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The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Faking It 208 Recap – Zen and the Art of Pageantry

Welcome to another Faking It recap! Faking It also known as the show where the motto is ‘fake it till you make it: including your sexuality, your secret drunken trysts and the manipulative friendships you have with those you care about!’

This week on the show, the gays try to bring down The Establishment on more than one account and Amy makes out with a girl (again). Basically top notch viewing.

As always, the recap is split into The Ploy, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what happened this week.

The Plot

Aw, what a sparkly sequined dress Lauren has! Isn’t it just horrible and makes you want to fry your eyeballs in a pan? As horrible as Lauren’s choice in formalwear is, it’s been picked for a very good reason – the local beauty pageant. Seeing her mum coo over Lauren, that familiar pang of jealously gets Amy and so wanting to impress her, our favourite queer Texan teen hatches a plan with girlfriend Reagan to enter the pageant and win.

Only Reagan has other ideas, namely she wants to expose the beauty industry for what it is: a terrible monstrous thing that wants to exploit women! With a slideshow and laptop in hand the plan is to publicly shame the pageant as Amy tears into them via a well written speech.

As expected, Amy chickens out, the hopes of impressing her mum proving too strong. As she’s asked what she thinks of pageants she provides a diplomatic answer, disappointing Reagan and boosting Lauren in the process. Enraged by the pageant system that’s been shuffling her onto stages, in bikinis with high heels (worn together! Ludicrous!) she yanks the mic and rips the pageant folk a new one, proceeding to throw her bra fillers into the crowd and hit a judge in the face. Following the debacle, she meets up with boyfriend Theo and tells him about her being intersex. The whole 3 minutes was incredible.

Meanwhile with the boring and mildly irritating heterosexuals (aka Liam and Karma), they are having dinner with Karma’s parents and her brother Zen, choosing the meal to ‘come out’ about the fact that they are dating because Karma is now straight after being a fake lesbian for an entire series. After a bit of ‘will she won’t she’ she eventually confesses that Liam is her boyfriend and that she was worried that her parents wouldn’t be proud of her any more. It’s sort of lovely to see them love her anyway actually (even if brother Zen soon steals the limelight).

After dinner, the MIHs (their official name now) head upstairs for some sloppy making out, with Karma telling Liam that she’s so glad that they can be honest with each other Welp. Of course Liam takes this very moment to confess that not only did he sleep with someone the night that he and Karma broke up but that that someone was her best friend, Amy. Double welp with a cherry on top.

 

The Gay

Things aren’t going better for the Sometimes Irritating But Mostly Just Angelic Homosexuals (don’t worry, I shan’t be abbreviating that and making it A Thing) either.

Still trying to drag his boyfriend out of the closet, kicking and screaming (and not in a good way), Shane is heartbroken this week when his hunky trainer boyfriend gets a new sports sponsorship. Only it’s not from your friendly marriage equality non-profit, but his new sponsor is a homophobic chicken company.

Sadly his dreams of going pro are just stronger than Shane’s protests! He chows down on that burger like he hasn’t eaten in three weeks. Yeah, get that anti-gay money, son.

As for Amy and Reagan, Reagan is still hurt and wants to know if Amy’s heart is really in it. She ditched the plan and she didn’t introduce Reagan as her girlfriend! Amy is very much into her and they make out. A lot. As Amy’s phone lights up (it’s on silent) because Liam has just texted her. Drama!

The Ugly

It was that aforementioned Amy/Reagan scene that I had a bone to pick with. Make outs and heavy petting aside, Reagan also asked Amy if she was straight, explaining that she once had a girlfriend who ditched her for her ex-boyfriend, saying that her Reagan dating was just ‘a phase’.

Faking It doesn’t have the best track record with bisexuality and this rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn’t explicitly biphobic, but it was suggested, y’know? Like Reagan would have a problem if
Amy was into girls and guys as opposed to one or the other. This will only blow up once Reagan inevitably finds out that Amy and Liam slept together so expect another scene like it to end up in ‘The Ugly’ section soon.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | How to Get Away With Murder 107 Recap – He Deserved to Die

Welcome to another recap of How to Get Away With Murder! HTGAWM also known as the show that teaches you more about the legal system than a law text book the size of your noggin.

This week on the show there were girl alliances, girls getting things done together and then the subsequent fall of those alliances and everything going to crap.

As always, the recap is split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly. Read on to find out what went down this week.

The Plot

Annalise didn’t have a filler case to take this week no, she was back at it trying to smoothen out the kinks of Rebecca’s defense instead. Suspected for killing her best friend and college student Lila, Rebecca risks being painted as the crazy drug dealer who stole her best friend’s boyfriend and proceeded to strangle her dead. Lovely.

Rebecca doesn’t take it quite so seriously though and Annalise rightly reminds her of the horrors of prison.

It all gets cut short when a news broadcast suggests that Rebecca slept with Griffin, Lila’s then boyfriend. Not only that but there’s very good reason to suspect that in an effort to paint Rebecca as the relationship wrecking ‘slut’, it was the prosecution behind the leak.

Naturally, this is the best time to get a gag order put in place and so that’s exactly what they have done that very same day. But at the hearing to have the gag order, Griffin’s defense requests a second autopsy on Lila’s body and given that it could be used to suggest that Rebecca killed her, Annalise and co. must now do everything in their power to stop it.

The afternoon before the hearing. Annalise fretting that she has no way to stop the second autopsy, her students likely doing the same and who should walk in? The prosecution! Rather than getting into a slinging match with Annalise she actually proves to be of good use, handing her a folder with a case that proves that the expert (the one who wants to convince the court to let them do a second autopsy) is a dirty cheating liar unfit for the job.

Annalise plays the hand that the prosecution dealt her but the next logical step is to do what else they can to stop the autopsy from going forward…and that’s where Laurel and Frank come in. The two of them tail Lila’s mother to a park, sweet talk her by appealing to her best interests and voila, just like that the emotional plea of a mother with a murdered child puts a hold on the second autopsy. Temporarily, at least.

And this is where that momentary ounce of girl power crumbles – the prosecution then puts forward her very own autopsy expert leaving her one step away from a checkmate. Sadly, Annalise’s ex-lover Nate doesn’t want to play ball when she asks for help and he instead criticises her methods last week when she had Frank plant evidence. But Annalise’s loss is our gain as we soon get to see her drunk students flirt with assistants to get info out of them. It’s pretty flipping hilarious.

More last ditch attempts are at hand when Annalise makes Rebecca break the gag order and tell the press that Griffin raped her. The judge, the prosecution and Griffin’s defense are all frustrated with the way things are going so the judge just grants a second autopsy. Yikes!

With Rebecca off the hook, she takes a moment away from all the legal-ish to go shopping. Nate shows up. He says he knows she didn’t kill Lila and that he wants to help. Hm.

As for what the second autopsy showed? Lila was six weeks pregnant, which is big news considering that she was also sleeping with Annalise’s husband!

Meanwhile in heterosexual corner – Michaela is having to sign a pre-nuptial agreement ahead of her wedding to Aiden (Aiden he who slept with Connor when they were in school), Laurel, unsure of whether or not to take a job at legal aid with her boyfriend decided to cheat on him with Frank, while Rebecca and Wes finally got together.

