If There Was Better Queer Latine Storytelling this Year Than “Gentefied,” I Don’t Know Her

Editor’s Note: The title of this “Gentefied” Season Two review is a Mariah Carey reference, because it’s Thanksgiving week, which is my favorite holigay, and I’m feeling a little playful.

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In Season One of Netflix’s Gentefied, Ana Morales, lesbian artist and lovable loudmouth of her family, always leading with her heart, found herself caught when a queer-affirming street art project also fell squarely into the crosshairs of political discourse about the rapidly gentrifying Boyle Heights neighborhood where she grew up, still lives, and still loves.

Yessika, Ana’s then girlfriend and Afro-Dominican housing rights activist, says of Ana’s art project at the time, “I’m all for fighting comadre homophobia with queer love bombs.” But that was before. Before neighborhood politics fell into their bed. Before Ana had choose between her first love, and her family. Before she made that choice far too easily for comfort.

Now months have passed, Yessika is gone, and once again Ana finds herself directly in line of a new question about queerness, brownness, capitalism and art. Her boss, Bree, has commissioned Ana to do an art piece for Nike (Ana and Bree have also hooked up a few times but shhhhh! because sometimes queer women do be messy, and we love that for them). Ana wants to showcase her abuelo and family patriarch, Casimiro, who is facing an upcoming final deportation hearing.

In Ana’s portrait, painted from a photograph taken of Casimiro asleep after Thanksgiving dinner, his eyes are closed and legs are outstretched, showcasing an ICE-issued ankle monitor over a clean pair of black Nike Cortezes.

Ana’s so excited to present to Bree, she’s nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet: “This is Nike, right? So ‘just do it’ and stand in solidarity with Justice. Stand with Casimiro Morales. No Papers, No Fear, Just Nike.”

Bree nervously jokes if it’s too early for tequila, “It’s too political.”

Ana rebuffs, “Is it? You said you wanted my voice, this is it.”

But we know what Nike is really looking for, right? Corporate identity politics that seem “down” without disrupting the center. Bree keeps pushing, “You are a queer Chicana. That is your voice. Ana this isn’t a platform for protest, this is a million dollar campaign…. This is celebrating brown lesbian women. This is a win for the LGBTQIA community.”

“I am a brown lesbian woman, and this is the win I need.”

And this — this showcases what the second season of Gentefied does so brilliantly. Ana doesn’t create separate boxes where’s she’s a whitewashed brown lesbian today and somehow leaving the realities of living in constant fear of La Migra at the door. No. It’s all inside her, all at once. Her wins are having her grandfather stay with his family, it’s being able to be her full gay ass-brown ass self, perfectly at home with her two knucklehead cousins as they try to final navigate young adulthood in neighborhood that’s rapidly changing (at one point Erik comes over to fix Ana’s broken pipes and she asks him if the 15 unanswered DMs to Yessika mean their relationship is over, he jokes “do you want me to lie?” and she kicks him like they’re 12 and not in their 20s. Later, at Thanksgiving, the three cousins partake in the annual tradition celebrated by brown cousins nationwide of “go out back and get high, take bets on who blows up the family dinner first”).

Gentefied always had a clear vision of the story it wanted to tell, taking seriously the intricate realities of brown families with some of the most stunning character arcs put on television in 2020. But the first season also struggled at times with tone and pacing — nothing that takes away from the beauty of show, however still noticeable as it found its footing. In its second season, Gentefied soars. It’s nearly unfathomable how good it is now — how it matured without losing its heart, how it never takes an easy out or answer.

It’s an exquisitely detailed portrait that asks all of its characters to be complicated, messy, whole people and not the two-dimensional flattened cutouts of “perfect immigrants” so often thrust onto our families, saddling us with unfair and ultimately dehumanizing expectations, no matter how long we’ve been here. To that end, there’s a speech given by Casimiro at the end of Episode Seven (“No More Band-Aides”) that’s already gone viral and speaks to this best, ending in a crescendo “I’m done begging…. I know I am not a criminal. This is my home. This is where I belong, whether you like it or not.”

And not to be gay (it’s me, I’m gay), but I most found these themes resonating in aftershocks of Ana and Yessika’s Season One break up.

As much I loved Gentefied’s first season, and I did, it was inexcusable that despite going through significant lengths to cast an Afro-Latina love interest for Ana from the very beginning — a rarity for Latine television both in the United States and in Latin America that should not be overlooked — the show ended with the Morales family closing ranks around Yessika in ways that reeked of racism and anti-Blackness. What’s worse is that it felt as if a lot of those choices came without intentional thought from the writers. Yessika became reduced to a stereotype of an angry Black woman, so imagine my delight when she returns this season as triumphant.

I wasn’t the only one surprised, actress Julissa Calderon noted that after the Season One break up, she didn’t expect to return, “I had no expectations because I didn’t know what was going on. When we ended in Season One, the girls had broken up. In the last episode, you didn’t see Yessika at all… I was like, well, maybe she’s gone. Maybe they’re done. Maybe she’s not coming back again.”

What’s most important is that Yessika comes back on her own terms. For the first time she’s given an episode from her own point of view (Episode Five, “Yessika’s Day Off”), including giving her a best friend from back home in New York who’s outside of Ana’s world. Within the community, other Boyle Heights lesbians clown Ana, telling her “We’re Team Yessika.” And in a particularly poignant moment, Yessika calls out the mistreatment she’s felt from the Morales family directly.

Without water for five days due to an irresponsible slum lord, Ana and her mother find themselves at Yessika’s housing advocacy and community group. Originally, their appointment was with someone else who works there, but that person is out for the day, and so here they are — at Yessika’s desk. It appears to be the first prolonged time that Ana and Yessika have spent together since their break up, and Yessika’s stiffness leaves Ana leaving in tears. Her mother asks, they’re family. Isn’t there anything Yessika can do to help?

Yessika reels back at first, swallows, and focuses her eyes. “Ahora somos familia, verdad? Y todas esas veces que sola era yo la negrita de Ana, hmmmm?”

Oh ok so now we’re a family. Right? But what about all those times when I was only just “Ana’s little Black girlfriend?”

It’s stunning. And it matters the way that Yessika uses “negrita” here, which can be a term of endearment in certain Black Caribeñe communities, but an insult from outsiders. It matters that the entire confrontation happens in Spanish, with Julissa Calderon’s Dominican accent on fully display so beautifully against the rest of her castmates, a subtle (and proud) note of her what makes her markedly different. They don’t even “speak” the same language, not in the same way. It matters that if the writers’ room is going to use Yessika as a mouthpiece in this moment to address their own shortcomings from Season One, that they are not only empowering her — but backing that apology up with a standalone episode that arrives later in the season, and that when she and Ana eventually do come back together to rehash the fallout of their relationship (I won’t share details, for spoilers) this time it’s told through both of their points of view. It’s rare and brave for a production to not only address it’s own anti-Black bias, but to grow.

Addressing anti-Blackness in Latine communities is still frankly not done in the majority of our storytelling — in part, perhaps ironically, because of the pressures of telling a “perfect immigrant” narrative (though also because, white supremacy exists within our communities, I’m not trying to pacify it). You can look as recently as the film adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights this summer, where they simultaneously changed the book of the show to discuss DACA and Dreamers, while cutting the musical’s original plot addressing anti-Blackness completely. It creates a false binary narrative that brown immigrants, by nature of being both brown and immigrants, cannot also be racist, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Myths of mestizaje be damned, racial hierarchies exist in Latin America. They are brought over here into our communities.

Comparing Latinx immigrant narratives this year, look at In The Height’s erasure with Gentefied, where these lived experiences of anti-Blackness are seen not only through Yessika’s eyes, but also in Episode Three (“Daddy”) where an Afro-Latina trans college student, Diane, herself far from “perfect” — once again circling back on the theme on the values of our imperfections and humanity — faces unconscious bias in her workplace from her Latina boss (Erik’s wife, Lydia, and I am simplifying some plot here) and it gets called out as such. In a late season episode, Casimiro looks on in a quiet nod to the fact that while the show is centered on immigration narratives of Mexican families like the Morales, Haitian families also face some of greatest threats of deportation in our broken and violent immigration system. Sure, some of these moments I’m mentioning are small — and some are large narrative through lines. But they’re all candid and sincere.

They’re the moments that make Gentefied truly great, because it’s comfortable with being challenged.

“Yellowjackets” Episode 101 Recap: Okay, This Teen Girl Survival-Horror Series RULES!

Note: I did not anticipate how swiftly the Yellowjackets pilot would take over my brain, so I had not originally planned on doing episodic recaps of the series. However, here we are! I’m playing a bit of catchup since the series premiered last week, so today’s recap covers episode one, and a recap of episode two will publish tomorrow. After that, recaps will resume weekly on Mondays. Buzz buzz!

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I have this odd habit of crying during television shows and movies I love. I suppose it’s not all that odd, but I don’t even cry during emotional parts! It’s not me crying about the narrative or what’s happening on screen at all. It’s me crying, I suppose, because I’m just happy? Satisfied? It’s like something has clicked into place. It’s rare, and it’s mostly unnoticeable to people around me, because it’s more of a watery eyes situation versus outright sobbing. But it happens from time to time. I didn’t cry the first time I breezed through my screeners of the first six episodes of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, but when I went back to the beginning and watched the pilot again, it happened. Something clicked into place. To be fair, it’s one of the best pilots to air in my recent memory. So yeah! I teared up when the title card hit! I am who I am!

So. Yellowjackets. Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, it’s a survival-horror series centered on a teen girls soccer team, a premise that in and of itself prompted multiple people to text me and ask: “Hey, have you watched Yellowjackets yet?” Indeed, somehow blood + teen girls has become My Brand.

The Yellowjackets pilot opens on a girl running through snowy woods. We never see if someone — or something —is pursuing her. We never fully see her face. The bright white snow set against dark trees; the percussive sound of the running girl’s desperate breaths; the uncertainty of what she’s running from — it’s simple and effective horror. Suddenly, she crashes down through the snow, falling into a trap. Large wooden stakes impale her hand, her middle. Karyn Kusama’s (Jennifer’s Body and Girlfight) direction is impeccable.

We move into a Big Little Lies-style interview sequence of various unnamed characters telling a journalist played by Rekha Sharma (who I’ve loved since Battlestar Galactica) about a horrific event in the past. This is 2021. A New Jersey town has been indelibly shaped by tragedy. Yellowjackets then shifts again to 1996, where we meet the titular Yellowjackets, a very good varsity girls soccer team. We watch them win the game that’ll take them to nationals, and then we start to meet some of the individual players, like best friends Jackie (Ella Purnell) and Shauna (Sophie Nélisse). Jackie wears a heart-shaped gold necklace. It’s the same necklace from the opening sequence, worn then by the slain girl. This isn’t perfect confirmation that the girl from the opening is Jackie, but it’s definitely what we’re meant to believe. Their problems are of the usual teen drama sort. Prom drama, sports drama, mediocre sex, big emotions, bad choices.

From there, Yellowjackets weaves between three different points of telling. There’s 1. Fucked up stuff happening in the snowy woods 2. The days leading up to the Yellowjackets going down in a plane crash on their way to nationals and 3. The Yellowjackets (or, more accurately, some of them) as adults. As for #1, there are very few scenes, and they’re all dialogue-less. They’re also largely faceless. But they’re the guts of Yellowjackets. In each consecutive scene set in the woods, the horror grows. The staked girl is dragged bloody, naked, and lifeless through the snow. She’s strung up upside down, her neck sliced, the blood rushing out of her. The people participating in this ritual are covered in animal skins, masks, and antlers, obscuring their faces. Later, we watch as these masked people eat chunks of meat around a bonfire. It’s pretty clear what they’re eating. Yep, we’re going full cannibalism!!!!!!!

So, a planeful of soccer girls crashes in the woods, and they eventually turn on each other to the point of actual cannibalism. That’s Yellowjackets in a nutshell. But the pilot does so much, weaving between these timelines masterfully. We see just enough of those nightmarish scenes in the woods. You almost forget about them when we’re in the other timelines, watching these girls navigate normal teen shit and then watching them as adults, too. But just when you’ve settled into those scenes, the woods jump back like a monster under the bed, waiting, stalking.

There are bits of violence and horror that come through in these other timelines, too. You get a sense of how these girls might turn on each other under dire circumstances from the way some of the team members decide to freeze out freshman player Allie (Pearl Amanda Dickson) for choking at states. At the helm of this plan is Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown) who, as Valerie wrote, is our resident queer girl. Teen Shauna and teen Jackie are also giving off — at the very least — romantic friendship vibes. Shauna’s Meaningful Glances at Jackie are, perhaps, a result of the guilt she feels for secretly hooking up with Jackie’s boyfriend Jeff. But that’s such a surface-level reading imo. Shauna is undeniably drawn to Jackie — does she want to be her? Kiss her? Consume her? (I mean that metaphorically, of course.) Yellowjackets leans into a lot of uncertainty, teasing out the turbulence of young girlhood in surprising and visceral ways.

We don’t see teen Taissa’s queerness surface in the pilot, but in the 2021 timeline, Adult Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is married to a woman and has a young son. She’s also running for state senator, which probably isn’t a great idea, because the survivors of the plane crash are very much hiding something. Like, you know, casual cannibalism. But back to those flashes of violence: Teen Taissa ends up putting the pressure on Allie to the point of slide-tackling her during a scrimmage, resulting in a bone just fully popping right out of Allie’s leg for all to see! (I suppose now is the time to mention that if you can’t do body horror, this might not be the show for you.) There’s also Something About Misty, who as a teen (Samantha Hanratty) is the team’s bespectacled manager and who as an adult (Christina Ricci) is a bespectacled nurse in a senior living facility. We see teen Misty staring in wonder as a rat drowns in a pool. We see adult Misty refuse an elderly woman her pain meds as revenge. Also, Misty’s the only face we see in those cannibalism scenes. The vibes are off with this girl.

The only adult Yellowjackets we meet so far are Taissa, Misty, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), and Nat (Juliette Lewis). Adult Taissa presents as tough, very much a politician who wants to seem like she has a perfect family and life. But she crumbles easily when a photographer asks her about her past. Her preferred coping method seems to be denial. We meet Nat at the tail-end of a stint in rehab. As a teen, she has a reputation as a bit of a wild child, stomping around with some fellow emo weirdos. As an adult, she’s…scary. The only real relationship she seems to have is with her rifle.

All four of these survivors are varying versions of Not Okay. They’re stuck in the past even as they desperately claw themselves away from it. Early in the pilot, adult Shauna masturbates in her daughter’s bedroom while looking at a picture of her daughter’s BOYFRIEND. Weird and disturbing are absolutely the first adjectives that come to mind re:Yellowjackets. Also, surprise! She’s married to Jeff, Jackie’s ex-boyfriend who Shauna was secretly sleeping with when they were teens. Shauna’s got a violent streak, quick to anger in small moments and eventually killing a rabbit who has been nibbling on her garden by stabbing it with a shovel. Rekha Sharma’s character corners Shauna and tries to get her to spill more about what happened in the aftermath of the plane crash. Shauna reveals they were in the wilderness for a smooth 19 months. But she doesn’t want to say more. And she rendezvouses with Taissa to make sure she hasn’t been talking either. The trauma these women experienced and the secrets they continue to keep simmer just beneath the surface of every move they make.

Amid the violence, there’s tenderness, too. When a fight breaks out between the teen Yellowjackets at a bonfire — a quintessential teen movie/show setting — team captain Jackie forces all the girls to say one nice thing about each other. They resist at first but then soften. These girls do care deeply about each other. Their relationship dynamics feel lived-in and complex. That playful, drunken bonfire quickly cuts away to the cannibal bonfire, a juxtaposition that crackles with urgency. Again, the Yellowjackets pilot uses just the right amount of foreshadowing, moving between the different timelines seamlessly but also unsettlingly. We go from Nat meditating outside at rehab and walking calmly in the sun directly to bloody hair dragged across snow. The usual teen drama, the problems in their adult lives, the violent encounters in the woods — it’s all connected. The stakes are equally high for all of it.

“Everything works until it doesn’t,” teen Taissa says. She’s talking about soccer. But it could just as easily apply to these haunted women and their coping mechanisms, which might occasionally work but aren’t permanent fixes. Shit went down in those woods. They will never be who they were before.

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Over the next several weeks, I’ll be recapping this series and absolutely touching on all the queer stuff. But I’ll also use these episodic breakdowns to discuss some of the show’s central mysteries and all the elements that make it so damn compelling. As I say up top, I have indeed seen the first six episodes, but I will not discuss anything other than the episode that aired that week — I promise! No spoilers! I encourage theories and analysis in the comments — I’m desperate to talk to more people about this show! So hit me with all your Yellowjackets pilot thoughts!

Boobs On Your Tube: Welcome Back to Riverdale, Where Everyone Is HORNY

Oh well hello and a happy Friday to you! It’s that time of year again, the time when the sunsets at 4pm in the northeast! Which means it’s also time to snuggle down under a pile of blankets with my cats and watch so much gay teevee! Speaking of! This week! Riese brought you great tidings of Kristen Stewart’s forthcoming gay ghost show? I (Heather) wrote about how that dang Netflix Goop sex show actually self-helped me. Sally updated you on JoJo Siwa’s latest routines on DWTS, which got her through to the finals! Valerie Anne is here and queer to tell you about the lesbian on Yellowjackets. She also recapped Legends of Tomorrow! Nic recapped another VERY GAY Batwoman. Carmen recapped another VERY GAY Twenties. And special guest Juan Barquin wrote about the new adaptation of Cowboy Bebop.

Notes from the TV Team:

+ I just wanted to reassure all the CWDCTVLGBTQ+s that Nic and I are all over ARMAGEDDON, keeping an eye on the Flash five-episode event for the arrival of our beloved gays. So far the only non-Flash character is Ray from Legends, none of our ladies yet. But at the end of the episode, they said they were going to call Alex Danvers for her alien expertise so hopefully her and Ryan are on their way to Central City as we speak! We’ll be sure to report back when they show up. — Valerie Anne

+ I’m ALMOST caught up on Dickinson enough to write about it for you! This season is impeccably gay so far, and I remain devastated it will be the last one. — Valerie Anne

+ Few shows have brought me more unexpected joy this fall than The Big Leap (which, of course, means it’s going to be cancelled). Stef Foster, Paulie Oster, my favorite boyfriend from Felicity (IYKYK), a big girl as the romantic lead and dancing montages set to classic Missy Elliott and Whitney Houston? It’s like my own personal catnip. But just in case I needed a reason to love this show more, they gave it to me this week when they revealed Monica Sullivan (the show’s unflinching judge/dance instructor) is bisexual and shares a matching tattoo with her ex-girlfriend, Annie. — Natalie

+ On Station 19, Maya changed exactly one (1!!) diaper and decided that she’s actually ready to have a baby with Carina after all. I debated writing a full blurb about it, because I miss writing about Maya and Carina so much! But honestly? The decision to make them mothers so quickly after marriage is a lazy writing choice, and to have Maya turn around so quickly on it (yes, I get she’s still grieving losing Miller) was bad writing at that. — Carmen

+ Also I know you updates on Home Economics and 4400! I’m in a bit of a content hole that I am digging myself out of rapidly (I owe stuff to everyone), but after Thanksgiving we should be back to normal. I miss y’all! — Carmen

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Nancy Drew 306: “The Myth of the Ensnared Hunter”

Written by Valerie Anne

This week, Bess regrets being so adamant about Addy being a one-time thing. She “casually” looks for Addy at the youth center, but when she’s not there, Bess tries to play it like she doesn’t care but she’s barely convincing herself let alone anyone else.

