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Is
the WB teen drama One Tree Hill (Tuesdays,
9 P.M.) introducing the first new lesbian
character on network TV this season? All the signs seem to point
that way after the show's November 30th episode ("Don't
Take Me For Granted").
A
nighttime soap revolving around the relationship of two teenage
half-brothers and their friends and family, One Tree Hill
slowly built an audience after it debuted last season, and has
become a solid hit for The WB in its second season. Although
there are already more characters than most viewers can keep
up with, two new recurring ones were introduced this season,
as well: Anna (Daniella Alonso) and Felix (Michael Copon), siblings
and cheerleader Brooke's (Sophia Bush) new next-door neighbors.
Felix and Brooke quickly become involved in a "friends
with benefits" relationship, while Anna begins to date
the show's star Lucas (Chad Michael Murray), and everyone else
continues to sleep with, break up with, and betray everyone
else.
The
writers began setting up the lesbian subplot in the previous
episode ("The Trick is to Keep Breathing"), when Anna's
brother Felix makes a suggestive comment at the school formal
about Peyton (Hilarie Burton) playing with Anna's hair, and
Anna freaks out, telling Peyton to "not be so gay."
Anna subsequently drowns her guilt with too many beers and throws
herself on Lucas, who makes her feel worse by turning down her
sexual overtures because he wants to get to know her first.
Anna's
behavior is straight out of the TV writer's manual
for creating The Gay Teen In Denial, which requires that characters
exhibit some combination of these three behavioral characteristics:
an extremely negative reaction to gay or gay-suggestive comments;
aggressive and blatant attempts to hit on a member of the opposite
sex (to prove to themselves or others that they're straight);
and/or the consumption of large quantities of alcohol.
This
formula is most often applied to secondary characters who only
appear in a few episodes, rather than regular characters like
Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
or Jack on Dawson's Creek. Examples include closeted
gay jock Larry on Season 3 of Buffy, who aggressively
hits on all the girls in his class, until finally admitting
he's gay; Eric on the fourth season of Dawson's Creek,
who spreads a rumor around the frat house that openly gay Jack
tried to kiss him and gets Jack kicked out of the house, before
finally admitting he's gay; and teenager Vanessa on the first
season of Nip/Tuck,
who seduces her boyfriend Matt to smother her feelings for another
cheerleader.
The
formula is occasionally applied to more prominent characters,
as well. On All My Children
this year, the questioning Maggie throws herself into the arms
of Jamie to convince herself that she wasn't attracted to Bianca.
On the second season of Once
and Again, Jessie starts spending time with Tad to
block out her growing attraction to Katie. In the coming-out
episode out in the fourth season of Ellen DeGeneres's sitcom
Ellen, her character reacted to her attraction to another
woman by throwing herself at her ex-boyfriend.
After
Anna engages in all three of these activities in the
previous episode, One Tree Hill kicks it up
a notch by hyping the lesbian subplot in the ad (above) for
last night's episode, which shows the two girls with the tagline
"It was just a sleepover...right?" The tagline is
a reference to the fact that Anna crashed at Peyton's house
after their school formal, but in the best tradition of sweeps
weeks, this was just teaser text designed to drum up ratings:
the sleepover wasn't even mentioned in the episode except for
a brief moment when Felix learns about it and says something
to the effect of "Mom and Dad won't be happy about that"
and "are we going to have to leave town again?"
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