We Lost One of TV’s Most Important Lesbian Characters When “Survivor’s Remorse” Got Axed

We lost an important lesbian character on television in October.

No, she didn’t die. But we lost her all the same.

Mary Charles Calloway, played by actress Erica Ash, was a force of nature from the premiere episode of Survivor’s Remorse up until it’s very last. Mary Charles, better known to her family and friends as M-Chuck was the older sister of the show’s protagonist, Cam Calloway.

Survivor’s Remorse followed Cam as he grappled with his sudden stardom after signing a multi-million-dollar contract with a fictional NBA team in Atlanta. Cam’s fortified by a small network of family and friends, including M-Chuck, as together they navigated the pitfalls of race, stardom, wealth, and community responsibility. The cast was rounded out by black comedy legends Tichina Arnold as Cam’s mother, Cassie, and Mike Epp’s as his Uncle Julius.

The brilliance of Survivor’s Remorse laid in its deceptively simple premise. Despite my brief description above, it was not really a sports comedy. It used sports as a launching pad. Instead of succumbing to tired clichés of bling and boobs, Survivor’s Remorse was witty, dark family comedy unafraid to push the envelope in terms of content, style, and tone. The show was a brainchild of actor and writer Mike O’Malley (yes, Kurt’s Dad from Glee) and attracted young black talent in the writing room as well as respected black directors such as Debbie Allen and Salli Richardson Whitfield. Did I mention that it was Executive Produced by LeBron James? Despite being less well-known than its peers, Survivor’s Remorse enjoyed high critical praise over the course of its four seasons. Still, it was unceremoniously cancelled by Starz due to low ratings, airing its final episode with little warning to fans on October 15th.

Survivor’s Remorse is an odd name for a comedy. On first read, it feels most applicable to Cam leaving behind his impoverished black community in Boston and his subsequent difficulty adjusting to newfound affluence in Atlanta. However, with time, each member of his family has their own survival tale.

M-Chuck is introduced as delightfully profane, crude, foul-mouthed. She’s undeniably charismatic and funny. She’s also fiercely protective of her brother, even when his fame sucks all of the air out of the room. She’s always on the prowl. In fact, she’s a womanizer. If The L Word’s Shane was black 20something with blonde highlights and thick Boston accent, she would still find competition in M-Chuck. In later seasons, we watch as she copes with the intergenerational trauma of her mother’s rape that resulted in her conception. You’re not going to find another character like her on television.

M-Chuck doesn’t exist solely on the sidelines. She’s connected to her family and most of the core plot lines. She also has her own separate character development. Even though M-Chuck is perpetually single, the show never brushes aside that she’s gay. Her revolving conquests are running joke of the series, often opening up space for multilayered political commentary. In season two, while the Calloways tour a Georgia plantation, M-Chuck beds the white actress playing a slave owner. At a time when narratives persist that homophobia is somehow worse in people of color communities than those of our white peers, her family unconditionally loves her.

In the show’s first season, the Calloways are looking for a new home church for their family after moving to Atlanta. M-Chuck brings her current girlfriend of the moment along, holding her hand and gently rubbing her thigh while they sit together in the pews. After the service, the minister approaches Cam and explains that while his sister is welcome to join the family in church, her gayness is not. The Calloways balk at the suggestion, first attempting to find middle ground with the minister and hoping to make the church more inclusive. The following Sunday, matters become more extreme. The minister’s sermon becomes a vitriolic anti-LGBT hate tirade. In response, M-Chuck stands up, yelling, and throws the Bible and church hymnals. She’s livid and willing to go down fighting if it means protecting her own humanity. The ensuing calamity is hilarious, but it’s also poignant to watch as the entire family stand by her side. They leave the church together, recognizing that if one of them isn’t welcome, then truly none of them are.

Throughout the third season, M-Chuck sees a therapist to help with her rage. As a result of these sessions, she begins to question her origin story. Cam’s father is incarcerated and rarely spoken of, but M-Chuck has never met her father at all. She starts by gently prodding her resistant mother, eventually getting her join along in therapy. In the third season finale, we learn a tragic family secret. As a teenager, Cassie was raped by three boys at a party. She is unsure which of those men “fathered” M-Chuck and has pushed the unspeakably painful night far from her memory. Erica Ash and Tichina Arnold are nothing short of a gift as they uncover new layers behind Cassie and M-Chuck following the revelation.

In the show’s post-mortem, Mike O’Malley discussed that he saw M-Chuck coming to terms her birth story as part and parcel of her settling into a long-term relationship. He expected Survivor’s Remorse to continue for another season or two and M-Chuck’s future would’ve included “being in a happy relationship, a committed relationship where she settled down… She would have been a great mom.” I agree that she would have been, but it’s a future we will never see. Survivor’s Remorse wasn’t perfect. It lost a certain spark following the death of a central character in the second season. In later seasons, the show — which was always a dramedy — leaned towards the dramatic with mixed results. But, it certainly had more story left to tell and I am saddened we will never get to experience it.

The importance of M-Chuck’s existence as a lesbian character on a primarily black television show cannot not be overstated. Most queer women of color on TV exist in white spaces. Take Kat Edison on The Bold Type or Pretty Little Liar’s Emily Fields as highlighted examples. While The Bold Type and Pretty Little Liars have developed a loyal queer fan base, both of these women are the only woman of color in their social circle. They, and the majority of other queer women of color on television, occupy a position that borders on tokenism. Though Kat is currently dating Adena El-Amin and Emily previously dated Maya St. Germain, both women of color, neither of these love interests were added to the main cast of their respective television shows. This is not necessarily reflective of the ways that queer women of color move through everyday lives. Many queer women of color live and love in majority people of color communities, places they aren’t the only black or brown friend and were conversations are not defaulted back to central whiteness.

In season four, Cassie begins a weekly live video podcast. In one episode, the broadcast is usurped by Cam’s girlfriend Allison, who wishes to talk about class and social discrimination internal to the black community. Despite Cassie’s protests of going off topic, M-Chuck joins in. She adds that black homophobia contributes to black queer folks feeling isolated from their community at large. When the podcast’s engineer points out that white people are also guilty of homophobia, M-Chuck concedes the point but also notes that white people are auxiliary to the conversation at hand. When Cassie tries once again to reroute the discussion back to the week’s scheduled topic, M-Chuck will not be deterred. She wraps up the debate, “If we are all a part of one big black community, a lot of us hate a lot of other of us.”

The conversation showcasing multi-dimensional black thought, and questions of isolation or not feeling “black enough”, is one that a lot black people are familiar with. It’s smart and nuanced. It’s also a conversation that fundamentally could not be filtered through a white lens. It could not exist on a television show that wasn’t like this.

Having black queer characters on a television show like Survivor’s Remorse not only allows for greater depth in conversations on screen. It also means that black audiences and young black queer people who won’t necessarily find their home watching The Bold Type, Pretty Little Liars, or Wynonna Earp still get to see themselves. A USA Today backed-analysis of 2017 Nielsen television audience data found that no single program ranked in the same top five among white, black, Asian, and Latinx viewing audiences. It matters that representation is found across all platforms, that it can reach as many people as possible. Whoever you are, and whatever stories you choose to consume, you should have an opportunity to see yourself.

In many ways, we are in the middle of an exciting time for black diversity on television. Comedies like Black-ish, Atlanta, and Insecure, along with dramas like Queen Sugar, are garnering critical praise. Black led primetime soaps such as Scandal and Empire have found mainstream ratings success. Combining network television and cable, there are more black-led shows on air right now than at any other point in the last 20 years.

Which brings me to the question: How may black queer women have been granted a central role into this new wave of television renaissance? How many black queer characters are even regularly seen on television right now, across the board? Orange is the New Black murdered Poussey Washington and constantly leaves both Suzanne Warren and Sophia Burset in peril; Sense8 gave us Amanita Caplan over two seasons before being cancelled by Netflix; Queen Sugar’s Nova Bordelon’s queerness has thus far withered into nothing but a blip in its second season; Starz’s other black television mainstay Power murdered its lesbian character Jukebox, played by Anika Noni Rose, just last summer. Black-ish’s lesbian aunt, played by out actress Raven Symoné, only shows up roughly once a year. While Empire has a black gay lead in Jussie Smollett’s Jamal, they completely sidelined their black lesbian character Freda Gatz and murdered Naomi Campbell’s black bisexual Camilla Marks-Whiteman. Denise on Master of None is used incredibly effectively, but admittedly sparingly. M-Chuck was a member of an incredibly tiny, and rapidly shrinking, cohort.

When asked about the possibility of including a black LGBT character on her show Insecure, Issa Rae remarked, “it’s just about figuring out the right way to do that… There’s so many topics we wanted to explore but, at the end of the day, we are just trying to tell a good story without anything feeling forced.” I’m not singling out Rae; she’s certainly not the first showrunner to make such a response. The problem is that LGBT storylines, and black LGBT storylines in particular, are still considered special or exceptional cases. We’re rarely given the opportunity to be seen on television as the everyday people we are in our regular lives. It’s simply not unfathomable that Issa Rae’s millennial black single girl living in Los Angeles would have at least one black gay or trans friend. Anymore than it was unfathomable for Cam Calloway to have a gay sister named M-Chuck.

And last month she was forced out with barely a whimper. Which is both ironic and upsetting for character who was absolutely always nothing short of a bang.

Fall 2017 TV Preview: Some Lesbian and Bisexual Characters for You

by Riese & Heather

Pumpkin spice is in the air and you know what that means: It’s time for fall TV. After Lexa’s death on The 100 and the waves of lesbian and bisexual TV character deaths that followed, summer TV rebounded in a pretty satisfying way this year. Wynonna Earp, The Bold Type, Orphan Black, Doubt, Stitchers, The Handmaid’s Tale, Master of None; even The Fosters has gotten back on track. But now it’s time to say goodbye and look toward the tempestuous embrace of traditional network TV. The news out of the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour wasn’t great. There seem to be very few new shows with queer TV characters this year. There are some returning favorites, though, and just a handful of fresh offerings. Here’s where and when you’ll find them.

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Sundays

Survivor’s Remorse, Season 4 (Showtime) – August 20th, 10 PM

Survivor’s Remorse is one of the most consistently excellent shows on TV, but it doesn’t get a lot of press or social media love because it always airs between summer and fall TV schedules, and it does so on Starz, which isn’t easy to access if you don’t have a hardcore traditional cable package. The show’s lesbian character is M-Chuck; she’s the sister of Survivor’s main character, Cam, a professional basketball player who lives with and takes care of his family. The show ended season three with M-Chuck on her way to Boston to find out the truth behind the rape that led to her conception. She’s working through that, now, in the first few episodes of season four. This show is funny and smart and relentless in its realness, shifting tone from comedy to drama and back again multiple times a season.

Top Of The Lake: China Girl, Season 2 (Sundance) – September 10th, 9 PM

The second season of this eerie British import continues to star Elizabeth Moss as Robin, who is basically what has become its own female detective trope (slightly reckless, incredibly determined, single or in unstable relationships, sometimes drinks too much, cares deeply about the case, is condescended to by men) and this season Nicole Kidman joins the cast as Julia Edwards, the adoptive mother of the baby Robin gave up as a teenager, who is having an affair with a female teacher at Mary’s school.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 (HBO) – October 1st, 10pm

Apparently Julie Goldman will be guesting on at least one episode this season as “Julie,” which is probably, you know, Julie Goldman, and as you likely know, Julie Goldman is a proud butch lez who’ll bring some real proud butch lez emotions to this show about white men who think they are very funny!

The Walking Dead Season 8 (AMC) – October 22nd, 9 PM

Lesbian character Tara is still alive on this show, which is basically all I have to say about it. Her girlfriend Denise died and she found out at the end of last season that the motherfucker who killed her didn’t even mean to (stray arrows in the eyeball, it happens to everyone!) and now she’s nursing another gravely wounded friend back to health. Tara’s not around too much, but when she is Stef always has big dreams for her creating her own little zombie-free Themyscira and living out her days in queer bliss surrounded by other living gay women.

Shameless Season 8 (Showtime) – November 5th, 9 PM

Season 8 of Shameless will introduce Nessa, “a tough, smart lesbian who lives in Fiona’s newly purchased apartment building.” Nessa will be played by Jessica Szhor and will “develop a strong relationship with Fiona.” It looks like my faves, lesbian Svetlana and bisexual Veronica, will be back, although I imagine their romance is over, which is sad. Some websites on the internet are attempting to torture me with teases like, “Nessa and Fiona are set to become best friends that may or may not result in passionate love,” despite the fact that we already went down the “could Fiona go both ways?” path in Season Two with Jasmine Hollander and also there was a big missed opportunity with Angela in Season Five. Just saying. Also Regina King is directing this season!

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Mondays

Supergirl Season 3 (The CW) – October 9th, 8 PM

Alex Danvers’s Season 2 Supergirl storylines were so good. Just so good. She came out to her mom, to Kara, to her friends/co-workers. She fell in love. She almost died but didn’t die, and never gave up on living with her very last breath. There were so many ways to swoon it was honestly hard to keep up. In the off-season, we learned that Floriana Lima, who plays Maggie Sawyer, has stepped down as a series regular, which most everyone assumed meant she was going to get shot in the face, but nope! Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg told Entertainment Weekly she’s absolutely not going to die. She’ll be in the first five episodes, at least — “It’s some of the most emotional stuff we’ve ever done,” Kreisberg promises — and the door will be open for her to come back. Alex isn’t going anywhere!

