Welcome to Dykes Discuss, where we discuss media and topics that aren’t necessarily lesbian-forward but that we still want to weigh in on! We have fun! Today, we are discussing Sirens, the Netflix limited series starring Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Meghann Fahy, and Milly Alcock.

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Kayla: hey hey

Drew: When you’re married to a billionaire you get to start your own catchphrase turns out

Christina: One of the many thrilling choices this show made imo

Drew: And with that we’re here to talk about Sirens, the latest limited series starring an iconic actress about rich people.

Do we think they asked Nicole Kidman and she was busy?

Kayla: If they didn’t ask her, I bet she’s so upset.

Christina: The amount of blondes that would be

possibly illegal

Kayla: My wife was really concerned with the lack of toner being used on miss Simone

We started calling her corn cob head toward the end

Christina: ME TOO, she had Emily from Revenge hair and I do not mean that in a good way

so YELLER

Kayla: Another iconic beach-set show about rich people featuring a yellow blonde

In fact, Christina and I previously discussed how this was filling a Revenge-shaped hole in our hearts

Christina: Which is ALWAYS open to be filled

But I gotta say, towards the end it did reach a level of….thought? that I am not sure that Revenge was ever capable of (with LOVE)

Drew: The show made me appreciate the way Big Little Lies balanced tones, because that’s ostensibly a show about domestic violence, but it didn’t feel weird to have the mashed together with rich beach vibes. But this… idk. It just wasn’t good enough for me to tackle everything it tackled re: suicide, child abuse, addiction, etc etc.

Kayla: I think I found the quality a lot higher than you!

Drew: Interesting! I could never quite figure out if I was watching fun trash or a failed attempt at prestige.

Christina: Ohhhh interesting! I thought it handled most of those topics pretty well, largely due to the actual chemistry between our sister duo

Kayla: I was surprised by some of the depth we got from this show, particularly in how MACABRE it was. I think a lot of these shows in this genre of sort of Thrillers About The Rich love to throw out morbid and serious topics but in a way that almost feels…tacky? And under-explored? This show was BLEAK!!!

Drew: It was so bleak!

Kayla: The stuff about child neglect and abuse, suicide, addiction, and also the pain of caring for a parent with dementia all felt super real and earned to me. And yeah, I think it’s because of our sisters and the acting in general

Drew: Yeah the acting definitely elevated it in a way I’m not sure the writing or style lived up to for me?

I kept thinking: I could’ve watched May December twice instead.

Christina: Oh to be clear the visuals are fucking garbage, just another Netflix assed brightly lit hellscape

Drew: What sucks is the directing talent is so strong on the show!!!

I don’t understand why it looks like that!!!

Christina: Again I say: Netflix

Drew: I’d love someone to do an investigation into WHY Netflix originals have to all look like this. Is it a budget thing?

Look I love sister shit and I think it’s really valuable if we’re going to keep getting shows set among the rich to frame through the lens of an assistant/the assistant’s sister/regular people

I can see a world where I was just like oh this is garbage fun, but I think for me it kept flirting with actually being good and that made me frustrated. But I definitely want to hear more about what worked for both of you.

Christina:  I really rolled with it, for the most part? Honestly to a degree I was kind of surprised by, given my recent disinterest in like, most shows lately? And I loved that it kept coming back to like “people are good and bad and life is complicated?”

Sure, every now and then I was like “wait is this scene actually happening?”

Kayla: And sometimes there isn’t a conspiracy! Life just sucks!

Drew: Yes I REALLY liked that

Kayla: Usually with these types of thrillers, we’d get some big reveal or twist, but that never really comes here. It’s just like yeah life is shitty sorry!

Drew: Especially because some random post I’d seen made me think the twist was going to be they were literal mermaids lmao.

Kayla: I did briefly think something supernatural was afoot, but I like when series feel like they’re going to go that way and then don’t.

Christina: Like the only person who is probably truly happy is…….Peter?

Kayla: There is no cult, just the cult of wealth.

