I Still Can’t Believe Teddy Altman is Bisexual
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
Sometimes, I have to repeat it to myself, like an affirmation I am trying to trick my brain into believing. On good days, it sticks, and I can keep it in my head for a couple of hours, convinced this is the time I will finally accept it. Most of the time, though, it slides right back out. Slippery. Determined not to be caught. And then I have no choice but to start the process over, chanting to myself as I empty the dishwasher and before I drift off to sleep: Teddy Altman is bisexual, Teddy Altman is bisexual, Teddy Altman is bisexual…
I don’t know why this particular piece of storytelling refuses to lodge in my brain, but alas, it does. It’s not even close to the wildest thing Grey’s have ever done— they went to the “two people are stuck together on a pole” well in the second season. They need all the plot they can get! Honestly, it’s not even the egregious retconning — though, to that I say: My girl was best friends with a queer couple and you expect me to believe that after a glass or two of Riesling, there was never a “Well, you know Allison, my best friend from med school who I was in love with” never came up??
I was not born yesterday Krista Vernoff! I’ve been in rooms with slightly wine drunk queer women, and let me tell you: It’s all coming up. But I have been a Grey’s watcher for a long time, I’ve learned to accept a wild retcon or two. So it begs the question: what’s my issue?
I mean, it’s not like I think Teddy is straight. Far from it. Teddy’s got this… presence that makes my housemates and I sit up and say “oh that’s gay as hell” anytime she does anything. Of course I noticed the breathless tension that vibrated between Teddy and Cristina from the moment they met, that’s what I do. I was raised on fanfiction, it taught me how to watch TV.
Teddy Altman? I’ve never heard of you.
Cristina Yang? I’ve never heard of you either — so I guess that makes us even.
It’s an energy you become attuned to seeking out, creating what you want to see with what’s in front of you.
She needs to be pushed; she’s like a racehorse, you need to push her otherwise she’s gonna lose her mind.
It was always easy with these two. Watch this scene, then look me in the eye and tell me that this fight is really about Owen Hunt, a man so horrible and useless I considered not even committing his name to the page. No, this fight about finally feeling recognized and supported, it’s about someone finally seeing you and threatening to take that away, because their feelings are too big, too complicated to name.
You believe in me more than I do, and I need that — I am gonna die here without that.
Florence and The Machine is playing, it is romantic and sweeping. I’m always in this twilight; in the shadow of your heart. It’s the kind of scene fanfic writers dream of, it’s big and dramatic and there are things lingering in unsaid spaces and come on, of course I know Teddy Altman is bisexual. I just can’t believe it.
Your honor? These are girlfriends.
That’s the thing about fanfic. (“just get to the damn point already!” you are muttering at me by now, not unfairly. It’s connected, I promise!)
There are a lot of us, I think, who discovered a love of pop culture through the lens of fanfiction. It taught me about different kinds of sexualites and thrilling ways of having sex that I didn’t quite understand, but wanted to explore. It taught me that my writing — forever too “voicey” for my teachers and college professors — had a place, that it belonged somewhere. It taught me that I didn’t need to accept stories and characters as they were presented on my television screen.
I could take whatever I had been given and reshape it into a story I liked better. It’s gay if I want to make it gay, I say now, about everything, all the time. A creator’s intent can only take you so far, and at the end of the day we are left with the images on our screens and how they rattle against the things in our heads.
To learn this information now — Teddy Altman, bisexual! — I bristled out of instinct. Of course she is, where have you been? I’ve been here, doing the work! This is why I always think of fanfic as gift, why I will remain endlessly grateful to it for teaching me to take what I need from media and leave the rest, for teaching me that the images on our movie and television screens matter, and for reminding me that there is so much more to it than that. It allowed me to build a community of real life friends who are all gay as hell, it introduced me to some of my favorite writers.
And look, maybe I am too used to reading subtext and finding fix-it fics to know what to do with something as simple as the thing you wanted being canon. Maybe I forget it because I don’t know how to accept it.
Maybe all I need to do is adjust my tone, maybe it’s not: I cannot believe Teddy is bisexual, eye roll implied.
Maybe I’ve learned to be more grateful.
Teddy Altman is bisexual? Wow, I can’t believe it.
I Still Can’t Believe They Did Marley Rose So Dirty on Glee
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
We all know that Glee had an endless multitude of problems, on and off screen. From Mr. Schuester being the worst adult ever to be in charge of teenagers, to the show’s on-screen recognition that it doesn’t treat its female characters well without any meaningful change, to the behind-the-scenes racism and general awfulness that we learn more and more about as we drift further from the show’s end, there is plenty to complain about. I could write a doctoral thesis on all the things Glee did wrong, but I’m here to bitch about the one thing I feel like not enough people speak up about when listing things, like how they continued to let Matthew Morrison rap or how Finn outed Santana: The way they treated Sweet Marley Rose.
Now, the New New Directions weren’t given a very steady stage to stand on from the get-go, and by and large they were considered a failed experiment for the show to keep going past when the original class graduated. And for some reason, it seemed like the majority of Twitter, even within the safe space of the #GaySharks hashtag, which is where I usually played, hated Marley. They made fun of her hats, they rolled their eyes at her sweetness and her wide-eyed innocence. Though no one could deny her talent.
