living single Archives

Very Special Gay Episode: Queen Latifah Was the Lesbian Fairy Godmother Holding Together Living Single’s Same-Sex Wedding

Welcome to Very Special Gay Episode, a fun little series where I recap standalone lesbian episodes from classic TV shows that are not otherwise necessarily gay. In this installment, we will discuss Living Single Season Three, Episode 22: “Woman-to-Woman”

There are few television shows that I would consider myself a legitimate TV “scholar” of — not in the way I would Living Single. Famously, my obsession with the peak 90s FOX sitcom lead to me having a Queen Latifah-themed birthday party in second grade. I’ve watched it quite nearly daily since it first went off air in 1998, first in after-school reruns and cable syndication, then on DVD (they only released the first season, a tragedy, but that did not stop me), and now on streaming. And every reunion show? Behind-the-scenes oral history? I was there. The Internet loves to joke about “besties” but Khadijah, Maxine, Synclaire and Regine? Those are my besties forreal. Those girls hold me down. Not past tense.

And maybe it’s because Living Single is still so alive for me, such a part of my everyday life, that I was shocked to find out that September marked its 30^thbirthday. For one, I refuse to be that old. But more to the point, I never thought I’d see the day where, even for a second, Living Single would get the well-earned due it deserves. But there it was… a commemorative sticker underneath its title on Max streaming, a special edition billboard on the same production lot where it used to get paid dust for Friends.

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It is hard to talk about Living Single without talking about Friends, because rock ’n’ roll and Elvis Presley vocals barely scratch the surface of what white America has stolen from Black people and Black culture. If you’ve never seen Living Single, first you should remedy that immediately — it’s available for streaming on both Max and Hulu. But also, the basic plot is that a group of twentysomethings learn about love, dating, and the meaning of friendship while stomping through hijinks in New York in the 90s. There’s also a few cross-group dating and big “will they/won’t they” romances peppered throughout. Is that sounding familiar? The show came out before Friends by exactly one year, and they both filmed on the same lot. I don’t have to say more on it, because plenty of others — including Living Single cast and crew — already have.

Plus, I mean, right now we’re here for the gay. And to celebrate Black greatness on its own terms, not in comparison to white people.

The structure of Living Single is that Khadijah (Queen Latifah) lives with her childhood best friend, Regine (Kim Fields), and her cousin, Synclaire (Kim Coles), in a Brooklyn brownstone. Across the street lives Khadijah’s college best friend, Maxine (Erika Alexander), and above the women’s apartment live Overton (John Henton) and Kyle (T.C. Carson). Today we are focused on Max. Let us begin our story.

Max and Khadijah both went to the HBCU Howard University. At Howard, Max’s roommate was Shayla (Karen Malina White) — which is a great winking nod to the fact that Erika Alexander and Karen Malina White played teenage best friends Pam and Charmaine on The ~~Cosby~~ Show, adding a little emotional depth to the story, if you know where to look.

Shayla is traveling up to Brooklyn with her fiancé, Chris, because the whole crew is throwing her a bridal shower that will somehow be only a few days before her wedding. The wedding will also take place in Brooklyn despite the fact that seemingly neither Shayla or Chris live there.

Does this timeline make sense!? No, but nothing made sense in the 90s. Go with it.

Everyone is getting ready for the bridal shower (Synclaire is hand-making little brides and grooms out of toilet paper) when Shayla shows up. We find out that Chris is short for Christina, her fiancée. Synclaire immediately starts ripping apart the toilet paper grooms while cheerfully exclaiming, “Lesbians! NEAT!” And we cut to the opening theme song.

People often wonder what life is like as the Editor-in-Chief of a gay magazine…

To jump around a little bit, because we only have so much time here, the most important thing to know is that even though Living Single is typically a very straight show (obvious lesbian prowess of Queen Latifah not withstanding), it is STUNNING and EXHILERATING how gay this episode is — not only in plot, but also in jokes.

About halfway through the episode, I noticed the trend and tried to keep a running tally of every gay joke I heard, and after roughly five minutes my hand was already cramping. My brain had broken. I gave up. On top of that, nearly every joke, every zinger, lands.

Even the jokes that made me most nervous, end on solid ground. Kyle — a known “ladies’ man” — stands out of Khadijah’s apartment before the lesbian bridal shower, proclaiming he can “change” every woman that crosses his path. When one woman in particular turns him down, he huffs, “You’re just like the rest of them, afraid of men.” Synclaire looks at him, her face in a confused pout, “That’s Khadijah’s friend Jamie — she’s straight.” His bruised ego rightfully becomes his own punchline.

But the star of “Woman-to-Woman,” surprising no one, is Queen Latifah herself.

Khadijah has always been read queerly. Maybe its my imagination, I know that ‘90s Queen Latifah was still far from being out herself, but I swear to you that Queen has never stood more proud, more swaggy, more effortlessly f*cking gay (in the every best possible way) than she does here. It’s not in what she says, it’s in how she says it. Her smirk, her hair bounce, her posture.

