Bex Taylor-Klaus Is Gay: “Scream” Actress Comes Out ‘Cause Life Just Got More Terrifying Than TV
Last night on twitter the live streaming video platform YouNow, actress Bex Taylor-Klaus shone a little light into the darkness of post-apocalypse America with the following announcement:
hello my name is bex and yes the rumors are true I am v gay
Live on YouNow in 10 minutes
— (((bex))) free palestine (@IBexWeBex) November 17, 2016
Bex Taylor-Klaus was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and began acting in elementary school, and at the age of 18 moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. Her first major role was on the third season of The Killing in 2013, in which she played Bullet, a butch lesbian teenage runaway who eventually met exactly the fate you would predict for such a character.
She then played genderqueer basketball player “Lex,” a name which definitively sounds like “Bex,” for six episodes of House of Lies.
“House of Lies”
Voice work and guest roles here and there (including a spot “Goth Girl” in the pentultimate episode of Glee) eventually led to what she’s now best known for, which is her starring role as bisexual teenager Audrey Jensen on the MTV show Scream.
Throughout it all, Bex has been a bit of a lesbian hearththrob, for reasons that should be readily apparent.
On YouNow, she took questions from a series of fans, many of whom wore adorable animal onesies and were so stunned to be selected by Bex that their questions mainly consisted of, “I love you” and “Oh my god.” Y’all it was really fucking cute.
Bex talked about coming out, about always feeling “wrong” when she tried to be straight, and compassionately handled the broadcast through a variety of internet connections and teenagers attempting to ask her questions from teenagers hiding in their bedrooms trying not to wake up their parents. One fan asked if she was scared to come out right now, considering recent events, to which Bex responded:
“Terrified, absolutely terrified. Part of why I’m coing out is because there’s so much hate and fear in and around the LGBT community right now and it’s important for us not to halt progress out of fear. Yes, it’s a scary time, but we need to stand up and say, even if you are afraid, I’m not afraid, or even if I am afraid, I’m strong. I am who I am and you can’t take that away from me.”
Due to a combination of gaydar and wishful thinking, fans have wondered about Taylor-Klaus’s sexuality for a long time. Back in 2013, she addressed fan questions on her facebook page, assuring them that “I am a straight girl who plays a gay character on TV. No, I am not ashamed.” According to The Inquistr, the remainder of the post read:
“The point of Bullet is not that she is gay. There is so much to her and I look up to the strength and determination this girl has. I get the beautiful opportunity to play a character I can admire and learn from on a daily basis. Bullet knows who she is and can accept herself for it all, even if others can’t or won’t. Not everybody is that strong. My biggest worry is that people will look at her and just see a gay kid, when that’s truly only a tiny piece of Bullet’s puzzle. Look at the big picture. People are a medley of different things and that is what makes us so interesting. Don’t lose sight of the beauty just because you see one thing you may find ugly.”
Although acceptance is absolutely abundant in Hollywood at this point, “making it” is still incredibly difficult for any actress, and it’s understandable that Bex would be hesitant to come out, especially when she was already being consistently typecast and had a more “nichey” physical appearance. (See also: Kate Moennig.)
143 weeks ago (this is a very useful way to measure time, thank you Instagram), Bex told fans on her instagram page that they would “never know” if she was gay or straight, which just goes to show you that life is full of surprises!
Bex, who voted for Hillary and has expressed disappointment on social media about the election of human Cheeto Donald Trump and regularly posts about Black Lives Matter issues, is doing a cool thing to come out when so many LGBTQ folks nationwide are considering crawling back in to save themselves.
THANKS FOR COMING OUT BEX, I LOOK FORWARD TO ADDING YOU TO ALL OF OUR HOT LISTS.
Also, she’s friends with Barb.
“Scream” Halloween Special Recap: Shear Horror
A year and a half ago, I was as overjoyed as a queer horror fan can be at the news that Wes Craven’s game-changing horror-comedy franchise was being adapted for the small screen, and not only that, but one of the main characters would be a bisexual girl. I loved the mystery and occasional gore of Scream (rest in peace, Half Of Will and Other Half Of Will), but when it came to queer representation, the show was a disappointment: Bisexual Final Girl Audrey’s girlfriend Rachel was killed off minutes into the second episode, and Audrey hasn’t had a romantic storyline since. And sidelining the show’s queerness hasn’t helped it reach a mainstream audience – Scream spent its second season barely hanging on in the ratings, and until just last week it was unclear whether this Halloween special would be its finale. MTV finally announced that Scream has been renewed for a six-episode mini-season, complete with a new showrunner to be named later.
Attention, new folks in charge of Scream: Queer women are loyal viewers. Be good to us and we’ll be good to you.
Anyway, so I’ve been recapping Scream AKA liveblogging my crush on Bex Taylor-Klaus over at AfterEllen for the last two seasons, and now I’m here to experience the joys of femslash and bifurcation with you fine people. The main things you need to know are: one, I hate all male characters on this show except Noah; two, I’m convinced Noah is a lizard person who does not experience human emotions (but I like him anyway); and three, I ship Audrey/Brooke. #NotHereForEmmaudrey
This episode, produced as it was in the limbo between season two and the as-yet-uncertain season three, has to walk a fine line, tying up loose ends from the last season while still leaving plot possibilities for the future. We open, of course, with Kieran Wilcox, conspirator in season one’s massacre and mastermind behind the slaughter of season two, being sentenced to several hundred years in prison.
Everyone always talks about the people I slaughtered, but nobody ever mentions my amazing veggie lasagna recipe.
Before Kieran can be locked up, however, there’s a surprise cameo from Ghostface, who twists a guard’s neck 180 degrees, then slices Kieran’s throat. Bye, Kieran. I won’t miss you, but the hair product industry definitely will.
At Chez Duval, AKA the farm upstate where Final Girls go to run around and play in the sunshine, Maggie is trying to bond with Emma over not looking forward to Halloween, the anniversary of two of Lakewood’s three biggest murder sprees. Emma doesn’t want to talk about it, and she doesn’t want to plan any college visits, either. They’re interrupted by Brooke, who came over to comfort Emma about Kieran’s murder but ends up being the one to break the news.
In the months between the season two finale and now, my two favorite Lakewood dudes Noah and Stavo (which goes to show how unimpressive the competition actually is) have formed an artistic partnership, writing a true-crime graphic novel about Lakewood’s blood-soaked history. Their publisher, Jeremy, has made a mint off them and wants to know what their next project is going to be. Noah has writer’s block, but Gustavo and Jeremy think a trip to the notorious “Murder Island,” site of a suitably gory urban legend, will be just the thing to inspire him. Murderville, Murder Island – people on this show are crap at nicknaming places.
Just call us the Three Murdersketeers.
After being hounded on her way to school by reporters, Emma jumps at the chance to get out of town and accompany Stavo and Noah on their research trip. Brooke is in, too, but Audrey has to check with her girlfriend first. Yes! Audrey has a girlfriend! I mean, it should be Brooke, but I’ll take it. Gina and Audrey work at the movie theater together, and their Halloween plans involved making out in the back of the horror movie marathon. Not gonna lie, this is still my idea of a dream date.
A loaf of bread, a DVD of Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town, and thou.
Gina can’t afford to miss work, but she tells Audrey to go without her, even though she’s clearly not happy about it. Gina, I am the ghost of your future! Tell your girlfriend what you want! Don’t just say what you think she wants to hear and then get mad when she doesn’t read your mind!
On the island, the Lakewood Five (if we’re counting Gustavo, although he wasn’t originally one of the Lakewood Six, but he’s survived a murder spree so that must make him an honorary member, right? Am I overthinking this?) are annoyed that Noah and Stavo neglected to mention that they’re here researching a murder, but their irritation fades when they see the fancy digs Jeremy has rented for them. Audrey finds a unicorn tchotchke like the one in Black Christmas (a reference I got before she said it, thank you very much) and has to call Gina to share the horror-nerd glee, but Gina sounds distracted and cuts the call short.
How can you hang up on this face?
Because relaxing is for suckers and people who get killed in the first act, Brooke has brought her NYU application with her to the island. Gustavo isn’t planning on college, but he wants to know if Brooke wants him to come to New York with her. She’s like “Do you want me to want you to come to New York?” and he gets pissed at her non-answer. Given Brooke’s penchant for snide comments and Gustavo’s prodigious ability to take absolutely anything as a personal affront, I can’t imagine how they’ve stayed together for eight months. Well, I can imagine one way, I guess, but I’m sure Audrey’s better at it.
Speaking of Audrey, she and Emma are exploring the island together – that’s not a euphemism – and Emma is complaining about feeling trapped by her name and her notoriety. She wants to do something Emma Duval: Murder Spree Survivor would never do, like get a tattoo.
Something to subtly complement the “I Heart Audrey” on my butt.
At the Murder Island Historical Society, Noah, Stavo, and Jeremy check out the mask and murder weapon of Anna Hobbs, the island’s own Brandon James. New evidence has recently come to light suggesting that at least one of the murder victims was moved after being killed. Noah’s still not feeling the story, until he sees a picture of Anna Hobbs and she’s hot. Good news: this time the person Noah has a boner for is already dead! We don’t need any more women dying to further Noah’s character arc, thanks.
At the coffee house/bait shop/tattoo parlor, Emma’s flipping through the Big Book of Shit You’re Gonna Get Covered Up In Ten Years, when a scruffy-cute dude walks past and gives her the eye. Audrey asks for his input on Emma’s body art and he suggests a heart with “Carpe Diem.” Speaking of carp: when he leaves, the Final Girls realize he’s taken their bag of pastries and left them with his bait fish. This gives Emma a chance to chase him down and introduce herself. She’s not seizing the day yet, but she’s definitely checking out the day’s ass over her shoulder as she walks away.
The crotchety historical society dude was always going to either be the killer or be on the chopping block. The good news is that he’s not the killer! The bad news is, well, you know. With pruning shears.
The girls are hanging out on the dock, Audrey stressing about Gina’s failure to answer her last few texts and Brooke second-guessing whether she wants Stavo to follow her to New York. To take their mind off their relationship worries, they grill Emma about Sexy Fish Dude and she notes that it might be nice to hook up with someone who doesn’t know her last name and her history.
Plus, he’s probably not sleeping with your half-sister! Since, you know, she’s dead.
They see Fish Dude docking his boat and Emma realizes he’s Alex Whitten, sole heir to the murder house Noah is researching and all its nooks, crannies, and ghosts. He invites her to a lunch of fresh-caught fish the next day.
Noah, Stavo, and Jeremy knock on the door of the Whitten estate looking for the caretaker, Billy, who turns out to be not a grizzled curmudgeon but a young, cute girl. Stavo flirts with her and I hate him forever, but she agrees to come over to their rental that night to tell them about the legend of Anna Hobbs.
Sitting around the bonfire that night, Billy tells Emma that she used to have a thing with Alex, but he’s hard to get to know – sometimes she’s not even sure when he’s in town. Then she gets to her real purpose. Anna Hobbs, the daughter of the Whitten estate’s former caregiver, was known around the island as a dangerous and unstable girl. Supposedly, one Halloween night in the 1930s, Anna found out that her mother was trying to have her committed and snapped, stripping naked, donning a mask, and slaughtering her mother, brother, and the Whitten patriarch with pruning shears. Then, crushed by remorse, she killed herself.
It’s a heartwarming holiday tale for the whole family.
Noah says the story has been twisted beyond all resemblance to reality through generations of retellings. Before the discussion can go anywhere, someone in an Anna Hobbs-style mask bursts out of the trees. Emma, who’s not a Final Girl for nothing, takes the intruder down without messing up her hair and unmasks Jeremy. He thought a real-life scare would inspire Noah.
As Jeremy makes his douchey exit, Billy offers to give the gang a tour of the mansion the next day. Gustavo walks her back to her caretaker’s cottage, and she tries to kiss him, but he deftly averts her with his unappealing personality and goes back to Brooke. Ugh, how embarrassed will Billy be in the afterlife when she realizes that she spent the last few moments of her mortal existence trying to put the mack on Stavo? Anyway, someone in an Anna Hobbs mask is waiting to prune Billy’s guts out. Bye, Billy.
Over lunch the next day, Alex and Emma talk about their absent parents. Alex’s are absent because they died in a plane crash, not because they’re a waste of space like Emma’s dad Kevin. Being wealthy and famous and orphaned young put Alex in a spotlight he didn’t want, which is why he’s spent so much time traveling, sailing, and avoiding human contact.
Tell me more about never talking to anyone. It sounds so fascinating.
Gustavo comes into Brooke’s room to apologize – he doesn’t say for what, so I’m going to assume it’s meant to encompass everything he’s said or done since he first appeared in season two. He tells her that he acts like an ass because he’s afraid of losing her, and at least if she’s pissed at him, he knows she cares. She says she does want to be with him, for reasons the human mind was never meant to comprehend.
When Audrey, Noah, and Stavo go to the mansion, they find a pair of bloody pruning shears. Noah insists on cracking jokes, but Gustavo thinks the blood is real and Audrey calls the cops. The sheriff is black and I am worried – I’m still pissed about what happened to Deputy Dwayne last season, especially because unlike other deaths on the show, Dwayne was never mentioned again. I know Scream plays with meta-horror and tropes, but if you’re going for subversive commentary on the short life spans of people of color in horror, you have to actually make a joke about it. Otherwise, you’re just another show that kills off all its black characters. Pardon the detour; I’m sure the sheriff will be fine.
I will not be fine.
There’s a storm coming in, and Emma and Alex banter about the unpredictable forces of nature and then make out, predictably. Emma gets back to the rental and finds it empty, which is the perfect setting for the phone – an actual vintage land-line telephone – to ring. There’s a familiar voice on the other end. In a charming hat-tip to the original Scream, whoever’s wearing the Ghostface mask this season tells Emma to turn on the porch light, revealing the Billy Formerly Known As Alive.
You monster. Why couldn’t you just text, like a normal person?
Sheriff I-Hate-My-Agent stops to avoid hitting something in the road, which turns out to be the body of the crotchety historical society guy. When he gets out of the car, the killer in the Anna Hobbs mask – can we call them Hobbsface? – snips off his fingers, then his head.
The Lakewood Six (I’m just gonna keep calling them that, regardless of their actual numbers) worry that whoever killed Kieran followed them here. Noah suggests that someone is doing a Freddy vs. Jason with Brandon James and Emma Hobbs.
Audrey’s theory is that Jeremy planned this attack to bring attention to the Anna Hobbs legend, and thus to his next book release. No one’s seen him since before Billy died, and he did have an Anna Hobbs mask. On the other hand, Audrey has never once been right about who the killer was.
I can’t help it. Piper was hot and seemed kind of gay. That’s my one weakness.
There’s a scream from outside, where Gina, having arrived on the island to surprise Audrey, instead surprised herself by finding the sheriff’s head. Why are her hands bloody? Did she pick up the head to check its pulse? That seems unnecessary. But this is no time to review which body parts or combinations thereof can benefit from CPR; the Lakewood Six (I’m counting Gina now) need to get the hell off Murder Island and back to safe, comfortable Murderville. If only Emma knew someone who had a boat. Oh, wait, she does! Oh, wait, she doesn’t – Alex’s boat has been stolen.
They go back to the Whitten mansion to call for help, but the land line isn’t working and the cell reception is gone. Noah and Gustavo head out to try fixing the broken CB radio in Alex’s truck, despite Brooke pointing out that “let’s split up” is never the right call. Alex is like “So who’s Kieran?” and Emma tells him the whole story, since it’s not like she has anywhere else to be. He goes all starry-eyed about how she’s a survivor. Ew, a Final Girl groupie.
Audrey finds Gina upstairs and tries to comfort her, remembering how traumatic her own first encounter with a severed head was.
I’m not saying dismembered sheriffs are a turn-on for me, I’m just saying if we wait for a day with no gory deaths no one will ever get laid around here.
They get off track, though, when Audrey starts to wonder how Gina knew where they were staying. Gina says Audrey suspecting her of murder means she’s got intimacy issues (she’s careful to phrase it as an “I” statement, though, because who we are in times of crisis reveals our true character, and Gina’s true character is just a gigantic lesbian), and storms out. She’s here, she’s queer, and she’s wandering around a murder house alone: things do not look good for Gina.
Emma is sympathizing with Brooke about her fight with Stavo when Jeremy shows up outside, soaked and panicked. Audrey votes to leave him outside, but Alex suggests letting him in but holding a gun on him until they know what he’s up to.
This mansion ain’t big enough for two ominously bland dudes.
Jeremy says he passed out drunk at the beach, woke up in time to see Hobbsface leaving Billy’s cottage, and has spent the day half-deliriously trying and failing to get help. Audrey gets up in his face about how his story, like Billy’s corpse, is full of holes, but Alex is all about non-confrontational resolution, so he just tricks Jeremy into an empty room and locks him in.
While Audrey looks for Gina, Alex shares a fancy murder-house fruit plate with Emma and Brooke. He says they should drink the most expensive wine in the house, like the guy in the parable who eats wild strawberries while clinging for his life to the edge of a cliff. Brooke clearly finds this boring and pretentious, but it’s kind of working for Emma, or maybe she just doesn’t want Kieran to be the last person she banged before her death.
Audrey doesn’t find Gina, but she does find her phone – and it’s full of stalkerriffic pictures of Audrey and Emma from earlier in the day, before they knew Gina was on the island.
Even my own girlfriend ships me and Emma? Why doesn’t anyone understand I’m supposed to be with Brooke?
