“Masters Of Sex” Kills A Lesbian Character, Can Somebody Pass The Potatoes
This week on Showtime’s very upsetting show Masters of Sex, we revisited the only lesbian couple, office assistant Betty Moretti (Annaleigh Ashford) and her pregnant girlfriend Helen (Sarah Silverman). Are you still watching Masters of Sex? Is anyone? I feel like the only person who can’t stop watching this show, even though every week it makes me want to throw myself off the Park Chancery Hotel. Our girl Betty’s been through a lot on this show, first introduced as the madam of a brothel Dr. Masters conducted research in, then as the plucky secretary of the clinic, and more recently as Helen’s devoted girlfriend. Ever since she was first introduced, it’s been obvious that Betty can’t catch a break, but she’s clever, funny and resourceful – easily one of the most endearing characters in the show’s repertoire.
Masters of Sex has followed Betty and Helen through the trials and tribulations that ostensibly would plague a lesbian couple during the time period of the show (are we still in the 1960s? Hard to say!). Unable to commit to each other in any kind of legal or even particularly public way, Betty and Helen attempted to forge relationships of convenience with men, with heart-wrenching results. Ultimately, the pair ended up living together and fellow homosexual Dr. Scully even helped Helen become pregnant! These guys were really defying the odds! Last week, Helen came clean to her parents about her relationship with Betty and although her parents didn’t take the news well, it seemed enormously ambitious for a show about queer people in such a conservative landscape. I don’t know why I thought this might end well.
When we meet Betty and Helen this week, they’re having a tender moment in bed as they adorably fake-argue about the gender of their imminent new addition. Helen had a dream about her now-estranged parents and she’s feeling oddly optimistic about the whole thing! “They still rejected me, rejected us… but when they left, I waved goodbye and they blew me a kiss! And it was really OK, and it wasn’t sad anymore, ’cause when I turned around, you and our baby girl were standing there and that’s when I knew how happy I was, how happy I’m gonna be – just you and me and Sweet Pea. A family. Aren’t we lucky?” It’s very dreamy and very obviously a setup for everything to be terrible forever.
“Oh shit, I just remembered – we’re two women in love on a television show.”
When Helen finally goes into labor, they go to none other than esteemed Dr. Scully, who is much more understanding of Helen and Betty’s situation than any other doctor would be, but Betty still isn’t allowed in the delivery room. It’s mentioned a couple of times that Helen had quite a lot of blood when her water broke, but all the (male) doctors are like, “LOL that could be anything, probably everything’s fine. Why don’t you have a seat and read a ladies’ magazine and we’ll come get you if anything changes?” To his credit, Dr. Scully is charming and reassuring when he informs Helen that the baby is breech and odds are good he’ll need to perform a C-section. Betty hovers nervously in the waiting room, in no way comforted by the fact that her partner is being operated on by one of the best doctors in the business, a close family friend who has her best interests at heart. She knows she is a queer woman on television. She knows what’s coming.
Dr. Scully brings Betty and Dr. Masters in just as the baby is born, and congratulations – it’s a girl, and she’s healthy and fine! However, Helen is SHOCKINGLY in bad shape, and even though Dr. Masters scrubs up to help out, even the two best doctors in the entire known universe could not save her. Helen dies of disseminated intravascular coagulation; she bleeds out on the operating table despite her doctors’ best efforts. While still reeling from this news, Betty visits the nursery in order to finally hold the daughter that she’s been kept from through antiquated laws and red tape. Instead, she sees Helen’s estranged parents holding her child, and a nurse sternly tells her that the family have made it very clear that she is not welcome. After struggling constantly to create a family for herself and Helen, Betty is left with no girlfriend, no daughter and seemingly no hope. It’s a devastating turn for a beloved character.
AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY THEY STYLED HER LIKE JERRI BLANK ?
According to Masters of Sex creator Michelle Ashford (via Entertainment Weekly), the character of Helen existed mainly so that Betty (a former sex worker) would have a stable relationship. “What we wanted to show is ultimately that Betty and Helen were women of substance and commitment to one another,” she explained, “They were trying to do something in an age when there was hardly any roadmap for this.” Apparently, Betty will have a much more involved story going forwards in season four, though it won’t all be tears and misery (just mostly that!): “So what we’re going to watch is how she [Betty] actually subverts a system that has nothing but roadblocks and actually finds a way to end up with the most bizarre family imaginable.” Sounds fun!
Showtime, you did not have to kill Helen in order to give Betty substance. This was cruel.