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Tuesday

American Horror Story: Cult, Season 7 of AHS franchise (FX) – September 5th, 10 PM

As discussed, this season of American Horror Story is loosely centered on a Michigan lesbian played by Sarah Paulson who is horrified by the election of Donald Trump and starts seeing evil clowns everywhere while her partner, played by Allison Pill, tries to keep her own shit together. According to Variety, Evan Peters plays “a series of cult leaders” including Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh and Andy Warhol. Lena Dunham has a guest role as Valerie Solanis, the legendary author of the notorious SCUM Manifesto (SCUM stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men,” obvs) memorialized in the film I Shot Andy Warhol. (‘Cause she shot Andy Warhol.) Emma Roberts plays “a Michigan newscaster who is promoted above Adina Porter’s character ‘simply because she’s much more superficial and willing to do what it takes to survive.'” Murphy insists, “It’s not about Trump, it’s not about Clinton. It’s about somebody with the wherewithal to put their finger up to the wind and see that that’s what happening and using that to rise up and form power. And use people’s vulnerabilities about how they’re feeling afraid… and they feel like the world is on fire.” It feels highly likely that we will end up adding more characters to the #buryyourgays list this year due to this particular program.

Legends of Tomorrow (The CW) – October 10th, 9 PM

As the captain of the Waverider, Sara Lance was basically the lead character in Legends of Tomorrow‘s second season. Not bad for a bisexual woman who only came back to life after fans made their voices heard loud and clear when Arrow murdered her! Sara also did some really solid time-traveling making out, first with Betty McRae and then with then with Guinevere in Camelot. At San Diego Comic-Con, EP Marc Guggenheim told fans Sara is getting a new love interest in Season 3: “It’s definitely time for Sara to settle down, or at least have a relationship that’s more than a roll in the hay. It’s hard when you’re traveling through time.” He also said it’s time to “reestablish Sara’s bisexuality,” and since she’s only been smooching women since Nyssa showed up on Arrow all those years ago, it seems likely that “reestablishment” means a male love interest.

Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu) – November 21st, Streaming

Karolina Dean has been a lesbian for a long time in Marvel’s written universe, and now she’s going to be a lesbian in the cinematic one! I don’t want to spoil her coming out arc for you; it’s very dramatic! But I do want to tell you exactly how gay she is: She absorbs the sun’s energy and radiates it back out into the world as a rainbow. The Runaways are runaways because they want to fight the evil forces in the universe and all their parents are monsters. The show boasts a legitimately diverse cast and looks like a lot of fun.

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Wednesday

Broad City Season 4 (Comedy Central) – September 13th, 10:30 PM

FINALLY FINALLY ILANA AND ABBY ARE BACK. This season Ilana will be searching the planet for the orgasms she’s been unable to have since the election of Donald Trump, which will inevitably involve hooking up with other ladies, right? Also, look out for a guest spot from Wanda Sykes!

Star Season 2 (Fox) – September 27th, 9:00 PM

Star slipped under our radar in Season 1 but I watched it all a couple of weeks ago and was actually blown away by it. Trans model/actress Amiyah Scott plays Cotton, a self-described “hustler” who works as both a dancer and a stylist at her mother’s salon in Atlanta. Her mother is played by Queen Latifah. Their relationship is tempestuous. Cotton’s storyline hits a lot of the same ol’ beats (to have surgery or not to have surgery, etc.) but it doesn’t center on them. Cotton is funny and smart and beloved and her complicated motivations and relationship with her mom inform all of her decisions. There’s also a gender non-conforming character named Miss Bruce (played by Miss Lawrence), who was a breakout star in Season 1 and has been upped to a regular for Season 2.

American Housewife Season 2 (ABC) – September 27th, 9:30 PM

Katie is the main character on American Housewife and sometimes she has second breakfast with her two best friends, one of whom is a lesbian named Angela. That’s all Angela does. She’s a sounding board for Katie and her problems and we only find out about her life through throwaway lines of dialogue. We don’t ever actually see her life. She’s got an ex-wife whom we met once. They hate each other’s guts. That’s really it. Middle America loves this show and there’s a black lesbian from time-to-time which is something!

Riverdale Season 2 (The CW) – October 11th, 8:00 PM

Riverdale’s adding a new character, Toni Topaz, and she will indeed be a bisexual lady. There’s also been hints that Cheryl Blossom will explore her own sexual fluidity this season. Whatever happens, you’ll hear about it on Tumblr for sure.

The Shannara Chronicles (Spike) – October 11th, 8:00 PM

Eretria revealed that she’s bisexual in Season 1 of The Shannara Chronicles but it didn’t really go anywhere, but according to the most recent trailer, it’s going somewhere (gay!) in season two! Here’s a bit of TV trivia for you from Valerie Anne: Shannara‘s new queer gal is played by Vanessa Morgan who is also going to be the bisexual Toni Topaz on Riverdale and also played the bisexual Bird on Finding Carter.

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Thursday

Gotham Season 4 (Fox) – September 21st, 8:00 PM

Gotham definitely killed Barbara last season. Electrocuted by her own girlfriend. Which, you know, happens when you’re both troped-up bisexual psychopaths. But then at Heroes and Villains Fan Fest in Nashville, David Mazouz (who plays young Master Bruce) seemed to indicate that she’s still alive? I don’t know, man. This show is not good with its women. It lost me when it banished Rene Montoya and every episode since then has gotten worse and worse w/r/t good queer rep.

Grey’s Anatomy Season 14 (ABC) – September 28th, 8:00 PM

Our beloved Arizona Robbins had a pretty controversial relationship on Season 13 of Grey’s Anatomy. For one thing, no one’s ever going to compete with Callie Torres. But for another thing, she was paired up with Eliza Minnick, who is both loathed by viewers and the characters inside the show. Bailey fired Minnick in the season finale and it was honestly just so satisfying to everyone. Probably that means another broken heart for Arizona. Maybe Minnick will meet up with Erica Hahn in the Parking Lot of No Return and they can have a nice brunch.

Will & Grace Reboot (NBC) – September 28th, 9:00 PM

“When we started it was revolutionary to have two gay characters,” Debra Messing said at TCA, according to Vox, “We were ‘LGB,’ but we stopped at B. My hope is we can now finish the alphabet.” What this really speaks to is that Karen’s bisexuality was so downplayed that the cast members have also forgotten about it. Well, I haven’t, and I pray for its return!

How To Get Away With Murder Season 4 (ABC) – September 28th, 10:00 PM

Annalise Keating is one of the most important characters on television, played by one of the greatest living actors. I’ll quote our TV writer Natalie from the QPOC roundtable we published a couple of weeks ago: “It’s hard to divorce my love for Annalise Keating from the woman that plays her because so much of what makes me feel seen is that she’s portrayed by someone who looks like Viola Davis. Annalise Keating is a dark-skinned black woman, who isn’t a size zero and whose natural hair hides beneath impeccable wigs. Hollywood has a very narrow definition of what a beautiful black woman ought to look like —*cough* Halle Berry *cough* — and Viola Davis upends all of that.” There’s no word yet whether or not Famke Janssen’s Eve will be back for any episodes in Season 4, but here’s hoping. She’s Annalise’s lifelong love.

Arrow Season 6 (The CW) – October 12th, 9:00 PM

Oliver and William watched the island of Lian Yu explode with basically every Arrow character on it in the Season 5 finale. Those characters included our much beloved and criminally underused Nyssa al Ghul. I’ve gotta believe The CW of all networks isn’t stupid enough to kill another lesbian, but I guess we’ll find out soon! There was a time I believed Donald Trump couldn’t get elected president!

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Friday

One Mississippi Season 2 (Amazon Prime) – September 8th, Full Season Streaming

While One Mississippi‘s first season ended with Tig Notaro says the second season will take much less inspiration from her real life. She told Deadline: “There are people that I’m dating [on the show], and checking things out with, and checking out the spark that got started with the Kate character. That’s definitely in season two.” Gay love! It’s in the air in Bay Saint Lucille! You should watch this show if you are not watching this show. It’s so smart and so so funny and THERE’S A LESBIAN LEAD and no gays have been buried.

Transparent Season 4 (Amazon Prime) – September 22nd, Full Season Streaming

A show beloved by queers and Jewish people alike and often recognized for boldly tackling complicated material is going all-out this season by sending its characters to Israel, where they will confront checkpoints, have spiritual revelations and inspire hot takes. “Transparent” came in #1 on our list of Most Critically Acclaimed Queer-ish TV shows.

Once Upon a Time Season 7 (ABC) – October 6th, 8:00 PM

[Deep sigh.] Once Upon a Time is promising, once again, a gay thing. EP Edward Kitsis told EW: “This [revamped] iteration [of the show] is reflecting the world today. It will not be anything more than just one of other love stories that are happening. I don’t think it’s an arc, it’ll be a character who is gay and that’s who they are and they exist in the world. They don’t have a sign that says ‘special episode.'” That is a thing I will believe when I see.

Jane the Virgin Season 4 (The CW) – October 13th, 9:00 PM

Luisa’s been perpetually in and out on Jane the Virgin over the course of the show’s run, but it seems likely that she’ll play a much bigger role in Season 4 on account of she now owns literally everything in Miami. Or at least everything entitled to the Solano heir, which Rafael is not. He lied to her about having cancer, and so she taped back together their dad’s shredded will and showed up at his door with it and who’s the psychopath now, my dude? (It’s still Rose. Rose is always the psychopath.) All signs point to a loyalty showdown this season, with Luisa choosing between her lover and her brother once and for all.

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TBD

Life Sentence Season One

This mid-season replacement stars Aria from Pretty Little Liars as a girl who thought she was going to die but then found out she wasn’t going to die after all! And then it turns out that her Mom is having a relationship with another lady because life is just damn full of surprises.

Boob(s On Your) Tube: “Lost Girl” Airs Its Final Faewell

Boob(s On Your) Tube is a twice-weekly round-up of all the queer shenanigans happening on your TV. The column runs on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:30 p.m.

SPOILER ALERT!

Survivor’s Remorse ended a strong second season in sudsy dramatic fashion by killing Uncle Julius in a car crash. It was such a departure from the more lighthearted drama this show usually tackles (or the real world drama it takes on in a satirical way) that I actually didn’t believe it was the real deal. But a quick peek at IMDB reveals that the actor who plays Julius is heading up an Uncle Buck reboot, and no showrunner can resist the urge to smash a character to bits when the actor is exciting the show anyway. And so. Uncle Julius, your one-liners will be missed!

This was another fantastic season of one of the most under-watched, underrated shows on TV and I’m so psyched it’s coming back for at least another year. The first half of this season was really M-Chuck-heavy, but the last four episodes swerved into rom-com territory as Cam fell in love with a nurse named Allison who actually might be his soulmate. In only ten episodes, season two explored domestic violence, reproductive health, the perpetual racism of upward mobility, disproportionate employment opportunities for black actors, entrenched homophobia in the church, and, as always, the bond of family.

M-Chuck remains of the most refreshing queer characters on primetime and if I had one wish for 2016, it would be that Starz would make it easier to watch their shows so everyone could see Survivor’s Remorse. (And the unshakable queerness of Black Sails, too, if you’re gonna have Starz anyway.)

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Lost Girl

Sundays on (Canada’s) Showcase at 9:00 p.m.

After five seasons, Lost Girl — the genesis of Canada’s top notch lesbian TV exportation and one of the most consistently queer shows on television — has finally bid us adieu. The series finale aired on Sunday night. The plot was so convoluted during the final season (especially these last eight episodes) that I won’t even try to hammer it out for you. If you’re still watching, you got it as much as you’re gonna get it; and if you’re not still watching, you only want to know one thing: Did Bo and Lauren end up together?

Yes, reader, they did.

I actually enjoyed the symbolism of the finale much more than the plot of the finale: A bisexual succubus who spent most of her life alone in the world and afraid of her own power finally faced off against a father who wanted to enslave her and control her sexuality so he could control the world. (Patriarchy anybody?) But with the help of her found family, which included two other queer women, she defeated his evil ass and pledged to help her new sister (Tamsin’s baby) fight him off, too, until he was conquered for good. And while she was working toward that, her found family decided to work toward smashing this whole Dark/Light binary the fae foisted upon them when they were just young whippersnapping superheroes.

And Bo and Lauren, they practically got married. After Bo’s final battle with Hades, and after sending Tamsin off to Valkyrie heaven and Tamsin’s baby off to live with Kenzi, Bo hopped up onto the hood of a hot rod with Lauren and:

Lauren: I, human, Lauren Lewis, want to spend the rest of my life with you, succubus, Bo Dennis.
Bo: I always thought because of who I am, I couldn’t have a relationship — let alone with a human. And you broke my heart.
Lauren: A mistake that I made twice, and one that I would never make again.
Bo: Lauren, we are messy. We’re complicated. That hasn’t changed.
Lauren: And I hope it never does. Do you think we can do this?
Bo: I do.
Doccubus: SMOOOOOOOCCCCCCCCH.

Lost Girl‘s ratings tanked over the last two seasons, but queer women really stuck with this thing, and it’s so rare to be rewarded for that loyalty. Lost Girl arrived on the scene when there were very few women kissing on television — and almost no women having sex with each other, especially with the lights on — and it so it was part of a core group of shows (including Glee and Pretty Little Liars) that shepherded in a new kind of lesbian and bisexual representation on TV.