I wish for this sign to magically appear every time I walk into a new room.

When Synclaire makes a hot pink sign for the bridal shower that proclaims “WELCOME LESBIANS” — there is Khadijah to rip it down, mumbling to herself “Nah kid.”

When Synclaire proclaims, “I’m not up on lesbian etiquette. It’s not like I’ve ever known any before,” there is Khadijah again: “Aunt Gladys was gay.” (Hilariously, Synclaire’s response? “Aunt Gladys was not gay. She just never found the right man. Like her roommate, Aunt Hazel.”)

When the always exquisitely dressed and extremely straight Regine shows up to the bridal shower in a backwards cap and baggy shirt, arguing “Why put out the banquet, if they can’t eat.” There’s Khadijah with the knockout, “You succeeded. You definitely look like a sack lunch.”

And when Max struggles with her best friend’s coming out, there is Queen Latifah one final time with the simple, non-confrontational, pitch-perfect words of wisdom that every straight person best friend of a gay needs to hear:

Khadijah: Max let me ask you something, the entire time y’all roomed together, did she ever try to come on to you?
Max: No.
Khadijah: Okay, so she played it cool. That’s how much your friendship mattered to her.

Truer words have never been spoken, especially because as it turned out, the reason that Shayla kept her secret from Max for so long (she told Khadijah junior year back when they were all in college) was not because she worried Max couldn’t handle the news that she was gay. It was because she worried Max couldn’t handle the news that Shayla was, for years, in love with her. It’s a scene that plays out beautifully, equal parts raw emotion and well-earned humor, with the kind of charm that you’ll have hard time believing goes by so quickly for how deeply you become invested in it.

Most notably, in a hat trick that a lot of straight shows still would struggle to pull off today, there’s never an ounce of homophobia laced in their confrontation. Max isn’t freaked out that Shayla is gay, or even that Shayla once loved her — she’s bothered that her best friend didn’t feel like she could be her true self around her. It’s that nagging feeling that leads to the two friends making up on the morning of Shayla’s wedding.

Max visits Shayla at the beauty salon and just as the closing credits are about to roll, she can’t help but lament:

“Think of all the time we waisted. All the conversations we didn’t have. All those chances I would have had to diss your dates.”

Release the tape! Release the tape! (ahem. sorry.)

And that final joke, my friends… drumroll.. brings us to the end of this Very Special Gay Episode!

OK, Is It Worth It? I’m biased, but based on the sheer infinite levels of gay jokes packed into 22 minutes, the rareness of Very Special Gay episodes on Black Television, and of course Queen Latifah — this is a clear winner by every known metric. Congrats to series creator and writer Yvette Lee Bowser, a success!! 10/10, Would do it again.

My Top 10 Television Shows: Carmen Phillips, Who Has Always Been Rooting For Everybody Black

In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.

Today, Deputy Editor Carmen Phillips shares feelings about her favorite shows of all time.

I love television — a lot. By which I mean, a lot.

If we’re being honest, and I think we should because we’re only human after all, I wanted to impress you with my choices. I wanted to pick the definitive BEST television I’ve ever seen (especially because we’ve had so few chances to write about straight and/or cis gay men’s television on Autostraddle, you know? So, I wanted to flex a bit). I gave that up and decided I wanted to tell you my guilty pleasures, the stories that I know are awful but I gobble like sugar sweet candy and never complain — because what’s television, if not fun? Ultimately, I did neither of these things.

In the “shows that almost made the list” section at the bottom of this Top 10, you will find a mix of the shows I consider objectively to be The Best^TM and the shows that are my most saccharine pleasures (some are a bit of both!). But for the actual Top 10 you’re about to read below, I simply picked the TV shows that I’ve watched most often. These are the ones I’ve repeated over the years, worn out my streaming queue, and can recite entire scenes from memory without looking up from my keyboard.

It’s an abstract measure of what’s truly my “favorite” — but, oh well, life’s random. At least this gets us to good cross section. OK! Thanks for reading the disclaimer and here we go!

10. Glee

This show makes my Top 10 for one reason and one reason only: Naya Rivera’s performance as Santana Lopez.

A few years ago, here’s what I had to say:

“The only straight I am is STRAIGHT-UP BITCH” is one of the most empowering lines uttered by a queer woman on television. Santana bristled, but she loved. She really loved. She loved without being forced to be soft. That’s something that we don’t often see in “bitchy” television characters, especially in those written by men.

Santana was allowed to rage. When she was in the closet, she took all the hate she was feeling about herself and she spewed it out. Maybe that sounds off-putting in retrospect, but let me tell you — back then it was cathartic. Kurt, Glee’s other resident gay, was a sympathetic queer character. He had a bit of a snarky sense of humor, but when he got bullied, he cried, and the audience cried with him. When he came out, his father loved him and hugged him and then we got to cry some more. His storyline was hopeful and optimistic. I don’t want to take anything away from Kurt or his importance in television history. But here’s the thing about Santana — she was the bully. She wasn’t a saintly gay. She found it hard to love herself, so in turn she made it hard to love her. She told her abuela that she had to come out because every day felt like a war. She was tired of fighting with herself. I wept. So many of us know what it feels like to tear yourself in two from the inside out, to put up armor and hope that no one will notice. My armor was a smile, Santana’s was an insult. And bless her for it.

