| We're on location in Bellflower, California where the the cast and crew of The N's hit program South of Nowhere are wilting in the sweltering summer heat. Popsicles and bottles of water are passed around the small room where the relaxed, amiable crew waits between takes.
The friendly vibe that pervades the set clearly flows down from the top. Director Robert Townsend (The Five Heartbeats, Hollywood Shuffle) watches with amusement (via television monitor) as the show's stars, twenty-two year old Gabrielle Christian (Spencer) and twenty year old Mandy Musgrave (Ashley) joke around in the room next door. Co-executive producer and writer Nancylee Myatt doesn't hide her glee at the chance to revisit the lives of her beloved South of Nowhere characters. She tells AfterEllen.com, “Last year we set up so much stuff, and this year is the payoff. It's awesome.”
Like the large, loyal South of Nowhere fanbase, Myatt wasn't certain that the show would even have a second season. She remembers, “I was looking at the last episode, and the montage of the cliffhangers for everyone, and I was desperate to finish it. I was desperate to go back and say, ‘Here's what happens!' And then we got picked up.”
Those cliffhangers include the apparent career-ending injury of teen basketball star Glen Carlin, his mother Paula's possible affair with an old fling that could spell the end of her marriage to good guy Arthur, and his adopted brother Clay's angst-riddled reunion with his birth mother.
But the real suspense has been building around the burgeoning lesbian relationship between Spencer Carlin and her best friend, Ashley Davies. In the final episode of the first season, the two finally shared a highly-anticipated kiss and seemed to be basking in the glow of young love while the lives of everyone around them were disintegrating into chaos.
So how did this quiet little show on The N manage to wrap up its first season by giving the gay teens the happy ending--and scoring a GLAAD Media Award nomination alongside heavy-hitting adult fare like The L Word, Queer As Folk, Commander in Chief and Six Feet Under--without getting boycotted or cancelled?
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