunners? I guess I know why now.

For starters, Heather McNamara is characterized as a vapid airhead, a truly shitty choice for the show’s only Black character. Then, in the middle of the pilot, Heather Duke spots Heather M in a car hooking up with a male teacher. They snap a pic, aghast that she is a “fake lesbian.” When you do the work that we do, the term “erasure” is slung at us in different contexts so often that it starts to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher. But holy shit Heathers! This isn’t just bisexual erasure, it’s that and really bad writing! 

Not only do we have no sense of the history of her lesbian identification — did she have girlfriends? Girl crushes? How long has she identified this way? If it wasn’t true, then why did she do it — for Heather Chandler’s approval? Was it a faux-liberal-status thing, like a poor reboot of what turned out to be an actually successful device for Faking It? Why, when Heather Duke saw her in the car, did they jump to “fake lesbian” instead of “bisexual”? I get why they’d say she’s lying about being a lesbian specifically, they’re an asshole and it’s technically true, but then later in the pilot, they say that Heather Chandler would rather have her eulogy given by a “real member of the LGBTQIIA community,” and um, if she said she was a lesbian but seems to be hooking up with a man (and the teacher aspect is not even raised!)… pretty sure the “B” still applies. Unless we’re missing some information, which if we are — bad writing. And SORRY SPOILERS but from seeing the second episode I can tell you that this issue is never cleared up or expanded upon, “she lied about being a lesbian and is not queer at all” seems to be the last we get on this topic. It gets actually worse, if you can believe it.

What was your reaction to those scenes in the pilot?

Heather: I agree with you completely. I want to reiterate what you said about the white noise of “erasure!” because it’s a pretty big deal that both you and I had an almost visceral reaction to that level of erasure. We spend so much time defending ourselves against people yelling at us for this and that erasure that I feel like we’re hyper cautious about tossing out that word. We have to mean it. And we both really do mean it here. It’s 2018, for one thing. If your vocabulary for describing the sexuality of women only toggles between “straight” and “lesbian,” you gotta get out of that hole you’re living in. But these writers are obviously not in a hole! They’re throwing around plenty of other words and phrases about the queer community and internet culture and social justice movements that indicates they know what they’re talking about! The word “bisexual” is not a mystery to them!

I guess my most generous reading here would be an indictment, again, of purity tests within minority communities. Like maybe Heather was bi but said she was a lesbian because she felt like there was more queer cred in saying that? But I don’t think the writers were on that page.

Riese: Right, ‘cause also — it’s not accurate! It seems like, amongst LGBTQ teenagers with social justice inclinations, “queer” is considered the hippest label of all. So if that’s what they’re going for, their parody of “social justice warriors” isn’t very well-informed.

Heather: That’s absolutely true, yes. Another real miss I want to talk about are the victims of Heather Chandler’s bullying. I think when you’re portraying the victim of harassment as a jacked, straight white jock who’s wearing a culturally insensitive mascot on his shirt, you’ve completely misread the culture you’re putting your story into. If this happened in real life, Reddit and Breitbart would be all over that shit defending that guy and villainizing Heather Chandler as an unhinged SJW. You’re essentially making your most sympathetic character a little TrumpBro, a Drudge poster boy.

Riese: Eek, yeah, I didn’t think about that but you’re right. They’re making Brietbart’s case for them! Again, it’s not necessarily unrealistic, but it’s not necessary, either. Like some people murder cats but I don’t need to see cat murder on my teevee, no matter how allergic I am to cats. I think the far more interesting and complicated dynamic is how “social justice warriors” bully each other, rather than cis white straight guys, but I wouldn’t trust this team to write that show, so.

Heather: Yes, I completely agree.

Riese: I did keep thinking about Faking It, though. When the premise for Faking It was revealed, we were similarly horrified — a show that implies it’s not only easy to be a lesbian in high school, but cooler than it is to be straight? Yet somehow it worked. It was the Obama era rather than the Trump era, for starters. But regardless, they pulled off a story set at this uber-liberal enclave where it was cooler to be “different” in a way that Heathers could not, and I think part of it is that the kids in Faking It were well-intentioned, kind, and generous. It was a parody of do-gooders and bleeding heart liberals, but an affectionate one. In Faking It, Karma and Amy are embraced for coming out, and “school spirit” requires promoting diversity and other liberal values. In Heathers, Amy would still be a lesbian and Karma would still be a pretend lesbian — but the reason they’d have embraced those identities to begin with would’ve been as an excuse to bully and antagonize straight people and to prove how much more evolved they were than the normies. Which would’ve been a terrible show.

