Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter posted an article that suggested Amazon Prime Video has granted A League of Their Own four final episodes, a truncated second season. After we posted the news, we heard on good authority that, actually, the ALOTO team is still pushing for more than that. We’ve decided to join that fight — the #MoreThanFour campaign — by sharing what this show has meant to our TV Team.
When we asked how we could help, what we heard was, “Help Amazon Prime Video understand the impact of the series.” And so, we would also like to ask you to share YOUR stories in the comments. What sets A League of Their Own apart? What difference has it made in your life? What does it mean for the culture? Please share this post with your friends and fans and ask them to add their voices to the call!
“Top-to-bottom, the queer characters of A League of Their Own became full, heartfelt, messy human beings.”
Carmen Phillips, Editor in Chief
In the finale episode of A League of Their Own’s first season, the Peaches have lost their first two games against the Blue Sox, and if they lose one more — it’s over. They’re done. They’re out.
At a team practice, Carson returns to a book that was first given to her by her girlfriend and teammate, Greta, all the way back at the beginning of the show: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. It might seem strange for a motivational speech about baseball. But you see, it was never only ever about baseball.
“Let be something every minute, of every hour, of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry or have to much to eat… Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something, every blessed minute.”
That moment has been at the top of my mind lately because the full quote was tweeted out on Sunday by A League of Their Own co-creator Will Graham — likely, as we all now know, in the middle of prolonged, hard negotiation with Amazon Prime Video ahead of A League of Their Own’s supposedly shortened second season. Every Blessed Minute. The fact that A League of Their Own’s last message to fans was about being of service, making use, says more in and of itself than I’ll ever be able to write in this blurb. But I am going to try.
I could write about how hashtag #RepresentationMatters — a metric by which, of course, ALOTO knocks it out of the park (excuse the baseball pun). I recently said to colleagues that it should be considered the new gold standard. It’s not just that the show took an already beloved, classic property that has lived in the hearts and minds of a lot of us for decades and breathed a life into it that didn’t seem possible 30 years ago — that it took the racism, homophobia, that lived at the edges of Penny Marshall’s classic and instead turned it inside out onto the main stage. It’s that top-to-bottom the queer characters of A League of Their Own became full, heartfelt, messy human beings. It’s that Black and Latine queer characters were not merely made to exist as one-dimensional sidekicks or comic relief, but instead with their own interiority. It’s that a Black trans person’s story could be told and not be rooted in trauma, but in love — in family. It’s that we could have space to imagine ourselves in a past that is so often straightwashed and whitewashed that we’ve been force-fed to believe that we didn’t exist when nothing could be further from the truth.
But the truth of the matter is that I am not naive. I am clear eyed that television is first and foremost a business. When our shows get cancelled, that’s the narrative that’s reached for first. Oh it was too niche! It couldn’t find a large enough audience to justify the cost! That story has been retold so many times, by C-suite executives and mainstream media, and it’s rarely as black-and-white or clear cut as they want to make it seem. Prime Video does not release streaming numbers, but here is what we can tell and what we do know: Categorically, A League of Their Own was one of the streaming network’s highest rated shows last year; that it’s online engagement and brand awareness continues to grow week-to-week even months after its release — without any new push from Amazon; and that while it’s audience was primarily domestic, it was large, large enough to outpace other shows that have already been renewed. As the Editor in Chief of the largest LGBTQ+ women’s website, a website that heavily draws from TV/Film coverage, I can also tell you this — across the board, the engagement and traffic we received on A League of Their Own puts it in the elite company of the top three shows we covered last year. Period. We’ve already started planning for the second season as a cornerstone of our television coverage because, based on hard data, we have the utmost confidence that it would continue to be a hit for years to come. I only wish Amazon would do the same.
“They didn’t dip every single Black character and their storyline in turmoil, trauma, and pain. Instead they chose sweetness, smiles, and joy. THAT MATTERS.”
Shelli Nicole, Culture Editor
Here is the thing and I am about to use the fuck out of my “caps lock” key, so get ready babes.
It is so WILDLY RARE that Black queers, lesbians, and dykes are in historical things IN GENERAL, but it is extra rare when we are not slaves or magical negros in said historical things. THAT MATTERS. This show takes place in 1943 — the writers could have been incredibly lazy and pulled from some of really terrible times for Black folks and Black queer folks to get inspiration for the storylines of their Black characters. But you know what they did instead, WENT THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. They didn’t erase the reality but they didn’t dip every single Black character and their storyline in turmoil, trauma, and pain. Instead they chose sweetness, smiles, and joy. THAT MATTERS.
Do you know how DOPE it was to see Max Chapman being called a stud by the preacher’s wife that she was in love/lust with? How it felt to see her in that suit, or newsboy cap? How it felt for her to not have one but two brown skinned love interests? To see her have a best friend who loved and supported her? To see her make out with another Black person on screen?
Do you know how FLY it was to have Clance be this hot and talented comic book nerd? To see her excited for marriage and a mortgage and kids? To see her pursuing her dreams despite all the whiteness in the comic book world in 1943? To see her sharing with Black kids cool nerdy shit and just being her fly, funny, kind, honest self? To see her in love with her man and flourishing in that?
Do you know how SEXY AND BEAUTIFUL it was to see Bert & Gracie have a full, sweet, strong, loving relationship? To see Gracie accept her baby and not give a damn what the rest of the world thought? To see her accepted by her baby for being her big, full, loud, vivacious ass self? To see her encouraging another Black queer person to not live on the shelf or make herself small because what the world thought? To see her actively choose joy even tho the world was scary as fuck for her and her partner ‘cos damn being fearful ain’t no way to live?
In 19 forty fuckin’ three?!
It’s WILD AS HELL TEW ME, that this show hasn’t been renewed yet? It’s as though the higher ups only accept one brand of queer and that brand of queer doesn’t include niggas living out loud. It’s INSANE how some shows have like multiple seasons on that platform when they very much should not, but there is a hold on something as historic, needed, fun, queer, and Black as this show has shown itself to be.
I know words can only do so much, but from what I know streaming numbers matter and ain’t no way in the fucking world you can’t tell me that this show didn’t do numbers — ‘COS THAT WOULD BE A LIE SO.
I just hope this keeps going. There is genuinely no reason it shouldn’t. Money and popularity are the only two things that could stop it and DUH AMAZON HAS A LOT OF FUCKING MONEY AND I ALSO KNOW THAT THE SHOW IS POPULAR SOOOO…..
I really hope to be able to share this post in the next few weeks with news that it’s been renewed for a full season, and if not then Showtime better step up and take it so it can officially be the dykiest network there is.
