100 Pictures of Shane

Sometimes you just want 100 pictures of Shane.

All photos are from my hard drive, though I imagine a lot of those come from this kate moennig fansite.

Will Santana’s Lesbian Future Somehow Include Dating Men? (and Other Teevee-Related News)

Glee:

From E! Spoiler Chat:

YELYAHbosco: There is lots of speculation about Glee‘s Santana and her sexuality, any scoop on her upcoming storyline?

“She’s definitely a lesbian,” Brad Falchuk tells us, forever putting to rest the question of her sexuality. Now that we cleared that up,

Jesus f*cking Christ Almighty. I hope they don’t riot on AfterEllen today.

I think I’m supposed to freak out about this, it’s like our obligation to flip our shit whenever a lesbian does it with a dude, but I can’t. Yes — we hate this trope. Our people, long oppressed by the thwarted lesbians of teevee shows past, hate this trope even more than I hate “dining with people who are eating buffalo wings.”

But this isn’t like that.

Honestly, I don’t personally think that the lesbian-hooks-up-with-dude storyline inherently problematic (as long as the girl goes back to her stated preference at the story’s end!). Stories need conflict, after all!

What’s problematic about any suggestion of this trope, and what riles up some Skins US–esque hostility, is how historically this trope has been used to undermine and trivialize our sexuality, pander to a straight male audience, reinforce patriarchal ideas of men being downright irresistible and ideal romantic partners and to placate networks or advertisers by quickly shuffling the lesbian storyline out of sight. Also, it’s been done and with so few gay storylines out there, we expect a lot from each one.

Because the thing is — and I might get axed for saying this — it’s a rich trope, from a writer’s perspective. It’s hard to beat in terms of inherent complexity, although employing it haphazardly is often exactly as lazy as it seems. It was executed well in The Kids Are All Right, where a gender-swap would’ve told a different story altogether — if Jules had cheated on Nic with another woman, the ‘other woman’ would’ve been a formidable threat to Jules and Nic’s relationship. Paul’s gender made Jules’ reasons-for-cheating abundantly clear: she wanted to be wanted by someone — no strings or potential love attached — and men are pretty adept at ravenously wanting sex. She was looking for sex, not love, and a standard Affair would’ve complicated that intent.

So how will this go? We’re cautiously optimistic. In our favor:

1) Glee drops storylines like they’re hot, cannot maintain continuity, it’s unlikely that they’d break tradition here and actually pursue a Santana-runs-to-a-dude storyline past one episode.

2) Everyone flipped about Blaine possibly going bisexual and our fears were unfounded.

3) Santana is definitely a lesbian and acording to the most recent definition of “lesbian,” a lesbian is a person sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. So this means, logically, that were Santana to run into the arms of a dude, it’d probs last about as long as it did for Paige on Pretty Little Liars.

4) Glee‘s done (relatively) well by us so far when it comes to homosexual representation.

5) There’s so much opportunity for humor in Santana getting with a boy after deciding she doesn’t like boys and that humor hinges on a rejection of the heterosexual paradigm.

6) Finn is a lesbian

Other  homosexual Glee info from the E! post:

Q: Anything new on Blaine/Kurt on Glee? Can’t get enough of those two!

A: Neither can we. That’s why we were so psyched when Darren Criss told us that Blaine and Kurt (Chris Colfer) have real staying power. “They’re in the honeymoon stage, and they’ve just recently gotten together, so that’s really new and exciting like any new relationship is,” he says to us. “I think [Blaine] has something really special with Kurt. It’s not just a flash in the pan kind of crush.”

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South of Nowhere:

The cast of South of Nowhere has put together a promo to inspire somebody to make a South of Nowhere movie. However someone invited Glen to this reunion, probably because he was on the show, but I don’t see why we have to keep looking at his stupid face. There’s still time to fix the mistake of inventing his character!

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Exes & Ohs:

The second season of Michelle Paradise’s “Exes & Ohs” was signed, sealed and delivered to Logo quite some time ago, but Logo never gave it an air date. Now it has one — June 29 at 7:30 pm. We somehow suspect this is an effort to use up their lesbian content so they can safely move forward as if there is no “L” in LGBTQ.

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The Today Show:

Jessie J appeared on The Today Show today and it was awesome.

VIDEO! The Real L Word (Parody) PART TWO: The Lost Episode

For those of you unable to afford brain reconstruction surgery, you probably still have PTSD flashbacks regarding Showtime’s Semi-Hit Shitshow The Real L Word, that fantastic program about the loves, lives, lust and lornadoones of several good-looking lesbians residing in the Los Angeles area. Perhaps you also remember the time that Executive Editor Laneia and Miss April Sarah Croce decided that Autostraddle was obligated by some higher power to produce a Real L Word parody video and I (Riese) said ABSOLUTELY NOT, but then this happened anyhow:

But that was only Part One! It’s been months, where’s part two? Well, I (Riese) sort of lost interest in the whole project BUT LUCKY FOR YOU, Sarah Croce stepped in! She’s a Jackie of all Trades or something, and a magical person.

That’s right, our intrepid supermodel Sarah Croce not only learned how to use Final Cut but subsequently applied this knowledge to editing Part Two herself! It’s like really good you guys.

So without any further ado (and face it, I just put you through a ton of fucking ado) — Part Two of The Real L Word parody, starring a bunch of people, edited by Sarah Fucking Croce:

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The New York City cast of this video were filmed by two real lesbians, Millie and Jenn of Onyxrai Productions, and produced by Autostraddle.com and Geek Goddess Productions. The Los Angeles segments (Ilene & EZier Girl and Stamie & Tracy) were filmed by a tripod and Stamie’s nanny, respectively.

Conceptualized by: Executive Editor Laneia, Senior Editor Jess R., Sarah H. and Sarah Croce

Part One Edited by: Riese

Part Two Edited by: Sarah Croce

Ilene Chaiken; Julie Goldman of In Your Box Office With Julie & Brandy
EZier Girl: Brandy Howard of In Your Box Office With Julie & Brandy

Rose: Miss January Jennifer Nieves
Nat: Music Blogger Stef Schwartz

Whitney: Miss April Sarah Croce
Tor: Design Director Alex Vega
Sara: Design Director Alex Vega
Romi: Design Director Alex Vega

Nikki: Editor-in-Chief Riese
Jill: Miss February Julia

Tracy: Haviland Stillwell of the Haviland & Riese Vlogs
Stamie: Stamie Karakasidis of Our Fifteen Minutes

Mikey: DJ Carlytron
Raquel: Photoblogger Robin Roemer

Furthermore, we have even MORE Behind-the-Scenes photos for you for funsies:

“Generation L: The Road To Mardi Gras” Was Pretty Good Actually

Last month we told you about Generation L, a reality web series documenting the adventures of a group of lesbians from Sydney, Australia during the biggest weekend on the queer calendar. The series has now come to an end and, as Autostraddle’s resident Sydney queer, it would be remiss of me to not do some sort of recap.

There’s been some confusion about what Generation L actually is. To be clear, Generation L currently exists as a web series, with aspirations of attracting network interest and evolving into a reality television show. Its 8 short episodes have offered a glimpse into the Sydney lesbian scene and left international viewers asking rather valid questions like ‘What’s a starfish?’, ‘What’s a dud root?’ and ‘Pussy burger? Really Papi?’

If you missed it, here’s the full Generation L: The Road To Mardi Gras episode list:

Intro / extended trailer
Generation L Episode 1
Generation L Episode 2
Generation L Episode 3
Generation L Episode 4
Generation L Episode 5
Generation L Episode 6
Generation L Episode 7

Below is the final episode, which ends with message from the Generation L creators about the future of the show.

If you watched the entire series, what did you think?

I enjoyed the show, overall. While there were a few moments that caused me to cringe, I appreciated their honesty. Sometimes I feel like we’re so used to seeing shiny polished people on screen that it’s quite easy to forget that the unedited and unscripted versions are a little rougher around the edges, and that’s part of what makes us interesting. Unlike with Ilene Chaiken’s The Real L Word, I didn’t feel like Generation L‘s message was look what hot trendy creatures those lesbians are.

Admittedly it took a while to warm up to the series. It wasn’t easy to make an emotional connection to a person and their story when it was developed over the span of a 3-4 minute webisode. However I persevered and by the end found that I had become completely enamored with the Generation L girls, particularly Amber the starfish and Rachel the seahorse. I’m sure that if I ever left the office and stepped out onto the ‘scene’ then I’d want to befriend them all.

Generation L appears to be the work of a group of girls who are trying to boost lesbian visibility with limited funding and resources. It’s a mission that’s easy for me to relate to. If you think the series has potential, I hope you’ll get behind it.

The Winter of Our Lesbian Content: This is a Glee, Skins & Pretty Little Liars Megapost

Remember that beautiful week — when was it? It seems like so long ago. Was it only two weeks ago? Were we ever so young? Were we ever so teary-eyed and wet-pantsed and surprised and shocked and touched and awed and optimistic about everything in the whole wide world?

Reader: we were. And we had reason to be. You couldn’t fly a crop-duster through a Burbank backlot without hitting the head of a lesbian/queer/bif-ckingcurious storyline.

Now that your triweekly serving of Lez is officially over (for the time being) and we still don’t know who A. is or which conventionally attractive lesbian Emily will take to next year’s Winterdeath Ball or whatever it was, it’s time to look back on the season that was. It’s time to dwell excessively upon the clear-pored Sapphic or semi-Sapphic humans who graced the screen of my laptop this past winter (because I don’t have a teevee, but you probably do, so this might just feel totally different for you than it does for me).

Am I watching “Landslide” again as I type this? Maybe.

This past season has been unquestionably the most lesbionic TV season of all time. This must be how gay men felt for the 356 years Will & Grace was on the air, along with Queer as Folk, Sex and the City, Dawson’s Creek, The Office, Entourage, Noah’s Arc, Degrassi, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under OR MAYBE even how they feel right now with Modern Family, Glee, Nurse Jackie, Shameless, Gossip Girl, 90210, Lost, Weeds, Big Love, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Greek, Mad Men, True Blood, The United States of Tara and basically every single show on Logo.

I talked about why we’re getting so much gay TV at the end of my Glee recap and so I’ve only got this to add: This season we were permitted to dream.

This had not been the case before now. Much like the feeling of ordering from Burger Fresh in the early 90s, we don’t expect the people in charge to get everything right. We don’t expect a homoerotic ‘ship to sail or sexual tension to get a follow-up episode or parents to “come around” to their gay kid. We expect at least one dead and one converted lesbian.

But, again like the feeling of ordering from Burger Fresh in the early 90s, we tuned in just the same because TV provides convenient at-home delivery. That’s right, Burger Fresh delivered. In MICHIGAN. So what do you want, a cheeseburger with the-wrong-kind-of-cheese and extra unordered-bacon-even-though-you’re-Jewish delivered to your doorstep? Or do you want to look into your freezer to see what’s worth re-heating from last year? You follow?

This season we felt slightly less like Lesbo Bevis & Butthead or desperate superfans because the little things we picked up on — Mini’s attraction to Franky, Sanatana and Brittany’s chemistry — actually got fleshed out, even just a little.

We’ll be rating these shows on a Lesbo Rating Scale from “Angry Lesbian” to “Happy Lesbian.”

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Skins UK (e4)

[all our posts on skins]

Queers:

Franky – genderqueer and pansexual (relatively confirmed)
Mini – bisexual or a lesbian (suspected)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

Oh, f- you in the ear Matty, you dark brooding super-complicated emo quasi-rebel, Avril Lavigne is darker than you are in your darkest hour. Courtney Love would smash your face in in a fist-fight and Jordan Catalano would be a better boyfriend. You thrive in the land of vulnerable women because you wear black a lot, which is edgy, and also you’re SO SO loyal to your OH SO COMPLICATED heart and its OH SO COMPLICATED feelings and you think if you curl your lip like that then somehow your reckless disregard for the subjects of your emotional attention will pass as genuine confusion rather than selfish, fickle, and pretentious. UGH UGH UGH.

I do think it’d be interesting to see our favorite genderqueer pansexual fawn Franky to date a dude so I’m not even mad about the fact that she seemingly ended up with Matty instead of Mini for gender reasons.

Just — Lawd do I hate this character. Everything he did made me groan.

In the End:

In Skins‘ Season Five finale, our suspicions that Mini has a Big Fat Lesbian Crush on Franky are confirmed, mostly because she does that thing that you did to your best friend in high school where you pretend to be Dr. Phil (“you deserve better, don’t go be with that boy”) / Oprah (“You’re my best friend! I protect you from the world!”) to cover up that you’re actually Ellen (“I like girls! Be with me! SURPRISE!”) . But also because Mini stores photos of Franky in her cell-phone spank-bank, tries to kill Matty, and constantly wants to touch/hold Franky. Oh, and Liv calls Mini out for her “girl crush.”

What precisely transpires in the poppyfields of Somewhere in the United Kingdom where Rich and Grace are going to get married is unclear — Franky thought 9/11 was beautiful, Franky just wanted to be normal for once, she takes a lot of drugs, freaks out when Matty tries to have sex with her which might be because she experienced some kind of sexual trauma earlier in life. Franky runs away, there’s a scene in a church basement where Liv starts to kiss Franky’s back to appeal to Matty but it doesn’t, Liv and Matty break up, and then, at an impromptu wedding reception with a Midsummer’s Night Dream theme, Franky arrives, texts with Matty about being a glorious headfuck thing, and then runs into his arms and is held. This could be a friendly hug or a love-forever hug, hopefully not the latter because as aforementioned I find Matty irritating.

Rating:

Skins was, per always, an excellent television program this season, which earns bonus points. Also extra for trotting out TV’s first genderqueer pansexual and for making aforementioned genderqueer pansexual so f-cking cute!

Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family)

[read all our posts on pretty little liars]

Queers:

Emily – lesbian (confirmed)
Maya – lesbian (confirmed)
Paige – lesbian (confirmed)
Samara – lesbian (confirmed)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

A., Ian, Officer Garret, Ezra, Aria’s Dad, Caleb, Lucas, Noel Cahn and basically every male character on this show who took up minutes of the finale that should’ve been spent on Emily making out with girls.

In the End:

The final episode of Pretty Little Liars was super-busy with all of this “plot” and “murder mystery” nonsense and contained only one lesbian reference in the whole entire thing. Where was Paige? What if Paige is A and we didn’t even know about it?! What if Sounder killed Jenny?

Emily’s Mom wants to move to Texas to be with their Dad, but there’s no way they’re taking Shay off the show so let’s not even bother with that besides to say that Hanna teases Emily regarding if Texas “beauty queens” are her type. Which is super-adorbs.

Emily is e-mailing Samara so that love connection is open, Paige is nowhere to be found and Maya is apparently completing her 16th week of the Most Intense Marijuana Treatment Program of all time. When she comes back she’ll probably be allergic to everything.

Ultimately Emily’s storyline was a refreshing departure from expectation. Emily stood up to her Mom (who eventually came around, somewhat), felt liberated after her secret was revealed, and even refused to participate in someone else’s closeted antics.

The last lesbian scenes of the season are expounded upon in our recap of the second-to-last episode of Pretty Little Liars.

Rating:

For TV’s most admirable lesbian character, a “9.”

Next: Skins US and Glee

When Homophobic Reality TV Stars Attack!

We’ve had an internet crush on Rich of FourFour for some time now, not least because he is just as obsessed with RuPaul’s Drag Race as we are and his America’s Next Top Model recaps have been going strong & brilliant for our entire extended adolescence/thirties. Also, Pot Psychology.

Rich has recently left his job at VH1, which means entering a new realm where complimentary (or at least not openly derogatory) coverage of its content is not mandatory. In that spirit, he’s sharing for the first time an email exchange he had in his capacity as a blogger with them – a host of a VH1 show who contacted him in outrage over some “gay stuff” that he felt he “fell victim to” in Rich’s writing. (Sidenote: Rich is gay.)