Christina: His billions remain, he has a new beautiful wife, all is as it ever was

Kayla: I also love how much the staff hates Simone and how desperate she is to not see herself as staff when that’s really what she is! Even at the end — and I think the ending is fantastic — she isn’t really choosing this new life. Peter is choosing it. And if she thinks it gives her power, that power is still limited! One of my favorite parts is when Kiki realizes she can’t fire Jose.

Christina: Right, that power is limited and frankly, has an expiration date

Kayla: Also, love Jose

Christina: Get the staff a spin off NOW

Drew: Someone drink Patrice’s damn smoothies !!!!

Drew: I also liked the dynamic that everyone is scared of Michaela but she’s always wearing this facade of niceness. And so the staff doesn’t like her, but not as much as they don’t like Simone.

Who I imagine might be an even more miserable Mrs. Kell to be working for at the end?

Kayla: The group chat will be POPPING

Christina: I feel like she has a dangerous amount of staff insider knowledge

buuuut as Jose can attest, he’s gonna be the last man standing!

Kayla: Absolutely, because he’s in PETER’S corner.

The whole series really is such a tragic arc for Devon, who basically just wants her sister to help her with their dying dad but then ends up realizing that everyone she loves will eventually disappoint her and also her sister would rather be Mrs. Kell than, well, be her sister.

Christina: I am still trying to work through what worked for me but I think it really does come down to the performances — and you know, I’ll give the writing a hat tip, as I was surprised and delighted by that ending!

Kayla: Meghann Fahy makes so much of it work imo. She really is the glue.

Christina: Can we TALK about Meghan Fahy acting (forever) but in particular that moment at the end was SO GOOD

Drew: I felt like we were supposed to see Devon’s ending as melancholy but hopeful. Like she’s not running off on a boat but she is going to get her own place. A happier ending than Simone’s.

Meghann Fahy really is so incredible

This is blasphemy since Julianne Moore is an all time fave but I thought Meghann and weirdly enough Kevin Bacon were the standouts??

Christina: Gimme a SLAB of that Bacon cause I was ready for breakfast

Drew: LMAO

Kayla: SCREAM

He was killing it

Drew: He was so good at being a victim who reveals himself to just be self-victimizing

Kayla: The first half of the series primes you to think Kiki is the primary villain, but it’s really him

Drew: I was like damn let this billionaire see his kids! To the point where I was annoyed with the show for making a victim out of a billionaire man with a solid prenup. And then yeah the end I was like ohhhh duh.

Christina: Like sure it’s a little simple that the primary villain are the men — who then blame the women in their lives for “forcing them” to act that way, but it…is still largely true so it worked for me

Kayla: Yeah a lot of what the show had to say about class, gender roles, etc, it was all obvious but also in the sense that it’s…true lol!

Drew: The final episode makes it even funnier that this weekend my mom told me she watched the show and didn’t like how the last episode treated the men.

Kayla: A very fascinating take for your mom to think the men of this show deserved better

It wasn’t even an overtly “man-hating” show!

Drew: No, they win! They’re just the villains

Christina: I mean EYE would have gone with sailor boy

personally

Drew: Okay yeah I get why she didn’t and what the show was saying buuuuut

Kayla: I did love the scene of Devon quite literally running away from all the men who needed something from her on the beach.

Drew: The more we talk the more I appreciate a lot of the choices it made. I think something about the mix of tones just didn’t land for me. I’m really curious if the play is more Meghann Fahy giving a devastating monologue tone or Catherine Cohen in jail tone. Not that those can’t be mixed! They just didn’t mix well pour moi.

Kayla: See, I feel like the dynamics in the tone were way better than, say, The Perfect Couple where I couldn’t even tell at moments if it was meant to be spoofing the genre it existed in.

Drew: Right but The Perfect Couple never registered as anything I should be watching sober lol

Christina: Honestly the weird comedy was some of my favorite parts, like Devon licking Jose after he was nice to her and then him calling her a neck licker?

Kayla: Sirens feels aware of the tropes of the genre while still doing surprising things. And again I think just the places it was willing to go wrt child abuse, addiction, suicide, dementia, all of it was so intense without feeling schlocky.