Lost Girl wasn’t without its problems, particularly it’s unbelievably transphobic season three premiere episode. I’m so happy with so much of the legacy of this show, but that storyline is a blight on it that I’m never not going to think of when I fondly remember the revolutionary queer stuff it did really well. (And you’ll notice the other two shows I mentioned up there, Glee and PLL, have been similarly reckless and irresponsible with their trans storylines. Like how hard it is to not use the “deceptive trans person” trope? It’s not hard at all! It’s so easy! Just don’t do it!) (At least Lost Girl apologized? Unlike Glee and PLL?)

Lost Girl gave us a happy ending I honestly didn’t see coming. I thought for sure Lauren or Bo or both of them were going to have to throw themselves into the hellmouth or whatever to save the world at the end of the day, but I’m glad they survived and decided to ride off into the sunset together. It’s so rare to see a male-female-female love triangle end with two women together. And, you know, Lost Girl is a show that lasted five seasons with a bisexual lead character. That’s a huge deal. Here’s one last smackeroo for the road.

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Jane the Virgin

Mondays on The CW at 9:00 p.m.

Last night’s episode of Jane the Virgin was one of my all-time favorites, which is saying something on account of this is one of my most beloved shows on TV. “Chapter 24” centers on two stories: Jane’s struggle to Have It All, a thing that includes leaving Mateo much earlier than she intended to take a pre-requisite class that will allow her to start grad school; and Mateo’s baptism, an event that is framed beautifully with Villanueva family traditions started by Alba because she left nearly everything behind when she moved to the United States in search of a better life for Xiomara. During Mateo’s baptism, Jane reads a letter Xo read at Jane’s baptism, and that Alba read at Xo’s baptism. It’s beautifully acted and directed, and a two-minute scene that showcases some of the very best things about this show. These strong, vulnerable, determined Latina women whose bond with each other is their comfort and their strength.

And because of that bond, both Alba and Xo are able to convince Jane that they’ll handle Mateo together — the three of them — so that she can pursue her grad school dreams.

Gina Rodriguez is putting on an acting masterclass this season. I will be furious if she doesn’t get another Golden Globe nomination.

In one of the other fifty-seven amazing plots, Luisa has been kidnapped and is being held in a bunker by a couple of German guys. She recognizes their language because she spent a summer getting drunk and sleeping with a lot of women in Munich. Luisa is terrified at first, crying and begging for them to call her brother, but then she decides it’s Rose who has captured her, so she hilariously monologues her internal conflict about whether or not her situation is infuriating or romantic. And she also starts demanding things from her captors, like room temperature water. In the end, though, it turns out Rose isn’t the one who had her kidnapped, and in fact whoever did kidnap her is trying to ransom her to Rose. In German she starts yelling things like, “I’ll sleep with your wife!” but the brutes holding her wallop her in the shin and take a photo of her shrieking to send off to whoever is paying them.

Maybe it’s Rick! (Lachlan.)

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American Horror Story: Hotel

Wednesdays on FX at 10:00 p.m.

Written by Tina Horn

Hotel really brought it with the gothic pseudo incestuous desire this week.

Chloe Sevigny (giving an understated performance as the suffering, logical, non-supernatural Dr. Alex that is really grounding the mayhem) reveals in voice-over that she was perhaps unreasonably obsessed with her son Holden (his head smelled like lavender?), and loved him more than her husband or daughter. Now that the entire family has spotted the missing boy at the Cortez, will they attempt to liberate him, and can that go anything other than very badly? Meanwhile, Kathy Bates (Iris) really wants her son Matt Bomer (Donovon) to love her as much as she loves him, even though all he does is scream hateful things at her. She tries to escape into death, and he feeds her his virus blood.

Angela Basset finally arrives as ’70s blacksplotatian star named Ramona Royale, who was then spurned by Lady Gaga’s Countess. I guess I didn’t really explain last week that the Countess, Donovon, and maybe the creepy blonde kids, aren’t vampires; they have a virus that keeps them young and makes them crave blood. A good friend of mine in the bleeder community informed me that Ryan Murphy has proclaimed that the ancient blood virus is “a form of hemophilia in a way.” The NHF is up in arms!

The Countess has apparently spent the 20th century feeding hotties her blood virus, living in murderous femme decadence for a few decades, and then discarding them when they decide they’d prefer Netflix and chill to hunt and kill. She and Ramona split when Gaga murdered Ramona’s male rapper lover, Prophet Moses in the ’90s.

Here are two issues I have with the Prophet Moses. Not the name. Great early ’90s hip hop name. First of all, the opportunity was right there for an alternate history conspiracy theory about the Countess being responsible for Tupac or Biggie’s murder. Second, and more importantly: while I am always happy to see bisexual characters, Ramona struck me as “only lesbian for the supernatural appeal” which is definitely a tired problem. Femme-on-femme desire is not something that only exists as a metaphor for otherworldly hedonistic indulgence.

That being said! Their affair was an excuse for many delicious period looks and make out sessions. In the ’70s scene, Gaga looks exactly like Hedwig when she gets in the car crash with Tommy Gnosis! Gaga also has a move on this show where she gets in female superior position and wears a thong during sex and her ass just looks absolutely perfect. It is very difficult to wear incredible outfits and pose well. We often deride or dismiss this skill precisely because it is something we typically ask women to do.

Going back to the Mommy Issues theme, we see both Gaga and Basset feed the blood of eternal life to her lover from her breast during sex. When we see Donovon turning his mother, he opens his wrist. Like I said, this is some classic Gothic Literature shit made hammy as hell and in case it’s not clear I love it.

Hotel might be trying to say something interesting about bisexuality. Both Tristan (who reminds me so much of my entitled junkie ex-roommate it’s truly scary) and the Countess attempt to seduce Will Drake, but interrupt one another. Drake tells Gaga he’s definitively gay, followed by this cringy sentence; “I feel the same way with you as I did when I kissed my first man.” Gaga straddles him, and when Tristan interrupts she exits, purring, “By the way, you’re hard.”

So many questions still unanswered: Will Liz Taylor’s character evolve beyond tasteless pencil skirt jokes? What does it mean that notorious serial killer James March is a Scorpio? Will Hakim arrive to rescue Naomi Campbell?

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Team TV coverage you may have missed

+ Faking It Episode 219 Recap: You’re Not That Kind Of Girl OR ARE YOU
This week on Faking It, the world decides to have a party at Lauren and Amy’s house and nobody brought finger-foods, just beer. It was okay. A lot of stuff happened. You should probably read this.

+ Lesbian Kisses On American TV: The Definitive History Of Everybody Freaking Out Over Nothing
We’ve come so far since same-sex kisses on television only happened once in a show’s entire run, rarely involved lesbian or bisexual characters and generally were obscured by somebody’s hair!

Boob(s On Your) Tube: Why Can’t Bo/Lauren and Carmilla/Laura Get It Together?

Welcome back to your bi-weekly round up of All The Queer TV. It’s going to be a busy week; let’s jump right in!

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Once Upon a Time

Sundays on ABC at 8:00 p.m.

Mulan is returning to Once Upon a Time this season, and the show is also promising a long awaited “same-sex romance,” so Kaelyn will be covering any queer shenaniagns for us. The season five premiere did not feature any such hijinks and if I am being completely honest with you, I feel like the same-sex couple is going to be two white dudes from Camelot and not Mulan with another woman at all — but, hey! I’ve been wrong before! Maybe I’m wrong this time! Maybe Mulan will have a threesome with Emma and Regina and that’ll show us all!

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Lost Girl

Sundays on (Canada’s) Showcase at 9:00 p.m.

I confess I have no idea what is happening on Lost Girl this final half-season, y’all. Lauren infused herself with the Rogue-style ability to siphon off super powers from the fae, and it lead to some mighty fine sex between Bo and full-chi Dr. Lewis. Of course that wasn’t going to last, though, and I don’t just mean the mighty fine sex. This week, Bo realizes that the more Lauren borrows her chi, the more neurological damage it does to her noggin. She can’t remember the simplest stuff, like that they ordered takeout and that her sunglasses are on her head. So guess what happens? They break up — AGAIN. Because being with Bo makes Lauren do reckless things like try to be immortal and so she decides they should not be together anymore.

Which is ridiculous!

Lauren already knew loving Bo made her foolhardy; this is not new information! And it doesn’t matter if she’s married to Bo or just pining after her and stalking her on Facebook (Faebook?) from a hundred miles away, she’s ALWAYS going to make dangerous, brash decisions because she’s always going to love Bo and that’s just the world they live in! Literal Zeus is on the loose, okay? Hades is building an army to punch a hole in the sun!

Bo ends up crying into a beer with Dyson, who also is crying into a beer because his werewolf heart is broken, but don’t worry, they don’t bone or anything. Bo goes home instead and bones Tamsin. Nope, just kidding, it is Hades disguised as Bo raping Tamsin.

Dammit, Lost Girl! I just wanted to see Bo and Lauren ride off into the sunset together and have a couple of laughs along the way these last few episodes. Is that too much to ask?! You were once the golden purveyor of Good Things!

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Gotham

Mondays on Fox at 8:00 p.m.

When How to Get Away With Murder revealed that Annalise is bisexual last Thursday night, right after a poignant and soul-singing Very Special Lesbian Episode of Grey’s Anatomy, one of my happiest thoughts was: The day is coming when no one I love with be forced to watch Gotham anymore!

The show has now written off Rene Montoya and killed off Detective Essen, proving once and for all that that the creative team never planned to use her as more than a token black character. They even used her death as a fridging point for both Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne. And while Gotham is certainly giving Barbara Kean more to work with in the first two episodes of this season — and also potentially turning her into Harley Quinn — her characterization is still flimsy and her motivation is incomprehensible. But here’s the thing: She’s going to make out with Tabitha/Tigress at some point this season, and so we’re all still hanging on.

I am debating writing a standalone piece about this show and abandoning it as a relic of a time when you could string along queer female viewers with the promise of two girls kissing, even if that kissing was filmed for the male gaze on a TV show that repeatedly showed it was only interested in pandering to its straight white male audience.

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Grandfathered

Tuesdays on Fox at 8:00 p.m.

For three glorious years, Fox’s Tuesday night comedy block featured New Girl and The Mindy Project, two female-fronted comedies that employed female showrunners. Tonight, a new era begins. With New Girl in the bullpen until 2016, Fox is rolling out Grandfathered and The Grinder, both of which tell the stories of womanizing 50-something white guys trying to navigate the world while being as handsome and wealthy as cartoon astronauts. Grandfathered stars John Stamos, The Grinder stars Rob Lowe.

The thing that gives Grandfathered the edge is that it also stars Kelly Jenrette as Annelise, the manager of the restaurant Stamos’ owns. The joke is that the person assisting Stamos’ character has to be a lesbian, or otherwise she’ll sleep with him and he’ll dick her over and his business will be ruined.

I’ll have a full report next week. (In the meantime, The Mindy Project is navigating maternity leave in its new season on Hulu.)

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:30 p.m.

It’s been an M-Chuck-heavy half-season of Survivor’s Remorse, so she didn’t have much to do in this week’s episode. Instead the focus was on Cam and his mom both hooking up with people who have business ties with Cam and regretting it almost immediately. M-Chuck did get the best line of the episode, though: “Who the fuck is Audrey Hepburn?”

You’ll probably be happy to hear that Vox loves this show as much as we do.

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Carmilla

Tuesdays and Thursdays on YouTube

Written by Karly

Good news everybody, Carmilla finally comes back this week. I was really worried. Sure, it would’ve been strange if, after she threatened to kill everyone, she waltzed into the apartment talking about, “I’m back! I’m one of the lead characters!” But it has been almost two whole weeks.

In episode 33, the gang reminds us that Vordenberg has real power because he is board chairman. But maybe his power literally comes from the board charter, and the original charter is his horcrux. Theo and Mel interrupt via video chat to tell the gang they want to help free Vordenberg’s prisoners from the catacombs. I’m a little bored by this part because Carmilla isn’t back yet, and I just know Laura agrees because she keeps staring wistfully past the camera and ignoring Danny’s overtures about dying for the cause and for the right person.

Laura makes one last plea to Carmilla to help by broadcasting on the Ethereal-Net (LOL). She says she was wrong to be righteous and she’s sorry and Carmilla can hate her for as long as she lives, but they need her help anyway.

Carmilla video-calls and Laura’s epic State of the Union address is replaced with “Hey! How are you? You look great” and I have never related to Laura so much in my life. Carmilla cannot believe that Laura is still asking her to be a hero after she just mauled a ton of people.

Then Laura says the most romantic/strangest thing to a girl who has blood all over her face: “Maybe in this story, you’re my hero and I’m your hero.” And it melts my heart because I am not a Slytherin. Carmilla tells Laura that evil sometimes wins in the real world and saving your friends gets you killed, Cupcake. Then she hangs up.

Laura doesn’t know how to process this: she thought her awesome monologue would totally work. Laura leaves the room to help Danny, just as Carmilla calls back and agrees to help. Perry does the thing where her voice gets low and creepy and she tells Carm that Laura doesn’t want to talk, and hangs up.

Next week somebody, for God’s sake, accuse Perry of something! Only two episodes left!

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Team TV coverage you may have missed

+ Faking It Episode 215 Recap: Raise Your Hand If You’ve Been Outed By Shane Harvey
This week on “Faking It” everybody goes to detention together and is forced to tell each other the truth about stuff or else die of boredom!

