Hello and welcome back to Boobs on Your Tube! We missed you! While on holigay break, the Autostraddle TV Team stayed busy keeping you up to date. If you’d like to catch up, we have you covered. Meanwhile, this is what happened this week:
First, Riese recapped the latest episode of The L Word: Generation Q in her supreme, trademarked, super detailed and incredibly snarky form! Her recaps are truly the TV event of every week and you don’t want to miss them! Speaking of one-of-a-kind television events and Generation Q, Drew and Annalyssa are back with another episode of To L and Back, so you can get your recap fix in a podcast – whatever your needs, we are here to provide. Kate McKinnon introduced Ellen Degeneres for her Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award and we cried buckets, but Heather’s here to remind us that we still have a long way to go. Maddy wrote an intensely personal essay about Catfish of all things. Carmen considered the role of nostalgia television from the Bush era that just might help us survive Trump. Valerie was disappointed to find out that the new lesbian storyline in Season Two of “Light as a Feather” was really stiff as a board. Heather got us the trailer for Cate Blanchett (!!) and Sarah Paulson’s (!!!) new limited series, Mrs. America about the right wing takedown of the feminist movement in the 1970s. Here was Carmen’s review: “I am not prepared for a world where I am physically attracted to Phyllis Schlafly.” So say we all.
BREAKING NEWS: The Autostraddle TV Team’s “Winter 2020 TV Preview: Where To Find All The LGBTQ Women and Trans People on Your Television” is OFFICIALLY HERE. Be sure to get in on that!
Here’s what else!
Notes from the TV Team:
+ This is technically not a part of our coverage, but I thought you’d want to know the sad news that Dr. Alex Karev is leaving Grey’s Anatomy after 16 seasons! Apparently there might be some drama behind it. — Carmen
+ Also I owe you an update on God Friended Me. I apologize because this week got away from me, but you’ll have it next week! — Carmen
Stumptown 110: “Reality Checks Don’t Bounce”
Written by Heather
Stumptown continues to surprise me. Well, actually that’s not true. The least surprising thing in the world is that this network TV show has made Dex’s life revolve around the men in it, and that she hardly ever interacts with other women in any signifiant way that lasts more than one episode. What surprises me is, despite that, I keep showing up for it! I love Dex and Cobie Smulders’ portrayal of her — including her nonchalant bisexuality — is pitch-perfect. Anyway, before the holiday break, Sue Lynn told Dex to get her shit together and it looks like she’s really going to do it, including putting a stop to the love triangle that has already grown tedious over ten episodes. Now that Ansel has moved out, and Grey and Hoffman are forming a tentative alliance, as opposed to doing turf wars over Dex, it seems like she’s going to get some storylines of her own!
One of the most interesting things to me about this week’s episode is how patient it was, in terms of character development, and it paid off with some legit emotional resonance. The camera lingeres on Dex’s face. The case of the week — a kidnapping and a squabble between brothers — reflects and helps her resolve her family struggles (it’s all very Grey’s Anatomy actually). She’s town, as usual, between doing what’s right and getting paid. And maybe she’s even going to seek treatment for her PTSD. It’s a good set up for the back half of the season; hopefully Grey and Hoffman will fall in love with each other and leave her alone.
Deputy 101-102: “Graduation Day” and “10-8 Outlaws”
Written by Natalie
They’re just so cute together!
There’s a moment, about midway through Deputy‘s first episode, where the newly appointed Sheriff of LA County, Bill Hollister, interrupts a previously scheduled joint operation with ICE and orders all his deputies to go home. He wants people to know, “regardless of how they got here,” to know that they can come to the Sheriff’s Office for help. To do anything else, he says, is like “gift-wrapping about a million victims for every bad guy in town to prey on with total impunity.”
It’s a progressive vision of policing — one that threatens to cost the county millions in federal grants — that I’d usually rush to celebrate. But my enthusiasm is tempered by knowing that, but for an ill-timed heart attack, the ICE-defying sheriff would have been one of the deputies pulled from the field for having too many instances of brutality in his file. This is the guy we’re supposed to cheer for; this is our hero?
Through the first two episodes of Deputy that kind of juxtaposition has become the show’s hallmark…at once, attempting to be a new kind of police procedural while also embracing the (worst) hallmarks of past procedurals. Even the show’s diversity feels both refreshing and regressive. In the past, Bex Taylor-Kaus’ Brianna Bishop would be a male character…in fact, on the shortlived and underappreciated Chicago Code (which starred Jennifer Beals as the newly appointed police superintendent), the ambitious, astute, talented driver/security guard was a male character. Instead, Deputy gives that role to nonbinary actor and the character comes out in the show’s first episode. Refreshing, right? But Bishop comes out by way of a U-Haul joke…a U-Haul joke she has to explain to her clueless boss who, apparently, has never known a lesbian before now. How is this a conversation we’ve having in 2020?
I hope that Deputy finds a way to reconcile its identity soon because Kaus is so endearing in their role. Plus? Last night’s episode introduced her girlfriend, Genevieve, played by Claws‘ Karrueche Tran…and Karrueche playing queer is everything I never knew I always wanted.
Almost Family 110: “Couragous AF”
Written by Valerie Anne!
Good outfits and bad ideas.
I want to start out by saying I’m really enjoying Almost Family. And it’s because I’ve been having such a great time that I want to talk about a huge issue it’s having. I want to call them out but with love. Calling in, if you will.
In the past few episodes, Amanda and Edie have super cute. Edie broke it off with her husband to commit to Edie, Edie introduced Amanda to her son’s other mother, etc. Things were moving along nicely. Until this week. It started with a flirty bartender. Amanda sees Edie with the bartender and says she should date other girls, since Amanda was the first girl she’d ever been with. Which is flawed logic, but we learn that Amanda’s ex got in her head about it, and also Amanda felt insecure because THEIR relationship started because Edie got curious. So I’ll forgive her.
What I cannot forgive, is the lesbian kickball team Edie meets on this strange quest. Things were off to a good start because the team is called the Dixie Kicks, but it was all downhill from there. Full of lesbians that apparently time traveled here from 2005, they complain about “heteroflexible” girls and “goldfish” – a term I think the writers made up that means a straight girl “fishing” for “gold star lesbians,” an outdated/biphobic/judgemental term in itself. So they’re using outdated, biphobic, and made up language, all at the same time; naturally Edie is confused. She tries to make out with the bartender, but her heart’s not in it; she just wants Amanda. I knew I was gay before I ever kissed ANYONE of any gender, so all of this seems misguided at best. If Edie realizes she’s a lesbian, that’s totally valid. Plenty of lesbians I know were in long-term relationships with men before they realized they were gay. But the fact that no one has even said the word bisexual yet is driving me absolutely batty.
I hope the show gets its act together on this front soon, or, at the VERY least, just stops talking about Edie’s sexuality at all and focuses instead on Edie and Amanda’s relationship. LET ME LOVE YOU, ALMOST FAMILY.
I’m ok with losing Karev if we get to keep Jo
Not sure if it’s going to be anything but a character on the Party of Five reboot got a lesbian friend in the pilot
YES! There will be coverage! I’m hoping it turns into a bigger plot. We have eyes on it!