Audrey confronts Gina, who says she was following them around to see if Audrey was cheating. She’s insecure because Audrey always drops whatever she’s doing for Emma, including plans with Gina. Of course, Emma picks that moment to demand that Audrey come see the message the killer has left for them in blood on the wall. Of course, Audrey does.
Fucking seriously?
Noah is doing less radio-fixing and more meltdown-having about how this is all his fault, he shouldn’t have brought them here, his writer’s block inspired the spinoff, etc. Gustavo says Noah doesn’t have writer’s block, he has survivor’s guilt. He feels shitty about making money off the tragic deaths of Riley and Zoe and, um, whoever else; most of them weren’t that memorable. Before they can get into that, Noah finally gets the radio working and calls the Coast Guard.
The indoor faction of the Lakewood Six (I’m not counting Alex) go to check on Jeremy, but he’s broken a window and escaped. He finds Gina sulking by herself, but she brandishes a poker and escapes. Alone, Jeremy discovers a photograph. Whatever it depicts must be awfully damning, because Alex appears and sticks the ubiquitous pruning shears through his chest. Okay, where was he hiding those all this time?
Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.
Brooke and Gustavo are having a touching reconciliation in the master bedroom when Audrey and Noah come in looking for Gina. Noah realizes this is where Reginald Whitten’s body was found after Anna Hobbs killed him – the one who might have been killed somewhere else and moved postmortem. Audrey is like “Can we focus on not dying?” but Noah is in research mode, finding an album full of pervy pictures Whitten took of women, including Anna. There’s something quaint about the days when a guy had to invest in equipment and a darkroom in order to be this big of a creep.
The bookshelf turns out to be a secret door, which Noah spends an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out the mechanism for opening before Brooke has the novel idea of, like, pushing on it. Beyond the door is a secret passage. Noah Foster did not come all this way just to NOT explore the secret passage in the murder house.
Emma feels trapped once again – this was supposed to be her vacation, but murder and mayhem followed her, like they always do. Alex suggests that they bail on everything and travel the world together. Read the fine print on this one, girl. He might be offering to cut you up and carry you around in his suitcase.
Smooch smooch murder all your friends smooch.
The secret passage leads to the caretaker’s cottage, and Noah is starting to put the pieces together about what happened the night Anna Hobbes allegedly snapped. Meanwhile, Emma and Alex hear a noise. She hides while he goes to investigate. He realizes the rest of the Scoobies are in the tunnel, and he locks the bookshelf door behind them.
Noah’s theory is that the lecherous Whitten used the passage to sneak into the Hobbs’ cottage and proposition Anna. When Mrs. Hobbs tried to stop him, he lashed out, killing her and her son and wounding Anna. Anna fought back and killed him, making it as far as the pier before bleeding to death. In Noah’s version, Mrs. Whitten moved her husband’s body to frame Anna and hide Whitten’s misdeeds. Brooke is like “So what does this have to do with us staying alive right now?” and Noah’s like “If I don’t get to deliver creepy, self-indulgent monologues, what even is the point of surviving?”
This discussion is cut short when they find Jeremy’s body. Still clutched in his hand is the photograph he found – of Billy with the real Alex Whitten.
Back in the main house, Hobbsface bursts in on Emma, but she fights him off and chases him away. Moments later, Fake Alex comes in through the other door. It’s all so delightfully Scooby Doo. Fake Alex leaves again, giving Emma plenty of time to wander around the room and step in a puddle of partially congealed blood, which leads her to where he stashed the body of Real Alex.
Oh my God, another bland dude. Even in death they surround me.
Emma asks Fake Alex what the fuck is up. It’s murderer monologue time! Fake Alex aka I don’t care enough to rewind and catch his real name is sad because his parents were murdered and he was the subject of a horrible, retraumatizing media circus. That is understandable! What’s less understandable is that he’s decided that he and Emma are the same, destined for true love because they’re survivors. He pointed Jeremy in the direction of the Anna Hobbs legend just to lure the Lakewood Six out to the island, so that he could kill a bunch of people and ask Emma out. All the victims were people who knew the real Alex and would have blown his cover. He tells her they can still leave, assume fake identities, disappear.
Okay, he’s gross, but he’s still a step up from Will Belmont.
Emma manages to act like she’s into it for long enough to get I Can’t Believe It’s Not Alex to tell her that he locked her friends up, and that he didn’t kill Kieran. Then she knees him in the junk and runs. Hunting for her, Alex gets distracted by the sudden reappearance of Gina, giving Emma the opportunity to stab him in the shoulder with his own shears. He chases her onto a balcony, trying to tackle her, but she’s like “Motherfucker, I’m Emma Duval” and throws him over the rail to his skull-cracking death. The rest of the Lakewood Six, having taken the long way back from the cottage, are just in time to gather around the body while Emma looks down like a vengeful god.
Are you thinking what I’m threesome?
As the late-to-the-scene cops take statements, Audrey reassures Gina that, no matter how important Emma is to her, she’s not competition for Gina.
She’s Team Paily, I’m Team Emison. It would never have worked.
Brooke tells Gustavo she wants him to come with her to New York. I don’t care about their relationship problems and I’m glad this storyline is resolved so I don’t have to think about it anymore! Back in Lakewood, Noah overcomes his survivor’s guilt by realizing that he’s actually a hero for telling the stories of those silenced too soon. It’s a little self-serving, but whatever. Emma gets her last name tattooed on her wrist and starts applying to colleges, because she’s done running away from her life. And of course we end with a friendly reminder that Alex didn’t murder Kieran – but somebody did, and that somebody is still at large.
Honestly, despite a respectable body count, this special was pretty uninspiring. Noah’s Freddy-vs-Jason idea was interesting, but Scream failed to meld the Brandon James legend with the Anna Hobbs one in a compelling way, and I never had a moment of fear that any of the main characters would actually die. Even in a stand-alone episode, the stakes should feel higher than this. Also, maybe it’s petty to complain about the love interest for Audrey I’ve been demanding, but Gina could pretty much have been played by a piece of cardboard with the words “JEALOUS GIRLFRIEND” written on it in Sharpie, right? Here’s hoping the writers give her more to work with in Season 3. I just want Audrey to be happy.
Boobs (On Your) Tube: “Wynonna Earp” Wraps Its Lesbian In A Bullet-Proof Vest
It’s been a weird couple of weeks, my friends. I got flattened by what I’m pretty sure was The Plague after I got home from A-Camp and I’ve been having some debilitating anxiety and panic attacks and now I’m in Detroit for our yearly Senior Editors super mega planning shakedown. I had intended to write a standalone post for the Orphan Black finale, but I’ve run out of time to do that, so I’m sticking that here in Boob(s On Your) Tube so we can talk about it together without further delay.
Next week I plan to start recapping The Fosters in earnest. The first two episodes of this season were way too intense for me, in the wake of Orlando, as they dealt with a potential mass shooting and then a The Call Is Coming From Inside The House scenario at Stef and Lena’s.
I’ll also start catching us up on Pretty Little Liars on Monday, so we can get back to regularly scheduled recaps on Wednesdays.
Until then, here’s what’s happening on queer TV!
Orphan Black
Orphan Black‘s fourth season was easily the tightest and best executed season since its very first one. The Big Bad was manageable — just plain old Neolution — as the story zoomed in on the lives of the Leda clones we’ve grown to know and love (and love to hate), instead of zooming out to reveal more shadowy figures and Castor clones and religious cults and military organizations and whatever other things weren’t Tatiana Maslany’s singular brand of magic.
I watched the finale three times and was blown away with every single new viewing about the fact that Maslany played the sociopathic villain who finally rose to the top of her game after selling out her sestras, the chaotic good moral center who risks everything to save her sestras, the dying hero, the comic relief, the straight-laced suburbian, and Helena too. Over the course of the season, she played seven characters that are worthy of Emmys. Every archetype. And that was especially true in the finale. She stabbed someone! She nearly died, twice! She was Krystal! KRYSTAL!
The biggest shock of “From Dancing Mice to Psychopaths” wasn’t that the Victorian era founder of Neolution is still alive, but that Delphine is working for him on The Island, and when Cosima and Charlotte end up there after running away from Susan’s mansion to escape a knife-wielding Rachel, Delphine promptly takes off her clothes and hops into bed with Cosima to keep her from dying of hypothermia. MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE FAN FICTION TROPE! Cosima tells Delphine she found the cure and brought it with her. “Their homework,” she calls it. And Delphine tells her not to share that information with anyone else. She’ll treat her and treat her and save her and save her, but Cosima has to be quiet about it. Swantown is not a very safe place to be.
Season five is the final hurrah. If it’s as good as season four, Orphan Black may just go down as my favorite TV drama of all time.
The Fosters
Right. So. The Fosters opened with an active shooter situation last week and let the shooter into the Adams-Foster house this week. I owe Lucy Hallowell everything for giving me a heads up on how anxiety-inducing this week’s episode was going to be, all horror film angles and shadows and WHO’S IN THE CLOSET? (Not the metaphorical homosexual closet. Like the literal closet, with a gun.) Look, obviously, it’s Degrassi Nick in there with his dad’s pistol. He’s had a bad life, sounds like maybe he’s got schizophrenia, and ends up pulling a gun on Mariana and then crying in her arms. Stef saves the day after Callie makes the first good decision of maybe her whole life and calls her mom for help instead of trying to throw her tiny body onto a fully armed man. Related: Brandon remains the worst. He moves in with his girlfriend after telling Stef she can’t tell him not to sleep with his foster sister. THE WORST.
Veep
Marjorie made it out alive! Stacy and I spent most of this season of Veep being alternately delighted at Catherine’s new romance with her mother’s former Secret Service lookalike, and terrified that her lookalike-ness was going to get Marjorie shot. In fact, until the credits rolled on season five, neither of us believed she was going to survive. She sure did, though! What did not survive was Catherine’s “documentary,” Kissing Your Sister. Oh, and also Selina’s presidency. She lost the House vote to another woman, and despite all her machinations to try to ensure that she was leaving behind a legacy, the new president got credit for freeing Tibet before her inauguration speech was even over.
It was a pretty bleak ending to a very funny season. I can’t wait to see what Catherine and Marjorie do with their rescued animal farm. They may be the only people with jobs when we return!
Wynonna Earp
WYNONNA EARP! Wynonna Earp is the biggest surprise of 2016 TV to me. What I said in my review of the pilot is still true: It’s like if Buffy and Lost Girl had a very Canadian baby that they raised deep in the heart of Texas. But it’s so much more than that. The relationship between Wynonna and Waverly is one of the best sibling relationships I’ve seen on TV in a long time. And the relationship between Waverly and Haught is maybe the sweetest queer love story I’ve ever watched. Waverly Earp really is the bisexual cupcake this TV season needed to keep me from breaking down and/or hurling my actual television into the sun.
And get this: Haught got shot in the finale. Shot right in the chest. But she was wearing a BULLET-PROOF VEST. Waverly and Wynnonna’s older sister, Willa, is the one who shoots her, after calling her Waverly’s “girlfriend.” When Haught takes the bullet, she doesn’t bleed, and Waverly thinks she’s a Revenant, but actually’s it’s that vest. Waverly confesses her love, smooches Haught right on the mouth, hands clasped around her precious face, and the whole time the music is like THIS IS WHAT LOVE IS AND ISN’T IT GRAND.
It is! It is grand!
The episode ends with Waverly and Willa having to take down their erstwhile brainwashed sister, and then Waverly scooping up some goop from the mayhem and accidentally turning evil. I’m sure it won’t stick. Her face is too sweet for her to be anything other than perfect. (Oh, one thing she is not is: an Earp! She’s adopted!)
Boob(s On Your) Tube: The Mother of Dragons is Probably Totally Bisexual
Some actual good stuff happened on TV this weekend, y’all! And not a moment too soon.
Game of Thrones
Sunday on HBO at 9:00 p.m.
Stacy is not taken to flights of fancy when it comes to two women doing it on TV. In fact, she basically assumes all women on TV are straight and that the gay ones are going to die. So when she came crashing into our bedroom on Sunday night, breathless and urging me to hurry downstairs to watch an important scene from Game of Thrones, I knew I was in for a real treat. Remember when I told you about Yara Greyjoy from the Iron Islands and how she had some gay intercourse with another woman before she set off with her fleet of ships to track down the Mother of Dragons? Well, Yara has now traversed the Narrow Sea and arrived in Daenerys’ presence.
For starters, Dany’s feeling real good. Some slave masters showed up and fired flaming cannons at her city and demanded their slaves back, and so she just hopped onto one of her dragons and summoned her other two dragons from their place of captivity and flew on out to the ocean and set the Masters and their ships on fire. I don’t know a lot about Game of Thrones, but I know Daenerys Targeryan gets off on burning condescending men alive. So, yes, she was feeling a-okay when Yara and her brother, Theon, wandered into her throne room talking about alliances.
Yara wants Daenerys to back her claim to the Salt Throne in exchange for ferrying her army across the sea so she can reclaim the Iron Throne. The Mother of Dragons is never particularly impressed with people, but Yara makes her mouth twitchy with smiles and also makes her eyebrows go bonkers on her face. Dany wants to know if the Iron Islands have ever had a queen, and Yara says no more than Westeros has had a queen. Dany wants to know if Yara’s father was an asshole like the rumors say he was, and Yara says she and Dany have that in common too. Theon explains that their uncle is building even more ships and plans to bring them over and offer them to Dany, but for the price of backing his claim to the Salt Throne and also for the price of marrying him.
Daenerys: And I imagine your offer is free from any marriage demands.
Yara: I never demand, but I’m up for anything really.
Khaleesi is so delighted with Yara’s audacious flirting that her face does a thing I’ve never seen it do before. They make a pact to support each other, kill some misogynist uncles, and see where it goes from there.
Veep
Sunday on HBO at 10:30 p.m.
Catherine’s film about her mother’s presidential legacy finally made its way into the world on Sunday night and it was glorious. I mean, it’s a terrible film, of course — but it comes at season five from a completely different angle (literally), allowing us to see what happens in Selina’s orbit when she’s not in the room. What was particularly delightful was how it dug deeper into Catherine and Marjorie’s relationship, from their first date to a quiet morning in bed to their breakup when Marjorie refused to introduce Catherine to her parents as her girlfriend to their reconciliation.
In a surprising but brilliant move, the main question of the season — Will Congress allow Selina to stay in office? — is answered right as Marjorie steps in front of the camera to tell Catherine that she loves her. It’s a huge moment of triumph for Veep’s most overlooked and overshadowed character; in fact, it brings her into the literal forefront of the story at the most important moment of Selina’s career. We hear the answer to the Big Question and see Selina react in the background, behind Marjorie’s body.
The name of Catherine’s film is “Kissing Your Sister” and it has its own website. The “our influences” and “upcoming projects” made me cackle-laugh.
Wynonna Earp
Friday on Syfy at 9:00 p.m.
Dang, kittens, if this isn’t the sweetest, most tender gay love story I’ve seen on TV in a long, long time. This week, Haught tries to help Waverly heal from her gunshot wound, but the touching makes them bonkers so they just start ripping their clothes off and prepping to do it right there in the Earp barn. They are interruped by Willa, who is kind of mad that Waverly didn’t tell her she’s gay and figures Wynonna’s going to be kind of mad too. Waverly doesn’t care, to be honest; she just wants to make out with her girlfriend.
And so she does just that, again, at the end of the night at a fancy party where everyone is going berserk because they drank hexed champagne. Particularly Champ is going berserk because of the booze and also because of the homophobia and also because of the jealousy. He tries to attack his ex-girlfriend, and then his ex-girlfriend’s new girlfriend steps to him and wallops him in the face with her fist and that’s that. It’s a delight! Haught’s gotta go fight the bad guys, but before she does, Waverly grabs her and smooches her right on the mouth in their fancy dresses right in front of everyone. It’s a very good way to come out. 10/10. Would watch again.
Scream
Monday on MTV at 11:00 p.m.
Audrey got totally Pretty Little Liar-ed on this week’s Scream. Some nefarious, anonymous person planted a bloody corkscrew in her car, so she disposed of it in the dumbest way possible (by digging a shallow little hole just inside the treeline of the woods and burying it there), so of course when she woke up, Scream’s A had retrieved the bloody corkscrew and put it under her covers with her. Scream’s A is messing with her because they know she had a tie to season one’s Big Bad, even though she herself was not the Big Bad. Also Audrey made out with her best friend, Noah, hopped up on a drug cocktail at a regatta gala. It was kind of a threesome and she was kind of hallucinating that Noah was her dead girlfriend (but resurrected). Anyway, then a dead body fell from the sky. #DramaBomb
The Fosters
Monday on Freeform at 9:00 p.m.
The Fosters returned to Freeform last night and while I do plan to do standalone recaps for it again this season, I couldn’t make myself watch and recap a school shooting episode this week. I just need a minute. Hopefully I’ll be ready to go next week.
Boob(s On Your) Tube: Look At These Bisexual Badasses on “Orphan Black” and “Wynonna Earp”
So much TV happened when we were up on the mountain for A-Camp! I’ll be honest with you: I haven’t watched Person of Interest yet, even though I know what happens, because I’ve only been home 48 hours and I have a terrible cold and a lot to catch up on and I want to at least not have a fever when I end up hurling my television out into the street. I need the strength! I’ll watch it tonight, though, for real, and write up something for you tomorrow. Thank you for being patient with me. Look at all these bisexual babes that came out while I was away.