The Gay

Feeling sorry for himself about Oliver, the guy who dumped him several weeks ago for cheating, Connor has a random hookup with a guy (who also has a boyfriend) as though that will make it any better. He also tried to give Oliver flowers, only to be turned away at the door by Oliver’s new love interest.

As for any queer women on the show, all we got was Rebecca saying that she’s ‘good at flirting with girls’ when she asked if she could go and flirt with the assistants.

I’m also still holding out hope for #BisexualBonnie. Yup, let’s make that hashtag trend, people.

The Ugly

The scenes I didn’t like this week were the love scenes.

Never mind the fact that Laurel and Frank appeared to have sex against a pillar (???) but Wes and Rebecca’s love scene was mixed in with a scene of the second autopsy and Connor’s love scene seemed shoehorned in.

It wasn’t the content just the way in which it was done, so not a huge issue but one that stayed on my mind following the ending title screen which I suppose is enough to warrant a mention.
I’ll be back next week with another recap.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Faking It 207 Recap – Date Expectations

Welcome to Faking It! The show where all of the high school teens are played by actors well on their way to 30 years old and everyone is either ridiculously attractive, ridiculously clueless or both.

This week on the show, Karma really wants to meet Amy’s new girlfriend meanwhile Shane is trying to out someone (again). Such fun!

As always the recap is split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out went down this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMgKXy1oNoU

The Plot

This week’s episode of Faking It was the best of the season so far! Each with their choice of love interests (Karma and Liam, Shane and his trainer, Lauren and Theo, Amy and Reagan) they’re all pretty much keeping to themselves. Lauren yells Theo into submission to take her on a date, Amy and Reagan have plans of their own, Karma and Liam are sort of getting on with whatever boring things insufferable characters do meanwhile Shane is trying to coax (read: mercilessly yank) his trainer out of the closet via something called a “group hang”.

What the hell is a group hang? Apparently it’s what the cool kids call ‘gathering in medium to large numbers’, aka ‘hanging out’ and Shane thinks that a group hang will give his closeted trainer boyfriend an excuse to meet his friends and maybe tumble out of the closet. Or something.

There’s some resistance from Karma though but after some conniving manipulation he convinces her that she needs to come along to check up on Amy and Reagan to make sure that Reagan isn’t some lesbian witch who wants to have her wicked way with Karma’s best friend. Karma wants to protect Amy but personally, after placing her feelings in Karma I think a wicked lesbian witch would be a massive step up.

And so there we have it! All four couples are at a sharing eatery where you have to share everything you order with one another. That’s disastrous for everyone but Lauren is the first to make the most of it, convincing Shane’s boyfriend to flirt with her to make Theo jealous. Their time at the restaurant ends with them making it so go figure.

The Gay

Everything else that happened though, falls squarely into ‘The Gay’.

It all kicks off when Amy/Reagan and Karma/Liam are sat right next to each other. About as jealous as you can be when you feel as though your best friend is being stolen away from you, Karma flaunts off her knowledge of Amy. From their past field trips at school to her favourite foods (mushrooms), Karma is keen to show that she knows Amy best. And in some respects she does, but Regan, who started off the episode making out with Amy and asking her about her friends has never heard of Karma at all, despite prompting Amy to reveal more that very morning. So, she’s equally as possessive.

So possessive that when she order the kale and encourages Amy to eat it, Amy ends up having an allergic reaction to the peanut oil that the dish is covered in because she was unaware of her allergy. Does Amy pass out? Die? End up in hospital? Well she probably would have wished for either of those outcomes as after Karma stabs her leg with the epipen that she carries round for just these moments Reagan becomes more frustrated, outright asking if Amy is in love with her.

Amy was in love with Karma and she tells Reagan that. Reagan storms out and Amy, hurt that her girlfriend probably wants nothing to do with her, sits looking glum. It’s not until Liam steps up and tells Karma to put a sock in it that she realises she needs to run out and get her girl!

Amy sprints out to the parking lot and begs Reagan not to go; but Karma has followed them out. So Amy does the only thing she can really, she tells Karma off and tells her that she’s making things worse. But! After some heartfelt explaining that yes Karma will always be a part of her life but she wants a future with Reagan, the two girls (literally) kiss and make up.

Across town Shane and his trainer are having a heated debate about Shane’s repeated attempts at getting him to come out. His trainer says he has to stay closeted for his career but that he *might* come out at some point for Shane. Aw!

But then! Star sweep across town once more and Karma and Liam are sat talking about the evening’s events in his car. Liam outright asks “sometimes I wonder if I’m the one you wanna be with” and while I was gasping, yelling and shouting at the screen (all at once, it was very impressive) Karma tried and failed to appeal to Liam who was having none of it. And then! When she got out of the car she started crying!

What a whirlwind.

The Ugly

This would have been the perfect episode of Faking It save for Shane trying to out someone again.

At this point I’m wondering fi the writers even listen to criticism because we’re on what? Our fifth outing/attempted outing at this point? And still it’s a sad trope that keeps happening.

Suggesting that outing is normal and even condoned by people in the LGBTQ+ community is really gross and toxic because people will watch this and fail to realise why outing is wrong. Faking It should be ashamed that it keeps doing this, really.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Gotham 107 Recap – Penguin’s Umbrella

Welcome to another Gotham recap! Gotham also known as the show where we fight crime by committing crimes and the moral code went down the pan in the pilot.

This week on the show, the helpless woman trope is played up to the max and the plot twist of all plot twists (read: a dramatic Gotham moment that would be tedious by any other show’s standards) occurs.

As always, our recaps are split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly. Read on to find out what went down this week.

The Plot

Still all riled up from last week, Jim Gordon is shooting for the stars. And by the stars I mean he’s attempting to become the universe’s most hopeful but utterly useless police detective.

Understanding that there’s a massive corruption plot going on in the city, Jim attempts to take everybody down. The Mayor, police officers and two mob bosses. He wants them all to pay for their heinous crimes! Realising that it’s dangerous, he sends his girlfriend Barbara out of town in an attempt to keep her safe as he dismantles decades worth of criminal activity.

If that sounds impossible in text then I assure you on screen it was even more laughable, which is exactly why Police Chief Essen (metaphorically) shoots him down, explaining that no one is willing to help.

Mob boss Falcone meanwhile wants Gordon to shut the hell up, sending a hitman after him to chase him out of town/outright kill him. He nearly does too, escaping with just a scratch. Haha, just kidding. He gets shot like three times.

He’d have been shot hundreds more had the hitman got his way but after some expert scrambling from Jim along with Crispus Allen and Renee Montoya (Renee being the ex of Jim’s girlfriend) showing up with a getaway car they’re able to take him to a veterinarian hospital so he can get patched up.

