Legacy of Lady Lovers

Fire up the Lesbian Bat Signal. Did you know there’s a Lifetime movie that stars both Teri Polo and Anna Silk? Did you know such a wondrous combination of ladies we love who play ladies who love ladies exists in this world. Did you know Stef Foster and Bo Dennis were like totally BFFs in an alternate universe? That 2006 movie is called “Legacy of Fear” and available for you viewing pleasure for free On Demand from Lifetime RIGHT NOW. What are you waiting for? Did I mention Teri plays a cop? Did I mention Anna plays a TV reporter? Hey, didn’t you see the Lesbian Bat Signal? This is not a drill.



p.s. Is that the origins of Boobs O’Clock I see there, Anna?

Fostering our Future

The new fantastic, flashy, female-fronted shows of the season have received seemingly endless and endlessly deserving ink. We all love “Orphan Black” and “Orange Is the New Black,” like a lot a lot a lot a lot lot lot. But there’s a quieter, also deserving show of the summer that has been quietly revolutionary in its own way. And that show is “The Fosters.”

At its surface, it’s just another family drama. Big brood faces adversities large and small. Heartwarming familial love triumphs over everything. But there are also some obvious and and obviously important differences. This is a two-mama drama, a household led by two gay women who are in a committed (and now legally recognized) relationship. And this, this makes all the difference.

We humans are a visual bunch. We like to be shown, not told. We like to see what makes us different and makes us the same. In the absence of those visual and personal cues we have this terrible tendency to believe the worst in each other. Racial stereotypes. Gender stereotypes. LGBT stereotypes. Those stereotypes can breed bigotry, hatred and violence. Most of that – not all, clearly, but most – comes from ignorance. People naturally fear what they don’t know and don’t understand. So showing them, exposing them, to these things becomes even more important.

Television has always been a powerful medium for shedding light in dark places. Too often it gets used to feed us comfort and laugh tracks. But at its best it’s a mirror of our best selves. Of the world we should be seeing and need to see – a world reflecting our richness and diversity. A world where we’ve all got a place around that proverbial table. What we do once we get there, well, that’s on us. But we should all be allowed to sit together at least to start.

And that – taking the long road home – brings me back to “The Fosters.” TV has never shown us a more clear picture of lesbian parenting (sorry, Callie and Arizona – but that baby’s kind of a glorified prop) than this little ABC Family drama that could. A blended family, a multi-ethnic family, a LGBT family, a loving family – “The Fosters” is all these things, yet in the end just simply family. This is a show about a family, and while the individual components of this family may be different from yours, we all recognize its universal mission. Protect one another, support another, love one another. These are things we all understand.

So when we see two women doing these things for their family, even if on TV, it matters. It matters because it models – for those who have never seen or dreamed or realized it before – what an LGBT family looks like. That we’re no so scary, not so terrible, not so other. To quote little Scout Finch, “I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Of course, all of this modeling wouldn’t mean much if the show itself wasn’t so very solid. If you didn’t tear up at least once – something in my eye, it was something in my eye, dammit – during its 10-episode summer run then I attribute it to severe dehydration and recommend you drink more fluids immediately. Some shows just try too hard (cough, “The New Normal,” cough) to show the new LGBT family. But “The Fosters” didn’t have to strain to make us believe, it just got down to the business of showing us.

Whether it was how a lesbian family handles parenting alongside one of the children’s birth father or deals with embarrassment from another child about being nontraditional, the situations – and how they handled them – felt organic. This show could have easily been like an After School Special of the Week. But instead it made the mundane extraordinary. Parents, families, deal with the silly to the life-threatening and for the most part all they have is humor, grit and that all-important glue of love to get through them.

Lena and Stef, along the way, became TV’s first legally married LGBT couple since the Supreme Court overturned Prop. 8 and DOMA in the summer season finale on Monday. And in doing so showed people on the most basic level how what happens in Washington D.C. matters in the living rooms of everyday Americans across this county. Elections have consequences. Legal rulings change lives. Lena and Stef can get married and the government will recognize them as such. And, better yet, we’re happy it does – we’re happy for them.