HOW COULD YOU EVER INSULT THIS PERFECT CREATURE
But for some reason, I loved her. Maybe it’s because I saw a bit of my high school self in Marley Rose; sweet, shy, a little awkward, hiding her pain behind a friendly smile. “You Have More Friends Than You Know” is exactly the kind of cheesy, saccharine song I would have written if I were in a Glee club/had any songwriting talent at all in high school. Hell, it’s the kind of cheesy, saccharine song I’d write NOW if I had any songwriting talent. (I was also always in a New York State of Mind.)
But one of Marley’s storylines was BEYOND atrocious — I think one of the worst in Glee’s sordid past — and even though it has been almost a full decade since it aired, I still get VERY riled up when I talk about it… which is possibly more often than is healthy.
In the first half of Season 4, poor Marley becomes the target of Kitty Wilde, the New New Directions’ resident mean girl. Of course, it’s because of some average high school boy and internalized misogyny taking the form of jealousy, but regardless of the cause, Kitty narrows in on Marley’s insecurities and really goes to town. And once she finds the one that strikes a nerve the most, which is weight-related, Kitty really leans in.
On a smarter, kinder, more thoughtful show, a teenager having an overweight mom who works in the school could have been a compelling story. Being self-conscious overhearing them tease the overweight lunch lady (which teenagers would absolutely do) and because moms and their daughters are too often inextricably linked in people’s mind’s eye. Also, I can say from experience, that sometimes overweight moms pass some of their own weight/food hang-ups onto their daughters, intentionally or not. (Though don’t worry, that DOES also happen amidst all the other horrors.) It could have been an exploration on one of the many reasons a teenager might develop an eating disorder, how it affected their day-to-day, and how they got help. However, this is not the path Glee chose to take. No, of course not. That’s too smart and potentially helpful for this show!
Instead, they chose to have Kitty GIVE MARLEY AN EATING DISORDER. This poor girl was already at risk for developing one, and Kitty GASLIT HER. Constantly commenting on her non-existent weight gain, encouraging her to starve herself and purge any food she did eat, even going so far as to SECRETLY SEW MARLEY’S COSTUMES so they would be tighter and Marley would think she was gaining weight. It’s diabolical, psychotic, and possibly even criminal. It’s unfathomably cruel, in a way I doubt any real teenager would ever concoct. It makes it all the more upsetting to know these episodes were written by grown men, led of course by Ryan Murphy. It’s meaner than actual mean girl Santana ever was, and in fact, it’s Santana that ultimately puts a stop to it.
If you’ve gone too far for Santana “razorblades all up in there” Lopez, you’ve gone way too far.
And you know what, I could have forgiven the insanity of someone PURPOSEFULLY GIVING someone else an eating disorder, if there was any kind of satisfying resolution or consequences.
But at the peak of Marley’s pain, when she passes out during the Sectionals performance…everyone TURNS on her. The Glee Club berates her, everyone shuns her, they accept her apologies as if she owed them, and not one person — not ONE SINGLE person — not even SUPPOSED ADULT WILL SCHUESTER tells Sweet Marley Rose that it’s not her fault. That she should not hold onto any guilt for her EATING DISORDER causing her to INVOLUNTARILY PASS OUT during a performance. No one said her health was more important than the national high school competition of nerdy teen singers. No one comforted her, not really.
And then, this whole storyline just…disappears. Kitty isn’t really punished for her actions, no one really apologizes for blaming her for losing Sectionals (which was NOT HER FAULT). They buy her a Christmas tree because her and her mom can’t afford one and then that’s kind of it? All forgiven?? It’s inFURiating. And don’t even get me STARTED on how the show absolutely WASTED the gem of talent they had in Melissa Benoist. I think perhaps, based on some stories we’ve heard since, it’s possible that some of the Rachel/Marley tension that happened on-screen could have been happening off-screen too, or maybe there was something else at play, but while Melissa was given some great songs to really slay, I think they could have done so much more with her. (And this is neither here nor there but I blame Glee for introducing her to the monster she was married to for a few years.)
Luckily just like Marley went from a Wallflower to Woman Fierce, Melissa went from Marley Rose to Supergirl, a show that still occasionally doesn’t use her powers to their full extent, but at least is a role more befitting the wonders of this mega-talented woman.
Talk about a glow-up.
But I will never ever ever forgive Ryan Murphy. For so many things across so many shows, but also always for how he treated Sweet Marley Rose.
I Still Can’t Believe a Sixty Second Scene from “The OC” is My Gay Root
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
The O.C. premiered in August 2003, one month before I entered my sophomore year of high school, and featured a world that could not have been more different than my own. I did not live in California, I was not skinny and popular, I was also not dorky and into video games, and my inner world resembled, you know, teen girl reality, instead of the soapy unbelievable glittering trainwreck Josh Schwartz created for his main characters Seth Cohen, Ryan Atwood, Marissa Cooper, and Summer Roberts.
Despite that, or perhaps because of it, I loved The O.C. with my whole entire heart.
My heart thought it was a heterosexual heart at this point, goddess bless baby Vanessa, and my ultimate crush was Seth Cohen (who I also think of as one of my Gay Roots, though that’s a different essay for a different day). So imagine my surprise when Alex Kelly showed up in season two and after a brief romance with Seth started exchanging meaningful looks with Marissa and it… meant something to me.
Though Alex and Marissa don’t actually kiss until Season 2, episode 12 (“The Lonely Hearts Club”), it’s 60 seconds in Season 2, episode 10 (“The Accomplice”) that is My Gay Root.