I’ll be taking a few days off later this week to show my grandmother around New York (she’s meeting my girlfriend for the first time!), but will be back next Tuesday with a new Boob(s On Your) Tube.

Boob(s On Your) Tube: Barbara Is a Better Bisexual Psycho on “Gotham,” “Steven Universe” Does It Again And More Queer TV

Fall TV is finally here, and with it an improved Boob(s On Your) Tube! Here’s what’s new:

+ Boob(s) will now run twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

+ Boob(s) will now feature mini-recaps from other writers besides just me, including new folks and some of your Autostraddle faves.

+ Because Boob(s) will now be suplemented with other writing and also because I will soon have two awesome new interns to introduce you to, I’ll be publishing some more standalone critical thinking TV pieces this fall, including ones you’ve been asking for about often overlooked shows like Person of Interest.

+ Since last we talked, the Emmys happened and Empire aired a new promo during the awards and Cookie was looking at Marisa Tomei like this:

Bette who?

(Thanks for the screenshot, Nic!)

If you want to know where all the lesbian and bisexual women are going to be on TV this fall, Riese has written you a handy guide!

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Steven Universe

Thursdays on Cartoon Network

When Mey Rude tells you to watch something or read something, do it. Her taste is flawless. Getting to talk about stories with her, to hear her compassionate and insightful analysis of all the media she consumes, is one of the best things that’s happened to me since I joined the Autostraddle team almost a year ago. Back in March, Mey wrote about the season one finale of Cartoon Network’s super diverse and wonderfully queer Steven Universe, during which it was revealed that one of Steven’s moms, Garnet, is actually two Gems: Ruby and Sapphire, a married lesbian couple that is fused together!

During last week’s episode, “Sadie’s Song,” Steven coaxes his friend Sadie into performing at the Beach-a-Palooza Talent Show. Steven is equally enamored with her voice, her clothes, her hair, and her makeup, so Sadie’s mom teams up with Steven to glam squad Sadie. However, it turns out that Sadie only likes singing for the sake of singing (or swimming for the sake of swimming or playing softball for the sake of playing softball); her mom, however, goes over the top about every hobby she tries out and ruin’s Sadie’s fun. Sadie confronts her mom about it and her mom agrees to dial it back because she just wants Sadie to be happy.

When Mr. Smiley announces Sadie as the talent show’s special guest, she has this conversation with Steven:

Sadie: Ugh, how did I let this happen! I don’t want to do this!
Steven: You never did; it was always me.

He then goes on stage in Sadie’s clothes and performs one of my favorite Steven Universe songs to date: I can’t help it if I make a scene / stepping out of my hot pink limousine / I’m turning heads and I’m stopping traffic / When I pose they scream and when I joke they laugh … Everybody needs a friend / and I’ve got you and you and you / I’ve got so many I can’t even name them / Can you blame me? I’m too famous!

Oh, and hey, there’s a lesbian couple in the crowd!

It’s not the first time Steven has explored the idea of gender and it’s a revolutionary moment on TV, and especially on a show aimed at children. Everyone is crazy for Steven’s performance! Below are Mey’s thoughts:

I (and a lot of other trans women I talked to on Tumblr) definitely are hoping for and leaning toward the idea of transfeminine/non-binary/trans girl (or a combination of those things) for Steven, and not just Steven-as a boy who enjoys wearing dresses for a performance. There have been a lot of Trans Girl Steven headcanons for a while, especially after “Giant Woman,” where Steven sang “If it were me, I’d really want to be a giant woman” [when he saw Pearl and Amethyst fuse into a giant Gem], and of course [the season one finale], “Alone, Together,” where we see Steven being extremely comfortable and happy fusing with Connie and becoming an androgynous person who very much is also feminine, is wearing what most people would consider “women’s clothes” and is read by a lot of people as a girl. Then, in this episode we see Steven wearing not only Sadie’s skirt and halter top and heels, but also putting on makeup, and being very comfortable in that outfit. And earlier, when they were going through Sadie’s closet, Steven was obviously enamored with her clothes in a way that most cis boys wouldn’t have been. I’m not delusional, and I know it’s not super likely, but if the show did reveal that Steven is trans, it wouldn’t be out of nowhere.

After the episode I saw a lot of people in the fandom talking about how much they loved that the show let Steven wear a skirt and heels but “they weren’t girl’s clothes, they were Steven’s clothes” or saying that “just because he wore a skirt doesn’t mean you should start calling him a girl” or “it’s so cool that the show showed that boys can like feminine things too,” which are all technically true (except for the “girl’s clothes” one, because they were Sadie’s clothes), but they also had a weird feeling of transphobia behind them. While I agree that boys should be able to wear whatever clothes they want, and that it’s good to break gender stereotypes, trans girls should also be able to come out, and it’s good to let trans girls embody gender stereotypes by wearing skirts and heels and makeup, and to insist that that wasn’t going on made me feel more than a little uneasy.

Overall, no matter what was going on in this episode, we saw a boy or trans girl or person dressing in a way they wanted to, in a way that would normally get them laughed at, that would normally get them insulted and beat up, and hearing applause and seeing smiles. I want Steven to be a trans girl, I think that would be the most revolutionary and important thing the show could do with this storyline. But I’m also extremely happy with the episode no matter what. Steven Universe once again showed us that femininity isn’t bad, and that it’s something that all people can aspire to and be attracted to.

And this isn’t even mentioning the great story and message with Sadie and her mom, or the lesbian couple who appeared in several background scenes. This show is just so good.

It really is, y’all.

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Gotham

Mondays on Fox at 8:00 p.m.

The only TV show that has managed to make me want to hurl it into the sun besides Skins Fire was the first season of Gotham. As I have mentioned here and there and actually probably everywhere on the internet, unceremoniously trashing Rene Montoya — one of the few lesbian Latina characters in TV history and DC’s only openly queer person of color in the cinematic universe — was a shit decision by a cowardly group of creatives who refused to stand up to their entitled straight white male fanboy base. And then they turned Barbara Kean into a bisexual psychopath by murdering her parents.

I don’t trust this show and I do not recommend getting emotionally involved with it!

I did, however, watch last night’s season two premiere to see if all the sweeping changes everyone was talking about were real, and shockingly they were. For example, Barbara has more agency and actual characterization in the first 42 minutes of season two than she did in the whole of season one. Honestly, she basically spent all last year sitting in her apartment waiting for Jim to come home from work, smoking the occasional joint and taking a lot of bubble baths, scissoring Renee Montoya every now and again. So it’s remarkable that she goes on a joy ride to cause hijinks in the city in this episode — especially because she had to BREAK OUT OF ARKHAM to do it.

Yes, she’s in Arkham, a co-ed prison for criminally insane masterminds. She’s got swagger in there! She’s not intimidated by the menacing inmates, and unlike Piper Chapman, it doesn’t take her two seasons to get her hands on a contraband phone. She does it almost immediately and uses it to call and harass Jim Gordon, which is exactly what I would do with my phone if I also lived in this universe.

It’s hard out here for a Batman villain, especially a bisexual one. Ask Harley Quinn. But it can be cool too. I love psychotic villains you can root for, because they’re so dang charming. Like Loki in the Avengers Universe. Like Mona Vanderwaal on Pretty Little Liars. I’m not convinced these writers will keep this kickass trajectory alive for Barbara, but it was nice for a minute.

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:30 p.m.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned the Survivor’s Remorse showrunner is Mike O’Malley (AKA Burt Hummel from Glee). I actually mean to mention it every week because there is something weirdly Glee-esque about this show, in terms of the balance it tries to strike with drama and comedy and the subversive humor it employs to tackle tough real-world topics. This year, for example, they’ve taken on racism, domestic violence, and now teen pregnancy — and it’s only episode five.

Also, O’Malley is way better at hitting that sweet spot than Ryan Murphy ever was.

So this week M-Chuck meets a pregnant 12-year-old teenager named Brittany living in a group home. Like super pregnant. Like nine months pregnant. Brittany didn’t realize she had any options because her group home mother is a devout Christian who believes her pregnancy is an immaculate conception. Brittany wants to keep her baby and M-Chuck wants to support her decision to do that, despite warnings from everyone in her entire family that a child cannot raise a child. M-Chuck won’t listen, though, and ends up throwing Brittany a baby shower on the Calloway estate, complete with ponies and bouncy castles and cotton candy. It isn’t until she sees Brittany hopping around in the castle — “I don’t see a sign that says pregnant kids can’t jump in here!” — that she realizes maybe her family is right.

She doesn’t regret trying; she tells Missy if her mom had subscribed to Cassie’s way of thinking, she’d “be in pieces in a medical-waste bin somewhere or adopted by white people who think Jesus loves all.”

M-Chuck has had a lot to do this season, and really only one of her storylines has revolved around Cam. It’s fresh writing for a lesbian character. I know I keep saying it, but I am super into this show.

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Lost Girl

Sundays on (Canada’s) Showcase at 9:00 p.m.

Isn’t it funny how the ultimate love triangle on Lost Girl didn’t turn out to beLauren/Bo/Dyson like the writers intended in the beginning, but actually Lauren/Bo/Tamisn and it’s not really a love triangle at all because there are only five episodes left and Lost Girl is rewarding all those Doccubus shippers who fought so hard to keep this show on the air so long? I think that’s a really rad and wonderful thing, and such a testament to the power of queer fandom.

… unless they end up murdering Rogue Lauren.

This week, Lauren and Bo make out a little bit. Bo is still getting used to Lauren sucking her chi if you know what I mean and I think you do. Tamsin accidentally busts it up. She’s got some mail at Bo’s; it’s a check from Hades for tracking down his daughter, so she stomps right back to him and tells him to die in a fiery explosion and stuff his money up his butt, etc. The thing is that Hades knew Tamsin would fall in love with Bo and that’s why he sent her after his daughter, because now that Tamsin has experienced true love and true rejection, she can harness that power and be a great leader in his coming war to destroy the world.

Obviously he is building an army. And guess who he wants to lead it? Bo, duh.

But Bo cannot be bothered with saving the world or dealing with her evil father at this moment because Lauren wants a smoothie and so Bo goes to the smoothie store to get Lauren a smoothie because that’s the most important thing to her in the world right now. Bae wants frozen fruit; bae’s gonna get frozen fruit.

Tamsin finally does find Bo and tells her that she’d rather be her friend than nothing at all, and oh also, maybe she could pretend to join her dad’s Dark Magic army to take him down from the inside before the series finale? She thinks that’s a pretty great idea. It’s no bananaberry blast with protein powder, but it’s good.

Oh, man. But what if BO DIES?

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Carmilla

Tuesdays and Thursdays on YouTube

Written by Karly

Will the giraffe shirt reign of terror ever end?! Laura is still wearing it! This week, Perry comes back with no memory of where she’s been (or “bean” as Danny pronounces it. Those Canadians). Nobody brings up the footage of Perry’s obvious possession, probably because they’re still reeling from the Hollstein breakup and Mattie’s death.

Vordenberg swiftly orders our tiny heroes dead over the PA system. While the gang (with an unsurprisingly UNINJURED Danny) boards up the apartment, Laura takes a moment to finally reflect on her black-and-white worldview. How could she have expected Carmilla to be “good” when Laura put all her faith in Vordenberg and when she gave Danny the weapon to kill Mattie? But loud growling and screaming from across the campus interrupt her moping. Catmilla is having a go at the anglerfish’s blood so she can have the extra juice to kill Vordie, or to kill everyone. Exact motives are unclear. But the mobs keep her back for the time being.

With Carmilla not even in the background this week, Laura and I have to pay attention to the bigger plot development. So with Perry’s advice (she’s totally possessed, you guys!) they go over the dean’s records and they find out the dean wanted the anglerfish dead as well, and maybe she knew how to defeat Vordenberg. Next week Laura hopefully changes her shirt, Carmilla comes back (and revives Mattie? C’mon, please), and they finally figure out that Perry killed all those people.

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Team TV coverage you may have missed

+ Faking It Episode 214 Recap: So Liberal With Her Scissors and Other Things
This week on Faking It, Lauren and Amy dress up like A and creep around the No-Tell Motel while their pals live it up in Los Angeles!

+ Uzo Aduba and Viola Davis Make History At The Most Feminist Emmy Awards Ever
Openly gay writers/directors Lisa Cholodenko and Jane Anderson took home trophies. Jane Lynch snagged another win. And Transparent pulled down three Emmys, too!

+ A Gay Girl’s Guide To Fall 2015 TV
Despite tepid reviews for most of this fall’s new shows, we’ve got plenty of new and returning lesbian and bisexual characters to be very excited about as well as quite a few lady-helmed productions.

+ Fan Fiction Friday: Jane the Virgin Stories, an Interview With a Fan Fic Pro and Even More Fandom Delights
Welcome to the all-new Fan Fiction Friday, now with even more features and fandom celebrations!

+ Mo Welch and Dannielle Owens-Reid Are Making Lesbian Webseries Magic with Plus One
“If someone had been like, “You are going to write a thing and it’s going to be fully produced and you are gonna star in it and it’s gonna be really good,” I would’ve been like, nah.”

+ Faking It Episode 213 Recap: Survey Says “Lesbian”
This week on “Faking It,” Reagan wants one thing, Amy wants another thing, Karma wants something else, Lauren wants a different thing but also a similar thing, and I want an iced tea. Unsweetened!