Basically this person referred to a male contestant as being exceptionally cute and Rich made a joke about this person having a crush on the contestant. That’s “how recapping works.” Everything is fair game. That’s it.

Rich has posted the whole exchange, with identifying details removed (though it’s not really difficult to figure out who it is, we’ll refrain!).  The reason for posting it is based on a few things including “the belief that if you see something even remotely anti-gay, say something.”

Subsequently, in that same spirit, we’re talking about it here. We recommend you go read the whole thing though.

Some gems from the Secret Mystery Former Host:

“To get to the point, not cool with all the “gay” stuff… Whatever the reason don’t do it again. Not cool bro. I’m not so self absorbed as to not make fun of myself, but the sexuality this is not only “hack” its also out of bounds…”

“Now for the first time in my life Gay [people] are coming up to me on the street and hitting me up on the internet. Yeah, don’t really need that in my life guy.” Don’t perpetuate and more homosexual energy please when it relates to me.

No jokes, asides, innuendos, nada.

Maybe one day we can laugh about this over a peach Martini (oh wait that’s kinda gay huh)… I mean a shot of rot gut wisky, however until then let’s try and get through these tough economic times with respect and civility. Just like Octumom [sic].

Rich’s responses were consistently measured and reasonable:

When I wrote about you, I was not responding to anything innate or characteristic about you, but to your words. It is my job to make sure my humor is as circumstantial as possible. I’m not the “hack” you’d like me to be. I think about this shit, every word of it.

Anyway, I actually never insinuated that you were gay, even, just that you took a shine to this one particular person. I don’t know what you sleep with and I don’t purport to.

A gay person knows on a fundamentally true level that there is no shame or embarrassment in being gay, but is it okay to capitalize on the insecurities of those who still do? We’d say yes because Rich isn’t capitalizing on it so much as he’s refusing to consider homophobia imposing restraints on his freedom of expression.

Where does that fall, in the hierarchy of social interaction? Does that brand of humor come from a homophobic place carved out in our cultural consciousness, or from a new and different place where the laughable thing isn’t homosexuality, but the fear of it?

Interesting also is Rich’s assertion that the person’s threats to go above Rich’s head to VH1’s officer’s won’t work: “I’ll gladly explain what I explained to you to my boss and anyone else at VH1. Perhaps one of the several gay men in charge? Welcome to Hollywood. It’s gay here.” While it’s unfortunately well documented that there are plenty of gays willing to throw their own community under the bus for the sake of job security or money or mainstream acceptance, Rich is right: gay people have risen to high enough levels of authority (at least in the entertainment industry) that crying homosexual slander won’t necessarily work anymore.

Because it’s not slander, not really. Which is ultimately the most resonant point of this exchange:

“it’s offensive to me that you think I should be able to feel sympathy for someone who feels they’ve been accused of being gay. You are philosophically aligning yourself with people who affected me profoundly growing up, people who preached that gay is bad”

Which The Person didn’t appreciate:

“…you made a major leap in logic philosophically aligning me with people that preach that gay is bad.”

This is one incident didn’t end up going anywhere; [redacted] apparently did try to bring it up to someone at VH1, to no avail. Because it’s stupid. It’s a stupid complaint and the fact that he’s making it at all says more about him than the joke ever did. Would this have been different ten years ago, before the lesbian cheerleaders on TV were allowed to have feelings, not just hot steamy choreographed sex, and the genderqueer pansexual characters not only exist, but are pursued by their peers?

The other, less interesting side of this is simply the reality of the relationship between Reality TV and the bloggers who recap it — “characters” frustrated with how they’ve been portrayed on the show often project their rage onto recappers because approaching the producers of the show is a futile mission. They hope recappers can make it right, but they signed up for the whole thing when they signed up to be on reality teevee at all.

In [redacted]’s first email to Rich he pretty much reflects that ideology head on: “These contestants know by now when they go on one of these shows that they can fall victim to editing or the bloggers pen, but as [redacted role] I always felt I was above that.”

Did Jayla email Rich when he referred to a Jayla/Kim fight as Dyke Drama? Did Joslyn email Rich when he called her pose “the human realization of everything a gay wide should be”? What about Annaleigh and Marjorie, about which Rich asked: “What is this queer little love affair that’s blossoming between [them]?” Was Liz not okay with being referred to as “at least a 2 on the Kinsey scale”? NO. For Chrissake, fanfiction was created around imagining television characters as homosexuals, and so far Spock hasn’t sued anyone.

Which leads us to this singular conclusion: that guy is probably gay, right?

Riese’s Team Pick: The Wire

You guys The Wire. The Wire! The motherfucking Wire! I have been eating The Wire for about two months now, and now that I’m done eating it I feel empty inside. It was just so good. I miss Omar. And, to pour a little extra salt into my wound of vulnerability — every season of The Wire is on sale on iTunes for $12.99 as of pretty much the day I finished watching them (Seasons One, Two, Three, Four, and Five) and since I can’t take advantage of that deal, you probably should. It’s “for a limited time.” Or you can buy the entire series or stream it for $1.38 an episode via Amazon. You cannot watch it instantly on Netflix unfortunately.

The Wire follows a few cops and detectives and the criminals they prosecute in the city of Baltimore. Season one of The Wire focuses on the illegal drug trade, Season Two on the seaport system, Season Three on the city government, Season Four on the school system (MY FAVORITE SEASON) and Season Five on print news media.

Season Four

The Wire was a critical favorite — Slate.com called it the best show on television, Salon.com called it the best TV show of all time, and The Telegraph said it’s arguably the greatest television program ever made.

The first few episodes of each season can be a little slow, but give it time — by mid-season you literally won’t be able to think about anything else. It’s masterful, brilliant, careful storytelling and these are stories we rarely hear — at least not presented with this degree of compassion.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

Back when it premiered in 2002, AfterEllen pointed out that the series would feature “the first regular Asian-American lesbian or bisexual character on television and only the second regular lesbian police officer in TV history.” Kima Greggs, played by African-American/Korean-American actress Sonja Sohn, was described later as serving as “a moral center for the series, one of the only cops in the group not willing to lie, cheat, and steal to promote herself or to help the case.” Also she’s hot:

And, in one of the show’s many daring/interesting/compelling choices, they made Omar Little, a “renowned stick-up man who lives by a strict moral code and never deviates from his rules, foremost of which is that he never robs or menaces people who are not involved in ‘the game,'” unapolagetically gay, with an extended network of other gay men who meet up at a gay bar owned by a really nice blind guy named “Butchie” who I wanted to hug a lot.

i love you omar

Omar was hands down one of my favorite characters on the show — and FUN FACT! President Barack Obama says Omar Little is his favorite television character (his favorite TV show is, of course, The Wire) — “that’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”

The Baltimore City Paper said:

“Omar [is] arguably the show’s single greatest achievement. Omar is a same-sex-loving, shotgun-toting free agent who robs drug dealers of their cash and stash. He’s fearless yet tender. He could be as viciously cold-blooded as any thug, yet he’s the show’s most constantly hilarious presence. He is as scary a human being as ever depicted on television, and yet he is one of the only characters who never has a doubt about right and wrong.”

Season Four introduced Snoop, a drug gangster played by lesbian actress/rapper/ex-con Felicia “Snoop” Pearson.

AS A MASSIVE SIDENOTE — in a bizarre intersection of art/life, Felicia, an ex-con, was arrested last week in Baltimore as part of a massive drug bust and charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin. When The Wire creator David Simon was asked to comment on the arrest, he had this to say:

First of all, Felicia’s entitled to the presumption of innocence. And I would note that a previous, but recent drug arrest that targeted her was later found to be unwarranted and the charges were dropped. Nonetheless, I’m certainly sad at the news today. This young lady has, from her earliest moments, had one of the hardest lives imaginable.  And whatever good fortune came from her role in The Wire seems, in retrospect, limited to that project. She worked hard as an actor and was entirely professional, but the entertainment industry as a whole does not offer a great many roles for those who can portray people from the other America. There are, in fact, relatively few stories told about the other America….

In an essay published two years ago in Time magazine, the writers of The Wire made the argument that we believe the war on drugs has devolved into a war on the underclass, that in places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral. And we said then that if asked to serve on any jury considering a non-violent drug offense, we would move to nullify that jury’s verdict and vote to acquit. Regardless of the defendant, I still believe such a course of action would be just in any case in which drug offenses—absent proof of violent acts—are alleged.

Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers.  But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter.

Anyhow. If you need more convincing I’d recommend checking out The Baltimore Sun‘s Top 10 Reasons to Watch The Wire, which includes this compelling argument in its favor:

On its surface The Wire is a cop show, the most stereotype-ridden of TV genres, yet nowhere in The Wire do stereotypes exist. There are no good guys and bad guys, merely men and women who work on opposites sides of the socially acceptable. The Wire treats both as people caught up in the same racial, class, and political tensions that afflict any American, and dramatizes them in manners that feel natural.

Mostly I’d like you all to watch it so that we can all talk about it. It feels so realistic that after devouring five subsequent seasons of The Wire, I find Law & Order really disappointing.

Also Holly from The Office is in it.

Season One: Season One

Glee’s Santana Is A Confirmed Lesbian, Kurt & Blaine Do Prom

I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Glee is on hiatus for the next four weeks and will return mid-April. The good news is that yesterday was Glee day at PaleyFest, the annual event where television writers and actors gather panel-style to chat about their wondrous contribution to pop culture. Much like Comic-Con, tons of spoilers and casting info comes out of the fest and boy did this one not disappoint.

Let’s cut right to the chase. Santana is officially 100% gay, as told exclusively to AfterEllen:

“Santana is now out, internally. Whether she’s dating somebody or not, we don’t know. But we think we’ve made a big step in giving the world that character. Whether her and Brittany will work out we don’t know. (Lesbian visibility) was our intention. We want to make sure everybody is included. Santana is a lesbian. She might not be ready to come out yet, but she is.”

Writers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk explained that while they love the Brittana dynamic (and who doesn’t?), the focus will now be Santana’s solo journey as she comes to terms with her sexuality. I actually think they are on the right track with this one — by having Santana deal with her identity independent from a relationship, it will probably come off as less of a gimmick and treated more seriously.

“A lot of people are very interested in that relationship. We now have a major character on one of the top shows on TV who is a lesbian. Whether she’s dating someone or not is not really what we’re getting at just yet. What we’re trying to do is explore that character and what it means to be that character. We’ll use Brittany as part of it, but we’re more interested in seeing who Santana is and how hard it is for her to accept who she is. That doesn’t mean they’re not gonna be together, but we’re more interested in the individual part of that relationship.”

AE also got a hold of Chris Colfer and he has a few ideas that could change the perception that gay men and lesbians operate on different planes: “They’re both very bitchy characters so I feel like they could bond. Maybe Kurt could teach her to be a little bit nicer — and a little bit more out.” Elsewhere, on the Kurt and Blaine front, there is sure to be some Klaine (is that a thing now?) angst when Kurt returns to McKinley High and the two fight to attend prom together. That’s awesome, but will it top Justin & Brian’s “Save the Last Dance For Me?”

Ya’ll up for some more Glee spoilers?  Good.

Close your eyes, ears and other portals if you wish to remain pure:

+ The “Born This Way” episode focuses primarily on the Karofsky bullying storyline.

+ Gwyneth will be back after the current four-week hiatus and hopefully again in season 3, adding that, “Gwyneth is sort of the muse of the show. I’m friendly with her. And Brad has become quite friendly with her. She’s also somebody who I write on the weekends and say, ‘What do you think about this for an episode even if you’re not in it?’ She has opinions. She’s great.”

+ Murphy says the show’s creators have long wanted to do an episode devoted to an album as opposed to an artist, and their wish has come true: Glee has been granted the rights to Fleetwood Mac’s epic record, Rumors.

+ Kristin Chenoweth returns later this season performing the original song , “It’s 10 am, I’m Drunk.” (She returns to pester Mr. Shu after her all-Caucasian production of The Wiz crashed and burned and she’s now performing in a one-woman show called Crossroads.)

Hey, what ever happened to Anne Hathaway guest starring as Kurt’s lesbian aunt?

Glee 216 Recap: “Original Song” or “The One With Gay Boys Kissing”

Do I even need to say it. Do I even need to tell you where to put your children (far away, like in the cellar if you have one, or maybe at soccer camp or viola lessons or something) and where you need to hide your television (far away, like in the cellar if you have one, or alternatively you could bring me your teevee because I can’t afford my own) and what to do with your ears (blast them out of your head with dynamite)? I do not. We all can see, plain as the day Quinn’s baby was born and subsequently disappeared into the vortex, what’s happening here.

IT’S THE FULL FRONTAL ATTACK OF YEAH YOU KNOW IT YOU GOT IT

Last week we saw all varieties of homosexual activity on three — THREE! — different prime-time television programs. Except one of them was in the UK, where everyone is drunk and a communist and happier than we are, so you know. Whatever.

Anyhow, before I launch into this guaranteed-to-be-halfassed recap which will certainly leave out most of the heterosexual business, primarily because I am still unable to separate Lea Michele, that-girl-i-knew-who-was-friends-with-all-my-friends, from Rachel Berry, the character, and therefore I feel dorky/strange/stupid writing about her in any substantial way and by “substantial” I mean “fangirlish” because that’s the language recappers are supposed to speak (I realize this sounds like a namedrop, but I’ve been asked why I don’t talk about this or that Rachel moment, so there’s your answer, end of conversation! Ta-da!), let’s cut to the part  that I still honestly cannot believe happened on my teevee:

The thing about gay kisses on teevee is that they tend to be pretty tepid, almost comically so — like everyone super-glues their lips together and then stuffs their glued-up face in another girls face and holds it there, lips still tightly affixed, for 2-3 seconds. Like this:

If you want tongue, try Showtime. Or, you know, Pretty Little Liars. But Kurt & Blaine actually parted lips, possibly even wiggled some tongues down some throats and warbled their way to couple-ville this week, which seemed improbable as I imagined Blaine was coming to find Kurt as insufferable as I currently do and they’d never get together under these circumstances.

But I underestimated the power of an acoustic Beatles tune to bring a homo to his knees.

The episode opens at Dalton Academy, where The Warblers have done the impossible and managed to choose yet ANOTHER song that’d make me walk right out of GapKids no matter what was on the sale rack in a size 18. Apparently these Warbler children who did, to be fair, gave us plenty of clues that they were merely imaginary lemmings sprouted from Blaine’s ID, believe their best/only shot at winning anything ever is to have Blaine sing a song while they make doo-wop noises in the background like little musical soldiers. Kurt, READING OUR MINDS, points out —

Kurt: “Can I be really honest with you? Because it comes from a place of caring: Been there, done that. Look, Blaine, your solos are breathtaking. They’re also numerous.”

Mhm. If they wanna wow the crowd, they can’t just cover Train and Maroon 5 and all those other pussy guys while Blaine does sign language. WHAT WILL THEY DO? WHO WILL HE SING WITH?

Cut to Kurt in his room looking at himself for no reason when his pet bird Pavarotti, who I may or may not remember ever existing prior to this episode, drops dead. That’s unfortunate considering Kurt could’ve used the money he spent on that Burberry birdcage cover on saving a child from the devastation of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis currently happening in Japan or even saving a child who lives nowhere near Japan and has never heard of Japan but nevertheless is, as they say, “hungry.”

But Kurt is also hungry. Hungry for “me-time” which for Kurt means “everybody-look-at-me-time”! He decides to express his feelings about Pavarotti’s death through song — BLACKBIRD. Jeezus there are no words for my love of this song.

Reader — I cried. Mostly I was thinking about George Harrison, though. No JK, I was thinking about John Lennon.

This is the moment that Blaine will reference later when he confesses to Kurt, after having encouraged his cult to allow him and Kurt to do a duet together and gotten the sign-off on it:

“Kurt, there is a moment when you say to yourself, ‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you forever’. Watching you do Blackbird this week, that was the moment for me, about you. You moved me, Kurt. And this duet would just be an excuse to spend more time with you.”

