Cut to school the next day, where Amy’s asking Shane to be her pretend date to homecoming. He’s just gotta pose for some pics and it’ll be totes NBD!
It’s called an infinity scarf, Amy, and it’s specifically designed to be appropriate for all climates.
Shane: “When I came out, I swore as G-d as my witness I would never pretend to be someone else again.”
Amy: “Well Scarlett, it’s kinda your fault I’m in this mess, remember, so the least you can do is stop my former beauty queen Republican mother from finding out.”
Shane: “Okay. Mostly because I feel bad but also because she sounds AMAZING.”
Gay boys love fancy Southern debutante moms. It’s a fact. Like how lesbians love sea mammals. Except me. I’m sort of impartial to sea mammals.
Meanwhile in the Death of Art Room, Liam and Karma are making out ravenously and she admits that she’s never Taken A Baloney Ride with a dude before, but they’re still gonna totally go for it! Then some girls walk in and interrupt them HOW SAD
You really should let me pluck your eyebrows, I promise it doesn’t hurt, you just might sneeze a little
It’s Homecoming Eve at the Fawcetts, and Shane’s dressed, in Amy’s words, “like Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike.” Shane insists this is the butchiest butch he can possibly butch and also, whatever, it’s Texas.
Hello ladies, I was told the gay guy from Nashville was drinking his ass off on your sun porch, if you don’t mind I’d like to head on back there and see if I can’t cure what ails him
Farrah and Shane fall instantly in love as he lays on the compliments real thick, and Farrah is super-eager to capture this moment on camera.
If you need help picking an Instagram filter just say the word I spend ALL my free time posting selfies on datalounge
Farrah says tonight’s shaping up to be a perfect night, ’cause Amy’s wearing a dress and Farrah got her very first reporting assignment! Yup, Farrah’s pitched the Lesbian Homecoming Queens story to the local news! In other words: AMY IS TOTALLY FUCKED.
Well this one will look real nice all blown up with flowers around it atop our coffins at the funeral
Amy immediately rings Karma, who’s already at the dance probs thinking about whether or not she should use strawberry lube or some other kind of lube for her ram-rodding later. Karma’s also heard that they’re gonna be on the news and is SUPER excited about it… until Amy informs her that Farrah’s gonna be the newslady in question.
Karma I told you five THOUSAND times that “Tipping the Velvet” was due back to the library LAST WEEK. Do you have any idea the kinds of fines I’m already facing?
Amy promises she’ll find a way to spoil Farrah’s plan if Karma can just stall the ceremonies, but before Karma can commence stalling, Principle Penelope Deliah Fisher arrives:
Penelope: “I didn’t have a chance to order a second tiara, so would one of you be willing to wear the crown? I’m guessing Amy but I don’t want to make assumptions.”
Karma: “Yeah, that’s definitely more her.”
Now this one we ordered EXTRA special from the same brilliant costume team that brought us “Once Upon A Time”
Then Liam and Karma send each other stupid text messages about meeting up in his car.
Ugh why does it always have to be HIS car
So, Amy keeps a screwdriver in her bra.
Oh my god I must have put this in my hoodie pocket when we went outside for lunch in the middle of me trying to fix that lamp, what the hell am I going to do if Pornstache finds me with this thing
Shane: “Have you had that in there the whole time?”
Amy: “I hate carrying a purse.”
Amy’s big plan is to let the air out of the news van tires. Shane shares his experiences with the group:
Shane: “When I came out I thought my Dad would either kick me out or kill me. But instead he let me record Project Runway even when it conflicted with his CSI reruns.”
Got any blow
Before Amy can commence tire-stabbing, she calls Karma, who says that if she’s unavailable the next time Amy rings, it’s ’cause she’s on her way to the backseat of Liam’s car to Lay Some Pipe, which Amy thinks is gross because do you really want your first time to be in the backseat of a car when you could be scissoring with a girl who carries a screwdriver in her bra? I mean, what the hell KARMA.
