Welcome to the Pop Culture Fix, your weekly round-up of all the pop culture you need in your face.
The People’s Choice Awards
The People’s Choice Award nominees are in, and it turns out that people are idiots and make bad choices. JUST KIDDING (mostly). Anyhow, some queer-related items of interest:
- Pitch Perfect 2, a movie which had a black lesbian character and was 25% music and 75% racist jokes, is up for Best Movie and Favorite Comedic Movie.
- Bisexual actress Michelle Rodriguez and queerish actress Shailene Woodley are both up for Favorite Action Movie Actress.
- Grey’s Anatomy, which features lesbian and bisexual lead characters, is up for favorite TV Show.
- The Favorite Network TV Drama category is probably the best because it’s mostly Shondaland, and all of the nominees include LGBTQ characters or storylines: Empire, Gotham, Grey’s Anatomy, How To Get Away With Murder and Scandal.
- Favorite Dramatic TV Actress is also dominated by actresses from those shows, and is 80% women of color: Kerry Washington, Sara Ramirez, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis and Ellen Pompeo. People are still into Ellen Pompeo?
- Pretty Little Liars sweeps the Favorite Cable TV Actress Category: Shay Mitchell, Lucy Hale, Ashley Benson and Sasha Alexander all earned nods. So did Hilary Duff.
- Bisexual actress and musician Lady Gaga got a nod for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress
- Ellen DeGeneres duly noted as Favorite Daytime TV Host.
Other shows with LGBTQ female characters up for nominations:
- Person of Interest – Favorite TV Crime Drama
- Masters of Sex – Favorite Premium Cable TV Show
- Arrow, Once Upon a Time & The Vampire Diaries – Favorite Network Sci-Fi/Fantasy
- American Horror Story – Favorite Cable Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show
- House of Cards, The Mindy Project, Orange Is the New Black and Transparent – Favorite Streaming Series
- Grandfathered and Scream Queens – Favorite New TV Comedy
- Rosewood and Code Black – Favorite New TV Drama
So Many Video Debuts!
+ BET debuts a new app-exclusive series called “Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church” and you can watch the first episode on their website right now.
+ Vice has debuted a trailer for all of the new shows you’ll have the pleasure of witnessing with the debut of their 24-hour Cable Chanel, Viceland, including “Gaycation with Ellen Page.” Other offerings include shows about the future, weed, carjacking (hosted by Michael K. Williams, aka Omar from The Wire), Compton, food, immigration, Fashion Week and sports. Unfortunately a lot of this programming seems to be, in typical Vice fashion, heavy on white savior narratives.
+ The Front debuted the first episode of their webseries “New Deep South,” featuring a young interracial couple in Mississippi ready to settle down and start a family and also be really cute.
+ The second episode of Geena Rocero’s transgender-focused digital docuseries “Beautiful As I Want To Be,” produced by Logo, debuts today. This episode features trans activists Jen Richards and Angelica Ross.
+ NBC has a new promo for “The Wiz,” which I am cautiously SO F-CKING EXCITED ABOUT. You guys! Common! Queen Latifah! Uzo Aduba! Amber Riely! David Alan Grier! I died already just thinking about it.
The Teevee
+ As I told you in the Fall TV preview, the new Netflix series “Master of None” features a black lesbian character, Denise, played by out actress and comedian Lena Waithe. AfterEllen has seen the show, and they say that it is good: “Although Denise is only in a handful of episodes, she’s incredibly likable and a different kind of lesbian. She’s the kind of woman who hangs comfortably with the guys, dishing out helpful advice when it comes to women.”
+ ABC Family unveils its schedule for 25 Days of Christmas.
+ Lesbians watching The L Word for the first time:
(For more ‘watching The L Word for the first time” humor, please check out Listling Without Commentary: Conversations I Had While Watching the L Word for the First Time)
+ If your ovaries have been aching for another pregnant lesbian to show up on your television set, have I got good news for you: Pregnant Lesbian Expert Shiri Appleby will be on Code Black this Friday as Malaya’s Ex-Girlfriend. Also she’s gonna be pregnant. A pregnant lesbian.
Also.
+ Last night, Carrie Brownstein and Amy Poehler did a Q&A event for Brownstein’s new book, “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.” One particular question led to making the evening extra-memorable — a young lesbian couple asked if Brownstein would marry them. She accepted. Poehler played “Greensleves.”
+ Key and Peele are developing a stop-motion feature with the director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
+ The Decider wants to talk about whether or not “Chasing Amy” was good for the gays. Honestly I haven’t read the article because I already know the answer: IT WAS NOT.
+ I hope you’re sitting down for this one: Ian Fleming, the straight cis white man who created James Bond, told a fan of the books that Pussy Galore was a lesbian who “only needed the right man to come along and perform the laying on of hands in order to cure her psycho-pathological malady.”
+ You can finally watch “Tangerine” and “Drunktown’s Finest without finding a local Film Festival!
+ The cast of The Baby-Sitters Club reunite, Mallory is still gay.
+ Watch Kelly Clarkson and Josh Groban do a duet from The Phantom of the Opera.
+ Want a virtual tour of Hollywood’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction? Here you go.
+ Marvel’s Iceman is gay. He’s just gay, y’all. Very gay, that one.