A Gay Girl’s Guide to Fall 2016 TV: Featuring All The Queer Lady Characters Who Haven’t Died (Yet)
Here we are at the beginning of another TV season, all hope and wide-eyed wonder. Just kidding, after the year of politics we’ve had to endure and the record number of lesbian/bisexual TV deaths we’ve witnessed, we’re a grizzled group of gays and bisexuals and otherwise-identified queers heading into 2017. And yet! Despite it all! Despite having our hearts broken and our hopes smashed by the storytelling medium that most people apparently use “to escape from reality,” we show up again and again, daring to believe this time could be different. Because there’s nothing like seeing yourself reflected in a story. Stories sustain us. They help us figure out how to navigate life and love and those tricky situations like when our new girlfriend pulls off her face to reveal that she’s actually our ex-girlfriend who’d supposedly died at the hands of another crime lord. We need stories. We need them.
Here are where the gay girls are on TV this year. Sappho protect us.
Streaming
One Mississippi (Amazon Prime, Season 1) — September 9
One Mississippi is a semi-autobiographical dark comedy about a lesbian who returns to Mississippi after the death of her mother. The lesbian, of course, is Tig Notaro. The series has rightly been hailed by critics as something very special, and I’ll admit that Tig Notaro shocked me right out of my shoes with her acting prowess. A full review of season one is coming your way as soon as I finish the last three episodes. For now let me say it’s one of the best lesbian comedies I’ve ever seen. Funny and sweet and sad and triumphantly true.
Transparent (Amazon Prime, Season 3) — September 23
Ali and Cherry Jones are still together at the beginning of Transparent‘s third season, so that’s something! And Sarah has finally accepted that she’s bisexual! Reports from The Toronto International Film Festival, where the first three episodes of the new season premiered last week, say that this season is more Maura-centric. In fact, her kids aren’t even around for the first episode, which ends with her in the hospital (don’t worry, it’s only dehydration!). One of the major story arcs this season will be Maura’s gender confirmation surgery, and the series will continue to explore the complicated relationships the Pfefferman’s have with each other and their significant others.
Red Oaks (Amazon Prime, Season 2) — November 11
Judy’s marriage is over in season two of Red Oaks, which means she gets to “figure out who she is after 22 years in a time machine.” Apparently part of that exploration involves smooching other women, which honestly isn’t that much different than season one. Judy totally made out with Karen (a thing that somehow flew right underneath my radar!) last year, and will go down that road again this year. “I get to have, like, hot girlfriends that I get to make out with. I’m just the girl who has everything. I made out like a bandit,” Gray said at TCA.
Sunday
Masters of Sex (Showtime, Season 4) — September 11
Betty’s back for season four. She had more screentime in the first episode of this season than most of last season combined, and guess what else? She and Helen are going to have their baby! Last season we saw glimpses of them working on a way to conceive, and now Helen is nine months pregnant! (So is the actress who plays her.) Annaleigh Ashford promised that we’ll get to see them navigate motherhood and that Betty’s relationship with Dr. Masters will take a turn for the better this year.
The Walking Dead (AMC, Season 7) — October 23
Well, Denise sure is dead. Died last season like two hundred thousand other queer women on TV. There was some question after the finale about whether or not Tara also bit the dust, but on-set photos during season seven filming show Tara alive and well. Or, well, alive. And still human.
Monday
Gotham (Fox, Season 3) — September 19
I was on panel at FlameCon (New York’s gay comic con) earlier this summer and literally everyone on that stage with me agreed that Gotham is the worst queer representation in the history of superhero TV. Last season, after sending beloved lesbian Latina Renee Montoya off into the Parking Lot of No Return, Barbara Keen continued to explore her bisexuality, which included making out with another woman for ratings/the man in the room, making out with another woman to pass the time until she could get her man back, making out with a woman and then her brother, and acting like a general psychopath. You know, all the tropes. Tabitha and Barbara will both be back for season three. Also: “a young villainess ‘who uses her sexuality to entrap men.'”
Supergirl (The CW, Season 2) — October 10
We know for sure that Maggie Sawyer will be around for the new season of Supergirl, which feels promising. And we know someone else in the universe will be exploring their sexuality, which I am going to take to mean “Alex Danvers is bisexual” until someone tells me otherwise. Supergirl was one of the most fun, most female friendly shows on TV last season. The move to The CW has a lot of fans worried, particularly with very male-dominated casting news in the off-season, including a much-hyped story arc for The Man of Steel himself. I’m holding out hope that he’ll be around for three episodes and then fly his overexposed super butt right back to Metropolis.
Jane the Virgin (The CW, Season 3) — October 17
“Rose and Luisa will go to the most dysfunctional couples’ therapy ever,” Jane the Virgin‘s EP told TVLine. Yes, Rose. You’ll remember that in the season two finale, Susanna shot Michael on his wedding night and then pulled off a mask to reveal that she is not Susanna at all! She is Rose! Sin Rostro! Luisa’s true love! (I really liked Susanna; it’s too bad the actress jumped to a different show.) Jane the Virgin is consistently the best, most feminist show on TV, and this is absolutely Gina Rodriguez’s year to bring home an Emmy. Luisa’s great. Super great. But she’s only a small part of what makes Jane perfect.
