Boob(s On Your) Tube: Shonda Rhimes Is the Only One Doing Us Right

Every Friday (well, almost every Friday) when I sit down to write Boobs Tube, I feel this heavy sense of sadness and disappointment settle onto my shoulders. My first move is to try to disentangle the frustration I feel about queer lady TV being so bad this year from my terror about whatever the fuck the Trump administration has done during the week. That’s an impossible task. The takeaway is the same, though: Things just are not good right now for gay women on television. Supergirl is the bright spot, but even the beauty of Maggie and Alex gets cloudy from time-to-time by the relentless straight white guy entitlement and rewards that are showered down upon Mon-El on the regular (as Valerie Anne has written about brilliantly in her recaps, and especially in her analysis of the crossover musical episode).

Everything else is just kind of background noise. In ten episodes, The Good Fight only made one of its queer women into an actual character. The Fosters hardly even let Stef and Lena stand in the same room this season. Pretty Little Liars comes back for its final ten episodes next week, and all I can think about is how badly Ezra Fitz and the decision to make a duplicitous trans woman ruined a show I loved with all my whole heart. Orange Is the New Black comes back in just a few weeks but is that show actually going to recover from murdering Poussey? I don’t think so. And based on the response of our readers, I don’t think queer women are going to stick around to see if it can be repaired. (It can’t be repaired.) Plus: Where’s Luisa, man?

There’s Orphan Black. There’s Wynonna Earp. I’m hopeful for those! And I could always watch this season of Grace and Frankie again!

The main thing our community has been talking about this week re: TV is Zeke Smith getting outed as trans on Survivor. He wrote an op-ed about it in The Hollywood Reporter, which is really insightful and gracious and approved by Laverne Cox. The New York Times also wrote about what the show did between the time that episode was filmed and when it aired. GLAAD had a strategy at the ready that night; they helped shape the message.

The only other real life queer news of interest is that the Television of Arts and Sciences Academy is letting nonbinary actor Kate Dillon choose which category they’ll submit in for the Emmy Awards for their work on Billions and Orange Is the New Black. And MTV is scrapping the gender-specific movie and TV award categories.

OH AND GINA RODRIGUEZ IS GOING TO PLAY CARMEN SANDIEGO.

Here’s what else on TV!

Black Sails

Written by Valerie Anne

Remember when we thought we had nowhere to go but up from Glee?

Black Sails came close to being one of the best representation of queer characters on television. Everyone was bisexual! It was a dream come true! The three lead women, including a kickass woman of color, and the lead man were all unabashedly queer.

Then they had to go and kill their bisexual female lead for no reason. Worse, to further a man’s plot. Eleanor, once fierce and independent and a force to be reckoned with, over the course of one season, was diminished to “the Governor’s wife” and was killed by her own husband’s idiocy. Max never even got to say goodbye. It was heartbreaking and awful and unnecessary.

BUT at least all of our other queer characters got relatively happy endings.

Flint got reunited with the boyfriend he thought was long dead.

Max found her rightful place running Nassau, albeit from behind the scenes this time.

Anne is pirating again, because Anne Bonny belongs on the ocean, Anne Bonny belongs on the sea. I imagine she still is with Max between voyages, but that was left open-ended.

One thing that most pirate-history-lovers were likely excited about (myself included, since I have learned a lot about ladypirates over the course of this show) is that at the end of the episode, Jack Rackham invites a new aspiring pirate on board, who introduces themselves as “Mark Reade.” Anne eyes the newbie up and down, not knowing what we know: This is actually Mary Reade, her future galpal.

It was a good finale, it was. It wrapped everything up while still giving you hope for the futures of your favorites, with the perk of adding one more queer character in the eleventh hour. Even Idelle was at the new Governor’s right hand. My only wish, deep down to my bones, was that they had let Eleanor live. Eleanor and Max could have been running Nassau together, while Anne went off with Mary Reade. Everyone else got a relatively happy ending. But Eleanor, the fighter, the survivor, was killed in a fight with a wandering soldier. It felt like a betrayal, and frankly robbed us of what would surely have been some high-quality Hannah New acting in the final episodes, she who carried this show on her narrow but strong-as-shit shoulders for years. And I think what sucks almost as much as that feeling of betrayal is that feeling of “I should have known.”