Determined to finish the job, Jim puts a plan in motion. Well, first he gets off the table and bails on bedrest the doctor’s best wishes but for some reason the show doesn’t tell Ben McKenzie (who plays Jim) to limp, so that’s neither here nor there. Next up, he takes a trip to Bruce “Batman” Wayne’s house and assures him that everything is on track and now Allen and Montoya know everything and can help out too! They’ll probably need to be on the case because after Jim’s next step he barely makes it out alive…

Squadding up with his partner, Detective Harvey Bullock, the two do what any fool with weapons training would do – sneak into Falcone’s mob den (using the Mayor and his town car as their guise), armed with just a couple of guns. Brilliant.
As you probably guess about a millisecond ago, their plan doesn’t go particularly well. Sure, they manage to hold a couple of guards at gunpoint and throw threats of jail time around but Falcone soon counters telling Gordon that Barbara never left town and that she’s securely in his clutches, y’know, ready to be killed up at the pull of a trigger.

Is he bluffing? Is he telling the truth? That question is soon answered for you when Barbara is herded into the room rightfully looking like she’s about to crap herself. It’s ok, I would be too. Thankfully for Barbara (to save her from any public embarrassment) Falcone soon chooses to let all three – Jim, Barbara and Harvey – go, the catch being “some day soon you’ll see I’m right”. Ooh, ominous.

We soon figure out just how deep Falcone’s mystique goes when Penguin shows up to provide him with information! Yes, that was the big plot twist I mentioned. Hardly gasp worthy but I couldn’t have you skipping right over to ‘The Gay’ now could I? Alas, it seems that the two have been working together for some time and Penguin has been filling him in on information about Maroni (rival mob boss and Penguin’s other boss) for a while.

More interesting than the twist itself is how it’ll play out, so hopefully we’ll see that soon.

The Gay

Like the morals of almost everyone previously mentioned (save for Montoya, Allen and Barbara), the gay rating of this week’s Gotham is also in the toilet. There’s no f/f kissing, trope-y, ratings or otherwise but what we do get is Montoya telling Jim that her “personal feelings” for Barbara got in the way of her believing his story.

Everything we’ve seen up to this point has suggested that those ‘feelings’ are currently held rather than a thing of the past. I still can’t tell if the show’s going to make a big deal of it soon but here’s to hoping.

The Ugly

This week’s episode of Gotham was marginally better than last week’s because it didn’t *completely* put me to sleep. Hardly high praise, I know.

Being rather boring is starting to become the show’s calling card at this point, but I guess it gets kudos for consistency? I’ll be back with another recap next week.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | How to Get Away With Murder – 106 Recap – Freakin’ Whack-a-Mole

Welcome to another How to Get Away With Murder recap! HTGAWM also known as the show where the law is upheld but so are nude photos, illegals means for legal gains and on occasion, analingus.

This week in the show, there were more rights to be upheld and Viola Davis was incredible (as per usual).

As always, the recap is split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out what went down this week.

The Plot

Many moons ago when Annalise Keating was just a young fiery whippersnapper (as opposed to y’know, a slightly older one) she watched the case of David Allen, a (then) young black man who was charged with his girlfriend’s murder. She’d been shot dead and, as per a witness statement, Allen had run down the road screaming and brandishing a shotgun shortly after. Pretty damning stuff.

But the evidence was all circumstantial, meaning that while it didn’t mean Allen was completely free, the evidence didn’t necessarily guarantee that he did it either. With the evidence possibly leading him to death row, Annalise and co. scoop up the case, determined to free this man or at least get to the bottom of what really happened.

Going over his case though, the team think they’ve hit the jackpot when the defence lawyer who worked with Allen years before said that there was a man with an alibi. He was a drug dealer though, and wasn’t necessarily reliable but it was something that could have gotten Allen off the hook nonetheless.

But that man died 15 months ago from a drug overdose, taking Allen’s alibi with him to the grave.

Feeling defeated, Annalise and her team get back to work trying to figure out what really went on. Further bumps in the road for them though when it turns out that Asher’s dad was the judge on the Allen case. Speaking to his father in a really intense debate, Asher confronts him plainly and asks why the day he met with the prosecutors is the only day in his entire career that’s not accounted for. And why just a month after he sentenced David Allen was he enlisted for a much higher position in the courts?

His father, obviously, doesn’t have answers for him and promptly throws Asher out of the house but it does give him a bit of extra ammunition. A high profile senator was the one who got his dad the job and so, voila, the team now has a potential motive for a framing.

“Your dad sent a guy to death row for no reason” from Laurel is what it takes to bust the case wide open. Charging at the rest of the law students, Asher trips and falls, unceremoniously into a box of paper. Smooth. But in the process he recognises a logo from the key witness’ building. Could it be that the key witness is somehow entangled in this corruption too?

Of course it is and it’s what Annalise uses to blitz holes into the prosecution’s case against their client. In one of the most well acted scenes I have ever seen on television, Annalise criticises the senator, yells at him across the courtroom saying that he displaced so many people, ruined so many lives and had an innocent woman killed and for what? To complete a housing development and make millions of dollars it seems, and with opposition from Allen’s girlfriend growing in momentum the senator had her killed and implicated her boyfriend for the murder.

Or so it seems at least. The case gets sent to retrial but until then (and a guilty verdict) but David Allen is set free. Another thrilling win for Annalise Keating and the plucky, young students.

Because this is a drama show though, Annalise still has an awful lot of other dramatic-ness on her plate in this week’s HTGAWM. Namely all of the stuff with her husband.

Having being confronted by photos of his naked body being found on a murdered girl’s phone last week, Wes, a law student and friend of the key suspect in the murder is demanding answers. He wants Annalise to find Rebecca (the suspect) and bring her home after she ran away following the nudes revelation in the last episode.

This is Annalise though so she doesn’t take anything lying down and instead does what any powerful lawyer with a legal problem has…she breaks the law. Specifically, she makes Frank (her right hand man) break the law for her and sees to it that the phone with the nude photos on makes its way into the car of Griffin O’Reilly (star quarterback and another suspect in the murder).

Little does Annalise or Frank know, that Nate, Annalise’s former lover, now has proof that Frank put the phone in the car. Well, Frank did it in broad daylight which seems silly, but Nate was having someone tail Griffin and keep surveillance on him, photos and all, so there’s a very good chance that everyone will land right in the poo in the next few episodes or so.

The Gay

There wasn’t really much gay in HTGAWM this week. Or any maintext queer content at all, but you know me, I love a good bit of subtext and this week HTGAWM delivered it in a small but significant way.

Last week Annalise discovered that Bonnie had landed Nate in it with the police (Nate’s employers), but had defended Sam Keating (Annalise’s husband) in the process. Surely this means that Bonnie has a crush on him? Well that’s what Annalise thinks but after Sam thanks her for putting up with all of he and Annalise’s “crap”, Bonnie literally tells him that “it’s for Annalise, I’d do anything for her”. Shippers start your engines!
Or at least, do it quietly, since one of HTGAWM’s flash forward scenes (the ones that cover the night of Sam’s murder) reveal that she slept with Asher.

She might still be queer! She might still be in love with Annalise too. The show definitely seems to be pointing in the direction of Not Heterosexual Bonnie at least, so we’ll keep you posted.

The Ugly

This was a near perfect episode for HTGAWM actually. Obviously there was no maintext queerness which is always a disappointment in any show but other than that I don’t think I can fault it. Good job ABC.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Faking It 206 Recap – The Ecstasy and the Agony

Welcome to another Faking It recap! Faking It known as the teen comedy/drama that will break your heart and try and tape it back together with half decent comedic timing!