Thank you Naya.

9. Grey’s Anatomy

When I talk about Grey’s Anatomy, here’s usually the first thing I say: There’s no version of my coming out story that doesn’t also involve Sara Ramirez as Callie Torres. That’s still true — but also there’s no way to talk about my humor, or the ways I’ve learned to cope through the worst of my depression, or the entire decade of my 20s, without also talking about Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve watched it so many times on a loop that it’s actually embedded itself into my DNA. I wouldn’t still be here if I hadn’t had Grey’s — with it’s drawn out monologues and needlessly complicated sexcapades — glowing that soft, quiet hummm into my darkest corners.

8. Friday Night Lights

Maybe you’ve heard of this thing? It’s called “Texas Forever.”

I’ve never been to Texas, and I’ve only ever sat through about three complete football games in my life, but also I’ve got to tell you, Friday Night Lights is some of the finest television ever written. It’s about football, but only as much it’s also about learning strength of character and how to love or what it even means to grow up. It’s about finding and building community. To be honest, when I think of Friday Night Lights, I barely even consider it a television show. Its scripts are so meticulously plotted, with characters who leave as their high school years wane and graduate, but core themes that hold steady throughout — it feels more like a long-form novel about a small Texas town. Ironically, that’s something a lot of pretentious critics say about The Wire, a show that couldn’t be further away from Friday Night Lights in terms of subject or tone if it tried. Still, I think the same adage applies here.

(Many write ups of FNL point to its earlier seasons as a highlight, but I’ve always been partial to a baby-faced Michael B. Jordan’s years in Seasons Four and Five. Those seasons also co-star a young Jurnee Smollet-Bell, whom you’ll see a repeat performance from on this list in exactly one second… )

7. Underground

Yes, I realize that I did an explainer defining the rules of this Top 10 list — namely that no matter how great or masterful, no show that I’ve ever only seen once could make the cut — but rules are made to broken and if there’s ever been a need for an exception, this is it.

Underground only lasted for two short and criminally undervalued seasons on WGN (you can currently find them streaming on Hulu). Its legacy got cut short because period dramas are expensive and WGN wanted out of the original programming business, but if you’ve ever trusted my opinion any piece of television criticism, you’ll make it your business to seek it out.

It’s true that I’ve only seen Underground once, but that’s for a very good reason. The highest praise I can give is this: I hate, and I mean genuinely loathe, fictional stories about slavery. It’s my steadfast belief that there are so many better ways to spend my one beautiful precious Black life than being re-traumatized by watching my people be abused, raped, and in chains. And yet — Underground is triumphant. It’s determined, and considered, and hopeful without ever once losing track of the violence, torture, or purposeful cruelty that enslaved Black Americans were subjected to. In Season Two, Aisha Hind’s Harriet Tubman has the honor of what I still consider to be the single greatest hour of performance put forth by a Black woman on television. Jurnee Smollet-Bell’s protagonist is a heroine of epic portions — fierce, loyal to her family, relentlessly brave. If you loved Amirah Vann’s Tegan Price in How To Get Away with Murder, you are wholly unprepared for her breakout role in this series. Autostraddle favorite Jasika Nicole is also prominently featured.

Like so many others, I’ve spent a lot of time this summer thinking about Black stories and media consumption. Underground is what happens when you purposefully decenter whiteness in our history and the stories we tell ourselves about it. You should watch it.

6. Noah’s Arc

Patrik Ian Polk’s Noah’s Arc is only rivaled by The L Word (hold one second on that!) when it comes to television shows that fundamentally shaped by baby gayhood as a queer Black woman. Those who know know, but Noah’s Arc was truly FOR US, BY US television — it didn’t have fancy Showtime backing, the sets and costumes were sometimes a little budget tight, but the love behind and in front of the camera was always sincere and overflowing.

When similarly placed (and much more mainstream) shows, like Queer as Folk and The L Word, were busy associating gayness with whiteness in our media, Noah’s Arc was the 1^stplace I saw ball culture, or learned about Black prides, or literally saw ANY gay Black couple love each other EVER. I was wrecked when Noah was beaten horribly in a hate crime. When Ricky briefly gave up his fuckboi ways and fell in love with Wilson Cruz’s Junito? I swooned hard. Alex’s everything is a Forever Mood. The first gay wedding that made me cry? 100% that was Wade and Noah in the spin-off movie Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom (and yes, I went out of my way to see the film opening night, thank you very much). Noah’s Arc was a window. More than that — a mirror. A mirror that I could be fully black, fully queer, at the same time.

