Back on the festival grounds, Dani’s eating a floral decoration while leaving Dre a voice mail that contains sentiments including “of course I want you to come” and “I love you” and “I love you” and “I love you.”
Alice gets on the mike and announces that Bette & Tina are stuck in a fridge and encourages the crowd to enjoy the open bar!
Dani decides to enjoy her drugs by letting go on the dance floor of her mind and it’s just so absolutely and completely fun? While I continue side-eyeing this show’s absolutely bonkers position on drugs and alcohol, it’s been a delight to see Dani keep opening up and discovering more of herself this season. (That said, I’d give it all up for Gigi!)
Pippa then saunters by their general vicinity, dropping a “nice meeting you Sophie Suarez” as she goes. Dani and Roxy encourage Sophie to get it, but first Dani fills Sophie in — Pippa’s an incredible artist who thinks Dani is the devil but Dani is obsessed with her and also Pippa used to date Bette Porter.
“Go have fun!” Dani enthuses. “Fun is super fun!” Sophie beelines for Pippa and Dani immediately starts crying and turns to Roxy: “I just love Sophie! I never thought we’d be friends again but we are!” It’s adorable.
Sophie and Pippa’s banter is perfection? Pippa admitting she’s not devastated to hear her ex is locked in a fridge and Sophie saying “this is a level of petty I aspire to”? Consenting to steal the golf cart, driving off the grounds to go flirt more somewhere else? I knew it’d take a lot to get me off my Sinley train for even one stop and I guess this is the “a lot” I was seeking!!
Bad news; Angie’s brought Hendrix Fitz to the wedding as a personal attack on me. Her Moms spy him through their tiny window to the world and are upset, but Angie’s certain they just need to get to know him better! Bette is certain there’s nothing to discuss if he doesn’t want to acknowledge the power dynamics of the relationship!
Squabble #19: Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of?
In the Ring: Hendrix vs Angie
Content: Hendrix Fitz is a big idiot dummy who’s moving to New York City ’cause one (1) publisher is vaguely interested in his work, which doesn’t make sense at all on any level in the history of levels, but he failed to tell Angie this in time for him to be excluded from this episode and replaced by Bella, as per my pre-stated preference on the dietary restrictions portion of the wedding RSVP. So they finally break up thank G-d, get this man out of my show!!!!!
Who Wins? Bette and Tina, but Angie demands they refrain from an “I told you so.”
We then return to Maribel and Micah’s. Micah’s freaking out. The show has decided that this is the moment and this is the manner in which we are going to address how Maribel’s disability intersects with her pregnancy. Except not really! We’re just going to have Micah and Maribel tear each other’s hearts out!
Squabble #20: Baby Talk
In the Ring: Micah vs. Maribel
Content: Micah asks what’ll happen if Maribel dies in childbirth or after childbirth, a possibility he’s apparently unclear on because he “doesn’t know a lot about her disability yet.” As someone who has simply causally googled this topic, there are a lot of complications specific to pregnant people with muscular dystrophy but “death during childbirth” is not one of them! Anyhow, Maribel bristles at the suggestion. He then brings up one true thing, which’s that pregnancy could be hard on her heart and labor could be hard on her body.
Micah: “The heart is a muscle. Labor is intense.”
Maribel: “I can handle it.”
Micah: “I wanna talk about what happens if you can’t!”
Maribel: “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Who Wins? It’s not over! But nobody is going to win, just FYI.
Luckily for all of us here, I have a lot to say about this story! So buckle up!
There’s two ways we tend to analyze stories like this: at the story level, obviously (how it functions for these characters in this narrative) and how it fares as representation of marginalized identities. The latter isn’t always the most pressing angle to address, but in this case, it is — because TLWGQ has been so deliberate and often self-congratulatory about its representational achievements and specifically about its improved representation of trans people. When it comes to offering compelling, nuanced representation of a Latinx woman with a disability and an Asian-American trans man, this story fails and will be serving an extended sentence. And putting this fight in this episode — saddling these two characters with a painful and incoherent argument while the rest of the cast is enjoying the festive, love-filled culmination of all those #tibetteisendgame billboards (except Tess, of course, one of three trans actors who find themselves suffering by the end of the episode) — absolutely not! Digging into the ways in which pregnancy and child-rearing will be different for Maribel in an affirming environment could be a great step for representation: acknowledging that different types of bodies handle pregnancy differently for all kinds of reasons and that’s okay and fine and beautiful! Answers to Micah’s question about labor exist! One of them is “a C-section”!