Tuesday
NCIS: New Orleans (CBS, Season 3) — September 20
According to TVLine, new NCIS detective Tammy Gregorio is “a tough and acerbic FBI Special Agent who is sent from D.C. to investigate Pride’s team — triggered by the departure of Meredith Brody in the wake of that season-ending Homeland Security/Agent Russo hullabaloo.” She’s a “by-the-book bureaucrat” with a “mysterious past.” Apparently she’s going to come out later this fall.
Strut (Oxygen, Season 1) — September 20
This Whoopi Goldberg-produced reality show will follow the models of the first ever all-trans modeling agency as they navigate the fashion industry. The cast is comprised of all trans people, most of whom are trans women of color. NBC says the series will have both “integrity and heart.”
American Housewife (ABC, Season 1) — October 11
This sitcom was originally called “The Second Fattest Housewife in Westport.” Now it is not called that. It follows a housewife and mother named Katie Otto who is trying to figure out how to stand out in Westport, CT. Her neighbor and best friend is named Angela and she is gaaaaaay. Black Lesbian Best Friends do not have a very good track record of luck on broadcast TV. The most recent Black Lesbian Best Friend was Annelise from Grandfathered, which got canned after one season. Before that, it was Kay from Marry Me, which didn’t even last a full season. The moral of this story is: How about making a Black Leading Lesbian Character the headliner of a sitcom for a change?
Wednesday
Empire (Fox, Season 3) — September 21
Empire was a disaster last season. It erased Tiana’s bisexuality, killed two queer women after turning them into total assholes, and then had Freda try to murder Jamal. In her season finale recap, Carolyn Wysinger noted: “Freda makes the second black lesbian on TV this season that exits the show in handcuffs headed to prison. The first was Loretta Devine’s elder butch lesbian character C.C. on Being Mary Jane. Then of course you have Poussey on OITNB who is already in prison. Is that where we are destined to be? Invisible or in prison?” (Insult to that injury, of course, is the fact that Poussey was killed on OITNB three months after Carolyn wrote that.)
Ilene Chaiken says Freda will be back for season three: “She’s part of our story. It’s not over. Jamal understand she’s a victim, but he still has to deal with the fact that she shot him. It was a hugely traumatizing event that she perpetrated on him. But he believes in her and in the mission of ending the cycle. So he’s going to have to do something about it.”
Code Black (CBS, Season 2) — September 28
Code Black murdered Malaya Pineda’s ex-girlfriend with leukemia right after she gave birth (classic!), but Pineda is still working the most terrifying ER in America. CBS only picked up the hospital drama for a 17-episode second season, which is apparently going to be a “relaunch” intended to help the series reach a broader audience. In this case, “relaunch” probably means “more sex in the on-call room” and “less blood,” which is fine by me!
Younger (TV Land, Season 3) — September 28
Younger is such a fun TV show; I sure do wish it would kill of its two male leads, eschew the straight love triangle, and focus on the women only! Especially I wish we could get some more time with Maggie and Lauren. Their relationship seemed so promising in the early episodes of season two. A May-December romance between cross-generational artists in Williamsburg? That’s literally the best thing anyone could ever say about Williamsburg! Maggie and Lauren are both back as series regulars in season three, so: fingers crossed.
Thursday
Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, Season 13) — September 22
Callie Torres is gone but Arizona Robbins remains, and she’s apparently getting a new love interest, which will hopefully distract her from the fact that her ex-wife took their daughter a million miles away to live with another woman. Jessica Capshaw is on the bench for the first two episodes of season 13 on account of having a baby, but she’ll be back in early October. Shonda Rhimes says: “I’m very excited to introduce a love interest for her, and to get to tell a story with her that lets her be who she is, and to see who she is post the relationships that she’s had … You don’t want to just stick two people together. I want to do it organically and I want the audience to be rooting for it. So I think we’re going to have fun with it.” Also, encouragingly: “In our world, Callie still exists.”
How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, Season 3) — September 22
This is my favorite photo from How to Get Away With Murder last season because it makes the show look like a family drama and not a frenetic Slytherin fever dream where everyone’s killing everyone in the name of devotion to Annalise Keating. Eve will be back this season to make google eyes and smooches at Annalise and also Mary J. Blige is guest starring! There’s not a lot of information about who’s murdering who in season three, but apparently The Keating Five are thinking of splitting up to either murder or be murdered on their own. Whatever. As long as Annalise comes out on top. (Annalise always comes out on top!)
Rosewood (Fox, Season 2) — September 22
After a season of mostly hanging out in the shadows and occasionally enjoying a B-story about their impending nuptials, Rosewood‘s first season ended with TMI cheating on Pippy with a man and then breaking off their engagement. They’re back for season two, but not back together.