Bess tries to distract herself by helping George with her Odette problem, and while she’s at the Historical Society, she gets a start when Nancy emerges from a secret door in the wall after searching some tunnels for a monster that looks like a Gentleman left underwater too long. The Drew Crew reviews the security footage of the Historical Society to see who else has used that secret door, when they see the exact nature of Bess and Addy’s relationship.

Eventually George gets it out of Bess that the reason she’s trying to keep Addy at arm’s length is because she’s afraid Addy won’t want more. George, who knows the value of not wasting time all too well, tells Bess that she has to take the chance and ask for a second date. And that Addy would be a fool to say no.

Though Bess might be a bit distracted in the coming days, because the rest of the footage reveals that Historical Hannah knew about the secret door to the monster tunnel all along.

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Legacies 406: “You’re a Long Way From Home”

Written by Valerie Anne

This week’s episode opens with the Super Squad being brutally murdered by the Tribrid because she’s a force to be reckoned with. As soon as Hope starts murdering her friends I know it must be some kind of nightmare scenario, and even though it DID turn out to be the simulation box, it didn’t make it hurt any less to watch Hope snap sweet Josie’s neck.

Finch and Cleo are trying to help the Squad find Hope, but Hope is managing to uno reverse their spells in her quest to learn more about Triad. Cleo knows there’s a weapon that can kill Hope but she’s hesitant to tell everyone, especially before she has what I assume will be an ancient White Oak stake. (I don’t want Hope to do anything she’ll regret when she turns her humanity back on, which I hope she does before Cleo permakills her, but I’m enjoying Chaotic Neutral Hope while she lasts.)

Josie is freaking out and Finch tries to calm her down but Josie feels guilty about her dad getting hurt while she was…relaxing with Finch so she snaps at her girlfriend. Finch realizes this isn’t the time to dicuss this so she gets out of the way for now.

All the while Lizzie is busy trying to find a way to save her dad, which I feel like personally is a waste of time, especially when Hope’s humanity is at…stake. She finds a spell that could steal life force from someone to put it back in her dad, but ultimately can’t go through with it. Later, Josie feels guilty that she found herself a little disappointed Lizzie hadn’t killed someone to save Alaric. And now dad is still in a coma, Hope is seeming farther (and further) away, and Lizzie’s in the therapy box. Josie has never felt so…on her own.

Finch points out that she’s never NOT been. Josie has had Lizzie since birth and they’ve both lived at the school their dad runs their whole lives. But now Finch is here to have her back so Josie can just be in her feelings, sit in the helplessness for a minute, have a breakdown if she needs to. Just…be.

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Hightown 205: “Dot Dot Dot”

Written by Natalie

This week’s Hightown saves its most explosive stories for other characters — Daisy, Frankie, Jorge, Renee and Ray, most notably — but it gives its most relatable story for Jackie Quiñones. And, boy, is it painfully relatable.

Jackie wakes up and reaches across the bed to find the space next to her empty. When she spots Leslie across the room, with far too many clothes on, Jackie tries to lure her back into bed. She praises Leslie’s oral performance from the night before, astounded that it was her first time. Leslie chalks her success up to beginner’s luck and asks if it was a big deal that Jackie let her go down on her.

“Um, I mean, not really….well…kind of,” Jackie admits. “You really wanna have this conversation? The butch conversation?”

And I very much do what them to have that conversation but, instead, Jackie pulls Leslie into a kiss. Eventually, Leslie has to leave for court and Jackie watches her go with a broad smile on her face. Jackie Quiñones, the lesbian lothario of P-Town, is ridiculously in love with a straight girl. Been there, Jackie…been there.

Later, Jackie suits back up for the Fisheries Service and joins an operation with Ed to catch the Scrodfather unloading an illegally caught great white shark. While making the trip up to a processing plant in Brooklyn, Jackie exchanges texts with Leslie and can’t hide how positively giddy she is about it. Ed notices Jackie’s cheshire grin and tells her that he’s glad to see her happy again. When they arrive in Brooklyn, all that’s left to do is wait on the truck so Jackie entertains herself with texts from Leslie.

Jackie: ughhhh ron’s so annoying this sux.
Leslie: anything i can do to help
Jackie: Yes! Send pics! 🙏 🤪
(Jackie sits up straight in her seat as her phone shows that Leslie’s responding back)
Leslie: *sends topless pic*
Jackie: OMG I love you so much

Listen, I get how an “I love you” can slip out after someone sends you (consensual) nudes. The hormones take over — oxytocin makes you feel connected to the sender, dopamine floods your system, impacting your impulse control — and suddenly, you’re professing love that you may not even feel or, in Jackie’s case, do feel but definitely would not admit to under normal circumstances. Been there, Jackie…been there. As soon as Jackie clicked send, I screamed, “OOOH, NOOO!”

Jackie’s message is delivered and read. Bubbles pop up, indicating that Leslie’s about to respond, but then they disappear…and Leslie never returns to the conversation. The longer Jackie goes without a response, the more frantic she gets. She texts. She calls. She freaks out. At some point, she calls Leslie a bitch. She pleads for Leslie to just call her back and let her explain. Of course, Leslie doesn’t and when she can’t fix her misstep, she takes her frustration out on Ed…damaging her relationship with the only person she’s been able to depend on in her life.

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All American 404: “A Bird in the Hand”

Written by Natalie

This week, Coop slinks back into the studio just in time to hear Layla’s new artist in the booth performing one of her songs. It stings to hear someone else performing her work so Coop lashes out, accusing Layla of stealing songs just like her father did. Layla refuses to be disrespected in her own studio so she reminds Coop what actually happen: she invested all her time and money into creating tracks that Coop never finished. She’s funneling the tracks to a new artist in hopes of recouping some of her investment. All Coop can hear is someone else delivering the rhymes she wrote and tells Layla, “good luck with your replacement Coop.”

Later, Coop bemoans Layla’s “business as usual” attitude but Patience is more sympathetic. She understands that Layla is just trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Shocked that her girlfriend isn’t on her side, Coop reminds her of when something similar happened between her and JP (aka Layla’s dad). Patience corrects the record: JP pushed her out of the process but Layla would include her, but for Coop’s own pronouncement that she was done with music. She reminds Coop that Layla’s career is on the line too and it’s unfair to expect Layla to give up.

Coop returns to an empty studio later and runs into Asher. They commiserate about their shared fate — both having recently had their dreams snatched away — and each offer advice to the other. He reminds her that if someone else is performing her song that’s just proof that she wrote a damn good song. Asher’s words get through to Coop and later, she apologizes to Layla for her behavior. Coop encourages Layla to use her music but pushes her to allow her new artist to freestyle their own lyrics: using Coop’s experiences takes away from the song’s authenticity. Later, when Layla gets her artist back in the booth, the song pops with the new freestyle lyrics and it’s clear: Coop might not be able to perform anymore but she’s still got an ear for the business.

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New Amsterdam 409: “In a Strange Land”

Written by Natalie

When Casey started questioning the how and why behind the creation of a fifth resident slot at the hospital, Lauren should’ve seen that as a sign. If Casey could figure it out, it’d only be a little while before one of her colleagues could piece it together or, worse, Leyla discovered how she earned her New Amsterdam residency. Once Casey figured it out, Lauren Bloom should’ve gone home and told her girlfriend the truth. Maybe, ultimately, it wouldn’t have changed anything but it would’ve given Lauren her best shot at salvaging her relationship.

Of course, Lauren didn’t do any of that. Instead, the couple return to work: with Dr. Bloom managing the ED through a mass casualty event, without her head nurse (Casey) to help her, and Dr. Shinwari joining Dr. Reynolds for a general surgery rotation. A fire at a midtown church sends its residents — mostly undocumented immigrants who were seeking sanctuary there — streaming into New Amsterdam. But the threat the immigrants face isn’t just from their injuries: ICE is camped outside the hospital, waiting for the immigrants to come out so they can be detained.

One of the immigrants has labored breathing but refuses to allow Layla to take off the bandages that are restricting their breathing. Thankfully, one of the ED’s nurses, Kai Brunstetter, intervenes, introducing themselves by revealing their pronouns. They ask if taking off their binder makes them feel unsafe and exposed and the patient nods. Kai explains that between the smoke from the fire and binder, their lungs are struggling so they have to take the binder off. The patient agrees and he introduces himself as Temi.

As Kai and Leyla undo the binder, they notice some discharge on the bandages and send him to Dr. Sharpe in Oncology for a mammogram. Kai accompanies him to the appointment and admits that the screening is “like stepping back into a body that isn’t mine” but insists that its necessary. Temi, clearly carrying the emotional scars of his youth, refuses the mammogram but Helen finds an alternative, an ultrasound on a transducer table. When they find a lump, Sharpe explains that they’ll need to perform a lumpectomy but Temi insists on a double mastectomy. Sharpe explains the difference between a mastectomy and top surgery but Temi acknowledges, “this might be my only chance.”

Temi wakes up from his surgery happy about his new body but Sharpe has bad news: his cancer has spread and he’ll need daily treatment for six weeks to avoid it killing him. But, Temi laments, if the cancer doesn’t kill him, ICE detention or deportation will.

Meanwhile, Dr. Shinwari returns to Reynolds’ side to help save a burn victim. Throughout the treatment, she can’t help but reflect on how lucky she is…how she could’ve easily been one of these immigrants, seeking treatment instead of giving it. In surgery, their patient has a setback and Leyla recognizes it right away, impressing Reynolds. The newly minted Chief of General Surgery is so impressed he offers her a slot in his department when she finishes her residency.

“I see how why they created a fifth slot for you,” Reynolds muses, much to Leyla’s dismay. He recalls the last time the hospital added a fifth resident, it was because of a family’s large donation to New Amsterdam. Leyla starts putting the pieces together and my heart (and hers) sinks.

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A Million Little Things 407: “Stay”

Written by Natalie

So, apparently, when Shanice said goodbye to Katherine, she really meant goodbye. It feels like a waste — there was so much potential there and so much chemistry — but at least Shanice’s absence hasn’t meant that Katherine’s retreated back into the closet. Quite the contrary, actually: our girl is single and ready to mingle.

Katherine enlists her assistant, Carter, to help her get ready for her first date. He’s giddy about her joining him in the alphabet mafia and imagines her “leaning into moto style”…which, as someone who’s a sucker for a girl in a moto jacket, I wholeheartedly agree. Katherine admits that she doesn’t know what to wear, much less what to talk about and Carter reminds her that “this is a first date, not confession.” She laments having to go on this awkward first date rather than having something develop organically like with Shanice but Carter pushes her to try.

“This is your first pancake, the one that’s never cooked correctly, but prepares the griddle for the others,” Carter advises. He hands her a sexy black dress and encourages her to eat that pancake…which might be taking this metaphor a step too far.

The date starts out great but, slowly, the wheels start to come off. Katherine admits that it’s her first date with a woman but her date, Heather, assures her that it’s definitely not hers. A little undone by Heather’s flirtation, Katherine rambles a bit and Heather puts her hand over Katherine’s to reassure her that everything’s fine. They’re staring in each other’s eyes when the bartender comes over to refill their glasses and Katherine pulls away.

“Um… do you want to split an order of guac? It says they put in pomegranate. I’m… I’m curious,” Katherine stammers.

“Clearly,” Heather answers back, every hint of flirtation gone from her voice, and it’s obvious what’s about to happen. Heather excuses herself to go to the restroom but never returns, leaving Katherine alone at the bar. At least she was kind enough to pay the tab before she ghosted Katherine.

Back at the office, Katherine drowns her sorrows and tries to figure out where she went wrong. Carter urges her to look at the date as a win, since she was confident enough to put herself out there. Coming out is difficult, no matter when it happens, Carter points out, reflecting on his own coming out story. His tale causes Katherine to reflect on the gay girl she knew in high school — a coming out that she did not handle well — and later, Katherine slides into her Insta DMs.

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Riverdale 601: “Welcome to Rivervale”

Written by Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Welcome back to Riverdale, where everyone is HORNY. Veronica and Reggie are horny for power as the town’s new power couple. Alice is horny for Uncle Frank, who shoots down her advances because he is capital-D Damaged, but who isn’t in this town? Betty and Archie are horny to make a baby. I know they’ve known each other their whole lives, so they’re not technically U-Hauling their relationship, but they are kinda U-Hauling their relationship. Betty says at one point “I’ve been dreaming about starting a family with you since sixth grade,” to which I simply have to ask — what? But seriously, these horndogs are going AT IT this episode. Me personally? Horny for the fact that Betty beats Archie in an axe throwing competition. Tabitha and Jughead are decidedly not horny, even though they’ve recently moved in together. It’s hard to be horny when your home is cursed with endless bug infestations. And Cheryl Blossom is horny for doing blood sacrifices in the woods.

Yes, you did indeed read that correctly. And I’m sure if you are a watcher of Riverdale, there’s little I could say or do to shock you. But the writers have taken Riverdale’s absurdity a step further, because you see, we’re no longer in Riverdale at all. This season, we’re in Rivervale, a shadowtown, a different dimension entirely. The players are the same, but the rules are different. We bid adieu to any semblance of reality, and you know what? I love this for Riverdale. Throw continuity and coherency out the damn door and let’s get weird. I don’t necessarily want Riverdale to become Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Sabrina will be making an appearance in Rivervale), but I do think there’s a happy medium. Riverdale has long moved past its roots as a teen drama (I mean, they’re not even teens anymore), and going full Twilight Zone meets Brothers Grimm? Hot! Jughead serves as a full-on Rod Serling, breaking the fourth wall and taking viewers through the fresh horrors that plague Rivervale. The format is working. These writers know how to blow up a concept entirely and then rebuild something even wilder than what came before.

In Rivervale, Cheryl has declared Thornhill a sovereign nation and also has a small army of bow and arrow wielding girls at her disposal. Over the course of the episode, characters need favors from her, and she hands them out with, of course, a price tag. They must bear witness at an unspecified ritual on her grounds. It’s a classic folklore premise, a beautiful witch promising a cure for people’s ailments and then coming to collect.

It’s difficult to choose a favorite Cheryl line from this episode (A couple I wrote down: “My spies tell me that Archie Andrews is trying to steal my maple thunder”; “Tell me, what demons torment you Tab Tab?”). The Rivervale aesthetic and tone absolutely plays to Madelaine Petsch’s strengths. And this exchange between Cheryl and Betty had me, simply, dead:

Cheryl: Cousin, howfore did you get into my house?
Betty: A bobby pin.

Betty and her bobby pins. She’s, dare I say, horny for snooping!

On the subject of quotes, Veronica says she has always wanted to “make it” on a bed of cash. MAKE IT? WHAT YEAR IS IT? (Temporality, temperature, and geography have always been more fluid than fixed on Riverdale, but that seems especially true in Rivervale.)

Cheryl does finally come to collect. She convinces the whole town to participate in a human sacrifice. Specifically, in the killing of Archie Andrews, who she ties to a post and crowns with a set of antlers before using a knife to cut out his heart. It’s like a CW-ified Yellowjackets!!!!!! See, I thought I was going to have to reach to bring up Yellowjackets in basically everything I write about television for the foreseeable future, but Riverdale really came through with the haunting animal imagery and friends violently turning on each other and ritualistic killing. Anyway, Archie’s dead now? Not entirely sure what to do with that information. Because under the new rules of Rivervale, he could easily come back to life anytime.

“Twenties” Episode 206 Recap: Stud 4 Soft Stud

Welcome back to your Twenties recap, episode 206 — otherwise known Hattie and Idina sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. In our last episode, Hattie and Ida broke up because Hattie was tired of being kept as Ida’s secret, which is also me being a bit reductive about what’s been a surprisingly nuanced conversation. Also, Idina’s been having a crush on Hattie since Season One! But first…

I know I’m usually here for shits and giggles, but I’ve been nervous to write this recap. So nervous, in fact, that it’s coming to you more than a day late — and I still can’t find the words to get it right! Which I apologize for, right from the top.

To skip to the end first, just for a second (we’ll come back around to it later, I promise), when the Black & White images of Black lesbian couples started scrolling across the screen, my mind wiped blank.

And I’m sure it has everything to do with the fact that I’ve never seen two Black masc women on television hold each other in love, romance, and care like Hattie and Idina. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that no matter how many times we see portraits of Black lesbians in love, it’s still so rare that the power catches your breath catches in your throat  — a reminder that we’ve been here before. We’ll be here after. That if we could reach across time with our stretched fingertips, someplace, somewhere, someone would grasp them.

And though we don’t often talk about other television shows in recaps (that’s not what you’re here for, right?) — I’m also sure that part of why my brain short circuited is that immediately before Wednesday night’s Twenties, over on the CW during Batwoman, a Black lesbian, Sophie, hurt by her Black lesbian crush (who also happens to be the superhero series lead, Ryan) took her gay feelings into a hot gay bar make out with yet another third Black lesbian, Renee, officially launching what I believe will be the first love triangle exclusively between Black lesbians on television… other than potentially the one we’re about to walk into on Twenties with Idina, Hattie, and Ida. These shows air BACK-TO-BACK.

You want to talk about not having the words for something? What is happening this fall for Black queer women’s representation is unmatched. There is not a single point ever in television history where you could even find something comparable. That’s where we are at.

(Also literally as I’m typing, I’ve got a text that Kyle Rittenhouse was of course acquitted on all counts, so.. yeah, just trying to survive the dizzying experience of being Black, being Black and queer, in America. Yup Yup.)

So this week we open with Nia running into Big Sean (WHAT UP DOE, DEEETROIT!????!) at a taco truck. I love Big Sean because I put on for my city and that’s a motherfuckin fact, but I cannot bring myself to care about Nia at this moment! I’m not sure what’s not working for me about the “Nia’s rise to social media stardom” plot? I do get why it’s a relevant story point for Nia’s character, as a former child star/aspiring actress. And I think there are points to be made about Millennials and Gen Z and how we live our lives Very Online. But something hasn’t clicked into place for me yet.

Big Sean and Nia make heart eyes and I love his Detroit accent that sounds like home. Moving on!

Hattie’s at the weed shop, as one does, when she runs into Idina. Idina asks how last night went. Hattie says she and Ida broke up. (Hattie: “I wasn’t gonna keep being her plaything”). Idina and her warm teddy bear brown eyes ask Hattie how’s she’s doing, then Hattie — and wait for it! — ASKS IDINA OUT ON A DATE.

Pause. Let’s talk about how much I love Idina. The one thing we know about my good sis is that she’s been all over Hattie for a year now, just waiting to shoot her shot. She made her feelings known last season in a speech about homonormativity, Blackness, queerness, and the boxes we force mascs into that still reverberates.

My Narrator Voice, Rewind the Tape! Episode 108:

“Hattie, I’m a lesbian. Which means I like women, all kinds of women. I like soft women, feminine women, masculine women, trans women, Black women… so if you want to limit yourself to the type of women you date, that’s cool, but I do think you should reconsider, because I know you see me out in the world with my locks and baggy clothes, but you have no idea what I’m like behind closed doors. When I take my clothes off, when I let my hair down, you don’t know if I’m dominant or submissive, if I like it rough or if I like to take it slow… I’m pretty good at taking myself, what makes you think I can’t take care of you?”  — Idina, A Real One

And that’s not even going into all the things Idina has done for Hattie this season, inviting Hattie to her writers’ group and being on her Nicki Minaj talking bout “yes I do the cooking, yes I do the cleaning.” So of course the smart money was on Idina tripping over her own feet to say yes. But instead… Hold Up.