I expected Kurt to literally cry tears of joy, but going in for the makeout ain’t so bad either. I’m hoping sex will losen Kurt’s collar a tad and remind him to show us some genuine “glee” again. In other words, I expected this. What are the kids at World’s Only Coffee Shop gonna say when these two boys stride in holding hands? TIME WILL TELL!

I’m happy that by the end of this episode we saw Kurt expressing shards of GLEE, the feeling, and I hope to see more of how this relationship makes Kurt happy.

Over at the lockers of our Discontent and Thwarted Desires, Brittany cutely edges up to Santana’s locker: “Hey, can I ask you a question? We used to be really close, and I really miss being your friend.”

Santana’s got the ice wall up in full effect — the rigid jaw, the cold, menacing stare — “Still waiting for the question,” she retorts.

“Did I do something wrong?” Brittany asks, sad as a sad puppy.

“I don’t know, did you?” Santana turns and almost — almost betrays her steely exterior but she ultimately powers through that moment where she’s forced to nearly look Brittany in the eye and wants to die again and lands safely on the other side of it — where Santana’s feelings still belong to Santana and nothing hurts.

Santana continues — “All I know is you blew me off to be with Stubbles McCripplepants. But it’s your loss. Because now I get the chance to write a heterosexual song about Sam, that we’re going to sing at Regionals.”

G-d DAMN.

Nicely played. See ladies — watch and learn. This is how one maintains one’s cool trashwhore exterior. Firstly: never make yourself vulnerable. One must keep the upper hand, one must have complete control, one must relish in the power of being the one less in love. Failing all that, one must at least APPEAR to have the upper hand/control/be less in love.

Let’s diagram.

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1.

All I know is you blew me off…

Retrospectively downgrades the significance and importance of Brittany rejecting Santana’s desire to be with her despite the incredible stakes by referring to “breaking my heart” as “blowing me off.”

+

2.

…to be with Stumbles McCripplepants…

Here she swiftly invalidates Artie’s adequacy as a partner and as a man. This is CLASSIC! It’s transparent but the beauty of these transparent low-blows is that they’re too low for anyone to call you out on being transparent because they’re still recovering from the fact that you actually said what you just said. Also serves to re-establish Santana as existing ABOVE Artie in the food chain of love despite being (as she sees it ) rejected for Artie.

+

3.

It’s your loss.

Standard. We all say this, it’s like our last mad dash towards a strand of pride.

+

4.

…’Cause now I get the chance to write an awesome heterosexual song about Sam…

This is a hit at Brittany for favoring her het relationship over lovegames with Santana. Santana is mocking Brittany’s participation in this farcical sexuality by rubbing its normativity in her face and sarcastically restating its inherent superiority.

Also an attempt to make Brittany jealous that Santana loves someone else, even though I mean, obviously she doesn’t, but she has to act like she does in order to be on top, like Tyra wants everyone to be. You gotta be on top. You know the song.

+

5.

…that we’re going to sing at Regionals.”

And by the way we’re going to win it all in front of everybody and that could have been me and you up there in front of everybody singing “Like the Way I Do” but alas, you’ll have to watch me sing with Trouty lips!!

It’s shitty to have all your feelings out there like that, to put them out there and let someone else decide what to do with them. You’ve got to get that shit BACK. And that’s what Santana is doing. Here’s hoping that they’ll work their shit out in a month — in song! And also naked.

Brittany, who probably also doesn’t know what season it is, is like, “wait, you’re still dating Sam? But you told me you were in love with me.” Brittany wants it back, that love, or maybe she wants Santana to admit she’s no more ready to leave Sam than Brittany is to leave Artie (which is untrue), or maybe she realizes being in love with each other and loving their boyfriends are mutually exclusive and she should leave Artie and his sweater vests behind in JC Penny and jet off into the future , which I imagine to be like Candyland, but rated NC-17 and with no boys.

Santana icily replies, lying clearly to save face: “I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. Look, can you stop staring at me? I can’t remember my locker combo.” That last part I think is because when someone stands that close to you, you can totally smell them and that makes you want to crawl inside them forever and ever.

Then Sue Sylvester arrives, calls them “Tweedle-dumb” and “Tweedle-fake-boobs,” says crazy things about them leaving Cheerios for Glee, and then as she departs, they open their lockers and piles of dirt pour out upon them, thanks Sue!

Brittany: “I don’t even remember putting that in there.”

Pretty Little Liars Episode 121 Recap: There’s a Monster at the End, She’s Probably Femme

To be honest I haven’t cared much about A.’s identity. I got the feeling this’d be more Who Killed Jenny than Who Killed Laura Palmer around when the old woman in the shoe was talking crazy to the bracelet-buyer a few episodes back. I’m not anticipating a SUDDENLY IT ALL MAKES SENSE moment because there’s no way anything could make sense at this point. So I’ve resisted my natural urge, inspired by my background in criminology (The Wire, Law & Order, CSI, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds), to actually try and connect any dots besides braille.

THEN last night, for the very first time since the show’s debut, I spotted a “clue” for real! You guys I’m like Olivia Benson meets Nancy Drew meets Lois Lane. I’m so so SOOOO proud of myself for this that I spent the afternoon bathing in sequins, listening to a recording of Jenna’s flute and painting my toenails that cute turquoise Aria sported all episode. Anyhow, enough about me and my clue, as let’s be real here: it’s your clue too.

This week on Pretty Little Liars, Facebook denied ABC Family the right to speak its name and therefore Aria’s entire unwarranted and completely irrational tirade against a photo of Ezra with a human lady is spiced up by a post-production dub that gets Aria referring to Ezra’s “facebook page” as his “website page,” which is oh-so-Max Sweeney of her and makes me want to Google search her pants/mini-skirt. Aria goes completely off her rocker in a very benign way, committing tiny random acts of whaththehellness like taking a Website Page photo with Ezra while wearing a paper bag over her head (with a face drawn onto the paper bag, I can’t even) and renting Runaway Bride on purpose.

Mrs. Oliviabenson, the Mother of Spencer, forbids Spencer to see Toby because if they’re seen together everyone will naturally conclude that Spencer and Toby beat Allison to death with a lamp and then hi HO hi HO, everyone’s in jail. Furthermore Spencer’s attendance is expected at The Founder’s Fair, which sounds like some kind of O.C.-esque social event (they were ALWAYS having events in The OC, amirite?) which will clearly involve a Hall of Mirrors and a Circus of Fear and ALL OF THE CARNIVAL TROPES IN THE WORLD!

Ian continues seething vaguely psychotic threats like telling Spencer how quicksand works (apparently the more you struggle, the deeper you fall, which is sort of like fisting) and bada bing bada boom we’re at the Fair, where Spencer and Toby have planned to secretly meet behind the funhouse (I’m positive that in real life nobody meets anybody at the funhouse, EVER, it exists only in fairy tales and TV shows) when Spencer gets a text ALLEGEDLY from Toby saying his phone died and he’s using someone else’s and Spencer should meet him inside the funhouse. Spencer is so blinded by her lust for neanderthal man that she foolishly enters the funhouse to find Toby.

There’s no windows, lights are crazy, everything’s a maze, you’re shuffled through dark shocking hallways — what a PERFECT place to meet someone. You know what would be a better place to meet up? Oh yeah… ANYWHERE ELSE EVER.

Once inside and suitably spooked, Spencer finds a message from A. on the wall and Spencer enters one of those tubes you go in when entering a photography darkroom for reasons I cannot entirely discern at which point SOMEONE locks her in there with a crowbar and way way WAY later, Ian rescues her by removing the crowbar AT WHICH POINT he immediately grabs her phone from the ground and does something to it (presses buttons). Then Spencer gets a text from Toby asking where is she, he’s outside, so clearly his phone is not broken and it was someone else texting Spencer to trap her in the funhouse and OH I DUNNO maybe it’s IAN because he grabbed the phone right after rescuing Spencer to erase the message I think HE SENT to Spencer!

TA-DA! Just call me Nancy.

Anyhoo back in Hannaland, Hanna’s listening to Elliot Smith on a loop which means she’s probably going to kill herself. Caleb, who’s hair looks slightly shorter this episode, is still on the shitlist though Hanna reluctantly hits him up for more clues — namely that Jenna was looking for “a key” but that’s all he knows and now he’d like to know Hanna again, biblically, and she’s like WHATEVER and then he cozies up to Mom who changes her mind and decides to like him but when Caleb goes to the Fair to give Hanna his love letter he makes the mistake of giving it to Mona, who consequently rips it up and dumps slushy all over it, to symbolize the slushy redness of Allison’s dead carcass blood.

Oh also, at the end, against Olivia Benson and the Natural Born Killers’s best advice, Spencer bounds across the carnival field to hug Toby and kiss him in front of the whole wide world!

Now for the gay parts!

Emily’s sexting with A. when Paige leaps from behind the cardboard brick pillar and grabs Emily’s fast-hands, squealing that she got the tickets to that show they talked about at the thwarted picnic date. It was sold out, but Paige’s Dad gay-bullied someone into coughing up tickets.

Paige won’t let Emily pay her for it ’cause it’s a ‘date.’ A date between Emily, Paige, and some dude who’s name, I think, was “Troy Atler.” That way it’ll seem less suspicious, Paige says. Because you know what they say about a girl who goes to see a rock band with another girl… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

When Emily recoils, Paige grasps for straws and picks “I’m totally really thinking about maybe possible taking steps towards coming out.” For example, Paige hasn’t pretended to date any boys. She also used her Website Page Machine and the Google Thing to Find Gay People on The Internet and somehow instead of landing on AfterEllen, which I swear has been search-engine-optimized by a genie, she ends up at the site of a Campus Pride Group an hour away at some other school where Paige’s Dad doesn’t yell at lesbians.

Emily senses the all-bark-and-no-bite sitch and offers to tag along if Paige wants to talk to someone from the group, because the idea of asking a singular human from a rando gay pride group online to have coffee and talk about feelings is maybe the strangest/most awkward idea ever. Alas, Paige is now TRAPPED and must follow through although you can kinda sense the crazy simmering towards her skin.

Later on in Hanna’s chateau, the girls take turns projecting the complications of their various secret lifestyles onto Hanna’s situation with Caleb and then to Aria’s situation with Ezra and the Mouthfacebook woman.

“He’s an animal,” says Emily, re: Caleb, in a way only a girl who almost threw up in some guy’s mouth and hates the way men smell in the morning could say.

Aria: Easy guys … he looked through your stuff, he didn’t invade Poland.
Spencer: Why are you sticking up for him? He broke her trust.
Emily: He went behind her back.
Spencer: He stuck his hands in her panty drawer!

If only Spencer would stick her hands in Emily’s “panty drawer” you know what I’m sayin’. Also how long does it take Maya to rehab from smoking weed? I feel like it shouldn’t take more than three days.

Emily shows up at The Coffee Shop for her three-way but Paige is nowhere to be seen and neither is Rosie O’Donnell. Then Emily spots a 35-year-old blonde at a table, who I think is supposed to be 17 or thereabouts and a lesbian.

Emily: I didn’t realize you’d be so [thinks: HOT]… punctual!

Flash forward when, high on life and lattes, it becomes painfully obvious that Paige is a no-show and doesn’t even text or leave a post-it note on campus. At The Macaroni Grill, we call that an NCNS or “No Call No Show,” which’ll get you fired unless you’re blonde and the Manager has a crush on you.

Anyhow, you know that feeling you get when you’re dating or have recently broken up with a somewhat psychotic person and every time your phone buzzes with a text your stomach clenches up in fear? Emily must get that a lot, what with A. and Paige McMoodswings. She should switch to AT&T ’cause that shit never works, she’d avoid a lot of stress.

Samara: Emily, not to be rude, but is there a friend?
Emily: What?
Samara: Look, if you made it this far, you’re doing great–
Emily: Oh no no no, it’s not me. This is about Paige, someone I’m… starting to date. That’s why this sucks, it feels like a step back for me.
Samara: I get it. I was with a closeted girl when I first moved here and noting but drama. I started to realize that if it was meant to be, it shouldn’t be this hard…

[pause for Emily to weigh her options — the girlfriend who has totally disappeared, or the girlfriend who occasionally appears?]

Samara: Something tells me she’s not coming.
Emily: I’m sorry.
Samara: It’s okay, I had to be in the neighborhood anyway. I’m setting up a booth at the festival. Me and some friends from art class are selling hand-made jewelery.

Emily makes plans to come look at jewelery the next morning because why not, really. Why anything.

Before we get into this Samara situation I HAVE A CRITIQUE… I’m not one of those people who complained that The L Word was too femmy and gorgeous and didn’t really represent “actual lesbians.” That truly actually IS how most of the lesbians look in West Hollywood, although WeHo tends to be more diverse than The L Word was (which is to say, not that much). In fact, I think that palatable similarity to every other ridiculous TV show actually enabled a lot of otherwise-closeted lezzers to tune into a thing precisely because that thing looked like all the other things and therefore felt safe and not just safe for you but also for any familial passersby. It wasn’t edgy or “out there,” it was the girl from Flashdance, you know? Also it’s television, everyone is gonna have a certain look and be ridiculously attractive, that’s just how teevee is.

But. But but but but but. I am registering a complaint about the gender presentations of Pretty Little Liars‘ lesbians not because I think they’re cheapening our media visibility (they probably are, but that’s not my beef today) but because this whole thang would be WAY more interesting if at least one chick had an alternative lifestyle haircut, you know?  Or anything different about her! It’s starting to feel kind of farcical. And I’m not just saying that because I like girls who look like boys and THIS IS TURNING INTO THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. Clearly Paige’ll transition easily into a cargo shorts lifestyle, but for now, she looks JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, except with BangHelmet.

That being said, g-damn Emily snags some good-looking ladies.

+

+

Anyhow, back to Samara. Samara’s alllll up on Emily’s baby ears. I hope they hook up so Samara can take off that jacket and give it back to my Mom.

Paige shows up literally out of the blue (that’s right, she burst through a field of blue smack dab into this story) and immediately starts acting bitchy. Samara references Paige having trouble with her father and wanting to talk about it, and Paige is like OMG when you say his name he can hear it like Superman and he’ll know that I’m a lezzer and I killed a sheep in the sheep barn to make my jacket.

Samara: Look, Paige — I hope it didn’t seem like I was calling you out. I get it, we’ve all been there.
Paige: I know you’re trying to be nice and everything, but honestly you don’t even know me.
Emily: Paige —
Paige: Sorry Emily I’m not looking to join a parade and ride down Main Street on a rainbow chopper.
Samara: Actually, I drive a Jeep.

For a second you think this might just be it. If this was rocks/paper/scissors than jealousy would be an atom bomb that destroyed all three of those silly objects, and perhaps would drive someone to come out lest they maddeningly lose their love. However even the awareness of other fishes in the sea doesn’t overpower Paige’s Love of the Secret Life.

Paige: That’s besides the point.
Emily: You know what? I’m gonna take this to go, I’ve got a paper that’s due. And tell your friends it was really nice to meet them.
Paige: Emily, wait —
Emily: What? So you can be rude to me too? You know what Paige, this is becoming way too much drama. I don’t wanna be your secret.

So far Paige’s interactions with Emily have included: threatening to out Emily as a lesbian, trying to drown Emily, aggressively challenging Emily at swimming, swooping into Emily’s car unexpectedly to kiss her, taking Emily to Sherwood Forest for a picnic to avoid being seen, accusing Emily of having an easy time coming out, pretending she never kissed Emily, ignoring Emily, crashing a bike on her way home from surprising Emily at midnight in the rain with crazytalk, inspiring her father to come to the cafeteria and yell at Mr. Fitz about Emily, and, worst of all, making Emily do karaoke. Emily liked that last one though, so.

So far I’d say their relationship has been 75% drama and 25% fun.