Legends of Tomorrow (The CW, Season 2) — October 13
Sara Lance returns for the second season of Legends of Tomorrow. She had that one-episode Sapphic dalliance with Betty McRae last year, which I hope she will repeat with another trip back to the ’50s this year, or else I hope she goes to the ’80s and makes out with Jo from The Facts of Life.
Tell me, my friends, what’s got you hyped for Fall 2016 TV?
Pop Culture Fix: “Masters of Sex” Tackles Lesbian Pregnancy and Kristen Stewart Tackles Lesbian Rumors
Welcome to your very special one-of-a-kind Pop Culture Fix, a weekly love affair where we catch you up on all the relevant pop culture news of the day.
Today is quite a day because Pretty Little Liars came out as transphobic and Kristen Stewart came out as “not straight,” and both of those items will be addressed in a few hours in their very own posts by their respective on-staff experts: Pretty Little Liars recapper Heather Hogan and Gothip Girl Stef Schwartz.
Sexually Fluid Celebrity Corner
+ There is a very important Kristen Stewart interview with Nylon Magazine making the rounds today in which K-Stew is the most candid she has ever been about her sexual fluidity. Stay tuned for the full report from Gothip Girl later today!
+ Miley Cyrus is on the cover of Marie Claire, talking about things and stuff:
As she opens her front door, Cyrus’ dogs circle around her ankles, barking excitedly. Like her studio, her home is hospitable and unaffected—there is nothing to suggest global superstar celebrity. There is, however, a 5-foot-tall embellished bong and a dildo covered in pink and red puffballs, art projects of Cyrus, though, she emphasizes, “The bong works.”
The full interview isn’t online yet, but some snippets are, like this one about why she started The Happy Hippie Foundation:
A lot of us are born into some shit, you know what I mean? Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about my being gender-fluid and gender-neutral. And some people snarl at that. They want to judge me. People need more conventional role models, I guess. But I just don’t care to be that person.
If you care about the future:
+ Sarah Silverman will return for a three-episode arc in Season Three of Masters of Sex, and her storyline will feature Betty and Helen trying to start a family. Show creator Michelle Ashford:
“We have a great story. Helen decides she really wants to have a baby and so it’s about what did gay women do in 1966 if they wanted to have a baby. It’s like seeing the very very beginnings of that movement when gay couples decided to have children. It’s really touching. She’s determined. She wants to have a baby and they want to stay together.”
+ Faking It comes back August 31st and we’ve got the scoop.
+ Patti Smith’s book “Just Kids” will be a Showtime mini-series.
+ The Lion King sequel will be a TV series.
+ Jennifer Nettles will play Dolly Parton’s Mom in “A Coat of Many Colors”
+ Beetlejuice will have a sequel.
+ The Jem & The Holograms movie has a new trailer.
+ Annabeth Gish will be part of The X-Files reboot.
+ Britney Spears will guest star on Jane the Virgin.
+ The Twin Peaks revival will debut in 2016 or maybe in 2017.
+ Lily Rabe will play lesbian serial killer Aileen Wournos on American Horror Story: Hotel.
+ BET is developing a New Edition mini-series.
+ Fox Searchlight is probably working with the BBC on an Absolutely Fabulous movie.
Laverne Cox Dances It Out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnYcRuc9S1E
All The Things She Said
+ TV Execs wanted to whitewash Awkward Black Girl but Issa Rae shut that down.
+ I was very unimpressed with how Donald Trump’s jab at Rosie O’Donnell was received. So was Chely Wright, who took to Facebook to talk about it:
Nearly ALL 5,000 people allowed this man– who aspires to be the leader of OUR America– to publicly bully, mock, attack Rosie O’Donnell (again– he’s been doing it for a decade and it’s bothered me for as long), but they cheered him on as he did it.
Wright also linked to a Huffington Post article by Elizabeth Birch outlining just some of the work Rosie has done over the years:
When I came to work with her, I could not have imagined all she had quietly done in her then short career to help people in need. By 2005, she had already contributed well over $60,000,000 to charities focused on the health and well being of children. Through her own charity, the For All Kids Foundation, she contributed millions in capital grants to hundreds of day care centers all of the country serving low income children. This was not someone else’s money nor leveraging her celebrity. This was investing her own hard earned cash. And her generosity began well before she hit pay dirt on the Rosie O’Donnell Show.
Birch details the work Rosie did after Katrina, the work she’s done with Rosie’s Broadway Kids foundation, and so much more.
+ Naya Rivera did a pregnancy photoshoot and talked to Yahoo! about pregnancy and internet trolls.
+ Vulture spent a day at the office with out actress Lily Tomlin and talked about her career, Grace & Frankie and her upcoming film, Grandma, in which she plays “a semi-retired gay professor and poet.”