Uh, no, I’m pretty sure that I told YOU to pick up the ‘shrooms
Amy viciously stabs the tire with Rosie the Riveter-esque strength and gusto… just in time to notice another news van pulling safely out of the lot, Farrah in tow. Plan to spoil has been spoiled.
Meanwhile, Liam and Karma are sucking face in the car and Liam says he’s been waiting to do this for so long, and Karma’s like OH TOTES ME TOO. Then she’s like, wait a second, but he just figured out my name last week, and inquires exactly HOW long he’s wanted to do this. “What, have sex with a lesbian?” Liam asks. “Pretty much since birth. I mean, I know it’s cliché, but what straight guy hasn’t?” Um, boo.
halp i’m stuck
Karma, apparently experiencing a rare moment of self-awareness, says she’s gotta get back to the girlf and hauls ass.
Back at the dance, Farrah’s arrived in her sensible blazer. Lauren’s sockless boyfriend tells Farrah that he loves her work especially when a cold front comes in. I sort of love him. Lauren, who may hate Amy but isn’t an idiot, tells Farrah the lesbian couple has gone home! Oops!
Welp, pretty sure I just had a miscarriage
Alas, Farrah spots a tiara across the room and is drawn to it like a weather moth to a news-flame — only to discover that yup, it’s Karma, standing there with her Burger King Crown and her surprisingly still-adequate hair situation. Amy is horrified and Farrah’s confused — she pulls her daughter aside, who quickly explains that she wanted to tell her, but she was afraid she wouldn’t approve.
Sweetie, it’s okay, almost everybody on the A-Camp waitlist ends up getting a spot!
Unfortunately, they’re not talking about the same thing — Farrah thinks Karma is the only gay one relevant to her interests. “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Farrah. “Her parents are so permissive, it’s no big surprise. But I’m fine with it. She’s not my daughter! But I do think that you should dial back the sleepovers.” Womp womp. Farrah clonks on back to the camera, asking where Karma’s adorable little girlfriend is hiding!
It was at that exact moment that Amy noticed Ilene Chaiken on the other side of the room, lurking around the party punch
Amy takes the crown from Karma’s hand, stuffs it on her head, slings her arm around Karma and declares, “I’m right here, mother.” And the look on Amy’s face is, indeed, the look of a girl who has just said a thing that was tough and true to say.
AHEM
Er?
LOL
sigh
UMMM?????
Hello, ladies
So Amy’s got her game face on and her arm around her “girlfriend” and Farrah is like a deer in headlights on camera. Farrah manages a “lesbians?” and a “back to you, Steve,” before fleeing the scene, leaving a stunned Lauren, Shane and Tommy and a defiant, relieved Amy and a confused, tentative Karma.
Damn, I’m a sexy motherfucker
Karma asks if she’s okay, and Amy is like, “yeah, that felt really good, actually.” Emboldened and without missing a beat, “Wanna dance?”
SMOOSH
Thus the two ladies make their way to the dance floor, surrounded by same-sex couples — like Shane and Liam. Liam’s telling Shane that he and a mysterious lady were rounding third base and about to get home when she freaked out and dashed. This has never happened to him before and he’s confused! Shane’s unsure who the batgirl in question might be.
Bro is that a wadded up bag of Smartfood Cheddar Popcorn you’re smearing all over my shoulder cuz that shit’s not cool
Shane wants Liam to rest his mancheek on Shane’s manshoulder but Liam says Shane’s too short for such antics, so they switch it up. I like how comfortable this show is with gay-straight friendship, it’s sort of beautiful even if I do want Liam to die in a fire.
btw I know who A is and I also know what you did last summer
Karma says she’s proud of Amy for standing up for herself, and Amy says she’s proud of Karma for “becoming a woman,” which’s when Karma’s gotta tell Amy that she actually did not pop her cherry all over Liam’s leather interior after all.