Christina: Shoutout to Bill Camp also, he simply slayed that

Drew: I do think there’s a conversation to be had about craft and what a show suggests about its quality based on how it looks. And I think sometimes it’s hard to win me back into oh wait actually this is worth thinking about even though it’s shot like that. But to argue with myself… peak era sitcoms had a standard sort of flat aesthetic but the best ones were brilliant underneath.

So maybe Netflix sheen is just the new multicam

Christina: I think that is how I think of it, actually! Never would have gotten there on my own but I think that’s how I think of these things

Kayla: I think I’d rather look at something that looks like trash but has a deep story than look at something beautifully shot where there’s nothing really there. And there was a lot THERE on this show — more than I expected!

I think about this a lot when watching short films at festivals lol. Sometimes the best ones that stick with me are the ones that look and sound BAD lol.

Drew: I do agree with that. But I just want both 😭 we were so spoiled by TV for awhile getting so much with both.

Christina: Hmmm agreeeee, I’d always rather find interest in garbage

Kayla: I think I almost found Sirens more narratively surprising and rich than this season of The White Lotus lol

Christina: KAYLA SAME

I was gonna say it but I was like “that’s too hot”

BUT YOU ARE SO RIGHT LET’S GOOOOO

Drew: I welcome the hot takes even if I disagree haha

Kayla: I’m thinking about this show more! The White Lotus didn’t really stay with me this season!

Christina: White Lotus went through me like Taco Bell this season, I am so sorry!

Kayla: Say. That.

Kayla: I mean, we must discuss, dykely, because it feels like it touches a lot of things we’ve brought up: Why IS this show so homoerotic? Because I think I assumed that would be the main point of interest for me. It’s certainly what got me in the door. And it’s certainly one of the aspects I like, but I was surprised that wasn’t my SOLE interest in the series.

Christina: I suppose the short answer is: mommy issues??

Kayla: Yeah I think I was super on board with how literal and uncomfortable (in a good way) it got with the mommy issues.

Even the casting — I mean, Kiki looks like she could be Simone and Devon’s mom. That’s obviously intentional.

Christina: And! Even though this show is in no way gay, Julianne Moore’s “I love her, but I can’t have her” hits that exact level of uncomfortable mommy issues that I simply live for

Drew: The gum

Kayla: THE GUM

Drew: Sorry that’s my contribution

Christina: I loudly said “I know that’s right!”

Kayla: But what actually got me way more was Simone writing Kiki’s sexts for her.

Christina: Soooo much was implied there, knowing what Kiki would say, what she likes…GOOD STUFF

Kayla: A psychosexual relationship between a boss and her assistant is definitely great fodder for a thriller. The explicit mommy issues gave it some more flavor. It’s about power AND it’s about mommy issues — in both directions. I think Kiki has reverse mommy issues of wanting to be this mother figure to Simone (and we know she can’t have kids of her own) BUT she also is attracted to Simone’s youth/beauty/etc., because it’s exactly the thing that secured her role as Mrs. Kell. I think she knows way before the kiss that Simone represents a “threat.” So she wants to hold onto her…close…by sharing a BED SOMETIMES????

Christina: Yeah, that’s what made her conversation with Peter so good/infuriating? Like she is doing the wrong thing in firing Simone, and she knows that and she is MAD

Kayla: She thinks it’s the final play she has, and it completely backfires on her.

Drew: Yes, definitely love the detail of her not being able to have kids and therefore wanting Simone to be her kid

Not that it isn’t ALSO psychosexual but her sleeping in Simone’s bed does feel more maternal

Like we’ve lost our pet falcon lets cuddle

Normal mom stuff

Christina: RIP To Barnaby, a real one

Christina: Also not to be an interviewer, but as you two have sisters and I do not….go off

Drew: I’m a bad sister because in the early episodes I was like babe just leave stop trying to get back to scary hey hey house

Christina: To me this felt like a veryyyyy real sister vibe, especially their last fight and resolution? Not a fight a lot of friends could come back from!

