Remember that beautiful week — when was it? It seems like so long ago. Was it only two weeks ago? Were we ever so young? Were we ever so teary-eyed and wet-pantsed and surprised and shocked and touched and awed and optimistic about everything in the whole wide world?

Reader: we were. And we had reason to be. You couldn’t fly a crop-duster through a Burbank backlot without hitting the head of a lesbian/queer/bif-ckingcurious storyline.

Now that your triweekly serving of Lez is officially over (for the time being) and we still don’t know who A. is or which conventionally attractive lesbian Emily will take to next year’s Winterdeath Ball or whatever it was, it’s time to look back on the season that was. It’s time to dwell excessively upon the clear-pored Sapphic or semi-Sapphic humans who graced the screen of my laptop this past winter (because I don’t have a teevee, but you probably do, so this might just feel totally different for you than it does for me).

Am I watching “Landslide” again as I type this? Maybe.

This past season has been unquestionably the most lesbionic TV season of all time. This must be how gay men felt for the 356 years Will & Grace was on the air, along with Queer as Folk, Sex and the City, Dawson’s Creek, The Office, Entourage, Noah’s Arc, Degrassi, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under OR MAYBE even how they feel right now with Modern Family, Glee, Nurse Jackie, Shameless, Gossip Girl, 90210, Lost, Weeds, Big Love, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Greek, Mad Men, True Blood, The United States of Tara and basically every single show on Logo.

I talked about why we’re getting so much gay TV at the end of my Glee recap and so I’ve only got this to add: This season we were permitted to dream.

This had not been the case before now. Much like the feeling of ordering from Burger Fresh in the early 90s, we don’t expect the people in charge to get everything right. We don’t expect a homoerotic ‘ship to sail or sexual tension to get a follow-up episode or parents to “come around” to their gay kid. We expect at least one dead and one converted lesbian.

But, again like the feeling of ordering from Burger Fresh in the early 90s, we tuned in just the same because TV provides convenient at-home delivery. That’s right, Burger Fresh delivered. In MICHIGAN. So what do you want, a cheeseburger with the-wrong-kind-of-cheese and extra unordered-bacon-even-though-you’re-Jewish delivered to your doorstep? Or do you want to look into your freezer to see what’s worth re-heating from last year? You follow?

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This season we felt slightly less like Lesbo Bevis & Butthead or desperate superfans because the little things we picked up on — Mini’s attraction to Franky, Sanatana and Brittany’s chemistry — actually got fleshed out, even just a little.

We’ll be rating these shows on a Lesbo Rating Scale from “Angry Lesbian” to “Happy Lesbian.”


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Skins UK (e4)

[all our posts on skins]

Queers:

Franky genderqueer and pansexual (relatively confirmed)
Mini – bisexual or a lesbian (suspected)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

Oh, f- you in the ear Matty, you dark brooding super-complicated emo quasi-rebel, Avril Lavigne is darker than you are in your darkest hour. Courtney Love would smash your face in in a fist-fight and Jordan Catalano would be a better boyfriend. You thrive in the land of vulnerable women because you wear black a lot, which is edgy, and also you’re SO SO loyal to your OH SO COMPLICATED heart and its OH SO COMPLICATED feelings and you think if you curl your lip like that then somehow your reckless disregard for the subjects of your emotional attention will pass as genuine confusion rather than selfish, fickle, and pretentious. UGH UGH UGH.

I do think it’d be interesting to see our favorite genderqueer pansexual fawn Franky to date a dude so I’m not even mad about the fact that she seemingly ended up with Matty instead of Mini for gender reasons.

Just — Lawd do I hate this character. Everything he did made me groan.

In the End:

In Skins‘ Season Five finale, our suspicions that Mini has a Big Fat Lesbian Crush on Franky are confirmed, mostly because she does that thing that you did to your best friend in high school where you pretend to be Dr. Phil (“you deserve better, don’t go be with that boy”) / Oprah (“You’re my best friend! I protect you from the world!”) to cover up that you’re actually Ellen (“I like girls! Be with me! SURPRISE!”) . But also because Mini stores photos of Franky in her cell-phone spank-bank, tries to kill Matty, and constantly wants to touch/hold Franky. Oh, and Liv calls Mini out for her “girl crush.”