Wynonna Earp
Fridays at 10:00 p.m. on Syfy
Lord knows I love a slow-burn, but I confess I love the part where everything combusts even more. Waverly and Haught finally got there last week on Wynonna Eerp, and it. was. marvelous. After throwing up every wall she could think of between herself and Nicole, Waverly cracked and stormed into the sheriff’s office and shut all the blinds and crashed herself into Nicole so hard they stumbled back onto the couch and kept on kissing and panting like something out of a fan fiction. I mean. Y’all. They kissed for like a good two minutes. In between which Waverly confessed that she’s always wanted to skydive and swim with sharks and eat weird food, because she likes to be scared, but when the thing she’s scared of the most is the human lady right in front of her, it’s a little too real. Adorable-sexy is my favorite kind of sexy, and these two are perfect at it. This TV season has been a goddamn misery so when Waverly’s like, “Maybe you should stop talking” and Haught’s like, “Maybe you should make me” I almost swooned out of my seat and into a puddle of tears on the floor. (Okay, that’s exactly what I did.) Waverly is the bisexual representation we need in the world. She’s none of the tropes, all of the glory.
Game of Thrones
Sundays at 9:00 p.m. on HBO
Yara Greyjoy is on her way across the world to find herself a Dragon Queen and lend her some ships in exchange for some fire so she can get the Iron Islands back. First, though, she and her sailors stop by a brothel and she reveals to us all that she’s a gay lady. She does this by kissing a woman and engaging in a little nipple play before pep talking her brother, Theon, and then bouncing to “fuck that one’s tits off.” Yara isn’t technically the first queer woman on GoT, but she’s definitely the first one I could see marrying Daenerys.
Orphan Black
Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. on BBC America
Look, Delphine’s not dead. There’s no way they’re trotting out her name like she died and then trotting out her name again like she’s alive in back-to-back episodes if she’s really dead. There’s no way. We’ll talk about this more after this week’s episode, but I refuse to believe now (as I have refused to believe all along) that Delphine “Straight Hair, Don’t Care” Cormier died in last year’s finale.
Oh, also, Sarah Manning is bisexual, pass it on.
(I’ll write more on this after Thursday night’s episode. There’s a lot to process and I need to work my way out of this Nyquil haze.)
Scream
Mondays at 11:00 p.m. on MTV
Scream is back! Remember last year when I had to stop watching when the show literally sawed that guy in half and then the next episode they showed him getting sawed in half again? And not like the way people do in a magic trick, but like long-ways they sawed him down, like down the middle from a standing position. Well, I managed to get through the first two episodes of this season without anyone getting split open like that.
Noah is on the trail of Piper’s accomplice from last season, and since that accomplice was Audrey, she’s creeping around in the dark and in the forest and in the swamp using voice modulators and other scare tactics to try to get Noah to stop digging around. It’s not really working. The police also suspect that Audrey’s doing dirty dealing. Their plan is real dumb, though. They try to trick Audrey into stabbing one of them by triggering her PTSD. It’s some Rosewood-caliber bullshit. I hope she gets another girlfriend soon. Like a bullet-proof one.
Rosewood
On summer hiatus on Fox
Oh hey, TMI cheated on Pippy with a dude and then broke off their engagement. Classic!
Boob(s On Your Tube): Carmilla and Laura Sitting In a Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Though the sidewalk outside of my apartment — which is hotter than the surface of the sun right now — begs to differ, Labor Day marks the official end of summer, and the official end of Summer Teevee. Fall TV doesn’t start in earnest until September 21st, so it’ll be a bit lullish here in Boob(s On Your Tube) the next two weeks, but then! Then! Real deal primetime TV will be back, and I’ll be expanding this column to a twice weekly event because there’s going to be so much to talk about, there’s no way we can digest and dissect all of it only once a week. More details about the days you can expect New Boob(s) soon, along with Editor-in-Chief Riese’s annual Fall TV preview!
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
Nothing queer to report on this week’s Chasing Life, except that Brenna’s new boyfriend, Finn, is like if Caleb Rivers from Pretty Little Liars was battling cancer by watching Gilmore Girls.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
Audrey survived the first season of Scream! Audrey is also (at least partially) the killer on the first season of Scream!
All signs point to Piper being the main killer, due to the fact that she confesses herself as Brandon James’ daughter and tries to axe-murder Emma and her mom in the process of monologuing about how it’s sexist to always assume the killer in horror films is a dude. Luckily for Emma and her mom, Audrey shows up in the nick of time and shoots the hell out of Piper and kills her dead. “That bitch talks too much,” is what she says as Piper is bleeding out.
Except for then, at the very end, Audrey opens up this secret compartment containing correspondence with Piper. Like maybe she even killed her own girlfriend at the beginning of the show. Who knows?
Well, the writers know. They told TVLine:
Toward the end, Piper was kind of someone that people were starting to suspect might have been the killer. Certain things were planted that hinted at it, [like] her father was murdered. We tried to let everyone have those moments of suspicion, and… we liked letting Audrey be the other half of that equation, because she felt like the very surprising element to us. Audrey is someone that I feel like the audience relates to and empathizes with, so letting her be the connective tissue between Season 1 and Season 2 is a great way to let the audience get pulled back in. They want to believe in her. They want to believe that she’s good, but there’s also a part of them that wants to think she got some justice, too. That’s an element that’s going to pull people back in a strong way.
I would call her a wild card of Season 2. The depth of her involvement isn’t yet revealed — just a connection to Piper. Like I said, not knowing if she ever donned the mask and actually killed someone is a big part of what’s going to keep people truly intrigued. And the fact that… her friends don’t know. You imagine the moment when Noah finds out that Audrey was a part of this, and you’re like, “That’s a hell of a TV moment that I can’t wait to see.”
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.
Gail closed out this season of Rookie Blue by hooking up with her work arch-nemesis, Frankie, after bumping into her at a wedding reception for two of their friends. It all happened off-screen, but the 37-second lead-up was super cute and I hope to see more of these two in the coming (half?) season.
I Am Cait
Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.
On the penultimate episode of I Am Cait, Caitlyn Jenner gets ready for and delivers her moving ESPY’s speech. She and Candis Cayne visit Chandi Moore at hospital where she runs a program for trans kids; the kids talk to Caitlyn about their struggles with changing their names, their physical transitions, and being harassed when their IDs don’t match their real gender. Once again, it opens Caitlyn’s eyes to her privilege. Cait also has dinner with her family, and it’s much more chill and lovely than when they hung out in the season premiere. And Caitlyn renews her country club membership and grapples with whether or not to use her real name because the club is really conservative and she doesn’t know how people will react. But Candis brings the truth bombs in glorious fashion, like always: “It’s not about what they think; it’s about how you feel. They’ll get over it. Just sign your name as Caitlyn from now on and move on.”
Next week, Caitlyn and Kris are supposed to meet on-screen for the first time and the most Kardashian moment of the entire season. It’s the thing I’m least looking forward to.
Survivor’s Remorse
Saturdays on Starz at 9:30 p.m.
Starz has already renewed Survivor’s Remorse for a third season! M-Chuck until 2016, at least!
This week’s episode focuses on Cam and M-Chuck’s mom, who decides to get a vagina rejuvination, but has to tell Cam about it because he’s the one footing the bills and he wants to know what he’s paying for. What could be a really one-note, frat-boyfest of vagina jokes turns into a really poignant commentary on how much control women really do/don’t have over their bodies, and how complicated it is to be a sexually active woman in the world without being slut-shamed. Cam’s mom ultimately tells him:
“When you were born, I was still a girl. I’ve hardly even been with anybody else since you were born, and motherfuckerer, that’s a long time. I’m not asking for your appreciation. I’m asking you for some understanding. Instead of making me feel like I’m some fuckinging beggar coming to you trying to explain my uncomfortable private fucking matters.”
Cam gets it. He promises never to ask about it again. But, look, M-Chuck had a few good moments too. When Cam first heard his mom was having a medical procedure, he thought for sure that she had cancer.
Cam: Non-Hodgkin’s is bad. People hit me up on Twitter every day for non-Hodgkin’s—it’s decimating people.
M-Chuck: We do a ton of cardio. Nobody’s getting cancer! If Mom had cancer, she wouldn’t be so vague. She’d be milking you for all you’re worth, you know that.
Carmilla
Tuesdays and Thursdays on YouTube
Laura and Carmilla smooched! Y’all, Laura and Carmilla smooched, hot and desperate for each other over a game of vampire checkers!
Okay, because everyone decides to tag-team to keep the giant ancient fish god from escaping while some soldiers try to kill her. Remember when Laura called Lophii “Loopiformes”? I wish they called her Loopi. But the Get Along Gang can’t do the plan until 3:00 am, so everyone breaks to take a nap and/or makeout with the loves of their lives. It’s late and they’re tired and their defenses are down, and so:
Laura: Like, were you really going to drink the fish god blood and potentially die?
Carmilla: Yeah, not that it matters to you so much on account of you can’t even stand to look at me anymore.
Laura: I only don’t look at you because when I do I can never look away from you!
Carmilla: So you don’t want me to die?
Laura: No, you asshole! The thought of a world without you makes me feel like my guts are being ripped out of my body!
Carmilla: Oh. We should definitely kiss, then.
Laura: Okay, but only a little.
They: [Kiss, and Carmilla pulls away]
Laura: Wait, no. A little more.
Carmilla: [is lovestruck even more than before]
Laura: Maybe after this is all over, we can talk.
Carmilla: [endless sighing]
Perry doesn’t go with the gang to protect Lophii. She stays behind to bake pie/do evil. Mattie finds her though and Perry gets REALLY close to her face and calls her “Rook” and blurts out a terrifying death prophecy, on account of PERRY IS POSSESSED BY THE DEAN. Tumblr, you knew it! You’ve been saying this for weeks!
As if that weren’t terrifying enough, Mattie gets busted at the end of the episode for murders she didn’t commit. Without her around, everyone’s gonna get dead so fast.
Team TV coverage you may have missed
+ GLAAD’s 2015 Network Responsibility Index Is Its Last, ‘Cause Counting The Gays Isn’t The Point Anymore
You really need to read this. It’s so good.
+ Faking It Episode 211 Recap: Stripped and Confused
Season 2B of “Faking It” is finally here, and everybody is still lying to everybody else.
I just realized Lost Girl came back last night in Canada for its final half-season. I’ll add it to Boob(s) starting next week!
Boobs(s On Your) Tube: Caitlyn Jenner Attends Pride, Canada Adds Another Queer Character and More
It’s the slowest time of the TV year, that weird lull between summer television and fall television, when everything is winding down and everything else is gearing up. Before fall TV kicks off in earnest, Autostraddle CEO/Editor-in-Chief, Riese, is going to do her annual Queer Lady Teevee Viewing Guide. Until then, here’s what happened on what’s left on the summertime boob(s) tube.
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
I was wrong last week when I told you Chasing Life had aired its midseason finale; there are still six more episodes left! However, we already talked about what happened last Monday night, so we won’t be able to discuss tonight’s episode until the next Boob(s On Your) Tube column.
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
Wellll, Clipped‘s first season has now come and gone and Charmaine didn’t reveal her queerness, after all. Such a shame.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
I really pushed my luck watching Scream as long as I did. As I mentioned last week, Will go sawed right the fuck in half and it made me feel sick for two days. This week opened with a flashback of that thing and so now I can never watch it again. I can, however, tell you that Audrey survived the penultimate episode of season one! Next week, we’ll find out whether or not she’s immortal and/or the serial killer who has offed half the students in her school. Maybe also she’ll kiss Emma? I’m pushing my luck even wishing for that.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.
One thing I promised myself this year is that I would watch Rookie Blue with the American audience and not, um, obtain episodes as they aired in real-time in Canada. It hasn’t been a problem — until this week! Because holy bananas, y’all, there’s a new detective in town, a Homicide one, named Detective Anderson, and she kind of hates Gail but also she is gay! She just comes right out and says it when she’s accosting Gail about her brother, Steve, getting tossed into the slammer jammer for being a bad cop. Like, “Oh, he wanted to hook us up one time, but I’m glad that didn’t pan out since your family’s legacy is dirty cops.”
That’s the only thing that happens this week. Gail’s face is like EXCUSE ME. And my face also is like EXCUSE ME.
It turns into a thing, though, in the coming weeks. It’s like watching Pride and Prejudice only it’s Canadian cops and they’re both Mr. Darcy.
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
Yewll! Yewll! Yewll! Yewll! With one episode to go in Defiance‘s third (and probably final) season left, Doc Yewll gets her bad self un-brainwashed, breaks out of Omec jail with Datak Tarr, chews bubblegum, gets a gun, and says the words: “Looks like mama got her groove back.”
Stahma also got her groove back, a little bit. She did some manipulating, some conniving. She’s still not her old self, not close, and probably we will never witness that old self again, but it’s good to see Jaime Murray getting to do something before the series end.
Next week is the finale. The Big Omec Showdown.
Oh, also Nolan and Amanda finally Zzzzzzz.
Whoops, sorry, dozed off.
Nolan and Amanda finally Zzzzzzz.
Dang, come on. Kissed. Nolan and Amanda finally kissed.
(ZZZZzzzzzzz.)
Hannibal
Saturdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
Next week is the series finale of Hannibal, a thing Margot will be returning for, which means probably her or Alana or both of them are going to get serial killed. This week Hannibal ate a pair of lips in front of Alana to prepare her for the doom. The Red Dragon mailed them in an envelope and I guess “loose human lips” are not a thing that show up on the X-Ray machine because the couriers at the asylum just gave the package to Hannibal and there were lips inside and he chomped right down on them in Alana’s face.
Thank God I have a girlfriend who watches this show and explains it to me. I would be vomiting for days.
I Am Cait
Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.
https://instagram.com/p/4fIHySyb3z/
The biggest surprise of the summer is how many real, earnest, truly moved tears I have cried over I Am Cait, which, despite its detour into Karsashianville last week, has actually served as a sort of mini-documentary to educate the world about trans people as Caitlyn Jenner learns so much about the trans community herself. This week, Candis Cayne challenged Caitlyn to start using the word “we” instead of “them” when referring to the LGBT community, and also to get more involved. Caitlyn was worried that her appearance at events like Trans Pride Los Angeles or Gay Pride NYC was going to cause a media circus, and also she was afraid that the queer community, at large, was going to have a hard time accepting her being there.
Before she headed out to NYC, she met up with two of her dude buddies who hadn’t seen her since she began her transition, and they were both a little uneducated about trans issues but also so warm and welcoming to her. One of the most moving moments was when her friend Sergio told her he’d already changed her name in his phone, before she even called to hang out with him.
Caitlyn also met with GLAAD to discuss her fears, and they told her to use the media circus she was afraid of to spotlight all the hardships facing trans women in America today, and of course, that’s exactly what she’s using this show to do.
At Candis’ performance at NY Pride, Caitlyn was so nervous to go out and meet the crowd, but as soon as they saw her, they started chanting her name and cheering and waving, and she was just so overwhelmed. Candis introduced her, and the crowd began cheering and filming her with their phones as she stood up, and filmed them right back.
The episode closed with Caitlyn meeting some Broadway starts, doing a Rockettes dance with them, and voicing over how the response to her coming out as trans has been bigger than even her huge Olympic fame, while walking outside to a jam-packed Times Square and driving away with her trans friends as people line the sidewalk and called her name.
Carmilla
Because there are so many TV shows with queer women in them these days, it’s almost impossible to also keep up with any web series, unless the web series you’re talking about is Carmilla. For those of you not in the know, Carmilla is very loosely based on the Sheridan Le Fanu novel and is probably the queerest web series in the history of the internet, and one of the more diverse ones. The main protagonist, Laura Hollis, is a student at Silas University, a place with more Magical Beasts than Hogwarts, and her roommate is Carmilla Karnstein, a — spoiler alert! — full-on vampire.
Season one revolves around Laura and her friends’ quest to find out why girls keep disappearing from Silas. (The reason girls keep disappearing from Silas is Carmilla kidnaps virgins for her mom, who, it turns out, is the Dean of the university.) Also, season one revolves around Laura and Carmilla finally realizing they’re in big gay love with each other.
Season two follows the story of Laura and Carmilla moving into her mom’s old Victorian mansion with their friends and the rest of the student body dealing with the fact that the school is super duper supernatural. Carmilla’s sister, Mattie, shows up and is AWWWEEESOME in every Slytherin way. She’s on the Silas Board of Trustees. We’re 24 episodes into the 36-episode season and so far Carmilla and Laura have broken up, despite still being in big gay love with each other; a group of students has formed a basically fascist vigilante enforcer group to eradicate all non-humans from the campus; Carmilla and Mattie have waged open warfare on the human population; and Carmilla and Laura have stared longingly at each other and cried and talked about how they’re sacred to each other and miss each other like holes ripped inside their bodies. It’s so campy. It hurts SO GOOD.
Get caught up and we’ll get into the nitty gritty next week!
Team TV coverage you may have missed
Have Mercy: Stef And Gabby Liveblog The Full House Lifetime Movie
The plot of this film seems to be the struggle of three white male actors who feel like the world owes them a big break. We’d rather watch Jodie Sweetin learn to add and subtract.
Kristen Kish and Her Perfect Hair Jet-Set Around the World in “36 Hours”
The best part of the show is watching Kristen gush over food. Seriously, I will tune in just to hear her talk about food. Also, to gaze upon her hair.
Boob(s On Your) Tube: “Chasing Life” Is the Bisexual Representation You’ve Been Looking For On TV
It’s been exactly one week since the Pretty Little Liars season 6A finale, and I feel like I have lived four TV lifetimes between then and now. It’s exciting that the conversation is still going strong because general pop culture caring about trans representation on TV is a brand new thing, but it’s still disheartening and scary too.
