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10 TV shows that need to add lesbian characters

Smash It’s no secret that Smash has been NBC’s biggest migraine of the last two years. During the off-season, they fired the creator, axed a whole bunch of hated characters, brought on the showrunner from Gossip Girl, hired the ever fabulous Jennifer Hudson, and basically just rewired the whole shebang. The show is unapologetically gay as a window – progressively gay for broadcast network TV, even – and yet we haven’t seen a single lesbian. A huge cast on a show set in Manhattan. Come on, now. Be for real, Smash. Nashville Nashville has turned out to be this season’s slow-burner, but the lady-centric drama gets better and better every week. Callie Khouri, the show’s creator, is also the writer of a little film called Thelma & Louise, so we know she knows the power of the female bond. At this point, the three leading ladies have nine men, total, fighting over them. That’s a lot of testosterone for an estrogen-based drama. How great would it be to introduce a Chely Wright-esque character to the mix? It’d be refreshing and real and highly relevant. Whatever Thing The CW Does Next The CW has some serious time slots to fill this fall, what with the cancellation of 90210 and the end of Gossip Girl and Hart of Dixie not pulling in much in the way of ratings. The network could actually take a couple of clues from ABC Family, one of the biggest ones being that social media success changes everything and lesbian/bi viewers are a key component of social media success. So, whatever direction The CW decides to go, it’d be smart (and awesome!) to bring gay ladies along for the ride. Girls Love Girls or hate Girls, we can all agree that if four girls live in Brooklyn, at least one of them is bisexual. The Mindy Project It came as a bit of a surprise when Fox announced an early second season order for Mindy Kaling‘s sitcom. The ratings and critical reception have been lukewarm as the show has tried to find its voice in its freshman season. We expect a bit of retooling in the off-season, which isn’t a bad thing. Two of the most critically acclaimed female-fronted comedies on TV right now, Parks and Recreation and New Girl, needed nearly a full season to find their feet as well. The Mindy Project‘s most troubling issues this year have been the off-putting rom-com cliches and the fact that it perpetually fails the Bechdel Test. One way to turn that around immediately would be to introduce a lesbian lead to the mix. As New Girl taught us already this season, you can’t go wrong introducing a lesbian gynecologist (aka “a va-genius”). Maybe Trish Bendix should remind Kaling that she wants a better lesbian rep!

Bunheads ABC Family already has Pretty Little Liars. And next season it is introducing The Fosters. Why not make it a homo-trifecta and have one of the Bunheads come out as a lesbian? Our vote is for Boo. We love our ABC Family Boos. Mad Men It’s not that we don’t love Peggy’s BFF Joyce. It’s just that Joyce is now Shoshana on Girls, so who knows if we’ll ever see her again? Mad Men loves to compare the plights of the women of the ’60s – last year’s Peggy/Joan/Megan juxtaposition was particularly wonderful – so why not throw a full-time lesbian into the mix? SCDP is in the market for a new leading lady anyway, at least in the interim, while our beloved Peggy Olson takes over the ad world from the outside. Once Upon a Time This season, Once Upon a Time has introduced even more badass female characters to an already female-fronted ensemble, but still no gay ladies. It’s a bizarre omission on ABC, a network that has always led the way in terms of positive queer visibility. Also, OUAT has a vocal, established lesbian fanbase, so why wouldn’t the creatives want to tap into that power? We get that Mickey probably leans hard on the writers about what these Princesses can and cannot do, but there are gazillons of other female fairy tale characters out there who have never starred in an animated Disney feature. Defiance Syfy’s post-apocalyptic series is coming our way in less than a month and the cast includes Jaime Murray, Mia Kirshner, and Julie Benz, whose past characters have respectively made out with Lucy Lawless; Kate Moennig, Erin Daniels, Karina Lombard, Sarah Shahi; and Dana Delany. If one of Defiance‘s characters isn’t a lesbian, it will be an actual crime against nature and reason. Teen Titans Go! I’ve written before about how ridiculous it is that we don’t have any openly gay cartoon characters yet. When Cartoon Network kicks off its new DC Comics cartoon in a few months, they can rectify that situation so easily with the inclusion of a teenage Batwoman (and The Question, too, if they’re really feeling awesome). If they won’t give us Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, at least the can give us this!

What TV shows do you think need to add lesbian characters?

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