In the end, “The Fosters” worked because we could always feel the love. It never waivers, and shone through every possible obstacle. Seeing truly is believing. I sure can’t wait to see them again in January.

My Weekend Crush

You know you know Teri Polo. From “Meet the Parents,” et al, and “The West Wing.” She has often played the supportive and/or long-suffering wife. She has popped up in numerous TV shows and movies. And each time you see her you think, oh – yeah, her. But now, perhaps finally, you’ll see her and think, oh – of course, her.


Because in just one episode of her new series “The Fosters,” Teri has made her character Stef Foster her own distinct person. Yes, she’s the loving wife again. But she’s the loving wife in an equal relationship not one where she is background scenery to Ben Stiller or Jimmy Smits. I especially like how in a few short scenes she has been able to establish both Stef’s sense of authority and abundance of compassion. Her little dashes of dry, even awkward, humor help, too.

Another thing I enjoy about “The Fosters” against stereotype characters is that while Stef on the surface might seem like the butch one, being a cop and all, she’s also the one who was married before and had the couple’s biological son. Also, I like how they’re letting Teri look her age, which is a settled in 44. She ‘s beautiful, obviously, but not trying desperately to be 24.

Also, dammit if Teri doesn’t look exactly like Jodie Foster’s slightly butcher little sister. I mean, it’s almost distracting. I keep expecting Jodie to walk on screen and introduce herself as Aunt Jo and there to be lots of inside jokes about how lesbianism runs in the family.

I hope the show continues its very solid course, and I look forward to seeing a lot more of what Teri can do. Oh, and don’t you worry, we’ll be talking about Sherri Saum’s glorious hair porn soon. So soon. Happy weekend, all.

Foster the people

When I first heard about a new ABC Family show with two moms and rainbow tapestry of a blended household I wasn’t sure what to expect. Politically correct afterschool special? Womanhood sisterfire kumbaya drum circle? Jennifer Lopez dance montage retrospective? But this story of two women raising their three children – one biological to one of the mothers and twins adopted from the foster system – who bring in a new troubled teenage girl is more than the demographically engineered sum of its parts. It is, quite simply, good. (For a more thorough and verbose analysis, check out my full review on AfterEllen.)

What makes it is good is that it feels so solid right from the start. It’s particularly solid in the things that usually take time – family dynamic, unspoken chemistry, ease of togetherness. This show from Jenny from the Block seems like real people could live around the block. And in a wonderfully, understated way it turns Norman Rockwell’s quintessential American portrait inside out and upside down while still retaining their essential ideal of everyday exemplariness. Like I said, it’s good.

For all our rightful demands for more and better representation of LGBT people in our culture, it’s also important to celebrate the goods stuff. Right now we’re lucky to have well-drawn portraits of gay women in ridiculously diverse walks of life our teevees. A gay teenagers being chased by murderous stalkers. A gay succubi and her scientist lover. Gay clone and her French scientist lover. And we haven’t even mentioned the surgeons, bomb girls, private investigators, former cheerleaders and all the rest. So here’s to The Fosters, a welcome addition to the pantheon of gay ladies. There’s always room for two more hot mamas.

Foster the future

I never thought I’d say this and mean it so sincerely but, thank you, Jenny from the Block. Because I don’t care about the rocks that she’s got, I just care that Jennifer Lopez is producing a new drama for ABC Family that centers around a gay female couple raising a large multi-ethnic family. The show is “The Fosters” and the moms are Teri Polo (from Meet the Parents) and Sherri Saum (from In Treatment). They play police officer Stef Foster and school principal Lena Foster, respectively and their kids will be played by young actors from “Wizards of Waverly Place,” “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” and “Aaron Stone.” I’ve never watched any of those shows but if Tumblr is to be believed folks seem pretty excited about the Waverly Place kid. The newest addition to the family will be a “troubled teen with an abusive past” Callie, played by newcomer Maia Mitchell. She’s the one in the photo who looks like she hates ever second of being in that subway tiled kitchen with its vintage Fiesta wear.