Other shows are drawing near the end of their summer seasons, too. Chasing Life and The Fosters finished up last night. Complications aired its finale last Thursday. We’ve got two more episodes of Defiance and Scream to go, though, and here’s hoping Yewll and Audrey make it out alive.
Next week, I’ll give you a run down of all the queer characters you can expect to see on your teevees this fall. Until then, here’s what the end of summer looks like.
The Fosters
Mondays on ABC Family at 8:00 p.m.
Stef and Lena are okay! I repeat: STEF AND LENA ARE OKAY! After a very, very tough summer season during which our favorite lesbian moms put each other through some unfair (but true to married life) shit, the truth about Monty kissing Lena finally came out. It happened because Stef’s best friend started dating Monty and walked in on Monty being in love with Lena at a cabin in the woods where the couples agreed to go for a weekend getaway. Monty confessed that yes, any queer person with eyeballs and a functioning brain and heart would be helplessly in love with Lena Adams Foster, and so Stef’s best friend told that to her and also the thing about the kiss.
Last night, Stef had a breast cancer scare! She didn’t even tell Lena about it because she was mad at her and didn’t want to need her and wanted to keep something from her the way Lena kept the Monty thing from Stef — but the truth came out at a backyard party, like it always does. It was an imaging glitch. Stef is okay. But the fact of the scare sent Lena barreling into Stef’s arms, shivering and terrified. They forgave each other. They danced. They pressed their faces together and loved each other in their kitchen, while all their kids (including new Jesus) did their drama around them.
In other stories, Jude continued to prove he is ten times the man Brandon will ever be because he exercised self control and did the best thing for the person he loves, even though he broke his own heart in the process. After Connor’s dad caught them making out and flipped out, Connor decided he wanted to go live with his mom in Los Angeles, and Jude gave him his blessing on account of THEY’RE IN REAL LOVE. They said so out loud with their mouths.
Plus also, you’re not even going to believe what I’m about to tell you: Callie finally got adopted! #OfficiallyAFoster
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
Chasing Life has blown me away with the way it has embraced Brenna’s bisexuality. When she made out with Greer last season, I thought it was just the ABC Family way, and while I was happy being pandered to, as I always am, I didn’t think it would amount to much. Well, ha ha ha! Joke’s on me! Brenna and Greer fell in love and enjoyed a real, organic relationship with each other before Greer moved away. During the Christmas episode, Brenna came out as bi, actually said the word “bisexual” out loud on TV, and made absolutely no apologies for it. She has been into guys on screen and she has been into girls on screen.
Last night, Brenna joined the queer kids at her new school in their Lesbian & Gay Support Group, and it was not what she expected at all. There’s a gay male couple, an asexual teen, a lesbian of color, and all of that seemed fantastic. Like Fosters fantastic. But then everyone started clowning on her for being bisexual.
Mariah: Wait, you’re bi?
Brenna: [Nods]
Gay guy: Yeah, I did that too, but I see it now. That’s sexy.
Mariah: You know, I could never date a bi girl. You’ve got to be pretty secure yourself to be with someone who’s attracted to the entire population.
Brenna: Oh my god, Mariah, it’s not like I’m into everyone I walk by.
Gay guy: Oh, babe, you don’t get it. The bisexual thing is so tricky because if you can change your mind every day about who you’re attracted to, it makes it sound like being gay is a choice.
Other gay guy: So is your guy type really feminine, or…?
Brenna: Okay, I’m not changing my mind. I’m just attracted to the person for who they are; not their gender.
Mariah: That’s exactly what my ex said before leaving me for a dude.
Gay guy: My theory is that bi guys are always actually gay and bi girls are always actually straight.
Brenna: I’m not straight! I mean, the last two people I dated were girls, so.
Mariah: Maybe you’re just gay.
What’s excellent about this is that Brenna is the sympathetic character here (and always), and is so beloved by fans of the show, so these people throwing all this trite bigoted bullshit at her are presented as jerks. None of these stereotypes are played for laughs. It looks like Brenna is going to abandon the group altogether, and who could blame her? But she goes back and trades shade-for-shade, defending bisexuality in a way that’s never been done on ABC Family and has only very, very rarely been done on TV in general.
Gay guy: I didn’t think you were coming back.
Brenna: I didn’t either, but I changed my mind! Just like I change my mind every day about who I’m attracted to! Hey, Mariah, I was wondering: What made you a lesbian?
Mariah: I was born this way.
Brenna: So when you’re with a girl, who’s the boy in the relationship?
Mariah: No one. There is no boy.
Brenna: [To the gay guys] But Andrew’s the girl between the two of you, right?
Andrew: No! There’s not a heteronormative dynamic in all relationships.
Brenna: Oh, there’s not? That’s just a stereotype?
They get it. And they’re sorry. Brenna is right now and always.
Legit bisexual representation on a teenage TV show? What a time to be alive!
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
Welp, Audrey got one step closer to getting Emma to be in a Big Gay Relationship with her her due to the competition being eliminated. Emma’s boyfriend, Will, got chopped in literal half after Emma found him in a field attached to a saw and went running for him and tripped a wire and watched as he was sawed in actual half. Emma herself was almost killed to death when she was investigating an abandoned bowling alley with her friends earlier in the episode, but she survived to accidentally maul her boyfriend. Audrey’s alibi? She was taking a makeup test the whole entire time.
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
Complications exceeded my expectations so much, y’all. I know it’s because White Collar promised that CIA Junior Agent Diana Barrigan would be who Gretchen actually is and didn’t deliver, and so the bar was pretty low, but still! A lesbian character of color is the main hero of the show because of her hard-assness but also her compassion? Check. Her queerness is an important part of who she is, but it’s not the main thing about her? Check. She makes it out alive despite the fact that everyone is getting shot all the time? Check. She actually threw herself on top of a guy this week to keep the a bad cop from shooting him and lived to tell the tale! I can’t explain the finale to you if you didn’t watch the show. Gretchen won, is all you really need to know.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.
Gail busted a dirty cop named Santana on this week’s Rookie Blue. It was pretty boring police procedural stuff. I wish she’d been making out with Santana Lopez instead. Just kidding! Those two would kill each other!
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
Sigh. This season of Defiance continues to disappoint me. It’s not offensive. I mean, it’s not offensive in terms of queer content. It’s offensive to me, personally, because it’s boring. This week, Doc Yewll helped Kindzi round up all the dudes in town and stick them in cages to prepare for the coming Omec invasion. This included Yewll’s BFF, Datak Tarr, who, along with Stahma, have been wholly underused this summer, which is a large part of the reason this season kinda sucks. Also, Yewll helped Kindzi literally eat her dad to death. It wasn’t as gross as Will getting chopped in half on Scream, but it was disgusting.
On the upside, Berlin returned from her brief hiatus in 90210, and thank the gods because I was starting to believe she and Irisa weren’t in real true forever love. Now I remember that they totally are.
Hannibal
Saturdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
It looks like Alana has finally pushed Hannibal to the point of murdering her (but only because he pushed her first!). She threatened to take away all his nice shit if he didn’t cooperate with her and the police, and this week she discovered that he’d been having long, leisurely phone conversations with a serial killer called the Red Dragon. She told him he was going to help them catch this fucker, or else. He chose: or else! And so Alana removed all his nice things like his smoking jacket and books and record player and also apparently his toilet. And then had him wrapped up to look like the movie. Good night, sweet princess!
I Am Cait
Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.
This week on I Am Cait, I was exposed to the fullness of the Kardashians for the first time. (This is the only Kardashian show I’ve ever watched.) It was kind of jarring.
Kim Kardashian shows up to talk to Caitlyn about how everyone in the family is pissed off at her for some things she said in her Vanity Fair interview, most notably Kris Jenner because of how Caitlyn said if Kris had been more supportive they’d still be together. Also Khloe is upset, I think, because Caitlyn said something disparaging about her husband? I don’t know the family tree; it was hard for me to follow. Kim’s suggestion for making up with Kris was to tweet an apology. Khloe’s suggestion for Caitlyn feeling less isolated from her family — because, as Caitlyn repeatedly says, none of her children have come to visit her since she came out and began her transition — was group texting.
I’ll tell you what really got to me, though: Number one) Kim dropped Caitlyn’s birth name like NBD, all, “You still have some of [birth name] in you; I thought Caitlyn would be a little nicer.” And when Caitlyn went to visit Chloe, she talked about all the stuff she’s learning.
Caitlyn: So much of it is so scary. Homelessness, people on the street—
Khloe: Aw, that’s not good.
Aw, that’s not good?! It’s a tiny bit more than “not good,” Khloe Kardashian.
And then Khloe just wanted to talk about herself.
I’m not cut out for actual reality TV. I liked the parts of the episode where Caitlyn had dinner with Jen Richards, Kate Bornstein, and Candis Cayne and talked about how more mainstream portions of the queer community often prioritize the political and social needs of the trans community way way way behind the needs of rich white gay guys. It’s an important conversation and particularly interesting as we consider how much trans erasure we’re seeing in the new Stonewall movie.
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+ Orange is The New Black Episode 310 Recap: There Is A Monster At The End Of This Book
In which things start falling apart.
I know I promised to fold Carmilla into this column, and I will start that next week!
Boob(s On Your) Tube: Are Stef And Lena Going to Be Okay On “The Fosters”?
This time tomorrow, we will finally know who A is on Pretty Little Liars and I can hardly concentrate on anything else. Here are some other queer things that are happening on TV, though!
The Fosters
Mondays on ABC Family at 8:00 p.m.
We’re not going to egg Donald Trump’s house, Callie. That would be classless.
Stef and Lena are scaring me, y’all. They’re supposed to be the steady sun around which all these dramatic little teenage planets orbit, but they are falling apart! Stef can’t go to therapy until Callie gets adopted, and the chances of that happening are about as likely as me getting a pet Hippogriff. This week, after Stef shelved therapy, Lena made the HORRIFIC mistake of talking to Monty about how unhappy she is in her marriage. You do not talk to the woman who kissed you because she’s in love with you about the problems in your marriage! You do not do that, not now or ever! And when Lena went home to try to tell Stef her worries, Stef was busy accidentally flirting with the new lesbian plumber and watching and rewatching the surveillance footage from Jesus and Mariana’s car accident. Lena wanted to process, but Stef squeezed her shoulder and told her everything is okay.
It is not okay. :(
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
Gal Pal Week
Remember how I told you Brenna met a boy named Finn at her new school, and he has cancer, and she doesn’t know it but he’s totally going to be getting saved from her anonymous bone marrow and they’re going to fall in love? That’s still happening, but in the meantime, Ford and Brenna kissed right on the lips. They did it because they were hanging out with Finn and he can’t kiss either of them because he can’t risk getting their germs on him, so they kissed each other instead. Ford says she’s not into women sexualizing themselves for the male gaze, but you know she’s always wondered what it would be like to smooch on Brenna. And now she knows!
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
Only two episodes left and still no queer storylines for Charmaine. #Dang
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
For the last time, I don’t know who A is! Now can I please take my clue parrot and go??
Audrey was called in for questioning by the police on this week’s Scream. They’re working with a theory that she and Rachel killed Nina and Tyler because they’re the worst (Nina and Tyler, not Audrey and Rachel), and then Audrey killed Rachel (after making out with her face on camera) to make sure she didn’t dime Audrey out. One small problem is that there’s this video of Audrey raging out and threatening to murder Nina and chop her into tiny pieces and feed her to some ducks or something. So Audrey calls her pre-girlfriend, Emma, and asks her to please break into her house and find the SD card from the night Nina died and smash it with a hammer.
Emma does this. Well, she breaks into the house. She does not smash the SD card. She watches it and then thinks about how it’s terrifying that A hasn’t called her since Audrey’s been in jail. But then she realizes she loves Emma like lesbians do and there’s no way all this evidence means anything this early in the season, so she gives Audrey and alibi and a hug and promises her everything’s going to be okay — until they probably also die.
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
Batwoman? No, never heard of her. Why do you ask?
There’s only one more episode of Complications left before the season finale, and Gretchen has firmly taken root as my favorite new lesbian TV character of the summer. This week, her sister — Ingrid, the one from rehab — gets kicked out of rehab because she let a recovering buddy crash on her couch. Gretchen can’t be mad about it because Jed is strung out on her couch while she’s on the phone with her sister. Ingrid comes on over and agrees to take care of Jed and not take any of the pills Gretchen leaves behind, and she follows through on her promise. Sister stories. I love sister stories.
In her work life, Gretchen accompanies John to prison to talk to the gang leader who’s been keeping his thumb on John all season. On the way there, Gretchen opens up to John a little and explains that she grew up in the rougher part of town with some shitty foster parents, so that’s how come she knows you have to work outside the system sometimes to be a real hero, and also why she can’t stop saving everyone and everything.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.
Not much Gail to report on this week’s Rookie Blue, just normal police procedural stuff and no lesbianing.
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
Blarg, the queerness on this show has almost disappeared completely, and without it, Defiance just isn’t worth it anymore. Queerness was so woven into the fabric of the town in the first season it felt revolutionary watching it. Now it’s just another low budget sci-fi first-person shooter tie-in. Brainwashed Doc Yewll helped Kindzi beat up her dad and begin her own personal mission for global domination this week. It should have been awesome. It was just whatever.
I Am Cait
Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.
I wonder if Kanye would play in a roller derby league with me.
This show continues to blow my mind in the best way. This week’s episode picks up where last week’s left off, with Caitlyn talking to a group of trans women at the San Francisco Human Rights Campaign’s office. She is shocked and visibly shaken to hear stories about so much violence and discrimination perpetrated against these women. In an overwhelmed monologue, she cries and says she had no idea how much privilege she enjoyed. She also asked a producer to please help her get on Ellen to give a scholarship to one of the trans women she met, Blossom, who cannot get into nursing school because she’s trans.
She goes skating with her new friends and motorcycle-riding, where Candis Cayne teaches everyone the perfect hair flip. Over dinner, the women talk about who they’re attracted to. Caitlyn says she’s never been with a man, but is interested in it. She says she has bigger problems to worry about right now than an orgasm. Just a gentle reminder on E! that gender identity and sexuality are two separate things, NBD.
Last week, Jenny asked her if she’d gone swimming in her own bathing suit yet, and she said no. So this week, she decides to join her friends in the pool. She says she’s as nervous as she can be, but ultimately finds it very freeing.
Are you watching this yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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The 10 Best Gal Pals In TV History
It’s Gal Pal Week on Autostraddle.com! Let’s kick it off by counting down television friendships we adore!
Boob(s On Your) Tube: Alice Pieszecki Arrives On “Chasing Life,” Alana Enjoys A Finger Wagging On “Hannibal”
If you spend most of your life with your eyeballs glued to GayBC Family like I do, you probably feel like summer is coming to a close. Why, this very night the Pretty Little Liars are going to prom! They’re going to graduate! And next week, the Big A Reveal. (No, for real this time.) (FOR REAL.) As ABC Family winds down, though, some summer TV shows are just gearing up!
Here’s the full trailer for Faking It‘s second season, which returns on August 31. Paige McCullers is definitely naked in this trailer, so.
Here’s the full trailer for the second season of Survivor’s Remorse. It’s back in all it’s M-Chuck glory on August 22nd.
https://youtu.be/KdL_1m5uzuA
This week’s queer TV roundup is a little more brief (and late) than usual. There was no new episode of The Fosters, and I’m working on a kitten-saving project that took up my whole weekend. We’ll be back to normal next Monday.
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
And then she wrote a book called Lez Girls and then she died.
At long last, Alice Pieszecki arrived on Chasing Life, as Brenna’s new girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend. “Wait,” I hear you saying, “a high school senior is dating someone old enough to date Alice Pieszecki?” Ah, yes. And that is the rub. See, Margo is Brenna’s fresh-from-college film club sponsor, but now that Brenna has changed schools, they’re in the clear to see each other romantically. Brenna is a mature 17, and she’s feeling it — until she meets Alice Pieszecki, who crashes her date with Margo, wine in hand, even though Margo told Brenna she’s an alcoholic. So Margo has to abandon their date to take Alice Pieszecki home.
On their next date, Brenna discovers that Margo took Alice Pieszecki home to her home, because they still live together and share a dog. Brenna’s probably too young to have ever even seen The L Word, if we’re being honest, and this amount of drama is both surprising and unnerving to her, so she bounces up out of there without even looking back over her shoulder.
At her new school, she meets a guy with cancer. I’ll bet six hundred million dollars he is the person she anonymously gave her bone marrow to and they’re gonna fall in love like John Greene wrote it.
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
I’m looking for a girl named Quinn Fabray. She said she was going to Yale and hasn’t been heard from since.
Coach Beiste arrived on Clipped this week, playing Mo’s mom, Dottie. (Get it? ‘Cause her name is Dot Marie Jones, IRL.) (Dot Marie Jones is an angel, by the way.) Anyway, so Dottie seems like a stereotypical lesbian and Mo’s dad seems like stereotypical gay man, and they’re getting divorced, but then they don’t because they’re actually straight, and Charmaine still hasn’t done any queer thing.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
Keep holding your breath, Emma. The Grunwald will be here soon.
Audrey consoles her future girlfriend, Emma, this week as she dealt with the fallout from her own sex tape getting leaked onto the internet. Will spends the episode trying to convince Emma he didn’t film their first time together, and also he spends the episode getting his ass beaten down. In gym class, it’s self-defense day, and Audrey pins him to the ground before the instructor even says go. Emma and Audrey get even more gal pal-y at a memorial service for Nina, Tyler, and Riley — which means they’re totally going to fall in love, and then it’s going to come to light that Audrey’s the one who released Emma’s sex tape! Or one of them is going to die! Or they’re both going to die! Or one of them is the killer!
