Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Here’s what you missed! Kayla recapped Hacks and how smart it is about characters “getting canceled.” Riese recapped the latest Under the Bridge. Furiosa comes out this weekend and it’s a dazzling blockbuster — is it also a trans allegory?
Breaking News — Drew and Kayla are still not done with Challengers! Drew wants to know Which Pair of Cinematic Boys Should You Bisexually Terrorize? So she wrote you a quiz. Kayla ranked the Top 10 things to do while listening to the Challengers score (are other people doing this? Or is it just the Autostraddle team in this chokehold?) Sa’iyda reviewed Queen of the Deuce, which tells the story of a queer woman who created a porn empire.
Riese has throwback photos of The L Word cast that will rocket you right back to 2005. And speaking of throwbacks, Drew wrote about the very special lesbian episode of Girls in case you forgot it existed. And still on that nostalgia train! The senior editors wished Glee a very happy 15th anniversary by picking out 36 songs we think they’d cover if the show was still around today.
Notes from the TV Team:
+ Abbott Elementary gave their queer character played by Kimia Behpoornia one last shout out in their season finale, as she goes on to lists all the stages of Kristen Stewart’s fame during a house party hosted by Quinta Brunson’s Janine Teagues. When another character deadpans, “You sure do know a lot about Kristen Stewart,” she responds: “I’m gay.” And let the church say, Amen. — Carmen
+ Despite a return guest appearance from Nomi, grown-ish series finale offered little cause for celebration for the gays. I can’t say I’ll miss the show (particularly what it became), but I’m appreciative of the classic moments that it gave. — Natalie
Station 19 Episode 709: “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You”
I cannot believe that after seven years, we’ve really made it to the end of Station 19. In so many ways I think this show had longer to give! It’s a solid weekly soap that has become, in its own way, one of the last remaining backbones of Shondaland on network TV. And now Grey’s will be the last remaining fingerprint of Shonda Rhimes next fall on a genre of television that she once helped to revitalize. I’m still working through some of my feelings on that, so we’ll put a pause here until next week, and today let’s talk about what’s really important. Carina and Maya in bed.
As the opening scene of its two-part series finale, Station 19 provides us with a montage of its ‘ships being incredibly sexy, almost as if the writers said to themselves: this is the last time we’re going to have to deal with the FCC, so F*ck It! Did anyone else notice that the couples were M/F (Natasha and Sullivan), M/M (Travis and the cute new gay Latino firefighter who’s name I still don’t know), and F/F (Carina and Maya) — I don’t know, I just thought it was a nice detail! Let everyone get hot and heavy at 9pm on a Thursday. Why not?!
So Carina is stressed about taking a pregnancy test to see if the embryo is sticking, but it’s too early for all that yet, so instead she sticks her tongue across Maya’s abs and into Maya’s belly button, which we can all agree is a better use of her time. Honestly I did clutch my pearls a little because do you remember when after showing .05 seconds of Calzona in a shower together, the camera had to pan away? Look at how far we’ve come!!!
Speaking of coming (sorry, I had to), once Carina is done going down on Maya, they both get dressed for what’s going to be a wild ass work day. There is a five-alarm fire coming through the woods and heading towards Seattle. Maya wants Carina to take it easy, because she could be carrying their bambino, but Carina says pregnant or not it is her duty to serve. Honestly, the whole forest fire setting is just really beautiful and emotional. It’s a dramatic and perfect backdrop to get all of our final goodbyes! We even get to see the entire Station 19 crew piled together, limbs intertwined as they sleep on top of the firetruck one last time. I sincerely just… loved it.
Maya spends the night fighting fires, but back at Grey Sloan Memorial, Carina is too scared to get her pregnancy test results, so in nice little moment of gay solidarity, Helm agrees to look for her. The music starts to swell, and you just know this is going to be a good news/bad news situation because just as Helm fixes her mouth to tell Carina she’s pregnant, just as Carina’s eyes start to crinkle and tear up with unimaginable joy, that’s when learn that Maya is surrounded in a brush fire, desperate, and cannot find her way back out.
Maya cries out to Andy, Andy cries out back to her. But it might be too late.
(I’ll be honest with you, I’m taking all of this with a grain of salt. 100%, I do no believe that Station 19 will end with Maya dying and Carina becoming a widow. Not for their core couple and one of the driving engines of the show. That would be too cruel! But it does make for an effective cliffhanger, and so I will see you all back next week — when we have to say finally goodbye for good. I’m not ready yet.)
Grey’s Anatomy Episode 2009: “I Carry Your Heart”
Here’s the thing about Grey’s Anatomy… it has a lot of goodwill, from a lot of gay fans (myself included) based on a long history of it being one of the most progressive and queer-friendly network television shows. It’s the home of the longest-running lesbian character ever on television (Arizona Robbins), the longest-running bisexual characters ever on television (Callie Torres and Amelia Shephard), one of the most watched lesbian weddings in history (Callie and Arizona’s), etc. The bonafides speak for themselves.
It is getting hard to reconcile or compare the present of Grey’s against that storied history. I think we all wanted to love Amelia and Kai, but even their biggest fans would agree — the couple was not given the same opportunities for depth in writing that was granted to past queer relationships. Helm’s queerness was left as a joke for years before she was given a relationship with Yasuda. And now that Amelia is out, they have slow walked every inch of her building relationship with Dr. Natalie Morales Monica Beltrán, to the point of which I’m not sure, at this point, if that relationship will ever lift off at all. Though I hope I’m wrong on that!
With the news of Midori Francis’ Intern Yasuda and Jake Borelli’s Dr. Levi Schmitt both leaving the show at the end of this season, presumably due to budget restraints, it’s hard not to feel frustrated as a gay fan. And last night’s episode did absolutely nothing to dissuade those frustrations.
First, the good news! We learned bisexual actress Adelaide Kane’s Jules is also bisexual, due to an off-handed “my ex-girlfriend” comment made while doing some Tinder swipes. And that is good news! We love queer actors getting to play queer characters, and for at least the brief moment of these final few episodes Grey’s Anatomy will have six sapphic characters on the show at the same time (Jules, Teddy, Yasuda, Helm, Amelia, and Dr. Beltrán) — which is a series high! And that’s saying a lot, on what’s already a historically gay show.
At the same time, representational quantity does not equal quality in storytelling, and whew boi did Grey’s prove that right last night.