If you’ve never seen Noah’s Arc, the first nine episodes are currently available online. The feature film Jumping the Broom is available as well. Earlier this summer, the cast and creator filmed a special Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter themed reunion episode that’s since been released on YouTube — and no less than four people I love sent me the original press announcement within an hour of its release. I’m just here to give Darryl Stephens and Patrik Ian Polk all of their flowers.

5. The L Word // The L Word: Generation Q

Ah yes, who realized that we’d arrive here eventually? The L Word portion of the list! The thing is, looking back over my television watching life, I’m genuinely surprised how many times I have re-watched The L Word!!

I mean, OK, I’m a queer TV/Film critic and also a senior editor on a lesbian website, so this probably doesn’t surprise many of you — but it surprised me. Even more than that, I’m genuinely surprised at how much I enjoy watching it? The L Word has very rightly been held to tough criticism over the last ten years. The original is famously bathed in whiteness and never did right by Tasha or for that matter, a single trans character. The reboot still has yet to cast a dark skinned Black woman or literally any woman who’s not a sample size. But even with all of that, I still genuinely fucking love both of these shows.

The L Word has often caused hurt, but damn does it get back up and try again. It always seems to find a way — a conversation between friends who use nothing but their eyes, the way that queer women pile on top of each other to say hello and drink wine out of mugs, working up the courage to ask that hot neighbor next door out on a first date, all of it — to remind me that it’s still home.

Plus, every time Bette Porter says “Fuck.” My heart.

4. Orange is the New Black

Speaking of shows that have caused hurt, may I welcome you to Orange is the New Black?

Listen I don’t know what to tell you, I once loved this show with passion and absolute fire, and then I was left betrayed and brokenhearted by a writers’ room and showrunner who had no interest in telling stories that respected Black and Brown women as opposed to actively traumatizing them. Somehow along the way, I found myself back to… well, I can’t say I’ve ever forgiven this show, Jenji Kohan burned that bridge long ago, but I did come back around to appreciating it.

Here’s the kindest, truest thing I can say about Orange is the New Black: Almost everything about how we tell women’s stories in the last decade, queer women’s stories, stories about trans women and women of color, all of it — it all changed because of this one single show. Perhaps Orange is the New Black’s greatest gift and curse will be that it lived long enough to watch its metaphorical TV children outgrow it.

I’ll never watch another Jenji Kohan show for as long as I live, but this cast was magic. I’ll always be grateful for the women of Litchfield and the summers they stayed my life.

3. Pose

It is sincerely dumbfounding how good one television show can be. At this point I feel as if I’ve written so much about Pose that I might as well be blue in the face. But you know what? Here goes one more:

With skill and artistry, Steven Canals and Janet Mock have tapped into a purity and resiliency and love that beats raw at the center of so many queer chosen families for Black and Brown trans and queer folks. Then, they splashed it in our full splendor across our screens, immortalizing us the same way white cis people have been able to see themselves for years.

I can go on. I could talk about how I’d never seen a Black Puerto Rican femme who’s the mother of her queer chosen family who reminded me so much of myself until I saw Mj Rodriguez’s Blanca Evangelista (down to her arroz con gandules served straight from the caldero). Or how I’ve held Angelica Ross’ performance as Candy in my heart for two years. I could talk about how Billy Porter is shattering glass ceilings on the awards circuit, and how rampant transphobia simultaneously keeps Pose from collecting all the little gold statues it rightly deserves.

In the opening of Pose, Elektra wonders what category to walk. Blanca responds: ROYALTY. Pose is so much more than luxurious ballroom runways; it knows we’re fucking rich. It knows that small family dinners surrounded by the people who really see you are worth more than gold. It knows even in the specter of death, queer folks don’t falter. We hold on to each other harder and stronger — and that fortitude is worth an entire crown of jewels. We’ve earned our diamonds because we withstood the pressure.

2. Living Single

When Autostraddle first designed this Top 10 series, there were two shows that I never doubted for a second would be the last two standing. And honestly, the two are so closely tied in my mind that I couldn’t figure out how to rank them separately. In the spirit of democracy (ha!) I did a impartial straw poll of my three oldest friends and my mom — another show won (barely), but more on that in a bit.

It may be a sitcom, but I take Living Single very seriously. I take it seriously that this Black television show, on what was once the last place ranked FOX broadcast network, centered on the friendships of four Black women, became the entire blueprint for a better known white juggernaut that many would later say defined the decade. I’d argue those critics who flaunt Friends as being definitive are plainly and factually wrong; there isn’t a thing Friends did that Living Single didn’t do first and with essentially 1/8^th the budget. Tattoo it on my skin. I stand by it.

I’ve watched Living Single front-to-back every year, every single year, since 1993 when I was in 2^nd grade. That summer I basically had a Queen Latifah themed birthday party. As a present, of my mom’s friends got me Queen’s Black Reign album on cassette tape! The unedited “adult” version, so you just knew I was big time!