From a story level? It’s sloppy at best. On the upside, it tracks: Maribel is stubborn and sometimes a little mean, and Micah is often hesitant to broach tough topics. It’s reasonable that Micah would fear saying anything ever that’d make Maribel feel like he was hyper-focused on her disability, especially as a trans man of color who also finds others fixated on those identities rather than his full humanity. On the downside, the timing of this argument is baffling, especially as Maribel does suggest they’ve visited a doctor already, and the doctor absolutely would’ve gone through the potential risks and complications with them in that visit. And Micah’s fixation on Mari potentially dying during childbirth is arguably dangerous to even include in this fight, as it’s a largely unfounded fear, seemingly prioritized because of its dramatics instead of its scientific accuracy. I wish Mari was at least given a line to debunk it.
We don’t know much about the ableism Maribel’s experienced in her life and how it’s shaped her relationship to her body or to medical doctors but it’s easy to come up with some ways to fill that void to get us here.
Like this: she’s always dreamed of having kids but doctors have always discouraged her from doing so and therefore she avoided doctors in this process. Micah reads stuff online that concerns him and stuff that indicates their chances of a successful pregnancy would improve with an in-office insemination rather than an at-home process. They clash on this topic, get vulnerable about their fears and flaws, and consequently Micah hits up his LGBTQ+ Center network to find a disability-affirming, trans-inclusive doctor who breaks down those walls and helps them prepare for a successful and healthy pregnancy. Maribel acknowledges that maybe just maybe he was right this time and they proceed accordingly. The season ends two weeks after Mari’s first IUI. Mari took an at-home test and they’re debating if the incredibly faint line is real or invisible or a false positive ’cause of the hormones from her ovulation trigger shot. They get a blood test at the doctor in the morning and are spending this final day of the season waiting to hear back, trying to distract themselves to no avail, which eventually leads them to decide to crash the wedding just to get the test off their minds for one second. They celebrate with their pals. At the episode’s end, they realize they missed a call from the doctor’s office and pull up their voicemail. Was it negative or positive? We do not know. Cliffhanger!
Cut to Tess going HAM on a vial of cocaine with Denver, I have no desire to dwell on this moment further.
Pippa and Sophie have relocated to a casual farm situation where they can flirt and be a potential artsy lesbian power couple in relative peace and inhale the noxious fumes of gassy cows. Pippa shares that she’s doing a career retrospective at the Hammer! Sophie explains her journey to The Aloce Show and Pippa asks what’s next for her. Sophie says she just got a promotion but that’s not what Pippa was asking — she was asking what Sophie’s next doc is gonna be about. Sophie’s not sure what it’ll be about or what the right time is to focus on another film. Pippa says there’s never a right time. But perhaps this is the right time to kiss????
Instead of kissing through the mooo like Maureen and Joanne, they allow this bovine to thwart their makeout sesh? But great news: Pippa’s decided to stay for the wedding after all!
Dani’s being cute and kissy with Roxy but this too is interrupted ’cause the Hays code prevents queer people from kissing for more than twenty seconds on this show and anybody who dares to break these rules will be forced on a six-episode hiatus or else they have to die. Anyhow surprise (not really ’cause we’ve known about this cameo for months but) it’s noted non-binary Australian drummer-turned-singer G-Flip, described by People Magazine as someone who “went from busting beats in their bedroom to becoming a star on the rise,” who’s at the party with their noted Selling Sunset Seller Chrishell Stause!
Turns out lesbian real estate is an insular community ’cause indeed, Crishell does know Dani’s ex-girlfriend Gigi Ghorbani and reveals off-handedly that Gigi’s engaged to Nat, who G-Flip and Crishell note “likes public sex.” So weird they’re talking about sex on this show that is NOT about having sex!!!!
Dani’s thrown off by this revelation but realizes in short order that in fact she’s over Gigi. I’m happy for Dani but unfortunately the rest of us are definitely not over Gigi!
“I wish this was real,” Dani says, cuddling up to Roxy and edging her body closer to Roxy’s body and Roxy says it is real! She has a condo in Echo Park and she’s not running away this time, probably because Echo Park is really hilly so it’s hard to run there.
We then return to Walk in Fridge: Escape Room Edition where the Los Angeles fire department is hard at work opening a door.
Bette and Tina emerge from the frosty beyond and immediately embrace and thank Tasha for rescuing them.
“See that?” Tasha points at Bette and Tina, who just greeted her warmly despite their frosty limbs. “That’s how you greet a person when they save you. Or your kitten!”
We then return to the battle of Micah and Maribel which I did not want to watch and do not want to recap. Maribel wants to know why Micah’s just bringing this up now. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing. He is fixated on Mari dying during childbirth, which again, is nowhere near the top of the list for “things to consider.”!
“What if you die and our kid asks why we had them if we knew the risks?” Micah asks. Maribel breaks a $700 vial of sperm on the ground. Micah throws three t-shirts into a duffel bag, heads to his car and calls Max, leaving Maribel alone and crying and looking so sad!!! This doesn’t make sense for Micah or for the story and also as far as I can tell, they are peddling some pretty scary medical misinformation here.