Faking It: a better show than Heathers

Riese: On the upside, I thought it was visually outstanding — Heathers the film had a very specific ocular feel, and this feels like an appropriate and compelling update of that aesthetic. Did you like how it looked or did that fall flat for you too?

Heather: Oh yeah, I mean, it looks like the original Heathers and Riverdale had a baby. The sets, the directing, the cinematography: It’s a really smart-looking show. In fact, if the writing were as slick as the visual aesthetic, I’d be plowing through this with a box of popcorn.

When we first heard about this remake we were both very excited. What were you hoping this would be when you first read about it?

Riese: I was scared that I was going to like it even though everybody else hated it and I’d have to pretend to hate it or else have to spend another day muting people on Tweetdeck. The movie had created such a specific world with such a distinct style and vocabulary, and generally I see no point in rebooting anything ever if you won’t be adding lesbians, so I was tentatively excited to see that world rebuilt but with queers! Everything else about the reboot was troubling. But I hoped it’d at least qualify as a guilty pleasure. Instead watching it was downright unpleasant, an honor I’d also bestow on many late-season episodes of Glee. Where all the elements are there to delight me — singing! dancing! costumes! funny comebacks! Santana! — but the meat of the thing is too rotten to consume. What were you expecting, did you have any positive hopes at all for it? Do you think it has any objective value outside of our political/cultural opposition to it?

Heather: Yes, that’s the exact correct analogy. As you know some of my favorite TV characters are your Mona Vanderwaals, your Cheryl Blossoms, even Santana Lopez in her way. These over-the-top villains with their bananas outfits and breathtaking one-liners and the ability to bring the show’s Schuesters and Ezras and Archies to their knees. I guess that’s what I was hoping for. A Heather like that who was explicitly gay, instead of someone who just feels queer. But the reason those characters work is because the writers peel back their layers and you learn the pain and justified rage underneath them. You sympathize with them and root for them to do their destruction because they’ve been through enough already! There’s absolutely none of that here.

I actually don’t see the value in this show and I’m not sure it has what it takes to catch on. People our age who loved the original Heathers aren’t going to be drawn to this remake, and younger people who are probably only peripherally aware of the original Heathers are the ones getting mercilessly mocked by it. What fun is that for them?

Will you finish the season?

Riese: I’m curious about it, but after finishing the second episode last night I had no desire to keep going. The way that episode ended was unacceptable! This is the exact genre of show that I generally can endure in any ideation, but I don’t think I will. Will you?

Heather: I actually have to watch the next five episodes for [non-Autostraddle] work purposes but I’m not looking forward to it. I guess if I were happy every day of my life, I wouldn’t be a human. I’d be a gameshow host.

Riese: Of all the Heathers I’ve thought about in the last 24 hours, you are definitely my favorite. You remain my #1 Heather.

Pop Culture Fix: The Queerish “Heathers” Pilot Is Here To Get Your Goat and Other Stories Best Approached With Trepidation

… This just in: the Heathers Pilot is available on Paramount’s Website. I haven’t watched it yet but reports suggest that it will be offensive and probably upset everybody, maybe even me (I am very hard to offend, so wish me luck!). I stay tuned for your feelings.

… The Charmed reboot has cast a lesbian witch: Melonie Diaz, 33, will play “Mel,” who is described as a “strong-willed feminist lesbian,” who will have a police detective girlfriend, Soo Jin. Diaz previously played a queer character in 2007’s Itty Bitty Titty Committee, made a splash with her indie darling 2002 debut in Raising Victor Vargas, and co-starred in Fruitvale.