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See you Friday!

Boob(s On Your) Tube: Lauren Gets The Girl And The Super Powers On “Lost Girl”

Starting next week, Boob(s On Your) Tube is making the leap to a twice weekly column, so I can more promptly cover all the fall TV shows that feature queer characters and provide a fun place to talk about the fictional ladies we love. This column will now run on Tuesdays and Fridays. I’m more excited for this coming TV season than I have been for any TV season in a long time — possibly ever — and not just because rumors are flying everywhere that Cookie Lyon is coming out as bisexual on this season of Empire! (I mean, that’s a huge part of my excitement, but not ALL of it.)

Also, I just want to shout out one of my foster kittens, Miss Frodo Baggins, who helped me write this week’s column.

She is very excited about potentially queer Cookie, too.

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Chasing Life

Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.

No queerness to report on Chasing Life this week, although I have been meaning to tell you that if you like John Green books/enjoy a cathartic TV cry, this show regularly passes the Bechdel test and will provide you with all the tears you need in your life.

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I Am Cait

Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.

I Am Cait finished its first season by celebrating Caitlyn’s accomplishments over the last four months with a “renaming ceremony.” She invites the trans women who have guided her on this journey, including series regulars Candis Cayne and Chandi Moore, plus all her friends and family. And the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Choir. And Boy George. It was uplifting and I even cried a little bit because I am really happy that Jenner has been able to come out and transition, and that she’s received so much support for both of those things from so many people.

The show ends how it began, with Cait doing a confessional in her bedroom alone with a camera. She says, “I want to help people in my community. We’ve got a long way to go, but at least we got a really, really, really good beginning. And that makes my heart feel good.”

So much of this show was the trans women in Cait’s life coming trying to help her understand that the trans community is her community, that it’s “we,” not “them.” And it seems like she got there, in terms of the narrative of this docu-series. So it was really disheartening that she seemed to reverse course on that during her press tour last week, telling Matt Lauer that she was a-okay with that Halloween costume of her that been making the rounds, and:

To be honest with you I’m the easiest on people. Now, the community—you know, GLAAD, all the people in the community—are like “Oh my god, you have to get the pronouns right; you have to do this, you have to do that.” I’m much more tolerant than that. I mean, I understand that it’s difficult for people to understand this.

She also told Ellen that she’s not sure if she supports marriage equality.

Trans woman Casey Plett, who reviewed the series for The New York Times, shared some poignant thoughts after the season finale:

The show tried. It really did… So yes, the show probably did a lot of good — yet isn’t the measure for quantifying that impossibly difficult when it comes to art and entertainment? What answer is there to lonely trans kids (so frequently, hand-wringingly invoked) who can’t relate to “I Am Cait” and/or find it tedious? Not only that, with positive representation of trans people still so nascent, checking that box alone is not really an indicative barometer for a show. Praising “I Am Cait” as excellent TV because it puts trans people in a warm light is like giving five stars to a pizza when you’re starving: Just because it was necessary doesn’t mean it was good.

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:30 p.m.

One of the most interesting things about Survivor’s Remorse is how it doesn’t shy away from exploring provocative storylines in a way that’s expresses nuanced sympathy and scathing mockery. This week’s M-Chuck story, for example, sees her and Missy and Cassie getting to know their home state of Georgia a little bit better by visiting a former plantation. M-Chuck is irate when they arrive and see black actors working in the fields, singing. It’s a real-time reenactment.

She confronts them, telling them they’re “turning slavery into Disneyland” and “I don’t see no fake Jews at Auschwitz.” She tells them they’re losing their sense of Black Pride and they tell her she doesn’t get what it’s like to be a struggling black actor because she’s Cam Calloway’s sister. M-Chuck takes special exception to the woman playing the plantation owner’s wife, who explains that she had to move home to south Georgia from New York because she failed as an actor on Broadway.

Later, M-Chuck asks her what she’s listening to on her iPod and it’s the Indigo Girls and so she and M-Chuck definitely go all in on some lesbosexy finger-banging in the former plantation owner’s house. Aaaaand a group of 8th graders on a field trip catch them cuddled up post-coitally.

M-Chuck is one of the most original lesbian characters I’ve ever seen in my life. Are y’all watching this show?

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Lost Girl

Sundays on (Canada’s) Showcase at 9:00 p.m.

Lost Girl‘s final season is finally in play, and if you figured Bo and Lauren were going to break up again because there’s just no way a human and a succubus are ever going to make it work in a long term monogamous relationship, think again — because Lauren’s got powers now! I’m not talking about just her Hermione Granger wicked smart brain; I’m talking about she injected herself with this serum she’s using to weaken the fae and has become like Rogue from X-Men! She can zap the powers of the fae who are near her, including Bo’s healing succubus powers, which came in handy in the half-season premiere when she was smashed in the face by a car while crossing the street like what happens to one in every three TV lesbians.

But she used Bo’s chi to make her own chi and heal herself.

Last night she did even more magic and freaked out everyone, including poor brokenhearted Tamisn. Bo, though, she did not freak out. Bo said, “Lauren, I love you for who you are as a person. I don’t care if you’re human or fae, just as long as you’re you.

Lauren’s coming trouble is two-fold in my opinion as a person who has watched pretty much every sci-fi/fantasy situation ever: 1) Lauren is now the greatest enemy of the fae and she doesn’t have a handle on her powers at all. 2) She has no idea that some side-effects are coming. (The side-effects are always coming!)

P.S. Perfect, perfect Kenzi was back last night, too, breezing onto the scene in a cloud of glory talking about, “So, which love triangle candidate are we calling up on these days?”

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Carmilla

Tuesdays and Thursdays on YouTube

Last Thursday my Twitter timeline was full of people talking “giraffe shirt” with a hundred thousand broken hearted sob-face emojis, and I was like, “What in the hells bells is giraffe shirt, you guys?” It was because Laura was wearing a giraffe shirt on Carmilla, see, and getting her heart crushed into tiny little bits. (I’m not like a regular recapper. I’m a cool recapper. I know what The Kids are Into These Days. #GiraffeShirt)

For a web series about vampires, Carmilla has always been surprisingly chill in terms of blood and galaxy-shattering break-ups — until last week when Carmilla learned that Laura betrayed her in an Ultimate kind of way. Remember when Carmilla told Laura that Mattie’s necklace is a horcrux and you have to destroy that piece of her soul before you can destroy her? And Laura told Danny, for some reason I am not clear on? Yeah, well, that came full circle when Mattie had Danny’s spine in a chokehold and was about to break her in half (for dimming them all out to Vordenberg, whose soldiers killed Lophii). Danny remembered the thing and snatched the horcrux from ’round Mattie’s neck and smashed it to smithereens and Mattie died.

It was Not Good.

I mean, it was Not Good because Mattie was the coolest character on this show and the only black woman on this show and now she’s dead. And it was also Not Good because Carmilla grabbed Laura by the hair and thought about eating off her face or some horrible vampire thing, but she couldn’t because she still loves her even though she also kind of hates her?

Carmilla gives a really great speech. She’s like, “Be good for me, Carmilla! Change for me, Carmilla! Burn down everything you’ve ever loved for me, Carmilla!” But then of course she did all that and Laura broke her heart anyway, so what was the point?

She says she’s gonna murder Laura like a common Rosewood lesbian if she sees her beautiful face again.

Three weeks left! I hope they kiss more! They are so good at kissing!

---

Team TV coverage you may have missed

+ Every Current Lesbian/Bisexual TV Character, Ranked By U-Hauling Potential
While we await new episodes of our favorite regular season shows, we thought it would be a good time to address the thing you really care about: Which lesbian/bisexual TV characters would be the best to U-Haul with?

+ Faking It Episode 212 Recap: Lesbian Nesting In Your Coop Every Night
This week on Faking It, everybody gets into costume play and makes bad choices.

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!

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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.

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Chasing Life

Mondays on ABC Family at 9:00 p.m.

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.

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Clipped

Tuesdays on TBS at 10:00 p.m.

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.

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Scream

Tuesdays on MTV at 10:00 p.m.

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.

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Complications

Thursdays on USA at 9:00 p.m.

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.

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Rookie Blue

Thursdays on ABC at 10:00 p.m.

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.

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Defiance

Fridays on Syfy at 8:00 p.m.

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.

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Hannibal

Saturdays on NBC at 10:00 p.m.

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

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I Am Cait

Sundays on E! at 8:00 p.m.

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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+ Fan Fiction Friday: 10 Sapphic Slayer Stories (Where No Witches Die)

Willow and Tara in love (and alive) forever!

+ Pretty Little Liars Episode 608 Recap: New Romantics

Aria asks Emily to prom and she says no!

+ Dannielle Owens-Reid Needs Your Help Making a Documentary About Every LGBT Character In American TV History

She knows who killed Jenny Schecter.

+ Orange Is the New Black Episode 309 Recap: Rumspringa Natural Good-Time Family-Band Solution

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.

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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: 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Hollywood Game Night

NBC, July 17

Jane Lynch doing her best Jane Lynch once a week with other celebrities!

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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!)

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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.

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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?

Here’s 35 LGBTQ Female TV Characters of Color Who Made 2014 A Very Queer Year

2014 was a remarkable year for queer women on scripted television. Five years ago, broadcast and cable networks clocked in at 32 queer female characters, total. This year, they boasted over 100. When I started covering lesbian media back in 2008, we didn’t have enough content to split between five writers for one weekly column; these days, we couldn’t recap every show with a queer female character if we had a full-time army of writers. TV still has a long way to go, both in terms of the quantity and quality of writing for LGBTQ women and trans women in particular, but we have come a really long way in a really short amount of time.

One of the main things to cheer about this year was that there were more LGBTQ characters of color on television than ever before. I counted 34 on broadcast, cable and streaming TV services. That’s more than the total number of lesbian/bi characters on TV in 2009, which is good news! It’s not great news, but it’s good news!

The reason it’s not great is because of those 34 characters, ten of them won’t be returning in 2015 due to being killed off their shows, written off their shows, or having their shows cancelled. There’s some overlap here. Nenna (Crossbones), Tara (True Blood) and Rayna (Matador) were killed off, for example, but their shows were also cancelled. The other thing that makes it good-not-great news is that of the remaining women, only six can really be counted as main characters. And, of course, fictional queer women of color only make up about 30 percent of the total number of fictional queer women on TV, and it’s still painfully uncommon to see a same-sex couple on TV where both women are of color.

Like I said, we’ve got a long way to go.

But, it’s encouraging that the number of queer female characters on TV has increased 300 percent in five years. And it’s encouraging that it is becoming commonplace to add queer female characters to new TV shows, and that these characters won’t always be white. And it’s super encouraging that streaming TV services are making broadcast network models of making television completely obsolete. Things are changing faster than I ever thought possible, visibility-wise. So, as we keep pushing forward for equality in mainstream media, let’s celebrate the 34 queer characters of color who helped usher in one of the most promising years of LGBT TV in history.

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Adriana Mendez, The Bridge

FX didn’t renew The Bridge for a third season, but for 26 exciting episodes, Adriana gave Lois Lane a run for her money when it came to investigative reporting.

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Arika, Dominion

I don’t want to spoil the dozen surprise plot twists and turns of Syfy’s Dominion, but I will spoil this one: Arika isn’t who she says she is, and that includes the part where she pretends to be into doing it with David Whale (played by Anthony Head Stewart, so: Old Man Giles, basically).

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Callie Torres, Grey’s Anatomy

She may have called it quits with Arizona this season, but she’s not calling it quits on being one of the most kickass surgeons at Seattle Grace.

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Camilla and Jocelyn, East Los High

This couple surprised us in the very best way on season two of Hulu’s original drama.

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Carolyn Hill, Under the Dome

First, her wife died. Then, the Dome’s magnetization caused her house to knock her out. Then, she was almost shot for discovering a stockpile of food and supplies. But Carolyn survived Stephen King’s hellscape, and she’ll be back for season three!

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Diana Barrigan, White Collar

USA finally pulled the plug on White Collar this year after a six-episode mini-season, and while the show never gave Diana the screentime she deserved, they also didn’t brutally axe-murder her to further the plot of the three main white guys on the show. Progress!

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Emily Fields, Pretty Little Liars

She will go down as one of the most progressive lesbian characters in the history of television. This year, she even scissored a resurrected ghost.

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Kalinda Sharma, The Good Wife

Kalinda’s story was on the back burner for many of the early episodes of season six, but she’s back in the thick of things now. She’s even building a relationship with Lana that might actually be serious.

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Kay, Marry Me

Tymberlee Hill‘s “soft butch lipstick flannel queen” is the best new original queer character of the 2014-2015 TV season, hands down.

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Korra and Asami Sato, The Legend of Korra

It’s canon, y’all.

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Lena Adams-Foster, The Fosters

2014 was an emotionally devastating year for Lena, but at least she and Stef finally got rid of that sex-killing hospital bed Annie Potts bought them.

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Luisa Alver, Jane the Virgin

Accidentally artificially inseminated the wrong woman because she was in shock that her wife cheated on her? Check. Slept with her step-mom? Check. Tossed into an asylum? Check, check. Luisa lives in Miami, but it might as well be Rosewood.

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M-Chuck, Survivor’s Remorse

She’s the sister of an NBA legend in the making, but M-Chuck is the real superstar of her family. She keeps them together. She doesn’t pull punches. And sometimes she makes out with ladies in church.