But also? I’d like to address the Rainbow Chopper situation? Rainbows always get the short end of the stick in these conversations. Everybody’s got a crack to make at a rainbow’s expense. Everyone wants to scissor but nobody wants to participate in a parade or anything requiring rainbow memorabilia. Yet in actual life, no gay or lesbian person has been forced to attend and march in a “parade” adorned in rainbow regalia post-coming out, let alone drive a rainbow-motifed airplane through the Founders Fair. So really, saying you don’t want to ride a rainbow chopper is off-topic. And precisely the kind of ridiculous thing Paige would say. I don’t like her anymore.

Emily is sitting in her window seat, thinking about butterflies and daisychains, when she receives a series of text messages, both underwhelming for two very different reasons:

Flashback! Time for a special moment in which I forget that Allison is Allison and not Mini and am disappointed that nothing more suggestive goes down, besides Allison telling Emily that Emily is the only one who understands her. That’s because Allison is pansexual, duh.

Allison: I brought you a present back from my trip. But you have to keep it a secret. I didn’t bring anything for the other girls so if they ask about it, you have to lie. Promise?
Emily: It’s beautiful…
Allison: It’s vintage. My grandma gave it to me, I wanted you to have it. You’re the only one that really understands me, em. the only one that I can completely be honest with. I have to go, I have a prior engagement.
Emily: Well I’ll definitely see you later right?
Allison: Yeah! Don’t have any fun without me… make sure you keep that in a safe place, it’s a lot more valuable than it looks.

DUM DUMMMMMM. Emily then finds the mysterious missing key, which Glen wore around his neck for the whole third (?) season of South of Nowhere, in the snowglobe so now it’s go time.

The ladies meet up, hit up the storage locker and find a lunchbox (Allison’s old lunchbox, says Emily, because she probably wanted to be in that box and would never forget it) with a USB drive in it.

The drive reveals that someone has been filming them for like, for.ever. Like it’s just videos of them. That shit will show up on Tumblr. It’s mega creepy and suggests that maybe these girls are so rambunctiously paranoid because, indeed, their worst paranoias have turned out to be true. It’s like Paranormal Activity, but with a bunch of obnoxiously good-looking shiny-haired girls in it.

were we ever so young

SPOILER ALERT

So next week is the finale and because PLL has like 5 hours of plot to fit into 40 minutes of television and 16 of which will be spent watching shadows duck behind various large objects, Emily will definitely get the short end of the storyline stick. Furthermore a sneak peek reveals that Emily’s Mom wants to move to Texas to be with her Dad and Emily doesn’t want to move to Texas and let’s be real, they’re not kicking Shay off the show, nobody is moving to Texas. But this is EXCELLENT as it provides an opportunity for Emily to move in with one of the gals, a la Ryan Atwood, or maybe with her girlfriend, who could be one of three girls which is higher than Tila Tequila’s odds at her finale.

According to IMDb, Maya will be in next week’s episode.

Possibilities relating to Emily’s romantic future:

1. Due to 2-minute time allotment for lesbian storyline, they’ll make every second count by filling it with huge, surprising revelations that practically lick the inside of your heart, they’re that warming.  Declarations of Loving You a Long Time, Getting Commitment Ceremonied, Having Sex, etc. An example of this is Naomi’s speech to Emily in the last episode of Skins’ Season Four where they packed so much emotion into about 45 seconds that you barely remember if they were even IN the rest of the episode.

2. Maya comes back, is dropped off probably wherever Emily is kissing some other chick.

3. Emily leaves, Maya comes back, their cars pass like dark ships passing in the night AND SCENE.

4. Paige comes out to her father then runs to Emily’s to be harbored — season cliffhanger.

5. Paige comes out to her father then runs to Emily’s to be harbored and has a fight with Mrs. Fields — season cliffhanger.

6. Paige comes out to her father then runs to Emily’s to be harbored but Emily is there with Samara or Maya — season cliffhanger.

6. Emily kisses Samara near the beginning of the episode, is spotted by Paige. Paige goes crazy and drowns a puppy or something then runs away to Prague.

7. Emily kisses Paige near the beginning of the episode, is spotted by Maya. Wants to be with Maya but Maya says YOU DO YOU. Cliffhanger.

8. Everyone puts their sweatpants on, gets a ponytail and watches Legally Blonde. And SCENE.

Franky Likes People: Skins UK Episode 507 is a Pansexual Ending to a Very Queer Week of TV

On Monday, Paige said “I’m gay” and the whole world changed. On Tuesday, Santana told Brittany she wanted to be with her and said she had all of these feelings she was afraid of.

And last night in the United Kingdom, on the teevee program Skins, Season Five, Episode Seven; Liv, Mini and Grace do a bunch of coke and decide it’s time to ask Franky, our favorite genderqueer fawn, about her sexuality.

Mini: What’s Franky’s story then?
Liv: Franky is Viola, the girl dressed as a boy who can’t get what she wants, whatever that is.
Franky: I know what I want.
Liv: And what’s that?
Franky: What’s what?
Mini: Well uh, Franky, you haven’t really told us whether you’re a — you know — or a —
Franky: A what or a what?
Liv: A LESBIAN.
Grace: Liv that’s so —
Franky: — no, it’s ok, I don’t mind. And the answer is…. no. I’m not anything.
Mini: So you’re bisexual?
Franky: No, I’m — into people.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liv: Who are you into at the moment?

Part of me wants to smack Liv in the face and the other part of me notices that they’re still just doing drugs and dancing, and that Liv is notably more concerned about Franky edging in on her boyfriend than she was about Franky being a lezzer, despite the locker room taunts that re-scarred all of us for life in the Season opener.

The music playing in the next scene — at a club where the boy Franky might like (Matty) leaves Liv (his girlfriend) to rescue Franky from a weird dude that’s hitting on her — is Jessie J’s “Do it Like a Dude.” It’s like everything is meta and a recap of some other recap.

Then! THEN! At play practice the next day, Grace, for no other reason than — I can only deduct — to specifically please me, directs Mini to kiss Franky even though Shakespeare didn’t necessarily put that part in the play. This is, keep in mind, after it’s been revealed that Franky likes people, and “people” includes “girls.” Yet there is minimal hesitation.

Franky and Mini kiss. And there’s a linger.

Alo’s eyes get real big and then — then it’s over.

Grace hops along onto being upset about Matty and Liv not wanting to be in the play and Mini wants to know if she’s doing better at her part and then Grace and Rich have a fight. And SCENE.

+

At practice the next day, it’s Matty’s turn to kiss Franky. It’s like The Shooting Tila Tequila Show up in here.

+

And when the time comes, the camera flashes to Mini:

… and back to the kiss. When Matty and his Chord Overstreet lips swing into her neighborhood, Franky turns quickly. Why. Does she have feelings. I learned about feelings earlier this week on Glee.

Unfortunately for us, Matty’s a self-obsessed asshole STUPID BOY who doesn’t deserve Franky, so this is really no contest, sexuality aside.

Then, during the play, Liv decides it’s time to kiss Franky because EVERYONE KISS THE GENDERFLUID SEXUALITY FLUID GIRL IT’S FLUID WEEK YOU’RE GAY YOU’RE STRAIGHT GO WITH THE FLOW IT’S SHAKESPEARE MOTHERFUCKERS KISS EVERYONE PANROMANTIC CANNONFUCK HEADTHING

Franky feels so tender but also fierce. I hope that she doesn’t feel like a canvas on which everyone can act out their desires. Being wanted by everyone but also no-one. I hope she doesn’t feel that way. I don’t think it’s true, anyhow. But Mini was the Original Franky Bully. We know what that means.

Then Liv yells at Matty because she saw him in the wings watching her kiss Franky like a “sick fuck” and he says “it’s two girls kissing, of course it turned me on!” and then Liv asks Matty if he loves Franky and he says he loves Liv but won’t say he doesn’t love Franky, which makes no sense at all, because Franky and Matty have had like what, one conversation ever, in the field, and I think Franky held a gun to his head and was crying and he had on a trenchcoat and it was like Black Swan meets The Lost Boys meets Salute Your Shorts meets The Wire meets The Catcher in the Rye but who knows maybe they can communicate via cross-room body language like Ursula told Ariel she could do in The Little Mermaid.

Oh so and, here’s what happens next week:

The amazing thing is that Franky is like a secret flirtmaster. That girl can suggestively stare a sexual response out of a tree. For crying out loud those eyes. I guess her and Matty could have staring contests forever and ever, maybe that could be romantic.

Part of what makes Skins feel so authentic (when it succeeds) is, obviously, the one-character episode format. We see them not only in their private lives but we see them literally alone. No other show spends that much time alone with kids in their rooms — the part we don’t even see of our friends’ lives — of anyone’s lives. We see, sometimes excessively, how they feel about sex — Mini trying the positions she sees in magazines to be ready for her first time with Nick, Sid jerking off to shitty magazines or a picture of Michelle or Alo with his multi-screen porn-viewing set-up. We see their crazy families and the things they don’t tell their friends — like there’s so much on both ends when you’re a teenager, so much family to hide from your friends and so much friends to hide from your family and so much heart and sex to hide from everyone.

And then we see them in the context of everyone else’s world, and it’s really hard to dislike a person once you know where they’re coming from. Which is a lot like real life, too, I think. I’m glad they started with Franky. It’s like she’s our little Cub Scout leader for Season Five.

via ncampbell.tumblr.com

I don’t even know. What’s next. Sex riot, right? Equality?

Glee 215 Recap: HomoSexy

Before watching this week’s episode of Glee (I watch it online ’cause I don’t have a teevee), a few eager fans decided to spoil my surprise homoparty by telling me, via formspring, that SANTANA IS A LESBIAN. I thought, “Is this a joke?” and then I thought, “but Santana is like the slutty one who sleeps with all the boys, there’s no way SHE’s the lesbian, this must be a trick of some kind,” and then, much later than I’d like to admit, I remembered that I, too, was the slutty one who slept with all the boys.

And so here we are.

I get it. I mean I get Santana — where she’s coming from. I mean I think I’ve been there too. I didn’t figure myself out gradually and then suddenly or even just gradually. I figured it out suddenly, all at once, like Santana does here, and a million puzzle pieces fell from the sky and over time, found their place in the f*cked up scattershot damaged resources of my once-incomprehensible memories and desires. Like Santana, I didn’t think making out with girls meant I could ever want to “be with” one.

I’ve never really related to a teenaged-teevee storyline before.

I didn’t, like Paige McCullers, enjoy my date with a boy until he kissed me (the kiss was fine, too). My family hadn’t been waiting all my life for me to tell them what they already knew, like Kurt Hummel. I hadn’t been consciously living a lie because I was afraid of my family’s reaction, like Emily Fields or Emily Fitch. I hadn’t known since I was 12 and fell in love with my future girlfriend like Naomi Campbell. I didn’t just know/accept it all along (or eventually reneg on it) like Tea. I wasn’t coaxed out of the closet by an already-ok-with-being-gay paramour, like Paige Michaelchuck or Marissa Cooper or Spencer Carlin was. But Santana — Santana I get.

And isn’t it amazing? That we have a choice now? That Willow is no longer speaking for the entire group?

+

Episode 215: Sexy

[thanks to gleekstorm and gleeky for leading me to many of the graphics/gifs used below. original gif-maker credited whenever possible]

Gwyneth Paltrow, playing Cameron Diaz playing Holly Holiday, is back at McKinley (I almost called it Rosewood!) to teach Health or whatever educational hybrid works best for this week’s plotline.

SIZE QUEEN

Emma, fresh out of a not-productive Celibacy Club meeting with Quinn and Rachel, squeals that sex “is not for kids and not for adults” ’cause the only way to get KY Jelly between Emma’s legs is to tell her it’s hand sanitizer. Also, outfits like these don’t make for quick-release nudity:

i’d like to write a song about this headband

Meanwhile in the hallway — WERE WE EVER SO YOUNG — Santana’s Black Panther Blazer is interested in sheltering Brittany’s bird-related sweater set via cuddle puddle and incest porn.

Santana: “Hey, Brit-Brit. So, how about you and I pop in some Sweet Valley High this evening and get our cuddle on?”
Brittany: “Look, I’d love to get my sweet lady-kisses on, but I haven’t been feeling sexy lately. I think I have a bun in the oven. Please don’t tell anyone, okay, especially Artie.”

Santana begins telling everyone before finishing telling Brittany she won’t tell anyone. Anyhow, false alarm! When Will asks if Brittany’s gotten a doctor to verify the impending birth of what will surely be the weirdest baby ever, we learn that Brittany mixed up “the voyage of sperm up her vaginal canal” with “the voyage of birds flying through the sky, landing and building nests outside her perrywinkle window.”

As Brittany explains her predicament, the reaction shots are priceless:

Will, wearing denim-on-denim (not really, but it does look like denim-on-denim, so), is ready to get “deep into their setlist” in anticipation of Regionals, that massively competitive season-ending event oddly attended by no more than three other musical groups, one of which is always a gimmick (old people! deaf people!) BUT unfortunately, Will now sees he’s got a bunch of future genital warts crowding up the music room and it’s time for sexual education.

This education will not take place in sexual education class, where we’ve already flash-backed to see Mercedes have AIDS panic over Cucumbers (the same thing happened to me once but instead of cucumbers it was this gun-toting, stab-wound-sporting, small-time boxer who I met at The Olive Garden) but instead, in Glee Club.

Since nobody dates outside of Glee Club, at least you’re taking care of all these couples as packages and LET’S BE REAL Glee Club is actually a pilot music therapy program for kids at risk. In this case it’s all the best looking kids in school at risk of growing up and becoming Republicans if you don’t keep ’em humble and slushied and singing like a bunch of homosexual pansies every week.

first things first: who can tell me what a “dental dam” is

Speaking of packages, Holly Holiday’s sex ed concept is that you’ve gotta “hide the vegetables” just like Jessica Seinfeld suggests in her cookbook about making sure children eat vegetables. Apparently the fact that “sex ed” is already pre-packaged in “sex,” which I believe is already pretty fucking interesting, especially to teenangers, is not enough. In order to REALLY REACH THE KIDS, Holly knows sex ed should be wrapped in sex and also SINGING AND DANCING, which, to be fair, is how everything should be wrapped. (But really did anyone fall asleep or fail to pay attention during sex ed? Condoms, WHAT A SNOOZER, let’s get back to The War of 1812 already! No. The problem with sex ed isn’t that it’s boring and kids don’t listen — it’s that most schools DON’T HAVE IT. I’ll stop now before I get incensed.)

Holly: “Sex. It’s just like hugging, only wetter.”

Holly, who picked up her jacket either from the future or The Hard Rock Cafe, calls out the kids for being sexually misinformed, like how Finn believed in pregnation via jacuzzi jets (although in a pinch, it beats a turkey baster) and Holly says this misinformation will end “right here, right now.”

How? By everyone acting completely inappropriate and singing Joan Jett while thrusting their tits into the air like spastic zoo animals. Beats chlamydia every time.

Although it seems like Holly got an excessive amount of screen time in Brittany’s dance number, what with all her singing and dancing and lead vocalizing — THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS — I’m not mad at this scene. Will resists the urge to get all molesty and instead holds up a sign reading “TOO MUCH?” which Rachel should probs snag for safekeeping to whip out next time Will gyrates his way into a school assembly.

She ends with some words to the wise:

Holly: “Just remember, when you have sex with somebody, you’re having sex with everybody. And everybody’s got a random.”

Sue magically finds Kurt (“Porcelain”) and Blaine at the Coffee Shop, where she prepares herself a potion of sugar packets, vanilla syrup and heavy whipping cream while informing the boys they’ll need sex appeal to win at regionals, which is utter nonsense.

Meanwhile at McKinley, where nobody’s got time for lattes or syrup, Lauren lights Puck’s loinfire by suggesting sex is in their future. I hope so, I’ve had enough of this chatty foreplay and am ready for the dramatic relationship part and subsequent Ballads to begin.