“It shouldn’t be a rare occurrence in 2023 for a show to exist that speaks so deeply to so many marginalized communities at the same time, but the fact is, our stories are still seen as ‘niche.’ Sorry but, we’re the mainstream babes, and we’re here to stay.”
Nic, Writer
Just last weekend I started rewatching A League of Their Own while introducing a friend to it for the first time and what struck me yet again was how much HEART there is from the jump. AND!! How BLACK it is!! And we’re not talking about Blackness through the painful lenses of slavery or the Civil Rights movement, though those stories are important! ALOTO allows us to watch a Black woman with a dream do everything in her power to achieve it. Scratch that… MULTIPLE Black women with dreams!!
Max Chapman is out here pitching the pants off every person in sight while examining her queerness, Clance is an OG blerd determined to make her mark in the comic world, Bert and Gracie are examples of what it looks like to love loudly, boldly, and proudly in a time when being any one of those things could be deemed a threat. Can you believe that on a show set in the 1940s, we get to watch Black women fall in love with themselves AND WITH EACH OTHER?! We see them at church, at the hair salon, at home stressed about impressing their in-laws, and on the baseball field. We see them get discouraged, frustrated, angry, and sad. But we also get to see their joy and their love and their successes and their swagger. Plus, WE GET TO SEE THEM KISS. This cannot be overstated y’all. BLACK LOVE MATTERS.
It shouldn’t be a rare occurrence in 2023 for a show to exist that speaks so deeply to so many marginalized communities at the same time, but the fact is, our stories are still seen as “niche.” Sorry but, we’re the mainstream babes, and we’re here to stay. We’re all fuckin’ fruits and I’ll be damned if we go quietly!! We deserve a FULL SEASON 2!
“It’s not enough that Max has the best smile, a killer arm, and won’t take nobody’s shit — but you also got my girl learning about and questioning gender out here too?? Embracing ambiguity and fluidity and defining herself by her own terms.”
A.Tony Jerome, Writer
A League Of Their Own was — and is!! — just SO FUCKING GREAT OKAY. I watch A League of Their Own (the movie) with my mom whenever it comes on tv and I always thought, man this would be better and more accurate with black women, black lesbians, and more queer people and guess what? I’m right!
Listen, I’m all for Abbi and D’Arcy love them, let them have their best life but I am here forever and always for MAX MOTHAFUCKIN CHAPMAN. (I feel like someone has probably already said Max is probably related to Tracy Chapman and yes, I agree). It’s not enough that Max has the best smile, a killer arm, and won’t take nobody’s shit — but you also got my girl learning about and questioning gender out here too?? Embracing ambiguity and fluidity and defining herself by her own terms instead of the ones her loved ones and fucked up society decide to trap her within? Did they create this show specifically so I could get the fictional guardian angel when I needed her most?
To be honest, Shelli said most of my heart’s thoughts in her answer but this show is so damn important to me because Max was scared she’d lose her soulmate (Clance, duh) by being herself, that she learned that Clance’s love for her is just like hers is for Clance — unconditional and very willing to remind you when you need to chill the fuck out and when you need to step the fuck into your greatness. Bert is just… so much good and seeing him with his wife, seeing these Black queer people be fucking alive and living and living and living and living and FUCKING LIVING means so much to me. It’s a dream I have all the time and I don’t always see it reflected on TV, much less the world. I need Amazon to renew this show with a full second season, so I can dream me and my people into better lives a little while longer.
“The A League of Their Own series surpassed my wildest expectations. The balance of narratives, of tones, of histories is masterful.”
Drew Burnett Gregory, Writer
Even before I knew about my own queerness and the queerness of the All American League, I took issue with the movie version of A League of Their Own. Having met Pepper Paire Davis, having studied the history, it just felt incomplete. There was a limit to what a feature film in 1992 could do with the story — there were so many limits. When this series was announced, I was thrilled. Finally, a reboot that felt essential rather than perfunctory. There were so many stories left to tell and now at least some would be told.
The A League of Their Own series surpassed my wildest expectations. The balance of narratives, of tones, of histories is masterful. It is great TV in the purest sense. Every episode works so well as an episode, the first season works so well as a season. There’s an attention to detail, toward getting all these different stories right, that is unmatched in other shows with this level of scope. I’m often forgiving to queer ensemble shows, because it’s so hard to include everybody, so hard to tell a wide variety of stories with sharpness and specificity. A League of Their Own is proof I should raise my standards. They do it with such ease.
If A League of Their Own does get canceled, it will not be despite its positive representation — it will be because of it. A show of this caliber, with these numbers, with this name recognition, would not get canceled if it did not focus on women, if it did not center queer people, if it did not split its narrative to spend an equal amount of time with Black characters. If it gets canceled, it will be an indictment of Prime Video — a sign they are past the point of redemption.
From 2014 to 2017, Roy Price was the head of Amazon Studios and the VP of Prime Video. His tenure ended with sexual harassment allegations at the height of the Me Too Movement. Like Weinstein and many other abusive men in Hollywood, Price had used stories by and about women and queer people as a shield for his behavior — shows like Transparent, I Love Dick, and One Mississippi. When he was rightfully forced to leave, his successors did not continue these shows without the abuse. They did not respond by meeting the moment with their programming. They simply moved on, allowing one man’s abuse to leave countless creative casualties.
They’ve said their goal is to focus only on big tentpole series like Rings of Power, The Boys, Jack Ryan, and Reacher. Their one lady show is the homophobic easy feminism of Maisel.
I can’t argue with a studio that has these priorities. A League Of Their Own existing at all feels like a miracle given these circumstances. I thought they might keep one inclusive show around to make themselves look good. But I’m not sure they care about looking good to people like us. They only care about shaping the culture toward people like themselves.
The artists who made A League Of Their Own deserve better. Of course, they deserve better. But I expect nothing.
Burn it all down.
“I still remember finishing the screeners and rushing to Autostraddle slack to let my leadership team know that this show was gonna be BIG.”
Riese Bernard, CEO
I’ll start here: I still remember finishing the screeners and rushing to Autostraddle slack to let my leadership team know that this show was gonna be BIG. That it was gayer than anybody anticipated — much gayer than any trailers or promotional materials had let on. That it told more queer stories and with more respect and heart and humor than we’d ever dreamed it could. That it had found brilliant ways to make the narrative more intersectional than the original series. That it might be the best queer TV show ever made.
But that fact — that it was gayer than we’d been led to believe — is something I keep chewing on as I think about A League Of Their Own and the possibility of it ending now with a truncated four-episode final season. Like it’s tapping into some central frustration I’ve had around so many queer-inclusive shows over the last 14 years of working on both the TV journalism and advertising sides of this website.