Living Single is on Hulu, if you’ve never seen it or want to catch up. It’s always funny in the way you want “classic” sitcoms to be, and it leads with its heart. After watching for 30 minutes, you can’t help but feel a little more settled about the world. (Also there’s a lesbian themed special episode in Season Three — 3×22 “Woman to Woman” — that, just like the rest of the show, pokes fun without laughing at you and ultimately lands exactly where you want to be.) The most important thing to know, that I will take no debate over, is that Max and Kyle are second greatest Black love story on television.

Want to know the first?

1. A Different World

Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert forever.

Debbie Allen’s magnum opus was so ahead of its time 30 years ago, and it gets better with age. Do you want to know who was frank, honest conversations about consent and the responsibility of men not to rape all the way back in 1989? That would be A Different World. Who was talking about growing HIV/AIDS rates in Black communities when the President of the United States could barely choke out the virus’ name? Oh that would also be A Different World, back in 1991. What about racist hate crimes on college campuses? 1992 — and you already know the deal. Debbie found time to dedicate entire episodes to Black history icons like Lena Horne or Alvin Alley, not to mention creating graciously realistic goals for Black hair care while living in a college dorm.

But what makes A Different World absolutely iconic is not its myriad of “Very Special Episodes” in that late 80s way — it’s that it is legitimately funny and feels “lived in” in the way you feel once you’ve settled in on a college campus. As a viewer, it’s so easy to genuinely believe these characters are best friends trying to figure out young adulthood and life. It’s a true work of large ensemble and in that light, there are very few other sitcoms like it. Most focus on a central cast of four or five — A Different World tapped out somewhere around nine!! With so many characters to keep track of, the show becomes an ideal masterclass in the tight 22 minute, three-act script. It’s also a surprisingly gripping slow burn romantic comedy (and here I am in 2020, still looking for a nerdy lil’ butch Dwayne Wayne with flip-up glasses to call my own).

There’s a reason that you can still buy Hillman college sweatshirts online 33 years after the show’s debut, a reason why Lena Waithe named her company “Hillman Grad Productions” — it’s because Debbie Allen took us to school. May we continue to be her legacy.

(A Different World is available on Amazon Prime, but if you’ve never seen the show you should start at Season Two and just thank me later.)

Shows that almost made the list: Vida, One Day at a Time, The Wire, The Sopranos, The Crown, Jane the Virgin, The West Wing, How to Get Away with Murder, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Big Little Lies, Sex and the City, This Is Us, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gilmore Girls, Oz

The greatest show ever made about friends making it as family in New York City, don’t @ me. You’ll sit down to watch one episode and be so instantly transported back to the ’90s you’ll emerge from a contented haze hours later.

Stream on: Hulu

Derry Girls

Please, I am begging you, just watch this show.

Stream on: Netflix

TV’s Favorite Fictional Writers, Ranked From Worthless to Wondrous

The first “rule” of writing is “write what you know,” which is why so many TV writers create TV characters who are also writers. The layer on top of that is TV criticism, which is writers writing about writers writing TV shows about writers. It’s navel-gazing at its absolute inception point and I’m here today to engage in it — because every few months our TV Team finds ourselves in the middle of a tirade about a fictional writer that leads us down a rabbit hole of all the fictional writers we have loved and hated in our lives. We have a lot of opinions about this topic, which makes us think y’all might also have a lot of opinions about it. Below are 33 of TV’s most popular fictional writers, ranked from worthless to wondrous.

The feelings in this post are my own; they do not reflect the opinions of the entire TV Team.

33. Ezra Fitz, Pretty Little Liars

Claim to fame: Ostinato, a true crime novel he wrote about a murdered teenager he had stalked, which he researched by stalking her grieving friends, who were also his students, one of whom he seduced. Also: Then and Now, a true crime novel about his murdered fiancée (who came back to life after he had a different fiancée, who happened to be that former student he stalked and seduced, and who also basically wrote this entire book).

32. Dan Humphrey, Gossip Girl

Claim to fame: He wrote Inside, a roman à clef about going to private high school on the Upper East Side. Main character: Dylan Hunter. Also: Between one million and ten trillion texts from Gossip Girl and a poem called “Sluts” about his girlfriend that he published in The New Yorker.

31. Dawson Leery, Dawson’s Creek

Claim to fame: No less than 100 terrible screenplays, ultimately the showrunner of a TV show called The Creek.

30. Rory Gilmore, Gilmore Girls

Claim to fame: Went on Obama’s presidential campaign trail, came home and promptly began falling asleep when talking to sources, sleeping with sources, calling editors on the phone to pitch bad stories, going into interviews with zero story ideas, trying to turn the Stars Hollow Gazette into the paper of record for the entire northeastern United States.

29. Jane Sloane, The Bold Type

Claim to fame: Rarely conceives a good story pitch, yet too good to write every story ever assigned to her. Wrote three entire semi-popular articles at Scarlet magazine, invited to sit on a prestigious panel of successful writers, immediately felt so stifled that she left her childhood dream job to work at a startup from which she was promptly fired, lived in her failure for a time, per Jacquline’s righteous instructions.