UGH KARMA YOU SHOULD NEVER SLEEP WITH A GUY WHO WANTS TO FUCK TO A JASON MRAZ MIXTAPE
Karma explains she decided against it because Amy was OBVS right, “Liam just sees me as this cool lesbian and I want my first time to be special, with someone who loves me.”
Amy smiles.
“Which is why I’m gonna make him fall in love with me,” Karma concludes.
And Amy stops smiling.
In more delightful news, I’m pretty sure these two should be a thing:
I ship it
Well, that’s all folks! Tune in next week for OCCUPY HESTER.
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Your thoughts are my thoughts. I’m reeeeeally enjoying this show, and I’m glad that they’re showing Liam to be the skeezeball that he really is (or at least pointing out that his fetishization is super gross and that Karma is an idiot).
Also, I legitimately laughed loudly at The Fawcetts.
I haven’t watched the show, but I enjoy the fuck out of your recaps. Who knew a show about two girls pretending to be lesbians could be so awesome?
I’m guessing that following the show solely through these recaps is much funnier than the actual show itself.
The show is damn funny with a great mix of feelings. This ain’t no Glee. Check it out! It’s refreshing.
yeah it’s pretty cute! plus it’s only 22 minutes long, which is more than i can say for the real l word
Uggghhhh it’s so short I almost feel like it’s a webseries. I’d rather have 20 minutes of Glee and 45 minutes of Faking It.
at this point i’d like glee to just be a collection of cute downloadable videos on iTunes. but yeah, it feels like it’s not quite long enough. as just a viewer its’ frustrating, but the length is great for me as a recapper. it’s only the second half-hour show i’ve ever recapped (the first was south of nowhere), but actually it’s been taking longer than i expected to write, i think because almost every scene involves a situation i care about, and they pack a lot in to each exchange.
I’d rather have 0 minutes of Glee and infinity minutes of Amy’s face.
Urgh I hate Liam. But I’m kind of glad he’s there because he is a pretty accurate representation of 99% of the guys I meet, and maybe if said guys watch this show (they will, because lesbians) they can realize they are him and feel bad.
Wishful thinking?
Re: the clapping; this happened to me and my girlfriend one time at a bar because we were holding hands. But it wasn’t awesome and supportive – it was horrible and drunk old men.
Pretty sure that Karma’s dad, who’s probably named Buddha or something, is Maureen Ponderosa’s brother from “It’s Always Sunny” and so I got SUPER distracted by that.
Also, I hate sea mammals. Is that seriously another thing we’re supposed to like? Because I’m already 40% hostile towards cats and 60% indifferent. Don’t make me feign love for orcas. I saw “Blackfish.” They scare me.
The people behind this show keep saying, “Oh, Amy could end up with a dude or a chick and she doesn’t like to label her sexuality.” Which is fine, because I’m totally a no-labels kind of person. I can ride that train to Question Mark Town all day long. But I feel like it’s always female characters who are questioning their sexuality or who are fluid or “label free,” and this is a two pronged problem because we don’t get many, if any, bisexual male characters (shout out to “Broad City” for having Ilana have sex with a bi guy this past season – “You are truly evolved. And I am truly wet”). But it also means that we don’t get the female equivalent of a Shane (not THAT Shane) who knew he was gay since 4th grade. Where are our dyed-in-the-wool lesbian characters? I kind of thought Amy might be that (we all saw that leather cuff and the Spicoli Vans, c’mon) but great, apparently not.
I’m surprised that the show creators are talking about Amy like that, based on what I’ve seen/read of future episodes? But I’m also not surprised that they’re talking about her in that way, because that tends to be the way these things go.
Anyhow — I think there are SO many reasons why it is the way you say it is (that we get guys who knew they were gay since 4th grade, but not girls) that I could talk about forever and ever, but an additional theory just occurred to me which is that these narratives tend to be presented on television as tightly related to gender presentation.