But the thing is, this didn’t happen to any other main character on the show. Vane wasn’t killed in a random subplot isolated from everyone; he even got to say goodbye to the woman he loved. Billy Bones survived getting thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean…twice. So I had no reason, on paper, to assume a queer woman’s storyline would be thrown away like it too often is on other shows.

Today a coworker saw my “Support positive LGBT representation” sticker on my water bottle and asked me about it. After I gave him an incredibly shortened version of what it was about, and mentioned how a ridiculous number of LGBT characters were killed off shows in a short amount of time, he scoffed and said, “I guess no show is allowed to kill off their LGBT character or they’ll hear about it.” then literally got on a scooter and rolled away before I could rant about how THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID.

Even if this was ten years from now and every show had a dozen queer characters so one dying on a show here and there wasn’t as egregious as every-show-unceremoniously-killing-one-of-their-maybe-two-queer-characters, or even in an alternate universe where everyone on every show was queer and heterosexuality didn’t even exist, I would still have had a problem with the way Eleanor Guthrie’s character was assassinated, both figuratively and literally. And it breaks my heart, because I loved this weird, beautiful, bloody pirate show.

All that said, it’s always sad to say goodbye. I’ll miss Eleanor, Max, and Anne, I’ll miss those beautiful oceans and stunning beaches. I’ll even miss that hauntingly beautiful opening sequence. For the most part, Black Sails celebrated the strength and genius of women fighting for their rightful place of power in a world that wished to grant them none. It showed the rise of women who had been beaten down by men who felt threatened by them or entitled to them. And at its heart, it was about the relationship those women had; sometimes as lovers, sometimes as friends, sometimes as a (finally) worthy adversary.

So goodbye, Black Sails. May Eleanor Guthrie, Anne Bonny, and Max, the woman who loved them both, live on forever in our hearts.

Grey’s Anatomy

Hands up if you remember that Black women tried to save this country from Donald Trump.

There’s nothing gay to report about the last few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, but there is something special to report and that’s: Chandra Wilson and Ellen Pompeo directed two of the last three episodes and they were both brilliant and nowhere else on TV do women get opportunities like this. It’s Shondaland only. Pompeo did “Be Still, My Soul” and it’s one of the most gut-wrenching episodes in Grey’s history (which, as you know, is saying something) and it’s so fitting that the woman who plays the eternally tortured Meredith Grey would pull the strings on the episode where Maggie loses her mom to breast cancer. Pompeo does so much without words in this episodes, gets in on Maggie’s face, doesn’t even close Maggie’s mom’s eyes after she passes away, and pulls out with an aerial shot that’s actually heavenly in the end. She’ll be directing another one in season 13.

Wilson got the Riggs/Mer bottle episode on a plane and directed it with such claustrophobic precision it came closer to giving me a panic attack than that episode in season one when Meredith stuck her hand inside that dude’s chest because there was a bomb in there. You know as well as I do that Grey’s isn’t much for subtlety when it comes to its metaphors but the turbulence of Riggs and Meredith juxtaposed with the literal turbulence of that plane were brilliantly executed. I felt like the world was squeezing in on me. I was terrified. I hadn’t realized Wilson also directed The Fosters this year! I like that. I like that a lot. Oh, and shout out to the pilot who got all the passengers safely through the storms converging on the plane in “In the Air Tonight”; she was a woman.

Between these two episodes of flawless direction by some of the hardest working women in Hollywood, we got an episode where Mer and her sestras danced. A beautiful throwback. Joy in the storm. Shonda just keeps on doing us right.

Rosewood

The Last Jedi Poster makes my heart feel like it’s on literal fire.

ME TOO.

Nothing gay, but here are some cute looks between Pippy and TMI when Pippy goes full caretaker before and during Rosie’s liver surgery. (His body explodes on the table but I think he’s going to be okay. There’s still like six episodes left this season.)