Lauren: “Puckerman, today is your lucky day.”
Puck: “You’re finally gonna let me motorboat those twins?”
Lauren: “Remember when I told you I had a master plan? Here it is.” [DRAMATIC PAUSE] “Can you think of a celebrity who released a tape of their intimate relations that DIDN’T make them more famous?”
Puck: “If this is going where I think it’s going, I may need to sit down.”
Lauren: “Rachel Berry wants to be a famous singer. I just want to be famous. Doing that number for Glee Club was my first step towards being a star. I wanna be like a Kardashian, I want a TV show and a fragrance. It’ll be called Zizes. And the slogan will be “you just got zized.”

I will buy ten bottles of Zizes and I will stir-fry my breakfast in it. I will baptize my baby in Zizes and I’m not even Christian.

welcome to the first meeting of ‘the skulls’

Meanwhile in an abandoned warehouse I swear just got busted with $16 million dollars of cocaine on The Wire episode I saw earlier today, The Warblers are putting on a private performance for a bunch of schoolgirls from their “sister school” to see if The Warblers are sexy enough to wow the adult judges who will be assessing the team based on vocal abilities, dancing and choreography.

The passion in the warehouse reaches foam-party proportions and Kurt makes sexy faces that remind me of karaoke on the Rosie Cruise but Blaine isn’t a fan/is an asshole.

Blaine: “Are you okay? You kept making those weird faces during the whole song.”
Kurt: “Those aren’t weird faces, those are my sexy faces.”
Blaine: “It looked like you were having gas pains or something.”
Kurt: “Great.  How are we supposed to get up on the stage at regionals and sell sexy to the judges when I have as much sexual appeal and knowledge as a baby penguin?”

This image exists on the internet:

Holly catches Lauren & Puck checking out online sex tapes as they plan for One Night in Zizes and lets them in on a little secret we all recognize from the Parents Television Council — that shit be child porn and they best not do it. Holly throws “my sex tape with JD Salinger was a disaster” out there like it isn’t THE BEST LINE EVER.  Someone oughta run into the rye and catch that sucker and put it on a t-shirt.

In Santana’s noir/reggae-themed Boudoir, Brittany tries to bring up feelings again. Last time Brittany wanted to talk about her feelings for Santana, Santana knocked Brittany’s idea of doing a duet to Melissa Etheridge, which drove Brittany STRAIGHT into Artie’s arms. So.

Brittany: “I need to talk to you. I really like it when we make out and stuff–”
Santana: “Which isn’t cheating because –”
Brittany: “The plumbing’s different.”
Santana: “Mhm.”
Brittany: “But when Artie and I are together we talk about things like feelings.”
Santana: “Why?”
Brittany: “Because with feelings it’s better.”
Santana: “Are you kidding? It’s better when it doesn’t involve feelings. I think it’s better when it doesn’t involve eye contact.”
Brittany: “I don’t know I guess just don’t know how I feel about us.”
Santana: “Look. Let’s be clear here — I’m not interested in any labels, unless it’s on something I shoplift.”

Santana doesn’t even buy clothes. Clothes just want to be on her.

Brittany: “I don’t know, Santana, I think we should talk to somebody — like an adult. This relationship is really confusing for me.”
Santana: “Breakfast is confusing for you.”
Brittany: “Well sometimes it’s sweet and sometimes it’s salty. What if I have eggs for dinner. Then what is it?”

Between the storks and the Novocaine, there’s a little Buddha in Brittany’s sage cerebrum.

Holly brings the girls into her chamber/sushi bar to sit on the floor. Why are we sitting on the floor, they ask. “Because we’re in Japan!” Holly jokes, ruining a recapper’s opportunity to make fun of them for sitting on the floor like they’re in Japan.

Truly embracing the hokiest, most unappealing aspects of the lesbian experience, Holly christens this event as  “the sacred sharing sexy circle,” which again, is better than any joke I could ever make about it, and Holly begins by asking the girls if either could be lesbians. They shrug and say they don’t know, which is beautiful, because they didn’t say OH MY GOD NO EW which is I think the required response according to the FCC rulebook.

Santana says she likes girls and guys, but also — “I made out with a manequin. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was in the shape of a person.”

Holly recalls her sweet sapphic swing parties at her all-women’s college and admits she “still feels a little tingle when I hear Ani DiFranco,” and these two little girls (this little girl breaks furniture, this little girl breaks laws) are about to learn that love is a piano dropped from a four-story window.

Brittany doesn’t know how she feels ’cause Santana won’t talk about it. Although Brittany is an easily-manipulated sponge, Santana isn’t exactly fondling these homosexy desires.

I know right, this is like America’s Next Top Model when they’re trying to make you think Lisa’s gonna be eliminated but it’s really Kim.

It seems like — with respect to coming out stories — most girls saw a door. Maybe you had gone in but kept it a secret, maybe you stood it front of it every afternoon debating whether or not today would be the day you’d enter. Maybe you opened and closed it constantly, or gayly dashed back and forth through it. Maybe your family or friends were blocking the door.

But some of us never even saw the door, even with nobody blocking it, and once it was opened we fell straight in. A friend opened that door for me. I never, ever, ever in ten million years, would’ve opened it myself.

This scene, I think, is when Holly opened that door for Santana.

Blaine tries to teach Kurt sexyfaces but instead reminds Kurt that he’s awkward, and also really bitchy when made uncomfortable. Blaine consequently steps into an alternate universe where it’s appropriate to go ask your friend’s Dad to tell your friend about boners by confronting said Dad at the auto-shop to suggest he give Kurt a little sex ed talk. Kurt’s Dad gamely considers the suggestion because he’s AngelFather of the Year.

The girls have chosen to work out their feelings via song. They’ve chosen “Landslide,” which is a bona fide eternal tearjerker. I’d cry to Landslide if they played it in the middle of The Office.

So this happens, and I cry like the end of Brokeback Mountain crying.  It wasn’t Beaches crying, or even necessarily My Girl crying, but it was a little more than when Justin’s Mom came to PFLAG. I don’t even know what happened I was too busy crying and projecting.

I believe there were some vague undefined glances from Brittany to Santana and from Santana to Brittany just uncertain enough to give you a door into projecting the hell out of this scene.

For me it begins with how you don’t ever want to want anything ’cause you don’t want to get hurt. Feelings are uncontrollable, messy. Why would I put those in someone else’s hands when that someone else has made it clear they’re not interested in carrying it. You just don’t even GO THERE. Santana hasn’t even CONSIDERED IT. You can see that all over her face. Like I said, she was too busy sucking the chrome off Sam’s Cadillac to see the door.

Then something happens that forces you to extract your feelings from your gut and stare at them: your potential paramour actually leaves her wife, or confesses that she likes you, or you consider, for the first time, that you could be bisexual or gay for real.

Then this door swings open and you run through it and realize on the other side is a possibility brighter than anything burned where you just came from. It’s been there all along.

So you sit up there in front of everyone and think “what if I was with this person.” You think “everyone’s looking at us and it looks okay so far.” Santana is presenting herself in a suggestive context and as of yet no hell has broken loose.

It’s like sticking your toes in the pool.

When the song ends Brittany asks, “Do you really feel that way?” and Santana nods and they hug. This is the first moment Glee has ever felt real to me.

Brittany seems to usually be thinking “I like chips,” but here she’s giving off an “I like Santana” vibe. I mean this scene was so intense I didn’t even notice that 1995 had been calling Brittany that whole time regarding that LL Bean/Blossom dress they’d like returned to its rightful century.

Rachel: “Can I just applaud this trio for exploring the uncharted world of Sapphic charm? Brava. Brava.”
Santana: “Look, just because I sang a song with Brittany doesn’t mean you can put a label on me. I want to make that clear.”

Police label anyone attacking Santana as a Code 45-11…. a suicide.

The Celibacy Club, dressed in uniforms snagged from the employees of Disneyworld’s Frontierland banana stand, perform “Afternoon Delight” in front of a giant photographic montage of Old Country Buffet’s dessert bar while the audience snickers because “Afternoon Delight” is about sex, not about coconuts!

Brittany stands up and claps. I think that means she’s gay.

Kurt’s Dad decides it’s time to have the sex talk.

Kurt’s Dad: “Believe me, I wanna do this even less than you do. It’s gonna suck for both of us. But we’re gonna make it through together and we’ll be better men for it.”

Was this scene written by gay men who wished their fathers had known it was indeed possible to discuss sex with a gay teenage son? Because he kinda knocks this one out of the ballpark. Kurt accepts these pebbles with a bitchy sneer but respectfully tosses his Dad a genuine “thank you” at the end.

The Scene

It’s easy to get fan-fictiony on this scene and get all flowery and sentimental in hopes of touching your heart on a very simple, trite level and I don’t wanna do that. I’m trying not to do that.

From the comments on our quickie last night it seems like everyone related to it for a different reason — like a lot of you realized your sexuality ’cause you fell in love with your BFF. Like Santana, I did have a girl BFF I made out with sometimes, but I never wanted more than that, really. So I relate in my own way (more on this in a minute) which isn’t necessarily your way. This is why we need fiction and why I’ll never “get” reality TV — we read novels and watch scripted television because a good story can mean something to everyone. There’s no absolute truth because it’s not real. We can all keep this scene in our own way.

Was Santana always written this way? No clue. But it’s also not impossible in real life for a human to hop suddenly from one storyline to the other. Sometimes there is no gradient. There was one life and then there was my next life and the switch was sudden and extreme. In the first life, I had sex with boys. A lot of boys. It seemed that having slept with such a significant number of male humans certified my sexuality was, beyond any shadow of a doubt and beyond any emotional attachments to female friends and beyond any enjoyment gleamed from sometimes making out with girls, straight as an arrow.

There’s two major types of sex, and then a bunch of subcategories, obviously, but the two types are With Feelings and Without Feelings. And Sex Without Feelings isn’t really very similar to the other kind. Liking it, for some people, has nothing to do, ultimately, with your sexuality or love or anything. Focusing so much on Sex Without Feelings to decide Who You Are isn’t always effective/efficient and it seems like that’s what Santana has been doing all this time.

There’s this fear — “what would people say about us” — and you’re afraid to take it out and look at it so instead it just sits there in your subconscious, making you bitchy.  There’s a fear of fear. An understanding that if feelings are never discussed, you’ll never be pressed to act on them.

Yes, your friends and family will still love you. But it’s difficult to admit that you care about your enemies, too, and what they might say about you, especially when you’re used to being the quickest, sharpest tongue in the brawl. That’s what we do, those of us who are afraid to feel, because that attitude functions as a shield and a warning.

I realized watching this that this was my second television-induced sobfest this week because on Monday, Paige on Pretty Little Liars said her thing about how “if I say it out loud — if I say ‘I’m gay’ — the whole world will change.”

And then I thought — well, if you count Betty and Tea, Maya and Emily and Paige, and now Santana and (to a degree) Brittany — there are a shit-ton of queer girls on our teevee right now. There’s also Franky being all genderqueer over in the UK.

via nowhere89.tumblr.com

We owe this prevalance, I think, to what happened in September and October. We had to die for them to realize our stories needed to be told (by someone besides Ilene Chaiken). ‘Cause we all deserve our own Young Nelson. There have never been more teenaged characters struggling with their sexuality on television than there are right now.

We have voices now. We had to die first. To make it politically incorrect for anyone to vehemently protest seeing gay kids on TV. Because how can you do that, when they’re being bullied like that, when it’s killing them. Just let Santana and Brittany make out, you know?

There’s a part at the end of “Landslide” when Santana and Brittany hug and they flash to Quinn right quick and her face says “The feeling of Finally” and that feeling is a smile. That was a nice moment, too.

I could be mad here that Brittany says she can’t break up with Artie for Santana, but instead I’ve chosen to believe that eventually, she will. I feel like this is how those things turn out. And Brittany’s too stupid, I think, to realize that, regardless of what you’ve built your life around and how afraid you might be, it’s worth it to change everything for TRUE LOVE. Isn’t it?

SANTANA IS A LESBIAN !!! WE WIN ALL THE THINGS! IT’S GLEE, THE FEELING GLEE!

Did you see Glee? Oh cool, me too. I’m gonna write a recap here and all, but I thought maybe y’all might have a feeling or three about tonight’s ep?

Also I know this is weird, but I personally relate more to Santana’s speech about how she came to realize her sexuality/feelings for Brittany or whatever than any other coming outish scene I’ve ever seen. And trust me, I have seen all of them. Look. I have my character now. Sometimes I think of lesbians popping up on the television like Pac-Man or something.

[Also a disclaimer: Yes, we’re aware Santana can’t be “labeled” as a lesbian and isn’t necessarily a lesbian but fuck us in the ear if we can’t employ hyperbole because it’s more fun that way. Anyhow, she’s not a real person — she’s a character. We can feel however we want to about her because she’s not real and therefore our opinions of her will not impact her life because she’s not actually alive. It’s much funnier to say SANTANA IS A LESBIAN than it is to say SANTANA LIKES BRITTANY, BUT DOESN’T WANT TO BE LABELED]

Pretty Little Liars 120 Recap: Someone to Watch Over Me As I Say I’m Gay

pictureperfecttvstars.tumblr.com

This week on Pretty Little Liars, the following things do NOT happen:

1) When Hanna discovers Caleb had been working as Jenna’s poolboy, sweeping up the dirty lying algae from the deepest moldiest corners of Allison’s coffin via Hanna’s tonsils, and Caleb volunteers “she was asking me all of these questions-” AND THEN instead of taking the FIRST OPPORTUNITY EVER to waterboard a human with a direct pipeline to the deepest darkest not-blindest recesses of Jenna’s psyche, Hanna DOES NOT pry for clues but instead Hanna tells Caleb to LEAVE RIGHT THAT MINUTE even though he clearly hasn’t even brushed his hair.

2) When Hanna slaps Jenna’s face, knocking Jenna’s 3-for-1 Claire’s sunglasses onto the cool heartless bathroom floor, rather than sticking around to see if Jenna can SEE THEIR FACES which it seems like she can, the girls run out of the bathroom like Angela Chase skipping Geometry Review. THEY DO NOT LOOK FOR CLUES.

3) Brittany and Santana did not make out. WHATEVER.

But don’t worry, my little homosexual devilcakes, all is not lost. All is not lost because this week Emily Fields had a scene that lasted at least two minutes if not longer and continued to extrapolate on the thesis I first put forth in August which is “Pretty Little Liars Successfully Maintains a Lesbian Storyline for Entire Season and Maybe Longer”:

.… over the course of Pretty Little Liars‘ first season,which ended last night, Emily did say a lot of other very lesbionic things, providing a fairly compelling and relatively unrestrained lesbian storyline — almost unprecedented for a brand-new show as usually our lesbian storylines are reserved for Season 3 or 4 when the writers run out of drugs and miscarriages and need something to boost ratings (usually, obvs, during Sweeps Week).

In other words: the Show has not fucked this up yet. Thanks, Show!

This week on Pretty Little Liars, Aria was revealed to be a utensil-hoarding obsessive crushed-out wide-eyed bundle of compulsive romantic optimism when she was forced to hand over a designer bag chock-full of Ezra Memories after accidentally texting her Mom mushy stuff that was actually intended to travel back in time to seventh grade when that kind of language was appropriate I MEAN it was actually intended to go to Ezra and so now her parents are all up in her grill about who it is that she’s sexting, and, secondarily no longer interested in each other’s grills.

I care less about Aria and her parents than I did about Angus’s affair with the Russian Nanny, but I appreciated this quote, in a big fight between Aria’s Mom and Aria’s Dad (anyone ‘shipping these folks? Nope? Thought so):

Aria’s Mom: “You can’t even agree with me that we are fighting.”

Emily Unpacks the Contents of Aria's Heart/Bag

To me the most interesting aspect of Aria is:

1. When I went to Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp for Theater (which I hated, btw. The camp, not the theater), I lived in the “Aria” section of cabins

2. “Aria” is a Crossword Puzzle’s favorite word

Hanna‘s had a tough year: she’s being stalked by The Letter A, she got hit by a car, got dumped by her gay boyfriend for dancing with Lucas who has now completely vanished from earth just like Allison and also Hanna was only dancing in the first place to get the money for her Mom who was broke and stole money and put it in the lasagna instead of ricotta, and now it turns out that the boy she gave Her Number One Asset to (you know what that means ladies, her virginity) was spying on her for Jenna because he needed the money.