28. Zoe Barnes, House of Cards

Claim to fame: An upstart reporter on The Herald‘s metro beat who became Frank Underwood’s media mouthpiece which led her to the job of White Hose Correspondent which ultimately led to her being hurled in front of a train by Frank.

27. Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Claim to fame: William the Bloody got his name from his bloody awful poetry, and then he murdered about ten billion people, and then he got a soul. His poetry was still terrible, though. To wit: “My soul is wrapped in harsh repose, midnight descends in raven-colored clothes. But soft, behold! A sunlight beam butting a swath of glimmering gleam. My heart expands, ’tis grown a bulge in it, Inspired by your beauty. Effulgent.”

26. Nick Miller, New Girl

Claim to fame: Z is for Zombie, a novel that misspelled the word “rhythm” three dozen times and a follow-up novel called The Pepperwood Chronicles about a New Orleans detective fighting “the alligator within.”

25. Kara Danvers, Supergirl

Claim to fame: Got fired from her newspaper reporting job for going rogue and publishing an article using herself as a source, which is called “writing an essay,” despite being told directly that she needed sources (which she already should have known), and despite the fact that multiple sources were available to her.

24. Chidi, The Good Place

Claim to fame: An ethics manuscript that took Michael — who can read all of human literature in one hour — two weeks to finish.

23. Stacy Merkin, The L Word

Claim to fame: Wrote a New Yorker article Jenny Schecter loved, then wrote a “piece of shit article” about Jenny Schecter in a “little magazine called Curve,” replete with “sloppy syntax and grammar.” (For a more favorable review just type in Publisher’s Weekly dot com Jennifer Schecter.)

22. Jenny Schecter, The L Word

Claim to fame: Masterpieces Lez Girls the novel and Lez Girls the movie.

21. Hannah Horvath, Girls

Claim to fame: Freelance article on trying cocaine for the first time, e-book of essays that never came to fruition, advertorials writer at GQ, Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where she received critiques such as “too Fifty Shades of Grey“), published in New York Times Modern Love column, finalist in Moth’s Story SLAM, teacher of “the internet” to students at a small liberal arts college, aspiring voice of her generation.

20. Tina Belcher, Bob’s Burgers

Claim to fame: Erotic fan fiction writer (definitely in her journal, also presumably on Tumblr).

19. Devon, I Love Dick

Claim to fame: An aspiring playwright who explores “the self-abjection that a woman goes through in order to unleash her desire” and “swaggers around in some kind of shadow polarity of Kevin Bacon.” Also Riese’s favorite TV character of 2017.

18. Alice Pieszecki, The L Word

Claim to fame: The Chart and at least one freelance article on vaginal rejuvenation.

17. Jughead, Riverdale

Claim to fame: Writer for various school newspapers who is also working on a true crime novel about Riverdale that features literary gems such as “Guilt, innocence. Good, evil. Life, death. As the shadows around Riverdale deepened, the lines that separated these polar opposites blurred and distorted. ‘I’m guilty,’ Cheryl said in biology class. But of what?”

16. Diane Nguyen, BoJack Horseman

Claim to fame: Ghost writer of BoJack Horseman’s tell-all biography, One Trick Pony, and the writer of the biography Secretariat: a Life. Also a ghostwriter of celebrity tweets.

15. Richard Castle, Castle

Claim to fame: Author of 41 best-selling crime novels.

14. Sabrina, Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Claim to fame: Her magical typewriter liked her creative writing assignments so much it brought them to life! She also wrote a variety of exposés for the school newspaper.

13. Dr. Watson, Sherlock

Claim to fame: Sherlock didn’t write his own stories; Watson did.

12. Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

Claim to fame: A magazine column about sex and dating that she turned into several successful memoirs.

11. Suzanne Warren, Orange Is the New Black

Claim to fame: The Time Hump Chronicles, an erotic novel that took Litchfield by storm and spawned its own fandom and fan fiction. It’s not just sex, it’s love. It’s two people connecting, with four other people, and aliens.

10. Gabrielle, Xena: Warrior Princess

Claim to fame: A self-trained bard, she wrote her and Xena’s adventures down on scrolls, which her decedents used to make a TV show. Notable gay scribbles: “I sing of the wrath of Callisto, the pain of Gabrielle and the courage of Xena, and the inevitable mystery of a friendship as immortal as the gods.”

9. Jessica Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

Claim to fame: Her debut novel, A Case of a Knife to the Brain, didn’t sell as well as expected (owing to being released the same day as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, of course), but Plaintiff Stephen King says, “Jessica Huang is scarier than any character I could ever write myself.”

8. Lois Lane, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

Claim to fame: She’s the award-winning ace reporter of Metropolis’ leading newspaper, The Daily Planet.

7. Liz Lemon, 30 Rock

Claim to fame: Writing and showrunning multiple seasons of The Girlie Show and TGS with Tracy Jordan, which earned her at least one Emmy.

