Friends, you made it to the end of the week! Would you like to celebrate by catching up on everything that happened on our screens since you last checked in? Of course you would! Lat week RuPaul’s Drag Race had one of the greatest lip syncs in the show’s history – and that is saying a lot! Drew celebrated Zoe Lister-Jones’ coming out by looking back at one of the straightest movies she ever made (that in retrospect, does seem super gay!). Drew and Kayla still have Drive-Away Dolls fever, so they got together to talk about its suffused with lesbian sex throughout, and if you had to look up suffused congratulations on your new word of the day! And Stef Rubino followed that up with this chaser of real life late-90s lesbian spaces in the South where the drive-away dolls could have stopped. Kayla revisited The Hours in a searing personal essay about how the film welcomed her into sapphic longing, and you absolutely must read it.
Speaking of the latest lesbian films of our obsession, we are so clearly not over Kristen Stewart’s Love Lies Bleeding and here’s all the content you could possibly ever need on that!
- From “Bring It On” to “Love Lies Bleeding”: The Best Training Montages of All Time
- If You Loved the Grit, Gore, and Grime of “Love Lies Bleeding,” Watch These Gay Movies
- What Are the Astrological Charts of the Toxic Main Gays in “Love Lies Bleeding”?
- Here’s Where You Can Watch the Movies That Inspired “Love Lies Bleeding”
And!!!!… Drumroll Please…
Follow our March Madness content all tournament long and don’t forget to vote for your favs!
We have OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED AUTOSTRADDLE MARCH MADNESS 2024!! This is of course huge news and we are so excited. Here’s Natalie, our March Madness extraordinaire and guide through these proceedings every year, to tell you more about it:
“Our theme for this year’s contest is “The Kids are All Right” and it was chosen for a reason. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of right-wing attacks on LGBT kids. They’ve written their bigotry into law, prohibiting kids from reading the books that they want, being called what they want, and received the health care that they need. But it’s the homophobia and the transphobia that are the problem — that has always been the problem — and not the kids. The kids are all right.“
We kicked off the festivities by voting for our all-time favorite brainiacs, and later today we will be voting on the next region to come! LET’S GO FANDOMS (this is the true sports of our people!).
Notes from the TV Team:
+ This is technically, to the letter of the law, not exactly TV, but! March Madness (the actual basketball kind, not the Autostraddle TV Character kind) is starting today and I am so excited!!! Falling in love with women’s basketball has been such a gift for me and if you’re ever curious about the sport, now is the time to jump in with both feet or even just a toe to test the waters. Trust me on this, you will be so grateful. If you need recommendations on teams to root for, you know where to find us! (It’s in the comments of this post!) — Carmen
+ Gay kitchen birdies have told me that the new Top Chef with Kristen Kish and at least one queer cheftestant has priemered this week! We’re going to have some thirst content for you next week on this very important subject matter, so just you wait. — Carmen
Grey’s Anatomy Episode 2002: “Keep the Family Close”
Written by Carmen
It took all of 21 seconds for me to pause Grey’s Anatomy last night to text Natalie “I AM SO PROUD OF TARYN HELM” (and yes the all caps is a historically accurate reproduction).
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that I have wanted more for former intern Hellmouth than to have her hands up [redacted redacted redacted] and to push some girl, respectfully, up on a dresser and against a wall. Truly, I do not know of a television character who has ever been more deserving.
I’ve written about this before, so please excuse me for quoting myself now, but:
“When we first met Helm, it was Season 14. She was a nameless intern in a sea of nameless interns, who most stood out because of her professional crush on Meredith Grey. She (correctly) clocked that the way Meredith spoke of her love for Cristina was not… entirely heterosexual. She wrote sonnets to the gold flecks in Meredith’s dirty blonde hair. At Jo and Alex’s wedding, fresh off a heartbreak from Arizona, Carina DeLuca warned Helm about getting caught up in women who did not reciprocate her love. The following season, CeCe — a professional matchmaker — picked Helm’s crush on Meredith up immediately and told her to take a seat, she wanted to impart queer wisdom about falling for straight women who don’t know you’re alive. But mostly, Helm’s sexuality was played for jokes.
For five long years, she was most prominently a side character in Schmidt’s own gay coming out story — if she had anything to do at all. She’d comfort her bestie as he nursed his first heartbreaks. In Grey’s Anatomy’s 400th episode, when Schmidt protested that men who have sex with men weren’t allowed to donate blood, she made note, ‘what about gay women.’ She’s alluded, she’s made eyes, but she’s never, not once in five years, had a plot of her own.”
Now it’s been six years.
When we met Taryn Helm, she was an intern ineloquently (and a little meanly) named Hellmouth by her attending surgeons. She had to leave the program altogether to find herself, to find her confidence and what made her tick. Now she’s back and she’s taking everything that they once said she couldn’t have.
Co-Chief Resident? ✅
A Hot Girlfriend? ✅✅
The Absolute Fucking Swagger When She Saunters Down to Breakfast or Picks Her Girlfriend Up in the Locker Room After a Long Shift?? ✅✅✅
Started with obsessing over straight women over 40 and now we’re here! What an epic and relatable come up.
Season 20 is going to be a game changer for Taryn Helm. One girl screaming her name off the walls (whoops my keyboard slipped) at a time. I can feel it.
Station 19 Episode 702: “Good Grief”
Written by Carmen
This week on Station 19, Maya and Carina are sweating it out (by which I mean, waiting patiently) on the results of their application to become baby Liam’s foster moms. And no, we do not have officially word yet that the baby’s name is actually Liam — but until Station 19 says differently, I’m going with the information we have to go on. Luckily… or ummm, very unluckily?… the waiting to find out next steps on Liam’s application gets pushed to the back of their minds when a patient that comes into Station 19’s free clinic appears to have a communicable disease that sends everyone at the firehouse spiraling into Covid-19 PTSD.