Don’t get your heart involved, is what I am saying.
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
Put up your hands and step away from the Nokia 5160, Humphrey.
Gretchen is my summer hero, y’all. No one else is going to be able to come close. This week, she saved Jed’s life by forcing him to get sober and by taking him to the hospital for vigilante treatment during one of his benders when he fell right on his face and busted it up. Gretchen also saved John’s life by smashing his car window and pulling his gun from his doctor bag(!) and getting into a high noon showdown with the gang members who were beating the shit out of him to keep him from explaining the plot of this show to anyone in authority.
The ratings are pretty solid. They’ve held strong this summer. USA will probably cast its renewal net around it really soon.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.
Did someone say Quinn Fabray?
I only started watching Rookie Blue for Gail and Holly’s storyline last season, but I have fallen in forever love with Gail Peck. She’s trying to adopt Sophie, as you know, so this week she meets with the family services person who is evaluating her. She decides to help out with a community softball game to show the social worker how good she is with kids, but it kind of backfires because she turns out to be super awkward with the kids — until there’s a drive-by shooting and she flips the switch to hero mode and saves some lives! At the end of the day, she gets to hang out with Sophie for a little while. Sophie who knows and loves her for the true hero she is. I prefer puppies to children (and dogs to adult humans), but Sophie is wonderful. I hope we get to keep her.
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
Queer Clones 2 The Street: Yewll and Kenya’s Cross-Country Adventure
Doc Yewll died on Defiance this week! Ripped to shreds! But actually it was only a clone of Doc Yewll! Kindzi is making clones of her and hunting them for sport. Weirdly, when Yewll finds out, it kind of turns her on? I mean, her wife also was a hardcore Slytherin, so at least her type is consistent, but YIKES. T’evgin finds Kindzi in her evil lair and yells at her about blah blah whatever I’m The King And We’re Good Aliens Now, but before he does that, Kindzi manages to stick some kind of mind-controlling device into Yewll’s head, so that’s going to end in a bloodbath for sure.
Hannibal
Saturdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
I wear pantsuits now. Pantsuits are cool.
Remember last week when I told you that Hannibal time-jumped three years? Well, it turns out Margot and Alana have been together the whole time, and they have a baby! Alana carried the baby — due to Margot’s ovaries being cut out by her brother last season, I think, before she fed him to the eels who lived in his floor — and it’s from Margot’s brother’s sperm. Now, they have an air to their pig farm! (I think.)
So Alana is working at the psychiatric facility where Hannibal is being held because she says there’s only five keys separating Hannibal from the outside world, and she’s got all of them in her pocket. She tells Hannibal this while also threatening to take away all his nice things if he doesn’t stop being a jerk to his boyfriend, Will.
“Did you come to wag your finger at me?” is what he says.
“I love a good finger-wagging,” is what she says.
“Yes, you do.” he says, “How is Margot?”
That’s the story as told to me by Stacy and also by Stef. #FingerWagging
I Am Cait
Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.
Kim, honestly, the least you can do is ask Kanye to follow me on Twitter.
I expected the second episode of I Am Cait to be much more Kardashian-y than first one, just sort of lighthearted and focused on fashion and living life in Malibu, so I was shocked when it dove right into the dissonance caused by someone as privileged as Caitlyn Jenner being thrust into the spotlight by much of the mainstream media as the face and voice of the trans movement. In an op-ed in People this week, Caitlyn said: “To those of you who have asked me for my opinion or expertise, I want to remind you that while I’ve know that I was trans since I was a small child, learning about the trans community is still very new to me, and I don’t have all the answers.”
And that’s the theme of the second episode of the show. Jenner takes a luxury RV ride up to the San Francisco Human Rights Campaign’s office with a group of trans women, including GLAAD’s Jenny Boylan, and it only takes a few minutes of discussion before Jenner’s conservative politics and privilege enter the conversation and highlight how living in a rich, white bubble has colored her view of the tough reality so many trans people face. Like so many Conservatives, Jenner has bought into the lie that people only need welfare if they’re not willing to work. That’s categorically untrue, and a belief that is hugely damaging because trans people suffer a disproportionate amount of unemployment and homelessness.
This exchange was the crux of the conversation.
Caitlyn: A lot of times, they can make more not working with social programs than they actually can with an entry-level job.
Jenny: I’d say the great majority of people who are getting help are getting help because they need help.
Caitlyn: But you don’t want people to get totally dependent on it. That’s when they get into trouble. ‘Why should I work? You know, I’ve got a few bucks, I’ve got my room paid for.
Another reality show would have cut away to commercial with some dramatic music, but E! actually cut to a confessional with Jenny Boylan, who said:
“Now I’m worried. Caitlyn has every right to be just as conservative as she chooses, but many transgender men and women need social programs to survive and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Living in the bubble is an impediment to understanding other people. If Cait’s going to be a spokesperson for our community, this is something she’s going to have to understand.”
I really appreciate the lengths the show is going to to highlight how Caitlyn’s life is a big exception to the experiences of most trans people. I also appreciate how far it’s going to show members of the trans community lovingly but firmly helping Caitlyn examine the huge gulf between her politics/lived experiences and the needs of the trans community/goals of trans community activists.
In another confessional, one of the trans women Caitlyn is meeting with says:
“Cait thinks that because she read a couple of pages in [Janet Mock’s] book that she’s in the know, but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t realize how common sex work stories are. She could never understand how it would feel to walk in those shoes. If she’s going to be our representative, Cait needs to learn the struggle we all face.”
By showing Caitlyn’s missteps and allowing trans folks to correct them, E! is also correcting a lot of common misconceptions held by their audience, most of whom probably wouldn’t have taken the time to educate themselves about the needs and struggles of the trans community otherwise. It’s pretty surprising to me that they’ve taken this route, but I’m glad.
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Aria asks Emily to prom and she says no!
She knows who killed Jenny Schecter.
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Leanne’s Amish roots come to light as she hammers out the tenants of Normaism, a rabbi arrives to test Jewish Black Cindy and the others about their newfound Jewish faith, and Suzanne’s legion of admirers grows.
Starting next week, I’ll be covering Carmilla in this column, and thanks to your input last week, I’ll add Steven Universe to the line-up!
Boob(s On Your) Tube: Welcome To The Queerest Week In TV History
Last week was a revolutionary week for queer women on TV! We saw more queer women in a seven-day span than any other week in television history, including The L Word‘s run on Showtime — and all of the women were on broadcast networks and basic cable. Caitlyn Jenner‘s new docu-series, I Am Cait, premiered last night to stellar ratings and became the number one trending topic on Twitter within just a few minutes its start time. I Am Jazz landed on TLC with really good feedback from the internet. Janet Mock tag-teamed with Melissa Harris-Perry yesterday to center the discussion of I Am Cait around the epidemic of violence against trans women of color. And the co-executive producer of Steven Universe confirmed what Mey’s been telling you all along.
@xavfucker by human standards & terminology that would be a fair assessment!
— ianjq (@ianjq) July 20, 2015
What a time to be alive! Let’s talk out the week in queer television.
The Fosters
Mondays on ABC Family at 8:00 p.m.
Hello, we’re Mariana’s lesbian moms. We also eat shrimps.
The Fosters got back to what it does best last week: Making Stef and Lena the unshakable sun that all the hyper-dramatic little teenage planets in their house orbit around.
It starts with the revelation that Mariana is going to be Ana’s baby’s godmother. Everyone’s pretty psyched about that — until they realize Mariana is also going to be baptized in the Catholic church. Stef has a long, troubled history with the church because of how her dad’s religious-based homophobia kept him from even attending her and Lena’s wedding. So, about three nanoseconds after Mariana says the thing about the baptism, Stef straight up tells her no. Absolutely not. Not even a little bit.
Mariana asks them what they believe, God-wise, and they say they believe in a higher power that exists in all things and coaxes us toward enlightenment and love and doing good. And then they march on over to the Gutierrez’s bakery and ask them to please stop brainwashing their daughter with all this talk of hell. Grandpa Gutierrez says he’s not trying to scare her with hell or anything like that; he just wants to make sure she’s baptized so she doesn’t end up in endless purgatory, separated from God and her family after she’s dead. Which is different because one is like just a bedroom and the other is Bowser’s Castle, I think.
Stef and Lena decide to let Mariana go through with getting baptized — they even get her and her new goddaughter matching necklaces — but after Mariana talks to the priest, she decides she doesn’t want to do it after all. It’s because the priest says the church will accept her moms the way they accept all sinners. She’s not into that tolerance doublespeak; she’s into full acceptance.
When Ana reveals at the end of the episode that she doesn’t feel a connection with her new baby, the same way she didn’t feel connected to Mariana or Jesus, Grandpa and Grandma Gutierrez are super annoyed, but Lena’s like, “Um, hello, that is postpartum depression, judgey judgers! She needs therapy and meds!” (And, in fact, self-medicating is maybe why Ana became an addict in the first place.) After which conversation Lena realizes that she’s probably been suffering from the same thing ever since she lost her baby, and she just hasn’t known how to talk about it. Stef pulls her close and kisses her face and tells her she’s going to be with her though this thing and everything always, no matter what.
Also, Callie is maybe not getting adopted again.
And, after getting his former pianist exiled to the sea, another composer steals Brandon’s idea at music camp. He tries to drop some sick burns on the music thief, but it is the most embarrassing thing I have ever seen and I can’t even talk about it.
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
This is worse than trying to make fetch happen.
Brenna made her move on her new film club instructor, Margo, this week. It was her last day at her old school — she’s moving to a different district so April can get better treatment at a different place — and so she took a moment to lean on in and smooch her smoochies right on Margo’s smoocher. Unlike a Rosewood adult, Margo’s response was to launch herself backwards out of the situation and explain that even though she’s not Brenna’s authority figure, she’s definitely 22 while Brenna is only 17.
Brenna goes home and broods about it and thinks about returning an email from Greer, but has to do wedding hijinks and stuff with her sisters first. And then she has to break into the school to steal back the wedding invitations she left there. After some deep bonding with April and Natalie, which includes hearing their stories of chasing after older lifeguards and TAs, she decides she can weather the embarrassment of having made a move on Margo. She asks for her help finishing her film project before she leaves.
During which Margo kisses her!
Next week, Margo’s alcoholic ex-girlfriend comes to town and she is Leisha Hailey.
Yes, I did kill Jenny. You mad?
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
CHARMAINE, WHERE IS YOUR QUEERNESS? WHEN WILL IT BE EXPLORED?
Besides this, I mean.
I gotta bounce. I can’t be late for Club Deer.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
GOD I HATE EZRA FITZ SO MUCH
Noah’s having a really hard time with Riley getting killed, so Audrey tries to comfort him by visiting him in the video game store where he spends all his time and suggesting they tag-team for some vigilante justice. Code names: Bi-curious and the Virgin. This doesn’t cheer him up at all, so Emma decides to start crime-fighting with a new partner, her former best friend(/lover?), Emma, who has her dad’s old year book, which used to include a photo of Brandon James’s victims. (He’s the serial killer who murdered everyone before this show started.) Emma’s dad used to be one of the guys pictured, but now there’s just a scribble that says, “The truth lies where the mask was made.”
Apparently that place is in an abandoned hospital where Brandon James had all the surgeries for his disfigured face, and he used the mask to hide the sutures. So Audrey and Emma go crawling around in there, like it’s any old Radley basement. Inside, they find a whole lot of gross shit like this pig that is missing all the body parts the new killer is chopping off its victims. Also, they find dead Tyler’s literal head. And they find some encrypted files on a laptop, one of which Audrey and Noah accidentally upload to the internet. It’s definitely a video of Emma having sex.
Whoops!
I Am Jazz
Wednesdays on TLC at 10:00 p.m.
I’ve accomplished twice as much as Rachel Berry in half the time, so.
Mey told you about this show back in March, and now it’s here. It’s a really lovely departure from TLC’s more titillating concepts, and it is edited with a lot more care and a lot less DUN-DUN-DUNs. Which is correct because Jazz Jennings is a marvel. She’s a YouTube star; she’s written a book; she’s been in an OWN documentary; she’s a celebrated activist; and now she’s got her own show!
The first episode focuses on Jazz’s apprehension about starting high school. Her parents are both really articulate about trans issues and the show doesn’t center on their experiences with having a trans daughter. The show is all about Jazz (as it should be). She talks through her worries with them (for example, whether or not to invite boys to a bowling night she’s having with her friends, because boys are often jerks to her). She even calms her mom, Jeanette, down when one high school dude tosses out a slur under his breath and Jeanette nearly flips over a table to get at him. I like Jeanette!
What’s really interesting about the show is that Jazz is a celebrity; there’s no doubt about it. She even does a book signing in which multiple trans adults tell her how much easier their lives would have been if a book like hers existed when they were growing up. And yet, she tells her mom at one point, “I’m very self-conscious.”
It’s this nuanced juxtaposition of Jazz as an accomplished trans activist/author/YouTube star and a regular teenage girl who is going through things all teenage girls go through that really makes this show stand out from the rest of TLC’s line-up.
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
Is that fucking Dan Humprhy? I already feel stabby tonight. He better keep his distance.
Gretchen continues her trajectory of becoming my favorite vigilante on television. (Sorry, Bi-Curious and the Virgin.) This week, we learn how she got tied up with seedy Wes and his dodgy hospital manipulation schemes. She was a good nurse with a bad past and he knew that she needed money to adopt her sister, Ingrid, so he roped her into doing shit for him, and then once she had a couple of years of nursing under her scrubs, she realized sometimes she’s got to go outside the system if she’s really going to help people.
This week, it’s her friend Jed, who’s in jail. Wes pitches this idea to her: Steal some cancer drugs and he’ll pay her and she can pay Jed’s bail. It’s a win-win. She gets money and cancer patients who can’t afford healthcare get the drugs on the black market. Gretchen ropes John into helping her. Gretchen wants to steal the drugs from a pharmaceutical warehouse, but John talks her out of it. So she decides to wear a beanie and break into a pharmaceutical van instead.
When they deliver the drugs to Wes, John looks at some patient records and sees that the people aren’t getting better, and the reason why is that Wes is diluting the drugs, so John just sets the whole place on fire. (Sometimes you poke the bear; sometimes the bear pokes you.)
Gretchen has to tell Jed to skip town, but is happy to adopt his curmudgeonly cat while he’s on the lam, so don’t even worry about that.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?
Gail has decided to adopt a little girl named Sophie whose mom died during one of Gail’s cases back in “Letting Go.” She’s applied for it and she wants it so badly, but she keeps thinking she’s not cut out to be a mom because she can be really misanthropic, as you know. But that’s crazy talk because Gail is a True Canadian Hero and one of the most full-hearted humans on this earth. And she keeps getting put in positions to hang around with kids and prove how great she is with them.
She’s also made a bucket list of things she wants to do before she becomes a mom. One of the things is to learn to dance. I hope another of the things is to make out with one of Canada’s other billion TV lesbians. Betty McRae, maybe?
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
And after this, enough about how all the Slytherins bounced before the Battle of Hogwarts.
Whoooooo boy. Okay. OKAY. Doc Yewll saved the town (again) on this week’s Defiance by convincing Amanda and Nolan to cut down Datak from his Castithan hanging and send him out to the enemy camp with a bomb sewn into his arm. You know, a suicide mission. One he could do and die with honor, by saving the town he claimed to love, instead of destroying it. But also, Doc Yewll knows Datak Tarr is way more savvy than that. By getting him cut down, she’s giving him a chance to save his life, even as she’s putting a ticking bomb inside his body. And she’s right, of course. (She’s always right.) Datak cuts off his own goddamn arm with a chargeblade and runs away and his arm blows up and the bad guys all KABOOM! and he’s free from his hanging, and all he’s missing is a single appendage. He even managed to get Stahma pardoned before he left.
Over/under on whether or not that Indogene-as-starfish thing comes into play again and Yewll gives him one of her own arms?
Over/under when Berlin comes to her senses and comes home?
Hannibal
Saturdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
Is this blood red suit too on the nose? Tell the truth.
Stacy says Hannibal reminded Alana again this week that he’s going to murder her, while sketching her face onto Botticelli’s “Fortitude.” This after a three-year time jump during which time he was institutionalized and she took on the role of being his therapist. He cooks desserts in his cell and draws and reads the newspaper and whatever else he wants to do. He’s there because the court deemed him insane. He knows he’s not insane, though, and so does Alana. The other thing she has stacked against her is that she had lesbian sex this season and that increases your chances of being murdered by about 300 percent. JUST GET OUT OF THERE, GIRL. Go with Margot!
I Am Cait
Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.
Now if only Kanye would follow me on Twitter.
Reviews are in for I Am Cait, and they’re all pretty good! It was my first experience watching a Kardashian show, and I was really surprised by how chill everything was. At one point, Kanye walks up in there and Caitlyn’s sister is like, “Why don’t your shoes tie?” And he slips off one of them and explains about laceless Adidas, but she’s still pretty dubious about the whole thing.
Actually, though, it was Kanye who said the main thing everyone is talking about in the episode and so I will quote it for you: “I think it’s one of the strongest things that have happened in our existence as human beings, that are so controlled by perception. You couldn’t have been up against more. Your daughter’s a supermodel, you’re a celebrity. Every type of thing, and it was still like, ‘Fuck it everybody, this is who I am.'”