6. Peggy Olson, Mad Men

Claim to fame: The real-life Peggy Olson was the first woman to rule Madison Avenue. And so was fictional Peggy Olson, who went from secretary to copywriter to copy chief at some of the most successful ad agencies in the world, through raw talent and a relentless work ethic and sheer force of will.

5. River Song, Doctor Who

Claim to fame: Melody Malone: Private Detective in Old New York Town, a noir novel that was actually a memoir which she published from the future to help her mom, her dad, and her husband not destabilize their nearly catastrophic time paradox even further. Also, centuries worth of spoiler-filled journals.

4. Jane Gloriana Villanueva, Jane the Virgin

Claim to fame: Snow Falling, a best-selling debut romance novel that received such praise as “BRILLIANT. MOVING. MASTERFUL. I laughed, I sobbed, I even danced. The best novel of the century,” from Rogelio De La Vega.

3. Khadijah James, Living Single

Claim to fame: The always-hustling editor-in-chief of her own indie magazine, Flavor. She wrote, she managed, she accounted, she did it all and paid other women to do it alongside her.

2. Jessica Fletcher, Murder She Wrote

Claim to fame: 43 mystery novels, total. Among them: The Corpse Danced at Midnight, A Faded Rose Beside Her, Dirge for a Dead Dachshund, and Ashes, Ashes, Fall Down Dead. And she didn’t even start writing until after she was retired!

1. HG Wells, Warehouse 13

Claim to fame: Just some of the greatest works of literature in all of human history: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Love Song of Myka Ophelia Bering.

We Relived the Black, Feminist Magic of “Living Single” and You Can Too

Living Single, the quintessential sitcom of the 90s — at least for Black women — was finally added to Hulu’s online streaming in January. Rejoice and binge!

In an era of cash-grab reboots and seemingly-identical multi-camera sitcoms lacking identity or, apparently, purpose, it’s comforting to return to one of the OGs. Living Single created the tropes that now saturate TV, but pleasantly, over 20 years later, it still holds up.

The ’90s were chock-full of incredible Black sitcoms: A Different World, Family Matters, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and my personal favorite as a young person, My Brother and Me, showed for-the-time diverse representations of Black life. In retrospect we can see that it’s overwhelmingly upper/middle class, cis, straight Black life, but at least we weren’t all in poverty or just sidekicks, tokens, and/or comic relief. Living Single was also the very first primetime comedy developed by a Black woman, Yvette Lee Bowser!

And it shows. A perfect example of 90s Black feminist media, the show makes plain its message and aesthetic with its theme song, performed by Queen Latifah — who also plays main character Khadijah, in one of her first major acting roles. “I]n a nineties kind of world/ I’m glad I got my girls/…Whenever this life gets tough, you gotta fight/ With my homegirls standing to my left and my right.”

The series focuses on the professional, personal, and — especially — love lives of four single Black women in their mid-to-late 20s as they attempt to find fulfilling relationships and career success in New York City. Living Single premiered in 1993, a year before Friends, five years before Sex and the City, and long before Girls. All of these shows (and so many others) are about a group of single professional women in a big city, and all of them borrowed Living Single’s premise —except with all-white casts). Living Single also premiered years before the Spice Girls brought “Girl Power” to the masses and ushered in a mainstream ’90s feminism that owed a lot to the show.

Looking at Living Single from 2018 is interesting. Unlike many ’90s (and, honestly, 2000s) sitcoms, which don’t hold up because of their pervasive casual misogyny and transantagonism, Living Single seems remarkably ahead of its time and offers meaningful messages that continue to resonate.

Knowing what we now (sort of) know about Queen Latifah, I was excited for a rewatch to see whether any lesbianism would work its way to the surface. While Latifah has played straight characters for most of her career, it’s a little disappointing in retrospect to see main character Khadijah join her peers in pining over men (who, true to ’90s Black mainstream media tropes, all appear to be ain’t shit). However aggressively heterosexual she plays her character, though, something that’s so refreshing about Living Single is how resolutely these women choose their friendships over their relationships with men.

Well, most of the time. As early as the second episode, Maxine and Regine have a falling out when Maxine dates Regine’s ex. By the end of the episode, though, they resolve to always prioritize each other and to never let a man get between them — unless he’s “really fine,” of course, then “all bets are off.” It’s funny in context, especially given the cackling that follows. And the next scene sees them all in pajamas, gettig ready for bed and singing about how much they love each other.

This factor is a consistent joy throughout the rewatch. The women have wildly different opinions about the issues they face, and butt heads often, but always seem to respect each other. A common thread in contemporary sitcoms is that writers and producers seem to confuse being mean with being funny. Khadijah and Regine, especially, rib each other constantly, but you can always see that the love is there. This is something that Black people will immediately recognize — it’s called “signifyin’” or “playing the dozens” — but something non-Black communities seem to struggle with.