… We have been waiting for so long: Lena Waithe’s Autobiographical Comedy “Twenties” Gets Picked Up By TBS: “TBS has ordered a pilot for Lena Waithe’s autobiographical comedy, Twenties. The single-camera show tells the story of Hattie, a queer black twenty-something trying to make her way in L.A. alongside her two straight BFFs, Marie and Nia.” (Brittani wrote about “Twenties” for Autostraddle in 2013)

… The creators of Everything Sucks! talk about making one of Netflix’s lowest budget shows, how they wrote a lesbian character, their influences (including the incredible ’90s Swedish film Show Me Love!) and their process:

Michael Mohan: In 1996, even Ellen DeGeneres hadn’t come out yet. So to try and sensibly depict a 15-year-old girl living in Oregon, it just seemed like a very compelling coming of age story that we hadn’t quite seen.

Jones: We had a writers room that was as diverse as we could make it, and everybody contributed to the character of Kate and lent a voice to her arc. We had a representative from GLAAD come in and we got to pick his brain a little bit about what some of tropes were in this kind of depiction. You know, what we might want to steer toward, and what we might want to in turn avoid.

… 7 Queer Books Being Turned Into Movies In 2018 

… Meet the Openly Gay Producer Behind Your Favorite LGBT-Inclusive Viral Videos

… ‘The Handmaiden’ lands historic BAFTA for Best Foreign Film

… Remember When Black Panther’s Princess-Badass Letitia Wright Played a Sweet Babygay Lesbian in “Banana”?

… The Hollywood Reporter talks to the Roseanne team, which apparently includes out lesbian comedian Wanda Sykes: Roseanne Returns: Is TV Ready for a Trump-Loving Comic With “Nothing Left to Prove”?

… Sally Potter’s ‘The Party’ Invites You to London’s Worst Dinner Bash Ever: Though inspired by the cast (which also includes Patricia Clarkson as Janet’s catty gal pal) and Potter’s relevant material, Jones is still amazed that she can be an out lesbian playing a lesbian. “Things have changed,” she says. “Our stories aren’t just being told. Today, we can tell them.”

… Black LGBTQ visibility in media has made strides, but we need more than representation: “We can no longer just be OK with seeing more of us on the screen. We must continue to make things uncomfortable for institutions who love Black culture but not Black people. This isn’t about putting one Black executive at the table, or giving us the green light on more projects. This is about us, pulling more of us in and requiring them to have us in front of the screen, behind the scenes, and making the decisions. It’s also about investing in our own community structures to dismantle the ideals we learned through colonization, and fight the homophobia that continues to hurt Black and brown people at large.”

… ‘Every Day’ is a Body-Hopping, Gender-Defying Love Story: It’s a fundamentally queer romance, with A’s consciousness manifesting itself in different races, heights, weights, and genders — Ian Alexander (far left), the trans Asian breakout from Netflix’s The OA, makes an appearance. And while its premise is a bit twee, in our current climate the movie’s message feels downright necessary. “The story is about being seen,” Sucsy says. “Love transcends binary categories. Falling in love with the essence of a person is what love is really about.”

… Queer Latinx Voices Are Front And Center On Starz’s “Vida”

… Meet the Openly Gay Producer Behind Your Favorite LGBT-Inclusive Viral Videos | PRIDE.com

… The purest reactions to the Queer Eye Netflix reboot 

… TV Shows Reboot With Newfound Diversity in 2018 | Observer: Party of Five’s reboot will have parents who were deported rather than killed, as in the original.

… Meet Deitre: They’re Brooklyn’s Queer Glam Rock Band, and They Proudly Live Their Truth

… This’ll go great I bet: Stewie Griffin Will Reveal His Sexuality To Therapist Ian McKellen In Upcoming Episode Of “Family Guy”

… Watch A Teaser For ‘Claws’ Season 2 but be aware that there is no lesbian content in it, which’s sad.

… Why you need to watch this French-Canadian webseries about queer women

… Trans Actress Daniela Vega, Star Of “A Fantastic Woman,” Presenting At Oscars

Here, Try These Semi-Sweet Morsels of Queerish TV Info From the 2018 TCAs I’ve Prepared For You

Ah hello my friends. Good news: The Television Critics Association Winter 2018 Press Tour wrapped up yesterday, and during this event we learned some things about some teevee shows that may be relevant to your interests! Let’s talk about those things, shall we?