This week on the show, we met up with Amy’s new love interest once again, #TeamSass (Amy, Lauren, Shane) attended a rave and Karma and Liam’s plot line sent everybody to sleep!

As always, the recap is separated into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out what went down this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdfiYgSDEg4

The Plot

What’s a girl to do when the boy she just exchanged mouth fluids with won’t text her back and even her sexuality confused step-sister stands half a chance of getting some? She’s going to tag along with her and her gay bestie to an all night rave, of course!

The lights are neon, the bodies are sweaty and the drinks are flowing like an iceberg slap bang in the middle of the Sahara, so obviously it’s the perfect place for Shane, Lauren and Amy to dance away their love troubles and get #crunk as the kids would say. (Are kids saying that? My go to word is ‘groovy’.)

Karma meanwhile, is getting her kicks in a much more tedious (read: generically heterosexual) way at school as she’s attending the Hester High art show with new boyfriend Liam. And, by kicks, I mean ‘having boyfriend trouble’.

You see, crippled by the soul-crushing guilt of having slept with her best friend and his serious commitment issues, Liam can’t call Karma his girlfriend. Despite how hard he tries the word just won’t escape his mouth! Poor thing, he’s finally seeing the girl he likes but he can’t open up to her (maybe try being honest with her next time? Just a hint).

Karma, fretting about the pending implosion of her budding het romance rings up Amy begging for her help. They cat and mouse for a while because Amy is still caught up in those Mushy, Gushy feelings for Karma that she told her best friend about just weeks ago and when she finally answers, Amy essentially tells her friend to stuff it because she can’t hear about her love life like this.

Liam gets a similar response when he rings Shane and so is left to wonder around the exhibit (his piece is a bunch of tangled metal pipes that says ‘KARMA’, ironically) and ponder his existence/the future of the relationship.

Being caught up in their friends’ drama however, the two leave Lauren to party it out in her own little world. She’s jamming away, she’s really going for it. And then she accidentally takes a pill of ecstasy, mistaking it for an aspirin. Whoops. She’s pissed when she finds out, obviously and goes to ride/cry it out amongst a pile of coats in a cupboard.
It all ends up well for the heterosexuals in the end though! Liam admits that he doesn’t think he can be Karma’s Prince Charming while she says that they should agree to be better people and give their relationship a shot. I say that they’re both pretty awful and that terribleness must be attracted to each other, but alas it’s not up to me.

Lauren is also rescued by love interest Theo who is harbouring a Highly Sensitive secret that’s still being teased like you wouldn’t believe.

The Gay

Shane’s love life is minimal in this week’s episode of Faking It save for some definitely not safe for work photos from the closeted MMA trainer from last week.

More importantly: Amy’s love interest makes a new appearance! Knowing each other as ‘Shrimp Girl’ and ‘Cater Waiter’ the two make light jokes as Reagan (the cater waiter of this budding romance) shows up as the DJ for the rave that #TeamSass are attending.

It’s all ‘I’ll help you push your records cart’ and ‘I’ll make eyes at you from my DJ booth’ until Amy finally gets the courage to go up there and share Reagan’s oversized headphones. Aww! They are genuinely adorable together and agree to exchange numbers, go on a date and all that jazz. It’s confirmed that they make out next week too so now is as good a time as ever to get invested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQuhFvCzQQ

The Ugly

While the entirety of the #Kiam storyline was a total snoozefest, what bothered me the most is that Reagan is 19. Amy confirms it in a conversation with Karma at the end of the episode but keeping in mind that Amy is just 15 years old (a legal child) and Reagan is an adult with an apartment and a good many years on her new girlfriend, it’s a bit concerning.

It skeeves me out and while I’ll inevitably fall into a shipping spiral for the two of them, that age gap is definitely…something.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Gotham 106 Recap – Spirit of the Goat

Welcome to another Gotham recap! Gotham the show where the streets are dirty, the cops are dirty and the filter this show is filmed with also looks suspiciously dirty too.

This week on the show Renee Pantsuited Badass Montoya makes a return and to be honest that’s really the only reason to watch this week’s episode.

As always, the recap is split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what went down in Gotham this week.

The Plot

After weeks of being the gruff, evil-aligned bad cop to Jim Gordon’s murky grey good cop persona, we finally got a look at Harvey Bullock’s backstory. Not than anyone asked for it, mind you.

Apparently, years ago, Detective Bullock was tasked with cracking the case of a goat-themed serial killer. The spirit of The Goat fuelling his murders, the suspect had taken the eldest daughters of wealthy families before torturing them and killing them off. Lovely. Hot on the case, a younger Bullock and his partner tracked down the original killer, shooting him dead and that was the end of that, or so they thought.

Similar kidnappings spring up around the city in present day and after a visit to his old partner (who is now in a nursing home) Harvey and Jim deem that this is no ordinary copycat but is possibly a partner. Shock!

Jumping to the case the two detectives look for a common theme between the new suspect (gleaned from looking at the service personnel) and realise that both the old goat spirit killer and the new suspect were treated by the same hypnotherapist. Coincidentally enough this same therapist is treating the latest victim’s father, explaining that he is a fragile little flower who is having a hard time dealing with his daughter’s death.

He’s not so fragile after all it seems after Harvey confronts the therapist alone (don’t ask why the lead detective is this foolish, just go with it) she calls on the man to attack Harvey so she can get away with crimes she’s been committing for over a decade. Harvey fights his way out of the scuffle, making it to the staircase just in time to shoot the therapist and jack up her ankle so she can’t escape. Phew. Case closed.

Elsewhere in what was otherwise a meaningless episode, Edward Nygma caused chaos amongst filing cabinets, Penguin hobbles around looking dapper and that was almost about it in terms of a plotline…

The Gay

Like I said, almost.

Continuing on her crusade to bring Jim down and get the girl, Renee Montoya secured a key witness in Jim’s supposed killing of Penguin. She then has a heated discussion with Barbara telling her to get out of dodge because shit is about to hit The Fan and Jim is going to be arrested.

Moseying on over to the police station following Jim’s arrest, who shows up other than Penguin! Proving that he is definitely Not Dead and that Jim clearly didn’t kill him, Renee’s plot to bring Jim down falls apart like a paper towel trying to mop a puddle and Harvey tries to throw a punch because Jim didn’t kill him like he was meant to.

This is all in ‘The Gay’ section because the likelihood of Renee and Barbara getting together seems…a little improved after this week (Barbara was mad at Jim for not divulging his secrets after all) so we shall see.

The Ugly

After a few weeks of really bad episodes, this episode of Gotham was just another spanner in the show’s quality works. Not only did the storyline seem pointless, it served to provide a touching backstory for Harvey Bullock; a character that we are being made to hate, through a series of immoral choices.

Other than the final scene itself, with Penguin making a public return, this episode was mostly quite boring. It’s sad to say for a show that had potential but maybe, by the slimmest of chances, Gotham can turn this thing around.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | How to Get Away With Murder 105 Recap – We’re Not Friends

Welcome to another How to Get Away With Murder (HTGAWM) recap! HTGAWM also known as the show based around upholding the law despite its core premise being that the characters have killed somebody!

This week on the show, more laws were (probably) broken, shots were had and wallpaper proved to be a plot device!