Consider this scene from Friends:

Ross insults his sister, and though she’s smiling you can tell she’s upset. She decides to fire back at everyone else in the room by mentioning what might be their most embarrassing experiences, and the looks on everyone’s faces show that they’re shocked and bothered. Monica runs out of the room. (In the same episode: Joey punishes Chandler for kissing his girlfriend, who he was emphatically not exclusive with, by locking him in a huge wooden box; and Ross continuously badgers Rachel over something minor and turns it into an emotional fight despite it being Thanksgiving dinner and Monica having a date at the table). Regardless of the title of the show, they don’t seem like very good friends.

But on Living Single, it’s clear that the characters are in it for each other. In the third episode, the crew finds out that Synclaire hasn’t been on a date in a while. Regine resolves to set Synclaire up, and in the process teases Khadijah about her lack of a love life. Khadijah fires back at Regine for “giving it away with a double coupon” — sex shaming Regine, and not for the first or last time — but Regine smiles and shrugs in response. At no point does this back and forth feel nasty. They’re just teasing each other, and love each other, and this is shown by how, when it matters, they consistently have each other’s backs.

They also consistently laugh at each other’s jokes, something I didn’t realize was missing from other sitcoms until I rewatched this one. Their smiles and laughter are proof that they’re not just throwing insults at each other, they’re exchanging jokes with each other. The difference is crucial.

The girls regularly trade the role of butt of the joke — Regine gets back at Khadijah a bit later, when Khadijah asks Synclaire whether she wants to be hooked up with “some sorry excuse for a date,” or whether she want to “run her own life.” After a pause, and with a huge smile, she exclaims, “I want a date!”

Regine has a lot of sex, and though the other girls rib her for it, they don’t look down on her (unlike on Sex and the City, wherein Carrie sleeps with a new guy every episode but still can’t seem to resist sex-shaming Samantha constantly). Khadijah is often positioned as the moral center of the show, but she also validates the other girls’ positions when they diverge from her own. Khadijah seems to want Synclaire to be more like her — self-possessed and independent — but as soon as the others start setting Synclaire up on her date, Khadijah doesn’t interfere. Neither do any of the other girls — who all seem to want Synclaire to be a high-powered, successful, independent woman like themselves — look down on her for eventually getting together with simple-minded but sweet Overton.

This example also illuminates how the show, like its contemporaries, had to walk a fine line between expressing its feminist message and capitulating to the cultural expectation that success means finding a husband as much as having one’s career ambitions validated. “What would the world be like without men?” Asks Synclaire in the first episode. “A bunch of fat, happy women and no crime,” declares Khadijah. Nonetheless all of the women prioritize dating and relationships at least as much as their careers.

The girls do have careers, though. Maxine is a successful divorce attorney (who brags in the first episode about a case she just won, in the wife’s favor, and positions herself as using her career as a means to right past, sexist wrongs). Khadijah runs a Black women’s magazine with a clear feminist bent. When Synclaire accidentally ruins a Maya Angelou cover story, Khadijah audibles and runs a story exposing men who lie about being married to sleep with and then dispose of women. Synclaire is Khadijah’s assistant, and also an aspiring actress, but also seems content with a simple life focused on interpersonal relationships. Regine does a variety of things. She’s ostensibly a buyer for a clothing boutique, but her primary career seems to be as a negotiator of the patriarchal bargain: using men for their money to promote herself and live the kind of life she wants.

Khadijah, Maxine, Synclaire, and Regine are a fascinating, diverse group that introduced the standard sitcom blueprint with which we’re now quite familiar. Khadijah is the straight-laced voice of reason; Regine is the sexually-charged, upwardly-mobile maneater; Synclaire is the new age, book-dumb, lovable weirdo; and Maxine is the quirky, self-possessed but often single battle-axe.

Also part of the group are their male friends: Kyle, an arrogant but charming stockbroker who mirrors Regine (an early scene where they, in unison, go over the standard “it’s not you, it’s me” breakup speech is gold); and Overton, a simple, earnest handyman who is a foil (and love interest) to Synclaire. And the parade of mostly uninteresting (and largely terrible) men they date throughout the series.

Living Single is more than just the blueprint for future TV sitcoms, however. Like the shows that came afterward, it attempted to validate the experiences of “modern,” career-oriented women and the struggles they face to be successful in their lives and loves. But it did so with something so many of the sitcoms that came afterward lack: heart.

I like my television to be entertainment first and foremost — simultaneously funny, relatable and, well, entertaining. The best shows, however, provide a thoughtful window into deeper aspects of the human experience: the nature of intimate friendship; or the difficulty in navigating a sexist, patriarchal culture; or the paradox of wanting to succeed on one’s own terms coupled with the desire to be validated in spite of that success (or lack thereof). What Living Single did so poignantly was capture these ideas without succumbing to the basest aspects of the human experience, especially when portrayals of women are involved. The put-downs, the jockeying for position in the eyes of men, the insults and backstabbing and cheating and blatant disrespect.

In this way, Living Single stands among the greats, and is fully deserving of a nice, long block of time in your binge watching schedule.