The stereotypical stylish, not-athletic, image-conscious and often somewhat effeminate gay guy is relatively well-received on television. Audiences really enjoy characters like Jack from Will and Grace, Kurt Hummel, Emmet Honeycutt and Shane on this show. And it’s usually those gay guys who talk about having known they were gay from the get-go, and when they do, they rarely talk about, you know, experiencing same-sex sexual attraction. They talk about wanting to try on their mom’s high heels, being bad at sports, or liking musical theater — these other stereotypical things that actually have nothing to do with who you’re sexually/romantically attracted to. Maybe this is television’s fundamental discomfort with discussing kids or teenagers having crushes on members of the same sex or maybe it’s just lazy writing, or maybe it’s both and a lot of other things, too. Because meanwhile, masculine women are definitely not celebrated or prevalent on television, even on gay shows, which is really fucking annoying. I mean, the only character on The L Word who tells a “when I knew” story that started in the sandbox is the show’s most masculine-of-center character, Shane. So if writers can’t figure out how to tell the backstory of a person “who knew he was gay since 4th grade” without telling that story as a story of non-normative gender presentation, and there aren’t any queer females on TV with non-normative gender presentations, then television isn’t going to tell that kind of story about queer females. Which means they need to realize that “dyed-in-the-wool” lesbians are just as likely to be femme or feminine-of-center as they are masculine-of-center (or none of those things!) and learn how to tell “when I knew” stories that aren’t just about gender presentation.
ANYHOW it seems like the only “dyed-in-the-wool” lesbians we ever get on television are like three-episode love interests of the no-labels girl.
What does it say about me that I read the end of the first sentence as “Carmen and Shane”?
OK, now I’m going to actually read the recap (and probably not watch the show).
If this show doesn’t end with Shane and Farrah opening a boutique together, I quit.
Awww, I feel like there are going to be so many moments in which I can relate to Amy. You articulated this particular feeling so well!
“It’s one of those moments when you’re intensely aware of every inch of your body and her body currently experiencing physical content and every inch of your body and her body that could potentially shift into new territories of suggestive physical contact.”
does that last picture remind anyone else of rachel and laneia’s demonstration of how lesbians have sex at camp 1.0?
thank you for debbie novotny. for reals. beautiful.
I covet Karma’s lace top thing. Also yay The Trevor Project shout out!
lesbians?
“Amy’s clearly jealous, but rather than addressing and dealing with those emotions, has chosen the much safer and more popular route that so many of us enjoy on a regular basis: finding a reason besides jealousy to rationalize being annoyed.”
THIS. Yes! High school was such a confusing time.
I’m really enjoying this show, even though I initially wanted to disregard it due to it airing on MTV. Only two episodes in and I’m already hoping for a second season.
The interaction between Shane and Farrah was the BEST. Also, Amy’s last name is Raudenfeld. So it’s Karma Ashcroft and Amy Raudenfeld.
Those are very sophisticated last names!
All I can think is that their ship name is possibly Rashcroft which sounds like something you get raiding tombs in short shorts.
As far as I know, the internet/tumblr has dubbed them “Karmy”. Which sounds weird, but has the benefit of the ability to call the shippers the Karmy Army. So you win some, you lose some.
Morgan you are very well-informed.
*Amy pulls screwdriver out of bra*
Amy: What? I hate carrying a purse.
*iz dead*
I had no idea that pulling tools out of a bra could do this to me…
What I mostly take away from this show is that Karma is a moron, Liam is gross, Shane is THAT GAY GUY tv shows think are the only kind of gay guys that exist, and Amy is probably a lesbian or bisexual but the writers will fuck it up somehow like always and make her all about boys at some point.
The recaps are good though. So there’s that.
Excellent as always, Riese!
My only thing is: I don’t know if the Amy/Karma dynamic is bleeding over in my mind, but when Liam and Shane are interacting I find myself low level anxious that they are going to go the Shane is actually into Liam route, which would make no sense since that is like the exact storyline of our main characters.