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Max, Black Sails

Max is a sex worker in a brothel in Nassau who finds true love with Eleanor Guthrie for a hot second before things get bad like they always do when pirates come to town.

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Nyssa al Ghul, Arrow

The only good thing about Sara Lance getting murdered is it opened the door for Nyssa Al Ghul to finally make her way back to Starling City to settle some scores. She’ll be back in 2015, too, with Flashback Sara at her side!

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Poussey Washington, Orange Is the New Black

We cannot get enough of this character, which was easily one of the most beloved of the year.

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Renee Montoya, Gotham

A kickass Latina lesbian of color who re-won the heart of the woman who is engaged to the whitest white hero in the history male whitedom. And she did it while taking down bad guys and wearing heels! If you thrive on the tears of fanboys, Gotham is your eternal sustenance.

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Santana Lopez, Glee

She won back Brittany. She won Rachel’s Broadway role. And in the (merciful) final season of Glee, she is actually getting gay married. Who’d have thunk it back in season one when she was just a lesbian throwaway joke? Four for you, Santana Lopez. You go, Santana Lopez. (And none for Ryan Murphy bye.)

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Shana Fring, Pretty Little Liars

She turned out to be a maniac who died by falling three feet off a theater stage, but at least we still got to see her in flashbacks/the multi-camera funeral her family filmed from different angles and uploaded to YouTube.

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Sophia Burset, Orange Is the New Black

Laverne Cox didn’t come close to having enough to do in season two of Orange Is the New Black. She was fierce as hell, but super underused. Season three is going to be her time to shine, we’re sure of it.

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Tara Thornton, True Blood

Another casualty of 2014 on another TV show that lasted three seasons past its expiration date. Ah, Tara. You really were too good for this world.

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Unique Adams, Glee

There are rumors that Unique’s class of New Directions won’t be back for the final season of the show, but I’ve Stopped Beleivein’ anything about Glee until I see it with my own bleeding eyes.

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Reagan, Faking It

There’s a lot to love about this 19-year-old DJ who succeeded in pulling Amy away from her crush on her straight best friend, Karma, like that she’s awesome and a feminist and hot and also that she’s Not Karma.

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Kate, Last Tango in Halifax

Thank the gods of Public Television that they brought this show (legally) across the pond for us. Kate and Caroline are one of the sweetest queer couples we’ve seen in ages.

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Nenna, Crossbones

The show only lasted a minute, but it was a beautiful minute of Tracy Ifeachor playing a lesbian pirate.

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Dr. Jean Fisherman, The Mindy Project

Jean made her entrance with a Sweeps Weeks-style lesbian kiss of a very straight Mindy, but we were willing to overlook it because there was so much to love about her character. Now all we need is more of her.

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Brook Soso, Orange Is the New Black

It turns out Piper 2.0 might actually be even nuttier than Original Piper, which always makes for good game on Orange Is the New Black.

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Reyna, Matador

Reyna was one of way too many lesbian characters that were murdered on TV this year, but at least El Ray pulled the plug on the show in a moment of sweet comeuppance after the end of the first season.

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Natalie, Switched at Birth

In addition to being a woman of color, Natalie is the only deaf lesbian on TV since Marlee Matlin‘s Jodie Learner on The L Word. She refuses to wear a dress to prom, refuses to give up her Prom King crown, and refuses to stop making out with her girlfriend in her school’s hallways. She’s pretty badass.

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Lt. Alisha Granderson, The Last Ship

Much like Ming-Na Wen‘s character on Stargate Universe, Lt. Granderson leaves her girlfriend on earth to go do stuff in space. Specifically, she’s looking for a cure for a virus that wiped out 80 percent of the world’s population. So, like Interstallar without Matthew Mcconaughey mansplaining everything the whole time.

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Suzanne Warren, Orange Is the New Black

Uzo Aduba deserves every award nomination she’s pulled down for her nuanced, powerful portrayal of Suzanne in Orange Is the New Black‘s second season. She was the highlight in every single way.

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Tituba, Salem

Is she canonically queer? Is she not? Let me just quote Rachel here: “I mean, what kind of a world do we want to live in, where we watch someone have gay witch sex and then try to second-guess it?” And there you have it!

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Dani, Glee

She only showed up for one episode of Glee in 2014, but she did it in so much style.

Boob(s on Your) Tube: Is Kalinda Sharma Accidentally in Love on The Good Wife?

Last week was a lame week for queer ladies on television. Luisa didn’t return to fight for her medical license on Jane the Virgin; Renee Montoya didn’t turn up and kick any asses on Gotham; Kay would have been as sweet/hilarious as always on Marry Me, but NBC didn’t give us a new episode; Nyassa al Ghul didn’t sneak back into town on Arrow to avenge Sara’s death. And just when you thought Portia de Rossi’s Scandal character was going to get caught doing lesbian things, it turns out she’s boning the (male) vice-president. Plus, this week was the last week of Survivor’s Remorse. Booooo, TV gods! Get your shit together!

On the upside, I got a hot tip about a Sons of Anarchy storyline involving a transgender woman’s relationship with “a normally disgustingly messed up hetero man,” so I will catch up on that this week and report back to you on Friday, when Boob(s on Your) Tube returns to its regularly scheduled time because I am back to my regularly scheduled life.

Here are the teensy-tiny handful of homosexual happenings from TV last week.

The Good Wife

Sundays on CBS at 9:00 p.m.

You know it’s slim pickings when the best lezzer stuff on TV is The Good Wife. I mean, don’t get me wrong: Kalinda Sharma was once the most fascinating bisexual character on TV, but she’s been riding in the backseat for a couple of seasons now, and the show has never done a super-awesome job with her lady-lovin’ side — but Lana Delaney is back, y’all, and Kalinda is kind of falling in love with her!

Kalinda spent most of the episode working with Cary on his upcoming trial, from the comfort of her own apartment, where Lana was sleeping near her and smooching her and tousling her hair affectionately. Kalinda even stayed awake to watch her sleep, like girlfriends do. And just when it looked like she was creeping so she could steal Lana’s FBI key card like Bishop told her to, she sneaked it out of Lana’s purse and broke it in half so no one can get their hands on it and exploit her.

So sexy. So sweet.

Now, more than ever, I’m convinced Kalinda is going to get murdered before the season is done.

The Walking Dead

Sundays on AMC at 10:00 p.m.

Tara almost got her face eaten right off by a zombie this week, but my girlfriend says Eugene saved her and that this is the longest any lesbian has ever lived on a post-apocalyptic TV show. Keep on living, Tara! There is no end to stock photos of “dog/cat zombies.”

Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:00 p.m.

M-Chuck didn’t have much to do in the season finale of Survivor’s Remorse. She offered to go down on a friend of hers who works at the salon to help her get over her crush on Cam, and she threatened to beat up Reggie’s ex-girlfriend, but the season’s last episode was mostly about Cam’s endorsement deals and personal drama. At least Starz has already announced that M-Chuck & Co. will be back for a second season in 2015!

Top Chef: Boston

Wednesdays on Bravo at 10:00 p.m.

This week’s Top Chef was almost a kick in the teeth because lesbian contestant Melissa King got the “going home” edit for sure.

In the Quickfire Challenge, sponsored by Reynolds (Makers of Fine Foils & Wraps), Melissa chose to go head-to-head with Katie, and she won with a cold-smoked scallop. But during the Elimination Challenge, her cold gazpacho lost all of its texture overnight and was thin and watery by the time it arrived at the judges’ table. Add that to the part where she was talking about how good her technique is at the beginning of the episode, and you know why I started panicking about her getting kicked off.

She did land in the bottom three, but in some kind of miracle situation, asshole Aaron got kicked off instead of her! Whew!

Team TV Coverage You May Have Missed

+ Transparent Episode 108 Recap: I Want To Be Happy For Two More Hours

+ Faking It Episode 208 Recap: The Flavor Of The Month Is Lezberry Blast

+ Orange Is The New Black Episode 213 Recap: And I Will Never Finger Her

+ Fan Fiction Friday: Glee’s 10 Hottest Lesbian Sex Scenes

Also also also, we’re getting close to ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas, which includes special episodes of The Fosters and Pretty Little Liars this year. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for December 8th (Fosters) and 9th (Liars)!

Boob(s on Your Tube): Lesbian Moms on Red Band Society, Tired Stereotypes on Marry Me

Hi, neighbor. Welcome back to Boob(s on Your) Tube, your weekly round-up of all the queer stuff on TV. Please forgive me for the lateness of this batch of recaps. They are posting four days behind schedule due to a valuable lesson I learned in the early morning hours last Thursday at an airport customer service desk. And that lesson is: When you get punched in the jaw, it actually has the potential to cause a lot more damage to your face/mouth region than what they show you on Teen Titans Go, proving once again that TV is better. And so here we go.

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The Good Wife

Sundays on CBS at 9:00 p.m.

Kalinda finally broke up with Cary on this week’s The Good Wife, but sadly didn’t run back to the (semi-)open arms of FBI Special Agent Lana Delaney. In fact, I get the distinct feeling that Kalinda’s ending isn’t going to be so happy at all when Archie Panjabi waltzes off to headline her own show. And by “not happy” what I mean is, I think she’s going to die. Just a feeling I have based on nothing more than my intuition and the fact that every bisexual character of color gets axe-murdered on TV at some point.

I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. What I’m right about, though, is that I need Kalinda’s trench coat collection. Those jackets continue to be the best characters on The Good Wife.

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The Walking Dead

Sundays on AMC at 10:00 p.m.

Tara didn’t show up on this week’s The Walking Dead, apparently, which probably means she’s still alive? I’m just going to assume she is still alive because I want to post another “zombie dog” photo from Shutterstock.

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Top Chef: Boston

Wednesdays on Bravo at 10:00 p.m.

This week’s Top Chef featured my all-time favorite kind of food — pub food! The chefs had to serve Norm from Cheers, and then they took over an Italian restaurant owned by a former Top Chef Masters contestant and had to serve vegan dishes to Emmy Rossum, whom Padma kept referring to as “my girlfriend Emmy Rossum.”

Melissa King didn’t get much screentime this week, which is always a blessing and a curse on reality TV. A blessing because it means you’re for sure not getting eliminated. A curse for viewers who have fallen in love with Melissa King’s perfect, smiling face. Melissa King served Emmy Rossum some risotto instead of noodle pasta because of gluten and Emmy Rossum loved it, which we know because she kept saying like, “Emmy Rossum loves this.” Even though Melissa’s team (the grey one) didn’t have an Italian menu that was as appealing as the other teams’, her fresh pasta dish was the hardest to prepare and she did it well, so she was safe.

In the end, James (the guy with the full-arm Patrick Swayze tattoo) and Rebecca were sent packing with their knives, and Gregory (the guy who keeps winning all the challenges and whose eyebrows are so alive they’re about to jump off his face) revealed he is gay and has a huge crush on Woody Harrelson.

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:00 p.m.

Not much M-Chuck to report on this week’s Survivor’s Remorse. She didn’t even sleep with the real estate agent who sold Cam his new house. She did, however, say the word “back-motherfucking-yard,” meaning that she is only three steps away from passing Bette “Mary Fucking Poppins” Porter on the Best Lesbian Swearer podium.

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Jane the Virgin

Mondays on The CW at 9:00 p.m.

Luisa was not on this week’s episode of Jane the Virgin, but her lover/stepmom sure was. She spent a lot of time asking Rafael where his sister had gotten off to, while he looked uninterested and said she was probably on a bender. At the end of the episode, Rose called up Luisa to tell her she has to come back by the next episode or Jane will win a default judgement against her for malpractice and Rafael will lose his shares of the hotel.

This show continues to be my favorite new one of the season. The diversity! The feminism! The way it laughs at itself! If you’re not watching, why are you not watching? Even when Luisa isn’t in an episode, it’s still worthwhile TV!

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Red Band Society

Wednesdays on Fox at 9:00 p.m.

Pretty Little Liars’ Jessica DiLaurentis, who is most famous for burying her daughter alive and giving away her magical parrot, returned to Red Band Society this week to hold her other TV daughter’s hand while she received a pacemaker for her failing heart. Just kidding, she showed up to sign the papers so Kara could get a new heart, and then rushed off to take some meetings. But when Kara woke up, her mom was there, crying by her bedside, partially because Kara isn’t getting any closer to getting a new heart because Kara isn’t getting any closer to passing her drug tests. And also because Kara has a shitty attitude. Kara said that if her mom can make the change from being a straight person to being a lesbian person who is married to Kara’s former nanny, Kara herself can change to be less of a jerk and move on up the heart transplant list. Jessica DiLaurentis explained that she changed because of Daniella, because sometimes a person is so special to you, you want to be better for them. Kara decided she might have that kind of person in her life: a nameless hot guy who chews on toothpicks.

Moral: Teenagers dying of cancer are still teenagers. See also: John Green.

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Marry Me

Tuesdays on NBC at 9:00 p.m.

Last week, 12aqua said Marry Me feels very cliche w/r/t gender stereotypes and also very heterosexual despite all the gay characters, something I don’t disagree with at all — but I am sticking with it for a while because the tone of it reminds me of Happy Endings, New Girl and The Mindy Project, all three of which I hated in the beginning for the exact reasons 12aqua articulated. Now, though, they are (or were, RIP Happy Endings) some of my favorite sitcoms on TV. And unlike those shows, Marry Me features a black lesbian character,  something that is way too rare on television for me to miss out on.