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

58 Comments

  1. In other Tv news the Originals are on tonight and it looks like Freya and Keelin are going to be a thing. I don’t think we’ve ever had gay werewolf/witch combo together before.
    However it’s good to remain cautious since the TVD/TO world is pretty terrible to queer people and women.

    • I was hoping someone would mention this. I was very excited when I noticed their chemistry was off the charts. Now let’s hope the writers won’t eff this up like the TVD did

    • Can you give a quick overview on their characters? Are they new to the show? Have they been shown to be queer before now? Are they important characters?

      • Keelin is an emergency doctor and a werewolf. She is a new character this season. Freya has been a recurring character since season 2. She is the oldest child of the Mikelson siblings. She was kidnapped by her aunt and imprisoned by her for hundreds of years. Keelin is the last of the Malraux family whose vemon can cure the Mikelsons. Freya keeps her prison so she can make an antidote. They eventually come to an understanding and help eachother out. Keelin is bisexual and Freya has not previously shown interest in girls.

    • YESSSS Thank you Freakazoid! I’ve been waiting for news about Queen Sugar’s season 2 premiere!

      @c-p had to make sure you saw this!

    • Great show and it is so nice to see Rutina Wesley play a character worthy of her talent.

    • Queen Sugar also will have only women directors for both seasons so far. Also, Jessica Jones’ second season will have all women directors and The Fosters has a 50/50 split of writers and directors when it comes to gender.
      Shonda set the table and now others are following suit.

  3. Since this is the first “Boobs on Your Tube” since the “Legends of Tomorrow” two-part finale…when the Legion of Doom rewrote reality, Malcolm Merlyn had Nyssa al’Ghul living a closeted life in Iowa.

    • I just finished the season on Netflix a couple days ago and had to rewind because I thought I’d heard him wrong. Like…I know they’re the worst of the worst and we are therefore supposed to come to the conclusion that Malcolm Merlyn doing that was extra awful, but it made me feel weird and sad.

      Bright side: Sara and Amaya making a *ahem* killer team while wearing leather jackets.

  4. Where indeed is Luisa? And where for that matter is JtV? It seems like there’s stretches of two or three weeks between every episode lately.

    BUT! Does anyone want to talk with me about the scene with Krishna in the last episode and how she clearly has a crush on Petra and now I’m fervently hoping the writers will go somewhere with that plot angle?? Also, as I was watching that scene I somehow knew she was going to say she was gay before she said it, so either she’s a subtly excellent actress, or I have superior gaydar that extends even to fictional characters.

    • It kind of bothers me how Luisa’s storyline just seems to disappear for like half the season and then just reappear. I don’t know. I came into this season excited about Jane’s storyline and Louisa’s and now I’ve just stopped watching the show. I just lost interest. The tongue-in-cheek tella novella references were interesting for a while but by now just feel old.

    • When an actor is not a regular on a television show, they are usually not contractually obligated to be available at a certain time, which I’m pretty sure is the case here.

      Yara Martinez has been prepping and shooting her own upcoming show, The Tick, and has likely been unavailable for JtV and its writers. Similar to Bridget Regan (Rose) who stars on The Last Ship.

      • I do understand that, but it would be nice if they’d at least mention her once in a while, especially on a show that’s usually so good at tongue-in-cheek meta references to the production process.

        • Yeppp, I’m still annoyed that we had an episode last seasons where everyone was concerned Raf was drinking too much. But no one thought to mention that he had a sister in rehab for alcoholism at that very moment.

  6. When I saw the preview indicating a Grey’s Anatomy episode on a plane I was like “again”? But turns out I really liked the episode episode. It was well-made And made me care for the cases of the week. Well done, Shondaland!
    But I still dislike Riggs and think Meredith deserves better. And I miss Yang

    • Riggs is the WORST. The ABSOLUTE WORST. And this on a show that also includes Owen Hunt is a true achievement. Why can’t he take Meredith’s “no” for an answer? What does this type of insistence model to everyone watching? Granted, this isn’t Supergirl, the main audience for Grey’s Anatomy is presumably older, but I started watching this show when I was in high school, and good GOD this is a TERRIBLe thing to model to teenagers that you just need to keep pushing until you get the answer you want! I expect better than this from Shonda.