Here’s what I loved about the show: It started with Caitlyn waking up at 4:00 a.m. and doing a confessional-type thing with a camera in her bedroom saying over and over, “I hope I get this right. I hope I get this right.” And then she talks about how she knows she’s coming from a place of privilege because she’s insanely wealthy and white. The episode mostly focuses on her meeting her mom and two sisters for the first time presenting as Caitlyn. Her sisters are wonderful; they talk about how they thought she would maybe grow out of this — she mentioned it to one of them 30 years ago — but now they understand that’s not a thing that happens. Caitlyn was always a girl. Caitlyn’s mom struggles a little bit. She’s worried about a thing she heard from the Bible. She’s worried because when Caitlyn was only five years old, she could tell that she didn’t want to wear boys clothes, and she’s afraid she forced her into a life she didn’t want to lead. She’s worried because she feels like she’s lost a son she loved so much.
But the best part is at the end when she says, “I was so proud of Bruce when he stood on that podium receiving that gold medal in Montreal. I had tears and the American flag was going up in the middle and I thought that I could never be more proud of him. And you know, I was wrong. Because I am more proud of him for the courage that he has shown. I love him with all my heart and I certainly love her with all my heart.”
The show uses Caitlyn’s family as a stand-in for the audience, to introduce everyone to basic Trans 101. For example, “Pronouns are important.” But it’s not just Caitlyn doing the educating: Susan P. Landon from the Los Angeles Gender Center stops by to talk to Caitlyn’s parents/the audience. And then Caitlyn goes to visit the family of a transgender teenager who committed suicide when he was 14, despite the fact that his family fully supported him and so did most of his classmates. His new birth certificate with his real name came just a few days after he died.
Previews for future episodes look like they are going to be heavy on highlighting all kinds of trans experiences, as well as your normal Kardashian shenanigans.
Team TV coverage you may have missed
+ Pretty Little Liars Episode 607 Recap: Happy Birthday, Motherf-cker!
“Sorry I was tripping balls at your birthday party and almost got everyone killed with a t-shirt cannon.”
Just a couple more doodads:
+ Someone emailed me to say there’s a queer storyline on Mistresses again this summer, but I’m not going to put in the time unless it proves itself to not be the same old sweeps-style baloney it did in the first season.
+ Like I mentioned in last week’s Pop Culture Fix, the lesbian character is back on BoJack Horseman this season, but I won’t recap that in this column since it’s a marathoning show.
+ I am still getting caught up on UnREAL; maybe next week it’ll finally make its appearance in this column.
+ And finally, do you want me to cover Steven Universe here, for the more queer episodes?
Tell me your feelings, cucumber kittens, and I’ll tell you mine.
Boob(s On Your) Tube: ABC Family Gets Even Gayer, Hannibal’s Lesbian Sex Happens Inside a Kaleidoscope
Hello, cinnamon biscuits, and welcome back to Boob(s On Your) Tube, your weekly queer TV round-up! You’re in for a double-doozy today! I was flying back from our senior staff retreat in Big Bear last Monday and intended to get this column done on the six-hour flight from Los Angeles to New York, but the seats behind me, on both sides, were occupied by the worst behaved children in the universe. Actually, I don’t know. That’s not fair. New Horizons only just passed Pluto. Maybe there are worse children in the universe and we just don’t know about them yet. For accuracy’s sake, let’s just say these were the worst children from here to Charon. They screamed and screamed and cried and kicked everyone, including the flight attendants, while their parents watched Jet Blue TV.
But we’re here together now at last and so let’s do this thing. (I don’t have screencaps for you this week, but I’ll be back to full speed with them next week!)
Chasing Life
Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.
201: “A View from the Ledge”
I am a firm believer that ABC Family shows succeed in direct proportion to the number of queer characters on them, so it was a smart move of Chasing Life to have Brenna come out as bi last season (even though the love of her life, Greer, had to move away to go to school). And the show is building on that momentum. In last week’s episode, they introduced a whole new queer lady! (And dude.)
First, though, in the season two premiere, Brenna has joined a film club to get her mind off of Greer and is writing/directing a movie about two teenage guys who fall in love, with Ford playing the accidental beard of one of them. Her guy friends are worried about people seeing them making out on-screen and thinking they’re gay, but she tells them to get the fuck over it because it’s 2015 and modern sexuality is fluid and also it’s going to look good on their college applications.
The new film club sponsor, a recent college grad named Margo, is impressed with Brenna’s style. They make eyes at each other.
202: “The Age of Consent”
So, Margo’s queer. Brenna and Ford find this out when they run into her at a solo-girl-with-guitar concert and she tells them she’s there with her dude buddy because they’re gay best friends. Brenna is quietly into it. Ford is super mega hardcore into it. In fact, she wants Brenna to go after Margo and make out with her face so it’ll be like Ford herself is making out with Margo’s face. (You’re going to have to make out with Greer’s face first, for that plan to make sense, Ford, just FYI.)
I’m going to tell you what’s going to make this whole thing even better: Leisha Hailey is coming to town, and she is going to play Margo’s “crazy ex.”
YOUR MOVE, PRETTY LITTLE LIARS.
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
105: “Outbreak”
Ugh, I am so in love with Gretchen, how did this happen? When I was binging these last two week’s episodes, I realized that Gretchen is kind of like if Marceline the Vampire Queen became a nurse in real life. Like she’s just so curmudgeonly and ready to beat people’s brains in if they cross her, like just in a nanosecond she’s ready for that, but also her heart is like a unicorn’s, so pure and heroic.
In “Outbreak,” she treats the shooter who started off the series of events that make this show a thing. She can tell the shooter is in serious pain, but the shooter won’t say so. Finally, the shooter confesses she needs to just get arrested and get to the police station so she can call and check in on her brother. Gretchen gets pulled away to do other things, and by the time she gets back, the shooter has coded. So Gretchen asks to do the paperwork so she can remove this girl’s bracelet. It’s a gift from her brother. Gretchen is going to find this little Elio and keep him safe.
106: “Diagnosis”
Obviously Gretchen doesn’t call the Department of Family and Children Services to report the Elio thing. She takes the bracelet and gets in her car and drives to what seems like a pretty dodgy part of town, only to find that Elio has been taken in by a neighbor. The neighbor is a creep. Like a pedo creep. Gretchen lies and says she needs to give Elio an exam. Once she sequesters him, she asks him what the heck is going on with the pedo neighbor and Elio confirms that his now-dead sister urged him to stay away from this fucker.
Again, Gretchen decides not to call for backup, but instead wallops this guy in the nuts and grabs Elio and makes a run for it. He chases her with a gun, and then a whole other guy with a gun shows up and Elio has to explain about the pedo-ness of his neighbor. The second guy shoots the pedo guy and promises to help Elio find his family. Gretchen allows this.
Next week, she’s going to save a cat!
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
306: “Where the Apples Fell”
I was so psyched after the first episode of Defiance this season because I thought the show was finally stitching together the elements of the post-apocolyptic space western theme that I like the most, namely: character development, character development, character development. What I love about Defiance is learning all the things that make these humans and aliens — with their different cultures and religions and planets of origin — come together and make the living, breathing organism of their town work. And Stahma Tarr’s “fuck the patriarchy” trajectory over two seasons was so satisfying I can hardly sit still when I talk about it.
This season, though, y’all? What the heck? It’s like some kind of Game of Thrones video game where the main thing is leveling up your avatar in the bloodiest way possible so they can join the fight against the Big Bad at the end of the game. I don’t like it very much. Stahma is spending the whole season at the mercy of every man, fucking that giant purple guy over and over, and getting to do exactly zero schemes. I don’t like that very much either.
“Where the Apples Fell” follows Stahma and Datak as they try to make an escape from Defiance after Alak returns and dimes out his parents for being Votanis Collective spies. Datak hits up Doc Yewll’s office for some help, because she’s the most competent person in town besides Stahama, and the only one besides her who gives as good as she gets with ol’ Datak Tarr. She agrees to help him escape — after chiding him for covering her mouth with his unwashed hands during flu season — but their plans are foiled by Nolan standing in the middle of the street giving some giant HURRAH speech or whatever Matthew Mcconaughey thing. Datak is arrested.
307: “The Beauty of Our Weapons”
Datak is sentenced to death for treason by the Defiance town council. The vote is unanimous; even Yewll casts her black marble for him to be executed. When she comes to examine him in his jail cell, to make sure he’s “fit to die,” she tells him she did it because she’s a pragmatist. He was going to hang anyway, and she’s got to keep living in this town after he’s dead. She squeezes his shoulder and tells him she’ll miss him, which is the most emotional thing she’s ever done, outside of hallucinating her ex-wife for half a season one time. Datak does get trapped in that Castithan torture machine, and everyone throws their rocks onto it while Amanda and Nolan watch.
He’s probably not dead, though, right? The episode ends before he gets stretched to death.
In other queer character news, Amanda once again invokes Kenya’s name in front of Stahma, and it sets Stahma’s blood on fire. They’re in a one-on-one face-off while the manhunt is on for her and Datak, and Stahma says she doesn’t want to have to kill Amanda, but that just makes the good mayor laugh and laugh and shout about, “Just like you didn’t want to kill my sister/your lesbian lover but you did it anyway!?!?” Stahma doesn’t murder Amanda, though. She says she’s going to leave her alive so she can wonder why.
The Fosters
Mondays on ABC Family at 8:00 p.m.
305: “Going South”
Stef and Lena have finally decided to get some therapy, thanks to their plumber who tells Stef at the end of “Going South” that he’s pretty sure they’re headed for divorce. Sadly, going south isn’t about going south to Scissortown. It’s about Callie and Brandon making a day trip to Mexico to go hang gliding and also about Brandon’s ego going down when Callie verbally thraxes him for blaming every one of his stupid man tears on the women in his life. He agrees that she — and the entirety of the lesbian internet, who have been saying this to him for two years — is right.
But for Stef and Lena, the days starts out rough and gets rougher and rougher. They fight about Stef hiring a plumber without running it past Lena, they fight about how Stef gets a little slut-shamey with Mariana when she finds out she had sex with Wyatt and took a precautionary pregnancy test, they fight about what Brandon and Callie are doing in Mexico and how to solve that problem. Lena wants to go to a couples counselor, but Stef has a hard enough time communicating with her best friend/wife; adding a third person into the feelings roundtable makes her want to vomit. But she agrees to it, in the end, because if a random handyman in the house thinks it’s broken, maybe they could use a tune-up.
306: “It’s My Party”
Stef handles therapy exactly how you think she would. When the therapist tells her and Lena to make a list of all the things they love about each other, and all the things that drive them crazy, she keeps calling it The Hate List, and every time she does something she knows pisses off Lena, she’s like, “Put it on The Hate List!” (By the way, is that Monty/Lena kiss gonna come up in therapy? I need them to deal with that and get on with it; every week, it’s a heart attack for me, waiting for that information to come out!)
Jude throws Callie a big birthday bash and everyone who loves her comes to it, including Rosie; the ladies from Girls United; handsome Cole, who is over his broken prom heart; Robert, who buys her a car; Sophie, who inexplicably schemes with Brandon the whole time; and Wyatt, who yells at her about how he and Mariana had sex and deal with it dot gif.
Lena finally convinces Stef that her list of things she loves about Stef is a million miles long, and the things that annoy her, those things are rooted in Stef’s goodness and loyalty and mama bearness. They smooch and they jump in the bouncy castle.
They still need to keep going to therapy, though.
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
Sigh. Charmaine’s queerness still isn’t being mentioned or explored. I’ll keep watching for you, though.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
Wellllll, Audrey’s gal pal, Rachel, got murdered in the first two minutes of the second episode of Scream, slashing the queer population of MTV’s new horror drama in half. Audrey is really upset about the whole thing, obviously, in large part because A murdered Rachel by luring her out onto the balcony and slipping a noose around her neck, and then making it look like a suicide. Audrey doesn’t believe it. She doesn’t believe it so much that she wraps a belt around her throat at Rachel’s wake to see if it’s possible she really hanged herself from the ceiling fan.
On the upside, it looks like Audrey and Emma have a Big Lesbian Past, which is kind of like if Regina George and Janis Ian had a Big Lesbian Past, so I’m excited to see where that goes.
(Probably nowhere. Probably death.)
Hannibal
Saturdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
306: “Dolce”
As you know, I cannot watch Hannibal, but the promised lesbian shenanigans did happen, and this is how Stacy told it to me via email when I was at Big Bear:
So Margot and Alana had a lot of business this week.
Margot and Alana discuss with Mason (Margot’s brother) how Hannibal disemboweled/hung Mason’s Italian hired-to-capture-Hannibal-so-Mason-can-eat-him detective, and Alana makes eyes at Margot while simultaneously schooling Mason on how his ego is going to fuck him over. If you’re wondering why Alana and Margot are somehow party to Mason’s scheme, for Margot it’s because she’s basically Mason’s prisoner and also probably because Hannibal used her for numerous psychological games last season. And for Alana, she got shoved out of a window, practically breaking all of her bones, and then was stuck lying on the ground while Hannibal stabbed and slashed all of her friends.
I won’t even tell you what Hannibal did to Mason to get him all riled up because you would literally never forgive me.
Later on, Margot has a scene with Mason where they acknowledge that he fucking straight-up cut out her uterus last season. His reasoning being that she weaponized it and shouldn’t have “waved it around like a loaded pistol.” He kind of said it like he was joking, but he wasn’t.
As a refresher, last season Margot slept with Will in an attempt to get pregnant because the only way she can inherit Verger family money and escape Mason and his abuse is through producing a male heir. Mason found out (thanks, Hannibal) and decided removing her uterus would be the most reasonable solution.
Okay, so Mason talks about how he wants a baby — specifically with her, his sister, and could she please figure something out? What a shame he cut out her uterus. They could be a family again. I guess he’s been getting into Game of Thrones.
And then Margot and Alana have sex inside of a kaleidoscope. (That’s a real thing. The director and editor put some crazy psychedelic effects throughout the scene. It’s like their skin and faces and limbs were merging and sometimes it looks like Margot is making out with herself??? It’s a very Hannibal sex scene.)
Afterwards, Alana helps Margot get dressed, which is kinda sensual and hot until Margot asks Alana if she knows anything about sperm farming.
I fear for Alana. It seems like her womb is on the market now. :/
At the end of the episode, it seems like Mason has captured Hannibal and Will — it’s a bit confusing because Hannibal was about to cut into Will’s skull but then suddenly they’re tied up in front of Mason? Who ever knows with this show.
307: “Digestivo”
This week I was home from Big Bear and so as soon as I woke up on Sunday, Stacy had watched the new episode and gently explained to me (#PillowTalk) how Margot discovered that Mason was incubating a baby he’d made with her eggs and his sperm inside of a pig? And so Margot and Alana — who kept dressing each other sensually, by the way, implied post-coitally — cut the dead fetus out of the pig? And then they used a cattle prod to harvest Mason’s sperm? And then they fed him to an eel? Like an eel that lived inside his floor? I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. I think Mason doesn’t have a face, but Stacy says she can’t tell me why, and that’s for the best. It doesn’t matter anyway now because faceless Mason is dead.
It seems less and less likely that Hannibal is going to get picked up by a streaming platform now that NBC has pulled the plug. Apparently Margot isn’t in the rest of the season, so maybe she makes it out of this show alive, after all!
Update: Stef says Margot is maybe coming back for one more episode and that she wants to tell you why Mason doesn’t have a face, but I can’t listen to that second part, so.
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P.S. I heard a lesbian character came out on UNreal, so I’ll try to catch up with that this week!
Boob(s On Your) Tube: Abby Wambach Makes Out With Her Wife On International TV, Deal With It
Two very important things happened since we last met to discuss the boobs on our tubes. I will list them for you in order of importance.
Number one: Abby Wambach made out with her wife on national television after the United States Women’s National Team won the World Cup last night. (A TV event my girlfriend live-reviewed like this: “Whoa. WHOA. WHOA!!! WHOA!!!!!!!“‘ And that was just the first 15 minutes.)
https://vine.co/v/en7PUTVxgb0
Number two: When Empire returns for its second season, Marisa Tomei will play a “lesbian billionaire.” Which: I mean, cool and everything, but I just want Cookie Lyon back in my life, Boo-Boo Kitties.
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
MEOW, MAMA!
WTF, are you trying to Toxic Tonya my cat?
NO! Mr. Piddles was the only likable person on The L Word! I loved him!
I have, very weirdly, fallen in love with Gretchen on Complications. I didn’t let myself believe in her because of White Collar, of course, but now she has won me over completely. She’s a total misandrist! This week she said out loud to a guy who asked her out, “Don’t like sushi, don’t like guys, and don’t like you.” Also, her cat is named Measles!
This week, Gretchen and John are still hustling to hide the patient they stole on the pilot episode. Gretchen’s not really feeling it, but then her sister shows up by breaking in through her bedroom window, and Gretchen has to find a way to get $10K to get her back into rehab. So, she hits up this skeezy plastic surgeon she used to work for and he says he’ll hide the guy from the pilot $25K, so Gretchen gives John a price tag of $35K and all her problems are solved. He gives her a sack of cash; she pays to move a body and send her sister back to drug counseling. Well, I mean, not all her problems are solved. Her sister is prone to breaking and entering and addiction and also she let Measles outside and forgot about her! And, you know, all the Medicare fraud and rage and all that. But she’s okay for now!
We also find out this week that Gretchen and her sister come from foster care, which seems like it will be important somehow.
Hashtag Measles, though.
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
Human mansplainers always have the tiniest little brains.
Doc Yewll showed up in a major way this week, saving the lives of both Irisa and Nolan for the hundredth time, despite the fact that they held her down and “skinned her alive” a couple of weeks ago. That’s how she tells it to the veterinarian who helps her remove the alien brain ticks that are inside Nolan and Irisa’s noggins anyway.