This week, Marry Me told the story of Annie and Jake’s sixth “Doomiversary,” the annual celebration of their first date, a day of the year that always ends in disaster. Fire alarms getting pulled, people getting kicked in the face by horses, cars exploding. You know, signs from the universe that a couple is destined to make each other miserable for all eternity. But it turns out that every year’s catastrophes were accidentally wrought by Annie and Jake’s friends. And it was Kay who kicked the whole thing off by sleeping with Jake’s ex-fiance, Fantasia Yang, near their Annie and Jake’s first anniversary. Kay said Fantasia Yang was “full on cray-ola but hoooooot.” Annie was appeased when she found out Jake picked her over a “crazy hot bisexual Asian chick.”

So, yeah. Lots of stereotypes from all directions, apparently. I won’t give up, though. I’m in it to win it like a Shane McCutcheon on Boobr.

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Team TV Coverage You May Have Missed

Transparent Episode 107 Recap: Pink Revisions

Grey’s Anatomy Episode 1106 Recap: This Could Be Us But You Playin’

Orange is the New Black Episode 212 Recap: It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I (Don’t Really) Feel Fine

Faking It Episode 207 Recap: Lesbians Move Fast

Top 10 Queer and Feminist-y Moments of Degrassi Season 13

Gotham Episode 107 Recap: Baby, Now We’ve Got Bad Blood

Boob(s On Your) Tube: Lesbian Halloween Hijinks, Top Chef’s Top Top and Telenova Stepmom Sex

Welcome to week three of Boob(s On Your) Tube, your one-stop shop for (nearly) all the LGBTQ TV that happened this week. Thank you for your tips via Twitter and the comments section here on Autostraddle dot com; together we will frolic through this brave new world where queer characters are not hoarded on premium cable or trotted out during sweeps weeks as ratings stunts. It would feel too good to be true if showrunners would stop murdering every woman who loves other women. (Still glaring at you, Arrow.) Bu let’s talk about the good stuff!

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Marry Me

Tuesdays on NBC at 9:00 p.m.

A big ol’ thank you to Penny, who commented last week to say NBC’s new Casey Wilson-centric sitcom, Marry Me, has a lesbian character. And yes, it does. And yes, she is fantastic. Her name is Kay and the way we find out she’s gay is she casually mentions in conversation that she got “nipped” on Boobr, “a dating app for lesbians, like Grindr is for gay men or Tindr is for straight men and whores.”

Marry Me‘s premise is as trite as it gets: A neurotic thirty-something flips out when her boyfriend of six years won’t propose to her — but the show is surprisingly good. For starters, Casey Wilson, who plays Annie, is one of the most underrated comedic actresses working today. (RIP Happy Endings!) The cast has great chemistry that makes the relationships believable right away. And it’s just really fucking funny. I have snort-laughed at least once during every episode.

The show also includes a whole handful of gay characters. Annie’s dads are gay, and unlike Rachel Berry’s gay dads, these guys get actual screen time. Bonus awesomeness: They are played by SNL alum Tim Medows and Scandal‘s former Mr. Cyrus Beene, Dan Bucatinsky. Best of all is Kay, a black lesbian character whose sexuality just is what it is. Kay is played by Tymberlee Hill, who you might remember as Intern Claire from Grey’s Anatomy, but who I love most on Drunk History.

Best lines so far:

“I just got nipped on Boobr. I’m gonna go get it, hit it, then forget it.”

“Candy is sweeter when you beg people for it.”

“I am not going to help you stalk your ex-wife, again.”

And here is a picture of her in her Halloween costume from this week’s episode where she helps her buddy steal back a candy bowl from his ex-wife. Lesbian dinosaurs are my kryptonite.

If Happy Endings or New Girl is your jam, this is for you.

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The Good Wife

Sundays on CBS at 9:00 p.m.

After last week’s homosexy love fest, this week’s The Good Wife was a bit of a let down. No lady parts smooshin’ up against each other at all. But one very good thing did happen: Kalinda’s kind-of boyfriend Cary was banned from seeing her. He’s out on bail awaiting trial and the judge thinks Kalinda is a bad influence. That is fine by me. Maybe it means Kalinda will start having scenes with other characters again.

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Degrassi

Tuesdays on TeenNick at 9:00 p.m.

Degrassi‘s 14th(!) season kicked off this week. We’ll have a recap of the entire Imogen/Jack situation leading up to Season 14 for you on Monday, so you can look forward to that!

It is bisexual cutie pie Imogen’s last semester in school/on the show and I’ve got big hopes for her for her final hurrah, which is ridiculous because 70 percent of all Degrassi characters die in the end, due to texting and driving and other various PSA-type dumb moves.

At the end of last season, Imogen kissed Jacqueline “Jack” Jones in the parking lot of Degrassi High, so I was hoping for some more of that Nickelodeon lovin’ in the season 14 premiere. Alas, Claire’s pregnancy/abortion dilemma took up all of our time. We did get an adorable peek and adorable Imogen, though, just for a second.

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Arrow

Wednesdays on the CW at 9:00 p.m.

Last week on Arrow, Nyssa al Ghul showed up asking about her ex-girlfriend, Sara Lance, who died in the season three premiere because she was a bisexual TV person. This week, Nyssa found out Sara was dead — and buried in the grave that bore her name when she was only fake dead, like some kind of Alison DiLaurentis situation — and swore to take revenge on Sara’s killer. Mostly that involved calling Sara “her beloved” and saying stuff like “I loved her with my heart and soul” and stalking around in the shadows and yelling at Oliver, which I approve of mightily.

Two very weird things about this episode: 1) Nyssa had more screen time this week than in any week when Sara was alive. 2) She didn’t help solve the mystery of Sara’s death at all.

At the end of the day, she and Oliver reached an impasse w/r/t Malcolm Merlyn (that’s John Barrowman to you Whovians who refuse to watch CW superhero shows), and so she returned home to the League of Assassins and Oliver returned to his ArrowCave. No plot progress and not even a single make out flashback between Nyssa and Sara.

Forgive me, but I’m still willing to trade Laurel to see Sara resurrected (again).

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The Walking Dead

Sundays on AMC at 10:00 p.m.

Lesbian Tara is still alive! The Walking Dead is still too gross for me to watch! Shutterstock still thinks dogs and cats dressed as witches are zombies! Happy Halloween!

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:00 p.m.

I know I’ve been on the fence about Survivor’s Remorse, but this week, it pulled me in and sold me.

Cam is working on building his brand and bringing his family together, so he chooses a high profile church for them to attend together. M-Chuck’s hookup from the night before comes with them, broken heels and all, not because M-Chuck invited her but because when M-Chuck and Cam’s mom said, “Get in the car,” she got in the car. M-Chuck holds the woman’s hand in church, even though she doesn’t know her name. It throws the pastor, which pisses off M-Chuck, so she tells Cam she’s not going back.

Cam has a chat with the pastor the next day, offering him a giant tithe and saying he hopes they can leave the Old Testament gay bashing in medieval times. The pastor agrees, but in church the next Sunday, he asks all the gay folks in the congregation to stand up — he knows they exist, he’s seen Glee — and tells them to get out of his church.

M-Chuck rushes the pulpit, but her family holds her back. In the end, Cam decides it’s not the church for him. He’s going to focus on doing right instead of listening to bigoted Bible thumpers.

A+ episode, and boy was I ever wrong about not loving M-Chuck.

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Top Chef: Boston

Wednesdays on Bravo at 10:00 p.m.

You guys, I think lesbian contestant Melissa King might actually have a shot to win this thing! She’s getting a really good edit. She’s sweet and smart and a good chef and this is the second week in a row that she’s been one of the top contestants in the elimination challenge! Here’s how it shook down:

This week’s Quick Fire Challenge was to cook with tea because of the Boston Tea Party, and Melissa prepared one of the best dishes. Then they were off to Fenway Park to cook a dish using either popcorn, peanuts or pretzels. Melissa made corn and ramp soup with pickled ramps, fried calamari, truffle butter and bacon popcorn. And the judges loved it! She landed in the top three, but lost out to Gregory, who kind of seems unstoppable right now. He is this season’s Nina. But Melissa hugged Gregory and patted him on the back and said, “Good job, man! Good job!”

Because she is the sweetest damn thing.

Sadly, Awful Aaron is still around, but everyone hates him now. I hate him even more this week because he said if he beat out a culinary arts teacher, it would be an “iron in the back” for chefs who don’t have classical training. What even?

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Jane the Virgin

Mondays on The CW at 9:00 p.m.

Luisa is still getting it with her stepmom on this week’s Jane the Virgin. At a family getaway, they do some scissoring, etc. in Rose/her dad’s hotel room. They take a breather and decide to eat some powdered donuts to regain their strength, but while Luisa is out getting the snacks, she peeps her dad and has to pull the fire alarm to keep him out of his own room where his wife is lounging around in post-coital bliss. It’s a close call, but ultimately no lesbians are harmed.

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Team TV Coverage You May Have Missed

Transparent Episode 106 Recap: Act Natural
Just when you think a family dinner can’t be more awkward than a party thrown by Lucille Bluth.

Gotham Episode 106 Recap: Where Does the Good Go?
Renee Montoya is back, and so is the Penguin.

Faking It Episode 206 Recap: Can I Have Your Number I Think We Should Go Out
Amy meets another lesbian (finally) at a rave.

Grey’s Anatomy Episode 1105 Recap: Is This The End of Calzona?
BRB, listening to Tegan and Sara and drinking wine from a box forever.

Best boob(s on your) tube this week, go!

Boob(s on Your) Tube: Sexytime Hijinks on The Good Wife and Doc’s Ex-Girlfriend on Jane the Virgin

Welcome to week two of Homosexual TV Moments We Didn’t Recap and You Didn’t See Due to Your DVR Being 97 Percent Full Because Your Girlfriend Won’t Delete the Last Season of Grey’s Anatomy Even Though You Can Stream it Now For Free. Unfortunately, that isn’t an SEO-friendly column title. Neither is Riese’s suggestion of Boob(s on Your) Tube, but we’re going with it. You can thank her in the comments.

And so here they are. (This week’s boobs.) (The ones you maybe missed.) (On your tube.)

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The Good Wife

Sundays on CBS at 9:00 p.m.

Hallelujah, the heavens declare the glory of Kalinda Sharma! (Again, finally!) On this week’s The Good Wife, Kalinda swaggers her bad ass right over to FBI HQ, a place that is home to many secrets and law enforcement officers, but most importantly is the place of employee of one Ms. Lana Delaney. Kalinda sleeps with her ex-girlfriend for information, which is a total Kalinda move: brandishing her sexual prowess like a lightsaber to gain insider information. And it seems like that’s her only game. She even shuts down Lana’s post-coital story about coming out to her mom.

But that’s like season two Kalinda stuff. The best part about Kalinda’s arc in “Shiny Objects” is we find out Lana actually went snooping around in Kalinda’s stuff, which is an enormous turn-on to Kalinda, because she is so into the idea that someone is as good at playing the game as she is. It actually causes her to open up to Lana in ways she hasn’t done before. Sadly, “You’re as cunning and duplicitous as me!” isn’t exactly the vulnerable sweet-nothings Lana wanted Kalinda to whisper in her ear. So, they’re back off. For now. (But they were sexy, sexy, sexy for a hot second.)

On the double plus side, Kalinda might also be off with Cary. Seems like he thought they were exclusive.

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Arrow

Wednesdays on the CW at 9:00 p.m.

When I first heard the rumor that Arrow was going to kill off Sara “Canary” Lance, I was pretty livid. (I’m still pretty livid. How many female characters, especially queer ones, have to die to propel dudebros’ stories forward before we stuff this trope in the refrigerator once and for all?) (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. offed two lesbian/bi DC characters in a three-episode span for Kate Kane’s sake!) I calmed down a little bit when I heard we’d be getting a several episode arc with Sara’s ex-girlfriend, super assassin Nyssa al Ghul.

This week, I waited. And waited. And waited, waited, waited. This episode features everyone stomping around and talked about how they have failed Canary. Finally, in the closing seconds of the episode, Nyssa shows up, bow and arrow drawn, demanding to know what the actual hell happened to Sara.

It took long enough, but I’m glad to finally see someone whose outrage matches my own! A little bird — sorry, too soon — told me we’d be getting some Sara/Nyssa flashbacks. That better be true.

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The Walking Dead

Sundays on AMC at 10:00 p.m.

Good news! According to my sources who are not terrified of guts and blood, lesbian zombie fighter Tara has lived through another week of the apocalypse! She is traveling around with two people, Maggie and Glenn, both of whom are good guys, I think, and my source (my girlfriend, okay?) says Tara has a lesbi-crush on Maggie. Again, no you may not have a photo due to my weak stomach, but I did find you another picture of what Shutterstock is calling a “zombie kitten,” so you’re welcome.

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:00 p.m.

In my mini-cap of last week’s Survivor’s Remorse, I called M-Chuck, the black lesbian character, “aggressively gay.” Several commenters pointed out that using the word “aggressive” was crappy because it plays into a damaging racial stereotype. I apologized in the comments, but I want to reiterate here that I’m committed to getting stuff right, and I got that wrong, and I really am sorry. I will be more vigilant about my language going forward.