2 Dope Queens — February 2nd, HBO

  • Based on the podcast by Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, 2 Dope Queens consists of four themed hourlong specials, directed by out lesbian Tig Notaro (deadline)
  • Phoebe: “We wanted a special that represents not only women, but people of color and queer people.”
  • Guest appearances include Jon Stewart, Sarah Jessica Parker and Tituss Burgess

Living Biblically – February 26th, CBS

  • [Camryn] Manheim is playing a lesbian raised in a religious family by a father who felt “a woman’s place was in the home and to submit to the husband.” (source: danielle turchiano)

Life Sentence – March 7th, The CW

(Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images)

  • Stella’s Mom Ida “finds the courage to explore her sexuality as a bisexual woman because of her daughter’s courage to live her life to the fullest.” (Black Girl Geeks)
  • She will come out as bisexual in the pilot. The director “feels it was important to flesh her out as a full woman – not closeted.” (Danielle Turchiano)

Heathers – March 7th, Paramount Network

Still nervous about this idea but here we are! Out gay actor Brendan Scannell, who plays genderqueer Heather Duke, said,  “The idea is that power corrupts and that everyone is at their core an asshole and concerned for themseleves. In the movie three beautiful women where wrecking havoc on the school; that was new and hadn’t been done before. Our modern retelling centers around marginalized communities — a plus-size, a Black girl and a queer — trashing everyone around them.”

  • The tone is “dark” and “edgy” and “isn’t a responsible series about teen bullying.” Instead it aims to “show the characters as they really are.” (dt)
  • Jasmine Matthews, who plays black lesbian character Heather McNamara, said she identifies with her character, recalling that in high school, “I was bullied but also the bullier. It was a confusing time for me.”
  • It’s an anthology series, so this cast is just a one-season journey.
  • Also, more than one but less than five of the characters who were on the TCA stage will die.
  • Shannon Doherty will guest in three episodes, including the first scene of the first episode.

The Handmaid’s Tale – April 25th, Hulu

https://youtu.be/xxQhWrAcQnE

According to Variety:

  • Season Two will be even darker than Season One, and “will offer a deeper look at the social and political conflicts that led to Gilead’s succession from the United States.”
  • It will go beyond what the novel presented, but remain faithful to Atwood’s description to make sure everything that happens in the book has happened at some point in history, somewhere.
  • Marissa Tomei has a guest role.
  • Offred will be on the run, heading to “the colonies,” described as “a pretty forbidding world.”
  • Elizabeth Moss: “So much of this season is about motherhood. We’ve talked a lot about the impending birth of the child that’s growing inside of her as a bit of a ticking time bomb, The complications are really wonderful to explore. She does have the baby, but it gets taken away from her. She can’t be its mother. It makes for good drama.”
  • Bruce Miller: “It’s easy in a show like ours to come up with perverse cruelties toward women and then it just turns into pornography. You have to keep tethered to the world. It’s a loser on every front to be imagining evil.”

Vida – May 6th, Starz

This is shaping up to be one of the year’s queerest adventures — and you can read all about it in the post about Vida I published earlier this morning because I had too many words to say about it for this post! But, in sum: a queer Latinx showrunner, a behind-the-scenes crew that is heavily POC, queer and female and several queer leads including one who is also masculine-of-center.

Sweetbitter – May 6th, Starz

Starz’s Sweetbitter is inspired by a 2016 bestseller about a 22-year-old who escapes Kansas for New York and becomes a backwaiter at a swanky Union Square restaurant, subsequently discovering food, wine, cocaine, good sex, terrible sex, sexual harassment and so much more. I read the book in a day, and related to a lot of it, but we’re all here today because of Ariel, the lesbian backwaiter from the book who’ll be in the show, too.

  • Season One’s theme is “intoxication” and it will cover a time span of just two weeks.
  • Apparently this panel turned into questions about how this show can exist in the #MeToo era which, based on my reading of the book, seems like a severe misapplication of concern! It also took time away from what I would’ve liked everybody to discuss instead, which was LESBIAN ACTION.

Roseanne- March 27th

Roseanne was a groundbreaking television visionary in the ’80s who gave a voice to working-class families, challenged norms of what women had to look like to earn a place on television, and introduced some of the first-ever lesbian and bisexual female characters ever. But Roseanne turns out to be a really bad person, and has maybe always been. Recently Roseanne actively espoused trans misogynist points of view and apparently voted for Donald Trump. Her character in the Roseanne reboot will do the same. Vanity Fair points out that despite the working-class setting, it’s still hard to imagine the Roseanne we met in the 80s being a Trump supporter in the ’10s.