Great news is that the patient’s scary symptoms turn out to be Dengue Fever, which definitely is still not to be taken lightly, but isn’t airborne or contagious in the same kinds of ways! Obviously, this is also great news for the patient who will survive as well. The fire house celebrates this relief, along with honoring Jack’s service, who will be leaving 19 after traumatic brain injuries stemming from a lifetime of fire work but also most specifically last year’s finale, with a family dinner.
Right before family dinner kicks off, Carina gets some bad news. A patient that she worked with five years is now suing her because her child has cerebral palsy. I am not a doctor a medical professional, but I was curious and googled around, it does seem that one of the potential causes of cerebral palsy can be brain damage occurring either “during or soon after birth” (that is according to the NHS).
I’m not sure of this plot choice by the Station 19 writers. While it was clear that the patient is a mother who adores and loves her child deeply, there is also worrisome discourse online that seems to bubble up every few months about whether disabled people are so-called “burdens” to their family members (to be very clear, I am firmly on the side that loving your loved ones is not a burden in any case). I worry about how this plot can be misinterpreted or misconstrued online or by people watching at home. I hope that the writers know what they are doing, because this isn’t something to be taken lightly. Not at all.
That said, Station 19 writers in the past have handled other delicate topics with grace on-screen at least, and I am going to enter with caution and my eyes wide open, but also with hope that a similar care for nuance here.
Meanwhile, immediately after Carina’s notice of being sued, Carina and Maya both get a call that their application to be Liam’s foster moms is approved! They bring the bambino to the fire house to meet his family and if your heart did not burst when you saw the smiles on their faces as they came through that door with the baby carrier and Carina mimed “shhh!” to the firefighters so that they wouldn’t wake the baby, man I don’t know what to tell you!!
3 Body Problem All Episodes
Written by Nic
Netflix’s latest entry into the science fiction space (pun only semi-intended), 3 Body Problem, has all of the ingredients to be the next big “everyone’s watching this” show (big budget, highly respected showrunners, mystery box plot elements, diverse cast). And I think it does a lot of things well! It leans heavily on the “sci” of sci-fi, yet it’s approachable enough that thankfully you don’t need to be a nuclear physicist to understand the overarching plot. The thriller elements hit when they need to hit and to be frank, the entire cast is VERY nice to look at. My main issues with the show boil down to 1) it’s so overstuffed with the science and complex questions about the universe that in-depth character moments get lost and 2) Y’ALL CAST SEA SHIMOOKA AND SHOULD HAVE GIVEN HER WAY MORE TO DO BECAUSE SHE SLAYED! So if you thought this was going to be an in-depth take on the science of the show, and not me just yelling about Sea… LOL, joke’s on you.
Sea plays Sophon, a sentient supercomputer who also serves as the unflappable narrator of a video game designed [NOTE: THIS IS ABOUT TO BE A SPOILER] as a recruitment tool. Her main role is to deliver what could simply be bland exposition about what players need to do in the game or what this alien race wants with us, but she manages to do it in a way that kept me interested in a very twisty and sometimes confusing plot.
When we first meet her, she immediately slices [name redacted]’s throat when he enters the game without an invite. This happens multiple times because of course this man can’t fathom a situation where he wouldn’t be allowed to enter a space. I was ready to pledge fealty to this badass warrior and watch her take down any man who dared enter her game, but unfortunately this isn’t that kind of show. Sophon’s main role is that of translator between their people and humans; which is important to the plot, I GET IT. But I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t screaming for more screen time for a talented queer actress. *shrug* If the show gets renewed for season two, I think there are ways the writers can expand Sophon’s role even more and as a fan of Sea Shimooka, that’s all I want.
Ok, as a big Shondaland girlie, this whole ‘sueing your Ob/gyn’ because your baby is born disabled plotline has been around before. Specifically in Private Practice, a woman (who crazily enough…I believe is played by the same woman who plays Connie in this S19 episode (the mum of the violent gun guy) ) sues Addison because her daughter Gwen has spina bifida (I think) and Addison promised that the in utero surgery she performed would give Gwen a good quality of life and she’d be able to walk. But the Mum, Sean, sees that Gwen can only barely take a few steps at the age of 7 and sues. She says that Addison should have told her to have an abortion and that she never should have gone through with the pregnancy. At the end of the ep its revealed that actually Sean just wants to sue Addison so she can get a shit ton of money to help pay Gwens massive medical costs. Addison then arranges with St Ambrose hospital for Sean to get a job there as a social worker instead.
Anyway, yeah….its an iffy plotline!! Don’t love it. But the rest of this week’s episode was 10/10 perfect. No notes!!!!
Oh my god, I completely forgot about that Private Practice plot!!! I think because, yeah, it made me uncomfortable even back then. (Also you are completely right, that is the same actress, what a catch! You are elite level, I bow to you!)
Huh, the first episode of the latest series of Call the Midwife had a character with cerebral palsy from an injury at birth as well. Played by notable English lesbian comedian Rosie Jones, no less.
Isn’t 3 Body Problem by the Game of Thrones guys? I wouldn’t call them “highly respected”.
I think the general consensus is that they’re okay adapting source material but are not good with coming up with their own dialogue, storylines or characters.
Before GoT outran the books, the quality difference between things taken directly from the books and things they invented themselves was noticeable. It was tolerable because most of the show was the former. But of course, once GoT outran the books, everything was showrunner invention. It didn’t help that D&D became impatient and just wanted to wrap the show up even though HBO was willing to give them many more episodes.