Billie
also illustrates this early on in the episode through this
conversation with a Hollywood version of a butch lesbian (i.e.
short hair and an armband tattoo) named Nance who asks her
to dance:
NANCE:
do you want to dance?
BILLIE: no thanks
NANCE: are you sure you don't want to dance?
BILLIE: (laughs) no, not this time
NANCE: can't blame a girl for trying
BILLIE: (smiles) no, you can't.
The
easy way in which Billie declines the invitation and her relaxed
body language indicate no surprise or distaste at the woman
hitting on her.
3)
Sara tells Billie "So you're not really gay, you're bi-curious."
This is the first time the concept of "bi-curious"
has ever been mentioned on TV, despite being a common term
among lesbians and bisexual women in real life.
4)
This episode may be one of the only times on television we
have seen realistic dancing between women--not the straight
girl-version of lesbian dancing where the two women intertwine
fingers while they dance two feet apart (although there were
a few of those shots in the beginning). For the most part,
the women in the club who were couples danced like lesbian
couples do in real life: close.
5)
The episode featured three lesbian kisses, and long, passionate
ones at that (this includes the scene when Jill kiss her girlfriend
passionately on the throat several times in the club, since
that is equivalent to a kiss in terms of explicit displaying
lesbian sexuality). This may be a record number of lesbian
kisses in a single episode on primetime television. The scene
with Billie, Sara, and Jill naked in the hot tub is also unusually
explicit portrayal of lesbian sexuality (if a little guy-fantasy
oriented) and only the second time lesbians have been shown
naked together on television (the first was a scene with Willow
and Tara in bed together in an episode of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer last season).
6)
The episode challenges the myth that lesbians are attracted
to all women when Sara tells Billie in the hot tub
that her friend Jill is not her type, insisting "we're
just good friends."
7)
The episode was aired at 8pm, a time slot which has usually
been off-limits to portrayals of lesbian sexuality.
The
Bad
1)
Since Sara and Jill are the only lesbians ever to appear on Fastlane,
this episode reinforces the lesbian-criminal association that is
a close cousin to the dead/evil lesbian cliche frequently employed
in television and film (such as in the recent
"lesbian episode" of Smallville). Of course,
this is a cop show in which almost all of the characters besides
the three cops are criminals--so it's not that lesbians were being
unfairly portrayed in the context of this particular series. The
reinforcement of the stereotype occurs when you look at the portrayal
of lesbians on a macro level--i.e. across shows. So even while it
might be totally appropriate and fair for the characters to be criminals
within an individual series, when an overwhleming number of the
lesbian characters on television are evil, criminal, or dead it
creates an overall impression that lesbians are disproportionately
evil/criminal.
The
dead/evil/criminal lesbian has appeared on shows like 24, All
My Children, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, ER,
For the People, Law & Order, Millennium, Northern Exposure,
NYPD Blue, The Practice, Quantum Leap, and Smallville,
while the the number of happy (or at least not unhappy), law-abiding
lesbian characters on television is much smaller.
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