5. South of Nowhere, The N, Spencer & Ashley ’05->’08
Riese: I have one question for you, The N! Perhaps you already know it. Perhaps you already know it because Carlytron and I asked it every thirty seconds while recapping Season Three for you. WHAT THE FUCK GLEN? GLEN always wins the SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP Award (Trademark Calytron) and what time is it? Sportstime! Don’t even get us started on the Jake with the website situation, or Dad & Aiden cooking all the time. We’re pretty sure the rest of the show was better when it first started, but by Season Three we could barely tolerate the non-lesbian parts, we screamed a lot and made faces.
This recap, SON Episodes 13 & 14 sums up the problem: “I’m thinking they should rename it “Glen of Glen.” “Central Glen.” “Beverly Hills, 9021-Glen.”
4. Edgemont, Canada’s CBC, Shannon & Stevie ’05
Intern Xandra: There are so many relationship cliches in this show it’s painful to watch. Even the lesbian relationship is a cliche — Shannon & Stevie are the only lezzies in town, Stevie doesn’t wanna date a fresh-out-of-the-closet girl but it happens anyway, they talk about their feelings a lot, “you don’t feel like a friend,” etc., they break up over an accidential outing and get back together two eps later (when the characters are pointing out a story-line is stupid it’s a problem) — but before that, we must endure the following:
The young award nerd gets together with the cute weirdo girl, the guys are consistently jerks to the girls they’re with (e.g., the model comes into money and her boy takes her to buy his dream car for himself so he can ride around in it and the moviemaker boy casts his girlfriend in the lead, then fires her when he finds someone better) yet the girls always take back said asshole boyfriends with little consequence (unfortunately, probs one of the more realistic aspects of the show). Another guy seduces a girl by writing her a bad song.
For a coming-of-age show, these kids looked like they’d already come of age and there were no interesting/realistic storylines. Fun fact! Shane’s twink friend from Season One and Fake Tim the Midget from Lez Girls (Season Five) are both in Edgemont. So, that’s something.
3. All My Children, ABC Daytime, Bianca: 2000 –> present
Intern Elizabeth: In all the years of Bianca actually being gay we *rarely* got to see her happy with a girlfriend. Instead we had to watch her first ‘girlfriend’ be murdered, her next ‘girlfriend’ (acutally, the next two) be straight, then she was raped got pregnant and had the baby swapped with a dead one… then she got her baby back and had another one using her comatose sister’s husband’s sperm. Never mind having to watch Erica Kane judge her daughters and everyone else all the time. And then there were the wacky murder mysteries, secret/surprise adult children, tornado induced comas, falling-through-glass-table blindness, shot-in-the-head amnesia …
(Confession: I actually took to watching just the Bianca storylines on Youtube a while ago to avoid the rest of the crap.)
2. Neighbours, Australia’s Channel 10, Sunny & Donna ’09
Crystal: I haven’t been watching the show lately, however I can tell you about the key non-lesbian storylines that I sat through during the 80’s and 90’s. Harold gets washed away at sea, leaving Madge a widow. Harold shows up again later with amnesia and joins the Salvation Army. Charlene and Scott get married, and Charlene releases a hit single called ‘I Should Be So Lucky’. Dr Karl has an affair with his receptionist, divorces Susan, falls in love with Izzie, discovers her baby is not really his and returns to Susan. Paul burns down Lassiter’s hotel and Gus is killed in the fire. Billy Kennedy breaks up with Anne after he reads her diary, and moves to LA to join the cast of House. Boyd cheats on Sky with Serena, Susan gets diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and Harold goes to live on a farm.
Sky and Lana kiss. Donna and Sunny kiss.
I flipped the channel over just as the kiss happened last night and it went like this:
[Donna kisses Sunny]
[Sunny freaks out]
Donna: It wasn’t that bad, was it?
Sunny: No you don’t understand, YOU STOLE MY FIRST KISS!
[credits roll]
I also don’t understand. ugh.
1. Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, Callie & Arizona ’09
Intern Emily: This season fans went through some pretty ridiculous crap – the random Owen Hunt arrives, randomly kisses Cristina in the first ep and then becomes a recurring character with PTSD who eventually tries to strangle Cristina in her sleep. Enter Lexie: she likes George but gets in a serious relationship with Mark who subsequently gets into a physical fight with Derek ’cause Meredith & Lexie have issues. Izzie’s seeing her dead fiancé everywhere (and is also talking to and sleeping with him??) but is also dating Alex who is really falling for her. George gets even less screen time than the lesbians. Derek keeps killing patients, goes into a depression over it, hides in his trailer in the woods and won’t go into work, then the Cheif tells Meredith that Derek wants to propose, but then he doesn’t and he bats the ring into the field bla blah it turns out Izzie’s got cancer (that’s why she was seeing dead people?). Meredith & Derek make amends and plan to get married but instead Izzie & Alex get married before Izzie’s surgery, Meredith & Derek get married via post-its, Izzie crashes after surgery, George is run over by a bus, and no one knows if they’re dead ’cause then the season ends.
Closing Statements: Really, the more you weed through all these other shows, the more you lament the passing of IFC’s masterpiece of self-sabotage The Ilene Chaiken Show, which we endured to get to The L Word, and you wish it had been better so that there would be more lesbian shows on the air right now. A Shot at Love With Whomevs does not count.
Speaking of things that are so bad they are good, it’s not all tragedy and bromance — sweeps lesbian storylines, when they happen on good shows and without too much trauma, can be pleasant enough to endure. I’m thinking here of Marissa & Alex on The O.C. and Paige & Alex on Degrassi: The Next Generation (what is it with all the Alexes, I feel this in my own life as well).
Many of these are covered in our Top 20 Favorite Fictional Lesbians. Just BTW. I’ve heard good things about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Skins, though I haven’t seen either show.
In closing, I don’t think we should have to spend so much time enduring things.
What’s your greatest feat of lesbian television endurance?