This is the last we see of either character this season and potentially ever. I love these two and I was actively shipping their relationship and I cannot think of a worse way for them to end it.
Back at Bette and Tina: The Force Awakens, Shane’s enjoying some red wine when she spots Tess mingling with her imaginary friends, clearly wasted. Kimmy saddles up to Shane to ask for “another set of hands.” I’m expecting Shane to say no, not now — her friend is in trouble and she needs to go make sure she’s okay. Because that’s how Shane is. She makes sure her friends are okay, even if it’s her ex.
But alas, Shane instead follows Kimmy off to the side for another quickie because I guess this is how they’re gonna incite Tess’s meltdown?
We return to Alice and Tasha who are somehow still fighting, which must mean it’s true love, right? Anyhow this is why you should never ghost someone, you should continue living together for three additional months, fighting about everything that ever happened and then exiting the premises completely confident that you have exhausted the whole topic forever! Then the next time you run into them it will be peaceful, no problem.
Squabble #21: Lay Down the Law
In the Ring: Alice vs. Tasha
Content:
Tasha says Alice’s head is so far up her own ass. Personally I’d love to see Tasha sticking 1-2 fingers up Alice’s ass but again this is not a sex show!!! Alice says Tasha couldn’t handle her success. Tasha says Alice just wanted a plus one to hold her purse! Alice says she isn’t gonna apologize for having a career, but Tasha says this all started even before Alice’s career took off.
Tasha: You were in love with Dana!
[silence]
Tasha: You talked about her so much, it felt like I knew her. [pause] In a way.
Alice: [pause in which her whole vibe shifts completely] What did you just say? I’m sorry I just —
This is definitely some ret-conning of what actually happened in their relationship (I don’t think Alice talked about Dana nearly enough, to be honest!) but again I will allow it because I’ll allow anything that brings these two closer together.
Angie interrupts this moment of introspection to get Alice over to the ceremonial area. Angie thanks Tasha for saving the day and Tasha smiles and Alice smiles now too. “She saves everybody,” Alice gushes.
Who Wins? Me!
Meanwhile, Shane’s about to make out with Kimmy again but wants to first disclose that her ex is here and it’s complicated. Little does she know Tess has spent the day doing lines with an actor from Ryan Murphy’s Factory of Identical Actors.
Kimmy finds Shane’s concern unnecessary and a little funny.
Kimmy: “You’re so cute. I’m not trying to marry you! I’m just trying to fuck you. I’m married already!”
Shane: “Oh!”
Kimmy: “I have a husband waiting for me in Glendale.”
Shane: “Oh, oh. You didn’t mention that.”
Kimmy: “I’m not sure if that was about the husband or that was about Glendale but Glendale’s cool and uh, so is the husband. We love each other and we also love to fuck other people. Case in point.”
Shane: [discovering polyamory for the first time] “And that works?”
Kimmy: “Does it feel like it’s working?”
Shane: “Yeah!”
Unfortunately but also of course, Tess wobbles over at this precise inopportune moment, inciting a breakdown that will interrupt the wedding and also my life.
We return to the festival grounds where the ceremony is beginning! Bette and Tina are in their best velvet suits, walking down the aisle, prepared to re-commit to one another once again! I wish they hadn’t killed Kit off so she could be at this wedding!
But alas, one voice rises above all the other voices in this venue and I am not talking about Outdoor Voices the brand, although we are outdoors and hearing voices. It’s not even this little guy:
No, this voice belongs to a drunk coked up Tess and it echoes through the chambers of a script where it somehow made it all the way into the page and is now being forced upon us and honestly we do not want it and the story does not need it and there is a reason people have wedding ceremonies before sunset and it’s ’cause the pictures are better that way!
Lesbian Squabble #22: Cake Boss
In the Ring: Shane vs. Tess
Content:
Shane’s trying to talk Tess down after Tess has begun screaming at her.
“You think I’m mad at you?” Tess screams. “I’m not mad at you! I’m devastated.”
Shane grabs Tess’s wrists and tells her they’ve gotta go talk somewhere else, and then asks if she’s drunk and Tess says of course she is, she’s gotta be to deal with all of Shane’s shit. Furthermore, she says that…. Shane killed her Mom? Wow, a twist?
And then of course in the small struggle that ensues, Tess ends up plowing right into the cake, falling into it, the cake now coating her elegant dress so she can be as humiliated and embarrassed as possible for reasons that absolutely escape me. Shane tries to help her up, but Finley steps in.
“This particular friend group is full of drama,” Pippa notes to Sophie.
“Hey any ladies out there wanna be Shane McCutcheon’s next conquest?” Tess screams. G-Flip and Crishell raise their hands.
Who Wins? Nobody, nobody, nobody
Nobody, nobody
Ooh, nobody, nobody, nobody
– Mitski