As always, our recaps are separated into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what went down this week.

The Plot

In HTGAWM this week, the defendant lucky enough to be privy to Annalise’s law skills is a boy who shot his police officer father dead after he and his mother suffered years of abuse. It’ll be a tough sell for Annalise and her law students given that a) no one likes a ‘cop killer’ and b) the prosecution has all of the money and muscle that you’d expect from a government agency.

Thankfully for Annalise, there is one pretty significant way that she cans win this in her favour – the jury. As the American judicial system goes, the lawyers can pick who they want to be on the jury. By asking the right questions and knowing enough about the person and what they are more likely to support or be against (based on age, race, gender and class) they can predict (or at least subtly influence) how the jury will think.

The jury is going to take a serious amount of persuading though as on the very first argument of the trial, the judge rules that the abuse as documented on the defendant’s blog isn’t allowed to be evidence. It takes some quick thinking from Laurel, who’s sat in the stands with a Windows tablet (love those Microsoft sponsors!) searching through the boy’s blog, to use a character statement as an excuse to get the blog into evidence. Round one won.

But, even with the bucket loads of evidence suggesting that the deceased was a terrible person the jury could still vote against the guy who killed him, y’know on account of the fact that he killed a guy.

Even with some help from Connor, who uses a gay hookup app to get proof that one of the people on the jury spoke about the case with someone outside of the jury, there are still a few more people to win over. And that’s where Laurel rockets herself into the position of ‘the one to beat’.

Showing up to the court, coffee in hand, eyebrows on fleek, Laurel ‘slyly’ leaves a bit of paper on a bench, knowing that a member of the jury was about to sit down on it. Unbeknownst to a lot of people, it’s legal for jurors to rule based on their emotions not just the facts presented to them and so in a case like this, where a boy killed he and his mother’s abuser, that’s a pretty big deal.

With the member of the jury admitting that she shared that information with her fellow jury members, the case is dismissed and the defendant gets community service instead. Annalise meanwhile, is rightfully pissed that *someone* tampered with the jury in the first place.

Annalise’s right hand guy Frank knows that it was Laurel but stays quiet and, because of that fact, he earns half a make out from Laurel – woo romance! She then heads over to see her other love interest and proceeds to have sex with him awkwardly on a desk, it really is her lucky day.

Flash forward though and this week’s scenes about the murder of Annalise’s husband Sam show Laurel heading over to Frank’s after they set the body alight, Frank apologising for something awful he’s supposedly done. Does this mean that Laurel will ditch her bf and fall for Frank’s beardy lumberjack-ness instead? Does anybody really care? Who knows!

We do know that Sam probably deserved it though as this week’s HTGAWM episode features Annalise confronting him about the nude-y pics found on Lila (the murdered student)’s phone. He throws her on the bed and leaves. While she’s waiting for his cheating, lying self to get home she cracks open a bottle and then makes her way over to Nate’s (Nate being her ex-lover) only for him to tell her that Sam doesn’t have an alibi for Lila’s murder. Dun dun dun!

Also, Rebecca, another suspect in Lila’s murder, uses the bathroom at Annalise’s house and sees wallpaper that featured in the nude photos, realising for the first time that Sam was the one who Lila was having an affair with. She tells Wes (Rebecca’s next door neighbour and Annalise’s student) and he confronts her about it too. And that’s where this week’s episode ended; drama!

The Gay

The gay was non-existent this week, save for a gay joke from Asher at Connor’s expense.

And, after the scene last week with Bonnie where she got chided for looking at a woman’s behind, this week the show seemed to suggest that Bonnie actually likes Sam Keating instead.

It comes about when Nate explains that he lost his job because someone (it was Bonnie) told the police chief that he was investigating Sam. Annalise confronts Bonnie about it and accuses her of trying to protect her husband, again with the drama.

I’m still desperately clinging onto the theory that Bonnie is Not Heterosexual because there has just been too much pointing in that direction to suggest it, also, the show’s creator has said that gay characters will be featured because they are a part of real life. Yes Connor is gay but assuming that they haven’t forgotten that queer women exist too, I think it’s right to be hopeful for the future.

The Ugly

HTGAWM is consistently brilliant – the only thing that bothered me about this episode was the apparent U-turning of Bonnie. As mentioned, I’m hoping that Annalise’s inference that Bonnie is protecting Sam is just that – inference – and not Bonnie suddenly being in love with Sam when that hasn’t really been hinted at.

We’ll soon see which of those is right though as I’ll be back with another recap next week.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Gotham 105 Recap – Viper

Welcome to another Gotham recap! Gotham, the show where we’re all essentially just waiting for Bruce Wayne to go through puberty and put his many billions of trust fund money to good, crime fighting use.

This week on the show, crimes are stopped, milk is drank in large quantities and no one seems to care that Renee Montoya has been missing for two episodes now!

As always, our recaps are split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out what went down this week.

The Plot

In Gotham’s fifth episode, the dairy industry really got lucky when a chemical agent was doled out to the poor, homeless masses in the name of revolution and anarchy. Righteous! Except not really because the chemical in question caused those who inhaled it to become super strong, batcrap insane and also in need of some serious calcium. The chemical wore down their bones after a few hours, making their body crave that dairy goodness before they eventually wound up dead, deformed and decaying in the street.

Detective Jim Gordon is hot on the case though as when he’s not dealing with romantical drama stuff (see: last week’s ultimatum from his girlfriend Barbara Kean) he’s a relatively adequate detective. He and partner Bullock narrow things down to a science wiz with a dodgy ear, calling in the man’s former employers WellZyn (a company owned by Wayne Enterprises), to figure out just what he was working on and how the hell he got away with using their labs to make it.

As expected, Gordon and Bullock are spun a load of yarn by a PR person which leads them to hit up his old professor who quickly reveals that his former student was working on a boost for super-soldiers and military activities, all signed off on by WellZyn. Does this mean that Wayne Enterprises are as rotten as a week-old cheese sarnie left out in the sun? And that Bruce is going to have to don those bulletproof bat ears sooner rather than later?

Coincidentally, Bruce is doing his bit to find the answer to one of those questions as he and butler Alfred have hit up the annual Wayne Enterprises luncheon. Bruce being a headstrong kid with a total disregard of subtlety/detective smarts starts asking around about possible corruption within the company. Obviously, he gets shut down like a backyard kegger in a middle class neighbourhood but he is almost taken out too when the mad scientist shows up and sprays the newer, more powerful version of his chemical gas through the vents.

Gordon and Bullock show up to save the day, evacuate everyone and apprehend the bad guy, as the show’s formula goes. Sadly though, before he can offer more help than “go look at Warehouse 39!” he jumps off a roof and sets off a car alarm. Rest in pieces you slightly barmy lunatic.

At Warehouse 39 meanwhile, the place is empty. Who’s to blame for the sudden removal of evidence? The same lady that Bruce spoke to at the luncheon it seems, it seems, and it appears that Bruce Enterprises is corrupt and only a pre-teen who has yet to witness his first chest hair, along with his British man servant, will be able to uncover the plot!