What precisely transpires in the poppyfields of Somewhere in the United Kingdom where Rich and Grace are going to get married is unclear — Franky thought 9/11 was beautiful, Franky just wanted to be normal for once, she takes a lot of drugs, freaks out when Matty tries to have sex with her which might be because she experienced some kind of sexual trauma earlier in life. Franky runs away, there’s a scene in a church basement where Liv starts to kiss Franky’s back to appeal to Matty but it doesn’t, Liv and Matty break up, and then, at an impromptu wedding reception with a Midsummer’s Night Dream theme, Franky arrives, texts with Matty about being a glorious headfuck thing, and then runs into his arms and is held. This could be a friendly hug or a love-forever hug, hopefully not the latter because as aforementioned I find Matty irritating.

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Rating:

Skins was, per always, an excellent television program this season, which earns bonus points. Also extra for trotting out TV’s first genderqueer pansexual and for making aforementioned genderqueer pansexual so f-cking cute!

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Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family)

[read all our posts on pretty little liars]

Queers:

Emily – lesbian (confirmed)
Maya – lesbian (confirmed)
Paige – lesbian (confirmed)
Samara – lesbian (confirmed)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

A., Ian, Officer Garret, Ezra, Aria’s Dad, Caleb, Lucas, Noel Cahn and basically every male character on this show who took up minutes of the finale that should’ve been spent on Emily making out with girls.

In the End:

The final episode of Pretty Little Liars was super-busy with all of this “plot” and “murder mystery” nonsense and contained only one lesbian reference in the whole entire thing. Where was Paige? What if Paige is A and we didn’t even know about it?! What if Sounder killed Jenny?

Emily’s Mom wants to move to Texas to be with their Dad, but there’s no way they’re taking Shay off the show so let’s not even bother with that besides to say that Hanna teases Emily regarding if Texas “beauty queens” are her type. Which is super-adorbs.

Emily is e-mailing Samara so that love connection is open, Paige is nowhere to be found and Maya is apparently completing her 16th week of the Most Intense Marijuana Treatment Program of all time. When she comes back she’ll probably be allergic to everything.

Ultimately Emily’s storyline was a refreshing departure from expectation. Emily stood up to her Mom (who eventually came around, somewhat), felt liberated after her secret was revealed, and even refused to participate in someone else’s closeted antics.

The last lesbian scenes of the season are expounded upon in our recap of the second-to-last episode of Pretty Little Liars.

Rating:

For TV’s most admirable lesbian character, a “9.”

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Next: Skins US and Glee

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Skins US (MTV)

[all our posts on skins]

Queers:

Tea – lesbian (confirmed, then semi-unconfirmed, and then confirmed again)
Betty – lesbian (confirmed)

Some Notes:

This television season of our eventual content began with an apparently catastrophic disappointment named Tea on a show blasphemously named Skins as it vaguely resembled, insofar as a Beatles Tribute Band resembles The Beatles, the British original.

Tea, hyped as a fantastic raygun of Lesbian Character, was indeed a cool character with cute outfits. But then she had sex with a boy, thus igniting the kindling of lesbo-vadge-angry-rage boiling in the vagina of every lesbian who reads queer pop culture website AfterEllen.com as well as probably a lot of lesbians who don’t even go on the internet.

I stopped recapping MTV’s Skins (Episode 103) a week before I stopped watching MTV’s Skins (Episode 104) because I don’t have time to but also because it was just really terrible.  I felt more sorry for those actors than I do for the actors employed as servers at The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Times Square where they’re made to present Forrest Gump trivia every hour. I mean those kids are never making it to Broadway.

It’s surprising, then, that Tea was the only character in any of these shows to end up with anything semi-resembling a “girlfriend” at season’s end. (Or, at least, the promise of a maybe-girlfriend for the future.)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

Nicholas Hoult played Tony as a crafty prick with a semi-sociopathic disregard for the concerns of others and, often, the demeanor of a snarky friendly serial killer. Underneath it all, UK Tony had an Omar Littleish affection for those truly close to his heart.

But this Tony — no thanks!