Spencer and Toby‘s romance intensifies as they are now both suspected murderers, and as Emily Fields could attest, you really only need one thing in common with someone to survive as a couple (for Emily, it’s “also likes girls”). But actually that’s not the only thing Spencer & Toby have in common — they’re both complicated and intelligent and probably own the Scrabble Dictionary. Also someone’s setting Spencer up to appear to be the murderer, Ian is getting creepier and telling her to leave town before she gets arrested, which makes me think Melissa killed Allison because of Allison’s relationship with Ian and then planted the sweater, also Spencer’s room got searched, and mayhem is likely to ensue.

Spencer: Maybe you should keep away from me.
Toby: People cross the street when they see me coming and they think you’re trying to frame your brother-in-law. Who else are we gonna hang out with?

Oddly, Spencer celebrates her newfound rep by sporting what could only be described as “jailbait chic” for two significant portions of this episode.

Also, this is like Where’s Waldo, but for girls:

I Am the Waldress

Shay Mitchell made overtime this week on Pretty Little Liars, as she seemed to appear in every single scene. Unfortunately she did not spend every scene talking about her favorite Shane-Carmen makeout scene, nor was she stowed away in the boiler room telling Paige her fingernails look like little moons.

Here’s Emily in a denim mini-skirt with Spencer, Spencer’s Mariska Hargitay Lookalike Mother, and some crap cop from West Baltimore rummaging around in all of Spencer’s fancy clothes and secret notes:

In the (coffee shop?) Emily & The Liars (wouldn’t that be a good band name?) spy Paige smiling/laughing with Hanna’s ex-boyfriend, Sean, who I think is also gay, but for the purposes of this show is not supposed to be gay. But he’s about to eat applesauce out of a mini-cup, too. So.

Hanna tells Emily it’s okay for Paige to ride the pony with Sean ’cause Hanna’s totally TOTALLY over Sean. I don’t want to be the What Happened to Mark/Papi Police for this show, but what happened to Lucas? Anybody?

Sean: You’re teammates with Paige McCullers, right?
Emily: Right.
Sean: Is she seeing anybody? Because I like her, she’s fun but I don’t want anything complicated right now.
Emily: I don’t know Sean, Paige isn’t really my friend.

via sassyanddelightful.tumblr.com

Sean: Oh, oh I get it. I shouldn’t be asking you — you’re Hanna’s friend. I was way out of line.
Emily: No, Sean, it’s okay. Hanna saw you at the table with Paige. She said you’ve got every right to be happy.
Sean: She said that?
Emily: I think she meant it.
Sean: Wow.
Emily: As for Paige, we swim on the same team, but I don’t know her that well.
Sean: Gotcha, thanks.

Get it. “Same team”? I wish they hadn’t left out the scene where we actually see Emily falling for Paige, because I’m inclined to suggest that she’s interested in Paige by default. Though you know, she does like ballsy women. Someone on this show’s gotta have a type besides “will require a secret and lying.”

Emily’s so badass and nonchalant, I never even see her eyebrows move. Oh – hey — there’s Paige. I feel like actors get better stylists when they get upgraded from guest star to regular. I’d expect Paige to get an alternative lifestyle haircut of some sort, but instead she seems to be wearing more makeup and less BangsAttack.

Emily: Hey, I saw you talking to Sean the other day —
Paige: Yeah, he’s nice.
Emily: Nice?
Paige: He makes me laugh. I know it might be weird — you being friends with Hanna and Hanna being his ex —
Emily: That’s not really the weird part, is it?

Emily: 1, Paige: ZERO

Emily: Sean asked me about you. He wanted to know if you were seeing anybody.
Paige: What did you tell him?
Emily: I told him as far as I knew, you weren’t. I think he wanted me to talk you up about him. I’m pretty sure he’s gonna ask you out.
Paige: He has.
Emily: And what did you say?
Paige: I said yes.
Emily: [Sadface]
Paige: It’s not really a date, we’re going with a bunch of other people. No big.

You know, like they used to do at that place in Manhattan, that Plato’s Retreat or whatever, with the mattresses and everyone just fucks everyone and everyone gets crabs. THAT KIND.

Anyhow enough of this romancing! Emily and Aria are walking through the set of Kids Incorporated when they overhear Caleb talking on his cell-phone saying suspicious things like that Hanna “isn’t who you think she is” and that he likes Hanna and therefore cannot continue to secretly spy on her. It’s like a conflict of interest or whatever.

The duo re-routes to their 7th osmosis meal of the day (they don’t eat, they just sit around with trays a lot). Did you notice that Spencer looks progressively to’up in the classiest way possible during this episode? Like they want her to look tired or something. Like “Spencer will be the best-dressed lady at the retirement home.”

Anyhow, Hanna won’t believe it — that is, until Jenna, doing her daily Creepster Laps, rounds a corner in the cafeteria, ominously passing the girls with a crutchcane, and they look up to see Jenna’s got the ugly owl pendant bouncing between her not-blind breasts. THE VERY SAME OWL PENDANT HANNA THOUGHT WAS A GIFT TO HER FROM CALEB.  You too can turn a jump drive into a pendant for less than $15!

Hannah tries to get ahold of Caleb while the Three Not-Blind Mice look on.

Spencer: “Either it’s exactly what it looks like, which is bad enough, or it’s something worse.”

Emily says if Caleb does anything to hurt Hanna then he’s a “dead man.” Not literally. Emily doesn’t believe in capital punishment, she’s much more into rehabilitation & second chances.

This whole situation eventually leads to Hannah cornering Jenna in the girl’s bathroom — as Aria and Emily look on — and slapping her in the fucking face. It’s triumphant.

Also in “Hallway Events”? This:

Aria: “I should just pick a boy, someone nice, and tell my Mom that’s who I’ve been texting. That would be the simple solution.”
Emily (glaring at Paige’s closeted ass): “There’s nothing simple about lying.”

It’s not just that being with Paige would make Emily feel ashamed of being gay again — Emily’s probably similarly sick of having ANY secrets at all. She’s the least dramatic of the four and probably would prefer calm over storm. Interesting that Emily was the first of the four to unload the secret she had in the beginning. Perhaps that’s because Emily’s been keeping her secret all her life.

Later that fine evening, Emily is lounging in her bed, debating if she should get tickets for Girlbar or Club Skirts, when she gets a text from Paige. Obviously this is the “I just had a bad boy date, can you confirm for me that I def like girls before I go public with this ish?” visit.

Emily: You had your date with Sean.
Paige: Yeah. That’s where I was tonight.
Emily: How’d it go?
Paige: Great! Good. He’s an nice guy, yeah it went okay.
Emily: Good.
Paige: Yeah. Until he kissed me. He took me home and kissed me goodnight and I don’t know, the date — the whole night — just felt — phony all of a sudden, like it wasn’t me, it was somebody I was watching but not me. He went home and I texted you.
Emily: Sean’s a nice guy, and if he’s interested in you as more than a friend, you have to be honest with him.
Paige: You’re saying I should dump him?

Paige Paige Paige. Just ’cause you’re a lesbian doesn’t mean Sean’s a lesbian. You cannot dump someone unless you’re already going steady and one date does not a partner make. Men don’t move like that. Life is not a people-mover. Life doesn’t just lift you into a ski lift and drop you into a pit of lesbians. I could just keep talking nonsense and how long would it take you to realize it’s never going to relate to the topic at hand.

Emily: I’m saying you shouldn’t lead him on, you have to be honest.

Yup! See Paige, this sitch doesn’t work out for Sean, either. Likely it’ll make him feel strange and insecure about his GF never wanting to play hide-the-salami and then he’ll take that insecurity out on his next girlfriend, and that’s mean. It’s International Women’s Day, for Chrissake.

Paige: “That is so easy for you to say, you’re fearless.”
Emily: “I am so not fearless.”

Considering Emily’s Mom has vanished into the ethers of homophobic isolation and Emily’s now taking guests at all hours of the night, it may seem easy! But back when Nia Peeples was still on contract, it was HARD she could not even play FOOTSIE without getting girlfriend shipped off to rehab, never to be heard from again.

wherefore art thou maya

No but really, Emily admires Paige for being ballsy and Paige admires Emily for being fearless. This is a perfect lesbian relationship — your girlfriend loves you for being something you don’t think you are (pretty, brave, smart) and you love her for something she doesn’t think she is (pretty, brave, smart) and together you form at least one confident human being. Such is the state of womanhood. Where was I?

Paige: “You came out!”
Emily: “I didn’t come out of the closet, I fell out on my face. But I’m out, and whatever else happens, I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

Paige: “If I say it out loud, if I say — “I’m gay” — the whole world is gonna change.”
Emily: “Yeah, it will.”

The ladies relocate this touching moment to the window area.

Emily: “You wanna hear something funny?”
Paige: “I would love to hear something funny.”
Emily: “When I was trying to talk myself into being interested in boys, I would look for guys like you.”
Paige: “Like me how?”
Emily: “The kind that would pull me up on stage, and get me to sing, because I would never do that on my own.”

I bet you’d like to see that in video, wouldn’t you?

Next week more scary stuff is going to happen. But let’s not think about that, let’s think about this:

Not that I knew anything about Maya besides that she was a total DRUG ADDICT in need of Intervention, but Emily and Paige together seems … cute. Maybe because they’re both swimmers. There’s probably some porn on that topic. Deep Sea Muff Divers, or something.

VIDEO – Autostraddle Behind-the-Scenes #5: Julie & Brandy Have Tyra Mail For Nacho

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Some pet owners teach their puppies to fetch things, or jump, or sing gospel music. Some pet owners teach their puppy to respond when Tyra Mail arrives.

Pretty Little Liars 119 Recap: A Person of Interest is Interested in Making Out, Secretly

This week on Pretty Little Liars, everyone made out. Tea kissed Betty, Brittany kissed Santana, Willow kissed Tara, Naomi kissed Emily, Spencer kissed Ashley, Shane kissed Carmen, Claire kissed Edie, Callie kissed Arizona, Paige kissed Alex, Frankie kissed Kat, Marissa kissed Alex, Samantha kissed Maria, Tina kissed Bette, Jenny kissed Marina, Helena kissed Dylan, Alice kissed Tasha, Sam kissed Kat, Camile kissed Sharon, Gretchen kissed Claire, Kim kissed Saint, Robin kissed Katherine and Mel kissed Lindsay.

And….

Emily & Paige did karaoke!

Here’s Episode 119, “A Person of Interest,” so you can over-judge for yourself.

From the moment Paige and The Incredible Dreambangs appeared on my “teevee screen” I said “Paige shops at JCPenny and her hair smells like Briarwood Mall.” Then, while reviewing the program in Hulu to write this recap, what advertisement suddenly appeared? JC FUCKING PENNY. Is Hulu reading my mind? Or was I right about Paige’s Junior Miss wardrobe? That question, and many more, will not be answered in tonight’s episode of Pretty Little Liars.

This week on Pretty Little Liars, the four girls practice their wide-eyed poker faces of prettyhell on detectives down at “the station” (seriously McNulty and Daniels could’ve cracked this case in a week), Hannah donning hooker chic (and I say this with nothing but respect for hookers) and Spencer showing up prepared to defend America against the redcoats, but Spencer acts the craziest and Spencer’s Mom looks so much like Mariska Hargitay in this scene that I almost expect Spencer to confess that Melissa molested her on Teen Tour in the late 90’s and since then Spencer and Melissa have been running a sordid predatory website vaguely connected to someone at a prestigious boarding school and someone who got killed and was on Gawker.

That’s not what happens but regardless Spencer’s family decides that Spencer needs therapy.

Meanwhile, Spencer is cavorting about town with Toby, who really, even in the moments he’s supposed to be sexy or whatever, is rocking the Cavanaugh trademark Creepster Gene. Spencer and Toby sleep together in a bed ON TOP OF THE BEDSPREAD WHICH EVERYONE KNOWS ARE CONTAMINATED WITH SPERM, are foiled by the Pied Piper of the Red Roof Inn, and give each other dopey eyes and kisses the next morning. There’s a lot of gratutious partial nudity here that seems very heterocentric and cisgender-privileged and ableist, especially because JENNA ISN’T REALLY BLIND oh and also Spencer becomes a “person of interest” in the investigation.

Hanna’s Witchy Moman’s not cool with the stray in the basement as he’s drinking all her milk and eating all her food, which could’ve turned into Hanna’s Mom asking about Hanna’s eating disorder but I guess we left that whole thing behind in the second or third episode and btw couldn’t Caleb just replace the milk with his phone-hijacking profits or you know, just finger some rotini and see what comes up?

Anyhow speaking of fingering, they end up in a tent Caleb where undresses from the waist up and Hannah keeps her clothes on but I think we’re led to believe that sex happens or something like it (because everyone knows when the boy is shirtless and the girl has all her clothes on, it’s time to ask “are you sure”), but don’t really care until later when Caleb takes a phone call which likely goes like this on the other end : “Jenny, this is Marina. I was thinking about you,” and Caleb says no no no no no it’s OFF he cannot do this anymore.

What is “this”? I don’t think it’s Hanna’s plumeria-scented netherparts, I think it’s something relating to A. or Jenna or Ghost Jenny.

I still can’t bring myself to give one, let alone two, shits about Aria and her dumpy teacher boyfriend who smiles with his eyes sometimes but never with his mouth. Maybe it’s worth mentioning that Jenna and Ezra bond over their shared affection for short fiction, world’s least profitable writing enterprise aside from poetry. All that second-grade level usage of symbolism and allegory gets their motors running. I’ve always been intrigued about the nature of evil, haven’t you?

via butyoumakemehappy.tumblr.com

Furthermore, on a scale of 1 to “Luminous,” everyone’s hair looks salon-soft and layered with waves of bouncy, shimmering color.

Listen if lesbians ran the world, this would be Spencer Loves Emily, with singing, dancing, and “making of” webisodes available online after the show. There’d be animated gifs of Emily tugging on Spencer’s pigtails and going to Mervyns together to try on backpacks for college.

Alas, we run only the city of Houston and therefore, let us begin with the less exciting, but certainly significant, Lesbian Parts of Pretty Little Liars.

The Lesbian Storyline opens in the lockeroom where Emily and Paige, looking very Clinique Bonus Time, are moving things in and out of lockers, where Emily accuses Paige of avoiding her — I mean you don’t just try to kill someone, attack-kiss them and then stop returning their calls. Emily asks if they’re supposed to pretend it didn’t happen, which’s fine as “poker face” is one of Emily’s 5 facial expressions already. Paige is wearing an afghan blanket from the hinterlands of JCPenny, but her hair looks cute.

Yes, Paige says, let’s act like it never happened because if everyone knows I’m gay, then someone else might use it against me to try and get me kicked off the swim team or something CRAZY like that.

Paige quickly clarifies what she meant by “pretend it never happened” — she means “pretend it never happened when other people are around but still I will spend the afternoon on yelp finding the best most remote country-western sports bar in all of Pennsylvania for me to take you where I won’t have to stress about kissing you or not because I know if I do that we’ll probably get knifed and sold as jam at the next 4-H Fair.

Actually oddly West Chester Pike exists in Pennsylvania, it’s a highway in the Southeastern part of the state. See.

Paige is already at the Saloon, wearing the same stupid outfit you wore on your first girl date (hers is from JC Penny though).

Emily: Do you come here a lot?
Paige: I didn’t realize it was so —
Emily: Rustic?
Paige: I found it online. I thought it would be —
Emily: Remote?
Paige: You gonna finish all my sentences?
Emily: Sorry.
Paige: That was a joke.