Pose – TBD

Photo by David Buchan/Variety/REX/Shutterstock (9308388c)
Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Steven Canals, Janet Mock, Evan Peters, Kate Mara, James Van Der Beek, Mj Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Ryan Jamaal Swain
FX ‘Pose’ TV show panel, TCA Winter Press Tour, Los Angeles, USA – 05 Jan 2018

Pose is set in 1987 New York and the ballroom scene specifically, and promises more LGBTQ+ characters than ever before.

  • The five trans women of color leads will be played by MJ Rodriguez (Nurse Jackie, Saturday Church), Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Hailie Sahar (Mr. Robot, Transparent) and Angelica Ross (Her Story, Claws).
  • Janet Mock is a writer/producer and told reporters that the women of “Pose” are “pretty full embodied in terms of their gender identities.” She emphasized that they “are beyond the struggle with their bodies, with people calling them by their right name. These are people who are creating new ways of having family — chosen family through the ballroom networks.”
  • Ryan Murphy: “The show is about the search for being authentic, about creating opportunities. We’re past an era of straight men playing these roles. It’s time to think differently and offer more opportunities to people who want to work. Many of this cast have never been in front of the camera before.”
  • “Bronx born-and-raised queer Afro-latino” Steven Canals, Pose Creator: “I spent years being told this show was too niche, there was no audience for it, and where would a show like this live?”
  • Murphy feels obligated to use his success to open doors for other members of the LGBTQ+ community, recalling shooting ballroom scenes with 60 trans women in them and likened doing a search for series stars to “the search for Scarlett O’Hara.”
  • There’s a scene where a character named Ryan comes out to his father and is beaten with a belt, which’s from Murphy’s real life experience.
  • Ryan Murphy: “Now is the time to tell this story about this group of people who are sadly are more and more disenfranchised and cut off. We wanted to celebrate them. They’re part of our family. The timing of this show was very important.”

Winter 2017/2018 TV Preview: Some Lesbian and Bisexual Content for Y’all

This has been such a wild year for lesbian, bisexual, queer and otherwise-identified female characters on television that we’ve barely been able to keep up! I’ve got such a long list of teevee shows I haven’t even talked to you about yet, like I Love Dick and Humans and — listen, now I have a whole new batch of shows to talk to you about.

Putting together a television preview like this probably seems pretty straightforward, but it actually takes a few days of digging and obsessive research — only about half the shows with queer characters advertise that fact ahead of time. The rest of the work involves reading descriptions of every new show and then using my psychic lesbian television powers to determine which deserve a deep-dive because something about the show suggests that lesbians or bisexuals could be involved. I can’t talk about the deep dive without sounding like a total lunatic and also revealing certain trade secrets, but, that’s just a little FYI for ya.

Still, sometimes there are no clues about queer characters or minimal info available about the show and therefore that show doesn’t make it into the preview — this happened in the fall with Netflix’s Mindhunter, which turned out to have a lesbian main character (whose lesbianism was referenced exactly once). Other times, the show intentionally withholds information for maximum impact, like Nicole coming out on Fresh Off the Boat.

So, this is what we know for now, but rest assured our eyes will remained peeled, locked and loaded as we head into what we hope will be another mostly-good year of lesbian, bisexual and queer representation on television. February and March premiere dates are still being determined and new shows are being announced every day.

New Winter 2017/2018 TV Shows With Lesbian Characters and/or Bisexual Characters

Marvel’s Runaways — November 21st, Hulu

Even if the lesbian parts have yet to really summon themselves to the surface of this show, it’s still a damn good story with a captivating group of protagonists. Therefore Kayla’s been writing about it right here on Autostraddle for y’all.

Godless — November 22nd, Netflix

After 83 men are killed in the town of La Belle, New Mexico, the former mayor’s widow, Mary Agnes McNue (Meritt Weaver) takes control of the whole damn place. She also starts wearing men’s clothing and begins a relationship with Callie Dunne (Tess Frazer), a schoolteacher and former sex worker! According to Queerty, “the two have the most passionate and compelling relationship in the series.”

She’s Gotta Have It — November 23rd, Netflix

You should definitely read Alaina and Carmen’s upcoming piece about this before giving it a watch, but in this reboot of Spike Lee’s groundbreaking film, Nola Darling identifies as a polyamorous pansexual and one of her partners ia a lesbian Mom named Opal Gilstrap!