It makes sense, looking back at the scene and close-reading it (thank you grad school, I imagine this is what my instructors all meant when they taught me how to refer to the text to make an argument). Alex shows up in Orange County for season two as the “bad girl” with a “troubled past.” She’s bisexual, she’s emancipated from her parents, and she runs The Bait Shop, a new club where all these high schoolers are inexplicably able to hang out and listen to indie bands that my high school crushes (pretentious boys who based most of their personalities around the obscure bands they liked to listen to) would then accuse of selling out by performing on a mainstream television show.
Alex, played by Olivia Wilde, is so hot. She’s gorgeous, objectively, but her energy is also extremely sexy. In a town filled with rich troubled kids who are all at least somewhat preoccupied with how they are perceived, Alex is different. She does whatever she wants. She’s strong. She takes care of herself. Is it any wonder that Marissa, a character forced to shrink herself into everyone else’s expectations, is drawn to this badass queer woman? Is it any wonder I was?
This particular scene is very short. If you went to pee in the middle of the episode, or your mom came into the room to ask if you’d finished your homework, you might miss it. Alex and Marissa decide to go to Los Angeles so Alex can rescue some of her belongings from her ex-girlfriend’s apartment. We enter the scene from the vantage point of someone in the vehicle, staring at the California freeway as Alex drives and Marissa sits in the passenger seat asking questions. We’re supposed to feel like we could be one of the characters in the car, and I did. Marissa wants to know what Alex’s butterfly tattoo means, how Alex was able to become emancipated from her parents, if Alex ever misses them. They’re giggling and having a good time but they’re going deep quickly, too. Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes” plays over their dialogue, starting with the intro and then cutting to the end:
There’s blood in my mouth ’cause I’ve been biting my tongue all week
I keep on talkin’ trash but I never say anything
And the talkin’ leads to touchin’
And the touchin’ leads to sex
And then there is no mystery left
And it’s bad news
…And it’s bad news
I don’t care, I like you
I like you
When Marissa asks Alex if she ever misses her parents, Alex’s answer comes quickly: “Sometimes. But my friends are my family you know?”
Marissa smiles and nods, clearly pleased to be included in Alex’s chosen family. “I do,” she says.
I don’t mean to be dramatic, but that is absolutely the moment I realized I could be a dyke.
I’m not going to write a revisionist history about what happened to me when I witnessed Alex and Marissa in that car two episodes before they ever kissed. I did not immediately come out, and I’m not even sure I let myself acknowledge how interested I was in that particular soapy storyline.
And I’m not going to write a revisionist history about what The O.C. intended when it comes to Alex and Marissa’s brief relationship (they literally only get five episodes as an actual “couple” before the relationship implodes and Alex is written off the show), though several other writers on the internet have argued that it was either a grab for ratings like every other sensational plot point in the show or a genuine bid for LGBTQ inclusion that should have gone farther and deeper. I can see how a less generous reading would say that Marissa is calculating how to further piss her parents off in this scene, taking advantage of Alex’s interest in her to pull off yet another stunt to add to her collection. Maybe! But that’s not what this scene means to me, regardless of intent.
The truth is I have no idea what was going on in that writers’ room in 2005, but I can tell you that it would take four more years before I ever asked a girl too many personal questions too quickly and then let her kiss me and when I did, Rilo Kiley played quietly in my head. It would take a few more years after that before I started investing in queer community and queer friendships that would allow me to understand Alex’s commitment to her friends as family. And did so many other things play a role in me eventually realizing I’m really fucking gay? Yeah, of course.
But this scene with Marissa and Alex and the California freeway and Rilo Kiley played a major role. This scene gave me a glance at something I didn’t yet know I would one day look directly in the eye.
I think it’s fitting that the piece of Marissa and Alex’s queer love story that spoke most directly to me is the moment before anything really happens. I’ve joked with girls before that “the beginning of a relationship is the best part,” even making a promise with one former ex that we would “stay in the beginning forever” in a misguided attempt to never get to any of the hard or bad or sad stuff that makes a relationship eventually run its course (spoiler: you cannot, unfortunately, stay in the beginning forever). And while at the wise old age of 32 I can confidently say that the middle and even the end can sometimes also feel like the best part of a meaningful relationship, there is something really fun and anticipatory and electric and charged about the beginning. The beginning is the moment before you are really committed to diving in with another human heart. The beginning is the moment before you know what the other person’s lips feel like against your own, what their hips feel like in your hands when they’re dancing, what their face does right before you make them cry, what they call their cat when they think no one is listening, what their biggest fears and wildest hopes and saddest memories are, what their life might look like with you in it. The beginning is the moment before all that. It’s a form of magic.
And when you’re a straight girl in high school who has never considered that you might be a dyke and you see that magic happening between two girls on your favorite TV show? That moment can eventually explode everything.
I Still Can’t Believe How Relatable Jill and Bethenny’s Friendship Breakup Was On “Real Housewives Of New York”
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
One summer, I stopped writing. Well, technically I was still writing, because writing is my job. But I wasn’t doing any creative writing. For years, I’d been the kind of person who worked on several creative projects at a time. Multiple pilots, various screenplays, plays, short stories. And then I was hit with what some might call an extreme bout of writer’s block, but it was more complicated than that. I had ideas. I just didn’t want to do anything with them. I pushed them away. It didn’t even feel gradual. It was like I’d flipped some sort of switch. I felt broken, but I also didn’t want to fix it.
So I wasn’t writing anything. Instead, I filled my days with another activity: watching all nine seasons of Real Housewives Of New York.