Paige: You were right today, i was avoiding you. i scared myself that night when i —
Emily: Kissed me?
Paige: There you go again –the first time i saw you with Maya, when i realized you were together, i finally admitted to myself that I was like you.

A brief moment to acknowledge the accuracy of that statement — you know that feeling. You’ve spent your life convincing yourself that there’s no possible way you could ever be “out” and if you were, people would ridicule you for it, or push you into lockers/throw slushies in your face and therefore it’s okay to sorta wimp out and keep it to yourself and then you see someone else being comfortable being out and you think, oh my god, it is possible, because they’re doing it, and then you’re not really off the hook anymore, so then maybe you make one last-ditch attempt at punishing this person for being gay and when it doesn’t work you realize OKAY OKAY OKAY it’s obviously totally fine and the only person to blame for me not admitting who I am is me, not the rest of the world. Etc. This seems to happen on the teevee a lot (see also: Kartoskykwhateverthefuckhisnameisy on Glee).

Back to this heart-pounding conversation:

Emily: Am i the first girl you’ve kissed?
Paige: Romantic, huh?
Emily: Definitely surprised me.
Paige: So was maya your first girlfriend?
Emily: She was — but she wasn’t the first girl i’ve ever kissed. I was in love with Allison.
Paige: Was she in love with you
Emily: No.
Paige: I didn’t know her well but she seemed like a very dynamic person
Emily: She was that.
Paige: Maya was kinda like that too
Emily: Yeah– I guess I like —
Paige: — ballsy women?

Later that same night… Paige does her very best Bijork Does the Swim Camp Talent Show on the karaoke stage, selecting feel-good grrrl anthem “SO WHAT” by P!nk, cajoling the hearty working-class extras from Central Casting to cajole her “friend” Emily onto the stage.

Would they be so supportive of Emily’s star turn if they knew she was A GIANT LEZZER?

Probably. The camerawork here is reminiscent of the dance dance revolution scene from Imagine Me and You.

The next day or somewhere thereabouts, Aria, who’s giving Ezra The Silent Treatment for a reason I’m completely unconcerned with, asks Emily if Paige is a thing. Not sure yet, says Dear Em. Why have “things” when we can lie on bedsheets all day and talk about our feelings and who killed Allison, that glowy bitch with the hair who ruined everybody’s life and thank God she’s dead but we better find out who did it. These girls need to switch to T-Mobile and ship out.

Picnic date!

Paige, wearing this season’s latest fashions from JC Penny, is lying on a picnic blanket on a set in Burbank that’s supposed to look like a forest. They’re holding hands. The basket looks like a life-size version of what my American Girl doll, Samantha, used when she went on picnics with my teddy bears.

It’s totally unrealistic and maybe adorable, until Emily — Earnest Emily the Eager Lesbian Lover — suggests they go see the band they’re listening to on their Joint Ipod when they come to town next month.

Paige: I’d like to. But you know — we might see people we know there. I can’t risk being seen with you.

This is nonsensical, surely the ladies can attend a concert and likely keep their hands to themselves anyhow lest they get hate crimed. Whatever, show. Emily doesn’t care for this.

Paige: I thought you understood-
Emily:I so understand. Believe me, but hearing you say that — ouch.
Paige: I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings — I had an amazing time last night — and I would really like to keep seeing you
Emily:Like this? Always in the middle of nowhere, hiding?
Paige: It’s the only way I can do it.
Emily: I’m not ashamed of who I am, but I used to be. And if we have to hide like this all the time, I’m gonna start to fell that way again.
Paige: I really like you, Emily–
Emily: I like you too, and I’ll always be here for you — but I think it has to be as friends. Sorry.

Emily has evolved. Once she was in a cocoon dating Jeri Blanks and now she’s a butterfly, flying far away from picnics on studio lots with closeted swimmers. Emily’s right on, too — it’s a certain kind of enabling — like how even after you’ve conquered your body image issues and eating disorder, dating a girl who won’t stop talking about calories can make you feel just as crazy as ever.

So um, next week? Shit is gonna get f-cking crazy. Have you seen the preview because somebody knocks somebody else’s glasses off and we all know who I mean by “somebody” don’t we ladies? DON’T WE?

In conclusion, these girls have a really destructive relationship with Allison. She seemed like a total bitchwad and I’m glad she’s dead THERE I SAID IT. They all need to read Codependent No More, change their cellphone numbers, and move to Lima, Ohio, where Emily & Brittany can be together and then Santana can get jealous and then everyone can be together. The end.

Jess’s Team Pick: Mindy Kaling Tweets Her Unused ‘Office’ Storylines

How do we all feel about The Office? Not sure about you, but Jim and Pam make me believe in love. Anyhoo, in honor of Steve Carell‘s last show, kickass writer/actress/co-executive producer (and friend of Samantha Ronson) Mindy Kaling (aka Kelly Kapoor) tweeted out her unused storyline ideas for his character, Michael Scott.

See celebrities? This is how you use Twitter.

Australia’s “Generation L”: Like “The Real L Word” But Hopefully Less Embarrassing

Australian production company Freehand, has followed in the footsteps of Ilene f*cking Chaiken by creating a reality television show that is centered around the lives of a group of lesbians living in Sydney, Australia.

The show is called Generation L, and it promises to be “a sensational new reality series that goes behind closed doors and into the lives and bedrooms of the new generation of gay women.” Neat, huh.

According to Mumbrella, the show’s ‘sizzle reel’ is currently being shopped around to Australian television networks. Meanwhile an 8-part web series, Generation L: The Road To Mardi Gras, will launch via YouTube this week! It will begin airing this Wednesday, March 2, and intends to document the lead up to this weekend’s Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.

At the moment this is all I can tell you about the show, sadly no-one from Freehand has emailed me any official information such as a press release or my audition call time. So let’s just watch that sizzle reel, shall we.

Thoughts:

– The Real L Word has made me absolutely terrified of how Australian lesbians will be portrayed on screen. Honestly the only thing that made The Real L Word even slightly bearable to watch was the knowledge that it was created in the USA and therefore I could distance myself from it. Not this time.

– Gay marriage is still illegal in Australia. This probably isn’t very clear given that everyone in this preview seems to be engaged or wed. Maybe they were wed by our open-minded neighbours, New Zealand. I guess they’ll explain all that later.

– The scene where Rachel calls Amber a “starfish” and Amber responds “I look like a dud root!” is perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious / awkward 15 seconds of footage I’ve seen this year. Thank you, Amber and Rachel.

– We really do speak like that.

– Sydney has quite an ethnically diverse lesbian population. I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.

– Kate is cute. I like her vest.

– While there were a few moments in this preview that made me cringe, my gut feeling is that this reality show / web series will be fine, I might even enjoy it. What do you think?

Pretty Little Liars 118 Recap: The Badass Seed is Gonna Work ‘Cause I’m Pushin’ it Right

This week on Pretty Little Liars, I wondered Jesus Christo how do these girls get anything done? I’m surprised Hannah even had time to shower this week (let alone with company), albeit with her clothes on.

Sometimes Pretty Little Liars seems like an amazing Saturday Night Live skit* where everyone is just trying to have a good time/put on a theatrical production/swim/pretend-to-be-blind and those girls are constantly whispering and looking at everyone with crazy eyes. Can’t these ladies order a cheeseburger without eyeballing a murder suspect?

[* Dream Cast: Maya Rudolph as Emily, Tina Fey as Spencer, Amy Poehler as Hanna and Molly Shannon as Aria]

I mean you just CANNOT speak to these girls. Here look — HEY LADIES what are you having for lunch?

Are you all studying for an exam? Need help? I’ve noticed you’re constantly whispering in class and that can’t be good for your information retention skills. (Except you Spencer, four for you Spencer.)

Wasn’t it weird the way that Hanna just got hit by a car? A little too Thunder Mountain Railroad, if you ask me. Are you girls feeling okay?

BANANAGRAMS?!!

Hey would y’all be able to just stand perfectly still for me and give me your best The-Camera-Doesn’t-Love-You vacant stare that’d make Janice Dickerson shoot jumping beans at your eyeballs while screaming about inventing the word “Supermodel”?

EXCELLENT.

This week on Pretty Little Liars, Ian reveals that Allison was not a psycho-bitch but actually a psycho-stalker-bitch and the rest of the girls, hair shimmering in the sunshine as usual, are peripherally and/or intimately involved in a school production of The Bad Seed because Ezra only involves himself with literary works easily parlayed into a metaphor for the girls’ feelings, Spencer teaches Hanna about reading between the lines because just like Jordan Catalano (Hanna’s boyfriend’s host body) Hanna cannot read because who has time, what with all the bathing in milk or whatever it is to get her skin to look that good. Also, Aria hops around in a Carmen Sandiego hat, flipping out that Ezra doesn’t want to meet her friends or talk about the future, Spencer is suspicious of everything except Toby who she kisses (I think) because they are both Danger Strangers, the girls ask Caleb to break into Jenna’s braille phone but don’t ask him to trace the texts they’ve been getting from this total bitch who’s just all butthurt about not winning an AfterEllen Visibility Award, Hanna kisses Caleb and clearly sees his penis in the shower, and once again all the ladies remain pretty, little, and lying.

via echofades.tumblr.com

Here, see for yourself:

Onto the lesbian, who was not making out with Brittany or Santana this week. Or anyone.

Our first Emily-inclusive scene takes place at play auditions for “The Bad Seed,” where all the maidens have forgone their Frye Boots for fuzzy socks because the only difference between a 17-year-old and the 8-year-old they’re auditioning to play is height.

This is that 8-year-old girl, for your reference:

And while we’re referencing things and Jenna said it was her favorite play because she is “fascinated by the nature of evil” (the horse is dead, bleeding and has cholera at this point rally), here’s a little bit more about The Bad Seed:

Aria had to rush over from Sex and the City‘s Big Gay Wedding wearing the SJP-sported mini-tuxedo bib with Brittany S. Pierce arm-warmers but now she is HERE HERE to help Hana look shorter and Emily is there, it’d seem, because Shay Mitchell is nice to look at and nobody expects anything beyond exposition to come out of her lovely mouth. Besides Maya/Paige/Spencer’s down-there hair, but I digress.

Emily says “it’s not like we can go on a double-date or anything,” but she’s not talking about how nobody can hit up Breadsticks with Emily’s Boot Camped Minor-League-Stoner Buddy or the Closeted-Possibly-Insane-Bang-Bangs-McBangerson-Swim-Musketeer-Kissing-Bandit because this conversation’s topic is not the beauty of woman/woman love but the borderline-illegal topic of child/teacher love. Suddenly everyone wants to hang out with Ez and tag his photos on their facebook. Kids these days. Don’t know the law.

Spencer got a 2-fer with Rachel Berry this weekend on PJs at Target and although the crying baby Spencer hears in her paranoid ghostwriter pericranium is mildly compelling, I’m far more interested in if those pajamas are full-body with footies or not.

(they’re not)
Emily’s next appearance is at a sort of swank roadside cafe in Mexico City, where Spencer has just returned from harvesting Sanka in the cool afternoon with the Man of La Mancha. Actually I’m divided about if this poncho = ethnic-exploitation chic OR lame mismatched hippie bullshit gowncape OR you know, “fun with afghans!” (dressing on a budget is important during a recession).

Wait, NM, they’re just at one of many ambiguous coffee/lunch/cupcake spots in the greater Rosewood metro area, sharing some one-on-one time. Or maybe it’s the cafeteria, and they’re having coffee and Trident for lunch.

Whatever, here’s the point — while Spencer’s chatting about snagging the role of the woman who spanks the Bad Seed (come ON you know Spencer has a dirty side, maybe it’ll come out during Bacchanalia at Sarah Lawrence) Paige calls:

Spencer: Is she still torturing you?
Emily: No, we’re cool now.
Spencer: Really? What brought you closer, her trying to drown you?
Emily: She’s got a cousin in the military and is kinda anxious about it.

This is confusing because is Emily lying to Spencer? Or is she lying to everyone? Or has she been talking to Paige, but not about the military but rather about being HOMO?

They could’ve solved this mystery just by having a SUPER QUICK scene between Paige and Emily in this repulsively heterosexual immoral fabric-of-society-rupturing show.  It’s not really fair as we’re already stressed about the Avon Barksdale case and that whole “A.” thing.

Then! Emily and Spencer spot Jenna talking to Ian and Ian hands her a package. It’s probably a dead baby.

“What is that?” asks Spencer. “What did he just give her?” asks Emily. Two birds of a feather.

Anyhow, Emily begs Spencer to hand over the excuse to visit Toby (French book) so she can convince him that she is by far the nicest person in Rosewood, and also the most forgiving. She doesn’t hold attempted murder against you even, nothing like that.

Onto play practice. Does Emily have a part? Shouldn’t she be swimming? Well I’m glad she’s here because the girls have JUST NOW REMEMBERED the SKETCHIEST THING OF ALL TIME HAPPENING TO THEM EVER!

Once upon a time, Allison got the girls into a frat party in probably the nicest fraternity house of all time, I don’t even see holes in the wall, let alone pizza on he floor and beer pouring out of the television.

Allison is a bitch per ushe, saying catty dumb things and flirting with older boys. The ladies spot Ian, who’s just started dating Spencer’s sister, flirting with chicks. Allison is flirting with Ian.

Meanwhile at the pool table, Hanna tries to get Emily to go talk to a boy who is “drooling in his beer cup” over Emily and Hanna says Emily should go talk to her and Emily’s like “erm no thanks I’m looking for the LUGS.” But then someone dies so Emily is saved.

Right so then some girl falls from the top of the stairwell and dies and probably Allison killed her.

ANYHOW!

Toby and Emily are having a nice little chat about how Emily is perfect and it was Jenna that turned Toby in, not Emily.

Emily: Maybe we could go out some time and celebrate, now that this is over?
Toby: What happened to Maya?
Emily: I meant, celebrate as friends.

Look at that — didn’t waver. LESBIAN FOR REAL.

Emily: Breakfast or something.
Toby: I like breakfast.

That’s fantastic. Toby likes breakfast. I wonder if he also likes lunch and dinner. I wonder if A. likes breakfast.

But on Saturday when Emily shows up for her breakfast date with Toby, she’s greeted not by Toby but by the Grim Reaper. Emily inquires as to Toby’s whereabouts and Jenna says he’s out with Spencer. She seems to expect Emily to feel as rejected by this as she does, but HELLO Emily is GAY and that’s one of many differences between homosexuals and Fans-of-Incest so Emily’s not like wounded in the heart/vadge, just confused in her little head.

Also Jenna put away your knitting needles, we both know you have NOTHING to knit and you’re just doing it to look extra creepy and potentially homicidal.

As Emily walks away, wondering if it’d be weird to go to Bob Evans alone, Jenna pulls out her magic EVIL flute and begins playing some kind of death march for the unborn incest-baby fetus she has wrapped in a hand-knitted oven mitt under her bed in case Toby ever tries to escape her watchful eyes again.

Emily looks at Jenna like “grrrrrrrrl just when I thought you couldn’t get any fucking weirder you whip out your little tin shofar of hate.”

Later on they find a trophy which they think is the murder weapon but is probably a plant and Emily/Spencer get super bossy/sexy and demand they go to the police with the evidence and so they do.

Emily: “I can’t believe we have it, the weapon, in our hands,” says Emily. “After all this time–it’s like —”
Spencer: “It’s like Ali can finally rest in peace.”
Emily: “Like we all can.”

Is anyone still concerned about Allison resting in peace? I thought we established that everybody hated her. Anyhow clearly that’s not the murder weapon, have these girls learned nothing? The police discover this and then the next day they show up at school to bring all the girls down tot he station and it’s not for jelly and ice cream.

Next week, there will be more screentime for the lezzers because it appears these girls just got home from Truck Stop [SPOILER ALERT]:

Also [SPOILER ALERT]:

Also this [SPOILER ALERT!!]:

Glee 214 Recap: Blame It On the Alcohol, For Real

This week’s Glee episode was entitled “Blame it on the Alcohol.” I had nearly vomited for the 45,667th time when I focused my hungover eyes on the episode title area of my computer screen circa Too Early O’Clock with vague intentions of a) Recapping Glee, b) Recapping Pretty Little Liars, c) Sticking my head in the oven, d) Cleaning the oven and THEN sticking my head in the oven.