Meanwhile, similarly shoe-horned in and trying to shake things up in Gotham this week are restaurant manager Penguin and mob boss Fish Mooney. The former has just told his new boss Sal Maroni that he knows various mob secrets that can be of use, leading to Maroni threatening to kill him, before Jim shows up to get him of that jam. The latter is sending out her talented, leggy protégé out into the wild to go and seduce mob boss with mommy issues, Carmine Falcone, so that Mooney can stage a takeover.

The Gay

Once again, the gay content was taking a short holiday with the closest we got to actual non-heterosexual activity being a scene where Mooney is teaching her protégé how to sound motherly and it leads to the two of them putting their heads together real close. It’s also worth noting that this was offset by Mooney’s secret hookup with a male mobster so a serious girlfriend is probably off the cards for now.

Jim also didn’t address the fact that Barbara threatened to break up with him last week so we’re no closer to Barbara and ex-girlfriend Renee Montoya (neither of whom were in the episode at all) getting back together.

The Ugly

Overall, this was a pretty pointless episode. Other than Wayne Enterprises most definitely being corrupt, it was very much all filler. And that’s saying something given that we sort of knew that the Wayne company was less than legit already.

Fingers crossed that Gotham will improve soon – the first season has a guaranteed 22 episodes in total so it’ll have a good amount of time to improve upon its poor run of form.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Faking It 205 Recap – Present Tense

Welcome to another recap of Faking It! Faking It also known as the show where all the men are The Worst and bad things happen to lesbians.

This week on the show, Amy is the world’s best friend, Karma is sad about a boy and Liam is a a useless, crusty dishrag. So like most episodes then!

As always, our recaps are split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what happened this week.

The Plot

There’s no way to say happy birthday to your best friend in the whole wide world (and also the girl who you are madly in love with) like a day-long scavenger hunt that celebrates the important parts of your friendship, right? That’s what Amy does for Karma’s 16th this week on Faking It, wrenching her straight friend out of a lovey dovey staring contest with hunky loaf Liam Booker.

Part one of the super birthday scavenger extravaganza involves…rummaging through a load of balls. Plastic ones, mind you, but the task still proves tiresome for the two best friends especially when Karma is stressing over a birthday note that Liam slipped into her locker. Amy stole it on the sly and Karma is distracted but that doesn’t mean that the birthday fun times must end.

Part two saw Amy and Karma having tea with Karma’s psychic aunt, Sage. Flying all the way in from Arizona, Amy’s second gift was a tea leaf reading so that Karma can find out what the gods of fate have in store for her. What do the leaves say? That ‘someone’ is standing in the way of Karma and her true love. The idea is that we’re meant to think that Amy is standing in the way of Karma and Liam but Amy will be damned if she’s be handing over the note just yet.

The two have a slight scuffle as Karma lies through her impossibly perfect teeth that the letter is from Erma the lunch lady before she eventually ‘fesses up and says it’s from Liam. Cue sadfaces all round when Amy hands over the note before Karma rips it up explaining that she sacrificed Liam and ‘chose Amy’ instead. Amy notes that it doesn’t feel like it, at which point I simultaneously wanted to cry and high five her.

A heart to heart with her mum and the offer of a boob job to get over her #Karmy feelings later and Amy meets Karma at school for the final section of the world’s most disastrous scavenger hunt. There are doll houses meant to represent how they’d live side by side, but now they realise that rather than being the bestest neighbours, coming over for tea and biccies, they’ll probably be y’know, living with their partners and children in them instead.

It’s sad until Amy becomes the MVP saying that she thought about standing in the way of Karma and Liam but the angel on her shoulder told her to do right by her friend and not her feelings. This is soon backed up by Liam showing up (per an invite from Amy) as one of Karma’s birthday gifts.

And as for that letter from Liam? All it said was ‘happy birthday’. Who said chivalry was dead…

The two also meet up again afterwards, Amy giving Karma the half of a friendship necklace that she spent hours winning from an arcade. Aww!

Other heterosexual pairings are preparing to shack up and mash their tongues together in admiration across town at a martial arts class that Lauren and Shane followed Liam and new boy Theo to. The plan is to punch out their feelings but cut to the chase, it ends with Lauren and Theo admitting that they like each other and kissing after class. Finally! It’s not all love and stuff though as Theo pegs it for some unknown reason that we probably won’t find out until the season finale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCmgKCL3znY

The Gay

With Karmy off the cards this week, the gay romance was left to Shane.

Convinced that the martial arts instructor has a profile on a gay hookup app, Shane makes it his business to seduce him and/or prove it via the means of sweaty shirtless body slams in the name of ‘health and fitness’.

Shane loses a bet with Theo about the man’s sexuality when he refuses to come out in the middle of the class but he still wins some sort of prize when he and the instructor have sex in the parking lot. Yay to breaking public indecency laws!

The Ugly

In quite candid terms, this episode of Faking It was a real stinker.

The Karmy content of this episode made me incredibly uncomfortable not because Karma treated Amy incredibly disrespectfully (because she did – the way she clearly didn’t appreciate or acknowledge the effort Amy went through to plan the day was downright rude) but because the show made attempts to gloss over it.

Although Amy flew in one of her relatives, spent almost an entire day winning the necklace and then planned the scavenger hunt itself, Karma doesn’t seem that into it and the show sadly makes this friendship dynamic seem normal and ok. In season one Amy expressed her frustration about Karma walking all over her like a doormat (and that was before she told her she loved her) so the fact that it’s still going on here was really unfortunate.

I also didn’t like the way that despite outing being Faking It’s biggest problem to date, it was almost used a plot device again this week. This is the third time this has happened and I found it really gross that Shane was willing to out the martial arts instructor for the sake of a bet. Never mind that the state they’re in (Texas) is incredibly conservative and being outed could have ruined the man’s career. Absolutely shocking.

So a disappointing 20 minutes overall, but girl group Fifth Harmony make a guest appearance next week and Reagan (the cute, queer waiter from last week’s episode) also makes a return. Better things to come then.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | How to Get Away With Murder 104 Recap – Let’s Get to Scooping

Welcome to another recap of How to Get Away With Murder! The show that is so brilliant I can’t even pretend to make fun of it with an oversimplified synopsis!

This week there was more death, more lawyering and the slightest hint of a queer female character, woo!

As always, things are split up into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what went down this week.

The Plot

In How to Get Away With Murder’s fourth episode, the world’s favouritest lawyer Annalise Keating has two cases on her plate this week.

The first task? To get Annalise’s old friend off the hook for a spot of insider trading. The woman, says Annalise, is a billionaire. She had cleaning jobs and built her company from the ground up, making waves in a male dominated industry. I’m starting to understand why her and Annalise are friends.

The client says she didn’t do it, naturally, and tells Annalise and her ragtag bunch of law students to look outside of the company for the culprit. Catching the person who framed her is the only way to get the case thrown out early and save her business, so it’s especially important.

Annalise being Annalise, she sends the law students to look at the woman’s employees only. Everybody hates their boss, her employees are likely no different and when billions are on the line? You’d better believe that one of those mammajammas would stab her in the back at the faintest sign of weakness.