In the time since then, I’ve gone from a casual viewer to a full-on Bravo Dyke, a term I am desperately trying to make happen. My girlfriend and I organize whole evenings around catching up with our best friends, the absurdly rich and richly absurd women of the various Real Housewives franchises. I’m in multiple group chats across multiple platforms with friends to specifically discuss the latest episodes. But the summer I stopped writing and started obsessively watching RHONY, it was a solitary experience. My ex hated reality television. I watched alone, often on my iPad in bed. It wasn’t some shameful secret or guilty pleasure — I’ve never really believed in feeling guilty for things that give you pleasure. But in the beginning, RHONY was a true emotional escape for me. I didn’t want to think about some of the recent changes in my life or actively address my depression, so I fixated on these chaotic bitches.
RHONY has been on so long now (thirteen seasons!) it’s basically an epic. Housewives have come and gone (except for Ramona Singer, the only cast member who has been in every single season and who might be immortal?); singles have dropped; trips have gone awry; there have been engagements, divorces, book deals, arrests, drunk fights, sober fights. Some seasons have more compelling drama than others. Sometimes the messiness of these women is difficult to watch. But across over a decade of their pinot grigio-soaked escapades, season three of RHONY will always be my favorite. Its main storyline — the dissolution of Bethenny Frankel and Jill Zarin’s friendship — is the best depiction of a friendship breakup I’ve ever seen on TV.
In case you don’t live and breathe Bravo, here’s the rundown of what happened with Bethenny and Jill. A lot of times on these shows, the friendships are tenuous, more like work friendships than real relationships. Jill and Bethenny though had a legitimate friendship outside of the context of the show, and you can tell. They act like real friends. In fact, they act almost like family. But something’s off at the start of the third season. Bethenny’s dating someone new, and Jill’s telling anyone who will listen she’s done with Bethenny because of a voicemail Bethenny left her telling her to get a hobby. Jill’s also mad Bethenny didn’t call when Jill’s husband Bobby was in the hospital for cancer treatments. She thinks Bethenny is only concerned about her brand and herself. Bethenny thinks Jill has a complex where she needs to take care of people and feel needed.
Jill and Bethenny don’t share any scenes in the premiere, and it’s clear right away they’re on different pages. Jill seems genuinely hurt by Bethenny but also stubborn and immature. Instead of attempting to repair anything, she’s just shit talking. Bethenny, meanwhile, knows something’s off between her and Jill but doesn’t realize quite how bad it is. She tells her new boyfriend Jason it’s just a small bit of drama, something that will probably pass.
It does not pass. Bethenny and Jill have an uncomfortable interaction at a fashion show. Bethenny becomes convinced Jill planted a gossip story about a rift between them. Other housewives start taking sides but also seem confused by the magnitude of this fight. In “Hot Off The Press,” the fifth episode of the season, Bethenny is determined to squash it. She calls up Jill, who initially seems like she’s sort of having fun messing with Bethenny but who quickly realizes this is serious. Here’s how the phone call starts:
Bethenny: In light of the disproportionate nature of this argument now compared to actually what originally happened, I think that we should sit down and have a conversation about it.
Jill: What does disproportionate mean?
Bethenny: Disproportionate means, it’s out of proportion. What originally happened with you and I was an email and a conversation and now it’s like a massive argument where other people are involved, where the press is involved. I haven’t told a single person about this argument, and now it’s enormous. I didn’t realize that Luann had heard my voice message from this summer, which you kept for two months and played for someone else. Like, that’s disproportionate. No one killed anyone. No one slept with anybody’s husband. Nothing enormous happened, and now it’s enormous, and I’d like to sit down and talk to you about why it’s so enormous.
Jill: I don’t think it’s really important why it’s so enormous.
Bethenny: If it’s not important to you, then that speaks volumes. But I thought that our relationship was much bigger than this. You have blown this so enormously out of proportion. You have told strangers. You have told Perez Hilton. The lengths that you’ve gone to to advertise this argument that wasn’t even anything enormous to begin with is astounding to me.
“Bethenny, we were friends like no other,” Jill goes on to say. “You were my best friend. I spoke to you five times a day.” Then she brings up Bethenny’s mean “hobby” voicemail again and recounts all the ways Bethenny didn’t show up for her over the summer. It’s quickly evident Bethenny didn’t actually know how sick Bobby was, and the more they argue over the phone, the more it seems like this is really just a series of miscommunications that have, indeed, been blown way out of proportion.
Jill cuts the conversation short by literally saying “we’re done” and hanging up. Bethenny’s left alone on the sidewalk, sobbing against a car. I’ve watched this phone call so many times. It’s heightened with classic reality TV aesthetics — a dramatic score, quick cuts between the women, close-ups on their reactions. But flourishes aside, it’s feels fucking real. It’s visceral. The emotional stakes are genuine.
Over the course of the season, Bethenny gets engaged. She gets pregnant. She learns her father who she’s estranged from is dying. And throughout all these major life changes, she doesn’t have her best friend. Then just as Jill starts to come around and realize she wants to be in Bethenny’s life again, Bethenny decides she’s done with Jill for real. Yet again, they’re on different pages. Every time it seems like maybe they’ll be able to work things out, someone says or does the wrong thing, and the fracture in their friendship widens.
Part of what makes Jill’s behaviors at the start of the season seem so calculated and off-putting is easily explained by her eventual confession behind-the-scenes that she heightened the rift between them for the sake of ratings. She essentially thought she was producing a friendship breakup storyline. Her flippant attitude at the start of that explosive phone call makes sense given these motives. But in her wild attempt to make good TV, Jill accidentally made great TV. Because her faked feud turned into a very real one. Her ratings grab ruined a friendship.
