This
week marked the kick-off for network TV's fall 2003 lineup--and
as far as lesbian and bisexual characters
go, it doesn't look like there's much to celebrate. Gone are the
days of multi-faceted lesbian characters on dramas like Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, and Once and Again,
who were at least occasionally allowed to have an on-screen romance;
instead we've got one-dimensional sitcom characters, oversexed
bisexual women, desexualized lesbians, and more lesbian criminals.
First,
Two and a Half Men
(CBS) and Coupling (NBC)
introduced us to two new gay female sitcom characters,
women whose sexuality exists solely to needle the straight male
characters.
On
Monday night's Two and a Half Men, Jon Cryer's character
despaired that his wife was leaving him because she's gay, and
his brother (Charlie Sheen) made cracks like "You're wife's
out meeting chicks, why shouldn't you?" This apparently qualifies
as high humor to American viewers, as the sitcom scored some of
the highest ratings of the night--which means we're probably in
for a whole season of lesbian ex-wife jokes that were funnier
on Friends ten years ago.
On
NBC's Thursday-night sitcom Coupling, Steve (Jay Harrington)
bemoans the fact that his ex-girlfriend Jane (Lindsay Price) is
"playing the bisexual card"--deliberately mentioning
her previous sexual relationship with a woman named Tanya to try
and seduce him. "Diabolical!" agreed his friend Jeff,
along with lesbian and bisexual viewers.
Unlike
Two and a Half Men, however, ratings for Coupling
weren't so hot, as the British knockoff tried to compete with
CSI and failed; the show scored worse ratings,
in fact, than the premieres of several other canceled NBC sitcoms
from the last few years, like Inside Schwartz, Leap of Faith,
and Just Shoot me. Which means if ratings don't pick
up quickly, the show will probably be gone soon; to quote my 8-year-old
niece, "too bad, so sad."
In
the ever-popular lesbian-criminals category, we saw a
lesbian cop-killer/thief (Rebecca DeMornay) on
Friday night's Boomtown (NBC). Although the episode was
interesting and DeMornay and her partner (played by Kelly Hu)
do a good lesbian killer routine, why couldn't the show have added
a lesbian cop to the series, instead?
While
this is usually a ratings-grabber (witness last season's similarly
themed episode of Fastlane,
which generated some of the show's highest ratings ever, and last
season's cliff-hanger ending of Law & Order: Criminal
Intent which featured an elusive bisexual con artist and
killer), this didn't seem to help Boomtown--the series'
season opener scored fairly low ratings for the evening.
Perhaps
it will pick up next week, however, when Boomtown employs
that other surefire ratings winner, the over-hyped lesbian kiss
(between DeMornay and new cast member Vanessa Williams), before
the show resumes its regularly scheduled heterosexual programming
in the following episode.
Dr.
Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) is the only returning lesbian
character in the primetime network TV lineup this year, and her
storyline in the season opener of NBC's ER
consisted of two minutes of her yelling and waving her cane angrily
at construction workers. Although she is likely to get more screen
time as the season wears on, how much and whether the quality
of her storyline improves are still open questions.
Certainly
we could do without a repeat of last season (in which Kerry's
entire relationship with her girlfriend Sandy was reduced to arguing
about having a baby in a few brief scenes in a handful of episodes),
but ignoring Kerry's personal life entirely while exploring every
nuance of the heterosexual relationships on the show seems like
a double-standard.
The
ER premiere scored fairly good ratings, ensuring that
the long-running drama will be around for awhile longer, but Laura
Innes is only contracted through the end of the year. Given that
Innes has publicly indicated an interest to downsize her involvement
with ER once her contract is up, there's a very good
chance this season will be her last.
On
daytime network television, we have the funny, de-sexualized
lesbian talk show host of The
Ellen Degeneres Show (NBC), and the depressing, de-sexualized
lesbian on All My Children (ABC).
While
Ellen at least made us laugh in conversations with celebrity guests
like Kim Cattral, Whoopi Goldberg, and Allison Janney, All
My Children's lesbian characters just made us want to throw
something at the TV as recent rape-survivor Bianca (Eden Riegel)
continued to make really bad decisions and spend all her time
with her straight (for now at least) friend Maggie instead of
her girlfriend Lena (Olga Sosnovska), Lena tried to kill herself
out of guilt for her part in Bianca's rape, and everyone continued
to treat Bianca like a slightly dim-witted child whom they have
to protect from even the harsh rays of the sun.
Now
that it looks like Bianca's going to carry her pregnancy to term,
we have several more months of Bianca the Asexual Lesbian
to look forward to on All My Children.
In
short, network TV--daytime and primetime--is looking
pretty grim for lesbian and bisexual women this season.
Not
surprisingly, the most interesting representation of
lesbian or bisexual women on television this week came from cable
(general and premium channels): specifically, FX's Tuesday-night
upstart drama Nip/Tuck and
HBO's new political drama series K
Street.
Scoring
the highest ratings for the show to date despite significant competition
from the Law and Order: SVU premiere and other new fall
shows, the ninth episode of Nip/Tuck featured a brief
relationship between regular lesbian character Liz (Roma Maffia)
and a male-to-female transgendered woman named Sophia Lopez (Jonathan
Del Arco) about to undergo sex re-assignment surgery. Although
both women ultimately decided they were better off as friends,
the show thoughtfully explored Liz' loneliness as a single middle-aged
lesbian, and the issues and concerns Sophia struggled with as
a transgendered person.
K
Street's second episode saw Mary McCormack's character Maggie
confront her soon to-be-ex-girlfriend Gail (Talia Balsam) because
she wasn't returning her calls. While the show mostly focused
on Maggie's professional life, the revelation that Maggie is gay
adds an interesting dimension to her her workaholic, overly ambitious
character.
The
fact that the week's only good lesbian representation
was on cable highlights the increasing divide
between network and cable TV when it comes to portrayals of lesbian
and bisexual characters. For every milestone we have achieved
recently on network TV--the first daytime
kiss (AMC), the first lesbian
sex scene (Buffy), the first
Asian-American lesbian or bi woman on TV (Coupling)--we
have just as quickly lost ground. There never was a second kiss
on AMC, Willow and Kennedy from Buffy are now
gone (with no new similarly complex and interesting lesbian characters
on network TV to take their place), and the bi woman on Coupling
is a joke--literally.
Network
TV had a greater number of complex, three-dimensional lesbian
characters two years ago than it does today, while the number
of realistic and interesting lesbian and bi characters on cable
and premium channels has only continued to increase during the
same time period. And even when the lesbian characters on Queer
as Folk, The Wire, Nip/Tuck,
K Street, and the upcoming series The
L Word are annoying or stereotypical, they're still ten
times better than what we're currently getting on network TV.
So
for now, at least, cable will have to carry the torch for lesbian
visibility on TV--at least until November sweeps makes us network
TV's favorite ratings-generator again.