You know how if you go to a super tiny rural high school, the same guy will get cast in the lead of the school musical every year because he’s literally the only boy in school who can kinda sing, wants to be in plays, and knows how to memorize lines? US’s Tony is like that guy, only stupider.

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If Tony was in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, his wax figure would look more like Tony than Tony does. Tony just came back from the dentist, every single day.

Furthermore, doggedly pursuing another woman — a lesbian, at that! (oh, the nerve! oh the ego! of course you can convert her, she just hasn’t met the right man yet!) — who is involved with someone else and YOU YOURSELF have a girlfriend who’s madly in love with you — is just shitty. His chlamydia is truly the antibiotic whipped cream on the ice cream sundae of his insufferable personality.

In the End:

So, it’d seem that Tea, inspired by the terrible sex she had with Tony the first time, proceeded to have terrible sex with Tony yet another time, and then tells Abbud (who I believe is speaking here on behalf of all lesbians everywhere):

Tea: “I think I did it to feel bad or something. To stop something else from happening. I’m scared of all of it. having a girl I could love, so I make it impossible.”
Abbud: “What don’t you get about being a lesbian? Lemme clue you in — a key component is not hooking up with guys, especially a guy like Tony. How could you do that to me?”
Tea: “I don’t know. We have some weird connection, aren’t I allowed to not know what I’m doing.”
Abbud: “You’re a fake.”

Tony, who is both crazy and (as aforementioned) a waste of the air he breathes, just can’t let go, so he becomes a sort of monotone stalker.

I’m not, really, fundamentally opposed to this plot — Tea explains why she’s drawn to Tony, she never renounces her sexuality, and she says the sex is terrible both times. Because the thing is — a good story’s gotta have conflict.

Unfortunately, the lesbian-gets-bicurious plotline has basically been used as a Lesbian Weapon of Mass Destruction for so long that we presently approach this plot with the same attitude with which I approach airplanes, which is to say I just take the Amtrak now. You follow? Tea could’ve betrayed Betty with other girls, but that would’ve been a less dramatic conflict and an entirely different story altogether. So it’s not the plot itself that irks the Lezbos so much as it is the suspicion that Eisley pulled this to pander to a straight audience rather than because it was the most dramatic conflict he could summon to tell this story.

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However, I might feel differently if I’d sat down to watch this teevee program for real every week in anticipation of something real/good instead of what I did do, which is half-watch episodes 104-110 today, fast-forwarding through every scene Tea wasn’t in. Again, much like air travel — might seem like a good idea in theory, but feels much different in hour 5 of snackless torture.

Anyhow! Michelle finds out about Tony and Tea, Tony gives everyone an STD, and in the finale Tea apologizes to Tony for making him like her and tries to get Betty back. High on pain meds, Betty invites Tea into her hospital bed (she’s got some ankle thing) and later on Tea returns to sleep together, almost leaves, then doubles back and slides in underneath the cast.

Rating:

I was excited about Skins US, legitimately. I went into it assuming I’d love it. Unfortunately, it sucked a lot. Also upset the Lezzers. So.

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Glee

[all our posts on glee]

Queers:

Santana – lesbian (confirmed by the show’s writers — on the show itself, it’s unclear if Santana is lez, bisexual, or something else, as she ascribes to no label)
Brittany – bisexual (confirmed)
Kurt & Blaine – gay (confirmed)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

Artie was mean to Tina and says misogynistic things a lot of the time and he’s a bad rapper and I don’t like his face. THERE I SAID IT.

In the End:

Luckily that is already described for you here in this recap of the most recent episode of Glee. Furthermore, all of my important thoughts regarding Brittany and Santana can be found in this recap of the Homosexy Episode of Glee.

The writers of Glee say when the show returns in April, Santana will be grappling with her lesbian identity. Which is a thing to look forward to!

Rating:

This season featured some of Glee’s stupidest episodes of all time, but the last three or four were arguably quite excellent.

What are your hopes & dreams for these shows when they pick back up?

+ Pretty Little Liars returns to ABC Family in June 2011

+ Glee returns to Fox on April 19th

+ Skins US has not been picked up for a second season yet, but we feel like it probably will be.

+ Skins UK will likely return next year.