After some interviewing from Asher, Michaela, Connor, Wes and Laurel, the team deems that everyone at the office is squeaky clean! Like a toilet bowl in a bleach advert. Well, almost everyone. Connor chooses to follow up on a lead of the woman’s assistant. He thinks highly of his boss but he’s been in the same position for 8 years, even on a good wage that’s got to irritate and so Connor being Connor attempts to get answers the only way he knows how: by having sex with him. When Connor leaves, the assistant makes a phone call and, having bugged the room, he is able to confirm that the assistant is in cahoots with someone else and that the client was telling the truth after all.

Trying to get some answers out of him, the next day they confront the assistant and the boss yells some truly awful things at him, even insinuating that his family was right to throw him out. And then while I (and probably you too) were patching up our battered heartstrings, the poor, law-breaking soul jumped out the window and killed himself.
There’s a life lost now and the stakes are much higher – they need to avenge him and find out who he was working with. Compiling the rest of the interviews and some truly incredible interrogation from Annalise, it’s revealed that one employee used a smoke break to get their boss out of the way while the other made the trades that got her into this mess in the first place. If this interrogation scene didn’t make you throw your hand in the air and yell some sort of expletive in admiration, then frankly, I don’t know what will.

As for Annalise’s other case, law student Wes stuffed things right up when he visited the suspect last week to tell her that another suspect was dumping her in it, implicating her for the murder. At the end of last week’s episode we learnt that she confessed to murder meaning that this week it was up to Annalise and co. to prove that not only was Rebecca (the suspect) coerced into confessing by the prosecutors but that her written and video statements should be dismissed.

Annalise puts her crack team to work and Bonnie is forced to blackmail the video statement out of the police chief. After watching Nate (Annalise’s ex-lover and cop) root through Sam Keating’s car (seeming to suggest that he is a suspect) she has the perfect leverage and uses it appropriately.

Reviewing the tape, the team have proof that Rebecca was forced into confessing to the crime. The judge agrees and they get her out on bail, Annalise and co. save the day once again.

Rebecca being set free also lets her speak to Wes again and tell him the passcode for the murder victim’s phone, he having found it a few episodes before. What’s on the phone? Nude photos of Annalise’s husband. Oh boy. Wes heads right over to Annalise’s house to tell her and obviously, she confronts him with it at which point I rubbed my hands together with glee. It puts her husband as suspect numero uno in the case, even if he does end up dead a few months later.

As for the whole, ‘Sam Keating gets murdered’ thing, the flashbacks with the law students show them trying to dispose of his body once again. In this sneaky reveal we find that Asher (typical straight white boy extraordinaire) knows that they were at the crime scene. How will it all play out? Who knows! But it will sure be fun along the way to finding out.

The Gay

As mentioned, Connor finds a new partner to do the horizontal tango with this week, but it doesn’t sit right with his Not Boyfriend Oliver when he listens to the audio recording about it. Oliver promptly throws him out, Connor having to stand in the hallway with his underwear.
What does it mean for the Not Boyfriends? Again, who knows! This show is full of mystery.
Meanwhile, less canon queerness took place on Bonnie’s first attempt to get that video recording. She spoke to the District Attorney, which proved fruitless but as she was walking away the D.A said to her “tell Annalise to send Frank next time, I prefer him watching my ass walk away”.

Does this mean Bonnie is queer? Does it mean that she just appreciates an attractive behind? Both are plausible! How to Get Away With Murder likes to play its cards close to its chest so I suspect we won’t find out for a while. I’ll recap the snot out of any queer maintext queer activity once it happens though.

The Ugly

Aside from that suicide making me uncomfortable (which I suspect was the intention) I have nothing bad to say about HTGAWM this week. It’s fast becoming one of my favourite programs so if you’re reading these recaps without having watched, I highly recommend catching up.

I’ll be back next week with another recap.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Faking It 204 Recap – Know Thy Selfie

Welcome to another Faking It recap! Faking It also known as the show that’s 5 parts ridiculousness, 3 parts heartbreak and 2 parts slightly questionable queer representation!

This week on the show there’s a whole lot of drama, a new love interest for Amy and Laverne Cox makes a guest appearance!

As always, our recaps are split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what happened this week.

The Plot

Remember last season when the school started to protest against the search engine company that Liam’s family owns (that wasn’t at all modelled against Google, no way!), Liam ended up hooking up with one the protesters, Karma was sad about said hooking up and Amy was sad about Karma’s sadness? Of course you do.

Well, that storyline is rearing its ugly head once again this season as Liam’s family is hosting a celebratory bash. Unfortunately for Liam, Amy soon shows up to kick his teeth in as he’s been threatening to tell Karma that she and him slept together. DUN DUN DUN! She keeps quiet though, if only because she wants to make his life a living hell just to make him promise to stay hushed. Atta girl, Amy.

Bonding between Amy and Liam’s “sister” ensues when the former tells everybody that she’s Liam’s date and so she needs a dress for the party. It’s almost cute, watching Amy meet Liam’s relatives. They’re rich and a bit up themselves but for a good 30 seconds they seem like nice people.

It soon goes downhill rapidly though after Amy tells everyone she’s pregnant, but just kidding! It’s a joke, “a little in-law humour to break the ice” she explains, but Liam locks her in a storage room anyway.

Hightailing it out of the storage cupboard (insert closet joke here), Amy soon reveals that Liam hates the family business and led a protest against them and that he also slept with Amy’s best friend. Good god. After a stern talking to by his “father” Liam looks bitter and deciding to damn it all to hell, he tells all of the partygoers that not only is his sister not his sister, she’s also his mother. Telenovela writers eat your heart out.

It does end somewhat well though when Liam agrees not to tell Karma about he and Amy’s hook up. He says he knows now what secrets do to people and he doesn’t want to spoil Karma’s day by telling it to her. It’s almost sweet! I can almost forgive the oddly accented piece of eggy bread. I really do hope MTV continues with the character development.

Segway over to Hester High’s campus and Karma, Shane, Lauren and returning character Oliver are having a little character development of their own. Episode guest star Laverne Cox (of Orange is the New Black fame) stars as the school’s drama teacher, putting the character through a hilarious series of acting, singing and dancing trials.

It’s actually really entertaining! Laverne is sassy, fierce and all of those other synonyms and I’m so glad she was a part of the episode. The other actors pull their comedy weight too, warbling really awful high notes and flinging each other about on stage in the name of ‘interpretative dance’.

The most notable thing of that half of the episode was that Karma told the auditorium that her and Amy’s relationship was faker than a Burberry wallet from a market stall and how that affected her. Would I prefer this big emotional run down to be said by Amy instead? Well yeah, but this was heartfelt nonetheless.

The Gay

Not much to report on this week on account of Amy and Karma being in separate storylines but there was one big/little thing: Amy’s new love interest!

In that closet (again with the obvious jokes) Amy meets her new love interest Reagan. They don’t exchange many words but Reagan, a member of the catering staff, does agree when Amy says that she ‘doesn’t have many boyfriends around her’ which is about as big a hint we’re going to get until the two meet again.

The Ugly

My concern with the show (again) is all about outing. Faking It has a history of this, as recently as the second episode of this season where Amy and Karma nearly outed Lauren for being intersex and here it nearly happened again.

When it was Lauren’s turn for the acting trial Laverne’s character asked her about the mysterious ‘pills’ that Lauren has been taking. Never mind that this is wildly inappropriate for a teacher to be asking about (even one with unorthodox teaching methods) but it would force Lauren to come out when she probably wasn’t comfortable in doing so.