The amount of coverage we gave to A League Of Their Own was relatively unprecedented for us to do for a show that’s not running an ad campaign with us. Not because networks who advertise here are paying us to do extra content, but because we’re simply more enthusiastic about a queer show that’s willing to invest in media targeted at queer women and trans people.
We hustled on our own to get people to watch ALOTO simply because we loved it so much, like more than we’ve ever loved anything since, IDK, the original L Word?? Plus, its cast and crew were doing so much work to get it out there in front of queer audiences. The PR team was connecting us with talent for interviews, and ALOTO’s truly fantastic social team also eventually leaned in hard to its queer audience. Gay people were so surprised by how gay it was that NBC wrote an entire article on this exact topic, noting that its queerness “was lost in Amazon Prime Video’s advertising campaign, which seemed to intentionally bury the lede.” If I had a dollar for every reader who told us they wouldn’t have known how queer it was without our coverage, we wouldn’t be fundraising right now! Queer creators on TikTok were also spreading the word with enthusiasm, for free.
We did all that together but it wasn’t enough, and that’s just really sad!
“Instead of having stories told about us, it felt like they were being told for us and by us. It’s a subtle difference but an important one, and it didn’t go unnoticed.”
Valerie Anne, Writer
A League of Their Own was truly something special. I wasn’t sure what to expect, because while I enjoyed the original movie, I didn’t have any strong feelings about it or any particular nostalgia attached to it. I played softball as a kid but only because my dad wanted me to…I wasn’t particularly good at it. I never watched Friday Night Lights, the only sports movie I ever loved was Space Jam. Given the topic and the setting, I was expecting a baseball show with a touch of queerness, I expected some corny Feel Good moments when I sat down with some friends to watch a few episodes. I honestly only even agreed to watch it because my friends were so hyped up about it and I liked the cast.
But then! It was about so much more than baseball! It was about friendship and found family and fighting against oppression. I had hopes it would be queer, but I was expecting a background gay here, a lesbian subplot there. I didn’t expect the main characters to be queer. And I sure didn’t expect more than one queer couple; when Max first kissed her lady love, I literally threw my hands up in the air and yelled TOUCHDOWN! (I know it’s the wrong sport but listen I was excited.) And because so many characters fell on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, we got to see all kinds of representation; Black, white, Latine, fat, baby gays, experienced gays, trans people, a range of gender presentation from “fuck dresses forever” to “are you even having fun if you aren’t smudging your lipstick,” and more.
A lot of shows pick a time in the past to set their show and keep all their queerness behind locked doors, as queers in that time would have to do, but they also keep the audience locked out. With A League of Their Own, we get to be in the room where it happens. We get to see queer people being happy and joyful together, while also not shying away from the hardships of many different minority communities. And my favorite thing about it (I’m almost done I promise) is that instead of having stories told ABOUT us, it felt like they were being told FOR us and BY us. It’s a subtle difference but an important one, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
What really breaks my heart is that when it was announced the Prime Video picked up Critical Role’s Mighty Nein as an animated series, it gave me hope for A League of Their Own, because Mighty Nein is gay as hell. I thought maybe Prime Video was finally understanding what we’ve been trying to tell networks for years: the LGBTQ+ community shows up for our own. Portray us well, we’re in it for life. We’re passionate and loud and just like the Peaches, you really shouldn’t underestimate us. So I hope Amazon changes its mind and gives the creators of this show whatever the hell they want.
“A League of Their Own has now entered into a pattern we keep seeing over and over again where networks and studios kill queer and trans projects too soon.”
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Managing Editor
If it seems like queer television critics are always mourning some sort of show cancellation or queer television fandoms are always creating some new hashtag to fight to save a show on the precipice of cancellation, it’s because we are. A League of Their Own has now entered into a pattern we keep seeing over and over again where networks and studios kill queer and trans projects too soon. So often, those cancellations do not seem to line up with the quality of the show nor the enthusiasm around it. And, as Riese so eloquently pointed out, if the marketing teams and people who work on the packaging and pre-hype for these shows want the shows to find their most passionate and loyal audiences, well, they’re not doing a great job of that by skipping over Autostraddle as a place to advertise.
Honestly, all of my colleagues above have already said brilliant, heartfelt things about the series itself and all that it does well — much like Carmen thinks it’s the gold standard for representation, I think it’s the gold standard for rebooting, full-stop — as well as what its cancellation means, what it signals to queer people. That our stories are not worth telling, that even when the show is REALLY REALLY GOOD TELEVISION, if it is too queer, too women-focused, too Black, too honest about homophobia, transphobia, and racism in American history (all oppressions which exist today, too, of course), then it is a risk to let it keep existing. I get riled up even when a mediocre queer show isn’t given a chance to grow in the same ways other shows are, but that doesn’t even apply here! A League of Their Own was great television from the jump — and on so many levels. Canceling it when there’s still so much story to tell wouldn’t just be a loss for queer viewers, but a loss for television and storytelling period.
“It is SO RARE for something to be both good and important. A League of Their Own is both of those things to the absolute max.”
Heather Hogan, Senior Writer and Editor
I grew up on a baseball field, spent more time in a dugout than I did in my own home, and when I wasn’t at a game or at practice, I was always asking my dad to play catch with me in the yard. He never said no, not one single time, no matter the weather, the season, the time of day, or what he had going on. Softball is where my lesbianism really blossomed, where I had the chance to just be full-on tomboy me, where I could let my body move “like a boy” without anyone mocking me. (Later, it became the basketball, where I got super extra gay, but softball is my lesbian origin story.)
My dad and I aren’t super close anymore, and he let slip a couple of years ago that one of the reasons why is because his wife has been hurting, for years, because I wore a suit to their wedding. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt the kind of incredulity that consumed me when he told me that. What was I going to do, wear a dress? Me? A dress? That’d have been like putting on someone else’s skin! It blew my mind that he didn’t know that, that she didn’t know that, that even when I said it out loud they couldn’t understand it. No one has asked me to put on a dress in two decades. It’s an absurd ask! An absolutely bonkers thing to want me to do! And so I cannot tell you what it meant to me — a 43-year-old married lesbian, surrounded every day by LGBTQ friends and colleagues — to see Jess and Lupe go through that same thing in A League of Their Own, to watch Carson and Greta come to Jess’ rescue when she’s about to get kicked out of the league for being too butch. It was a balm I didn’t know my weathered heart needed.
Viola Davis is my all-time favorite actress, an idol of mine, really, if it’s okay to crush on your idols. And How to Get Away With Murder‘s Annalise Keating is, I think, one of — if not the — most important bisexual TV characters of all-time. Because of that, she makes a lot of Autostraddle lists, so I’ve spent days of my life pulling photos of her off the internet.