Drew: Take the 10k and gooooo

But yeah the sister vibe felt really real

Kayla: I like that there was no bad sister! They were both kind of bad to each other! But also good to each other! LOL. I get why Devon feels like Simone owes her given that Devon gave up her life to raise her, but Simone didn’t choose to have a mother who almost murder-sui’d her or a father who then neglected her. When Devon was so pushy about needing Simone’s help, once we knew more of the backstory, I was like girl stop barking up this damaged tree and let your sister go actually…….

Drew: Yeah for sure, I actually think Simone was right to leave! Maybe that makes me a bad daughter also

Christina: Simone was right to leave! And Devon is right to be frustrated and scared and want help!

Drew: And I liked in that final scene the faux reassurance that they’d see each other soon. Like maybe they will but Devon knows something irreparable has shifted

Kayla: Oh yeah they will MAYBE see each other in 8 months to a year and it’ll be the most stilted lunch ever, and Simone will have to leave early but pay for everything at least.

Christina: God, that scene where Devon admits that she wanted to hurt him? WHEWWWWWW

Kayla: Exaaaaactly what I mean about the show being willing to GO THERE

I mean, it sucks. These people were each other’s life rafts, and they can’t be that for each other anymore. Simone, for all her faults, comes to that realization quicker than Devon does.

Drew: I found Simone so off putting and I am realizing that’s due to relatability. I have definitely tolerated behavior from bosses I wouldn’t tolerate from my family anymore lol

Is it really escape if you just recreate the same dynamics with people you aren’t related to…….

Christina: Oh I know myself well enough to know that job would….also become my life in a similarly mommy issued way!

Kayla: I think the character I related most to was Patrice. I would at least react the same way if I made a smoothie for someone who never drank it.

Or maybe I’m Barnaby.

Christina: My problem is I would never have turned on her

Catch me leaping from the cliffs

Kayla: The cliffs were a really good red herring. I mean someone did fall off, but he survived! And wasn’t pushed!

Drew: I was so surprised he didn’t die! And that Raymond didn’t die either!

Kayla: I thought there’d be at LEAST one big cliff death/push. The show really did manage to thwart my expectations quite a few times, especially at the end.

Christina: In many ways I do think that final conversation with Devon and Kiki just reallllly nailed it for me?

Kayla: Yes, that ferry scene is so surprising and so different from the type of conclusion we usually get in this genre. Quiet, grounded, a little sad but with some hope, too. I’m glad she’s letting her cash the 10k!

Christina: I LOVED that she told her to take the money, so many shows are so weird about money. And like, letting characters keep it as opposed to having to struggle nobly

Drew: This always annoys me so much. Taking 10k from a billionaire is ethically good. And I love that she also says she took some necklaces lol

Christina: Perhaps I loved it because it is a perfect set up for a fanfic, and I always love seeing that

Kayla: Oh talk to me have you checked the Ao3 tags are the girls cooking?

Christina: LAST I checked it did not even have a category tag

Kayla: Wow, hopefully our words here summon the fic gods

Kayla: I did watch this back-to-back with the Shondaland murder mystery The Residence (it was mid imo!) and both shows were very focused on birds. Big Bird propaganda is up to something…..

Christina: I HATE to say this because it does make me want to die, but I do think birds are trendy rn

Kayla: Wow. Birds (on tv)…pickles (in recipes)…fish (on accessories)…the trends right now are strange

Christina: ……or I’m just 35 and everyone I know likes birds

…..much to consider

oh fuck im 36

Kayla: Oh you mean birds are trending IN THE COMMUNITY. Yeah, I think that is true for us 30+ queers

Drew: My partner has fully converted me. They fly! They sing! They eat without their hands! What’s not to like

Christina: ANWAY! Good show imo!

Kayla: Good show! Not gay but plenty for the gays to like!

Kayla: I do love that Meghann Fahy, much like Julianne Moore, has been embraced by the fag and dyke communities alike.

Christina: From the moment I saw her on The Bold Type, I turned into a 50s studio exec and was like “that kids got IT”

*several minutes go by without us hearing from Drew*Kayla: Drew are you okay lol

Christina: She’s checking on Barnaby

Kayla: she IS in Big Bird’s pocket

Drew: I GOT TRAPPED UNDERGROUND

Kayla: Wow the next Netflix thriller will be about you getting trapped underground