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — November 29, Amazon Prime

In this period piece Alex Borstein plays the androgynous pants-wearing lesbian (I mean, right?) bartender who sees the titular Mrs. Maisel’s budding talent as a stand-up comedian and signs on to manage her act. Your Jewish grandmother will love this show, I wish mine was still alive so we could watch it together.

Easy — December 1st, Netflix

The first season of “Easy” included a lesbian episode and guess what, the second season does too! Kiersey Clemons and Jacqueline Toboni are back, playing “a mixed-race pair of bohemian lesbian creative types… who aren’t quite as free of bourgeois neuroses as they want to think.” They also show up two other times in the season.

Grown-ish — January 2nd, Freeform

Black-ish daughter Zoey Johnson is off to college with her very own teevee show, Grown-ish! One of her new besties, Nomi Segal, is a proud bisexual who will for sure be dating some ladies and it’s gonna be great.

The Chi — January 7th, Showtime

Lena Waithe’s much-anticipated series set on Chicago’s southside focuses on “an interconnected group of working class African-Americans who remind us that no matter what, the human spirit is strong and hope never dies.” There are at least two minor lesbian characters in the program but regardless y’all — Lena Waithe!

Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams — January 12th, Amazon

Episode 5 of this anthology series based on some Phillip K Dick stories features Anna Paquin playing a lesbian cop living in a future where cars fly. She’s struggling to cope with memories of an event where many of her fellow police officers were killed, so her wife gets her a virtual reality holiday! What fun.

Black Lightning — January 16th, The CW

DC’s first African-American superhero comes out of superhero retirement to save his daughters from their increasingly crime-ridden community — and his daughter, Anissa Pierce (Nafeesa Williams) will have a thing with bisexual bartender Grace Choi, played by Chantal Thuy! This is so many wonderful things happening at once and I can say for the first time in my damn life that I’ll be tuning into a superhero show from the moment it debuts.

Counterpart — January 21, Starz

Starz is really pulling out all the stops to ensure you don’t cancel your subscription despite their cancellation of Survivor’s Remorse. Counterpart, a high-concept sci-fi thriller about a government agent who discovers his employer is guarding a crossing into a parallel dimension, will star Sara Serraiocco as Baldwin, a “mysterious assassin.” She’s got short hair and a sharp shot and hooks up with a girl in the trailer!

Life Sentence — TBD, Freeform

This mid-season replacement stars Aria from Pretty Little Liars as a girl who thought she was going to die but then found out she wasn’t going to die after all. And then it turns out that her Mom is having a relationship with another lady because life is just damn full of surprises. Also this is a very similar plot to the plot of Chasing Life, right? I didn’t watch it, I was just force-fed a lot of previews. Regardless, this was supposed to be a mid-season replacement last year but really truly is gonna happen this year and will undoubtedly be exactly as mediocre as it sounds.

Heathers — TBD, Paramount Network

Due at some point in mid-March, this reboot re-casts the famed Heathers of the iconic ’80s film — a group of conventionally beautiful popular mainstream straight cis white women who terrorized their less conventionally blessed classmates — as misfits. The three primary Heathers include an amab genderqueer person and a black lesbian. How on earth will this work? We’ll find out!

Shows That Don’t Definitely Have Queer Women TV Characters But Also Kinda Do Or Maybe Should or IDK, I Feel Like They Will

9-1-1 — January 2nd

This is a Falchuck/Murphy project, but it’s a bit of a departure from their usual fare and it’s a small cast, so there’s no guarantee of a queer character. However, I think we can agree on the strong butch vibes radiating from the above screenshot. 9-1-1 is a procedural that “explores the high-pressure experiences of police, paramedics and firefighters who are thrust into the most frightening, shocking and heart-stopping situations” and stars include your girlfriends Angela Bassett and Connie Britton, as well as Nate from Six Feet Under (RIP).

The Good Place — January 4th

Has Eleanor made enough references to finding women attractive for us to call her bisexual? This debate will re-ignite in January, gird your loins!