Do you know how hard it is to find a photo of Annalise Keating smiling? Do you, in fact, know how hard it is to find a photo of any Black LGBTQ+ TV character smiling? Because of all the reasons my teammates have already written about what we put Black fictional characters through constantly? But when I say “Max Chapman” to you, when I say “Clance Morgan,” what do you picture? Smiles as bright as Christmas! As the sun! Which isn’t to say that they’re not facing down misogynoir all the time, or that they don’t have hardships — but it is to say that there are huge moments of triumph for them too, of laughter, of tenderness, of love. They are the best characters on the show because they are the most fully realized characters on the show, and that — again, as my friends have said — is no accident. It is a conscious and deliberate choice that got made over and over and over again, from conception to the editing room.
One of the toughest things about this job has always been the curve we use to talk about our stories. Often what’s most important isn’t the best quality, because it doesn’t have the funding, and what does have the funding is often just whatever, just a Tig Notaro cameo so PR people can tell us there’s “LGBTQ+ storytelling” in whatever movie. It is SO RARE for something to be both good and important. A League of Their Own is both of those things to the absolute max. (Ha, Max!) Not seeing it reach its full potential, especially now, when anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and sentiment and legislation is growing and growing like we’re in the 1940s? That would be absolutely heartbreaking, one of the worst things I’ve seen in my 15 years of covering queer TV as my career.
My love for the show is infinite and has many reasons, but I’ll focus on two:
1. Queer Joy! Seeing all type of queer folks going in their journey and finding themselves and not suffering for their gayness (for the most part, within the historical limits) was wonderful.
2. I could feel the love the creators and actors had for the story they were telling. It was such a product of love and respect.
I’m so tired of seeing streaming using us for our fandom, then dropping us after a first or second season. We have so many stories to tell, and I want them to keep being told!
Queer people are something like shadows in time; erased in the past, censored in the present, left dreaming of a future that is different, better. A League of Their Own made us solid in yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows all at once. It was so important and beautiful.
A League of Their Own is so much more than just a show. It has created community for so many of us that didn’t have one before. It’s given so many of us chosen family to fill the holes in our lives left by the blood family who turned their backs on us. It has given us strong, brave, hero in their own way women who have shown so many of us how to stand up for ourselves. I can see myself in almost every character and Carson’s simple statement, spoken boldly and without shame; I am one of them. That moment changed my life.
Yes! The discussions online and the gushing were just as important to me as the show itself!!!!
To put many big feelings into a few small words:
There are so few shows that have a COMMUNITY of queer characters. That have more than two queer characters who all interact as a GROUP, and where being QUEER is the thing a unites them. This is something that, more than anything else, is a fact of my life that I rarely seen on tv but which is represented on ALOTO. And that is the thing that will be missing if ALOTO isn’t renewed. The queer community needs more episodes and scenes where groups of queers laugh and joke about being queer and make plans and go out together to be queer. Queer people in real life come in groups – we are not just the one queer person in a friend group or in a workplace. ALOTO is so different from everything else on tv because of this, and the tv universe will be so much poorer for its absence.
I came rather late to this show. Not knowing a thing about baseball and not having seen the OG movie were prob two of the main reasons why. But Autostraddle/Tumblr convinced me otherwise. So glad I did give it a try. The amount of joy and excitement I felt watching a show where LGBTQ/POC peeps are at the centre of it all… I truly haven’t felt that since the OG L Word. So YES, #MoreThanFour is what I would hope for those involved with the show. And of course, for all of us, whose lives were touched by the stories and characters it already gave us.
PS: Can we also spare a thought for Willow (the series), which was unceremoniously cancelled today. Sword lesbians rise!
This show means a lot to me, a GenX bi white woman. And I love that it’s so good that I can share it with everyone in my life, queer or straight. My (cis straight) husband and I watched the whole series in less than a week.
I love that I could confidently recommend it to my 78 year old (very straight) mother. And talk about it with my 16 yo niece, who may or may not be queer but she really loved this show. It’s rare to find shows on streaming platforms that truly appeal to a multi-generational audience.
I also don’t think I’ve ever viscerally understood segregation and American racism the way I have watching ALOTO. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a show that followed the intersecting lives of white and Black characters the way ALOTO does.
Everyone else has said the points better so i’ll focus on a new angle: I loved how focused it was on the MEAT of the sport! Lupe’s pitching vs her muscles and repetitive strain! technique! It brought back all the best memories of pitching as a teenager
(Also @Drews comment what does Amazon thing “tentpole” MEANS? it means it raises the tent so OTHER THINGS CAN BE UNDER IT)
I love ALOTO so much and it would be such a tragedy to not see it continue as much as it deserves. To me, it was a fantastic story about first gay loves, friendship and found family. It provided a look into our own history. I found painful and joyful identification with the characters, with tough situations around societal homophobia and how that can make us turn on each other, and with how we find our community and maintain it.
I recommended it to family members and it allowed me to spark discussions about the history of LGBTQ rights in America and how far things have come (and how far we still have to go). Others have pointed this out, but the show is made BY and FOR us and it shows. It’s not straight people looking at the community and trying to see how they can tell our tragedies and profit off painful stories. The amount of love and care in the making of the show really shines through, the cast is fantastic, and we deserve so much more of these stories!
A League of Their Own is hands down the most important TV show of 2022. To have the characters stories revolve not around the choices that their oppressors were making, but on their relationships to one another is such a rare gift in the world of TV. When Max finally got her shot at pitching, it was because Esther, another queer Black woman, made it happen. This fucking show told us that WE are the people who have the power to make change. Us!!! The queers, the Black nerds, the women who dare to inhabit their bodies and their spirits to their full extent. The world needs this fucking lesbian baseball show!!!
ALOTO has helped me so much. I feel much more confident and comfortable with being lesbian and expressing myself. I’ve never been able to relate to any characters, even the queer ones. But ALOTO gave me so many different characters and I was finally able to see a lot of parts of myself in all of them. I needed this show when I was younger and I finally have it. It made so many people feel seen.
But this show isn’t just about being queer. It’s about dreams, sports, women, friendships, teams. It’s funny, joyful and beautiful. There’s just no reason not to give it at least 2 more full seasons.
The wonderful crew, cast and fandom deserve so much better.
All of this!
