Last week, a valued Autostraddle reader wrote in to us asking, “Can anyone explain to me why Netflix keeps trying to make me watch a show about a homicidal teenage boy who wants to kill a teenage girl he’s traveling with? Am I misunderstanding the premise of the show? Like…how could that show possibly get the green light???? “The End of the F***ing World” is REALLY advertising everywhere and I’m like…just…WHY?”
My friends… this is why:
Oh, are those two lesbian detectives on a cross-country chase to locate aforementioned young male psychopath and the girl he eventually decides not to kill? It is. Yup, we are looking at a black butch lesbian character and also Yara Greyjoy, two lesbian cops on a show that has its ups and downs but more importantly has its tops and bottoms.
Female detective buddy-cop shows have always traversed heavily in queerbaiting and lesbian subtext, from Cagney & Lacey to the honestly intolerable (sorry!) Rizzoli & Isles.
Alleged Heterosexuals
For ten billion seasons, we’ve also been forced to collectively entertain the idea that Olivia Benson is a heterosexual woman who has never hooked up with Casey Novak. There’s a new Ryan Murphy show (although it looks nothing like a Ryan Murphy show) called 9-1-1, where Connie Britton and Angela Bassett continue, week after week, to play characters employed by police departments who are not romantically involved with one another. Also they live in a Los Angeles with literally zero traffic, which is a bananas extension of disbelief.
Sure, we’ve had lesbian and bisexual cops and detectives before — it’s one of the most popular professions for les/bi characters, after all. But within the procedural format, very little time, if any, is devoted to their homosexual feelings and actions, like Tammy Gregario on NCIS: New Orleans, Diana Berrigan on White Collar and Abby Sullivan on NYPD Blue. We’ve seen full-blown lesbian law enforcers on non-procedural shows, like Stef on The Fosters, Kima on The Wire, Gail Peck on Rookie Blue, Sam on Lip Service, Tasha in The L Word and Nicole Haught on Wynonna Earp. We’ve recently seen two Latina law enforcement officials come out as bisexual: Rosa Diaz on Brooklyn 99 and Christina “Chris” Alonso on S.W.A.T. Those are all wonderful developments.
But there’s a special erogenous zone within our lesbian loins dedicated entirely to the sensation of “two fictional firearm-toting women fighting fictional crime and also having realistic sex.” If untreated, this area of our desire map risks extinction. This is a serious threat now that Maggie and Alex have broken up on Supergirl and we’re no longer privy to Person of Interest and its Root/Shaw romance. (Which wasn’t TECHNICALLY law enforcement but also it was.)
The creators of The End of the F*cking World may have intended to create one type of show: a show centered on a young boy and a young girl and their shitty families and subsequent misadventures and also murder. In the process, they have given us a small taste of another show. A different show. Dare I say it… a better show.
Look at this relatable content:
It’s a proven fact that queer women go nuts for same-sex relationships between women who are bound together in fights against adversity, including but certainly not limited to situations like: a crisis in the ER, finding out your parents are part of an evil supernatural cult, vampires in general.
Nobody knows if The End of the F*cking World will return for a second season — at least one reviewer has called for it to end exactly where it ended, praising its clean resolution. I agree. Honestly I was pretty neutral on the show itself and zoned out more than once (possibly ~10 times). But I call upon Netflix to consider this alternate possibility: a procedural/dark-comedy crossover, with two lesbian leads forever ensnared in the will-they-or-won’t-they (again) hysterics of everyday life on the fictional beat. Because when the show ended and everybody else was concerned about [spoiler], I had merely one concern: what’s gonna happen with Eunice and Teri??!!
Just think about it!
I’m gonna checked this out for sure, thank you. But I’m sorry, Riese, of course Olivia Benson never hooked up with Casey Novak, that’s clear because her soulmate is Alexandra Cabot.
Having never seen The End of the F*cking World, the only thing I wanted to comment about was Riese’s line about Olivia Benson and Casey Novak.
You’re right, @freakazoid1980, and Alex Cabot is Olivia Benson’s soulmate…like, maybe Olivia slept with Casey once after Alex had to go into witness protection but that’s it.
OKAY OKAY OKAY YOU’RE RIGHT
rizzoli and isles pissed me off so much, still does.
and i just started watching cagney and lacey, its been years since i watched the series so it’s like a new show.
i knew nothing about this one, so thanks for the rec!
Rizzoli & Isles had great chemistry and was a fun show
Ok this is a fantastic article and all but how DARE you forget about iconic, groundbreaking ’70s cop duo Dyke & Fats?!
i thought about including it but Fats was straight, so i couldn’t figure out how to work it in!
Oh true, my bad! Sometimes I forget to take off my gay goggles
no literally ME TOO. and then i was looking at ‘lesbian cop’ on TV Tropes to make sure i hadn’t missed anybody and was like oh whoops. i had a whole paragraph about how SNL already parodied the show i want to see and then realized nope they did not
Why am I not surprised that you guys have higher standards of journalistic integrity when reporting on lesbian cop show parodies than other media outlets have when reporting on literally anything else?
I actually binged this entire show Monday night and was yelling at my TV when it was over because WHY WASNT THIS ABOUT TERI AND EUNICE’S ADVENTURES IN POLICING.
Also not overlooking the opportunity to ship Tunice, because I love fish puns.
Not to take issue with these perfect sentences, but I think this loinal area will remain healthy because of our collective habit you alluded to earlier, of shipping any power-suited female cops in close proximity to each other. In fact, this part of loin is probably overdeveloped already. I mean, if we were serious about solving global hunger, we would take this piece of loin, sauté it with garlic and feed it to the world.
sally, you’re as always right, and i hope we can have mashed potatoes and broccoli on the side, and maybe a glass of seltzer
COMMENT AWARD all the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obviously I support this spinoff 100% and I think it would be a good opportunity to take on all tropes that are currently extremely tiresome with men but would become thrilling and more than minimally arousing if portrayed with queer women.
Suggested storylines:
– lesbian cops bust an underground gambling ring at a high-stakes all-queer-female poker game
– lesbian cop becomes overprotective of a queer single mum crime victim that she has to interact with an unusually high number of times for reasons
– lesbian cops help out bartender at the gay bar they go to at the end of every episode to drink whiskey and look attractively grizzled
– lesbian cop is troubled when she has to investigate a buddy from her Tuesday-night all-queer-female basketball pickup game
–
Wow, these are great pitches.
Whine ahead : why can’t we have our own channel, or whatever, to give life to these shows, _not cancel_ Mississippi One, give the two cops in this article a decent turn around the block, etc. etc. Argh.
And “take my wife”
yes i want to create a channel and if you want your show on the channel it has to have at least one butch lesbian in it
I thought this show was absolutely beautiful – for the first couple of episodes I was deeply uncomfortable because, yeah, we’re watching a teen boy and girl spend all this time together whilst she’s completely oblivious that he’s planning to kill her, but it (luckily) sensitively and intelligently turns that premise on its head, and instead we get a raw and authentic story about the difficulties and alienation of growing up, especially when you’ve been robbed of intimacy throughout your life (as both protagonists have), and the struggle to find close human connection. I thought it explored the relationship between teen girls and sex and the way men and boys treat them really well also. ‘It seems like sex can go from something you want to do to a punishment really fucking quickly’ was such a brutal and relatable line to hear from a seventeen year old girl.
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT! It was basically the only reason why i bingewatched through the whole season. Gotta love them, so awkward and relatable
I watched 1 episode of this show and then decided it embodied everything I hate about the manic pixie dream girl trope and I could love myself enough to stop watching.
yes! i’ll join any petition you start. thank you, Riese.