+ Eight female showrunners from the CW did a panel at TCA about being women in the television industry and it was pretty cool:
Sometimes you’re on other staffs of other shows or you’re not the showrunner and you have to do a rape storyline and you don’t want to do it. People are going to be watching it and they’re going to see your name on the episode and they’re going to think you think that’s what it means. Like, this is your interpretation of what it feels like to be a female and suffer this — and it’s not. It’s your own staff of the show, and this is what you kind of have to write, and it’s just such a horrible position to be in as a writer, and I don’t want to put any other writer in that position
Queer Things You Can Watch Right Now
+ RED, a Brazilian webseries that “tells the story of Mel Béart and Liz Malmo, two actresses who meet while shooting a short film and end up taking to their real lives the romantic relationship that they portray in fiction as Scarlet and Simone.”
+ Clean Hands, a short about a “troubled lesbian marraige.”
Also:
+ In Praise of Willow Smith and Black Girls Who Dare to Be Carefree
+ Disney Princesses without makeup
+ ONTD has unforgettable dance scenes from movies.
+ The Boozy Underbelly of Saturday Morning Cartoons
+ Take a look inside Karrueche Tran’s Closet
+ Straight Outta History, the Rage That Makes Movies: “Universal Pictures took on one of its more delicate challenges on Tuesday: making sure that the studio’s film “Straight Outta Compton” heals more wounds than it reopens.”
+ Meet Eight New Afrofuturism Artists Creating a Future of Color
+ Here’s your Orange is the New Black Guide to Prison Makeup
Boob(s On Your) Tube: 16 Summer TV Shows You Can Count On For Queer Characters
Hello, goji gummy berry bears! Welcome to Boob(s On Your Tube)! We’re in that weird two-week window between fall and summer TV where there’s hardly anything happening. I mean, my DVR managed to record 22 episodes of The Golden Girls in the last seven days, so something is happening, but not a lot of new somethings. So! This week, I’m going to run down the 16 TV shows that are coming at you this summer that definitely feature queer characters. There will probably be more. Old shows will add new queer characters. New shows will debut queer characters. (For new shows, my money is on Killjoys, a new Syfy show by the producers of Orphan Black and creator of Lost Girl; and Stitchers, a new ABC Family show that is probably gay because nearly all ABC Family shows are gay these days.) However, here are the shows I know we can count on.
June
Pretty Little Liars
ABC Family, June 2
Super lesbian Emily Fields returns to continue her courtships with Alison DiLaurentis, Paige McCullers, probably a new handful of gorgeous queer women who fall out of the sky, and potentially an actual Liar. Masks will mask masks of faces on faces. Parrots will fly. Mona will transcend. And Hanna will continue to know what Hanna means. Can’t miss, must see, Rosewood forever.
Hannibal
NBC, June 4
Margot Verner is a lesbian character on NBC’s brain-bending gorefest, Hannibal, a show my girlfriend calls “the most beautiful, psychologically damaging thing on network TV.” I have asked her multiple times about the fate of Margot Vener, but I keep checking out when she gets to the part where Margot’s brother cuts out her ovaries. She’s alive, though. That much I know for sure.
The Fosters
ABC Family, June 8
In the season two finale, Lena kissed another woman! The other woman was Monty, the principle at Anchor Beach! But Lena didn’t have time to tell Stef because Jesus and Mariana and their birth mother (who was pregnant with a child Stef and Lena had agreed to adopt) got into a car accident that included one fatality! If that level of drama delights you, you’re gonna love season three, which promises a brand new foster kid and Lena not telling Stef about the aforementioned kiss.
Becoming Us
ABC Family, June 8
Mey has watched the first two episodes of this show, and she’s not really feeling it. From her review:
I also said I hoped that, unlike Maura’s family in that show, the transgender parent in Becoming Us‘s family wouldn’t be filled with horrible people. While I wouldn’t go that far, after watching the first two episodes I was definitely expecting Carly’s family and the other people in the show to be much more supportive of her and to be better examples of how to act when you have a trans family member than they were. After all, why would you agree to star in a reality show unless you thought it was going to paint a good picture of you? Instead, I found myself crying halfway through the first episode — not because the show was touching my heart, but because I couldn’t believe how Carly was being talked about by her family.
Orange Is the New Black
Netflix, June 12
This needs no introduction or explanation. Orange Is the New Black is everything. I know it, you know it, Netflix knows it. Now we just need it. Give it to us so we can binge it!
Defiance
Syfy, June 12
Last season, Syfy’s post-apocalyptic alien/human western revealed that Doc Yewll is a lesbian who sometimes has visions of her dead Indogene wife. Also, of course, there’s Stahma Tarr and Kenya Rosewater’s love affair that did not die when Stahma shot Kenya in the face. Sure, Kenya is dead now, but only kind of, because Kenya is also alive as a clone. She’ll be back in season three, and it’s one of the things I am most looking forward to this whole summer.