As a lesbian in my early 30s I remember trying to find anything queer at all to watch back when I was a teen, and I remember how hard it was to find. It has gotten better but we are still way too far off from where we should be in this regard. That being said being a “butch” (I prefer gender queer) lesbian it is even more rare to find content that includes individuals like me that I feel are represented in a positive way. I feel like ALOTO actually has such a good variety of representation and is something I personally have been waiting for, for a very long time. I loved the movie growing up but when I was learning more about myself and would revisit the movie I always wondered how there weren’t any queer characters in a movie about an all female league of over 400+ women… I mean let’s be real, the math didn’t add up. My sister and I binge watched the entire show the weekend it was released and I remember reading all these hateful reviews from what I can only imagine to be CIS straight people on how the show was “too woke” (which was incredibly aggravating to me) and so I left a review on how important the show was and what it meant to me. Amazon saying they’ll only give 4 more episodes on a show that was so long overdue feels like they’re just giving in to peoples ignorance. We need this show to continue (at the very least give it a full final season) and we need more shows like it to be created way more often. Even with all the added shows and movies with queer representation, we don’t have enough. Let us continue to learn about these characters and laugh with them, cry with them and sometimes be angry with them… Who is it hurting? (I’m sure plenty of rude individuals would have a clever retort here) I personally feel like we’ve waited long enough, and I’ve spent enough time and done enough digging just to find a story/stories I can relate to, now is the time to keep moving forward with our progress, not backwards.
ALOTO is the first show that I’ve watched, looked at the characters, and said, “That’s me up there.” And that feeling is something I didn’t know was so important until it finally happened. Over the last 7 months since it’s been out, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned to be more authentic and real than I’d ever been in my whole life. I’ve found a group of friends who’ve become family, who I lean on everyday for support.
And not only did I see myself, I saw that it’s okay to be myself. It’s okay (beautiful even!) to love a woman. It’s okay to not fall into the predetermined box that people expect in terms of gender. I’m allowed to be whoever I feel comfortable and happy being. It seems like it should be a simple concept, but when you grow up in highly religious, conservative settings, it’s not.
I have a lot of words I could say about this show and what it means to me, but I’ll reel it in for now. 4 episodes can not be the end of this show.
Hard agree to everything said by AS staff and earlier commenters. This show & characters are so well written and real. Writ large, many of the execs making decisions about renewals and cancellations are white, or straight, or men, or all three, so they can pretty easily just promote and watch things full of people like them and not have to come to terms with the fact that something like ALOTO that isn’t about them, can still be for them too. This is good acting & writing & producing & costume design & set design, it has a fanbase, and people are buzzing. Also, nothing garners buzz for a renewal like a successful campaign against cancellation…
On a personal note, Greta Gill is a revelation for me. Greta is so femme and yet so unmistakably queer. It’s hard to find those things together onscreen. Watching her be the catalyst for someone else’s coming out story then watching her weaponize her straight-passing privilege (helping Jess through the makeup test), yet also be so hurt by it (the catcalls from the stands) is so powerful.
My love for ALOTO is unceasing. This show quite literally changed my life. But it’s ability to impact people reaches far beyond anything anyone could have imagined. Every day I get online and see folks sharing stories about how this show opened their world, made them feel seen, or gave them the courage to live their lives authentically.
This show shines a light on the experiences of a diverse group of people from the past that has arguably too much relevance in our world today. This show is truthful, while still centering joy. Never have I seen so many queer folks experience joy onscreen. Seeing that joy showed me that I could want that for myself. Queer people deserve to know that they worthwhile and capable of having joy in their lives.
I was walking on air for a week after I watched this show. Every time I saw a billboard, I cheered. It filled me with hope and made me cry and just really made my day. I have never seen a story get it so right politically while also having a soul. It resists white saviourism and bury your gays and a hundred other tired, ugly tropes that are killing us. And on top of that, it’s funny, the cast is stellar, and the story is compelling. It takes the best of what the movie gave us, and makes it 1,000 times better with new life and relevance. I don’t generally join fan campaigns, but I just can’t stand the thought of losing this show.
This is my first ever comment, but I love this show enough to get me to not lurk anymore. So much of what everyone has said is true – having a show that is by us, for us, diverse and inclusive, funny and deep, is SO important. But beyond all that, I have two other reasons for LOVING this show.
1. I have rarely seen a show that so perfectly shows the reality, stress, fear, and unique challenges of being queer RIGHT ALONGSIDE all of the joy and wonder and unique amazingness of being queer. Queer joy yes, but queer joy rooted in our shared reality is something I am not used to seeing onscreen, and it captivated me. The way I BAWLED at the end of episode 6, the way I cheered (and cried) when the team helped Jo in episode 8, the way I swooned when Max did THE LEAN in episode 3, and so many other tiny beautiful moments make this show feel more real than anything else I’ve seen.
2. As a queer person who’s partner, two best friends, and three extremely close siblings are all exclusively opposite gender attracted (although one of them is ace spectrum, so at least someone’s queer!) the friendship between Max and Clance is EVERYTHING to me. To see them be each other’s team, be each other’s family, and still exist in their own unique spaces with their own unique needs, then support each other in those spaces and those needs…wow. It meant the world to me to see that.
Also, this is not really about what this show means to me but it needs to be said: Carson and Lupe are actually the end-game romance for Carson, and I need to see this happen, which obviously requires #MoreThanFour episodes. I would explain but honestly, when I re-watched with this in mind it seemed SO OBVIOUS so instead I recommend you just re-watch :)
I have never, ever re-watched a show right after finishing it… until ALOTO. And I can’t wait to watch it a third time. I love this show.
I’ll keep it simple, since I could write a novella on what this show actually means.
Friendship between women. Love between women. Camaraderie between women. Trust between women. Faith between women. Respect between women. Honor between women. Understanding between women. Compassion between women. It’s a show about women, their complexities, their nuances, their deep love and affection through friendship and some with romance. It’s a beautiful story. We need more than four. It requires more than four.
I want to order endless ALOTO merch off Amazon Prime and send it relentlessly across LA to Amazon Prime Video HQ until they are buried under seas of Rockford Peaches Halloween costumes…
Amazon are you reading this? What the hell are you thinking? Are you all routinely tripping in your Monday meetings ? Do you know how easy it would be to lock in a few million queer fans globally *forever* by simply honoring this show in the way it deserves with a full and non begrudging season order? We are feeling disrespected. We are feeling angry. We are feeling that you happily throw vast amounts of money at your other empty, glittering shows that no one watches or even talks about and then have the audacity to think this one costs too much or aims too high or … wait … it doesn’t have enough heterosexual shenanigans in it, does it. It can’t be ‘real’.
What is this all about ? Are you seriously saying deep down you can’t take us seriously enough to allow our stories time to breathe? That’s the way it feels. Just give the WLW crew a casual little flutter onscreen for 8 eps, and they will be so grateful that they will just humbly accept it when you casually truncate their joy and the brilliance of Abbi Jacobson. But mark my words, we will not accept it.
