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“Defiance” is Jenny Schecter’s Tragic Post-Apocalyptic Western Dystopian Dream Come True

When Syfy announced its new original series Defiance, our homo-happy ears perked right up. For starters, seventy hundred gazillion queer women have suddenly found themselves knee-deep in sci-fi love thanks to the gateway drug called Lost Girl. But also, Defiance scored quite a few lesbian loyalty points by casting the gay-for-pay trifecta of Jaime Murray, Julie Benz, and Mia Kirshner. Or, to put it another way: That’s Gai from Spartacus getting ready to do it with Lucy Lawless; Robin Gallagher from Desperate Housewives getting ready to do it with Dana Delany; and Jenny Schecter from The L Word getting ready to do it with Karina Lombard. (Plus, not pictured: Helena G. Wells.)

But what about Defiance? Is it worth your time? Well, that all depends on whether or not you’ve ever asked yourself what would happen if Shakespeare, Ron Moore, and E.L. Doctorow sat down together to write a cable TV pilot, and then answered yourself, with much enthusiasm: “Jenny Schecter’s Tragic Post-Apocalyptic Western Dystopian Dream Come True!”

Here’s the deal: Three decades ago, right around 2013, a fleet of Votan spaceships called “arks” arrived on earth, sporting half a dozen alien races and some terraforming equipment and hoping to reshape this planet in their own planet’s image. They’d been traveling thousands of years and were kind of grumpy when they landed and found that earth was already populated by humans. The aliens and the humans tried to negotiate, but when they couldn’t come to an agreement about who got to do what the mountains and the seas, they just went ahead and blew up the whole damn planet.

At some point during the Apocalyptic nightmare, a Ninth Unit soldier named Jeb Nolan teamed up with the aliens and decided to start saving people instead of slaughtering people. They did it in what was left of St. Louis, and the rest of the world followed suit. Now everything is blown all to hell and there are all kinds of fantastical beasts clomping around and the cities that are left are crumbling and abandoned spacecraft are still crashing to the ground like so many expensively equipped meteors. Jeb’s a treasure hunter these days, tracking down the alien technology after it collides with earth, along with his adopted daughter, an alien teenager named Irisa.

You know this guy Jeb, have seen him a hundred thousand times before, have played at least six RPGs with his character. He’s the disgruntled cowboy that rides into town saying smart-ass things and sleeping with some ladies and generally trying not to feel any feelings because his past is rife with bloodshed. But underneath it all, he has a good heart, and he saves the town, and they make him the sheriff. Chief Lawkeeper. Whatever.

The town he saves is, of course, St. Louis, but now it is called Defiance. A handful of alien races and humans are living pretty peacefully inside Defiance, thank you very much – but there’s plenty of social and political shenanigans to deal with. The mayor is Amanda Rosewater and she is Julie Benz at her most badass. At one point she even quotes Omar from The Wire, talking about: “You feel me?” She’s brand new to this whole mayor thing, but she’s plucky and clever and she’s got just the right amount of empathy for the people that she leads. Amanda’s sister is Kenya and she is Mia Kirshner doing all the things that make us love Mia Kirshner, including being the bisexual madam of Defiance’s most popular brothel/saloon. There’s no animosity between the sisters just because one of them is the town’s chief politician and the other one of them is the town’s chief sex worker. In fact, when Jeb moseys into Defiance and needs to make a buck, Amanda sends him to her sister’s brothel to find work.

(Unfortunately, there will be trouble between the sisters because they’re going to get themselves into a love triangle with Jeb in about two more episodes.)

The other main social/political thing happening in the town is the family feud between the human McCawley family and the alien Tarrs family, both of whom have lots of power and lots of money and a son and daughter who are in love with one another. At first you think Datak Tarr is the Lucius Malfoy of the clan, slithering around and talking shit and doing people dirty and threatening to kill the Juliet that his son Romeo is in love with. But two minutes into the second part of the pilot, it becomes clear that Stahma is Lady Macbeth-ing the whole thing. Instead of killing Juliet, for example, she suggests that they marry Romeo off to her and then kill Juliet’s entire family so that they’ll control her and her family’s money. Stahma makes the suggestion while dressed like this and frolicking around in a bubble bath:

And frankly, you also would not say no to Jaime Murray if she suggested for you to disappear the Capulets while wearing that and doing stuff with you in the bathtub.

At the end of the pilot, the residents of Defiance band together to drive back an attack by the most aggressive of the remaining alien races, and Jeb and Isra – who, by the way, is skilled in hand-to-hand combat and con-artistry and the subtle art of surly hilarity, and also is my favorite character – decide to stay around for a while and do some more heroics. So, it’s a father-daughter team. And two warring families. And Jenny Schecter as a dystopian madam. And Julie Benz as the mayor. And a whole lot of laser guns. Which is to say it’s a little bit Battlestar Galactica (if it picked up where it left off, from the other point of view), a little bit Firefly, a little bit Deadwood, a little bit Being Human, a little bit Romeo and Juliet. It’s a little bit of a lot of things, actually, and all of them are pretty badass.

But the recapping choice is up to you: Did you enjoy Defiance enough to read a weekly recap? Or would you rather us keep an eye on our lesbi-favs while focusing our attention somewhere else?

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