Chasing Life
ABC Family, June 17
Brenna came out as bisexual during season one, a thing her grandmother loved and celebrated every time she had the chance. Brenna’s girlfriend, Greer, had to skip town to go live with her dad in like Rhode Island at the end of the season, but everyone’s fingers are crossed that she will return for some more live-in lady-love.
The Last Ship
TNT, June 21
Lt. Alisha Granderson is the only lesbian lady surviving on the last ship, but she does have a girlfriend back home. Granderson didn’t have enough to do last season, but I’m hoping the writers explore her backstory and place on the ship a little more this summer. Christina Elmore, who plays Granderson, is a marvel.
Rookie Blue
ABC, June 25
Rookie Blue kicks off its sixth season here in the States this summer. The Canadian drama kicked off its new season in its home country on May 19th. The show’s creatives have talked very candidly about being blown away by the online response to Gail and Holly’s relationship. On the upside, Gail is not going back to men. On the downside, there’s no firm word on how Holly will factor into the coming season.
Under the Dome
CBS, June 25
Last year, lesbian mama Carolyn Hill spent too much time in captivity and not enough time on-screen. The show is headed to Thursdays this summer, hoping to capitalize on Big Brother viewers. CSI fan favorite Marg Helgenberger is also joining the cast for an extensive arc. Carolyn remains one of the only black lesbian TV characters on broadcast network TV, so I’m rooting really hard for more for her to do this season.
Scream
MTV, June 30
Bex Taylor-Klaus, who you remember from The Killing and Arrow, has joined the cast as a “bi-curious” character. In the realm of horror films, that means she’ll face an imminent and horrific death. Let’s see how that trope translates to the small screen.
July
Ray Donovan
Showtime, July 12
Kate Moennig as Lena never has enough to do on this show, but also, it’s Kate Moennig, so every minute on-screen counts as ten minutes on-screen.
Masters of Sex
Showtime, July 12
Betty was upgraded to a series regular in season two, but weirdly, it didn’t translate into much more screen time. Mainstream and queer critics alike thought it was a dumb move to relegate her to the shadows. She did, however, ditch The Pretzel King, so her storyline is wide open for sapphic shenanigans this summer.
Hollywood Game Night
NBC, July 17
Jane Lynch doing her best Jane Lynch once a week with other celebrities!
August
Survivor’s Remorse
Starz, August 22
One of the biggest and best TV surprises last year was M-Chuck, the lesbian character on Starz’s original series about a basketball player who makes it from poverty to the NBA and brings his family along with him. She’s smart about life and smart about business and completely unapologetic about being an openly gay lady. She’s also her family’s rock. I am very excited to see where Survivor’s Remorse takes her this season. (Riese also just watched this show and loved it!)
Faking It
MTV, August 31
Amy’s in love with Reagen, or Karma, or herself, or all three. Who even knows at this point. Definitely season three will be a lot of girls kissing and fandom losing its mind and Riese writing brilliant recaps. Those are things you can count on.
I’ve also made you a downloadable PDF calendar with each of these premiere dates! I’ll updated it as more information becomes available!
What shows are you most looking forward to this summer?
The Best Television Shows of 2014 According to Us
By now you might have read a few lists about the best television of 2014 written by television critics, people with strong opinions, or just people that love TV. That’s all very cute but I thought it was time to find out what we, a collection of random queers with impeccable taste, liked this year. We’re not experts or critics (though we do write some pretty bomb recaps). I just thought it would be interesting to see if any of the shows we love had things in common with each other. I suppose you can try to spot the trends yourself.
Best Shows of 2014
These are the shows that our esteemed collection of TV watching Autostraddle affiliates deemed the best of the year.
5. Jane the Virgin
4. Transparent
3. Bob’s Burgers
2. Broad City
1. Orange is the New Black
Best of the Rest
These are the shows that got a lot of votes but not enough to crack the Top 5.
True Detectives
The Walking Dead
The Comeback
Orphan Black
Key and Peele
Game of Thrones
Shows We Wish We’d Watched in 2014
Since we’re not an all knowing group of folks that watch every single thing, I thought this would be a good way to acknowledge the shows that we’ve heard are great but haven’t gotten around to. Maybe those that have seen them can fill us in in the comments. I think it says something that apparently we’ve all seen OITNB, Broad City, and Bob’s Burgers?
10. Adventure Time
9. Inside Amy Schumer
8. Fargo
7. True Detective
6. The Comeback
5. Masters of Sex
4. Black-ish
3. Jane the Virgin
2. Transparent
1. Orphan Black
Well-Received Shows that We Apparently Don’t Care About?
These shows got no votes in best show or shows we want to watch.