Wayward Sisters — January 18th, The CW

Photo: Katie Yu/The CW — © 2016 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved

This “backdoor pilot,” apparently the result of a fan campaign for Supernatural to wake up and write stories about women, will enter Supernatural from the rear on January 18th. I know next to nothing about this franchise besides that they killed all their lesbians, but I assume there will be rioting if a show focused entirely on the female inhabitants of a certain universe does not include some girl-on-girl culture. Also “backdoor pilot?” You guys. What! I only became aware of this phrase recently and I have a few questions.

Grace and Frankie – January 19th, Netflix

Last season was the most intense for Grace and Frankie’s allegedly platonic and not apparently lesbian yet totally gay relationship, and this season Lisa Kudrow will join the cast. It seems unlikely that Grace and Frankie will ever become the girlfriends they are destined to be or that we’ll get a lesbian character because of the show’s Gay Husbands premise, BUT COME ON. Also the show will take a “deep dive into Brianna’s love life.” Hopefully that deep dive will be a clam dive.

American Woman (Paramount) — January TBD

Another feature from the new prestige-TV-oriented Paramount Network, this series covers the early days of the ’70s feminist movement and its sexual revolution as felt by its most privileged members: rich white women in Beverly Hills! Alicia Silverstone and Mena Suvari star in the show Silverstone describes as “oozing” with sex and also oozing with burning bras. There’s gotta be some lesbian action in here or else I call bullshit on the whole production!  DO IT FOR MOMMI.

When Does [Show With Lesbian/Bisexual/Queer/Trans Character] Come Back in 2018?

Call the Midwife (PBS) comes back December 25th, 2017

Valor (The CW) comes back January 1st, 2018

Madam Secretary (CBS) comes back January 7th, 2018

The Fosters (Freeform) comes back January 9th, 2018

Supergirl (The CW) comes back January 15th, 2018

Riverdale (The CW) comes back January 17th, 2018

Portlandia (IFC) comes back January 18th, 2018

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) coes back January 18th, 2018

How To Get Away With Murder (ABC) comes back January 18th, 2018

Arrow (The CW) comes back January 18, 2018

One Day At A Time (Netflix) comes back on January 26th, 2018

Jane the Virgin (The CW) comes back on January 26th, 2018

Pop Culture Fix: Get Your Hot Takes Ready for the Queerish “Heathers” Reboot

Hello did you see the Fall TV Preview Riese and I wrote for you because we love you? Here are some other pop culture things!

+ A couple of months ago Riese told you about the new Heathers reboot that, at the time, was coming to TVLand with a queer woman director, a black lesbian Heather and a genderqueer Heather. Well, the Heathers reboot is still happening but it’s going to be on Paramount Network and there appears to be a white male showrunner. This is not a great development. The first teaser landed on the internet this week, and it’s word-for-word the movie at this point, though the cast talked to Pop Sugar and said the film is only going to serve as inspiration.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYUhasUHqfS/?taken-by=heathers

This is going to be a weird one. The thing about Heathers is all the Heathers are the same straight white bully and that’s why they all end up dead. In this version, the characters representing normally marginalized and often oppressed groups will terrorize the straight white guy and girl and get killed for it? I guess we’ll see how it turns out.

+ Vulture has rounded up everything the internet knows about Ryan Murphy’s new biopic about Riese Bernard/the news season of American Horror Story.

+ How about a new trailer for season two of One Mississippi!

+ From the writer of last night’s episode of The Bold Type.

https://twitter.com/LynnSternberger/status/902712979921268740

+ You probably heard James Cameron said some dumb nonsense about Wonder Woman last week. Well, Patty Jenkins responded on Twitter.

+ Well it ain’t Tippi the — actually, wait no, it literally is Tippi the Bird.

+ Stephanie Beatriz is on this week’s Queery podcast with Cameron Esposito and it’s really, really good. She talks about bi erasure, eating disorders, and learning to love herself.

+ A definition for you.