Idina isn’t a plaything either. She doesn’t want to be someone that Hattie messes around with because she’s bored. She deserves more than a rebound.

Hattie does that Jonica Gibbs thing where she stops being goofy and pours all her charm into you, “That’s not what this is, I promise. I want to get to know you better. Give me chaaaaaance.”

And no one can say no to those dimples, so Idina agrees. STUD-4-SOFT-STUD DATE NIGHT!

(Nia goes hiking with Big Sean the Don. They fight about social media. See my previous commentary and insert it here, let’s keep it moving.)

Back at home, Nia’s reconsidering her life choices when her big sister shows up at the door! And omg it’s Kelsey the lesbian from the best seasons of Dear White People (actress real name: Nia Jervier).

Kelsey’s been sent by their parents to get Nia’s life in order because she’s getting dragged online for playing an over-the-top stereotype. Big Sister Dear White People also promptly kicks Hattie out of the house (I told you that Lauren’s invite for Hattie to stay at her house would come back!). She then has Hattie, Nia, and Marie over for a family dinner where she gives them the “sage advice” that sometimes settling is better than soul mates. I definitely understand her larger point, life can’t always be passion — you can grow in love with almost anyone you commit with — but also I hope none of my loved ones choose “settling” as their life choice, ya know?

Marie goes home to an empty house, very much heavily weighing Big Sister Dear White People’s commentary, while Chuck is out exploring his first time at a gay bar.

Chuck, at a table swirling a glass of red wine, is so nervous that even though he’s sitting still, it practically ripples off his skin. A very sweet man comes over to flirt, offering Chuck another glass. Chuck says if he drinks too much, too quickly, he will start singing — and he wants to make a good impression. Cutie man says, but maybe you’ll sing for me later? And listen, I swooned.

(Same night, Nia has Big Sean at her house. Still don’t know what’s going on, but I think they decide to keep flirting in the future? Emoji shrug.)

STUD-4-SOFT-STUD DATE!! AHHHHH!

Let’s start with fashion, I know you want to know: Hattie’s in yet another flower suit jacket, but not the same one from Marie’s engagement party. She has on a white button up and a gold chain that shimmers with the warm glow of my own eyes as I stare lovingly upon (ahemmm sorry — not the point!!). Idina’s wearing a simple flannel button down layered underneath a black bomber jacket and again, a whole babe. Hattie and Idina are just are just two babes talking real soft and I am beside myself, do you understand what I am saying???

Idina hates traditional first date questions, so she proposes a twist on the genre. What if instead they ask questions like, “If you could only eat Mac-and-Cheese or Ice Cream for the rest of your life, what would you choose?” Which is flirty and fun until Hattie hits with the “What’s something you wish you weren’t good at?” — and once again, we feel the mood shift. This has become a Twenties signature, everything is lighthearted until it’s not, and I fall for it every time.

Idina wishes she wasn’t so good at taking care of others, just so that maybe — just maybe — someone might take care of her for once. And yes that’s a thug tear of recognition you see rolling out my eye.

Hattie asks Idina what she thought of Big Sister Dear White People’s advice: Can there be love without passion? Idina believes that love isn’t any one thing, sometimes it’s passionate and sometimes it’s boring (a word). Hattie’s never been good at boring, she moves from one thing to the next. But she’s missing the whole point; it’s not about what’s boring, it’s about what is steady.

Idina’s been here, Idina’s been steady.

And so, Idina takes Hattie home to her bed. The collage of black-and-white portraits of Black lesbian couples being to scroll, kissing, smiling wide mid-laughter, holding each other by our bellies, pressing to each other with our lips, old couples, young couples — and if I cried a thug tear before now it’s a tsunami. We are so beautiful, even when we only see ourselves. We deserve every tenderness and care that this cruel world can offer us. We deserve our own softness.

Hattie is nervous, she’s going to have sex and this time it’s going to mean something.

Idina holds her.

They kiss.

Then, they kiss again. Idina makes her laugh. They lay down. Idina grabs Hattie by the hips as they roll over. The camera turns sideways above them, panning out, but they are still kissing. Still holding. Masculine, and strong. And a year ago Hattie couldn’t see this for herself — she couldn’t imagine this vulnerability without a femme. She said so herself. But now she has Idina, who’s been her friend, her companion. Who’s grabbing her by the pockets of her Dickies and roaming her hands against her white tank top.

Beautiful. They are so damn beautiful.

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Post-Credit Notes:

+ Is anyone else also having a problem connecting with Nia’s plot? Or am I alone in that?

+ Amount of times I thought to myself that Hattie would be a mistake I’d gladly make: 2 (“give me a chaaaaance” with those dimples, and then later with the same dimples on date night — honestly also during the entire last  hookup scene with Idina but as a high femme person I know that wasn’t my space or about me, so I’ll see myself out.)

+ Amount of times I thought to myself that Idina would be a mistake I’d gladly make: 1 (during date night. WELCOME TO THE LEADER BOARD, BB! Unlike Hattie and Ida, who stay messy, you actually aren’t a mistake I’d make. Hard working, good communicator, honest. I’d take you with open arms anytime.)

+ Quote of the episode: “I’ve given out a lot of love in my life, I’m ready to receive it.” — Idina

Netflix’s “Cowboy Bebop” is a Failure of an Adaptation

“Whatever happens, happens,” is one of the most popular phrases from Shinichirō Watanabe’s animated series Cowboy Bebop. It’s said by the protagonist, Spike Spiegel, a man whose entire aura is personified by a certain effortlessness. But this “Que Será, Será” attitude isn’t limited to just one character — it flows through the very way Watanabe approaches the series through episodes and incidents that are, more often than not, just random happenstance. Each episode takes the Bebop crew — bounty hunters Spike, Jet, and Faye; child hacker Ed; and data dog Ein — on adventures both deeply personal and entirely nonsensical, be it trying to discover what important message might exist on a Betamax tape or gambling your spoils away even in the face of crippling debt. People constantly float in and out of their lives, some just an amusing dalliance to fondly remember while others etch a deep scar in the psyche, reminding one of how inescapable the past really is.

With every single creative decision of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, showrunner André Nemec and writer Christopher Yost prove they have fundamentally misunderstood the series and its characters, butchering it more and more with each passing episode as they try to mimic a series that is, quite frankly, a masterpiece.

It was impossible to not find myself comparing the live-action series to its source text, as each individual episode is a loose remixing of any given animated Bebop episode, stretched beyond their original 20-minute runtime into something twice as long and not even half as interesting. Take “Cowboy Gospel”, Bebop’s premiere episode, which takes the plot of the anime’s premiere “Asteroid Blues” and stacks a number of diverging plot lines and scenes alongside it (including the haphazard introduction of Faye to its central duo). Or, say, “Venus Pop”, which takes the anime’s “Cowboy Funk”, strips it of its best character (Cowboy Andy, who was designed as a perfect and hilarious foil to Spike), and removes the humor inherent in sidelining its unhinged antagonist in order to focus on unrelated melodrama featuring the series’ “Big Bad.”

One of the anime’s greatest strengths is that, of its 26 episodes, supporting characters rarely showed up more than once, because their appearance in a single episode was enough to make them memorable. The briefest encounter with the original Bebop crew could be life-changing for these characters, whether they were a group of blaxploitation-inspired bounty hunters trying to catch a hallucinogenic mushroom smuggler (from “Mushroom Samba”) or a whacked-out indestructible assassin that goes by Mad Pierrot (from “Pierrot Le Fou”, its title a nod to Jean-Luc Godard’s film that, for the live-action remake, was bafflingly changed to “Sad Clown A-Go-Go”). By contrast, Yost and his writing team have designed live-action Bebop so that practically every on-screen figure must have a motivation that is tied to a grander, cross-season narrative arc involving Spike’s old enemy Vicious.

This is, to be perfectly clear, one of the series’ greatest offenses. The incorporation of Vicious and the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate as a narrative throughline for the series rather than as a personal, contained arc for Spike isn’t just misguided — it’s flat out stupid. His presence in the anime is sparse, peppered throughout the series between delightful adventures, bolstering the mystery that exists around him and Spike’s old flame Julia; they’re ghosts more than actual human beings, which is what makes them compelling figures. The live-action series instead positions him as a tortured, abusive, controlling bad guy, and her as his tortured, abused, controlled wife, with nothing but bad wigs and melodramatic scene after melodramatic scene to show for it. Any sense of mystery or danger is expelled through the airlock and left floating dead in space. Practically every episode actively spells out Vicious’ motivations, down to tying numerous random figures into his plotting, for no reason whatsoever.

This attempt at expanding the story ends up short-changing every actor in the production, including some of those positioned to take on the most interesting characters of the anime. Take Gren — a former associate of Vicious who has one of the most memorable arcs of the anime in both parts of “Jupiter Jazz” — being reduced from someone with a tragic history and tale of their own into what amounts to a sassy host and bartender who gossips with their clientele in the background. For a series declaring to be drastically reinterpreting the character (though this is apparently promised for season two), Mason Alexander Park is given absolutely no chance to flesh out this character beyond surface level “non-binary presentation” (which isn’t particularly groundbreaking when one considers the character’s transness has everything to do with their circumstances and not something as shallow as painted nails).

Its protagonists suffer just as much (Ein almost exclusively being used for cute corgi reaction shots and Edward nowhere to be found for almost the entire season), with each episode purportedly dedicated to their characterization and personal narratives being undercut by mass amounts of filler. To their credit, John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, and Daniella Pineda are all trying their damnedest to make the characters pop, but that determination to exude personality is a double-edged sword. Rather than embody Spike’s carelessness about whether he lives or dies, Cho’s every movement feels uncomfortably staged; there’s nothing natural or playful about him, and a character that once oozed intrigue is now bad cosplay. Pineda’s version of Faye Valentine, one of the original series’ most emotionally compelling characters, is, I’m convinced, written by someone who has never met a woman, but took a course taught by Joss Whedon on how to write Badass Female Characters. There isn’t an ounce of depth to her, just beat after beat of the character making half-assed quips or calling someone a dickhead as a showcase of how cool and tough she is. The only actor who escapes embarrassment more often than not is Shakir as Jet, whose talent goes beyond a pitch-perfect imitation of Beau Billingslea (who voices the role in the anime) and feels truly lived-in — despite working with bad writing.

Where Watanabe and his team approached their original series by creating a unique atmosphere for every single episode — even having composer Yoko Kanno creating the show’s marvelous music alongside the writers to ideally suit it — directors Alex Garcia Lopez and Michael Katleman fumble their adaptation at literally every turn. It isn’t just in the way they haphazardly insert new arrangements of Kanno’s music into scenes where they are ill-suited; it isn’t just that their incompetent filmmaking actively takes away from the often charming attempts at translating the fluidity of animated fighting into live-action choreography; and it isn’t even just that the production design for the series looks like they ran out of money the moment they started filming and had to steal props and sets from an unaired episode of Doctor Who. It is that the creative team behind this series has no reason for or interest in telling the story they’re telling.

Cowboy Bebop dreams of having the same vibrant aesthetic as Robert Rodriguez’s oeuvre, but Lopez and Kattleman don’t have the skill to take Bebop from animation to live-action. There’s something about the way Rodriguez embeds a cartoonish, comic-like sensibility into his realism that makes films like Spy Kids, Sin City, and Alita: Battle Angel work so well — professional while also having an air of being slapdash. Bebop, as an anime, constantly toyed with genre and cinematic history, resulting in episodes both whimsical (“Toys in the Attic” playing on Alien with expired food come to life in lieu of a xenomorph) and somber (“Black Dog Serenade” setting a standard neo-noir tale of betrayal between friends on a spaceship far from home). And, beyond this, it knew when to slow down and allow the viewer to take in its atmosphere. As cheesy as it sounds, it was like a great piece of jazz music: as easy to appreciate the craftsmanship that led to its existence as it is outright enjoyable to kick back and listen to.

Live-action Cowboy Bebop, instead, takes everything implicit and makes it explicit. The sly eroticism, subversive sexuality, and teases of violence beyond the cartoonish no longer exist, with sex and blood (and even Faye’s newly introduced queerness) now presented in the most juvenile manner and often played for laughs, be it in the condescending depiction of sex workers or people exploding while turning into trees. Genre isn’t toyed with but instead used for cheap pastiche, like using a sepia filter and having characters dress like detectives in seedy alleyways to represent a tribute to noir. And, yet, with all its nuance being made overt, the remake also manages to strip the show of most of its brilliant criticism of capitalism and the way the Bebop crew navigates a clearly dystopian future (in part because the showrunner naively believes the future should be “hopeful”). The anime rather explicitly confronts how many people within this universe are essentially trying to survive in a world that prioritizes money. Bounty hunters like the Bebop crew are no different than anyone else in the galaxy, including the folks trying to scam the system by any means possible, throwing their bodies and lives headfirst into danger just to score their next meal.

It’s a show that takes one of the most fleshed out-universes in a limited anime series — or, hell, in all of television — and strips it of everything that makes it unique. Rather than update what doesn’t need updating, attempting to reinvent a revolutionary series that needed no fixing, they could have simply taken what already worked and tossed these characters into wholly new and equally bombastic situations. Instead we’re handed one of the worst pieces of television to come from the streaming era, a remake that can only be described as a worthless endeavor from top to bottom.

“Batwoman” Episode 306 Recap: That Girl Is Poison

Hello and welcome to your recap of Batwoman episode 306 aka The One Where the Writing Team Had Zero Regard for Our Feelings or Heart Rates. I think I’m going to start referring to these as “levels” instead of episodes, because I swear, every single person involved with this show, from the cast to the crew, levels up every damn week.

We open on a girls pickup basketball game in the park, and I’m immediately reminded how much I miss playing. Unexpected feelings punch for the win! One of the girls runs to get their errant ball, but is distracted by strange goo seeping out of a barn. She clearly has never seen an episode of Wynonna Earp (all seasons currently streaming on Netflix *thumbs up*), because she walks directly into the barn and said goo, and discovers a man trapped in honey and screaming for help. Now, I only have one complaint in this whole episode and it’s right here at the top. Homegirl stepped into an unknown substance with fresh kicks are you kidding?!?!?! I’m pretty sure I heard my entire sneaker collection scream in that moment.

GCPD arrives and removes the victim from his sticky prison, as Montoya (hey girl!) storms in and claims the scene as her own. She immediately instructs them to take the vic to Mary before warning them they’re going to need all hands on deck for this one.

At Montoya’s City Hall office, the detective briefs Alice and a flannel-clad Ryan on the situation, and lays out her theory that whoever did this probably weaponized the natural surroundings. Hmm, weaponizing nature, you say? Sounds like a Poison Pam M.O. to me! Sounds that way to Alice too, because she’s doing a less than great job of hiding her “I know something you don’t know” face from Ryan. The two expertly trade barbs (you see what I mean about leveling up?!) before Alice leaves to check on Mary and the vic.

Down in the Batcave, Ryan sees that the artist formerly known as “Crowphie” has made herself quite at home with some takeout wontons and a front row seat to Gotham’s CCTV footage (Sophie’s Version). Sophie’s been trying to track down Black Glove on her own, because if Ryan had any information on Jada’s involvement, surely she would have told her instead of hiding it. Ryan’s pause before telling Sophie that she doesn’t believe Jada to be a monster, broke my heart a little; her internal struggle is all over her face.

Neither budge on their feelings about Jada though, with Sophie reminding Ryan that her sister suffered at the hands of Ryan’s mother. And Ryan doesn’t deny Jada’s involvement, she just asks Sophie to trust her to share all of the information as soon as she can.

Understandably, Sophie is upset. She’s spent week after week watching Ryan tear herself up over getting this woman’s approval. She has reassured Ryan that it’s Jada’s loss if she decides to have nothing to do with her daughter. And now, Ryan is standing in front of her, seemingly taking Jada’s side over hers.

Trust is one of the most vulnerable and scary parts of any relationship, and these two are still trying to figure it out. This conflict makes so much sense for Wildmoore right now, and while I hate to watch moms fight, this is classic angst and my little shipper heart is thrilled.

At the clinic, Mary evaluates the victim while Alice has herself a little honey taste test. According to both Kehlani and Halsey, honey is queer so, infer what you will. This feels like a good time for our weekly, “RACHEL SKARSTEN, HOW ARE YOU SO GOOD?!” yell session, because my word, the comedic timing on this one is unmatched.

Alice accuses Mary of being responsible for this attack, but Mary turns around and accuses Alice of having delusions again and gaslighting Mary. What’s it called when you gaslight someone by accusing them of gaslighting you? Whatever, there is gas-ception happening here as Alice runs down all of Mary’s obviously plant-like symptoms. Alice doesn’t need to do much more convincing though, because as soon as the vic wakes up and sees Mary, he screams and identifies her as the one who attacked him.

Down in the Batcave, Mary calls a team meeting to come out as straight… and also as Poison Ivy. Only on this show does someone need to clarify (somewhat apologetically, I might add) that they’re not gay.

Instead of listening to their friend, Ryan and Luke find every excuse in the book to explain why Mary is always thirsty and has accumulated more plants than two queers moving in together. At least until Luke searches the vic’s phone and sees that his last three texts were, in fact, to Mary. Ryan gets a call from Montoya and decides to mute it, which definitely won’t come back to bite her. Alice calls them out on wanting to protect Mary at all costs, but being hella quick to send herself back to Arkham at a moment’s notice. Speaking of protecting Mary, she decides to handcuff herself to the desk until they can figure out how to help her.

At City Hall, Sophie goes to see Montoya, and the tension between these two?! I wasn’t looking for it on first watch, but the scene at the end of the episode honestly feels like a natural conclusion after rewatching these two go at it. What’s their history?! Give us the Alice-narrated backstory!!

Sophie’s here to blackmail Renee for data on the freeze serum by threatening to walk away from Alice babysitting duty. No Alice means no Batman trophies. Montoya suggests just asking Batwoman for help, but Sophie informs her that they’re not exactly on the same page at the moment. Y’all, THE SIGNS WERE RIGHT THERE! These writers, they be crafty. Before Soph leaves, Renee warns her about getting involved with Black Glove.

Back in the Batcave, the team learns that Mary met the victim on a dating site called Twinge (lol), and he apparently hit her with the “you’re sweet” which is I guess the worst hetero compliment one could receive. In response to that rejection, Poison Mary decided play up the “sweet” theme and suffocate him with honey. Alice is impressed and also kind of aroused by this?? Look, every person on this show has chemistry with everyone else, so I did forget Mary and Alice were step-sisters when I screamed about Alice wanting to date Poison Ivy Mary. However, as a friend lovingly pointed out, they met late in life, plus Barry and Iris were practically raised together so I’m gonna go ahead and keep shipping this deliciously evil duo, whatever partnership they have.

As Alice continues her onslaught of practically perfect one-liners, Luke pulls up literal receipts showing that Honey Man may not have been Poison Mary’s only victim. Dear sweet Mary is absolutely distraught over the idea that she may have hurt someone else.

Ryan and Alice arrive at the scene of Poison Mary’s potential second attack, and Ryan starts to blame Alice for not saying anything about Mary. But Alice reads Ryan for filth for not noticing that her own roommate has been acting off for ages. Sorry Ry Ry, I’m Team Alice on this one. The two find the Black Glove hat guy who kidnapped Jordan buried in the ground, another victim of Poison Mary’s wrath.