This show was the first time I have ever seen queer women’s interiority played externally as just regular drama. No flipping things in my head. No scavenging for moments, and waiting. Because it was a whole complete, profound experience in itself. The idea that executives cannot see that they are part of an evolving zeitgeist, and that they would casually, wantonly, squander that opportunity is totally mystifying.
So again I say – Amazon, are you reading this?
I’ve known I was a lesbian for about 5 years or so now, since I was about 15. Although this has been a part of who I am for years, I always had a sense of loneliness about it, feeling that a lot of the unique joys and pains were something that other people just didn’t understand. I thought the hurt and wonder I was feeling all that time was just me, alone and weird and not quite who anyone wanted or expected me to be. It’s always been difficult, as much as it’s been wonderful.
Watching ALOTO changed all of that for me. It was like being hit over the head with a sign that said “people like you have been here all along.” I’d never seen anything that conveyed all the complexities I felt, and it was so immensely comforting to feel understood. I hadn’t realized how badly I needed that. To come to terms with the fact that now, then, and always, we have been here and we have been living and loving and learning and failing and succeeding every single day was life-changing for me. I’ve rewatched the show multiple times, and it truly touches me in ways that I can’t explain. I know that it will be a source of comfort and joy for me for the rest of my life, and I am forever grateful for that, and I would be even if it had all ended with season one.
That said, I know that this story does not have to be over, and it sure as hell doesn’t deserve to be squished into a half-length season. Stories by and for women, by and for Black women, by and for queer women, by and for gnc and trans people, deserve to be PRIORITIZED. A show as wonderfully and beautifully crafted as this, in which how much everyone involved cares shines through in every scene, needs to be recognized. We need more art by and for us, more art that’s about more than just a cash grab. More than four.
I hope the people at Prime read all of these statements! A League of Their Own is my teen daughter’s favorite movie. Stories about women doing things together are so powerful and there are still not very many of them in 2023. We need this retelling if the history so urgently. Lesbians, bi women, trans people, LatinX and Black queer people, and especially people who are more than one of these things are part of history and part of this world and are so often made invisible or less than. They might be in stories but only as one-dimensional characters who die or disappear from the central story or are only there to make the central characters’ world more interesting. We deserve more. We supported this show because it gave us more. It used the real history of the league and of queer women and men to paint a picture that reflected our lives beautifully. And we watched and spread the word and made it one of the most watched shows with such strong numbers that there is no logical defense for not renewing it with a full season. If a heterosexual show had those numbers, it would get a full season 2 and probably much more. It just looks like bias when ALOTO gets four measly episodes instead, after being wildly successful. So, Amazon Prime, are you biased against queers and people of color? Or are you ready to make more great television about us?
Everything y’all said is so beautiful, and Valerie particularly articulated what warmed my heart most about this show – I too was expecting a background queer at most, or maybe some gay subtext, and then when Carson and Greta were canonically gay, I was sure that was going to be it. But no, they were only the beginning – Max, Lupe, Jess, Jo, all of these characters are not only queer but their varying experiences of queerness are integral to the show and their character!!! Sure, I’ll watch anything with a wlw character of any kind, but so often these characters don’t feel representative of me, because how could one character possibly embody all that a queer person can be? When you have a show like ALOTO, so many different queer people can find a character that resonates, or different parts of difference characters, and you can see how they live in community with each other. We can have feel-good content too – and not the feel-good content straight people want, where nothing homophobic happens and we just assimilate. Feel-good content where queer people of varying background and experiences come together and support each other. It was so shocking, and so beautiful, and I’d hoped that this was the beginning of a new tide of storytelling from major streamers, not the end
A League of Their Own is the very first show I ACTUALLY saw myself in. I was finally able to see parts of myself that were so much deeper and more beautiful than just lesbian or diverse gender representation. There are numerous examples of wonderful characters who all have complex, joyful, wonderful traits and stories that I felt identified with on such a stirring level. It feels different to watch this show. It and the community around it is truly a team. Amazon Studios cutting short this show demonstrates exactly how they are comfortable devaluing women and queer and POC stories and experiences. They always put money exactly where they want to. We aren’t worth a full run to them, despite there being no practical reason to ignore and silence us. Their actions are clear, and they’re dangerous, because they continue to perpetuate to society that we are less. They enforce the idea that our stories matter less than others. We matter.
A League of Their Own is the ONE show that convinced me to keep my Prime sub. Where else can I watch a queer inclusive, joyful, well-written, and over all high quality show about a women’s sports league?! Amazon, why would you throw away the one show, that among all the shows available on streaming networks nowadays, is truly one of a kind? Please invest in your audience for this show by making more full seasons because we don’t have anywhere else to go for shows like this.
ALOTO has meant the world to me. The original movie was a huge part of my childhood. We’d have yearly watch parties with my softball team. I’ve been waiting my whole life to see a show like this made, and then to see it expand on the movie in such a satisfying way! Nowhere else are these types of stories being centered. Getting to see Max and Clance’s loving and hilarious friendship, Max’s character arc of her passion for baseball, and her learning and embracing how she wants to present to the world have been hugely impactful for me. I could go on and on about each expertly and lovingly crafted character. It would be devastating to watch their stories get cut so short. Please give us a lot #MoreThanFour.
I was almost scared to watch A League of Their Own because the movie had been so important to me growing up. But the tv show is SO. MUCH. BETTER! The tv format allows for more character development and to show a full story of those who were excluded from the league (and the movie). The sheer number of queer people in the show allowed the characters to be fully realized and not caricatures representing every butch, femme, small town, big city, etc gay out there. There are so many folks on the screen that I’ve never seen getting this kind of air time. And it’s funny! And fun. And necessary. Right now as queer rights are being stripped state by state, it’s important to see that we have always been here living full lives.
The ALOTO crew had better have several backup recordings of all their material stashed with secret friends & buried in bunkers or something.
I stay up at night worrying about how these corporations [think they] “own” all this beautiful art by us and for us & can remove it from the interwebs at any time they see fit.
Also, yeah would never have signed up for Amazon or watched ALOTO w/out AS coverage, and then I told my friends about it!
ALOTO makes us feel like we have come home. I always have my guard up watching ANY TV EXCEPT for when this show was released. I could actually relax for an hour and witness genuine Queer stories. We are literally starving for shows like this. I don’t understand at all what Amazon’s deal is with the ratings and fanfare it got over this show and here we are having to fight for this thing to keep going. It is tiring AF.
Like another commenter, I’m un-lurking in the slim hopes that maybe this will do something.
I came late to the ALOTO party a few months ago, when I still had a few weeks of Prime left from TLOVM and figured I’d watch something else to get my money’s worth before I cancelled it. ALOTO is the reason I still have Prime. Frankly if they cancel it I’m just going to pirate everything Prime puts out that I actually want to watch and support the CR crew by buying merch, because I’ll have lost all faith that giving money to this studio means anything.
