It was a big week for gay TV! The Pretty Little Liars reboot is back with Pretty Little Liars: Summer School and Valerie wrote about how it compares to the original. Drew reviewed the new Netflix mystery series Bodkin which should’ve focused solely on its lesbian character. And Kayla and Riese had updates on Hacks and Under the Bridge!
Our series Very Special Gay Episode is also back with a special 20th anniversary Friends tribute to the show’s lesbian wedding from Kristen Arnett. And the TV Team shared our favorite unconventional ships causing the comments on Autostraddle to tell us they weren’t that unconventional and the comments on Instagram to react in shock and horror. (Shenny will do that, I guess.)
Meanwhile in film, Drew reviewed the new Netflix movie Beautiful Rebel, a biopic about Italian rockstar Gianna Nannini that she thinks you should skip. We’re still talking about Challengers with this tenniscore fashion guide from Kayla. Also Gabe Dunn watched She’s the Man for the first time and Caroline Darya Framke celebrated The Mummy as an important bisexual text 25 years after its release.
And here’s everything else!
Notes from the TV Team:
+ My greatest lament about grown-ish — at least this iteration of it — has been the lack of authentic character growth. College is a time of growth and re-invention and, yet, for the most part, the characters on grown-ish are the same people they were when we met them. Well, except Zaara…who last week finally told her parents that she was letting go of their dreams for her. They promptly responded by cutting her off and demanding she repay them the cost of her tuition. Despite the cost, Zaara’s grateful for her independence and plots her next move: studying abroad in Portugal. She even invites Kaela to join her for the summer.
The invite proves my point about this show: Daniella Perkins and Tara Raani have natural chemistry and rather than exploring that — as real college girls would — the show continues to push Kiela and Junior together…literally putting them both back to where they were when this show started. — Natalie
+ Much to my surprise, Special Ops: Lioness has been renewed for a second season, albeit with a shorter title: just Lioness. Despite season one’s ending — in which Cruz seemingly quit — Laysla De Oliveira is slated to be a part of the show’s new season. No word on whether or not Stephanie Nur’s Aaliyah will be par of the show’s sophomore season though. — Natalie
+ Are their any chefbians left in the Top Chef competition? To my knowledge, sadly no. But even in the absence of queer cheftestants, I feel it’s my duty to provide continual updates on Kristen Kish’s ongoing war against sleeves.
This week, she donned two outfits: one all black, the other all-white, both sleeveless. A chefbian might not be Top Chef but with a sleeveless Kristen Kish, the gays stay winning. — Natalie
Station 19 Episode 707: “Give It All”
Last week my frustrations with Station 19 hit a boil and maybe… just maybe… I was too hasty in my critiques, maybe I pulled the trigger one week too early. It’s not that I don’t stand by what I said! I still believe that in its final season, Station 19 has sidelined Maya and Carina, saddling them with week after week of a family planning plot that’s felt stuck in a forever limbo.
But I ended last week with a wishlist that we’d finally get Danielle Savre some work worthy of her talents with upcoming return of Maya’s brother, Mason, and the white supremacist cult he’s fallen in with. I remained hopeful that “one day we’ll return to the storyline of Carina being sued by her patient. I’m really hopeful that we’re going to get a few more hot sex scenes before the fire soap’s final bow.” I’m excited to report that this week Station 19 hit every note on this list. Not only did this week make good on its promise of Maya and Mason (more on that later), but it also wrapped up Carina’s lawsuit, gave Maya and Carina some much needed hot sex, and overall — this might have been Station 19’s gayest episode ever. EVER. And that includes the misaligned Pride episode earlier this year!
In fact, so many gay things happened in that one hour that I’m going to have to pick and choose what we focus in on during this short little recap. To get it out of the way: Carina survived her lawsuit by putting her heart first, which wrapped up that plot perhaps a little neatly — but not without its good moments. Carina and Maya are still riding the hormonal waves of IVF. The cute gay Latino firefighter (I haven’t learned his name yet) that works with Ruiz started making moves on Travis, and it’s very swoony. And longstanding gay comedian Cameron Esposito (!!!) guest-starred as the patient of a week, a lesbian construction worker with a nail through her arm. This next part isn’t gay, but there’s also a wonderful glimpse into Indigenious fire work. All of it is great.
All that said, it’s Maya and Mason’s plot line that really shines. Danielle Savre has always been one of Station 19’s acting heavy weights, and when writers give her material worth her caliber, it’s stunning. Maya, having tracked down Mason in his new cult house, shows up at her brother’s door. She came with the hope of “saving him” — I think in part out of self-inflicted guilt, when she last saw Mason, he was in the midst of mental health struggles and living on the street, but also because she believes that underneath the hate he’s been lately spewing is still her little brother, the boy with the drawings who she loved so much and loved her in return.
Mason, unsurprisingly, rebukes her at first. When he was at his lowest, it wasn’t Maya but his new “brotherhood” that picked him back up, got him sober, and gave him a home. They’ve also filled him full of shit that “the American tradition is broken” and that it’s “identity politics” that’s kept white men like him without a job. Maya knows that there’s more to being a family than being brainwashed, so she offers to take Mason home with her. She wants to give him a second chance, she also wants to give them a second chance together/
The longer Maya is in that house, listening as Mason pivots from Proud Boy talking point to talking point, the more she realizes, it might be too late. She wants to help Mason, but she’s unwilling to risk the fragility of the love that she’s clawed for herself away from the emotionally abusive house that they both grew up in. Mason is deserving of that same love, real love, but he has to want it first.
Instead, Maya goes home to Carina. And her wife blindfolds her and feeds her donuts and they have very hot sex. Just the way the bisexual gods intended.