      Also, if I were Meredith, I would never get on a plane again. Mind you, if I were Meredith, I’d never step foot in a hospital again, so I guess she’s just braver than me. I did enjoy the flashback shots of Cristina and Lexie though. (Hi Chyler Leigh!)

      • YES x100 to the Riggs comments! I just rewatched Season 1 (RIP Grey’s when it was good), and actually thought the same thing about Derek…Meredith explicitly turns him down multiple times and so he turns up to her house party uninvited? McGross.

        • Yeah it’s true about Derek too. Difference is, I was 16 when I watched the first season and I didn’t know enough to understand that that was wrong. Now I’m 28 and I don’t want any more kids to believe as I did that that’s okay. It’s been 13 years, Shonda should have learned better by now. I expect better from her.

      • Owen, Riggs, Fitz and Brandon Foster should all get together to see who is the worst of the worst. And then fuck off forever.

        • …and take Ross Geller with them. (I know that one’s from the archives, but being the worst stands the test of time in his case.)

          Completely agree re: missing Yang, but to be honest, she’s too good for the current state of things. She lives on in our hearts and her voice comes out of our mouths every time we scream at our screens about any of the myriad dumb shit shenanigans happening at Grey Sloan. That’ll have to be enough.

      • I’m not a huge Meredith fan, but hoo boy, she deserves far better than a guy who takes it upon himself to decide the only conceivable reason she might reject him is because of her dead, perfect husband. Meredith literally asked him why she should consider him, and he couldn’t find anything other than pouting and repeating how much he likes her.

        Glad Cristina is in a better place now and won’t be written OOC just to approve of this mediocre dude.

  7. Can’t wait to watch last night’s Grey’s! This season has been such a snoozefest, so (commence shameless plug) a friend and I started a podcast to relive the best/craziest moments of its 13 seasons! We call it Greytest Hits: each ep is centered around a superlative category (e.g. Most Inoperable Tumor That Turns Out to Be Totally Operable), but mostly we talk about how Owen is the worst. So, relevant to y’alls interests.

    I’ll post the link below if you want to check it out! We are very new at this, so any podcasting tips (or other feedback) are also welcome!

      • Ohhhh I’m definitely in to this! I agree with you that this season has been pretty dull – I really just don’t enjoy a lot of the story lines, and it seems like all my favourite characters (Arizona, Alex, Bailey) are being sidelined in favour of all the characters that grate on my nerves (Riggs, Richard, Own, April) and then other characters are just being totally assassinated (ALEX, Maggie, Amelia).

        I’m definitely gonna check out your podcast, thanks for the recommendation!

        • Awesome, thanks Allison! Definitely let me know if there’s something you’d want us to talk about that we haven’t yet :)

          • @emilymc Okay so I actually listened to every episode of your podcast – I really like it a lot! It makes a nice change from all the tv recap podcasts. I like that I get a little taste of a bunch of episodes instead of just a recap of one episode. And you guys will NEVER run out of categories! I agree with your choices on a lot of things, and disagree on a lot of things, but it’s fun to see what you come up with (and try to jog my memory of the last 13 years!)

            As for things I’d want you to talk about, oh boy, I have so many suggestions!

            – Most ridiculous conversation to ever happen while someone’s open on the operating table
            – Most ridiculous superstitions
            – Best elevator hookup (c’mon, this one’s a classic!)
            – Worst instance of surgical snobbery towards other medical specialties
            – It would be too hard to do an episode that’s just “favourite patients” but you could do subcategories like “favourite Peds patient” or “favourite queer patient” or whatever

            One piece of advice – I just finished your episode about Alex’s girlfriends. In the future, maybe think of using different language to describe people who struggle with mental health problems? You guys got kind of ableist at times, and it was hard to differentiate when you were using “crazy’ to mean “ridiculous plot nonsense” and when you were using “crazy” to legitimately refer to diagnosed psychiatric illnesses. I would seriously consider re-recording that entire episode because a lot of it could be really offensive.