In the Batcave, the team works through how Mary managed to track down Black Glove when Sophie hasn’t been able to. Turns out, Poison Mary isn’t a big fan of medical ethics, and used Dr. Hamilton’s credentials to game the system. Alice is so proud that her “steppy” is one step closer to Harley Quinn level tactics. Honestly y’all, every time someone remembers that Harley is a genius with a literal PhD, an angel gets their wings (cut off, probably).

Alice suggests that someone tells Sophie that they have her sister’s kidnapper in custody, but Ryan, in full Protec Mode, refuses to involve her.

As Mary starts to figure out that the ivy pheromones allow her to communicate with nature and heighten what she’s passionate about (justice!), Alice suggests they find out what triggers Poison Mary. And then… Montoya shows up at Wayne Tower.

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 706 Recap: Are We Out of the Woods Yet?

Hello freaks and geeks! Welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow episode 706, “Deus Ex Latrina” aka the one where Gideon kills Ava. (Kind of.)

We skip the previously ons and dive right in, peeking into the year 2214, where Assistant Ava is telling Bishop that the first generation of Ava clones is almost ready for launch. He’s pleased but she has a follow-up question about the billions of dollars being diverted into a secret project she is not privy to. But lucky for her, he’s ready to show off his project: a Waverider.

She’s not sold on the name but she’s intrigued about why he decided to build a timeship that looks like it was hobbled together from old air ducts. He gives her a tour, which includes introducing Assistant Ava to Wrong Gideon, and Assistant Ava is not impressed by this new AI in Bishop’s life.

Assistant Ava asks what Bishop needs a timeship for and he says he’s going to get revenge on the Legends for kidnapping him, using him for his intelligence, and then messing with his memories. Wrong Gideon gives him the timemaster oath and makes him swear to uphold and protect the timeline at all costs, and then sets a course for whenever the Legends may be.

And speaking of the Legends, they actually have no idea where or when they are. The time machine is fried, Davies is panicking, and none of them know enough about plans to deduce anything. In fact, Gary posits that they could be in a land before time for all they know.

Since they have no idea where they are beyond “the jungle” they decide to make camp. Ava and Sara do their best to pep talk the team but it’s almost like they can sense a slight downshift in the presence of the Paragon of Hope in the universe and they can’t quite get their spirits up.

Ava and Sara tell the Tarazis to help Davies fix the time machine while they go off on their own to bicker a little out of earshot.

Nate and Zari are worried about their Captains and call Spooner and Astra in for a sibling-esque huddle about what their moms are fighting about. Spooner reads their minds and can tell they’re getting a little fighty. Sara’s anxiety about not knowing how to protect her team is rising and causing Ava’s stress about the timeline to rise which is in turn triggering Sara’s anxieties about not upsetting Ava and round and round they spin.

Realizing this is only going to get worse if they’re left alone, Spooner takes Sara to hunt for some food and Astra takes Ava on a hike to gather wood.

Gary and Gideon start to bug Nate about his relationship with Flannel Zari so he sends them off to gather berries for them to eat with whatever the hunting team comes back with, sure that even these two ding dongs can’t screw up the timeline enough to attract the Evil Waverider if they’re deep in the woods.

In the future, Bishop takes Assistant Ava into the timestream and they get their first alert from 1925 in Odessa, Texas. And then, as we probably could have guessed, because of reasons both timey and wimey, it turns out Bishop was the one who shot at the Legends in the Season 6 finale. Though what maybe we didn’t realize is that he was shooting to kill.

Assistant Ava thinks that felt a little too easy, but Bishop is too egotistical to consider that he failed, so he just starts celebrating, not noticing Assistant Ava’s distinct lack of whooping.

In the jungle, Zari and Behrad go to find Davies, who is looking rather defeated. He’s sure the time machine can’t be fixed and assumes it’s because he was destined to fail, that this is his fate. And speaking of fate, theirs is not looking great based on the danger sign they’re sitting near…but that’s a problem for future us.

On the Evil Waverider, Assistant Ava and Bishop are eating fabricated food, Assistant Ava asking the important question: fabricated from WHAT?? But Bishop isn’t bothered by this unknown, especially once they get another alert about a disturbance in the Timestream, this time about Hoover going missing. He wants to use clone technology to replace him but Gideon says clones are human and thus fallible: just look at what happened with Legend Ava.

Assistant Ava makes a case for #NotAllAvas but Bishop decides to make a robot Hoover instead.

Meanwhile, the real Ava is trying to collect sticks but is too stressed about ruining the timeline to focus. She hates not having all the answers, and sometimes she wishes someone else was in charge. Realizing she just said all the quiet thoughts out loud, she reassures Astra that it’s fine! It’s fine, she’s FINE. Very convincing.

Astra tells Ava that it’s okay if she’s not okay, uses magic to make an axe, and tells her captain that she’s got to let it out.

Back in time a bit, Assistant Ava and Bishop get an alert from Wrong Gideon that the Hooverbot died, and on top of that, the Legends are actually alive. They decide to make another Hooverbot, but this one with the Kill the Legends directive, but within 12 hours, it’s in pieces, too. And Edison is dead. Bishop is extremely stressed, and Wrong Gideon is trying to get him to stop going after the Legends because playing whack-a-mole with the anomalies is only making things worse, but Assistant Ava tells Wrong Ava to stop being such a fuddy duddy. So Wrong Gideon decides to lure Assistant Ava to the cargo bay by saying Bishop wants to talk to her, and once she’s inside, she opens the hatch and yeets Assistant Ava into the timestream. Correct Gideon would never!!

Unknowingly very close to a danger zone, Behrad gives Davies a pep talk about how he was lost once, but while he was lost, he found the Legends, and they lead him to find his purpose and be truly happy. Davies does not receive this hopeful message well and is rude to Behrad, making Flannel Zari want to murder him a little.

Zari chases Davies down and yells at him but when she goes to grab him to drag him back to the group, he collapses in a panic and she instantly softens. She realizes now he’s not just a dick, he’s just bad at processing his feelings. When she tries to level with him and asks him to focus up, he says that Zari and the Legends don’t really want his help anyway, because he’s useless. He tells her that the last people who depended on him died, and this hits Zari a little too close to home. She tries to tell him that she understands but he won’t listen to her.

Zari explains something that probably was never said to him in the early 1900s, which is that sometimes, talking about what’s wrong can actually help you feel better. He is… skeptical at best.

“Yellowjackets” Has a Lesbian Character We’re Buzzing About

Now that I’ve seen the pilot of Yellowjackets, I can tell you a variety of ways you could have sold me on giving this show a try. Queer actress Jasmin Savoy Brown! One of my childhood crushes, Christina Ricci! Queer female main character! Big Little Lies meets The Wilds! Those all would have hooked me, easily. But I was sold by learning it also features Sarah Desjardin, who first charmed me in her queer role on the devastatingly underappreciated show Impulse and then later as a deliciously malicious prep school teen on Riverdale. And if it’s any indication how much I enjoyed this first episode, by the time Sarah’s character appeared on screen, I was so invested that I had completely forgotten why I started it in the first place, yelping with joy when I saw her.

All I knew about this show going into it was that it would toe the line between standard Showtime drama and thriller, and honestly I’m glad I didn’t really know anything else. That said, I’m about to spill some pilot spoilers on you to try to get you to watch, so if you’re already sold, now’s the time to jump ship.

For those of you who want to know more, let’s get into it.

Yellowjackets is the story of a high school girls soccer team, their mascot being the titular role, whose plane goes down on their way to a championship game, forcing them to do whatever it takes to survive for 18 months until they’re rescued. The show jumps between present day and the 90s, a popular trend in TV lately, probably partially due to the average age of TV writers, 90s nostalgia being hot right now, and teen dramas being easier to manipulate without the interference of smartphones.

The Yellowjackets pilot comes in hot, dropping huge reveals right off the bat, including but not limited to, a) exactly how long the girls were stranded for, b) at least four girls who survive into adulthood, c) that the girls resorted to cannibalism and other cult-like activity while stranded. These big reveals dropping in episode one makes me think there are a lot more secrets yet to be revealed.

One of the survivors in question is Taissa, who is our as-of-yet only queer player. We haven’t spent quite enough time with Teen Taissa (Jasmine Savoy Brown) to know if she came out before the crash (just that she’s fiercely competitive and a wee bit manipulative). But Adult Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is shown with her wife and son. An overeager, borderline insensitive photographer brings up her childhood trauma with an off-handed remark and calls her the Queer Kamala, which feels…reductive. But she holds her head high and smiles for the camera, her wife supporting her all the while.

As of right now, Taissa and her wife are the only confirmed queer characters, but we’re only one episode in, and I have some Opinions about the way Teen Shauna was looking at her friend Jackie and an alternate theory about why she did the things she did, but that’s a discussion for a later date. There are other teens on the island with the four survivors, and there could be more survivors we don’t know about. Plus, there’s still more pre-crash backstory to delve into, so it’s quite possible Teen Taissa has more queer peers. Only time will tell! But it’s a soccer team, so I feel good about our odds.

Also, this is neither here nor there, but the casting for the Teen and Adult versions of these characters are spot-on. There was a point that I fully thought they, for some reason, chose to use the same actor for both versions of the character of Misty, because Christina Ricci was almost unrecognizable and looked so much like Sammi Hanratty that I was totally thrown. Anyway!

I know that “Lord of the Flies but with girls” is also the concept for The Wilds, but honestly? I’m here for it. There are 8 billion Batman movies, why not a whole slew of different takes of how teen girls would act if left to their own devices? Because the truth is, this concept can play out in a thousand different ways depending on the situation, resources, and the particular teens. It’s such a fascinating character study, and as someone who has tried to mentally anxiety-prep what I would do in the unlikely event I was stranded in the wilderness, I find shows like this fascinating. And having been a teen girl who was friends with mostly only other teen girls, this particular aspect of the concept intrigues me the most. Hell, while I WAS a teen girl, desperately trying to keep my closet door closed, sometimes “well we’re alone on a deserted island” was the only way I could even allow myself to *imagine* kissing a girl. (Thanks, Catholic guilt!) All this to say, for this particular genre of show, I say the more the merrier.

One difference between these two shows that seems small on paper but I think will make a huge impact is that, on The Wilds, they were largely strangers, with only two or three pairings who knew each other before the crash. The Yellowjackets are already a team, albeit one with some cohesion issues, so whether that helps them stick together or is the thing that drives them apart is anyone’s guess. Will the captain of the team end up the de facto leader or will she get the Scar treatment and get eaten by the hyenas she thought she had a handle on? Will the most ruthless among them take charge or will she hold back for fear of hurting someone (again)? What is going ON behind Misty the Mascot’s wild and terrifying eyes?

New episodes of Yellowjackets air Sundays on Showtime, and the show’s #1 fan Kayla will be making sure to keep us apprised of the gay goings-on in Boobs on Your Tube every week henceforth! Until then… Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! BUZZ! BUZZ!

There’s Something About a Commanding But Goofy Tomboy

“There’s Something About” is a series where writers chat about the type of babes that make them all hot and bothered by showing you fictional Pop Culture hotties that fit the bill.

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I watched a lot of television as a young person, and I was also a nerdy goody-two-shoes desperate to fit in with the populars. So it’s no surprise to me that the characters that burrowed into my psyche (in what I now recognize as crushes) are a sort of a rebellious but still silly tomboy. I never understood the whole brooding bad boy thing, but someone who could stand up to the meanies in their universe and also had a silly side has always done it for me.

Is this just the closest thing to soft butch representation I saw on TV in that era? Maybe! In real life, I tend to be the louder, more intimidating person in my relationships, but that doesn’t stop me from crushing on these characters or imagining us arguing over who is better at opening jars in our partnership.

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Callie Torres – Grey’s Anatomy

Callie is a badass orthopedic surgeon who frequently wrestles the bones of professional athletes back into their sockets! Portrayed as an outsider from the beginning of her stint on Grey’s, Callie loves the gore and grit of ortho, and for a bit lives in the basement of the hospital in an honestly pretty cool but grungy cave. Rocks a leather jacket, intimidates the hell out of the mean girl clique at the hospital and is still goofy enough to dance around in underwear. Dream babe. (And it’s just icing on the cake that Callie was played by the irl nonbinary dream babe Sara Ramirez.)

Missy – Bring It On

While Bend It Like Beckham is the canonical “gay but not” film from this era, I have to acknowledge the searing gay tension in Bring It On. From the moment Missy uses her finger to smear the fake arm tattoo she’s given herself, I was smitten, and honestly so was Torrance! And though I wish she hadn’t had to conform to the cheer teams looks, who can forget the silly little dance she does when revealing her cheer uniform to a car full of teammates?

Khadijah James – Living Single

This show was my favorite to watch any time I stayed home sick from school as a kid, and I’m honestly due for a rewatch. I don’t remember any specific plots or episodes, but what’s never ever left my mind are all the jerseys Khadijah wears, her being an absolute boss in her romantic relationships and career, and. that. SMILE! It was enough to manifest a lifelong love of Queen Latifah in me. Forever and ever, babe.

Robin Scherbatsky – How I Met Your Mother

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: is How I Met Your Mother a good show? No, and on top of that, it’s frequently transphobic, racist, homophobic, misogynist, the list goes on. But. BUT. Robin Scherbatsky, the on-again-off-again girlfriend to the excruciatingly boring and often horrible lead man on the show, made a compelling argument for me to watch every episode of this show ever made….TWICE. Once a Canadian teen star whose biggest song was “Let’s Go to the Mall,” Robin is now a newscaster who swills scotch, smokes cigars, and doesn’t ever want to settle down. She swears, she’s loud, and she’s sometimes mean for no reason. She’s perfect and I would never ever ask her to settle down. RIP to Ted Mosby, but I’m different.

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Upon reflection, what we have here is a classic case of “Do I want to be them, or be with them?” I think it’s a little of both, and it’s changed over time.

When I was younger and still hoping to impress frat bros in college or the straight boy jocks at my high school, I loved that these characters were “not like other girls,” that they were cool AND hot, extremely confident in themselves, and above all — wanted. I really wanted to be like that, so assured in my own skin. And now that I’m older, wiser, and a lot gayer — I mean, more confident! — I understand that I don’t just want to be like them, I also want to date them.

I Can’t Believe Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Sex Show Actually Self-Helped Me

I try, as a general rule, to not know what Gwyneth Paltrow is up to, Goop-wise, because one time in 2017 I got a Goop magazine to try to make a silly post out of it and I still haven’t recovered from the knowledge that some people spend thousands of dollars for an exfoliator made out of like gold dust and unicorn dander. Also Gwyneth Paltrow’s definition of “wellness” in the Letter From the Editor was the most bananapants thing I have ever read in my life, like, “Wellness is a proposition, a preposition, a supposition, it’s nutrition, optician, suspicion, volition, an expedition with ambition of redefinition!” Not just gobbledygook nonsense, but expensive gobbledygook nonsense. Through the years, Goop has endorsed a candle that smells like a famous orgasm, vampire repellent, vagina rocks, and some kind of silent dog whistle necklace that’s supposed to make you feel like you’re meditating when you blow into it.

So you can understand why I was skeptical of Paltrow’s new Netflix show, Sex, Love & Goop, in which “courageous couples journey toward more pleasurable sex and deeper intimacy with help from Gwyneth Paltrow and a team of experts.” But it did promise lesbians, and so of course I watched.

Over the course of six episodes, lots of different couples meet with lots of different sex therapists to try lots of different techniques to have more fulfilling sex lives. Their struggles range from classic mismatched sex drives to classic mismatched in-bed desires; and the approaches for helping them range from crawling around sniffing each other’s butts to exploring a handcrafted vulva model to that thing Bette Porter did with Candace the Carpenter in season one of The L Word where she had psychic sex with her using just her brain and her horniness. And then there’s Shandra and Camille, a very sweet and shy baby gay couple who meet with erotic wholeness coach Darshana Avilaust and just want to know more about how lesbians have sex.

Camille used to be a dancer and has a lot of shame around her body, especially when she feels like it isn’t perfect; Shandra used to be an athlete and has a lot of shame around her body, especially because she gained weight when she got older and didn’t look like a teenager with a racehorse metabolism anymore. Darshana wants to teach them some sex positions, and how to use some standard sex toys, and just some basics like that — but first, she’s curious if those body image issues are getting in the way of their shared pleasure. And surprise! They are! So she asks them to participate in some “mirror work,” where they take off as much clothes as they want and stand in front of the mirror and talk about how they feel about their own bodies.

When the butt-sniffing and psychic sex were happening, I’ll admit I was also playing Stardew Valley on my Nintendo Switch, but when the lesbians started talking about their tummies and thighs and breasts and necks and faces, and listening to each other and affirming each other and just holding space for the other person’s insecurities, I put down my game and started crying my homosexual eyeballs out.

A few months ago, before I had surgery on my spine, over a year into a ceaseless battle with Long Covid, my wife slid into beside me one night and tucked her head under my chin and said, “Should we try to have sex before your surgery?” Which was a good question for a lot of reasons. For starters, we didn’t know how long I was going to be in a whole neck brace situation after surgery, or how much PT it’d take for me to be able to hold my head up by myself again, or how much pain I’d be in. All we knew was even our cats were going to be too heavy for me to lift. And then there’s all the billion things Long Covid is doing to me on a daily basis, from migraines to air hunger to excruciating joint pain to fatigue. Sex has been sporadic since I became chronically ill, even for a lesbian couple 11 years into a monogamous relationship. I said “Yes, of course!’ because I love having sex with my wife and she was right that we should be planning ahead.

As we lay in bed afterward, I couldn’t stop laughing. Because I was giddy from the endorphins and serotonin and all that, but also because I had truly forgotten that my body was capable of feeling like anything other than a pain prison — until my wife reminded me with her body that there’s still lots of ways I can feel good too. I didn’t deal with the anguish underneath that laughter, not that night, because I so rarely feel AWESOME and that night I felt AWESOME.

No, the ache underneath my giggles didn’t come crying out of my eyeballs until I was watching Gwyneth Paltrow’s wacky sex show. And, look, sure sure sure, it’s annoying that the other couples on Sex, Love & Goop just get to flat out do sex stuff and the lesbians also have to do emotional stuff — but cliches are cliches for a reason, which I proved by sobbing about my body while Shandra and Camille sobbed about their bodies.

Begrudgingly, I admit Sex, Love & Goop helped me start to process my own hang ups about how I was letting my disabled body steal the joy of having sex with my wife. So: fine. Gwyneth Paltrow wins this one. But I’m still not buying any vagina gravel.

Kristen Stewart Hitting Target Demographic Dead-On With Gay Ghost-Hunting Reality Show

In a recent profile in The New Yorker, our very own Kristen Stewart revealed that in addition to her work adapting bisexual author Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir “The Chronology of Water” for the cinema, she’s also writing a TV show with her fiancee Dylan Meyer and, in a move that will undoubtedly delight the 25% of LGBTQ+ people who have seen a ghost, developing a gay ghost-hunting reality show with a friend. Kristen Stewart told New Yorker writer Emily Witt that the ghost program will be “a paranormal romp in a queer space” with “elevated aesthetics.” She also told the writer that “gay people love pretty things” and therefore the show is “aiming for a richness.”