Lots of things make me happy about this news, not the least of which is Teri Polo is wearing her cop uniform in all the pictures. But mostly the fact that this is the first show to center around two moms (and a mixed race couple at that) raising a family is pretty amazing. Granted, it bites at the heels of the pregnant lesbian cliché which we see around sweeps week when writers don’t know what to do with the lesbian characters once they’re done playing softball. But these aren’t women trying to become mothers. These are women who have are raising their teens and tweens and that’s pretty cool. The show was created and being written by two men (one with a pedigree including Queer as Folk), which, fine – I would have preferred female showrunners too, but you can’t have everything I guess. The show goes in production this spring and will begin airing in the summer.

“The Fosters” adds to ABC Family’s inclusive roster, which already include “Pretty Little Liars.” Strange but thankfully true, the channel that began as an extension of ultraconservative homophobe Pat Robertson’s Christian television ministry (yes, really, it really fucking did, is poised to become one of the most diverse channels on TV and help expands our public definition of family.

Also, Teri and Sherri make a really cute couple. I’d join the PTA for them.

Foster to the future

Could lesbians finally have more to be thankful for from Jennifer Lopez than her sizeable, um, talents? Turns out, maybe. Jenny from the Block is producing a new one-hour family drama centered around a mixed-race lesbian couple. Let me repeat that, a one-hour family drama centered around a mixed-race lesbian couple. One more time? Still think you fell down, hit your head and woke up in a utopian society where mixed-race lesbian couples get to star in their own primetime TV shows? Nope, it’s real and in development with ABC Family.

In fact the series, called “The Fosters,” has just cast its lead couple. Former “The West Wing” star Teri Polo and “Rescue Me” alum Sherri Saum will play Stef and Lena Foster. Together they have a biological son as well as several adopted children. Teri will play Stef, a “tough but kind” police officer. Sherri will play Lena, a big-hearted school principal.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, their lives get complicated when they decided to take in Callie, a troubled teen with an abusive past. Callie’s “disruptive ways threaten to turn the Fosters’ lives upside down.”

Now this concept is interesting for a number of reasons, none the least of which is the fact that TV currently does not have any scripted shows centered around a lesbian character, let alone a lesbian couple, let alone a mixed-race lesbian couple. Sure, there are lesbian characters in major roles on TV. But none are central. In fact the only show built around a gay woman on TV right now is “Lost Girl,” which centers around everyone’s favorite bisexual succubus.

The uniqueness of the characters is matched by the uniqueness of their storyline. On most shows with gay lead characters, their gayness is the story. Think about it. “The New Normal” – the fact that they are going to be gay dads is the story. “Partners” – the fact that one roommate is gay and one roommate is straight is the story. “Glee” – everything is basically gay even the straight folks.

But on “The Fosters,” if the plotline holds, the fact that the lead couple is gay is not the central issue. The fact that they’ve adopted a troubled teenage girl is the central issue. And that’s a big difference for a gay leading character.

Alyssa Rosenberg over at Think Progress wrote a winding, interesting piece last week about the role of homophobia in modern stories about gay culture. Make no mistake, homophobia still exists and is still a powerful and important story for us to tell. But she argues that limiting our stories to those that revolve around our gayness as the central problem in our lives is – well – awfully limiting. And it’s true.

When we argue for our rightful equality, our argument usually boils down to this: We are the same. We are like you. So we deserve the same rights. But too often when we are portrayed it is our gayness that is our most predominant characteristic, and often our most problematic one. Not that we have unfulfilled dreams. Not that we have trouble getting the kids potty trained. Not that we have fights with our partners about the garbage.

Which is what give me hope for “The Fosters.” If it pans out, this could be a show where the gay characters get to be gloriously gay, but also everything else that makes being a human being so glorious and sometimes not so glorious. Fingers crossed. If JLo pulls this off I might even forgive her for those ridiculous Fiat ads. Maybe.