        • @arvan12 I’m so glad you enjoyed it – thanks for listening!!! I love all your ideas, and we will definitely, DEFINITELY have an elevator-themed episode (elevator hookups, elevator fights, elevator surgeries…so many options!)

          And as for your advice – thank you. We only ever intended “crazy” to refer to general Shondaland ridiculousness, and definitely not as a way to refer to, trivialize, or stigmatize mental illness. We hear your concerns and are going to figure out a way to address this and also listen back again to see where we can do better. Thanks for listening to us in the early stages, and bearing with us as we learn and improve! Your comments are very much appreciated :)

  8. I love Survivor. I listen to podcasts, I recap it and run a tipping competition with my friends. Survivor consumes a lot of my life for a lot of the year. It’s such a brilliant, engaging show.

    I’ve seen 34 seasons of Survivor and have seen some truly unpleasant things in that time. Survivor is a show about people. It’s a reflection of society. Because of that you see some pretty shitty stuff.

    There has been more than a few uncomfortable moments on Survivor. There has been some extreme bullying and rampant misogyny that has left me disgusted but in 34 seasons of Survivor and more than half of my life. I have never seen anything as bad as what happened on Wednesday night.

    To see a gay man out a trans man in front of a group of people with the specific intention of harming (the intention makes it worse, but either way), knowing that it would be broadcast around the world was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen. He used every cliche in the book to backtrack, “I fight for trans people”, “I have trans friends”. He knew the damage it would cause and he did it anyway.

    It left me feeling numb. I felt like the wind had been sucked out of me. I can’t even imagine what Zeke was feeling at that time. It was heartwarming to see his tribe support him, and Jeff did so well to steer the conversation and keep Varner accountable for the words he said and the harm he caused. It looks like CBS handled the issue extremely well. Reading Zeke’s op-ed was so touching. Even so I’m heartbroken because a trans person’s life should never, ever be a learning experience for cis folk.

    I’m still processing it all but I hope that Zeke is doing ok.

  10. Everyone is bisexual on Black Sails? I’m pretty sure Max was a lesbian and both Flint and Thomas were gay (but as confirmed by the actor the scenes were cut back by real life homophobia because people freaked out at the idea of gay pirate).

    And one upcoming show I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is season 2 of The Girlfriend Experience, it apparently has a lesbian storyline this year.

    • Flint had a romantic and sexual relationship with lady Hamilton/Mrs.Barlow but there is some ambiguity as to whether it came from shared grief over the loss of the man they both loved. He was pretty torn up after her death though.

  11. Eleanor Gutherie deserved better.

    There were so many things this show did right. I mean they have four bisexuals who are all show runners. Their characters had real storylines that didn’t revolve solely around their sexuality.

    I went back to watch all the Anne scenes and this time around when I wasn’t blindly shipping MaGuthrie, I totally fell for the Anne/Max/Jack relationship. The thrupple with Max, Anne and Jack felt real and not gratuitous.

    However, I did not like the ambiguity with Anne and Max’s relationship at the end. I really wanted more closure, well I wanted them to wind up together and the ambiguity left there felt like the writers were trying to pander to everyone and make everyone somewhat satisfied.

    That being said, all of the good queer stuff does not out weigh the damage done by Eleanor Guthrie’s post-season 2 portrayal and death.

    Eleanor Guthrie’s death was half a baby-step above the the character being hit by a stray bullet. I agree with Valerie Anne, the time devoted to her death and her ending was not given the way it was with characters like Charles Vane who got less screen time, and less fan love too in my opinion. I mean she was Eleanor Fucking Guthrie.

    Eleanor’s whole story-line post season 2 was a disgrace. It felt completely out of character for Eleanor to give up all her ambitions and control of the island for a man. I mean, pirates tip-toed around her and didn’t want to piss her off. She was a badass in her own right and suddenly she falls for a man and all her hopes and dreams are focused on her husbands success and familial happiness. She just felt so out of character. The writers did not do her character credit after the second season on.