As noted in the paragraph that preceded the paragraph we are now in, ghosts are of particular interest to the queer population. Our research found that LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people are certifiably more haunted and more likely to believe in ghosts than the population at large, and last year our writer Ro made a passionate and 100% convincing case that ALL ghosts are gay. This hypothesis likely rings true to the creators of the Queer Ghost Hunters, a YouTube series based in Ohio that produced two seasons of gay hauntings in the mid-to-late ’10s.

Stewart’s filmography is pretty haunted, too. In 2007, she appeared in very bad film The Messengers as the daughter of a family that moved to a farm in North Dakota only to find themselves under constant peril from ghosts only visible to Stewart’s character and her brother. She sought out the ghost of her dead twin brother, a medium, in 2016’s Personal Shopper. And she is visited by the ghost of Anne Boleyn in 2021’s Spencer, in theaters now!

This New Yorker profile has more in store for you than simply the gay ghosting news: at one point, Stewart shows Witt her lookbook for “The Chronology of Water” and tells her, “I want to fuck with a split screen. Like, genuinely shredded memories. I want seasons. I want the movie to have scope.” Early in the article, it is confirmed that Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer have been engaged since this past summer.

In conclusion, there has never been a better time to be a gay ghost!!!!

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feature image credit: American actress Kristen Stewart at the 78 Venice International Film Festival 2021. Spencer red carpet. Venice (Italy), September 3rd, 2021 (Photo by Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

Boobs on Your Tube: “Legacies” Tempts With Baddie Bisexual Vampires

Holy cats, y’all, this has been the absolute WILDEST day of TV trailer news! We got new teasers from Sex and the City, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk! Let’s see… what else happened this week? The Morning Show doubled down on its gay smooching and Christina was there with you to yell about it. Carmen recapped an all new episode of Twenties. Valerie Anne recapped Legends of Tomorrow and the Supergirl series finale. Batwoman went full fan fic and Nic responded in kind by going full fangirl. Riese reviewed Dopesick! Shelli reviewed Tampa Baes!  And Sally caught us up with JoJo Siwa’s latest DWTS routines.

Notes from the TV Team:

+ On Queens, it’s not looking great for Jill and Tina!! Waking up from her adulterous hookup, Jill finds out Tina is visiting LA. After some cover up (Jill suggests U-Hauling because she doesn’t want to deal with her guilt), it finally comes out that Jill cheated in the last episode. Tina offers to forgive her, but the truth is that Jill is newly out for the first time and still ready to explore! Tina, surprisingly mature about her heartbreak, decides that if she’s waited this long for Jill, maybe the timing just isn’t right. And if she’s lucky, maybe their paths will cross again in the future. Until then, welcome Jill’s Hoe Phase?  — Carmen

+ On All American, news about Coop’s decision to give up music finally gets back to Layla. Incensed, Layla puts her label first: forcing Coop to sign papers ending their partnership and allowing Layla to shop Coop’s music around to other artists. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mo’s daughter is starting to ask questions about what happened to her mother and why no one’s avenged her death. Looks like that thirst for revenge runs in the family. — Natalie

+ Dickinson is back! I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet but I’ll be writing about it in some way, shape, or form as soon as I do!! — Valerie Anne

+ So we have collectively decided that Amelia is flirting enough with hot enby Dr. Kai on Grey’s to warrant joining our recaps! Unfortunately this week we were all so upset about [Station 19 not gay spoiler] that we processed our grief about it over 50 comments in a slack thread! Amelia and hot doctor Kai, your time begins next week. — Carmen

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Hightown 204: “Daddy Issues”

Written by Natalie

This week, Jackie’s back in her Fisheries Service uniform, questioning the Scrodfather about shark poaching off the Cape. The interview proves unproductive so Eddie encourages Jackie to salvage the trip to New Bedford by visiting her father, Rafael. She goes, begrudgingly, and things are awkward and tense. Jackie returns to the station and works out her angst by fucking Leslie against the lockers.

A text message disrupts their post-coital bliss, alerting them to Daisy’s real identity. Once they discover her probationary status, they set a trap and she falls right in. Leslie threatens Daisy with arrest but Jackie takes a more gentle approach to convince Daisy to become their informant. She gives Daisy a day to think about everything and passes on her business card. Daisy returns to Xavier’s and when she’s not deferential enough with Jorge, he punches her in the face and throws her out of the club.

As they await word from Daisy, Leslie and Jackie stroll along the streets of P-town. Jackie laments that Daisy’s protection of Jorge and Leslie chalks it up to “daddy issues, after all, she is a stripper.” Jackie scoffs: everybody’s got daddy issues, including Leslie…case and point: her affair with Ray. Leslie concedes that her father is a bit like Ray — an emotionally unavailable cop with a propensity for violence — but notes that she got her drive and competitive spirit from him. Leslie asks if Jackie’s father knows she’s gay and she acknowledges that he does and that he’s cool with it. Leslie’s surprised, she’d heard that “the Latinos weren’t down with that stuff.”

“Aw, you’re so cute when you’re racist,” Jackie chides, before explaining, “I’m an only child — probably wanted a boy — so I think, in a way, he related to me more because I wanted to fuck chicks.”

Jackie acknowledges her father’s fuckboi tendencies and admits her frustrating at how his philandering ways hurt her mother. The show of vulnerability touches Leslie and she grabs Jackie’s hand and weaves their fingers together. She leans forward and kisses Jackie who ramps up the passion between them until Daisy’s call pulls her away. Leslie urges Jackie to be careful and come home to her. She pulls Jackie into another kiss and Jackie slips her the keys to her apartment so she can be there, waiting, when she’s done.

Later, Jackie wakes Leslie and stokes her ambition (and her libido) with the promise of taking down Frankie and Jorge. Things quickly get passionate and, once again, Leslie tries to go down on Jackie. She resists, again, and Leslie assures Jackie that she really wants to do this.

“I don’t really…I don’t really…” Jackie stammers, clearly not interested. But Leslie — who, despite the circumstances, feels very straight in this moment — says please and Jackie relents. Her release finally comes but it’s a mix of pleasure and pain that feels like it might reverberate throughout the rest of the season.

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9-1-1 507: “Ghost Stories”

Written by Natalie

Halloween came a little late this season on 9-1-1, as the first responders of the 118 dealt with ghosts, both real and imagined. For Henrietta Wilson, the ghost comes in the form of her ex-girlfriend, Eva Mathis. Last we saw Eva, she’d threatened to sue Karen and Hen for custody of Denny but overdosed (and was subsequently sent back to prison) before she could make good on her threat. This week, she returns looking to make amends.

When she arrives, Eva reports that she’s nearly two years sober and is looking to start over somewhere else. Hen offers half-hearted congratulations and tries to usher her ex out the door. Eva admits that during her recovery, she’s had plenty of time to think, and she acknowledges how much she hurt Hen. She’s amazed that, even despite that hurt, Hen sill saved her life and took in her son, never holding him responsible for his mother’s transgressions. As tears roll down her face, Hen admits that she’s glad Eva’s doing better but forgiveness just isn’t possible right now.

When she returns home, Hen shares the news of Eva’s visit with Karen. Why she thinks Karen needed to know about a visit from the ex that Hen cheated on her with, I don’t know…and, frankly, neither does Karen. Hen insists that she just didn’t want any secrets between them, particularly about Eva. Karen wonders if Eva’s truly leaving town and Hen admits that she thinks Eva was being sincere. Hen’s continued faith in Eva only further exacerbates Karen’s insecurities and after leaving Hen stunned, Karen takes her fight directly to the source: Eva. She puts it to her plainly, “why [do] you keep popping up, trying to blow my life apart?”

Eva insists that that wasn’t her intention; instead, she just wanted to make Hen — the first person to ever really believe in her — proud of her again. Karen admits that she’s been worried about the specter Eva casts over her relationship with Hen since their third date. Everytime Eva calls, she’s convinced she’ll lose Hen and Denny because all the people she loves, belonged to Eva first. But Eva puts Karen at ease: Hen won’t leave because she loves Karen more than her. The admission stops Eva’s ghost from haunting Karen’s relationship with and the couple reaffirm their love by candlelight.

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NCIS: Hawai’i 107: “Rescuers”

Written by Natalie

Kate Whistler walks into the NCIS offices with a spring in her step. She’s dressed more casually than usual. She’s smiling broadly. She even stops to say good morning to Ernie, the team’s tech guru. In short, it’s all very un-Whistler like. She tries to cloak it — pretending that her visit is about some security clearance forms and not Kate returning the tennis bracelet Lucy left at her apartment the night before — but it’s clear to anyone paying attention: Kate Whitsler is smitten. And that, as it turns out, is a problem for Kate Whistler.

When the couple cross paths later, the energy between them has shifted: Lucy is still glowing from their night together and already hard at work planning their next date (bowling! rockin’ bowl!) but Kate’s withdrawn. Kate pulls Lucy into a quiet corner and lightly admonishes her for talking about dating while at work. Stunned by Kate’s shift in demeanor, Lucy asks what happened to the woman who was all smiles this morning. People noticed her behavior this morning, Kate admits, and it puts additional pressure on her. Kate suggests that they keep their relationship a secret but Lucy’s not interested in being anyone’s secret. Before the conversation can get any more heated, or overheard by the approaching crowd, Kate cuts Lucy off and walks away.

During a break in their case, Ernie confronts Lucy about her relationship with Whistler. She admits that they’ve dated before and have been together, again, for a few weeks but things continue to be frustrating. She laments Kate’s interest in keeping their relationship a secret — after all, they’re adults and aren’t breaking any rules — and surmises that Kate’s just embarrassed to be with her.

Later, Kate stops by the office and apologizes for her behavior. She admits that she allowed a bad work call to impact their dynamics. Lucy asks directly if Kate’s embarrassed by her but Kate denies it: actually, she’s embarrassed by herself. She’s trying to be more expressive but it’s a hard adjustment. Recognizing that Kate’s making a sincere effort, Lucy agrees to keep their relationship between them. After all, Lucy flirtily offers: “secrets can be fun.”

Two points about this scene: first, how is it so completely devoid of emotion or warmth? Lucy is battered and bruised from an encounter with an assailant and Kate doesn’t show any concern about it? Even someone as compartmentalized at Kate would’ve had some visceral reaction to seeing their partner hurt, I’d think. Also? None of this makes sense if these two have dated before; surely this is a conversation that they would’ve already had.

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New Amsterdam 408: “Paid in Full”

Written by Natalie

As she prepares to take over as medical director of New Amsterdam, Veronica Fuentes is cleaning house. Though she claims its all about the budget, her real focus seems to be removing Max Goodwin’s fingerprints from the hospital, including getting rid of the doctors who are loyal to him and his vision. Lauren admits that Fuentes is extorting her to help fund the hospital but neglects to mention why (details, schmetails). Iggy’s convinced that Max will save them but Lauren notes that even if Max can save them now, in two weeks, he’s jetting off to England and they’ll be at Fuentes’ mercy.

Back in the ED, Lauren ribs Casey for not having the schedule done yet, a task made even more difficult by the additional resident. He doesn’t understand why the department has an extra resident but remains short on nurses. Lauren immediately gets defensive and snaps at Casey which causes him to consider how Bloom’s girlfriend got a slot in her ED. He confronts Lauren about the additional resident later and Lauren lets him know that she doesn’t appreciate the implication. But Casey knows Lauren and he knows when she’s lying…and she rushes to fill the silence with an explanation.

She admits that she bought Leyla’s seat but insists that everything was completely above board. If that were true, Casey points out, Lauren wouldn’t have hidden the truth from everyone. He warns that her actions undermine everything that Leyla’s worked for and Lauren admits he’s right. But then, the desperation that drove her to make the donation in the first place becomes evident, “Okay, but you get why I had to do it. I had to. Please, please don’t… please don’t say anything.” He cautions: when everyone finds out, she’ll lose everyone’s respect, just like she’s lost his.

Meanwhile, a ransomware attack strikes New Amsterdam and, short of paying the hackers 10M in cryptocurrency, there’s no immediate solution to getting the hospital back online. Max urges Fuentes to get the board to back a ransom payment but she resists unless he agrees to sign onto her proposed budget…a budget that would fire three dozen doctors, including Dr. Bloom. The attack causes chaos throughout the hospital and Max is forced to sign off on the budget. He does, however, manage to amend Fuentes’ proposal and — just like Iggy said — save Lauren, Iggy and Floyd from being fired. The consequence, though? Widespread firings, including Casey.

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Nancy Drew 305: “The Vision of the Birchwood Prisoner”

Written by Valerie Anne

No sign of Bess’s newest fling this week, but I think getting laid is putting a little extra spring in her step because she’s chipper as all get-out as she acts as a buffer between Temperance and Nancy, making sure to compliment them both the entire time. She agrees to be a distraction for the detective while Nancy and Bess do a magical mind meld with the serial killer in custody and dubs this trio “Team Nantempess” because she’s the cutest.

Bess does her best to distract the detective with tea, but her attempts are almost thwarted by a zombie cat. She tries to use it as an excuse to keep him there longer, having the detective help her dig a grave for the kitty even though he’s totally onto her.

Later, Bess confronts Temperance about the cat but she swears it died of natural causes and she just used it to get information. Bess realizes that Temperance is probably using her for her energy but when given an out, Bess decides to continue her tutelage.

Besides, they have a supernatural baddie to find, and they can probably use all the magical help they can get.

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Legacies 405: “I Thought You’d Be Happier to See Me”

Written by Valerie Anne

This week, Josie and Finch wake up together, ready to spend the day celebrating their big win, but then they hear Lizzie scream for Josie and learn that the twins’ dad is in the hospital…because of Hope.

Speaking of Hope, she’s out drinking and dancing with a lady she’s about to feed from when who should show up but the one, the only, REBEKAH MIKAELSON. Love of my life, queen of my heart, goddess amongst mortals, bisexual icon, and Hope’s Aunt Bex. Rebekah and Hope share a drink of the woman Hope was dancing with and Hope wants to finish draining her but Rebekah wants Hope to come home with her. She doesn’t understand why Hope is acting like this, she can’t imagine being a tribrid is THAT much different from being a vampire and then Hope gives her a smirk and Rebekah realizes that Hope turned off her humanity.

Rebekah tries to stab Hope with the dagger that her brothers so often used to tuck her away but before she can take Hope anywhere, the bartender snaps Rebekah’s neck because he wants to kidnap Hope. Hope wakes up and starts using him as a dartboard while trying to figure out who he works for. He reveals that he’s part of Triad, and that the “original bloodlines” want to destroy her. Hope threatens him but just as he’s about to give up the ghost his brand ignites and fries him.

When Rebekah wakes up, Hope gives her her mother’s necklace, her most prized possession, says “Always and forever” in a mocking tone that breaks my heart and leaves her aunt in the dust.

Meanwhile, the twins are trying to get their father to wake up from his coma by jumping into his mind, but his life is flashing before his eyes. He has a dramatic goodbye with Lizzie, and explains that one of the only reasons he took Hope in was so she would form a bond with his girls and protect them if things went south. And since the actor who plays their father is a garbage human, I’m hoping they’re actually writing him off, even though it would be devastating for the twins and also could cause an irreparable rift between them and Hope, who would be crushed once she turns her humanity back on, which I don’t LOVE. Maybe they can get his consciousness into a new body? We’ll see.

And Just Like That: Miranda Receives Strong Bisexual Eye Contact From Sara Ramirez in First SATC Reboot Trailer

After months of heated anticipation, a substantial trailer and a release date (December 9th) for HBO Max’s Sex and the City reboot “And Just Like That” has been unleashed upon the internet. That’s us, the internet. And we are tentatively quite excited?!

As previously discussed, Sara Ramirez will be playing “podcaster Che Diaz, a nonbinary, queer, stand-up comedian who often hosts Carrie Bradshaw (Parker) on their show. Che, who uses the pronouns they/them, is described as a big presence with a big heart whose outrageous sense of humor and progressive, human overview of gender roles has made them and their podcast very popular.”

And Che is all over this trailer!! And also maybe all over Miranda?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLwEjJPbcs

Let’s discuss!

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Natalie: Less than a month away, Carmen.

Carmen: AGGHHHHGGH NATALIE WHAT A GOOD MORNING THANK YOU

Valerie: Carmen the little heart!

Carmen: Hahaahaaa, I am who I am.

Carmen:

Is that Sara Ramirez (excuse me, Che) flirting with Miranda!!!
I think… I think…. MIRANDA HOBBES BISEXUAL????
Could we be that lucky???

Riese: Do you think that Carrie’s gonna be like “Che wore a chain with a lock around their neck but did Miranda have the key to open their heart?”

Natalie: I would also like to talk about the woman Miranda is with in the trailer.

Carmen:

Natalie: Yeah, the woman she’s talking to in that screenshot is married on the show but there is a rainbow enamel pin on her backpack so… I’m hopeful?

Carmen: Natalie… are out here doing SATC recon? Am I… going to have to add you to our club?

(Editor’s Note: the SATC club currently consists of Carmen Phillips, Reboot Board President and Riese Bernard, Historian of SATC and all things 1990s and 2000s. Drew Gregory puts up with us.)

Natalie: lol

Carmen: So that Black woman with the rainbow pin holding on to Miranda for dear life is Dr. Nya Wallace (played by Karen Pittman). She’s a Columbia law professor who’s married to Andre Rashad Wallace (LeRoy McClain), a musician. But it’s 2021 and I believe everyone is poly and pansexual until told differently.

Heather: What is especially funny to me about the Miranda screenshot is Cynthia Nixon is notorious for riding the MTA around NYC and glaring down anyone who looks in her direction, like unblinkingly, for until that person gets off the train.

Riese: MIRANDA HOBBES BISEXUAL

The Morning Show: Am I Your Woman?

Welcome back to our second to last installment of “Gay Things That Happened On The Morning Show”! Our Girlfriends In the News only share one scene together this week, but they have a rather eventful few days, so let’s dive right on in!

Bradley Jackson: Family Drama and Hard Hitting Interviews!

Bradley is in her hotel room with her Plot Device as he apologizes for being high and making a scene in her place of employment. He says he only did it because “what she did hurt him so much,” because he is not a very nice Plot Device. He does agree to go to rehab, and Bradley sighs, clearly exhausted and over it.

At work, Alex pops in on Bradly to tell her that she is quitting the day before Maggie Brener’s book comes out, but she will bravely do her job for the like, week and half beforehand. Alex kind of apologizes for the whole “disappearing after the debate” and being a garbage person. She does truly seems sorry to have squandered her relationship with Bradley, but is looking forward to doing the show on Monday!

But alas, Bradley will not be in on Monday, she has to take Plot Device to rehab. Laura was going to cover, so maybe Alex should wait till Tuesday to return? No, Alex is professional now, and she will do her job with Bradley’s girlfriend, hard no feelings at all. It is slightly funny that Alex doesn’t mention that Laura and Bradley are dating? Or the whole “being outed in Groucho Marx glasses”? But she IS sorry about Plot Device going to rehab, she really is. Bradley suggests they should get drink soon, they haven’t really spoken in a while and maybe Bradley was a bit too harsh on Alex before. Ummm she wasn’t, Alex has been a garbage coworker and person, but she does look very beautiful and I, much like Bradley, am deeply invested in stunning older women liking me. Alex seems touched by this offer, but warns Bradley that she will Be Cancelled soon and a relationship with her could be deadly. It’s strange to think about how little they have interacted all season. Is this like, the third or fourth time? Maybe?? Weird!