Pop Culture Fix: “Heathers” Remake Has A Black Lesbian Heather and A Queer Director

+ FUCK ME GENTLY WITH A CHAINSAW. TV Land is re-making Heathers, one of the best movies of all time, as a “comedic anthology,” with queer writer/director Leslye Headland at the helm. In the reboot, everything will be hella gay:

TV Land’s take is described as a black comedy that takes place in the present day. It features a new set of popular-yet-evil Heathers — only this time the outcasts have become high school royalty. Heather McNamara (originally played by Lisanne Falk) is a black lesbian; Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty) is a male who identifies as gender-queer whose real name is Heath; and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker) has a body like Martha Dumptruck.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s unnecessary hyphenation of “gender-queer” and utilization of “real name” instead of “birth name” and their tacky employment of “a body like Martha Dumptruck” aside — there is not a thing on this planet I am more stoked for than Heathers who are a black lesbian, a genderqueer person and a fat girl. HELL YEAH FEMINIST HEATHERS.

35-year-old director and playright Leslye Headland (Sleeping With Other People), who has an undercut and is engaged to actress Rebecca Henderson, told THR that she saw the film for the first time in her 20s, and “related with it so much. I can’t believe they got away with so much. The movie was a huge influence on an entire generation and it’ll be nice to introduce this to a new generation.”

Screenshot 2016-09-07 09.41.07

Leslye Headland and Rebecca Henderson at the “Appropriate Behavior” premiere

Headland was tapped earlier this year to direct an untitled Weeks/Mackay lesbian-straight duo comedy for ABC which ultimately did not get picked up by the network. Her play “The Layover” is currently running Off-Broadway — a play sparked by her fascination with Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thrillers. (Highsmith is the lesbian author of “The Price of Salt,” which inspired Carol.)

In a New York Times profile last month, Headland talked a little bit about coming to terms with her sexual orientation:

Ms. Headland wrote the play shortly before she began dating Ms. Henderson, when she still felt “unwilling to be openly — I don’t even know — gay, bi, not straight,” she said. The characters in the play aren’t honest about who they are, because neither was Ms. Headland. “I was so scared for so long to be out, and I don’t know why,” she said. The play emerged in part from a deep unhappiness she felt at the time, a sense of irreparable emptiness.

She also told The Times that “I’m in a wonderful relationship. I can’t wait to get married. I love her. But love is ephemeral, love is fleeting, love is a very terrifying thing.”

Stories Not About Heathers

+ Sarah Paulson is taking Marcia Clark to the Emmys! So if Sarah Paulson wins, they’ll go up there together, and then everybody’s feminist hearts will explode.

+ So many people are gay! It’s just a matter of time before we all gather our machetes and our sexual identities and just set fire to the place, you know? Anyhow, today in “Everyone is Gay”:

+ Ann M Martin, who wrote one of my favorite lesbian protagonists ever, Kristy Thomas, and also Mallory, who is gay, IS ALSO GAY. Read Heather’s article about it here.

+ One of fashion’s up-and-coming-it girls, Selena Forrest, told New York Magazine that she loves girls and only dates girls. If she had to pick a label she would pick bisexual. Read all about that here.

+ Mary & Jane, a new MTV show about best friends named Paige (Jessica Rothe) and Jordan (Scout Durwood) running a weed delivery service, is not about queer stuff. But it’s also not not about queer stuff, as an over-paginated article from AfterEllen disclosed. The two actresses teased sexual tension between the two ladies, with Scout declaring, “We have those moments, but they’re a little more light-hearted. They’re less sincere. Because everybody’s gay. I think guys have this kind of bromance genre now, and that’s fine, now it’s becoming a thing, and it’s great. I think we’re kind of like the femme bromance. So even though it’s not sexual, it’s everything but. Like it’s emotional.” Ummmm… okay???

Vogue had this to say about the program: “At its best it’s got something of the charm of a Pineapple Express mixed with that of a stoner-baiting Taco Bell commercial. At its worst it’s a lifeless, flat buddy comedy.”

+ The creator of Last Tango in Halifax says it was a mistake to kill off their lesbian character Kate (Nina Sosanya) in a car crash, which happened after Kate married her partner, Caroline. “It was a shock. I didn’t realise how attached the audience had become to that relationship and to those two characters,” she said in an interview at the Edinburgh TV Fest. “I found [the criticism] hard and I regretted it. I do think I made a mistake. I wished I had found a better story.”

+ Laverne Cox models as Beyonce, Tina Turner and Tracey Africa in Cosmopolitan Magazine.

+ Sia and Maddie Ziegler’s new music video, which features a verse from Kendrick Lamar, is a tribute to Orlando. It’s very intense.

+ Hollywood is bad at trans stories, here are some films you can watch instead. (Also these!)

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