  12. Please make Boobs on Your Tube a regular weekly column, I know you might not find much to talk about in TV but readers/commenters might like this space to discuss the shows they watched. Or there are shows that you may not watch or report on that others might be interested in like…

    Call the Midwife season 6 started airing 2 weeks ago in the US on PBS
    http://www.pbs.org/call-the-midwife/blogs/modern-day-midwives/call-the-midwife-season-6-episode-2-gif-recap/

    Wentworth started its season in Australia 2 weeks ago also, I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone but shit meet fan.

    Angela popped up on American Housewife (I know no ones favorite show) doing her supporting thing.
    Fortune Feimster showed up on Life in Pieces again where she’s recurring.

    And other shows that I might not be watching but others do and want to add.

    • As always having a lot of feelings about Call the Midwife. I remain current with the US showings, unspoiled, & crying both happy and sad tears every damned episode. Nurse Crane at the end this week, reaching right in and squeezing my tiny heart!

    • I had no idea Call the Midwife had begun it’s 6th season. THANK YOU for posting this. This is great news!

  13. Survivor: Outing a trans person is an act of violence and for having done that, Jeff Varner should be held to account, but I do worry that Survivor and CBS are escaping culpability in this whole mess.

    Varner outed Zeke Smith to the show’s cast and crew and that was an act of violence and it was wrong. But Survivor and CBS outed him to the world…and that too was an act of violence…and there hasn’t yet been a sufficient explanation of why they chose to air what they did. As Rich Juzwiak wrote over at Jezebel, “this moment, and the identity it revealed, was sculpted and commodified.”

    Yes, they had the video and, certainly, they’re contractually entitled to air whatever footage they collect, but what about basic human decency? Did they ever say to Zeke, “we know that this is a violent act and, as such, we won’t air this if you don’t want us to?” Based on everything I’ve read, it seems like Zeke’s adjacency was in response to the outing, not in determining if his outing would be shared with the world.

    Grey’s Anatomy: A while back, I watched a conversation between the first ladies of Shondaland. One of the highlights from that conversation was the news that once Grey’s wraps, Ellen Pompeo has no plans to act again…so,to me, Pompeo’s directorial debut felt a bit like the beginning of the end of Grey’s.

    A few thoughts on the past few weeks of Grey’s:

    1. What began with a bang, ended with a whimper: For weeks, we slogged through one episode after another of Grey’s, watching everyone bicker with one another and seeing our favorite SGMH doctors on the verge of mutiny. And then, it just ended…with Bailey and Webber quietly settling their disagreement. That’s it? I sat through all that awfulness for that?!

    2. RIP, Diane Pierce: My heart really broke for Maggie, as she continued to grieve for her mother. That cruel reminder that the world keeps spinning even when your world feels like it’s stopped…I’ve been there and watching it play out of my screen was gut-wrenching. I like the rapport building between Maggie and Jackson and I’m anxious to see if Maggie will take her mother’s advice and get a little slutty with him.

    3. Meredith & McRig: I’m not sure what happened but somewhere between the end of the fall season and the start of the winter season, Meredith and Riggins lost whatever chemistry they once had. Maybe it’s Martin Henderson’s decision to shave his beard or the constant starts and stops over Maggie (or Meredith’s fear of replacing McDreamy) but watching them now just elicits a “meh” from me.

    Also? Why do they keep pushing this potential Maggie jealousy story when the better story would’ve been with Owen?

    4. What a Time to be Alive: Could you have imagined a story about a plane flying through severe storms, resulting in multiple injuries–two nearly fatal, would be the less crazy story about airlines that we heard this week?

    Imposters: I hate so much about this show. I hate that Maddie’s marriage with Jules is used for shock value…as proof of how villainous Maddie really is. I hate that Ezra and Richard’s relationship with Ava/Alice are given more screentime than Jules and Cece. I hate that Jules is experiencing the same emotions as Ezra and Richard but she’s portrayed as the neurotic one. There really is so much to hate…

    And yet, I watch…for reasons that I didn’t particularly understand until the most recent episodes.