Friendship breakups are obviously hard to capture on television. So much television is narratively fueled by friendship. If two characters stop speaking to each other, then how can they exist in the same show? Bethenny and Jill’s friendship breakup is reality TV gold, because it really does feel real, but they also have to confront it on camera, have to process everything in front of an audience. They’re not just friends; they’re also castmates. They can’t take a break from each other, because they have to film together. Their arguments become scenes. Their breakup is a plotline. The simultaneous realism of their friendship breakup and the performance of it is disorienting and makes it all the sadder. As a viewer, I wanted Jill and Bethenny to make up. All the other housewives wanted them to, too. But as someone who has been deeply hurt by friendship breakups at various points in life, I’m almost grateful they never fully resolve things. Because that’s reality. Not all friendships last. And friendship breakups can be just as life-altering as romantic ones. That’s palpably felt in the way Jill and Bethenny’s plays out. At the end of the season, Jill quite literally compares it to death.
There was a reason I stopped writing. It became easier to understand that once I had some distance from it. Not long before I started watching RHONY, a significant friendship of mine changed dramatically. It was far from my first friendship breakup, and it wasn’t even the most dramatic or devastating one. But it was the first time I experienced a friendship breakup that was also connected to my writing. Two women who I had collaborated on a creative project with stopped dating each other, and their breakup fractured our friendship trio as well as our working partnership. We had just begun the process of forming our own small production company. I had just written the second season of our scrappy, DIY queer webseries. Then it all just sort of fell apart. It was difficult to keep the friendships going, too. We grew distant with each other. It became difficult to separate my grief over the sudden end of the webseries from my feelings toward them.
Jill and Bethenny’s friendship breakup is hardly an exact retelling of what happened between me and these two friends. But in retrospect, it’s easy to see why I was so drawn to and affected by season three’s saga. I had so many unprocessed feelings about what had happened with those friends. When revisiting Jill and Bethenny’s arc, it’s tough to see where real life ends and reality TV begins. It feels both real and produced all at once. But it captured so many of the feelings I was actively trying to ignore in my own life: the difficult-to-describe loss, the fantasies about how things might’ve gone differently, the frustrating lack of control, the sad nostalgia.
I stopped writing because I was scared. The (small but meaningful) success of our webseries followed by its abrupt end gave me creative whiplash. It was always in the back of my head, that feeling that putting myself out there in my writing could result in heartbreak again. I stopped trying to repair the friendships because I was scared, too. It felt easier to shut down, to immerse myself in someone else’s drama like, say, the drama of a bunch of wealthy socialites running around on reality television. Eventually, I was able to work through a lot of these feelings and understand the link between my writing dry spell and the end of a significant part of my life.
I could write again. But the friendships were never fully fixed. It became clear that it would never be the same as it was before. And that’s just how it goes sometimes. But just Google “Jill and Bethenny” and you’ll find dozens of articles with headlines like “Are Jill Zarin and Bethenny Frankel Friends?: 2021 Update”; “Jill Zarin reveals if she’d be friends with Bethenny Frankel”; “Jill Zarin Gives Update on Her Friendship With Bethenny”; etc. People want closure. People want to believe that friendships are forever. But Jill and Bethenny are striking examples that sometimes all you can do is wish each other the best and move on.
I Still Can’t Believe Marvel’s Never Heard of Bisexuality
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
I’ve been rewatching all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in timeline order because I caught a glimpse of both Tessa Thompson with a lightsaber and Cate Blanchett in that leather suit when Thor: Ragnorak was on TV the other day, and I thought to myself, “No, Hoagie, you need to earn that.” So I started with Steve Rogers in World War II, like good nerds do. I’m not even through MCU Phase One and already I’ve found myself yelling, “Kiss! KISS!” at Bucky and Steve; and, “GAY YOU’RE GAY!” at Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers, like I did in my head when I saw these things in theaters.
That against the backdrop of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Disney+’s latest Marvel entry, which featured Bucky and Sam Wilson getting gayer by the episode — going to couples therapy, rolling around on top of each other the grass, browsing other men holding tigers on dating apps — while the show’s writers and directors gave interviews after basically every episode laughing about “Ha, ha, ha! Yes, we can see why you’d think that’s gay due to it looking and sounding gay, but it’s not gay!”
I still can’t believe, in 2021, that Marvel’s never heard of bisexuality!
Captain Marvel is so gay that the writers had to add a line of dialogue to try to convince the audience Maria and Carol slept in different rooms.
You know, on account of the house they shared and the daughter they were raising together.
Let’s just start with the easiest thing: The MCU characters who are already queer in the comic books. There’s Valkyrie, played by real life queer human Tessa Thompson. There’s Loki, who is also genderfluid in the comics. And, more recently, there’s Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Star-Lord. Then there are Marvel characters who aren’t in the MCU, like X-Men’s Mystique and Deadpool. None of them have been canonically queer on-screen, even though promises persist and Ryan Reynolds is insisting Deadpool be gay when the character is folded into the MCU. How easy it would have been — and still would be! — to have any of them smooch on another queer person, or even a queer alien! So easy! Just so easy! Smashing your mouth against someone else’s mouth is, in my expert opinion, a lot easier than wearing a harness attached to springs and wires and pretending to fly!