Blame it on the Alcohol?

I almost thought Hulu was punking me, but it turns out not EVERYTHING is about me (although, as I’ll explain shortly, it is, because we are all connected, like as a human family etc).

See, typically I view Glee on Tuesday night via an illegal pirating site to gather my preliminary thoughts/feelings. But not this Tuesday night. On Tuesday February 22nd I was drunk and vomiting while imploring my sleepover buddy to play me songs on her guitar, which she did, because she’s gay, and so am I, just like Blaine at the end of this episode and Brittany in my imagination.

In any event, I blame the lateness of this recap on — you know — the alcohol! FOR REAL.

Now that I’ve told you all that, let’s just address the elephant in the room: if you imagine the universe to be a jigsaw puzzle of a tiger’s face, then today it became clear to all of us that the tiger has eyes. THEN Obama made his announcement and the tiger had an ear. You follow? You will. The answers will be revealed to you in the Pyramids.

Oh, because I am too hungover to think (and also because the WordPress Media Library broke mid-cap, preventing me from uploading my own shit), I stole some photos from the tumblr Gleekstorm, and I thank them for their vulnerability and accessibility.

So! This week we all remembered that all these kids are over 21 ’cause bitches got drunksexy.

Much to the surprise of no one who has ever waited 45 minutes for a table at the Cracker Barrel in Lima, Ohio, this episode opens with the revelation that the children of McKinley High have been turning to the drink and getting drunkity-drunk-drunk. “Not wasted on learning, wasted on booze,” the principal tells Will, because bla bla the media glorifies drinking and markets alcohol to children. Have you ever had an alcoholic slushie? Don’t. Also, Will and Emma are friends and Sue Sylvester pushed a homo down the stairs and took over Glee coaching duty for rival school “Aural (Oral) Intensity.”

Puck saddles up to Rachel — who is wearing a dress with puppies on it — and suggests she throw a party ’cause her Dads are in the Stardust Theater on the Rosie Cruise listening to other Broadway actresses sing Mama Who Bore Me.

OH WAIT! Speaking of the universe being connected — Rachel’s Dads went on the Rosie Cruise, which made me SO jealous because the Rosie Cruise is essentially heaven, and also annoyed that we’re never gonna see the parents of this We R Family EVER; ALSO, Lea knows Rosie from Fiddler and later Rachel mentions playing “Celebrity” – which is a game Broadway people love to play for some reason, I think because it offers them a chance to talk and gesticulate while everybody looks at them and smiles. And where did I (yes, me again!) play “Celebrity” for the first time? On the Rosie Cruise, muthafunkas.

Rachel Berry has dug deep deep deep into her solar plexus and extracted a song about her headband, which she earnestly sings to Finn while doing this hair-strokey thing that makes him do that awkward smile thing and eventually he’s gotta break the news: her song sucks.

Luckily, Rachel’s got a plan to transition from “Little Princess” to “Natural Woman” (a la her new heroine Carole King) by getting drunk and making out with chicks. JK! Rachel wouldn’t do that.

In fact, NOBODY will do that on this show. COME ON MURPH SHOW US SOME MUFF-DIVING, it’s like L Word Season 4 up in here.

Oh right I was saying — Rachel’s going to drink to write songs, just like Lady Gaga. Thinking about whiskey right now makes me feel like Kurt Hummel in a Nazi foxhole in World War II, but I’m only saying that because of his outfit in the next scene.

Let the Rachel Berry Trainwreck Houseparty Extravaganza begin!

Rachel Berry’s sporting this Little House on the Prairie / Are There Mormon Underpants Under Dem Jeans get-up as she guides the children, with lunatic Stepford flair, into her homosexually decorated rec room which comes complete with a stage for her impromptu “performances for neighbors” and the “annual Oscar party.”

“Hey girlfriend,” Rachel says to Quinn, setting a thousand ‘shippers a-sailin’ into the Mirror-Blue Night. Santana’s autostraddling her mute boyfriend, aka Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, so Quinn’s having a terrible time. Rachel’s got drink tickets “to stop things from getting out of hand,” which kinda makes you want to hug her and I’m not just saying that because I think her dress would look better as a Snuggie.

When the crew threatens to ditch, Rachel laments, “How am I supposed to write ‘Both Sides Now’ if I Can’t Even Throw a Party.” I think you need to date Bob Dylan or something. Or anyone who’s not dumb as rocks.

Blaine, drunker than Darren Cris at the The Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Wrap Party, wants to ride Finn’s big tall hobby horse into football heaven but Finn’s straight and sober. Not Kurt. Kurt is gay and sober and practicing the dance moves he’ll do if Mr. Shue ever makes them all ride wheelchairs again.

Santana’s got a dead animal wrapped around her Jem & the Holograms mini-dress, Puck’s sporting Lauren’s glasses, Artie’s dressed like Camilla the Chicken and Brittany is for all intents and purposes naked. Good party!

Rachel tells Finn she’d do ANYTHING for him which inspires him to introduce her to the “Archetypes of Drinking”:

A.

Finn: Exhibit A: Santana, the weepy, hysterical drunk.

Santana: You like her more than me! She’s blonde and awesome and so smart. Admit it. Just admit it!

+B.

Finn: Lauren Zizes and Quinn… the angry girl drunks.

Quinn: I can’t believe what you did to my body. I used to have abs!

Lauren: Who told you that hair style was cool? Geronimo?

+

C.

This is the best kind of drunk.

+

D.

Just kidding, this is the best kind of drunk.

Then there’s “the needy girl drunk,” Finn tells Rachel. “Hanging all over me, being overly lovey. It’s not cool.” Um? Something’s missing. Where is THE BI-CURIOUS DRUNK? And no, I’m not talking about Blaine.

via luckypressure.tumblr.com

Rachel leaps up and declares that it’s time for the World’s Shortest Game of Spin the Bottle, because it was playing Spin the Bottle with Herbie Hancock that inspired “The Circle Game.”

This would be a fantastic opportunity for Brittany and Santana to make out and also for me to stare at my screensaver for three minutes, like I just did, because I still feel terrible and blame it on the goose.

Instead, Rachel and Blaine kiss. “This is outstanding!” Kurt exclaims, which is funny. Their duet is spectacular for reasons including but not limited to the brief moment of the Bitch-of-a-Living hop:

In the party’s aftermath, New Directions feels terrible & hungover, and Artie is offering Bloody Marys. I always hate those motherfuckers with the Bloody Marys, what is wrong with you? I would rather sever my left arm, which is a different kind of Bloody Mary because my name is Marie and I would be bloody.

Tina: I need to close my locker and it’s gonna sound like a gunshot.
Mercedes: I have had the worst hangover since Saturday and it’s Monday.

Normally I’d say THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE GLEE YOU’RE STUPID, but it’s like 24 hours since I finished drinking and I still feel terrible, so who knows. Anyhow just like Rachel predicted, this naughty behavior inspires a great musical number that seems like something that would happen if Ryan Murphy adapted Less Than Zero to the stage.

It’s Sudafed episode redux and the kids have a full-fledged habit at this point. Also, they have never looked hotter than they look in this episode. Rachel, Brittany, Santana, Lauren, Quinn, Tina, Mercedes : I applaud your beauty.

Rachel: Mr. Shu, first of all that vest is very cute. You are all kinds of awesome. But maybe there are no songs about the dangers of drinking because there’s really none as long as you have a proper designated driver.. [To Mike]: Have I ever told you how great you are?

Mr. Shu: Driving drunk is dangerous. And have you ever heard about alcohol poisoning? It kills about 400 people a year.

They’ll spend tomorrow thinking of an anti-drinking song for the assembly. It’s just another ZANY day in Magic High, where “class” is an abstract concept, “Glee Club” meets at undetermined hours, Sue Sylvester roams the halls committing violent misdemeanors in a tracksuit, football is either always or never in season, and a magical band of dancing elves sits furiously creating costumes out of garbage bags and sequins for the children to wear on the stage.

Blaine and Kurt are out for the fifteenth mocachinno of their friendship – it’s like Central Perk or something – when Rachel calls (she’s at home in her pajamas drinking Lily Pulitzer wine out of a Strawberry Shortcake glass listening to Carole King) to ask Blaine out on a date. The exchange happens very quickly, which just shows how CONNECTED they are. Kurt laughs chuckles of jealousy and confusion.

Kurt: Wait a second — why’d you say yes? You can’t lead her on.
Blaine: Who says I’m leading her on?
Kurt: You can’t be serious.
Blaine: When we kissed, it felt good.
Kurt: It felt good because you were drunk.
Blaine: What’s the harm on going on one crummy little date?
Kurt: You’re GAY, Blaine.
Blaine: I thought I was, but I’ve never even had a boyfriend before. I mean isn’t this the time we’re supposed to be figuring this stuff out? Maybe I’m bi! I don’t know.
Kurt: “Bisexual” is a term that gay guys in high school use when they wanna hold hands with girls and feel like a normal person for a change.

Wait — did you hear what I just heard? That was the door to my heart slamming shut to Kurt. It takes a lot for me to hate a gay character not written by Ilene Chaiken. I’m sorry Chris Colfer, you seem awesome even though you won’t give us an interview, but Kurt — you and me are dunzies.

Blaine: Why are you so angry?
Kurt: Because I look up to you. I admire you for how proud you are of who you are. I know what it’s like to be in the closet and here you are about to tiptoe back in!
Blaine: I’m really sorry if this hurts your feelings or your pride or whatever, but however confusing it might be to you, it’s actually more confusing for me. You’re 100% sure of who you are. Fantastic. Well, maybe we all can’t be so lucky.
Kurt: Yeah I’ve had a lot of luck, Blaine. I was really lucky to be chased out of high school by a bully who threatened to kill me.
Blaine: And why did he do that?
Kurt: Because he didn’t like who I was.
Blaine: Sort of exactly what you’re saying to me right now.

No it’s not.

Blaine: I am searching, okay? I am honestly just trying to figure out who I am and for YOU of all people to get down on me for that? I didn’t think I’d hear this from you. I’d say “bye” but I don’t wanna make you angry.

Kurt goes over to Rachel’s to help her clean up after the party they had LIKE FIVE YEARS AGO. Kurt asks Rachel about the date.

Rachel: The date was lovely, we saw Love Story at the revival theater, we even dressed up as the characters!
Kurt: That’s not gay at all. Did you kiss?
Rachel: No, our lips spent the evening mouthing Ali MacGraw’s dialogue. Frankly I did expect a little snog as the date drew to a close, but I guess the timing just wasn’t right.
Kurt: Or the blood alcohol level.
Rachel: Look, I know that you have feelings for him, and I’m sure you think I’m crazy for asking him out. But Blaine is obviously conflicted, and if he turns out not to be gay well then, I guess I will have done you a favor!
Kurt: And I’m doing YOU a favor by telling you that Blaine is the first in a long line of conflicted men that you will date that will later turn out to be the most flaming of homosexuals.
Rachel: Blaine and I have a LOT in common.
Kurt: A sentiment expressed by many a hag about many a gay. Look – I don’t doubt that you and Blaine would have a JOLLY good time shopping at Burberry and arguing over who would make the better Rum Tum Tugger — I don’t dispute that. But there’s something you and Blaine will never have, and that’s chemistry.
Rachel: Fine. Then I’m gonna prove you wrong. I’m gonna take the beer goggles off and kiss him and if the spark is still there I’m gonna take you down to the bakery for a piping hot slice of Humble Pie.

I want to vomit. That’s actually unrelated to the show. You guys. I don’t think I can drink anymore, but what can I do about the media glorifying alcohol, showing beer commercials during Nascar, marketing likker to tiny children and shoving its fist into my mouth except by “fist” I mean “beer bong”?

Actually TBH I find this whole Rachel-Blaine-Kurt thing to be really tedious and boring and I cannot even summon myself to feel any rage about it. If this was rock-paper-scissors, “nausea” would cover “rage.”

Kurt’s Dad is pissed that Kurt had a boy sleepover and Kurt wants Dad to know that they had all their clothes on. For some reason Kurt withholds the vital information that they did not make out or anything. Why? I have no idea. There must be a point in here somewhere, maybe it’s in the soufflé with the fancy eggs.

Kurt: It’s not being gay that upsets you, it’s just me acting on it.
Dad: I don’t know what two guys do when they’re together. You know I sat through that whole Brokeback Mountain, and from what I know something went down in the tent.

Oh good, I’m glad we’re dedicating twenty seconds of this episode to a really common problem with how people think about gay people (that somehow because gaysex is a mystery, it’s offensive and therefore not allowed) even though it has NO relation whatsoever to the very reasonable request of a parent that nobody of the gender-you-are-attracted-to can sleep over without permission.

Kurt: I won’t have sleepovers without anyone that might be gay without asking you first.

Good thing that Blaine is bi now! Also though, here’s the thing about high school: sometimes you don’t have the gay revelation until the sleepover is already underway. You hear me? YOU HEAR ME LADIES.

Kurt tells Dad to educate himself so that he can talk to him like straight sons can.

But Dad just said that he watched Brokeback Mountain and that’s the only gay movie ever ever ever to ever happen in the history of movies and look what happened to those boys? One of them died, and the other one had to fake-date Taylor Swift. 

Got it Dad? You better join up Grindr and get learning so that you can have graphic sexual discussions with your child, just like straight sons and straight fathers are doing all over the country right this minute. I hate this scene. The man is making brunch in an apron, for crying out loud.

Rachel practices her French in the Eternal Coffee Shop and not only does it make Blaine say “oh my god, I’m gay, thank you for clearing that up for me” and then run to the bathroom to jerk off thinking about that guy from The Gap, but he completely loses interest in his coffee order. I’m sure Kurt knows it.

Rachel is thrilled because now she has experienced the pain necessary to write a song. It’s going to be called U R So Gay But You Don’t Even Like Me.

The principal gets all the zingers this episode ’cause he says Ke$ha how Ke$ha is supposed to be said — actually seriously as I type this I am feeling nauseous just thinking about Ke$ha. I look into her eyes and think “somebody get a bucket.”

At the final assembly, the kids drink jungle juice, which is probably how Ke$ha became Ke$ha (well that and a bucket of to’up glitterbombs), and throw up gray paint onto each other. This miracle of nature/special effects is heralded as an effective anti-alcohol message (DUH) and Sue does something insane to Will that is really just so stupid that as a writer I feel it’s my duty not to encourage this kind of thing by telling you about it.

More importantly, Heather Morris (who plays Brittany) dances in an off-the-shoulder paint-splattered t-shirt and Daisy Duke cutoffs and cowboy boots and everyone is acting super sexified — hereby marking the first (and probably ONLY) time in my life I’ll ever, ever, EVER be able to tolerate a Ke$ha situation.

In the end they have a somewhat mature and honest conversation about alcohol and we all sign pledge forms to not drink until after sectionals. I think I will sign it too.

Quin: There’s a fair amount of pot calling the kettle black in that statement.
Brittany [whispers]: Oh my god that’s so racist.

Ultimately I feel satisfied by this episode.

The moral of this story, and also of this recap, is that drinking is super fun, but also sometimes bad. That’s right my little cabbage patch kids, just because you CAN drink a quarter-bottle of whiskey in one sitting doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

I was gonna try and write a thing about how I have a lot of feelings about how much I enjoy seeing a super-butch heterosexual football coach and a sassy smart stylin’ fat chick on my teevee. I have a lot of issues with how Beastie and Lauren’s characters have been handled sometimes. But really, come on: I think if we can agree on one thing, it’s that in general this show does not know how to handle its shit. But then again, this:

Anyhow now I’m not, because I still feel like shit. DON’T DRINK YOU GUYS. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for all of us. (UPDATE: Just smoked a joint and feel slightly better)