When Bradley drops off Plot Device at the Best Rehab Ever, he tries to convince her to go to Disney, or maybe Cooperstown? Those are wildly different experiences, but the point is that he would like to do anything other than rehab, tbh. Bradley looks understandably exhausted, and takes this moment to tell him that after he gets out of rehab, she can’t see him anymore. Again, taking the spirit of Laura’s advice, but perhaps not the letter of it! I think it would probably have been more effective to let him think whatever he wants right now, just to get him in the door, and then perhaps spend sometime with a therapist who could teach her how to communicate and enforce boundaries?

Plot Device does not handle this well, he threatens to take the money she gives him to buy more drugs and overdose. A very cool and not at all manipulative tactic! Bradley has heard this from Plot Device before, and she can’t do this with him anymore. He’s an adult, he can go in or not, he can get clean or not, but she won’t make that call for him. She wants him to get better, but if he doesn’t, that’s not her responsibility anymore. Again, she is right to say this! She just needs a bit of help with the delivery and like timing. She drives away, leaving her plot device behind, unburdened….FOR NOW.

When Bradley returns to New York, she is given the opportunity of a lifetime— interviewing Maggie Brener about her new book. Instead of condemning Alex like everyone expects, Bradley takes a rather surprising tack. Why, she wonders, does so much of Maggie’s book focus on Alex and Mitch’s consensual affair? There were so many other terrible things Mitch and the network did, why the laser focus on Alex? Maggie pushes back, she literally says “Okay, you wanna go there?” Which is, to be clear, very hot and Marcia Gay Harden looks incredible. She brings up the whole “Alex terrorizing her in her hotel room hotel room in Vegas” moment, and while Bradley is obviously surprised by this, she recovers enough to say that what she hears in this story is a woman in pain, begging to keep her private life out of a bestselling book. Maggie is taken aback, and for the first time, speechless. “Who is the worst person you ever slept with Maggie?” Bradley asks, casually. Maggie does not say Alex, but you know that is my personal fanfiction theory. The interview ends, and Bradley has saved Alex from cancellation! History was made today, folks.

Laura Peterson and Alex Levy: Are The Girls Making Up?

Laura finds Alex on Monday morning to check in and make sure they’ll be professionals, no matter how they feel about each other personally. Alex assures her they will, and honestly, they are kind of great together on air! Alex asks Laura to set her up for a story from the weekend, they banter about COVID— can you believe it’s real? I mean…. Alex, you were very literally just in Italy? So… Yes? Should be your answer? I think the story Alex wanted Laura to set her up for was Mayor Pete dropping out of the Presidential race and endorsing Biden, which feels like a story they both would have prepped for, but whatever! Then Dr. Bottum comes is back to tell the frenemies that washing your hands is very important, and they “make up” a song about TMS to sing as they wash their hands. It is very cheesy but also very appropriate for a morning show.

Alex pops by Laura’s dressing room after the show to discuss the fact that Laura is dating her ex girlfriend. No, sorry, that was fanfic again, what Alex really wants to say is this: “Do you remember that night when a bunch of us went to see Bring In Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk?” I am levitating due to the simple act of hearing Jennifer Aniston say those words, but Laura is as perplexed as we all are at this sudden trip down memory lane. It feels important to note that Alex mentions Maggie was there, just so we can all take a moment to think about Marcia Gay Harden at a Bring In Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk concert. The point Alex is desperately trying to make is this: Why doesn’t Laura like her? One day they were friends and one day Laura didn’t speak to her! She can’t for THE LIFE of her figure out why! This is probably a good time to remind you all that earlier in the season Laura tells Bradley that she thinks Alex was the one to out her to Your Day America, the morning show she used to work on, and the one she was fired from for being gay.

Laura asks if Alex remembers what was going on her with at that time, and Alex does! She remembers Laura needed some space from everyone, but it seems like what Laura really needed was a friend. Of course, Alex immediately tries to walk back their closeness, because she is history’s greatest monster. But it doesn’t matter, because Laura knows the real reason Alex hung out with her and all her friends “that summer.” Alex is offended by this insinuation, and then Laura lays out her theory about Alex outing her, except it’s all phrased very vaguely in terms like “you knew what was going on with me.” Alex does admit to gossiping about her, but also says that everyone was gossiping about Laura and her gayness. “Gossip seemed so much less vicious back then,” Alex sighs. Laura points out that it wasn’t, it was just not gossip about her—yet.

Alex wishes they had cleared the air sooner, despite the fact that she probably would have denied that she was gossiping back then. Either way, she really enjoyed doing the show with Laura today. And not for nothing, it would have been fun to be friends over the last few years. For once, Alex sounds like she means something she is saying—probably due to the fact that she is taking inventory of her life and she has quite literally no one around her. Laura admits she said shit about Alex too, and Alex seems both amused and kind of touched. I feel like this half admission is letting Alex off the hook a bit easy, but I absolutely believe that the subject of Laura being in the closet would have been HOT gossip among The Community (of Journalists), I just wish the show had committed a bit more to one or the other? Also, am I high or does Jen have better chemistry with Julianna than Reese does?

Girlfriends in News, Reunited!

Who else would Bradley celebrate her interview victory with but Laura? They’re in Bradley’s hotel room, I guess its just like…fine that they got outed? I mean, the Mitch story is big enough to knock their shit outta the press, and Laura isn’t co-hosting anymore, so I guess it’s all just gravy? Laura is wearing a negligee type thing and I want her to (redacted). The point is, Laura does have a heart condition, one that means she will be staying at her Montana ranch for a month or two during this whole COVID thing. Would Bradley come stay with her? I am actually hyperventilating thinking about a third season set partially at some green screened ranch with Laura in a cowboy boot. But wait, Bradley is on TV five days a week, how would that even work??? “Give it up. For me. I don’t like it when my woman works.” Laura deadpans. Bradley asks if she’s serious, and Laura starts laughing. She has a studio on the ranch, because of corse she does. No, not about work! Bradley says, self consciously. “Am I your woman?”

Yes? If she wants to be? They smile at each other, before leaning in for their second on screen kiss. They have more chemistry here, but the first kiss was hotter? Hotter is a very generous reading, by the way, because nothing is like, really hot on this show, aside from the streaks of white blond in Jen’s hair and Juliana’s many gay outfits. Their make out is interrupted by a knock on the door, and it’s the bell hop, coming to drop off a mysterious envelope FILLED with cash. BUM BUM BUM!! Who is paying Bradley off??? And for….what??

As ever, I will be here to update you and guide you through any and all gay moments that happen this season! And if you like, you can read my old school, Television Without Pity style recaps via my (free) newsletter, Chaos, It’s The New Cocaine where I am bravely recapping every episode in painstaking detail, yes, even the straight stuff.

“Twenties” Episode 205 Recap: Almost Doesn’t Count

Welcome back to your Twenties recap, episode 205 — otherwise known as the closet is a messy place to be and Siri play Brandy’s “Almost Doesn’t Count.” In our last episode, Hattie and Ida had a date night that quickly pivoted into a very honest talk about privilege, the pressures of being first, and looking for accountability between ourselves in Black queer relationships. Which will also be a continuing theme this week! But first…

My Narrator Voice: Excuse any typos or weirdness you see in today’s recap, I got my vax booster this morning and I’m hydrating, but this fever is coming with a quickness. Still, I must push on because when they wrote We Shall Overcome they were talking about sitting in sweatpants at your kitchen table writing television recaps. It’s in the second verse.

The powers that be at Twenties decided I haven’t blushed enough yet this season, so they went ahead and put Jonica Gibbs in a pair of oversized round glasses and a Fannie Lou Hamer sweatshirt for her second writers’ group meeting. If you’ll remember, in her first outing Hattie — it simply must be said — fucked up. She often fucks up, so that’s not new. But she’s trying to get her life together, and she has Idina to hold her to that, which very much is.

Hattie gets… umm overzealous in her critiques of others’ work, and I’m 100% sure that every single person in that group wishes Idina would just get over her crush already so they could drop this girl. Speaking of which, this sets us up for my favorite meta commentary of the week:

Hattie, completely oblivious: Idina, my girl, your script was so relatable. Like, I could really see myself in Robbie. I mean she was hilarious, a bit of a hot mess, but I liked her! The only thing I didn’t understand was why Isabelle was so into her, though. Like, Izzy had a great life! She’s got the fly store. She’s got the cool whip. She’s obviously a great cook. Why is she following behind this dusty-ass girl?

WHY INDEED HATTIE!?!?!?

Hattie wraps up with “I guess I’m just not here for the unrequited lesbian love story right now.” Is Hattie setting up a realization about the role Ida’s playing in her life right now and why it might be time for them to “move on and go their separate ways”? Of course.

But do I want to save Idina from her own unrequited love story with Hattie? I mean, I want to wrap Indina up in a blanket and couch snuggles because have you seen her? But yeah, that too.

After the writers’ group, Idina and Hattie do that thing where they clean up the apartment together and Idina holds every glance for three seconds too long and sets her voice all soft when she says things like “it’s been really nice having you” and Hattie ignores it as if these things aren’t happening.

Idina nervously plays with the dish towel in her hand as she wonders outloud if Hattie would like to go to a movi— but before she can get out the rest of the sentence, Hattie runs up out of there due to an emergency group text from Marie.

The emergency, of course, is that Chuck is bi. Nia doesn’t take the news well (or rather, she takes the news with the same kind of vague horror, confusion, and self-importance that a lot of straight women on television react with when confronted with a man being bisexual). Hattie essentially shrugs. She always knew that Chuck was:

But she didn’t think that was her place to say.

Marie goes on to work where she meets with the big swol athlete looking man that y’all have informed me is Iman Shumpert. He wants to try some new things with his feature project, but it’s hard to focus because Marie looks like all she wants to do is climb him like a tree.

Meanwhile, Hattie and Ida are having an actual daytime date (!!) out in public (!!) at Idina’s coffee shop and I was so proud of Ida for showing some of the openness she promised Hattie in the last episode, but before I could even clasp my hands together and say awwwwww, a work colleague of Ida’s walks by and in that instant — everything changes.

Mid-laugh, Ida steels her face. In the smallest, almost indecipherable detail, she moves her legs away from Hattie’s underneath the table. Glass shattered.

The colleague leaves and Idina, working her shift, comes up to the table. On paper she’s asking if Hattie and Ida would like anything else but she’s really checking in on Hattie, having just witnessed an ice cold murder.

Hattie asks Idina for the check. Ida asks what did Hattie expect, that she’d introduce her as her girlfriend?

Hattie gets up from the table, “You could have at least introduced me as your friend. I would’ve taken that.”

That night Hattie’s back at Idina’s, smoking away her heartbreak and watching what looks to be one of the films from the 1970s L.A. Film Rebellion movement? But I might have to fact check that one. (It’s rare Twenties throws a deep cut that I can’t place, kudos.) Hattie wants to complain about Ida keeping her a secret but Idina’s fed up — why didn’t Hattie call one of her straight friends and cry on their shoulder?

Of course we know why, first of all — Hattie has never told Marie about Ida (iiiiinteresting) and most importantly, straight friends never really get it, right? Don’t get me wrong, they try. Sometimes our straight friends, they even succeed! But there’s that thing, that thin filter you have to communicate through first. It’s never a gulf, not exactly, but it’s also not the same. In particular, Hattie, Nia, and Marie have a long habit of keeping things from each other, which has always been strange, and finally it seems the show is ready to address it.

Idina can’t be Hattie’s token “gay friend.” And she cannot be the person Hattie cries to about Ida. She doesn’t say it (maybe our straight friends aren’t the only ones we keep secrets from!) but we all know. It’s still too raw. Last season was still too soon.

And why yes, that is Idina holding her head in her hands and gazing at Hattie with a lovesick Disney Prince smile on her face as Hattie walks out the door. This is not going away.

Hattie leaves Idina’s for Ida (of course) and Ida wants to apologize for earlier by… decorating her backyard as a date night???

— record scratch —

Y’all know I love me some Ida B. I’m always ten toes down on Team Mean Femme. I think Twenties is bringing up a really important, fairly nuanced, conversation about generation gaps and what it means to “come out” or “be in the closet” and who’s closet is it anyway? I wrote a little about this over the summer with Queen Latifah — but it’s also true here, I will never know what it means to be a 50-year-old (40something in Ida’s case) Black woman who came into her sexuality during a world that, even in the matter of 10 or 15 years, is vastly different from my own.

Black communities are not backwards, homophobic, or divorced from queerness in the ways a lot of media likes to depict us. And we know this! But that doesn’t mean that for a woman Ida’s age, there isn’t baggage. Hell, I’m 35 and for a woman my age there’s baggage. I’m positive that even if you’re 25, to a 15-year-old, you might be hung up on some shit too. That’s how this works, that’s how growth happens. Each next group barreling through doors that the ones ahead of us didn’t think was even possible.

But Ida is keeping Hattie as her secret. And an extravagant date night in her own backyard, no matter her romantic intentions, only further underscores the point.

Lemme get off my soap box!

Ida looks sexy as hell and soft in a hoodie with her hair down. I love that after Season One of iconically severe dresses and sky high heels, we get to see this vulnerability in her. That’s been true all season, but somehow hits harder right now, when we know she’s trying so fucking hard to make this messy situation right.

Hattie agrees to stay and watch Mahogany because no Black gay person in the history of never has ever said No to Diana Ross. At first Hattie says no kisses, no touches, but we’re talking about one of the most romantic movies ever made, so sure a little pinky touching is ok.

The movie ends and she packs up to go. Ida pouts. She didn’t really expect Hattie to keep her word. But it doesn’t feel good anymore. It doesn’t feel right.

This is the third almost break up we’ve seen for them this year (the first by my count is when Ida encouraged Hattie to become a better writer and Hattie acted like she was in the 90s R&B group sensation Immature, the second being last week’s dinner date when Ida promised to try harder about pushing her own boundaries) — and it’s the one that sticks. It’s time.

To be clear, I don’t think Ida is even in the wrong! Not necessarily! Closets — even big expensive ones that cost more than my year’s salary — are complicated. The plain truth is that Ida isn’t in a place to provide Hattie with what she needs.

But Hattie? She’s in a place to mend at least one of the distant relationships in her life. She calls Marie to meet up at their favorite diner. She still doesn’t tell her about Ida, but they share milkshakes and sing CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” until they’re doubled over the table.

Hey, it’s a start?

---

Post-Credit Notes:

+ As a part of her apology, Ida got Hattie a gold plated vape, which is something I didn’t know existed (no seriously, how rich is she??)

+ Marie and Chuck laughed together and touched shoulders as they did dishes and talked about Marie’s next career moves. I swear my girl ain’t never been happier. Do you see what loving your partner for who they are can do for you?

+ There was no Nia in this recap because I’m pretending that her social media influencer storyline/whatever is going on with Ben — ha! finally learned this dude’s name! — isn’t happening. I already told y’all about my short attention span for straights!

+ Amount of times I thought to myself that Hattie would be a mistake I’d gladly make: 3 (those glasses, that shot of her blowing smoke on the couch with Idina, and the entire last 10 minutes of the episode. Yes the episode is only 22 minutes long. Yes that’s half the time. Stop asking questions damn.)

+ Amount of times I thought to myself that Ida would be a mistake I’d gladly make: 0 (two weeks in a row!!! Much like Lauryn Hill, it’s killing me softly.)

+ Quote of the episode: “Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with.” — THEE Billy Dee Williams, Mahogany

“Legends of Tomorrow” Episode 705: A Wrinkle in Time

Hidey ho and welcome to this recap of Legends of Tomorrow, season 7 episode 5, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist” aka the one where Ava disappeared for a brief but terrifying time.

As we begin this episode, we’re still in the 1920s, but the Legends have finally made their way to New York City. Well, the bullet Blonde Blonde Gang anyway. Gary lets Avalance and Behrad out of the mansion and they immediately beeline for some New York pizza.

But I guess being Out of Time and off the Waverider for so long, they simply…forgot that they couldn’t speak freely. Or maybe they didn’t know that it’s a New Yorker’s job to eavesdrop on any conversations they can, but either way, a news vendor overhears them talking about time travel and other nonsense and then recognizes the women who were talking as the Bullet Blondes.

The man decides to shoot them for some reason, but luckily Sara jumps in front of her friends and takes the shot, and it smarts but she heals up. Unfortunately, everyone sees it happen and while in modern day New York it wouldn’t have even warranted a tweet, in the 20s it’s a little riskier so they run back to the mansion.

Inside the mansion, Zari is tinkering with Hoover, who is convinced he’s the real Hoover, even after Zari showed him his robot brains. Nate brings the tinkerer a treat, for which she is very grateful.

When the Bullet Blondes return, Nate and Gary start whispering about Zari, which she hates a lot.

Other things that are hated in this room include but are not limited to, Ava hating that Sara got shot. She knows Sara is fine but it sucked to watch and she can’t help but kiss the spot her dress burned away where a booboo would be if Sara didn’t have super-healing.

They found the address to Edison’s Lab, so that will be their next stop, but Sara wants Ava to stay behind. She’s the only bulletproof one between the two of them, which Ava can’t really argue against. So she begs her babe to not mess the timeline up too badly and sends her on her way.

Sara and Behrad head to the university to find Dr. Davies, who they think looks like Rory with hair, or maybe a young Stein, which is a hilarious joke since actually he’s played by Matt Ryan aka Constantine.

Sara does a sneaky maneuver that would make Parker from Leverage proud and gets the research she needs: the schematics for the first ever time machine.

Meanwhile, the Spatula Squad is running out of time; they have until 7pm tomorrow to get to New York or their friends are going to explode. So Astra decides to hitch a ride.

Spooner follows suit and Gideon mimics them, and it’s very cute. And what’s cuter is, when a car whizzes past them, and Spooner starts yelling to her god in the sky, Gideon looks up and waves to whoever Spooner is talking to. It’s just so precious.

Seeing how frustrated Astra is, she decides to turn their luck around by putting a luck spell on a rock. Spooner is surprised she can do this but Astra hilariously answers, “I’m a witch.” She gives Spooner the luck rock and they try hitchhiking again. This time, a man stops and gives them a ride.

After examining the stolen plans, Behrad and Zari say they can use them to make the time machine…but it will take them five years. Ava basically says my dad’s favorite phrase: the impossible just takes a little longer. But Sara is going to turn into an actual bank robber if she has to stay in the 20s a minute longer. Since they have no other options for now, Sara goes back to sneak the plans back into Dr. Davies’ apartment, and notices that he’s already done most of the work for them.

So now all they need is a single part. Behrad thinks he knows where they can find that part, but Ava is still very concerned about footprints.

Sara promises that whatever they do now, if it gets them to the future, they can time travel back and fix it. They can clean up their own messes! It’ll be fine! It’ll be fiiine.

After they leave, Hoover keeps rattling off offensive things while Ava paces around the mansion, stressed about her girl and her favorite worst assistant.

She tries to get the Hoover bot to tell him who sent him but he won’t, so flannel Zari tinkers with his programming a little to see if she can get him to stop sucking, and finds his to-do list.

It involves some regular Hoover activities but at the tip top of the list is one directive to rule them all: Eliminate the Legends. And they realize that this means whoever is trying to kill them is trying to protect the timeline; which doesn’t make sense to them because THEY protect the timeline.

Out in New York, Sara sends Gary to find the missing piece while she distracts the scientist. Gary finds the piece but as he goes to take it out of the lab, he runs into Edison himself. And like an idiot, when Edison asks what project he’s signing it out for, Gary just…tells him! That it’s for time travel! I swear we can’t take this kid anywhere.