Okay but, let’s say there’s no more room for new characters in MCU movies. Ten million characters is enough. Fine. Fair. What about the characters who are already very clearly in love with each other and have filmed scenes with both action and dialogue that prove it? Maria Rambeau and Carol Danvers, just for one example. Living together, working together, raising a daughter together, running at each other against the setting sun crying and clutching at each other while making promises and saying how they’re the only ones who ever knew who the other person really was, how they only ever believed in and were at home with each other.
Do people ship us? Sure. Are we very clearly gay for each other? No. There is, even, a symbolic man between us right now.
When two women are not very clearly gay on-screen together, they are filmed like Pepper Potts and Black Widow in Iron Man 2: side-by-side looking at stuff that’s not each other, talking about stuff that’s not each other, and going their separate ways at the end of the movie without any acknowledgment of when they might see each other again. They walk beside each other and the camera invites you to look at them, instead of showing you how they can’t stop looking at each other.
When two women are very clearly gay for each other on-screen, they are filmed the way so many bazillion cishet scenes have been filmed before: staring longingly at each other, getting closer and closer to each other, never breaking eye-contact, never talking about other love interests, eyes and body language only for each other, each separation significant. LIKE MARIA AND CAROL.
Has there been anyone else?
You know there hasn’t.
It’s the same for Bucky and Steve, of course, and then Bucky and Sam, in the Captain America world. The way they live and die for each other, pine and grieve for each other, put their faces really close together and lie on top of each other, risk it all to keep the other one safe/bring the other one back from the dead. Bucky gets classically, heterosexually fridged as a motivating plot device for Steve! Bucky comments flirtily that Steve should keep his full-body spandex Captain America suit! Bucky literally says to Steve, “I am with you until the end of time” like some kind of Disney prince!
Okay, now, using “I feel” statements, why don’t we talk about how you both feel about Steve Rogers, because, let’s be honest, this could get weird.
Look, we are living in a time when TikTok has declared everyone under the age of 25 queer, in a year when gay people are such a lucrative market that Disney is making its own line of Pride apparel, and when A-list actors are begging to be gay in big budget comic book movies. There’s no excuse for these straight shenanigans anymore. Bisexuality already exists in MCU’s movies. Marvel just needs to acknowledge it. Or, at the very least, stop denying it.
I Still Can’t Believe “Friends” Was The First Time I Saw Myself On-Screen
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
Seven months after coming out to myself, I posted a personal history of trans representation on Tumblr. The list ranged from serial killers to cruel jokes to pitiful attempts at Oscar bait. It ended with The Danish Girl and it began with Friends.
Friends is a boring show to talk about. The conversations that needed to happen have already happened. We all know about its transphobia and its homophobia and how it’s a rip-off of Living Single. Anyone who chooses to revisit its world of 90s heteronormative whiteness has come to terms with the compromises or prefers to live in ignorance.
I am not here to lament the first example of a trans woman I saw on screen. I’m not here to discuss “Chandler’s dad” played by Kathleen Turner who was a punchline again and again and again. I’m not here to unpack the ways that shaped my views of transness and kept me in the closet. I don’t care about her. She wasn’t a person to me. The show did its job to ensure as much. Friends was the first time I saw my transness on TV, but it wasn’t Chandler’s dad — it was Chandler.
My family loved Friends. They loved it so much that starting in season nine — when I was only eight years old — I was allowed to watch it with them. Being my media-obsessed self even back then, I did not settle for inclusion in family viewing night. I needed to catch up. I needed to start from the beginning. I needed to know everything. My family took a lot of road trips and that year my parents bought my sister and I a portable DVD player. I picked out the first season DVD box set at Tower Records and my fixation began.
We sped through the first season and I begged for more. By the time the show’s tenth and final season began, I owned the first nine on DVD and had watched every episode twice. Friends taught me about sex and so much more. It became my comfort show — something that felt sophisticated while being family friendly in the most literal sense. When I got a TV in my room I began cycling the DVD sets through my dreams. White noise with a laugh track.
I haven’t watched Friends with any consistency in a decade and yet I can still recite scenes by memory. Sometimes I’ll think of a sentence in a certain tone and wonder where it comes from and embarrass myself when someone tells me I’m quoting Friends. But there’s one line that twisted its way through my brain stickier than the rest. It occurs less than three minutes into the series.
Ross has entered the group’s coffee house hangout with his soon-to-be signature “Hi.” He’s depressed because his wife Carol has just moved out. Like all Carols, she realized she was a lesbian. Joey asks if Ross really didn’t know and Ross is incredulous. “Why does everyone keep fixating on that?” he whines. “She didn’t know. How should I know?”
Cue laugh track. Cut to the wide shot. Chandler, feet on the table, eyes staying on a magazine, says, “Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian.” Everyone looks at him. Titters on the laugh track. He lifts his head and we go to a close up. “Did I say that out loud?” Laughter erupts.
The first time I read an article about how Friends was actually homophobic and that meant it was actually bad and that actually we should all hate it, this line was included. I was horrified. I wanted so badly to be a good ally to women and gay people — I was literally in college on a scholarship for queer activism — and yet apparently this line that had meant so much to me was homophobic. I didn’t understand why.
I knew it was inappropriate to walk around announcing that I wished I was a lesbian, but privately I felt like this wish from Chandler signaled a version of masculinity I could comprehend. Three minutes into the show I understood this character more than I’d ever understood a character and throughout the ten seasons I felt comforted by his awkwardness and softness and how everyone thought he was gay. I felt so confused in myself and here was a character who felt similarly confused. Here was a character introduced by expressing my greatest desire — everything would make sense if only I was a lesbian. Just don’t say it out loud.