    Nearly every show on television that deals with romantic drama has “love” as its ultimate goal. You’re watching to see which couples fall in love, which stay in love and which, after some split, find their way back to love. You ‘ship couples, you scorn the person who dares come between them…it’s all about the pursuit of love.

    But, in real life, I am not that person. I’m not a romantic. I’m a cynic–a full-fledged, unapologetic member of Team #LoveIsALie–and Imposters is the rare show that shares (and affirms) that cynicism. As fanciful as the plot to Imposters seems, it is, ultimately, a story about heartbreak and the feeling that sometimes comes with a bad break-up: you got conned (even if we don’t call it that).

    I nearly passed on Imposters based on the trailer alone and then, after watching three episodes, I was sure I’d reclaim that Tuesday night hour…but then I started to see myself and my experiences in Maddie, Ezra, Richard and Jules in ways I didn’t expect and I
    just kept watching, misgivings and all.

    Jules, meet Autostraddle. Autostraddle, meet Jules.

    (Sidenote #1: I’m being intentionally vague here because I don’t want to spoil the show for anyone that might be persuaded by my argument for watching.)

    (Sidenote #2: Another interesting tidbit about Imposters? It’s written and produced, in part, by Kathy Greenberg. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because she was one of the creators of The L Word.)

    TV Potpourri:

    – Blacklist: Redemption just finished its inaugural season and things don’t look good for a season two. I only mention this because I’m hopeful that the end of Redemption means the return of Eve Rothlo on How to Get Away With Murder.

    – Shonda Rhimes’ new series, Still Star Crossed will debut on May 29. It’d previously been set for a mid-season release but got bumped. The series is based on the book from Melinda Traub.

    • Note to Self: Don’t post on the internet after midnight.

      A couple corrections:
      1. I meant to refer to Zeke Smith’s agency not his adjacency (whatever that is). I blame this on autocorrect.

      2. The character on Grey’s Anatomy is Nathan Riggs, not Riggins. I blame this mistake on my mind’s need to make everything about Friday Night Lights. At least in this case, it’s not that much of a stretch: the actor that plays Riggs, Martin Henderson, used to be on Shonda’s short-lived show, Off the Map, alongside QB1 himself, Matt Saracen Zach Gilford.

      Also? I’ve got FNL on the brain because THR published an oral history of Scandal, which celebrated its 100th episode this week, and it said that ABC wanted Mrs. Coach AKA Connie Britton to play Olivia Pope. The hair would’ve still been fabulous but…I mean…can you even imagine that?

    • I’m so glad I’m not the only one watching imposters!! I see so much of myself in Jules and I’ve loved her *steamy* scenes in the last few episodes. Also as someone who usually presses fast forward when whiney white guys are on the screen, I have to say these whiney white guys r very tolerable and even fun to watch sometimes! More people should give it a try!!

  14. Minor correction: The bomb episode of Grey’s Anatomy was season 2, not 1.

    I’m glad to see what Shondaland has done to the TV landscape but Grey’s Anatomy got increasingly frustrating the longer it’s been on. Part of me wants to watch again because there are the good episodes mentioned above but then there are the issues of it being on for 13 seasons.

  15. Have just watched episode 4 of Harlots, and there is definitely a queer relationship brewing between two of the girls. Also, it has a lot of women taking control of their lives in a world which hates them and manages to make a show about the sex industry without glamourising it. Definitley recommend and would a recap here – it would be very insightful!

  16. Something gay happened on The Arrangement. But it’s a woman married to a (male) cult leader and she’s hooking up with a social climber type who wants her career help, so I bet I’ll be adding somebody to the big list by the end of the season.

  19. Hi there! Just wanted to point out that the “Kate Dillon” referenced in the intro is actually Asia Kate Dillon, and they are a phenomenal performer and advocate. Great article!

  20. but there is something gay to report about the last few episodes of grey’s anatomy… my heart

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