This week, Cam’s family convinces him to visit a kid in a coma for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Cam is reluctant to go because he doesn’t want to seem opportunistic, but M-Chuck convinces him that there’s nothing wrong with benefitting from doing something legitimately good for people. If he can help a grieving family and land a contract with Nike at the same time, there’s no shame in that. She goes with Cam to the hospital, mostly to make a play for nurses, and after she hits up her brother for some money to take one of the hot ladies out for coffee, he puts her on the payroll as his PR person so she can earn the cash to keep up with her Shane McCutcheon lifestyle.

Cam needs M-Chuck’s PR help right away, actually, because the kid he visits in the hospital wakes up from his coma and starts demanding things. Like strippers, for example. He pretends to be into learning to play ball but uses it as an excuse to get Cam alone and ask for strippers. M-Chuck works it out by letting him peep on her in the shower — and then the kid dies at the dinner table. Hashtag dramedy?

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Top Chef: Boston

Wednesdays on Bravo at 10:00 p.m.

Lesbian contestant Melissa King gets a lot more screen time in this season’s second episode, due in large part to being on a team with some screw-ups. During the Quickfire Challenge, she makes fritto misto with pollock, mushrooms and razor clams. Padma calls it “a tempura platter,” which frankly sounds fucking delicious. Padma is a firecracker this season. I wish James would show her his full-blown upper arm tattoo of Patrick Swayze. I’d like to get her read on that.

During the Elimination Challenge, Melissa teams up with Joy and Ron, and they get along better than any reality team in the history of the world — unfortunately all their amiability makes for some dumb decisions. Serving their veal dish almost completely raw, for example. Sadly, Joy gets the axe (cleaver?) because of it

I say “sadly” because there is a wanker to beat the band this season. His name is Aaron and his deal is molecular gastronomy and he is a giant, giant dick. This week, it took him two hours to make some jelly that the judges hated so much. I was rooting for him to go home in tears. Alas. But hey, sweet Melissa lives to see another day!

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Bad Judge

Thursdays on NBC at 9:00 p.m.

A couple of folks tweeted me to say there were lesbians on Kate Walsh’s Bad Judge this week. I asked around and here is what I found out from Brittani:

A random lesbian hit on Kate Walsh because she had an SUV. It was like ten seconds of the show. Also that show is terrible — but they seem really proud for coming up with the name Tedward, which I get.

Now you know.

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Jane the Virgin

Mondays on The CW at 9:00 p.m.

Jane the Virgin is my favorite new thing happening on TV this season. In last week’s TV round-up, turkish said the show feels an awful lot like Ugly Betty, which also played brilliantly on telenova themes and somehow managed to turn a weird, uncomfortable concept into a feminist home run, and I completely agree.

This week, Dr. Luisa, the OBGYN who accidentally impregnated Jane, finds herself alone in her office with a bottle of vodka. Not a good idea for anyone, really, but especially not a recovering alcoholic. Into this danger zone wanders Luisa’s ex-lover, Rose, who offers her some comforting words, a shoulder to cry on, and also sexual intercourse. Yes, they do it. No, they do not do it on-screen. A very weird choice, actually. We just hear the sounds and see a title card with an “XXX” on it.

But that is not as weird as this: Luisa attends a party at the end of the episode at her brother’s hotel. He is pissed at her because he put his name on the line to help her open her practice and if she gets hit with a lawsuit (and she’s definitely going to get hit with a lawsuit), his hotel could be used as collateral in the settlement. He tries to kick her out of the party, but their dad tells him to stop being a jerk. Family is family. And guess who else is family? Oh, it’s Rose. Ex-love Rose of the “XXX” title card. She is married to Luisa’s dad. Rose is Luisa’s stepmom.

Turns out telenovelas are my jam, man.

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Team TV Coverage You May Have Missed

Pretty Little Liars Halloween Special recap
It’s nice to reflect on all the lesbian love Emily has managed to squeeze in between murders.

Faking It 205 recap
Birthdays! Scavenger hunts! Ball pits!

Top 10 black sitcoms from the ’90s
No, seriously, remember when there were more than two?

20 stupidly easy things the Pretty Little Liars could do to stay alive
How hard is it to turn on a damn light?

Transparent 105 recap
Now with a handy illustrated feelings chart to help you process!

If you see any lesbian/bi/trans/queer women on your teevee and you’d like to see them mentioned in Boob(s On Your) Tube, hit me up on Twitter during the week!

This Week In Gay TV: Bisexual Hunger Games on Gotham, Sexting Lesbians on Survivor’s Remorse

Hello, Autostraddlers! My name is Heather Hogan and I’m a new editor here at the greatest website of our generation! I’ve spent the last six years working as the senior editor at AfterEllen, writing about all the queer pop culture things under the sun. And now, finally, like the B-level superheroes who got the call to join The Avengers and The Justice League, I have arrived at your doorstep, ready to laugh and learn and knock out the occasional villain with you. You’ll see me around all over the place, I hope. Please say hi. I’m excited to know and love you.

It’s a pretty rad time to be alive and able to afford cable if you’re a lady who loves ladies and also TV. We’ve got lesbian doctors saving lives, bisexual private investigators playing politics, gay teenagers falling in love, a queer zombie hunter, a queer pirate, queer superheroes, and enough lesbian cops and lesbian moms to start an army. (With Stef Foster of The Fosters as commander, of course, because she’s both a lesbian mom and a lesbian cop. She’s the triple word score on your gay TV scrabble board!)

GLAAD counts 75 lesbian/bisexual female characters on TV these days, which, as Riese pointed out a couple of weeks ago, is maybe a little misleading since several of those characters haven’t participated in any queer shenanigans in years and others are guest characters who only pop up once or twice a season.

But there’s still a lot to love! And a lot more than we can fully recap! And, honestly, a lot more than you’d want us to fully recap because do you really care what kind of bollocky wankshite the 2.5 Men get up to while waiting for Amber Tamblyn‘s character to do a lesbian thing? No, of course not. Because you have a functioning brain.

With your needs and feelings in mind (all day every day), we’ve decided to roll out a weekly round-up of all the gay stuff that happened on TV that didn’t warrant a full recap. It’s like a weekend potluck. A buffet of delicious leftovers. A smorgasbord of sapphic delights. No really, we can’t think of what to title this feature (right now we’re going with “This Week In Gay TV”), so feel free to offer suggestions!

Gotham

Mondays on Fox at 9:00 p.m.

I’ll be recapping Gotham weekly starting next Wednesday, but let me bring you up to speed with what’s going on in that pre-Batman cesspool of corruption and greed. As you know, Gotham City Police Department is home to kickass lesbian Latina detective Renee Montoya, who we know had a Thing with Jim Gordon’s fiancé, Barbara Kean. Over the past two weeks, we’ve found out just how deep their Thing really went. (Ahem.)

Because Babs is either agoraphobic or under house arrest or something, she never leaves her loft, but that’s okay because Renee Montoya doesn’t mind a little mild breaking and entering every now and then. In episode 103, “The Balloonman,” Renee catches Barbara taking a bubble bath and smoking a joint in the middle of the day to ease the anxiety of knowing Jim Gordon is going to come home at some point and get his boringness all over everything. The ladies have a chat about how they were once addicted to drugs and alcohol and each other — like, standing toe-to-toe with their faces three inches apart, they have this conversation — and just when they’re about to get their homosexy smooch on, Babs pulls away and tells Renee to skedaddle.

Renee warns Barbara for the hundredth time that Jim is in bed with mob boss Carmine Falcone, which isn’t true, but Renee doesn’t know that because all signs point to it being a fact.

In this week’s episode, “Arkham,” Barbara finally confesses to Jim that she had a relationship “of only a year” with Detective Montoya, which pisses him off properly. He says it’s not because Barbara is bisexual, but because she lied to him, a thing that seems pretty true. They kind of break up and Barbara leaves the house for ten minutes, so really it’s a win-win.

Also, this week, Fish Mooney holds a Hunger Games-style contest to find a new crooner for her club. Requirements: She has to be able to sing, and convincingly seduce both men and women, and when faced with the possibility of unemployment must be willing to beat a potential co-worker to death with her fists. Fish finds her girl. She feels very happy/evil about it.

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Grey’s Anatomy

Thursdays on ABC at 8:00 p.m.

There was no Autostraddle recap of this week’s Grey’s Anatomy because there was no lesbian stuff at all on this week’s Grey’s Anatomy, presumably because the network’s entire season-long quotient of homosexuality was met in the 10:00 p.m. timeslot when How to Get Away with Murder‘s gay wannabe lawyer, Connor Walsh, had sex with every man on the show, and also the phrase “He did this thing to my ass that made my eyes water” was used.

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The Good Wife

Sundays on CBS at 9:00 p.m.

Archie Panjabi, who plays be-booted, leather jacketed bisexual PI Kalinda Sharma, is calling it quits with The Good Wife at the end of this season, probably because 20th Century Fox offered her a show of her own and she figured that she’d like that a lot more than the paltry screentime and crappy stories she’s endured these last few years on her own show.

To wit, this week, Kalinda spends her time reliving her affair with Peter. She promises Alicia she’ll keep quiet about it if Alicia decides to run for office. She also sits in the dark in a car with Bishop explaining that he lost his job because Alicia is running for office. That’s it. That’s all. Four minutes max. I don’t want to ignore Kalinda because she’s not in a relationship with another woman. I think that’s a dangerous, slippery slope that leads to bi erasure and the dismissal of a wide variety of queer experiences, but Kalinda’s story is so boring these days. Not because she’s not gaying it up around town, but because it’s bland and vanilla and beneath her.

Maybe they’ll bring back Lana for a Kalinda’s final hurrah.

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Arrow

Wednesdays on the CW at 9:00 p.m.

Two weeks ago, during the third season premiere of Arrow, bisexual badass Sara Lance took a couple of arrows to the chest and died. The show’s bosses say Sara’s death was necessary to advance the plot of other characters, a thing known as “getting fridged” in the comic book world. (As in, “But we had to brutally murder Green Lantern’s girlfriend and stuff her mangled body into a refrigerator for him to reach his true crime-fighting potential!”) Anyway, this week, Oliver & Co. found Sara’s body and carried it around and cried over it and raged over it and promised to seek vengeance against her killer. Apparently Sara’s ex-girlfriend, Nyssa al Ghul, is going to show up next week to bring some assassin realness to the hunt for justice.

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The Walking Dead

Sundays on AMC at 10:00 p.m.

In terms of what you’ll find here in these weekly TV round-ups, none of it will be bloody. I’m a clumsy puppy, terrified of thunder, and even the sight of fake blood makes me queasy. I asked around and found out some good news about this week’s season five premiere of The Walking Dead: Tara the Lesbian is still alive! No, you can’t have a screencap of Tara. You’re just going to have to trust me. I tried to get a screencap and accidentally saw some cannibals and couldn’t eat lunch. But this photo is what happened when I searched “kitten zombie” on Shutterstock, so.

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Survivor’s Remorse

Saturdays on Starz at 9:00 p.m.

There’s a very real chance you haven’t heard of Starz’s new show Survivor’s Remorse, so here’s the deal: It’s a six-episode series about a young basketball superstar named Cam Calloway who signs an enormous contract with a professional basketball team in Atlanta in his second year in the league. (The show didn’t buy the rights to actually use NBA lingo, so pretend I said he’s playing for the Hawks.) In the two episodes of the show that have aired so far, the main focus has been on the way Cam and his family deal with him suddenly becoming a multi-millionaire. The title alludes to the fact that Cam feels really guilty about making it out of the projects when so many of his friends didn’t have the chance.

One of the main characters is Cam’s older sister, M-Chuck, who is just super aggressively gay. It’s off-putting but also kind of refreshing, which confuses me a little bit. M-Chuck equates the number of smiley emoticons a girl sends her with the length of time the girl wants you to sit on her face. She spends her bathroom time looking for women to sext. She’s got a drawer full of vibrating dicks she offers to let her haters suck on.

I have mixed feelings about the show as a whole, which doesn’t always do justice to the weighty topics it tries to tackle, but I plan to keep watching. There are only four episodes left this season, but it’s already been renewed for a second.

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Top Chef: Boston

Wednesdays on Bravo at 10:00 p.m.

Season 12 of Top Chef kicked off this week and even though lesbian contestant Melissa King didn’t have much screen time, I want to mention her. First of all because her Bravo.com bio is redundantly amazing: “A self-proclaimed ‘cookie monster,’ she loves cookies!” And also because I want to talk about the hardcore shade Padma Lakshmi threw down this week. “I would like it if you would not only clean up your act but also your station,” is a thing she actually said. And then she spit out a pork belly. Hopefully, Lesbian Melissa King will have more to do in the coming weeks.

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Team TV Coverage You May Have Missed

Transparent 104 recap
Please gather three boxes of Kleenex before you click through to read this recap/watch this episode.

Jane the Virgin review
Despite its dicey premise, the CW’s new comedy-drama offers up lots of feminist elements and a lesbian gynecologist to boot.

Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word review
Higher Power Laverne Cox hosts the MTV documentary about the experience of seven transgender teenagers.

Faking It 204 recap
More Laverne Cox! And Amy processes her “drunken decision to take a baloney ride with Liam’s pony.”

A lesbian character and wild Julie Goldman appear on The Mindy Project
They’re girlfriends, it’s awesome, just watch it.

And that was your week in gay TV. Prayer circle for Imogen and Jack, who return for Degrassi‘s 14th season in ten days. And a human shield for The Walking Dead‘s Tara, who is probably doomed simply by nature of being a lesbian TV Tara.