The week before moving into my first real apartment, my first real girlfriend and I broke up. She was studying abroad and we’d made the smart choice to not try long distance. I sobbed into my friend’s air mattress. All I wanted was to meet a girl and fall in love and get married. All I wanted was someone to project my gender feelings onto. I’d come the closest I ever had and now she was gone. The thought of being single, of random hook ups, of normal college exploration, all felt miserable to me. I didn’t want it.
One morning, while we were eating breakfast, my friend’s lesbian roommate came home from a night out. As she recounted her wild evening, gluey oatmeal slid down my throat in thuds. Every word she said made me ache. Her story that involved a date, an ex, a threesome, and car sex, did not titillate me — it haunted me. I had no interest in having those kinds of experiences as myself. But as a lesbian? It was all I wanted. I must’ve looked upset, because my friend swooped in and told her about my break up. “You must be devastated,” she said. “Your girlfriend was so hot.” My mood shifted immediately. My ex was lesbian-approved. That would have to be enough. Three days letter my ex reached out begging to get back together. She didn’t have to beg. I’d already been convinced.
I brought up the roommate’s story months later to my friend. I asked if they remembered that moment in the pilot of Friends when Chandler says that he wishes he was a lesbian. My friend said yes. I asked if they knew why it was homophobic. My friend said no. In fact, they’d always liked that line too. At the time, they also identified as a straight man. They don’t anymore.
I don’t think Chandler Bing was a trans woman. I’m not going to give that to a character and a writing staff so explicitly transphobic. But I sure wish she was. When a character we don’t know is mocked, we are told that character exists for mocking. We do not want to be that character. But when a character we know says something unexpected, we listen. We may laugh, but we listen. They’re a person and we think maybe we can be that kind of person. If only we saw more kinds of people. If only I knew Chandler’s wish didn’t have to be a secret. If only I knew it could be my reality.
I Still Can’t Believe Anyone on “Battlestar Galactica” Was Straight
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
I mean, especially Kara Thrace.
The first time we see Kara Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) — more commonly known by her callsign Starbuck — she’s lightly jogging. It’s enough to tingle the gay spidey senses. Her hair is slicked back. On her, the leisure uniform worn by the Battlestar Galactica crew — a tight tank top over a second tight tank top — evokes an unmistakable air of dyke-debonair. In her next scene, when we truly meet Starbuck for the first time, the gay spidey senses are more than tingling. They’re practically quaking. Her hair is mussed now. Her dogtags are out. She clutches a cigar and cards, playing poker with her bunkmates and her asshole superior, who she eventually punches in the face after he pisses her off. Surely, we are looking at an erratic and cocky butch top.
Nope!!!!!!!! Instead, we’re supposed to fully invest in the sexual tension between Starbuck and Human Potato (slash her former ex-brother-in-law?!) Lee Adama?!?!
See also: Boomer?!
Boomer aka Number Eight (Grace Park) sports a low ponytail and what appear to be self-cut bangs when we initially meet her in the movie-length prologue episodes of BSG. I repeat: self-cut bangs. Scientifically, straight people do not know how to cut hair.
When I say I can’t believe Starbuck and Boomer are straight, what I really mean is I refuse to believe it. In fact, I have overwritten all my memories of Battlestar Galactica—which I’ve watched multiple times — to make pretty much all of the characters queer. Cylons? Gay. Humans? Gay. We all know everyone in space is gay. Battlestar Galactica’s suggestion otherwise? I simply refuse to accept it! You’re telling me the vast and mysterious expanse of the universe which is ever-expanding (a fact that never fails to break my brain) adheres to the same boring and unimaginative constraints of heteronormativity that much of our dumb bitch planet Earth does? No way. There’s no sound in space, but there’s absolutely an abundance of homosexuality.
Okay, so as far as explicit queerness goes, Battlestar Galactica does offer a little bit. Recurring character Felix Gaeta (played by Alessandro Juliani, one of genre television’s great underrated character actors) is gay, but it rarely comes up. And “sure,” gay characters do not “need” to be “defined” by their “gayness”…but…I’m not asking for some big rainbow moment. I’m just asking for queer characters to have the same fully realized and compelling relationship arcs and love interests as the straight characters do. On a show that features a lot of smooching, would it hurt to include a few more smooches of the queer variety?
We get another whisper of gay in the two-hour special “Razor,” which features Gina Inviere—one of the many aliases for Number Six (Tricia Helfer)—in a full-on relationship with Admiral Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes). To which I say: Could this not have been an arc more fully explored in the main series? Why is it relegated to the straight-to-DVD spin-off chapter?! (These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer is, broadly, homophobia.)
Ultimately, you’re far more likely to encounter relationships between robots and humans than you are to find lesbians in the BSG universe. And I do not say that to disparage robot-human relations. I’m very pro-robot-human relations, and you can feel free to quote that back to me whenever you like.
So Starbuck is one thing, but do you mean to honestly tell me most of the thirteen models of Cylon engage regularly in heterosexual activity? ALL thirteen models absolutely scream bisexual energy. Again, we do get a whisper of textual acknowledgement re:the inherent bisexuality of Cylons. There’s a brief love triangle between Gaius, Caprica Six (Helfer), and D’Anna Biers (queen of Sapphic subtext, Lucy Lawless). But considering all the chaotic bisexual energy these sexy robots are giving, there’s a shocking dearth of bisexual chaos occurring on this show.