Meanwhile back in his office, with Sara trying to keep him there with fake tasks, Dr. Davies starts to have a panic attack. To make matters worse, Edison barges in to confiscate his work and send him to Bellevue. Much to Sara’s surprise and chagrin.

When the ride they hitched breaks down, Spooner tries to use the luck rock again and a race car driver pulls up. They sweet talk him into taking them to New York, which is all fine and good until they get pulled over in New Jersey. Desperate to get to their friends, Astra manages to convince the cop that it would be the best decision to let the famous racecar driver go, and since the copper wants to see a pape with his face beamin’, he agrees.

Back in the mansion, Nate is being weird, so Zari asks if he and Gary hooked up, which she wouldn’t be mad about, just confused since he seemed like a monogamous kind of guy. But the truth is, he just wants to DTR. He’d been letting their weird totem situation keep him from asking, but he does want to take things to the next level. He wants them to live together. And he thinks the mansion is the perfect place to do that.

Zari says yes and Nate goes to get her a celebratory bear claw, but when he leaves the Hoover bot says he knows Zari is lying about something. She tells him to shut up and storms off.

“Batwoman” Episode 305 Recap: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Another week, another jam-packed episode of Batwoman! We have a lot to cover so let’s jump right in, shall we?

There’s no “previously on” this week, but that’s okay, because it means we’re treated to the absolute joy of watching new roomies Alice and Sophie engage in the age-old roomie tradition of movie night. (Have we…seen Sophie’s place before? If we have, I surely don’t remember, but that exposed brick is to die for!) The two are in normie clothes watching a horror movie (incredible set-up for the rest of the episode if I do say so myself), and Alice is adorably terrified. They hear a noise on the balcony, grab empty bottles to attack the intruder, and quip about how Alice drank Sophie’s good wine that I assume she was saving for an eventual Wildmoore date night.

Speaking of Wildmoore, the intruder is none other than Ryan, who seemingly got the memo about everyone in the CWDCTVLGBTQ universe traveling via balcony. She’s there to pick up Alice to investigate a lead from Montoya. I swear, this pairing of Alice and Sophie is already giving what it needs to give, and I really hope we get more of these two because Rachel and Meagan’s comedic chemistry is GOLD.

Alice and Ryan arrive at a crime scene where a man is wearing a pink feather boa and strung up by what Montoya believes to be Catwoman’s whip. Ryan thinks it’s fake because there’s no way a whip infused with Wayne tech could be destroyed by a mere pocket knife. Alice has no problem letting Montoya think it’s real because the faster they finish this assignment, the faster they can get on with their lives. Ryan intends to do just that though, because she entrusts the handling of the vic to Mary since homegirl has dinner plans with her mother!

At Wayne Enterprises, Ryan is on the phone attempting to calm investors when Mary comes in waving the dinner invitation from Jada around. As she runs down all the reasons this dinner would be a bad idea, including Jada possibly uncovering Ryan’s secret identity, she gets incredibly thirsty and chugs all the water she can find. Much like, I don’t know, one would water a plant???? I noticed that Mary’s wardrobe and makeup were both getting greener, but what I didn’t catch on first or second watch was that her fun buns were an homage to Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy! This show just gives and gives and gives. Despite Mary’s worries, Ryan informs her that she’s going to the dinner and plans to bug Jada’s office to get some dirt on her mother.

Back at Sophie’s loft, Alice is giving Sophie shit about being Ryan’s date to dinner tonight as Sophie frantically gets ready as if it is, in fact, a date. Ms. Moore is rocking a FLY orange dress, a pushup bra, and the nerves of someone presented with the very real possibility that the feelings they’ve been trying to push down just might find their way to the surface. And another thing, good luck trying to convince me that Sophie didn’t get all those plants as a way to have something other than Batdrama to talk to Ryan about. Who among us hasn’t developed a deep interest in our crush’s favorite hobbies?! Anyway, Alice is living her best life right now; her meds are working and she’s hallucination free, so the last thing she wants is to be dragged away from her “vacation”, but dragged away she becomes, because Montoya calls her in to the office.

Ryan and Sophie arrive at Jet Manor and y’all, the way I gasped upon seeing these two beautiful Black women dressed to the nines, standing next to each other with a height difference that continues to attack me every week?!?! We deserve this. We truly do. Ryan is incredibly uncomfortable in the house with the butler and the chandelier and the winding staircase, and Sophie assures her that it’s just a power play to get in Ryan’s head. Both of these women are strong in their own right, and they both have these moments of vulnerability with the other. Recently, it’s been Ryan letting Sophie see through the cracks of her hero exterior where self-doubt and insecurity lie in wait. And every single time, Sophie is right there to reassure Ryan that she is enough, just the way she is. Meagan and Javicia are so good at subtly amplifying those small moments in ways that make this burgeoning relationship feel real and earned.

Lady Jet struts down the stairs and is a bit taken aback by the presence of an uninvited guest. Before Ryan can introduce Sophie, Soph introduces herself AS RYAN’S GIRLFRIEND! THIS IS NOT A DRILL, FOLKS! WE HAVE FAKE DATING! I REPEAT, WE HAVE ONE OF THE BEST FANFIC TROPES IN THE SHOW CANON! Fake dating leads to the discovery of real feelings leads to confessions of love leads to happiness and happy people just don’t kill their husbands! Huh, that one got away from me there, sorry y’all.

As if the show could sense I was becoming unhinged, they bring us back back to earth with a jarring scene of the chef creepily getting dinner ready by chopping the head off a pig and laughing maniacally. Casual.

Meanwhile, Sophie and Ryan are regaling Jada with the tale of how they got together, and they’re scarily on the same page. It was obviously a Taco Tuesday (GAY), and it involved Sophie saving Ryan from choking on chips, or something.

Jada, playing the role of caring mother, remarks on how beautiful their story is, and Ryan agrees that it’s so special when you find that person, and she knows that she can always count on Sophie to be there for her. You know, like if Ryan was dying and Sophie wrapped her arms around her and reassured her everything would be okay. Hypothetically, of course. Sophie excuses herself to find the bathroom and I assume releases the breath she’s been holding since Ryan looked her in those gorgeous brown eyes.

Ryan’s done playing nice with Jada and wants to know exactly why they’re having this dinner. Jada doesn’t pull any punches and warns Ryan to shut down whatever she has going on with Marquis or she and everyone she cares about will suffer. And speaking of Marquis, he suddenly shows up to the house with a guest of his own, and he’s furious with Ryan for not telling him about the dinner.

Meanwhile, Sophie’s snooping upstairs to find Jada’s study and plant the bug. She has Luke on comms and gets everything set up, before taking an extra minute to examine a photo of Jada and Marquis that’s on her desk. She discovers the hidden part of the picture showing Jada’s ex-husband, and before she can get Luke his photo to run through facial rec, the comms feed goes offline. Sophie rushes out, but not before Jada catches her in what is very clearly not the bathroom.

At City Hall, Alice and Montoya talk through the situation with Catwoman’s fake whip and, well, Montoya talks about it. Alice wants to dig into Batman and Catwoman’s sex life, including the most perfect burn about not thinking heroes did things like that (IYKYK). Montoya’s frustrated about the fake whip so she cracks a beer and puts Alice to work sorting through files to find the culprit. No one seems to fit the bill (though there are some nice Easter eggs, like Talia al Ghul), until Alice notices a file much larger than the rest; a file belonging to one, Poison Ivy. She calls out Montoya on their actual mission being to find the viny vixen.

Back at the most awkward dinner to ever dinner, Miss Zoey takes it upon her (white) self to give everyone at the table a lesson on modern family dynamics, per her dissertation, because of course she does. It’s the caucasity for me, your Honor. She excuses herself, and Jada and her kids get into it about trust and the fact that Sophie was snooping around upstairs. Ryan takes this moment to thank Jada for giving her up because even though she wasn’t rich, she traded in that silver spoon for a home and love and a real mother. And whew, that one looked like it might have actually punctured Jada’s ice cold exterior.

Meanwhile, Zoey’s in the bathroom and can’t feel or move her arms. Suddenly, a man in a pig mask appears behind her and in a twist from classic horror tropes, random white Zoey is the first to die. I love that these writers are like, enemies to lovers? Yes; fake dating to real dating? Yes; a Black person dies first in the horror episode? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

“Supergirl” Series Finale Recap: I Hope You Dance

Hey, you. Welcome to this mega Supergirl series finale recap, which will cover season 6, episodes 19 and 20, “The Last Gauntlet,” and, appropriately, “Kara.” And while this will be my last ever Supergirl recap, I promise it’s not the last time this show will appear in my writing. After six years, these characters have woven their ways into my life in an inextricable way.

But we’re not done yet. So let’s pick up where we left off, with everyone still in their bachelorette party finest, standing in the Tower, the dead body of a reporter and the devastating lack of Esme making the air tense. Before they can decide what to do next, Lex’s voice cuts through the thick air and Alex immediately starts threatening his life if anything happens to her daughter.

But it’s just a recording, and Lex promises Esme won’t be harmed if the Superfriends fork over the five totems they have PLUS find the Destiny Totem for him. They’ll make the exchange on a bridge that is a dead zone for magic and tech, a safe space for the swap. Alex is desperate, ready to burn the world down, but Kara promises Alex and Kelly that she’ll fix this.

Lena sets off to find a spell that will help her track Lex, Nia tries to dream the location of the Destiny Totem. Alex doesn’t care if they use the decoy totem or just give them the real totems, whatever will get Esme back, but Kara thinks they can use the totems to power her up instead.

All Alex needs to do is trust her.

In the villain lair, Nyxly is surprisingly sweet with Esme, her heart breaking a bit when she realizes the little girl is resolved to her fate because even at such a young age, she’s no stranger to bad things happening to her. Nyxly takes her hand and says the totem’s magic word, pretending like it’s a game meant to cheer Esme up, but all that happens is Esme’s totem tattoo loses a few petals.

Lex is ready to just cut the totem out of her but Nyxly won’t let the little princess be hurt, especially not at the hands of some man. And for now it seems Nyxly not wanting Lex to hurt Esme is enough for him to hold back.

Across town, a Shadow woman slips into the Tower but gets caught by Lena. Andrea sees the reporter’s body lying on the ground and thinks Lena was wrong about her; maybe she IS a monster. She blames herself for stealing his byline, but Lena is quick to reassure her that this is Lex’s fault.

Andrea can’t fix this, but Lena says it’s not too late to be a better person. Lena has made missteps, and in another timeline has done worse things than this, so she knows better than anyone that redemption and forgiveness is possible. Andrea can still make amends. She has to actively choose to be better, to acknowledge and fight back the darkness, not pretend it doesn’t exist. Keep doing the next right thing.

As predicted, Kara feels like this is all her fault for taking a night off. She says it’s her job to keep her family safe and even though she’s tired and stressed she’ll do whatever it takes to make this right. She’ll use the AllStone herself if she has to. She just has to fix this.

In the villain’s lair, Lex is playing with himself (chess, to be specific) when the one and only Lillian Luthor strolls in. She schools him on chess and asks him what the deal is with all this murder and kidnapping nonsense, and when he says he’s in love she rightly laughs in his face. But when she finds out he’s in love with an alien, her face grows cold and angry. After all he’s done in the name of human supremacy, after all THEY’VE done, now he’s in love with an imp?

Lillian wants him to plead insanity and dump Nyxly so that the Luthors can be a perfect evil human family again, but Lex knows Lena isn’t coming back, and he’s not going anywhere without Nyxly. So Lillian storms off.

Back in her room, Esme is drawing a picture of her moms, and is dubious when Nyxly says she’ll see them again. Nyxly tells a story about her dad ruining her colored pencils, and says that just because scary things happen doesn’t mean scary things are always going to happen. We are not the bad things that happen to us. Esme looking somewhat calm now, Nyxly tries the password again, but more petals fall from the totem tattoo.

At the Tower, Kelly follows the sound of crashing to find her fiancée crying in the weapon’s room. She’s so worried about Esme, and she feels so… powerless. It’s something Alex has struggled with in the past, being the only non-powered human on the team, and she calls it her kryptonite. But the thing is, she’s not alone anymore.

Kelly is also just a human with training and tools, doing her best. And she is there to pull Alex out of her emotional quicksand made of what-ifs and worst case scenarios. Kelly reminds Alex that their little family has so much love they literally attracted an ancient elemental energy, and that’s how Kelly knows that they’ll be together again. And that they’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Brainy makes Nia a bracer for her Dream Totem, but she’s afraid that she’ll dream that something terrible will happen to Esme, like when she dreamed about Brainy having to go away. But Brainy says no matter what she sees, they’ll face it together… which gives Nia an idea. She decides to take him into the dream world the way she took her sister, so they can quite literally face it together.

When they go back to the team, they tell them they know Esme’s safe but not where she is, but they do know where the Destiny Totem is. Supergirl flies off to Prague to a statue of the Fates and plucks the thread of life, says the password, and sees a possible future. As she’s considering that future, and how much the statue of Clotho looks like Sara Lance’s friend Charlie, Alex shows up and takes the totem from her. Whatever it takes to get her daughter back.

And Kara is the fastest person on Earth, and the strongest. And as Alex just mentioned, she’s technically powerless, but for her magic glove. Kara could just take it back. But she doesn’t. She tries to talk her sister into giving it back, telling her of the future she saw. The wars, the destruction. But Alex is willing to risk everything for Esme.

Alex puts the final nail in Kara’s plan’s coffin when she points out that if Kara fails, she’d never be able to forgive her. And Kara would be willing to risk just about anything to stop Lex and Nyxly, but she won’t risk her relationship with her sister. Especially since it’s not like Kara’s 100% sure HER plan will work.

So Kara doesn’t move to stop Alex as she portals back to National City, totem in hand.

Meanwhile Nyxly, arms full of stuffies for Esme, finds herself face to face with Lillian, sitting like some kind of Lena Luthor on the couch.

Lillian doesn’t think Lex can love anyone but himself, and she’s not shy about her xenophobia. She tells Nyxly that Lex is just using her, a pawn in his game, and says so with enough conviction that Nyxly starts to doubt her boytoy’s intentions.

Kara goes back to the Superfriends to tell them that Alex took the totem, and how she had to let her go. Kara looks tired in an existential way, and it seems to be breaking Lena’s heart a little.

Kara knows she can’t face the AllStone on her own, but she’s not on her own. So she wants to use a combination of science and magic to stop them. Brainy has an idea that would supercharge Supergirl, making her able to go higher, further, faster, baby. Kara asks why this was never presented to her as an option before, and Brainy says that between the satellites they’d have to hijack and the energy they’d take from the sun, it would take things six months to get back to normal.

Lena is horrified at this; she knows what kind of devastation this could bring to the Earth. Kara would be playing god, and at a great cost.

Kara knows it’s not the best option but it might be their only option. She has to take the big swing. She has to fix this.

And she’ll fix the sun problem later. Not wanting to be part of this, Lena goes to the bridge to help Alex and Kelly, and Nia joins her.

Once they’re gone, Brainy starts setting up the satellite, and tells Kara she’ll need to charge for four minutes to reach peak power, and that they’ll likely meet resistance from the governing bodies.

With 21 minutes to go until the agreed meeting time, Esme’s tattoo is down to its last petal. Lex mutters his plans to cut it off her himself out loud, which Mitch overhears and runs to get Nyxly, who stops Lex from using her crystal ball on the little girl. So now Mxy is gone, Nyxly feels betrayed, and Esme is scared. Nyxly puts her body between Lex and Esme, and with this surge of love for the little girl, the totem pops out of Esme and into Nyxly’s hand.

Now that they have it, Nyxly is going to bring Esme back to her mommies and she’s so, so done with Lex. All he is to her now is another power-hungry man who tried to take advantage of her.

When Guardian and Sentinel get to the bridge, they’re pleased to see Dreamer and the Wicked Hot Witch of the East join them as backup.

Nyxly brings Esme to the bridge, and Esme lets out a joyful squeal when she realizes her moms really came for her. Everyone starts walking toward each other on the bridge when a storm starts to crackle.

Because across town, Supergirl has begun to charge.

When it’s time to make the exchange, Alex puts the box of totems down and Esme runs into Kelly’s arms. As soon as all the totems are near each other, they whirl together to form the AllStone, but before Nyxly can grab it, Lex and Lillian show up to explode the bridge.

High above National City, Supergirl is charging and the world is going dark, causing the people to start to panic.

As the timer ticks down and it’s almost time for the final surge, Kara sees the fear in the eyes of the people she was trying to protect and realizes that Lena was right; this isn’t the way. This is exactly what she has stopped people from doing for years, seizing power for themselves, no matter the cost. This isn’t right. So Kara stops the process and the sun gets back to normal.

Kara drops down into the street among the people, her heart breaking a little as she realizes they’re cowering away from her. She apologizes and says she realizes now what she was about to do was wrong. But that she’ll fix it.

So Kara flies to the bridge to fight by her family’s side. And fight they do. Esme hides while the Superfriends, Nyxly, and Lex & Co. all play a deadly game of keepaway with the AllStone.

Eventually the stone rolls toward Esme’s hiding spot and she picks it up, seeing it causing all this grief, and shouts, “Leave my family alone,” before punting it to the ground, shattering it.

It splits into three, and Supergirl, Nyxy, and Lex all grap a piece. They start to use the AllStones powers against each other, and at firstUPShe looks to Lena for help, so she starts whipping out some magic, causing a storm to swirl around them.

Lillian is surprised to see Lena doing such strong magic, but then turns to her other child in time to see Nyxly about to zap him with some AllStone energy. Using up her last shred of maternal instinct, Lillian leaps in front of Lex, falling to the ground as Lex and Nyxly continue to fight, turning into lizard people for some reason.

Lena, the only good Luthor to ever Luthor, runs to Lillian’s side and holds her, because despite their differences and despite what some would even call abuse, this is still the woman who raised her.

As Nyxly and Lex continue their titan tirade across National City, the Superfriends regroup at the Tower, watching the news report that they’re sucking energy, power, and all the totem’s elements like humanity and hope from the world.

Kara still has her piece of the AllStone but she doesn’t want to use it to fight; she doesn’t want to be like them. She needs to find another way to fix this.

Kara dons her Supergirl suit and flies up over National City to clear her head. (And this is neither here nor there, but in case you were wondering, this is the first place I teared up during this two-hour finale event. I wish I knew why! Even writing about it without watching it is making me emotional. Supergirl flying over National City for one of the last times. Her theme swelling softly in the background. I don’t know! It’s all downhill from here re: my ability to hold in the waterworks.)

Supergirl hovers there in the sky and listens to the people crying, calling out; she hears their fears and their pain.

But then she hears something different stand out against the murmur of agony. She hears Orlando giving a hope speech of his own. The people he’s talking to start out being so sucked dry of everything they had that they were literally black and white, but he puts the color back in them. He reminds them that they have power within them that no one can ever take away, that they still have the ability to fight. And a hope speech is exactly what Kara needed too, and she knows exactly what to do.

As we transition into the final episode, Lena is at Lillian’s bedside, mourning her dying step-mother and the fact that humanity itself is fading.

Before she goes, Lillian has something she needs to tell Lena. She’s known her whole life that her mother was a witch, and that Lena was too. She just gaslit her into thinking she was powerless. She pushed her to science, turned her into a Luthor, tried to snuff out her light. But here Lena is all these years later, a Luthor in name only, having found her own way, and her own power. Lillian says that Lena is free now, and that she has to really own that power. Forget about Lex, and Lillian, and everything they tried to make her. She needs to live the life she chooses.