I have literally been watching ALOTO on repeat since I first discovered it. It’s some of the most nuanced, detailed, perfectly paced and written storytelling I’ve seen in years. It’s damn good television and letting it rot like this is senseless.
At least give it a full season to wrap up properly.
You’ve heard plenty about all of us who see ourselves in the characters and there’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said. So I’m going to talk to you about my dad.
He’s a straight white man in his 60s. He’s not looking for representation. He has watched more hours of TV than any human should and almost all of it has been made for people like him by people like him. He also watches a truly ridiculous amount of baseball.
He’s the one who put the original A League of Their Own on at some point in my childhood. So when I heard about the series, I had to tell him to watch.
He LOVED it. He texted me a few episodes in to tell me that his favorite character was Jess, a person who is so far from his experiences. A person who looks nothing like him and acts nothing like him and represents nothing about him except his love of baseball.
So my point is, this isn’t just about those of us who know what it’s like to be Jess or Carson or Max or Greta or Clance or Bertie or anyone else. Because we’re “niche” and nobody is interested in catering to us.
ALOTO is a good show. Good storytelling, good acting, relatable even to people who are nothing like these characters at all. 65 year old straight white men like it. And don’t even get me started on my mom, who is the pickiest TV watcher I know but was totally on board with ALOTO. There is nothing small about this show. It’s universal.
Do it for the upper middle class white dudes who look like you, Amazon.
Excellent writing. Realistic characters. One of my top 3 shows I’ve ever watched in my 37 years of living. Makes me feel seen, uplifted, joyful, connected to my community, like everything is OK. This show gives me HOPE.
In addition to wanting to +! everything you have said about the beauty and rarity of getting to see Black characters experience triumph and joy: I just rewatched the movie and series with my mom (her first time seeing both), who was visiting for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Mom is turning 80 this year, grew up in the Midwest, and kept saying, “How did I not know there were women playing pro baseball so close to where I lived??”
Four more episodes is not enough! We just met Esther. We barely got to know the hermanos by the end. Esti and Shirley both seem like their characters were just about to get some more development. Max and Clance both deserve their stories to unfold with more leisure than they got in the first season. There’s so much story here: the writers and actors should have sufficient time to do it right.
There are a multitude of reasons ALOTO is special and important to me. The two most foremost reasons are the beautiful stories of queer community and joy that center so many aspects of our diverse world and the overall theme of cultivating agency and hope amid systems and societal structures that try to erase or restrict belonging and possibility.
As a queer white woman, it was relieving to experience stories that didn’t solely focus on trauma or suffering without making light of racism, sexism, or anti-queer and gender fluidity attitudes. When I am feeling discouraged, I think about the scene where Bertie cuts Max’s hair or Lupe shares her story with Esti or Jo’s smile at the love and belonging extended in being complimented. I want more of these moments like these with these characters especially at this sociopolitical time.
This show is necessary for many reasons, including to teach society about marginalization, whether based in sexuality, race, or gender. So many people still suffer trying come to terms with who they are and finding acceptance is an entirely separate battle. The hatred and exclusion that still exists towards members of the LGBTIA+ community is very real and strong. The shootings at Pulse, Club Q, and other gay-motivated hate crimes are proof. We need a show that’s just for us, that reminds us that we are beautiful and we are loved. Our love is also beautiful and not something to be tokenized or slipped into media geared towards hetero audiences.
the queer community does not have not shows that relate to our lives in both serious and humorous ways. I can relate so much of my own life to this show and the way that makes me feel is indescribable…like people finally ‘get’ me. This show is a lifeline, a reason to laugh, to cry, and a reminder that there are other people in the world just like us.
This is more than just a tv show to me, and I think most, if not all, of the fandom would agree. Please, please give us more.
Thank you for doing this in support of ALOTO. I’ve been so worried that the show would get cancelled. Four episodes is better than none, I guess, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t get a full renewal. This is so important to me
If they are hellbent on only giving us four episodes, then each episode better be the length of the average Marvel film.
A League of Their Own is such an important show because it tells the story of the Rockford Peaches without ignoring the queer part of the storyline. Lesbian stories right now are lower than ever and A League of Their Own is so important to the queer community. I’ve never seen a show with so many queer characters in it. Not only that but it includes very important black and trans storylines as well, all the while telling an uplifting story of women who never give up on their dreams. This show has a wide fan base and is so important and inspiring to so many people. Even if the next season is the last, it deserves a full eight episodes. This is one of the best ongoing shows right now, the best thing Amazon Prime has, and it does not deserve to be cancelled. Please give it more than four episodes!
First of all , only 39 comments thus far ?? Come on people!! Where are you ?? Second of all where are you Showtime , HBO , Netflix?? Clearly Amazon is too chicken shit ( thanks for throwing us a bone with 4 more episodes by the way – geez 🙄) . Not only is it historically significant it’s got substance , real substance. If the subject matter makes you squeamish don’t watch it – there are plenty of us that will .
This show feels like my whole heart. I wasn’t allowed to play little league which probably won’t have been an issue if I had been a boy. I used to watch the movie A League of Their Own and related to being kept from opportunities because of who I was. I did my chance to play high school baseball with the boys’ team. This involved my coach championing a change in league rules. Someone which a measure of power took a chance, and I achieved a dream.
From those opportunities and the reinforced narrative of movie, I carried the belief that I can eclipse expectations. Watching the new series, I saw the same tenacity to chase athletic goals as well as the courage to exist authentically in a world even at a cost.
The expense of providing a full second season is nothing to a company like Amazon, and yet it can reflect everything to viewers who long to see themselves fully rather than distort themselves onto characters and plots barely resembling their reality. At the same time, this is not a niche show. While this series does have a diverse cast, the message of joy and perseverance is for everyone.
Amazon, take a chance, change your ruling to fully renew a popular and essential show.
This show isn’t perfect television, but it’s pretty close! And everything about it that I think isn’t perfect is stuff I wish they’d elaborated on more but understand exactly why they didn’t, because they didn’t have the screen time. Cutting it down to only 4 more episodes is, well, better than nothing, but will hinder their ability to tell the story well.
I’m also deeply cynical about modern remake culture, but this show is the great exception that has shown me that remakes and reimaginings, done well, can make for great media. If all the mindnumbing nostalgia cash-in TV and movies I’ve had to sit through in the past decade gave me this show, it was all worth it.