And GET THIS: BSG creator Ronald D. Moore once said the following: “We sort of always talked about the Cylons being basically bisexual in all formats.” So the things I’m picking up were “sort of” put down in the BSG writers room. But the commitment to this “all Cylons are bisexual” ethos seems to have wavered somewhere between conception and execution. Because, again, the show simply is not bursting at the seams with textual bisexual chaos, even though it should be?????? Even though in my heart it is?
If you have not seen Battlestar Galactica and think I’m telling you to stay away, oh no! That’s not what I’m saying at all! It’s a very good show! One of my top favorites! But when we love something deeply, we are also keenly aware of its imperfections. I love Battlestar Galactica, and I wish it were gayer. I wish it were gayer, because I love Battlestar Galactica. You get it.
I Still Can’t Believe Pretty Little Liars Thought Ankle Rubbing Was Lesbian Sex
I Still Can’t Believe is a TV Team series where we remember the things happened on television that baffle us — in good and bad ways — to this very day.
Pretty Little Liars was a TV series whose premise was: What if the most unhinged, batshit bonkers, out-of-the-frame, hyperadrenalized mishaps befell a group of teenage girls living in a haunted town of endless secrets and living dolls? There’s no character for whom this was more true than Emily Fields, Rosewood’s resident lesbian who, over the course of seven seasons, saw multiple girlfriends murdered and one girlfriend resurrected, was kidnapped alongside a different girlfriend and forced to stab their kidnapper — who was pretending to be the cousin of her most recent dead girlfriend, but was actually the one who murdered her — in the guts on top of a lighthouse, received a necklace made of human teeth that spelled out DEAD GIRLS CAN’T SMILE, got poisoned by her BENGAY sore muscle cream, weathered a car driving into her living room on purpose, was attacked by her school building which literally came to life one night and told her to ACT NORMAL BITCH, and had her ovarian eggs stolen and fertilized and implanted into the uterus of her first girlfriend who died and came back to life.
Pretty Little Liars hit during a perfect storm. It arrived when Twitter was just taking off as a platform for communicating with the people who make TV and the people are watching the same shows as you. It casually walked, without issue, through the door Glee had kicked down when it came to gay teens on TV, at a time when ABC Family was desperately trying to rebrand itself as a network known for more than its lifelong contractural obligation to air Pat Robertson’s white evangelical nightmare show, The 700 Club. And it made its entrance before streaming platforms were making TV, before binging became the norm, before the studios and networks that greenlit television were able to bypass Standards & Practices reviews that worried about losing advertisers aiming at straight, white, conservative, middle-age middle America. Watching TV live and weighing in and being heard by the actors and creators was part of the Pretty Little Liars experience, and it was a new one — and oh, it was heady.
I recapped all seven seasons of this show, but the one image that stands out to me after all this time — the one that I still, to this day, cannot believe — is during the series finale when all the straight couples were having sex, and, instead of doing that, Emily Fields and Alison DiLaurentis rubbed their bare ankles together. I rewatched “Till Death Do Us Part” recently, to see if I was remembering it correctly, and yep: There’s Ezra and Aria flipping each other like pancakes, Spencer climbing Toby’s naked torso like a tree, Hanna and Caleb making a baby, and Emily and Alison’s feet just a-touchin’. Little toe tap here. Little heel bump there. Feets on feets on feets, lesbian lesbian feets.
The reason I still can’t believe that it happened is because it was 2017, after Orange Is the New Black, Sense8, Lost Girl, Orphan Black, Jane the Virgin, and Wynonna Earp had all given their queer couples the exact same amount of sex with the lights on as its straight couples. It happened after ABC Family had become Freeform, in large part because of Pretty Little Liars. It happened with so many queer people writing and directing. It happened in the last episode, when there was nothing left to lose. And! It happened! Juxtaposed with every! other! couple! on the show! That kind of thing is always going to bother the heck out of me — it’s my job, in fact, for it to bother the heck out of me — but it was really the cherry on top of Emily’s short-stick romantic storylines over the course of the show’s final seasons.
Everyone else had their final shebangs with their first on-screen loves on the show, which of course Emily couldn’t do because hers was Maya St. Germain and Maya was dead. Everyone else had emotionally resonant romantic storylines in the final seasons, but Emily didn’t because one of her love interests was just a plot point that never made a lick of sense, and Alison spent most of the last season chained to a bed getting tortured by her husband who carried a BONE SAW around in his backpack. And to celebrate making it through the series alive, no small thing for two gays in Rosewood, Emily and Alison just stacked their feet on top of each other!
Years before Pretty Little Liars‘ finale, there was a similar controversy on Modern Family. Gay viewers noted that while the other families shared a lot of physical affection, Cam and Mitchell hardly ever touched. The discourse reached its apex in a scene were Claire and Phil, and Cam and Mitchell reunited in an airport. Claire and Phil kissed in the foreground, while Cam and Mitchell hugged in the background. Even GLAAD had something to say about it.
There’s a lot of reasons Pretty Little Liars doesn’t hold up in 2021: most notably making the inexplicable decision to pin the show’s major crimes and mysteries on a trans woman character, perpetually glorifying the relationship between a teacher and the student he stalked and abused, and killing off basically every Black character who ever came to town. Pretty Little Liars was on air long enough to see the whole world change around it. The TV landscape it launched in was not the TV landscape it landed in.
This show gave me a lot of laughs, a lot of notoriety as a lesbian writer, a lot of good friends, and more than a handful of grey hairs. The absurdity will stick with me, fondly, forever — but I’m never going to get over this pile of homosexual tootsies.