Louie
Girls
The Americans
What were your favorite shows from 2014? What shows have you been meaning to watch? Has this list convinced you to give anything a shot?
The Lesbians On “Masters Of Sex” Sure Are Good Friends
Hello and welcome to another rousing discussion of just the lesbian parts (more or less) of Masters of Sex!
First of all, can we all agree this season is really weird? Last season was all about how the study came to be and how all these sexually repressed people were learning things about themselves and how hard it was to conduct such racy experiments in conservative times and what a total douchebag Dr. Masters was, right? This season feels a bit forced. There are so many subplots going on at one time that we can’t ever stop to focus on one thing – not even the reasoning behind the relationship between Masters and Johnson, which I assume is the point of the whole show. What ever happened to Ethan Haas? Does anybody ever pay any attention to the Masters’ baby or did they just leave him in a bouncy swing for like three episodes straight? Is Barton Scully okay? I really liked that guy.
Anyway, last week we met Helen (Sarah Silverman), Betty Moretti’s fortune teller ex-girlfriend. Helen’s been dating Betty’s husband Gene’s old friend Al, but the whole thing has just been an excuse to get closer to Betty. Since everybody on this show is engaged in healthy relationships filled with rich, honest communication, it seems likely that this arrangement will turn out spectacularly well.
When we first see the Morettis this episode, Gene is earnestly explaining to Betty that although they’ve discussed adopting kids, he would be really disappointed to raise children that he’d never be able to see a part of Betty reflected in. We already know that Gene’s aware of Betty’s history as a prostitute and her inability to have kids (two things she was less than forthcoming about), but it’s clear that Gene loves her to the ends of the earth and back. When he tells Betty that she’s enough for him, as long as they’ve got each other, Betty shoots him the guiltiest affectionate smile she can muster.
This is all very Jenny and Tim.
Elsewhere, Virginia Johnson continues to be a goddamn saint and Libby Masters really raises the bar for racist, uptight white ladies everywhere. Who cares? Across town, this is happening:
My husband may be the pretzel king, but you really twist my… something something.
Helen and Betty have snuck off to their little love nest (Helen’s place?) for a little illicit afternoon action, and their post-coital cuddle session just about breaks my heart. “I missed you,” Betty whispers, stroking Helen’s hair. They make out tenderly, gazing sweetly into each others’ eyes, but when Betty checks the clock to see how much longer she can stay, the reality of the situation really ruins the moment for Helen. Betty starts fantasizing about setting Helen up with her own apartment, where they could carry out their affair with relatively few complications. In her proposed scenario, Helen ditches Al and is totally available to Betty — who would stay married to Gene and pay for the apartment with Gene’s money. To Betty, this arrangement is the only way the two women can realistically hope to stay together forever, but Helen has no interest in being Betty’s dirty little secret.
Later on, Helen and Al pop by the Pretzel King’s place unannounced, and the two men start delightedly planning a spontaneous couples’ weekend getaway. Betty looks horrified by the whole thing, especially when Helen reveals that she’s asked Al to elope. Even though Betty is clearly using Gene for his money, status and stability, she can’t handle the idea of Helen doing the same. When Al kisses Helen in celebration, Betty absolutely snaps and tells them to get a room, declaring their behavior “just fuckin’ rude.”
My what a lovely dinner party.
Betty realizes she sounds like a crazy person and excuses herself. The next morning, she tells Gene that she never could stand Al and Helen and she doesn’t want to be a witness in their wedding — nor does she want to socialize with the two of them ever again. Gene looks perplexed — weren’t those two best friends like two days ago? Betty looks really pretty.
UGH why do we have to have pretzels for breakfast every morning? Maybe sometimes a lady would like a waffle. This would never happen at Autostraddle brunch.
None of this makes any sense to Gene, but he meets up with Al to break the news that he and Betty will be unable to vacation or even casually socialize with Al and Helen from this day forwards, ’cause Betty is OVERRRR IT. The ensuing conversation between Gene and Al is actually kind of sweet — Al is completely besotted with Helen and totally oblivious to the ways of women’s sexuality, so when he reports having seen Betty and Helen kissing “like Carey Grant and Grace Kelly,” it’s so clueless and innocent. Boy, those two must be great friends! Gene on the other hand has been around the block a few times, and he starts to put the pieces together.
Later that night, Gene confronts Betty about her relationship with Helen. She probably could have denied it and pretended that his accusations were ridiculous, but her face just… falls, revealing everything. She clarifies that she “loved” Helen, past tense, but her reaction renders her attempt at minimizing the situation utterly useless. Gene doesn’t seem particularly upset that Helen is a woman or what that means in the grander sense, which is pretty progressive for the time, but mostly he’s fed up about all the lies and deception that Betty’s put him through during the course of what he describes as a “fucking avalanche” of a marriage. At this point, who can blame him?
I cannot.