I just really like the idea of a gay guy/straight guy friendship and it would be nice if they let that stand uncomplicated by some sort of secret gay crush situation. I feel like this is the rarer cousin unicorn of the heterosexual opposite gender best friends who do not fall in love with each other and are in fact just good friends. Like this is something that actually exists in the world, but given enough time on a TV show apparently never lasts. cough cough Warehouse 13? cough cough
Yeah I’m hoping they maintain a platonic crush-free gay guy/straight guy friendship between the two of them, too. In Glee they did manage to lampshade that a bit by Blaine having a crush on his best friend Sam but Sam not being even remotely bothered by it, which I would add to the short list of things Glee did that I didn’t hate. I’m thinking that we might be safe in this case because Shane has known he was gay since 4th grade and it seems like he and Liam have been best friends forever, so now would be a weird time for a crush to randomly pop up. I think showing solid gay guy/straight guy friendships is one of the most progressive things a show like this could do.
Yes, I super agree wrt progressive things and is definitely one of the things that got me actually interested in this show after reading your preview of it.
Fingers crossed the great TV gods don’t betray us again.
I apparently did not pay enough attention in the first episode, cause I had no idea Lauren and Amy live in the same house or that their parents were getting married, but now the beginning of this episode makes so much more sense than when I thought Lauren had randomly broken into Amy’s house with a measuring tape.
So. Many. Fellings. This is like my repressed high school closet phase and i have had all the feelings that Amy is having. but at least its a comedy and can also make me laugh! I love your recaps!
this show sounds kind of amazing. thank you riese…
Just when I didn’t think I could relate to Amy more (yay for melodramatic debutante-ish southern mothers!) I looked down at myself and realized that I’m wearing roughly the same outfit she is at the beginning of the episode.
Nice outfit!
This show is infuriating me already. I really can’t decide whether to love it or hate it (indifference is not an option). All i can hope for is that they set Amy up with a gf who actually deserves her and don’t let her stay in the ‘crutch on my straight best friend’ trap. Because we all know that that is a dead end.
Props for them not validating straight guys wanting to sleep with lesbians though coz Karma was totally turned off by that. Although Liam thinking that all straight guys wanna sleep with lesbians was also kind of a stereotype… *complains about the shallowness of many characters*.
Riese you are the queen of recaps. Seriously. No one does them like you.
thank you amanda!!
Riese, you must be a mind reader, because I just finished reading Tipping The Velvet last week and I returned it a week late to the library! (Though luckily I didn’t have a huge fine, only about $2.)
Isn’t it obvious that Amy keeps a screwdriver in her bra in case she ever runs into Lea Delaria from OITNB for the perfect lesbian opportunity?
Damn auto-correct, that comment was supposed to say that RIESE must be a mind reader!
Is anyone else irritated by the complete acceptance of the obligatory butch/femme dynamic? Umm, who said one had to be butch and the other femme?
I have a lot of problems with this show actually, but I love Amy so much. She is intelligent, beautiful, and funny, AND she is totally me when I was in school and had an 8+ year unrequited lovefest for my best (and SUPER straight) girl friend. Fortunately, however, I think Karma is going to realize she loves Amy back. Yay for gay lerv!
Riese, can you post a list of various GAY AS FUCK stuff like that wristcuff that I can wear to family gatherings with my uber religious Catholic family? Out to everyone but them :D
Is it just me or are all of the characters on this show the stupidest people in the history of television? The only likable character is Amy. That being said, it is interesting and in curious to see what happens.
I LOVE READING THESE RECAPS, i don’t watch the show and probably never will + i don’t like reading recaps of shows I am watching. but these are just the best. so thank you riese!!!! for documenting all the dubious forays of the mainstream into mystical, mystical lesbianism.
RIESE WAIT IS FIREBALL A GAY LADY THING. AM I EVEN MORE OF ANY UNINTENTIONAL STEREOTYPE.