This show is brilliantly written, acted, paced. It has just enough queer characters to be able to draw out the parallels and the differences between them and act as a beautiful lens into each of their experiences. It’s most obvious in the parallel stories between Carson and Max but we also see it with all of the queer side characters. I absolutely adored everything they did with Lupe, it was the prefect balance of subtle and explicit. Over and over they set something up and didn’t take the predictable route but instead gave us something new and fresh – the final baseball game on paper came down to win or lose, 50/50 chance, hard to be original, but they gave use something heartfelt and unexpected.
OK so with that out of the way – you asked for personal stories, so. Lots of ink has been – rightly! – spilled about the amazing series of lenses on the queer experience, on the beauty of Max’s storyline, on how well they write all of the characters and their freindships and complicated relationships.
I’m not American. Because I’m not American, I knew basically nothing about baseball going in. The original movie was famous, but I’d never watched it. I’m not American, but I am Jewish in a country where we’re a significantly smaller minority than we are in the US. I have pretty complicated thoughts about American media hegemony, but American media is basically the only time I ever get to see other Jewish people portrayed ever. I was expecting a feel-good sports drama with some queer people (though I didn’t know how gay it was actually going to be!). I was not expecting Shirley Cohen. And what they did with Shirley’s character is, to me, an encapsulation of why this show is so good and why it would be such a shame to see it cut.
Initially I rolled my eyes when we met her. ‘Ah, yes, the neurotic Jew side character. How original. Never seen that one before.’ Her inclusion felt odd, in a show that had already shown it could do nuanced storytelling in the 1.5 episodes of Max’s story we’d already seen. Then, in a blink and you miss it moment I literally had to rewind to make sure I’d heard properly, they casually call her ‘too semitic’. Shirley is a side character with another role in the plot, so that’s about as far as they (honestly, probably with good reason) go into the realities of being Jewish in 1943. But when you couple that with how masterfully they handle Max and her family and friends and Lupe and Esti – you can see how much thought goes under the surface into every single character.
Her job in the plot is so, so smartly written. She’s the face of societal expectation within the team – and you can see how it’s affected her in her fear-spirals even as she passes the pressures onto those around her. (Which, now that I think of it, is a very loose parallel to Toni even as they’re very different characters). She is neither a stereotypical villain nor a cliche ‘secretly she was gay all along and that’s why she’s homophobic’ trope but instead a nuanced and sympathetic character. She is a funny character, but she is always treated with sympathy by the narrative, and the culmination of her arc is a moment of triumph that defies stereotypical storytelling (while, also, deeply funny and brilliantly acted).
And Shirley is just one side character! Every single character in this show has the same clear level of depth and sympathy put into them, almost every narrative decision taken refuses to be a cliche and instead becomes something more interesting.
This is legitimately one of the best pieces of television made in the past decade. It will be a real shame to see Amazon strangle it. Ironically enough, the decision is probably made because it’s ‘too gay’, but all that will do is force the writers to cut the fascinating, new, amazingly-well written and acted arcs of straight side characters like Shirley and Clance in favour of finishing Carson and Greta and Max’s stories with what little time they have.
A League of Their Own means community, positive representation and comfort. It means joy. It means history is important and we’ve always existed. Telling queer people and poc that they should settle for crumbs is wrong and unfair. We all deserve #MoreThanFour.
Somehow my comment isn’t showing up so I will post it again…
As a lesbian in my early 30s I remember trying to find anything queer at all to watch back when I was a teen, and I remember how hard it was to find. It has gotten better but we are still way too far off from where we should be in this regard. That being said being a “butch” (I prefer gender queer) lesbian it is even more rare to find content that includes individuals like me that I feel are represented in a positive way. I feel like ALOTO actually has such a good variety of representation and is something I personally have been waiting for, for a very long time. I loved the movie growing up but when I was learning more about myself and would revisit the movie I always wondered how there weren’t any queer characters in a movie about an all female league of over 400+ women… I mean let’s be real, the math didn’t add up. My sister and I binge watched the entire show the weekend it was released and I remember reading all these hateful reviews from what I can only imagine to be CIS straight people on how the show was “too woke” (which was incredibly aggravating to me) and so I left a review on how important the show was and what it meant to me. Amazon saying they’ll only give 4 more episodes on a show that was so long overdue feels like they’re just giving in to peoples ignorance. We need this show to continue (at the very least give it a full final season) and we need more shows like it to be created way more often. Even with all the added shows and movies with queer representation, we don’t have enough. Let us continue to learn about these characters and laugh with them, cry with them and sometimes be angry with them… Who is it hurting? (I’m sure plenty of rude individuals would have a clever retort here) I personally feel like we’ve waited long enough, and I’ve spent enough time and done enough digging just to find a story/stories I can relate to, now is the time to keep moving forward with our progress, not backwards.
UHHHHHHHH!!!! This show is so important in so many ways: it shows a vibrant spectrum of queer representation, it has gripping story arcs that don’t just involve dating and break-ups and it appeals to such a wide audience. It was so refreshing to “watch” this show across my entire friend group, not just my queer mates.
I just completely absolutely love this show. I will buy a premium subscription to watch the next season and all my queer friends will too. We will spend all our gay dollars on more premium subscriptions, whatever it takes. Please, in the name of queer culture, or corporate profit — whatever floats your boat — give us so many more than 4 more episodes of these perfect characters.
This show is one of the first mainly queer focused shows I’ve watched and it was life changing honestly. It helped so much with me not being ashamed of liking women and being attracted to them and exploring my sexuality and expressing it more instead of masking it. The romance between Carson and Greta, also Max and Ester was so pure and beautiful and we would love to see where they go with those relationships. I’m really looking forward to seeing Lupe and Jess and the other side characters queer relationships and general storylines develop. Being a young queer woman and seeing a display of queer history, and how society was so hard on us for simply just being ourselves and loving who we want, really made me appreciate how far we made it and how much more we have to go. To sum it up the LGBTQ+ community as a whole would love for it to be renewed for more than 4 episodes, so we can really get a background on the characters and see how their storylines would develop.
This show has changed my life. I have never seen representation the way A League of their Own shows it on the screen. This show has a place for everyone to relate to. I grew up as a queer female athlete so this show impacts me on many levels. Being a female athlete, I can relate to the “brush over” treatment that women’s sports and their ability to excel in sport receives in comparison to men’s sports. To see myself represented on this show as a passionate athlete who cherishes other female athletes and sport has been incredible. Secondly, this show displayed queer sex and relationships so well that I can only wish I had a show like this growing up. It’s emotional, it’s intimate, it’s real. Its hard to put into words, but all I can say is that I’ve never experienced this kind of euphoria and connection when watching a show. I speak for many when I say I NEED MORE THAN FOUR. We need to see the development of these characters we’ve grown to love so much. I’m sure this is rambly and has a lot of mistakes but I’m passionate, lol.