To do the surgery, Yewll had to borrow a kind of sentient tech from Kindzi, the lady Omec whose screentime has been seriously neglected, and who, upon meeting Yewll for the first time, said to her: “T’ep k’udademet raniip gipekel av k’useket nok, dats’ik Indo! Ve’ak!” (Translation: “I will gorge upon your hexagonal brain and bury the pulpy remains in the dirt, Indo betrayer! Face taker!”)
Anyway, Yewll’s definitely got a crush on her!
Stahma continued having such sex with the dude Omec that Syfy gave me a warning to avert my eyes every time a commercial break was over. Alak returned after chopping up a bunch of humans and held a knife to his mom’s throat and wailed about dead boring Christie. Amanda fawned relentlessly over dying Nolan. And Nolan remembered how he turned into a hardcore killer and turned Irisa into one too. She tried to bounce to get some space, but the way Doc Yewll did their surgery, they have to stay within 200 feet of each other for the rest of time.
The Fosters
Mondays on ABC Family at 8:00 p.m.
The Fosters: 75 Percent Queer At All Times
Cole returned to The Fosters this week to host a queer prom that nearly caused Jude to lose his mind. Jude was psyched to go to the dance and slow dance with Connor and stuff, but completely overwhelmed by everyone introducing themselves with their chosen labels and their pronouns. Connor was freaked out that Jude was freaked out and told him he wasn’t interested in being Jude’s Big Gay Experiment or whatever, so, after a heart-to-heart with Cole about how sometimes labels are restrictive but sometimes they are safety and freedom, Jude said out loud that he is gay.
Cole got a big ol’ crush on Callie, but she only wanted to be his friend. He assumed it was because he’s trans, but she assured him that she is only attracted to entitled teen assholes, so it was most definitely her and not him. Cole — being neither entitled, nor an asshole — took her at her word and danced with her for funsies anyway.
Meanwhile, Vee returned and brought along Nate to a dinner party at Stef and Lena’s, which made Lena more upset than we’ve ever seen her, times a billion. Because Nate called Vee a horrible racial slur when Lena was a teen and he still hasn’t apologized for it. It gets even weirder when Nate shows up with his girlfriend and she is black (due to him being pretty racist last time Lena saw him). Vee keeps telling Lena to please stop talking about Nate’s mistake and Stef begs Vee not to erase Lena’s experiences, and finally Nate came clean about saying what he said, but still refuses to apologize for it.
Off-screen, Monty was lady-killing at the Cubby Hole, one supposes.
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
Y’all want to start a lesbian commune, or nah?
A.J. turned his attention toward Charmaine in this week’s Clipped, and Dani noticed immediately. You think it’s because they’re trying to Ross and Rachel A.J. and Dani, but then Dani launches into this monologue about all Charmaine’s perfection: her fingers, her face, her wit, her “sexy energy,” the way she smells. (“Annoyance, by Charmaine” is how Charmaine describes it.) But Charmaine realizes Dani is really only noticing her because she’s noticing A.J., so she tells her to figure out if she’s in love with A.J. and Deal With It like a grown-up.
No lady love — or even discussion of Charmaine’s queerness — yet, but Diona Reasonover is a joy!
Are y’all watching this? I don’t think y’all are watching this.
Hannibal
Thursdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
U got a bay, bae?
There was no Margot on this week’s Hannibal, but I want to mention her because Stef proposed to her in the comments of last week’s Boobs Tube, and I don’t want you to have missed it.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
Heads up, BFFs. It’s open season on Liars and I’m hunting. – A
Like how could I even be A? I’m here with you right now while someone is getting murdered!
A is everywhere and nowhere, get serious.
Did you watch the series premiere of Scream? I did!
I know, I know: Whaaat? But I decided if I can watch Pretty Little Liars, I can watch this. I already feel bad for making Stacy tell me everything that happens on Hannibal and The Walking Dead and every other bloodbath on primetime TV. I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to keep watching, but here’s the scoop, in case you want to dive in:
1) There are two, maaaaaybe three queer girls on this show. All white. One of them is one of the main characters, Audrey, and she is played by Bex Taylor-Klaus, who is a stone-cold teenage fox on this show. She says, “I’m not a lesbian” about a hundred times, so maybe this season will explore the the concept of queer labels in Generation Z. (Or whatever we’re calling post-Millenials. Generation T for Tumblr, maybe? Generation Harry Styles.) The second queer girl is Audrey’s gal pal. The third queer girl is a Mean Girl who says the word “bicurious” and invites Audrey to a Mean Girl party where she tells her about her fantasy of making out with ScarJo.
2) The whodunit revolves around a popular girl who was one of seven girls who recorded Audrey making out with her girlfriend and posted it on YouTube. That’s how the show opens. So, like, you know how in a horror movie, the person that gets massacred first, you’ve got to see her being a monster so you can get behind it? This girl is presented as a monster for outing a nerdy gay kid, which I’ve never seen before. I think it’s pretty revolutionary. (Like compare that to Finn Hudson just four years ago outing Santana like the world’s greatest hero.)
3) This GIF.
I dunno. Audrey just seems like the kind of girl who would CLEAN UP at A-Camp, so I want you to know she’s out there existing on MTV, even if I get too freaked out to keep watching this show.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10 p.m.
I didn’t even meet Cosima; how can I give you her number?
Fine. How about Ms. S?
Many of you expressed an interest in Gail Peck when I showed you a photo of her last week for the first time, so I feel like I should back up and properly introduce her: She is a cop on the Canadian show Rookie Blue, which ABC airs in the summer time like Syfy does for Lost Girl. The show is in its sixth season now, but Gail didn’t start exploring her sexuality until she met a pathologist named Holly, who appeared in the seventh episode of season four, “Friday the 13th.” So that’s where you can start watching if you want to see queer Gail realize she’s queer. Holly left at the end of season five, but Gail’s gayness is here to stay.
This week, Gail & Co. investigated the disappearance of Gracie from Orphan Black, who played an abused teenage girl on this show too. It appeared that she’d been kidnapped, but really her dad killed their dog and locked her in the freezer and was an all around monster. So Gail helped the mom leave the dad with Gracie and Gracie’s brother too.
Gail is awesome. And a total babe; y’all were right about that, of course.
Team TV coverage you may have missed
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Faberry and Brittana and Swan Queen and Xena and Janeway and Korrasami, oh my!
+ Orange Is The New Black Episode 305 Recap: Fake Acid, Fake Personality Tests and Real Panties
Piper and Alex make plans to be stereotypical lesbeans! Black Cindy gets some new curls. Flaca starts a feelings-war with her homegirls in the kitchen. And everyone fills out their E-Harmony profile together!
+ Pretty Little Liars 605 Recap: The Girl With the Tippi Tattoo
Sara Harvey takes Emily to get a tattoo while Spencer and Hanna go creeping in the Radley Basement of Infinite Horrors.
+ Feminism, Queerness, and Dead Lesbians: It’s an “Orphan Black” Season 3 Roundtable!
“I’m still processing this. I’m not okay.”
Pop Culture Fix: Girls Like Girls Like Ellen DeGeneres, Tig Notaro and Lethal Lesbian Vampires
Hello, Hot Wheels! Welcome to your weekly Pop Culture News Fix!
Pop Goes the Marriage Equality Culture
+ It turns out that Ellen DeGeneres did more to influence Americans’ attitudes about gay rights than any other celebrity or public figure. I’ve been a fan of Ellen since Day One and her journey is one of many that just blows my mind.
+ Variety magazine’s Marriage Equality issue features a photo spread of LGBT Hollywood families, including legendary power lesbian Kelly Bush, the PR whiz who has helped clients including Cynthia Nixon and Ellen Page come out.
Teevee
+ The Vampire Diaries, a show I have never seen, will debut a LETHAL LESBIAN for Season Seven, according to casting notices picked up by TV Line:
First up are Nora and Mary Louise, a dangerous duo of down-low lovers with murderous tendencies. The vampires, both turned in their mid-20s, have kept their relationship a secret for more than a century, and although their connection is clear to those able to infiltrate their inner circle, Mary Louise’s constant doting can sometimes feel a bit smothery for fiery Nora’s liking. Still, anyone foolish enough to cross either of them will feel both their wraths.
+ Scream, a new show with a queer character played by Bex Taylor-Klaus, debuted last night. Gawker says that it was really awful, noting that “Aside from the motormouth genius (the show’s de facto narrator) and the lesbian, the characters are indistinct, poorly acted, and their lines are mumbled at least half the time.” AfterEllen talked to Bex all about it:
AE: You have played a lot of LGBT characters—how is this one different for you?
BTK: I’ve had the opportunity to play lesbian and gender-queer in the past, and those characters have been secure in who they were. Audrey is still finding her way, figuring out who she is and who she loves. It’s great being able to dive into that. I want questioning or bi curious kids to also see good representation in the media and know that it’s perfectly okay to not be sure who or what you are yet. It’s okay to be working it out.
+ It’s time for a LESBIAN Peppa Pig: “More gay characters are needed on children’s television to send out the message same sex relationships are of ‘equal value’ to any other, Lib Dem leadership contender Norman Lamb has said.”
+ Our Lady J says “More (entertainment) executives need to put stories into the hands of trans people.”
+ Variety says “Premium Cable Lead the Charge For Realistic Gay Characters.”
+ Amber Rose and Blac Chyna Kissed at the BET Awards to “Celebrate Marriage Equality”. Any excuse to kiss a girl, amirite? By the way, The BET Awards were hella gay.
+ Hey look, it’s the trailer for Tig Notaro‘s new Netflix documentary! It looks amazing, obviously:
The Cinema Show
+ BREATHE is a movie that you probably will wish was a lesbian movie but will like regardless:
Based on Anne-Sophie Brasme’s 2004 novel, Breathe has been oft-compared to Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is The Warmest Color, though it’s not about two teen French girls who fall in love, per se, but rather about two teen French girls who develop an intense, volatile, and eventually abusive friendship.
+ THEY’RE MAKING A SEQUEL TO WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, which is one of my top five favorite movies of all time. Even though whenever I tell people that, they tell me that I am a “sick puppy.” I have seen it 10,000 times. However, I’m a bit confused about why (out actress) Heather Matarazzo isn’t playing the grown-up version of Heather Matarazzo’s character? Also where the hell is Brendan Sexton III (aka Warren)? So, here’s the scoop:
Independent stalwart Todd Solondz has started shooting “Weiner-Dog,” starring Julie Delpy, Greta Gerwig, Kieran Culkin, Danny DeVito, Brie Larson, Ellen Burstyn, Zosia Mamet and Tracy Letts.
The film is a follow-up to Solondz’s 1996 drama “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” in which the main character, Dawn Wiener — played by Heather Matarazzo — was teased with the nickname “Wiener Dog.” The castings of Gerwig, who will be playing the adult version of Dawn Weiner, and Delpy had been previously announced.
+ “Freeheld,” the story of a lesbian couple fighting to keep their pension benefits after one falls terminally ill, stars Ellen Page and Julienne Moore and is apparently “struggling to be commercial.” Ellen Page told Variety that “There’s this awful bias that women can’t carry films, which is being proven not true. Hopefully that will start to change.”
+ Female-Driven Movies make more money because women are better than everybody else all the time Amen.
+ The producer of The Hunger Games says we need more than a gay superhero: “The reality is that diversity as an overall subject has to continue to be addressed onscreen. That goes beyond having a gay superhero. There should be a black superhero, a Latino superhero and, while we’re at it, we still aren’t seeing nearly enough women behind the scenes and as the anchors of movies. ”
Music
+ Is the music industry purging its record of homophobia? “Even genres driven by displays of outsized masculinity — heavy metal and hip-hop — have largely purged homophobia. Metal had a crisis of conscience after the coming-out of Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, while rappers like Kanye West and Drake have worked to forge a more enlightened image for hip-hop.”
+ Trans Indie Rocker Isley Reust talks about her new album with her all-female band Spectacular Spectacular and her recovery from addiction.
+ Misty Copeland is the First Black Principal Dancer at American Ballet Theatre!
+ Here, it’s a music video from Hayley Kiyoko called “Girls Like Girls” and it’s about girls who fall for each other. You know, in a GAY WAY. It’s also weird but also very cute.
Boob(s On Your) Tube: “Scream,” “Hannibal” and “Complications” Are All About That Bad Blood
Space clams, hello! Welcome to Boob(s On Your) Tube, your weekly round-up of queer lady TV! A lot of bloody things happened last week; let’s relive them!
Complications
Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.
What? I’m so sure you’ve never hit anyone in the face with like a toaster.
Okay, this show is bonkers, y’all. Remember in last week’s pilot when Gretchen convinced that one patient to lie about her symptoms so she could stay in the hospital and get away from her abusive boyfriend? Well, this week Gretchen goes to the house of the abusive boyfriend to get the woman’s stuff, and it does not go as planned. Or maybe it does. I honestly do not know what Gretchen is thinking ever.
The abusive boyfriend pulls a gun, for starters, so Gretchen smacks him in the head with a waffle iron and then later on she ties him up so tight with an extension cord that his hands almost fall off. She dips out then, for a minute, to go meet up with her friend who is helping her scam Medicare and make an extra buck. He tries to ignore her, but that’s a big mistake because she smashes her way into his house through a window and destroys his laptop by throwing it into a fish tank. She goes back to the house where the abusive boyfriend is tied up, and he escapes. So she gets into a car chase with him, runs him off the road, and very seriously considers leaving him there to die! John the Batman tells her she has to save his life because of the hippocratic oath or whatever, so she doesn’t let him die, but that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t killed before and won’t kill again next week.
At the end of the day, Gretchen goes home and sweetly snuggles with her girlfriend.
She is like if Lisbeth Salander and Kate Kane had an angry little baby who grew up to be a healthcare worker inside a Walt Whitman poem hijacked by Flannery O’Connor. She’s too much, she’s not enough. She’s wonderful. And also horrible. But mostly wonderful.
Defiance
Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.
Fuck me. This better not cause another power outage and interrupt my Xena marathon.
Doc Yewll only made the briefest of appearances on Friday night’s Defiance. She didn’t even say any words. There are no other queer shenanigans to report. But I want to show you her five seconds on-screen because it so Doc Yewll. She walks outside and finds the entire town in a state of hysteria because the St. Louis arch has exploded and is raining down around their ears, right, and the people are just running and screeching and body parts are flying everywhere, and Yewll’s face is so unmoved. So unimpressed. Like her main emotion when she sees that the town’s symbol of strength and unity and freedom is crashing to the ground in the form of a billion tons of steel is just pure annoyance. Like she’s trying to watch someone’s grandma use the self-checkout at Kroger. I love her so much.
The Fosters
Mondays on ABC Family at 8:00 p.m.
I think we should give Brandon to Mike and keep AJ, tbh.
The Fosters nearly gave me a heart attack last week.
It starts out all cute and zoo-y like every episode, but there’s only one shower this time because of how the ceiling in the kitchen exploded last week and the bathtub fell on top of the stove or whatever tragedy. Fine, NBD. A day in the life, honestly. Okay, but then Stef goes out with one of her buddies to a gay bar that night and guess who they see while they’re drinking and talking about Pretty Little Liars like all lesbians do at cocktail hour? Oh, it’s Monty. Principal Monty. She’s at a gay bar on a gay date, and Stef’s friend, Jenna, wants the hook-up.
What follows is the second most awkward lesbian dinner party after the one when Bette called Jenny’s movie a mastubatory opus on The L Word. Stef invites Jenna, and begs Lena to invite Monty, so she does. Jenna stares at Monty the whole time with love eyes and Monty stares at Lena with love eyes and Lena’s eyes dart around wildly making contact with nothing. After dinner, it’s all, “Did you know she was gay?” And, “Do you think she’d be into dating women?” And, “How would you say she fares on a scale of one to ten in terms of surprise kisses?” And Lena doesn’t tell Stef anything! Doesn’t tell her about the kiss in the finale! Just lets the conversation sliiiide on by.
It was at that point that I almost threw up — but my nausea was not yet complete!
The next day at school Monty goes, “Do you not want me to date your friend Jenna?” And Lena goes, “I don’t want you to date anybody.”
And that fucking sentiment hangs in the air long enough to slaughter ten thousand lesbian hearts, and then Lena finally clarifies that if Monty isn’t dating women, she isn’t gay, which means Lena doesn’t have to tell Stef about the kiss. It’s really upside-down logic, the kind you expect from Stef.
Monty is going to date women, though, because Lena woke up the sleeping homosexual inside her, which is apparently Lena’s spiritual gift.
Clipped
Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.
You wanna be where everybody knows your favorite Sam Adams seasonal.
Clipped‘s second episode continued to color in the lines of its characters while toning down their improvised Bostonian accents in a major way — both of which things were very good decisions. Diona Reasonover‘s Charmaine Eskowitz didn’t have much to do this week. The main story revolved around 25-year-old Danni and A.J. giving up on their dreams of becoming a singer/professional baseball player, and Charmaine stepping in to tell them to stop their navel-gazing whining and start living their lives. She also spent some time flirting with a dude in a bar, so it looks like she’s going to be bisexual. I actually can’t even remember the last time we had a bisexual black woman on TV. I guess Maya St. Germain on Pretty Little Liars, maybe? Here’s hoping Charmaine doesn’t have any fake cousins.
For real, though, y’all? Are you watching this? I think you should be watching this. There are never queer leading characters on sitcoms! Watch this!