Supergirl goes back to the Tower and realizes she’s been going about this all wrong. Supergirl doesn’t need to fix this. Kara doesn’t need to fix this. Everyone needs to fix this. The Superfriends don’t have to save everyone, they have to empower the people to save themselves. So they come up with a plan: Brainy is going to use a Legion crown to project a Supergirl hope speech into everyone’s mind. The problem is, he can make everyone hear it, but he can’t make them get it.

Lena comes in and tells them Lillian is gone but she barely liked that woman anyway and at least she got to say goodbye. Still, Kara hugs her because it sucks to lose even a mostly shitty family member.

Lena’s ready to distract herself with work though, and has an idea of how to help open people’s hearts to Supergirl’s message. While J’onn, Guardian, Sentinel, and Dreamer go try to contain Nyxly and Lex best they can, Kara, Lena, and Brainy use their powers combined to inspire the world.

Supergirl gives one last hope speech. Quite literally a hope speech to end all hope speeches. She tells everyone that they have to work together, that they have to believe in themselves and lift each other up to stop this. They can defeat this darkness, but only if they all come together.

And little by little, everyone starts to regain their color, and the people aren’t just taking their power back metaphorically, they’re literally taking it back from the AllStone.

The rest of the Superfriends arrive at the final boss battle, and Nyxly and Lex call back some of their big hitters, including but not limited to the Nightmare Monster and a shadow version of Red Daughter.

But with hope and her family by her side, Kara Zor-El is not afraid.

And so they fight. They each lean into their strengths, they work together, and just when it seems like the tide is turning against them, reinforcements appear. First the Legion reinforcements from the future, then James in his old Guardian suit. At one point, Lena finds herself face to face with her brother…

But Andrea in her Shadow form appears right on time to save her.

Hell, even Mitch gets tired of being bossed around and helps the Superfriends.

Nyxly wants to really get into Dreamer’s head and starts to attack her using Nia’s mom’s dream owls, but as if to reject the idea of using a good mom’s energy as a weapon, Best TV Mom Ever Eliza Danvers appears.

(For those keeping track, this is when my tears started to trickle out a little. One by one, still few and far between.) Alex is happy to see her Mama and they make a joke about how she was a Kryptonian in the movies, because it’s the last episode and there are no rules.

Realizing how very outnumbered they are, Lex opens a portal to the Phantom Zone, but his foes won’t back down. He summons some Phantoms, but when the Phantoms fly out and assess the line of Superfriends Superfamily, now backed with the full support of National City, the Phantoms turn on Lex and Nyxly. Because, as it turns out, they were the ones with the most fear.

The Phantoms scoop up Nyxly and Lex and take them to the Phantom Zone, and Lena is amused that hubris did end up being Lex’s downfall after all.

And while I think this was an appropriate ending for Lex, I sort of wish they had found a way to put Nyxly in her crystal ball or something. She went through enough in the Phantom Zone by circumstances out of her control. But I suppose this was easier.

The battle done (they kinda won), they have a funeral for the reporter, and I have to assume also Lillian, two notable casualties in this war.

To thank them for ending the reign of terror, and perhaps realizing they almost made things worse instead of better, the government offers to let J’onn and Alex restart the DEO, but in their own way now. Not in the name of alien oppression, but just in specialized alien support services.

Alex isn’t so sure she wants to go down that road again.

But Kara thinks she should. Starting the DEO up again would give them the ability to teach and train and empower more people. This isn’t a make-a-big-swing-then-sit-back situation. They have to fight every day, they have to keep doing the work, and the more the merrier.

And as she explains the importance of keeping up the fight, of spreading the hope, we catch a glimpse into the future of the Superfriends. Alex and Kara do start up a brand new DEO. Lena starts a new Luthor foundation, and helps Andrea set up a journalism school. Dreamer and Kelly start a Dreamer center for LGBTQ+ outreach (and City Councilman Orlando is there for the grand opening.) It’s all very beautiful.

They can’t just swoop in and save the day as vigilantes or heroes; it’s not sustainable. But they can be civil servants, teachers, leaders. They can be friends, to each other, and to the citizens of National City.

The future folks go home, Mon-El stopping to tell Kara that she did good. Not just well, she did GOOD. And her speech made the history books; what she did here today will echo through time. She’s an inspiration.

Nia says goodbye to Brainy, he’s sad he can’t even stay for the wedding. He leaves her with two whole cheesy dream sayings, including that she’ll always be the girl of his dreams. And frankly that’s relatable.

And then we cut to three weeks later, the day before Alex and Kelly’s wedding. Kara’s apartment is full of flowers and she’s assessing her next task when the news reports about a kitten up a tree. She takes her glasses off and is ready to help when the reporter gets the breaking news that local business leaders got together; she doesn’t need to fix this.

Hulu’s Dopesick Puts a Lesbian Coal Miner at the Heart Of Its Opioid Crisis Miniseries, But Also The Wigs Are Really Bad

The first thing I need to say about Hulu’s limited series Dopesick is that the wigs are terrible. Unforgivable. As Bim Adewunmi noted in a Buzzfeed article about bad wigs for Black characters in 2018, “Bad wigs are the noxious fumes that crowd out everything else; they slowly fill the frame until that’s all you can focus on, that distinct lack of life-sustaining oxygen.”

Dopesick’s first grave wig-related error occurs mere minutes into the first episode when noted corrupt homosexual Kathe Sackler (Jamie Ray Newman) strides into the stately wing of an art museum owned by her rancorous family, and I initially assumed her character was in fact intended as a wig-wearer and wondered aloud if she was Orthodox, which a quick Google affirmed she was not. I was in fact supposed to look at a wig best suited for a lesbian character in an offensive SNL skit from the ’90s and think, “Ah yes, that is Kathe’s actual hair! Brilliant!”

Eventually, her wig was overshadowed by the sheer audacity of fellow soulless rich person Martin Willis (R. Keith Harris)’s bald cap / wig that summoned a child dressing up as their Dad on Halloween.

Meanwhile, Amber (Phillipa Soo)’s bisexual bob floated precariously on the verge of falling right off her head. In this screenshot you might assume she is doing some sexual role-playing, like “I’m a dancer at the Kit Kat Club and you’re a writer from America,” but I assure you, that thing is not situational, she wears it for eight straight episodes in every conceivable scenario.

And finally, Bridget Meyer (Rosario Dawson)’s wig line, as described by Autostraddle Editor-in-Chief Carmon Phillips, “looks like a Tyler Perry production took a trip to Party City.”

Thank you for your time I am now prepared to talk about the show itself.

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Dopesick, inspired by Beth Macy’s best-selling book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America contains six paired storylines, each confronting the opioid crisis from a different angle.

Firstly we have the Sacklers and their associates, most prominently OxyContin’s top mastermind Richard Sackler (Michael Stulhbarg) and then the young and money-hungry Purdue salespeople recruited to push their dangerous drug and accordant collections of lies to doctors in vulnerable parts of the country, encouraging prescribers to open their mind to treating even mild-to-moderate temporary pain with opioids despite the potential for addiction.

We have the government: Assistant U.S. Attorneys Randy Ramseyer (John Hoogenakker) and Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and their new boss John Brownlee (Jake McDorman), all based on real people who saw the crisis brewing in Virginia and took steps to stop it; and DEA Agent Bridget Meyer (Rosario Dawson), an amalgamation of several real-life personalities. Working in the Diversion department, Bridget is the tenacious public servant pushing against a corrupt and complacent agency refusing to address a growing crisis.

And finally, we have the citizens of one of those vulnerable areas, a small mining community in Virginia: beloved small-town doctor and widower Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton) and then one of his patients, Besty Mallum (Kaitlyn Dever), a miner prescribed Oxy following a work injury.

Betsy and Dr. Finnix are fictional characters and neither appears in Macy’s book, although they are likely inspired by her work chronicling the opioid-impacted citizens of Lee County, Virginia.

Betsy Mallum is a closeted lesbian when her story begins in the late ’90s, proud to be the only woman working the mines with her father and a team of coal-stained, black-lunged, hard-drinking men. She escapes her well-meaning and very religious parents for her secret girlfriend’s trailer, always sparkling with Christmas lights, where they take off their hoodies and flannels and dream of a life lived openly in Eureka Springs. Her girlfriend is ready to skip town, but Betsy’s scared to leave behind her work and her family.

Then, after a severe back injury suffered on the job, her prescription for Oxycontin (doled out by a still-skeptical Finnix, attempting to believe the lies he’s been sold by his own personal Purdue Pharma salesperson) quickly turns into a destructive addiction, and the next major accident in her mine is one she caused herself while too medicated to function. Her dependencies destroy her relationship and eventually her body, trading one secret shame for another, chemical one. Dever’s performance is raw and heartfelt and easily Dopesick’s most compelling portrait: much like Dever’s character in Unbelievable, Betsy is vulnerable in ways she can’t quite articulate herself, strong enough to have made it this far but only by an inch, teetering always on the edge of something dark and permanent. Her story ends up becoming a perhaps not unfamiliar one in which familial homophobia (A scene in which Betsy attempts to come out to her mother is particularly searing) eventually takes a backseat to what one must realistically note is a far greater threat to her well-being.

Addiction is a consistent issue in LGBTQ communities and for LGBTQ people isolated from community, and Dopesick handles that intersection well. It’s unclear at this point (only the first six episodes are currently available on Hulu) if Betsy will live through this. If she doesn’t, I don’t know where dying in a story about lethal drugs fits in to the Bury Your Gays conversation, but I’d be willing to forgive it.

Michael Keaton’s Finnix is humbled and compassionate, capturing how easily doors to despair can swing open and suck you in, how even the most care-focused professionals can find themselves completely undone. He’s also a rare source of support for Betsy when the story begins; understanding that self-acceptance and authenticity is a crucial element to a patient’s health, too.

Although OxyContin’s highly addictive nature is well-known at this point, Macy’s book and the series — as promised by its title — hammers home what many other opioid addiction documentaries and special episodes haven’t always done: users were and are not simply chasing highs, they were escaping the physically unbearable lows, the skin-crawling, sweaty, restless, anxious, nauseating, heart-pounding brutality of dopesickness itself, making relapse not only tempting but unfortunately logical. Dr. Finnix’s struggle becomes the vehicle for another story central to the book’s case: that drugs like Methadone and Suboxone — while often dismissed by rehab, professional associations and 12-step programs as just another addiction to the point that they are now “far more tightly regulated than the painkillers that have gotten people hooked in the first place” — can be many addicts’ only hope for a normal, productive life free of Oxycontin, Fentanyl or Heroin.

Placed side-by-side against scenes of the Sacklers doggedly pursuing higher profits and incentivizing salespeople to get richer and richer for every doctor they convinced to prescribe higher dosages in higher quantities — including actually encouraging their salespeople to target and encourage “pill mills” — the absolute sociopathy of the entire crisis is underlined, again and again. At that same level of trouble we find Ramseyer recovering from a medical procedure and coming face-to-face with doctors who’ve been so profoundly seduced by Purdue that they refuse to prescribe him anything BUT Oxycontin.

Unfortunately, rather than sticking to a traditional framework in which events unfold in order over a period of calendar time, Dopesick jumps from year to year and story to story, guiding us by a time-ticker that snaps back and forth from the nineties into the aughts. It’s a bewildering choice, sacrificing the profound narrative potential of a story remarkable in part because of how long it took for the government to take action against Purdue Pharma, how relentlessly salespeople and payrolled “experts” co-opted and invented medical terminology and passed off ideas as studies while the potential for this crisis was already plain. The story is a series of frustrating setbacks and unforgivable stalls — literally going backwards in time is a painful whiplash we simply don’t need.

Characters from different story clusters are always popping up in each other’s narratives, further complicating our ability to keep track of what the fuck is happening and when. Rather than witnessing a crisis building up over time, we just hop all over the space-time continuum like Marty McFly dressed up as his Dad in a bad wig.

I read Dopesick last week, have seen The Crime of the Century twice as well as The Pharmacist among other opioid crisis focused documentaries, have read maybe ten longform articles about Purdue, The Sacklers and the opioid crisis as well as all the AG’s full complaint in the recent Massachusetts lawsuit — and I still can’t keep track of these time jumps or understand the choice to employ them.

This haphazard structure made the plainly unnecessary elements of the story moreso, such as Meyer’s relationship and eventual divorce from her husband, although he does fill a hole in the heart of reluctant SVU fans who dearly miss Raul Esparza. It’s curious why we spend so much time there instead of, for example, introducing another important element of Macy’s book: how race impacted not only patient experience, but the press and government response to the epidemic, and how little progress was made against Purdue until the drugs started popping up in wealthy white suburbs.

There’s also nuance missing around Oxycontin’s usefulness for many pain patients whose lives have been made possible through closely monitored prescriptions written by careful, informed doctors. The characters who suggest Oxycontin is useful for anything besides end-of-life pain for hospice patients seem to always be the bad guys in Dopesick, which isn’t always the case.

Ultimately, Dopesick creates a kind of collage for the viewer — the pieces are all there and resolutely compelling, they just aren’t put together properly. In its best moments Dopesick is a stirring portrait of a series of individual lives impacted by their relationship to the same drug, and these intimate moments we witness — from salesman swapping deceptive sales tips in bed to a father violently attempting to get in between his addicted daughter and the backpack of drugs she pawned their possessions to obtain — resonate in a way that simply hearing about those stories through a documentary never could. If, of course, you can handle the wigs.

“Tampa Baes” is Thin, White, and Colorist — But I Knew That Already

LOL, WOT IS THIS MESS?

Within the first two minutes of Amazon’s new lesbian reality series, Tampa Baes, one of its many white cast members Cuppie gloats that the city has a diverse population. The scene laid over her voice shows a bunch of giggly white and fair-skinned folks at parades and bars in sunny Tampa Bay, Florida. So already I knew what I was in for.

Tampa Bay has an almost 23% Black population, so while that may not be a lot — there ain’t no way in gay hell you can tell me you couldn’t find at least a handful of dark-skinned thick niggas to put on this lily-white show. Am I aware that there are folks on the show from diverse backgrounds? Yes. But I urge you to remember that you can be from those backgrounds — and still be white. Something that lovers of the series seem to have overlooked when they took to social media this past weekend to defend it, listing cast members from Middle Eastern, Native and Latinx backgrounds under the POC moniker. Most recently, Amara La Negra (who is Afro-Latina) brought that point up when she was on “Red Table Talk: The Estefans”, where she spoke about being denied roles because they wanted someone who looked “more Latina” (fair-skinned with straight hair), essentially telling her because she was dark-skinned and Black, viewers wouldn’t read her as Latina. Anyway, back to my issues with this mess of a show and less on my love of Amara La Negra.

The cast includes self-proclaimed lesbian it couple Murphy and Haley, who are known for throwing elaborate parties at their very fancy home. Would I party in their house? Nah, I’ve already served my time being the only visibly Black girl at the party. That’s no worry anyway because the way their crew is portrayed in the show, I’m sure I wouldn’t receive an invite. I don’t fit the mold of a snapback sapphic, nor am I the Black Fat Lesbian friend that’s going to let you attempt to twerk on her and look the other way when you drop AAVE.

The Black cast members (Mack and Jordan) feel like characters instead of actual cast members. Filming reads like production wanted to heighten their Blackness when they are on camera. Whether it’s Mack wearing a t-shirt with a still from Friday, or when she’s in the background of cast member and artist Mel’s video talking about the importance of her Black Lives Matter mural. Amazon cast two Black folks who they thought were acceptable for their viewers, and it’s as simple as that. Two folks who probably went to PWI’s, grew up surrounded by whiteness, and often talk about the plight of being a mixed-race person who was separated from and rejected by the Black community. While I don’t agree with folks on social media attempting to erase Mack and Jordans’ Black identity due to their mixed heritage, I do agree with folks saying that dark-skinned Black women will forever have it harder than our racially ambiguous, loose curls sisters.

Some of the cast addressed the response to the show’s colorism. On Jordans’ Instagram in an interview with People, she’s asked about the absence of dark-skinned Black lesbians. (Editors Note: I reached out to her to have a chat but she kindly directed me to Amazon’s PR team and referred me back to the Instagram highlight). While she says it’s important to listen to the critics and that she understands, her answer — to me — was significantly underwhelming and tone-deaf. She says that Amazon didn’t “cast” anyone, that they were seeking pre-existing friend groups. Fine, that’s all well and good. But the problem here is that Amazon didn’t find any issues with moving forward with this particular friend group that looked the way it does. I am sure that with a little more work and effort, they could have found a lesbian friend group that looks far more diverse than this very thin, very light, very cis, very white, very femme group they opted to go with. So while it’s not her fault, her defense of Amazon and her seemingly being okay with how her friend group looks speaks loudly to me. Black queer lesbians should be allowed to be rightfully upset with our CONSISTENT lack of representation in media, especially by media companies who have the money and resources to do better. We have been asking these shows to just do the bare minimum for years to little or no avail.

I found myself so upset at many storylines that featured Black cast members. At one of the parties, there was some dyke drama. After the party, Mack was recorded by Shiva during a moment in a car where she was rightfully upset and reacting to something that was said. Shiva admits that she only captured one minute of the conversation, but that’s worth noting because drunk or not, she opted to record the moment when a Black woman was angry and sent it to another person. A few days later Mack, Shiva, and a few of the other cast members aired out the situation and I hated every minute of it. Having to watch Mack explain herself and her anger at the moment to a bunch of white women was bullshit, they put the onus on her to not only dissolve the situation but also make everyone feel comfortable and happy afterward. Throughout this situation, Mack felt the need to continually reiterate to everyone that they are normally a chill and calm person, and that made me so fucking sad. I am on the side of calling out non-Black folks when they are in the wrong and letting them sit in their discomfort. I no longer feel the need to assuage them in any way after they have done me dirty and that doesn’t make me (or Mack) any less of a “Good Vibes Only” typa bitch. It’s my job to let you know how I feel and why, and it’s yours to look inward and think about the harm you’ve done and why you did it.

In another episode, Olivia antagonizes Reide, a Black woman who Shiva is interested in (who yeah, did her lowkey dirty) about how she’s leading her friend on — a situation that doesn’t have anything to do with her. I hated watching Reide sit there, legs shaking, looking this white woman square in the eye, and doing all she can to not show her anger because you very literally never know what’s going to happen. In the end, Reide decides to walk away while Olivia is laughing at the situation before the camera goes into the next scene. That hit hella close to home, too many times I’ve had to walk away from a white woman at a bar who got a little liquid courage and made me her target for the night. Sometimes they wanna put their fingers in my hair (yes — STILL), and other times they want to rap to the lyrics and say “nigga” with a smile — you literally never know what’s gonna happen when you party with white folks.

While I do have a few issues with her, I fuck with Mack. I have talked repeatedly about looking for myself in film and TV since I was a child, so even in pop culture that I may not completely adore, sometimes I still find a slight connection. Mack being a faith-based person is pretty dope. I grew up in the church and am a pastors daughter, and I’ve separated myself from most elements of the church and religion, but there are a few that I still vibe with and have tweaked to fit me and the dykey life I live. So I find it kinda fly that she is willing to share this side of herself for an audience who may need to see it.

Tampa Baes gives you exactly what you thought it would. When the original trailer dropped, I knew what it was gonna be and, as a Taurus, I am happy to report I was right. I’ll be saving my queer Prime viewing for Harlem because this show — ain’t it.