In the end, Betty does a piss-poor job of convincing Gene that she actually loves him, and he storms off.
Across town, terrible things happen all episode long. Nobody anywhere does the right thing in any situation ever (except Virginia), and everybody is sad. Typical.
Join us next week, when Sarah Silverman will no longer be on this show and we try to set Betty up with a nice girl, like maybe Coral or Vivian Scully.
Oh Hey, Kissing Girls and Lesbian Drama On “Masters Of Sex”
You guys, I’m really sorry I haven’t talked about this yet but I really thought nobody else was watching Masters of Sex this season but me! A couple of weeks ago, Sarah Silverman tweeted about wanting someone to talk about it with and I felt that deeply because I thought I was all alone, but then this past week I realized that she’s actually a character on the show.
Watch Masters Of Sex tonight so I have someone to talk about it with after
— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) July 28, 2014
For the uninitiated, Masters of Sex follows the vaguely real adventures of Dr. William Masters, a gynecologist who was one of the first medical professionals to study human sexual response. The show is very loosely based on his life and the life of his badass research assistant, Virginia Johnson. Most of us are watching the show because Virginia Johnson is played by all-around superhero Lizzy Caplan, aka Janis Ian from Mean Girls.
The tightly-wound and morally questionable Dr. Masters is played by Michael Sheen, who you might remember as 30 Rock‘s persnickety Englishman Wesley Snipes:
Or you may remember him as the flamboyant HBIC of the vampire government (or whatever) from the Twilight movies:
Anyway, last season the show introduced us to a fascinating cast of characters navigating their own personal challenges in a very sexually repressed time in America’s history. Among them was Betty (Annaleigh Ashford), a brassy, openly lesbian prostitute who let Dr. Masters conduct certain experiments necessary to his study in her brothel. This season, Betty’s married to Gene Moretti, a rich man who clearly adores her and wants to start a family with her, which is complicated for a number of reasons… but nothing complicates Betty’s life quite like the arrival of her ex-girlfriend Helen, played by a surprisingly smirk-free Sarah Silverman.
You never gave me back my half of our Melissa Etheridge record collection.
Helen arrives on what she describes as a whim and immediately charms Gene by claiming to be some kind of spiritual medium. Clearly, Betty’s husband has no idea about the nature of the relationship between the two women. Helen tells Gene she and Betty are old friends who met years ago when Betty came into Helen’s shop looking to have her palm read. Betty’s panicked expression tells us immediately that there must be more to the story, and she especially hits the ceiling when her husband jovially insists they set Helen up on a double date with an old friend of his. It’s clear there’s a lot of unfinished business between these two.
Betty meets Helen outside her workplace, clearly looking for a fight. We learn that the two women were girlfriends for several years — and that Betty unceremoniously dumped Helen when her meal ticket husband swept her off to a world of respectable heterosexual matrimony. Both women were heartbroken, but Betty believes she was just being realistic, that there was no potential for the two of them to be happy together in the late 1950s. She tells Helen as much — “There is no future here. Years and years of going out together as what? Two spinster friends who are living together, pretending we’re sisters, or going to some bar where some butch won’t serve us ’cause we’re not wearing ducktails and gabardines? It’s pathetic, Helen. We both like dresses, so we’re just gonna have to buck up and… and do the right thing.” Oh, Betty.
“And what am I supposed to do? Go back to taxi dancin’? Ten cents so some slob can sweat gin all over me? I’m never doin’ that again! So you go back there and you tell mister chocolate man that he ain’t closin’ ME down!”
Helen decides she’s in it to win it — if Betty got to have a rich husband, stop working and live the dream, so can she. She’s gonna “grab the brass ring” and work her magic on Gene’s friend Al. Betty tries telling her husband a slew of lies to dissuade him from setting Helen up with Al, but her attempts at smearing Helen’s character somehow only make her more appealing. During the double date, despite her best efforts, Betty finds herself falling back into a familiar rapport with Helen — it’s clear neither woman wants things to be truly over, and they know each other better than either of these men ever could. When she talks about the past in mixed company, Helen enjoys slipping a few thinly-veiled barbs at Betty, insinuating how much she cared for Betty and how hurt she is that things are over. The men are oblivious, but Betty gets the message loud and clear.
Betty slips off to the restroom to powder her nose/cry, and Helen pulls the ol’ Marina Ferrer move, following her into the bathroom to make out. It’s a classic.
DUCK TAAAAALES
“You can’t do that,” Betty tells her.
“I just did,” Helen replies. The two women sit next to each other in silence, soaking up the reality of the situation. Are they doomed to a life of closeted affairs, or will those crazy kids make it? Considering how happy all the other characters on this show seem to be, the odds aren’t great.
Next week, everybody on this show continues to be a terrible person except probably Virginia and Allison Janney, wherever she is.