Hannibal
Thursdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.
https://twitter.com/BryanFuller/status/614494436521738240
Lesbian lady Margot made her first season three appearance on Hannibal this week and exchanged meaningful glances with Alana. What I know about these two is what Stacy tells me about these two, between saying, “Don’t look over here at my laptop!” while she’s watching the show, due to all the gore. For example, Margot lives with her psychotic brother and owns a lot of horses. She is gay and slept with a man last year and when queer women told showrunner Bryan Fuller why that’s a problem, he Ryan Murphy-ed it, and trolled them grossly.
Okay, but this year, Margot is going to have a female love interest. Perhaps it will be Alana. Fuller’s #LoveWins tweet from Friday (pictured above) seems mean if it’s not going to Alana. What I know about Alana is she’s mad. Like really mad. So mad! I know it because the whole time Stacy was watching this week’s episode, she kept being like, “You mad, Alana? You mad?” And then she’d look at me and be like, “Alana is mad.”
So Alana came to Margot’s house and Margot was wearing her horse gear and they looked each other up and down like dessert.
… which is probably not a good metaphor for this show. I’m sorry.
Rookie Blue
Thursdays on ABC at 10 p.m.
Don’t worry, Netflix swooped in and saved the day. We will get a sixty-seventh season of Degrassi!
Everyone’s favorite Canadian police procedural has arrived back on American TV, and with it lesbian officer Gail Peck, who broke my heart into one hundred thousand pieces last year when she had to let her girlfriend, Holly, go (to stupid California). Gail only had a few moments on screen in the summer premiere, mostly to just set up her storyline for the season, which is going to be: adopting a glorious Canadian baby who will grow up to be a hockey-playing lesbian or a bisexual succubus, like all the best Canadians. She has to make a video for the adoption agency. I hope the video lasts an entire episode and involves outtakes of Gail dancing around in her underwear singing Pat Benatar into a hairbrush.
Scream
Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.
MTV’s serialized Scream remake, in which Bex Taylor-Klaus plays a queer lady, lands tomorrow night. We can watch the first eight minutes of it right now, though. Or, well, you can. I can’t. Why is there so much damn bloody TV this summer?
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“Yes, I’ve been ousted from Internet retirement by the sweet harkening of a fellow bulldyke on TV. And truly, I was not disappointed.”
+ Orange Is the New Black Episode 303 Recap: The Double Reverse Jinx Strategy
Poussey and Taystee hold a funeral to honor the books martyred in the Conflagration of Three Days Ago. Piper and Alex have more hate sex. And Nicky self-destructs.
I’ve got a full-on glorious season three Orphan Black roundtable coming at you tomorrow. We’re talking queer themes, feminist themes, and that goddamn death that I’m still not over.
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?
Where The (Queer) Girls Are Gonna Be On Your TV This Year
GLAAD’s annual “Where We Are on TV” and “Network Responsibility Index” reports intend to serve as a barometer for progress in LGBTQ representation on American television, and this year’s reports, as usual, reflect incremental progress in some areas, regression in other areas, and an overall lack of queer women on our teevee screen. The Network Responsibility Index gives ratings to 15 major networks based on the 2013-2014 season, and Where We Are On TV analyzes diversity — gender, sexual orientation, race and ability status — across all scripted television shows, and looks at LGBTQ characters planned for the 2014-2015 season.
I’ve been reading and analyzing these reports for five years now — there’s usually quite a bit to talk about because the reports are so very quantitative and representation is so very qualitative. When last year’s report came out, we talked about how a lack of representation onscreen was likely related to a lack of representation behind the scenes, compared the U.S population of various races, sexual orientations and gender identity to their representation on screen and looked at the quality of that year’s LGBT female characters because quantity didn’t tell the whole (sad) story.
In 2012, Kate wrote about the lack of masculine LGBT women on TV in Why Do Queer Women On Television All Look The Same?. In 2011, the first year any network received an “Excellent Rating” — MTV and ABC Family both snagged one — we talked about the lack of queer people of color. In 2009, we did some supplemental math ourselves to note that only 28 LGBT female characters — some only one-episode guest stars — were cited by GLAAD, as opposed to 86 men.
This year, June Thomas at Slate.com argued that these particular GLAAD Reports are “pointless and outdated” and that “GLAAD’s conclusions are essentially meaningless in the current TV landscape,” citing online streaming and YouTube as major change agents, making it so “it’s just as easy, if not easier, for many viewers to watch shows that are no longer on the air.” She also requests her fellow LGBTs “commit to valuing quality over quantity—“counting the queers” is no way to achieve social justice.”
These are fair points — the numbers never tell a complete story. The system is inherently flawed, too. For example, The L Word was singlehandedly responsible for a surge in lesbian representation for five years, making overall numbers seem progressively high when the majority of Americans weren’t actually being exposed to any more queer women on TV than usual. Last year there was more parity with respect to the gender of queer characters than there is this year, but this year feels a whole lot better than last year for queer women and queer women of color.
Mainstays like Santana on Glee and Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy existed last year (and still do), but new shows weren’t exactly chomping at the bit to write lesbian storylines. This year we’re seeing a lot more LGBT women front and center. Broadcast networks will feature 32 regular LGBT characters this season, up from last year’s 26, and 33 recurring LGBT characters. Of those 65 characters, 18 are lesbians and 10 are bisexual females. On cable, 105 regular and recurring scripted characters are LGBT, which includes 26 lesbians and 21 bisexual females.
Do the math: that’s 44 lesbian characters and 31 bisexual females compared to 82 gay men and 12 bisexual men. Wild, right? The striking discrepancy between men and women for the ratio of lesbian/gay characters to bisexual characters could be its own GLAAD report, honestly, and it’s something I’ll talk about a little bit in my recap for tomorrow’s episode of Faking It.
Among 813 series regulars on 115 primetime scripted television series on five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC), 32 are LGBT, or 3.9% of the whole. Of these, only 43% were female and 57% were male, and 74% are white. Latino/a characters and black characters each represent 11% of the remainder and 5% are Asian/Pacific Islander. The forecast is slightly brighter on cable, where 64 regular LGBT characters will appear this season, up from 42 last year. Of these, 56% are cis females, 44% are cis males, and 1% is a transgender male. 66% are white, 11% are Latino/a, 10% are black, 8% are multi-racial and 5% are Asian/Pacific Islander. Streaming networks, where we’re seeing some of the best representation of all time, were mentioned but not analyzed.
The hidden delight of the Where We Are On TV report is, however, that the networks have given GLAAD a shit-ton of information about upcoming characters and storylines! So for this year’s Report on the Report, we’re gonna give you a qualitative look at where you’ll find lady-loving-ladies on television this year.
Disclaimer — No human can possibly be intimately knowledgable about all these shows, but I’ve spent several days researching them the best I could and getting info from other team members about the shows they watch. It’s likely you know more than we do about some of these shows, so feel free to alert me in the comments about anything inaccurate and we’ll make the change!
READY? I DON’T THINK YOU’RE READY.
Returning Regular Lesbian, Queer & Bisexual Female Characters
We didn’t lose too many LGBTQ female characters between last year and this year to shows ending or getting cancelled. True Blood was even included in the 2014-2015 analysis although it ended this past summer, so no points got docked for losing Pam and (the ghost of) Tara!
The major queer characters from last year are pretty much still around:
- Santana and Brittany on Glee (who might have a wedding proposal next season!)
- Emily and Paige on Pretty Little Liars
- Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy
- Delphine and Cosima on Orphan Black
- Bo and Lauren on Lost Girl
- Stef and Lela on The Fosters
- Gail and Holly on Rookie Blue
- Jack and Imogen on Degrassi: The Next Generation
- Caroline and Kate on Last Tango in Halifax
The somewhat second-tier w/r/t the size of the role and/or pertinence of their queer identity remain as well: Doc Yewll and Lev on Defiance, Kalinda on The Good Wife, Diana on White Collar, Betty on Masters of Sex, Lena on Ray Donovan, Elaria Sand on Game of Thrones, Jenny on Two and a Half Men (groan), Ariana on The Bridge, Carolyn on Under the Dome and Tara on The Walking Dead. Reportedly, Nyssa on Arrow will have a big storyline this season.
Some newly-out queers and smaller roles round out the bunch: Haddie on Parenthood, Nenna and Rose on Crossbones, Margot on Hannibal, Patsy on Getting On, Lydia on Switched at Birth, Crickett on Heart of Dixie, Joanna and Alex on Witches of East End, and Dominion‘s Arika and Uriel. Lesbian recurring character Gina Mendez on The Following survived a stabbing at the end of Season Two, and there are rumors she’ll be a major character in Season Three… but there are also rumors that she may not return at all.
Then there are the ones whose interest in women hasn’t been mentioned in years but still technically count, like Josslyn on Mistresses, Angela on Bones, Pam on Archer and Patty on The Simpsons. Oh right, and Connie on the animated series Brickleberry, voiced by Roger Black and described as “a lesbian female ranger who has a large body, immense strength, and a deep voice that is often mistaken for male.” Her vagina makes growling noises when she’s excited and she’s obsessed with a straight female park ranger. Yay for representation!
Unfortunately, forget lesbian bed death, the real plague haunting queer women on television is plain ‘ol LESBIAN DEATH. Lots of queer female characters died this year. Shana, a queer women of color, was killed off on Pretty Little Liars. Leslie Shay was killed in the season premiere of Chicago Fire. Recurring character Reyna Flores was killed off on Matador last week. And although she appeared throughout the season in hallucinations, Tara died the true death in the True Blood premiere.
The Almighty Johnsons, which apparently featured a bisexual character named Michele, was canceled.
Very Recently Debuted Shows With LGBTQ Female Characters
Faking It has a teenage high school girl who likes girls at the heart of its story. It’s been under fire for falling into the lesbian-sleeps-with-a-man trope after the Season One finale, and it seems like the writers want to keep her options open, but presently it seems that regardless of her identity, her dating-related storylines will be exclusively girl-on-girl. Faking It is the first show since South of Nowhere to have a teenage lesbian as one of two main characters.
Chasing Life, a charming and cheesy little drama that premiered this summer on ABC Family, introduced a subdued but resonant queer storyline for teenagers Brenna and Greer, which included a “label-free” teenage girl choosing a girlfriend (the openly lesbian Greer) over a boyfriend.
Also on ABC Family, Switched at Birth has really been stepping it up with its queer representation. In addition to casting lesbian and bisexual actresses like Sandra Bernhard and Meredith Baxter, the show currently features a deaf Latina teenage lesbian, Natalie, who has a girlfriend, Hillary. There’s also a lesbian book editor named Lydia Kaiser who played a small role in Season Three.
The Strain, on FX, just brought back FRANKIE aka Ruta Gedmintas as computer hacker Dutch Velders. GLAAD says that “FX will have ten lesbian, gay or bisexual characters, including Michael on Partners, Dutch on The Strain, and Abdul and Sammy on Tyrant.” So I guess that means that Dutch is a HOMO.
TNT’s The Last Sail has a lesbian lieutenant of color who told AfterEllen she appreciates that for her character, “being a lesbian and having a female partner at home was dealt with in such an un-sensationalized way.” Season Two starts in 2015.
New or Returning Shows With New LGBTQ Female Characters
Backstrom (FOX) – Nicole Gravely (gay) – 2015
GLAAD says that “The Portland Police Bureau’s Special Crimes Unit on Backstrom will feature both a gay and a bisexual character, Nicole and Gregory,” and that’s good news because Nicole (Genevieve Angelson) is one of two lead characters. She plays second-in-command to the titular self-destructive and “irascible” Everett Backstrom (Rainn Wilson), a detective “tasked with not only keeping the unit together in the face of Backstrom’s behavior but ensuring that his unorthodox investigatory methods hold up in court.”
Last year, when the role was still being played by Mamie Gummer, Vulture described Nicole’s role as “…an openly gay police detective who is saddened over her breakup with her longtime partner.” But in January, AfterEllen reported that the show was being “re-tooled” from the Swedish novel series it was adapted from and that Nicole would no longer be a lesbian, but that she also wouldn’t be heterosexual, because who isn’t dying for ANOTHER “label-free” lady on television AM I RIGHT LADIES? However, GLAAD’s inclusion of Backstrom and description of Nicole as gay could suggest yet another re-tooling has taken place.
Survivor’s Remorse (Starz) – M-Chuck (lesbian) – October 2014
GLAAD lists Survivor’s Remorse’s M-Chuck as one of the “new out women… to be introduced in the upcoming season.” M-Chuck, who is African-American (like most of the show’s cast), is third from the top on the show’s webpage, and she is described as Cam’s “older sister, staunch defender and biggest fan.” The show “follows Cam Calloway, a basketball phenom in his early 20’s who is suddenly thrust into the limelight after signing a multi-million dollar contract with a professional basketball team in America.” M-Chuck is played by Erica Ash, who you might remember as the only straight female actress on Logo’s Big Gay Sketch Show! The sitcom, executive-produced by Lebron James, is only slated for six episodes thus far but is getting positive reviews. The San Francisco Gate remarks that Mary Charles / M-Chuck is “a woman on constant prowl for the ladies and isn’t afraid to show a little PDA with a girlfriend during church.” YESSSSSS.
Gotham (FOX) – Renee Montoya (lesbian) & Barbara Kean (bisexual) – Now Airing
As discussed, Renee Montoya is a Latina Lesbian detective on Gotham, and her bisexual ex Barbara Kean will appear later in the season. So far Renee’s screen time has been minimal.
Faking It (MTV) – Reagan (lesbian) – Now Airing
Faking It will be adding a love interest for Amy this season, and GLAAD reports she is a lesbian of color.
Jane the Virgin (The CW) – Luisa (lesbian) and Rose (bisexual) – October 2014
Jane the Virgin, a show that actually looks really good and funny despite everything the premise would lead you to believe, has two queer female characters: Rose, who is bisexual and in every episode this season, and Luisa, who is a lesbian and the doctor who accidentally gets Jane pregnant.
Scream (MTV) – Audra Jensen (bisexual) – 2015
The Scream films are being adapted for the small screen, and Jamie Travis of Faking It will be directing the pilot. Bex Taylor-Klaus will be playing a lead role as Audra Jensen, the “daughter of a Lutheran pastor” who is “described as an artsy loner who aspires to be a filmmaker.” You may remember Bex Taylor-Klaus from her role as a homeless masculine-of-center kid Bullet on The Killing.
One Big Happy (NBC) – Lizzy (lesbian) – 2015
We’ve got a lesbian in the lead of this new NBC Comedy. “Gay and a bit type-A” Lizzy (Elisha Cuthbert) and her best friend “straight and more laid back” Luke decide to have a baby together — platonically — and then Luke meets a girl named Prudence and they get married and ta-da a non-traditional family is born! Our dearest Liz Feldman is writing the show, and Ellen DeGeneres is the Executive Producer. Fingers crossed this will be better than The New Normal, although seriously must we always stick babies in our lesbians?
Black Sails (Starz) – ??? – 2015
Black Sails will be introducing two new LGBT characters, but there’s no indication from GLAAD on if these characters will be men or women or neither. The show already has two queer characters, Max and Eleanor. Many fans hope Anne Bonny might turn out to be one of those “new” LGBT characters.
Red Band Society – Sarah Souders and Andrea Souders (lesbian)
Sarah and Andrea will play small roles as the moms of “mean girl” cheerleader Kara.
The Mindy Project – Dr. Jean Fishman (lesbian)
Niecy Nash will be playing a recurring role as “a take-no-prisoners type” who “also happens to be a lesbian” and will be Mindy’s “antagonist” at the office. I really love The Mindy Project so I am very excited about this.
Where Are The Transgender Women?
Unique, who was holding it down for trans women of color on Glee, isn’t returning next year — which is actually fine, because the show did a terrible job with her character and storyline and I was sick of hearing them get praised for including her at all. GLAAD found zero transgender women on the shows it analyzed this year (and just one transgender boy — Cole, who plays a minor role on The Fosters).
After several consecutive years of minimal progress in transgender representation on broadcast networks, GLAAD decided that starting next year, “networks must feature significant transgender content in their original programming in order to receive a grade of “Excellent” in the NRI.”
However, Faking It just introduced an intersex character, which is obviously different from having a transgender character, but is within the trans* umbrella. There is a lot more going on for transgender characters on streaming television, however…
Streaming Content With LGBTQ Female Characters
Orange is The New Black (Netflix)
Orange is the New Black remains an embarrassment of riches. We’ve got Piper Chapman, our bisexual lead, a queer transgender woman of color, Sophia Burset, and then a whole truckload of additional lesbian, bisexual or at-least-kinda-queer ladies like Alex Vause, Suzanne, Poussey, Big Boo, Nicky, Soso and Leanne.
Transparent (Amazon Prime)
This show is SO FUCKING GAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY y’all. We’ve got Maura, a lesbian transgender parent, at the epicenter. Then there’s Maura’s bisexual daughter, Sarah, Sarah’s lesbian activity partner, Tammy, and Tammy’s wife, Barb. Maura’s daughter, Ali, is possibly genderqueer (this hasn’t been articulated yet but seems to be the direction we’re going in), and her best friend, Sid, is bisexual. The show also has 25 transgender cast and crew members, including one prominent trans female character, Davina (Alexandra Billings), as well as three recurring characters, Kaya, Eleanor and Shay.
House of Cards (Netflix)
House of Cards is secretly kinda queer — the main dude is bisexual, but there’s also some girl-on-girl culture happening between two recurring characters, Rachel Posner and Lisa Williams, though it’s unclear how that will play out next year.
Alpha House (Amazon Prime)
I have no idea what this show is but apparently it features two female legislative assistants who are dating!
East Los High (Hulu Plus)
I’m actually really not sure how we didn’t know that this show existed until last week?? There’s a teenage Latina couple! YOU GUYS.