I didn’t like the way that the show did this and I’m really disappointed.

Hopefully this nonsense will disappear once and for all in next week’s episode.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Gotham 104 Recap – Arkham

Welcome to another Gotham recap! Gotham also known as the show where where almost everything is grey including the the morals, the suits and the dreary, dreary skyline.

These week on the show the mob turf war gets #real, a small child is a better detective than anyone at the Gotham PD and Barbara gives Jim and ultimatum. It’s all very exciting!

As always, things are divided into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out what went down in Gotham’s streets this week.

The Plot

When there’s something strange, in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? Jim Gordon! Or not, as it seems as Gotham’s most upstanding detective really proves his skills (or lack thereof) this week when a professional hitman begins taking out city officials in an attempt to rock the vote.

Using a retractable steel rod and the old fashioned method of burning someone alive, the hitman in question is killing off the officials so that the control of the Arkham district (including the abandoned Arkham Asylum) will be given to one particularly mob faction. The idea is that whichever mob boss (Carmine Falcone or Sal Maroni) gets control of the district will be able to do whatever the hell they want with it and make a crap ton of money in the process. So, high stakes.

Gordon doesn’t realise this however, until he has a little visit with Bruce Wayne, who will eventually be known as Batman. According to the littlest Wayne, Falcone wants to uphold his parents’ plan to turn Arkham Asylum into a state of the art mental health institute, whilst the surrounding areas would be turned into low-cost housing. Maroni meanwhile, wants to turn the entire thing into a waste treatment centre. Gross.

It wouldn’t be dramatic if things lucked out for the ‘good guys’ (and I use that term lightly, as this is Gotham) though! And so shortly after Gordon gets into a stand-off with the hitman, whilst trying to protect Gotham’s mayor, said mayor announces that Maroni will control the asylum and Falcone will control the surrounding areas.

Helping this turf war to cause all sorts of problems for just about everybody, is Oswald Cobblepot (also known as Penguin) former assistant to mob boss Fish Mooney and current sneaky schemer.

Penguin is awkwardly limping around in a kitchen these days, after having jumped a dishwasher for his loafers last week, but he’s using his lowly position to get in Maroni’s good books. How exactly is he doing this? With more murder of course! Hiring a group a of goons to kill Maroni’s henchmen, he makes out like he’s done Maroni a favour, hiding in a freezer with a big bag of money and telling him he ‘rescued’ it from those very bad men whom Penguin is definitely not in cahoots with. Penguin is then promoted to restaurant manager giving him a prime position to listen on on any mob deals. Also, he feeds those goons some poisoned pastry so we don’t need to worry about them coming back to mess with him.

The Gay

Also causing trouble in this turf war is Fish Mooney who, in the absence of Renee Montoya (fellow Gotham PD detective and your favourite character, probably), brought the gay this week.

For reasons yet to be seen, Mooney was looking a new bit of entertainment. Both in the entertainment sense and the “”entertainment”” sense. Namely, this involved auditioning talented, attractive women and seeing what they’re made of. In quite possible the funniest line of TV I heard this week Mooney asks the two women to ‘seduce her’ which results in Mooney’s first same sex kiss on the show so far. More queer women of colour, yeah!

In a dark twist, the women have to battle it out to prove who can be a ‘weapon’ for Mooney too. The woman who kisses her beats the other to a pulp which is somehow a win because it means she’ll stick around to kiss Mooney more in the future? I think? It all happened so fast but there’s potential there. Maybe they’ll develop into adorable girlfriends, who knows.

And then, the less queer but still significant event when Barbara began to press boyfriend Jim Gordon for answers. In the episode last week, Montoya showed up to warn Barbara that Gordon killed Penguin. They kissed! And reminisced! Then, Penguin showed up.

This week in Gotham we saw the wonderful fallout of that (a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion) when Penguin didn’t introduce himself as such, meaning that Barbara still has no idea who he is or that Jim didn’t kill him, as Renee suggested. That doesn’t mean she’s going to let it go though calling out the morally grey, definitely not all good detective out on his secrets. She asks him about Penguin, he refuses to budge and after a bunch of really awkward circling Barbara is forced to admit that her and Renee used to be a thing.

Is this the part of the recap where I should say ‘Barbara has secrets too!’, ‘they’re both as bad as each other!’ well yes, probably, but Barbara doesn’t tell him about the kiss her and Renee shared either. I’m no relationship expert but keeping something like that from your partner? That’s some shady behaviour.

Moving quickly though, the couple does look to be donezo (or close enough) towards the end of the episode when Barbara shows up at the precinct and tells Jim plainly ‘either you tell me your secrets or I’ll leave your lying ass, son’. He doesn’t answer and she leaves, so grab your popcorn out for next week kids because this one’s going to get good.

The Ugly

There wasn’t a whole lot of ugly in this episode, just one thing that bothered me once I’d come down from my ‘oh my god Mooney just kissed a girl’ high.

And that was that Mooney’s storyline this week might not necessarily lead to very good representation and could just be a case of ‘let’s make her kiss her a girl, it’ll be good for the ratings’.

Can I confirm that this was the case? Obviously not! But we’ll soon know depending on how the next few episode do (or don’t) deal with it.

Expect another Gotham recap next week.

 

‘How to Get Away With Murder’ Gets Full Season Order

‘How to Get Away With Murder’ is ABC’s new drama, which so far is dripping with mystery and gooey intrigue. Headed up by Peter Nowalk (producer and writer for Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal) and executively produced by Shonda Rhimes (the creator of those aforementioned shows) ‘HTGAWM’ is off to a brilliant start.

Hopefully you’ve been tuning in (it airs on Thursday nights on ABC, if you’re in the United States) and not just living vicariously through my recaps but so far, in addition to all of the murders and lawyer-ing up the show has proved itself to be incredibly queer friendly. Main cast member Connor is a gay, white male and while that’s hardly good news of those of us looking for more diverse characters to fall in love with (though two of Connor’s love interests have been men of colour) it’s still good news for those of us who like LGBT media that the show has now received a full season order.

Critically a ‘full season order’ is not the same thing as ‘being renewed for season 2’ which is what we’d all like to hear but it does mean that ‘HTGAWM’ will be upholding the justice system all over our teevees for the next few weeks. The show was designed to have 15 episodes in its first season but as we’re just at the 4th episode now (it airs this Thursday coming) and it has already been given a thumbs up, that’s fantastic news.

All of the appropriate appendages crossed, ‘HTGAWM’ will get a second season. At least, it has a very good chance of doing so. It’s been the most watched show of the Fall pilot season, getting 14.3 million viewers in its first week and by week two that had only dipped to 12.2 million which is phenomenal.

Hopefully those high ratings continue and that ‘HTGAWM’ adds a queer woman or two to the mix soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGVpoXLeHTM

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Faking It – 203 Recap: Beware of the Thirdwheel

Welcome to this week’s Faking It recap! Faking It, also known as the show that takes all of your nightmares about falling in love with a straight woman and makes it a painful, scripted television series!

This week at Hester High, the blue oasis in the red sea of Texas is embracing all things Brazilian, Liam reveals a huge secret and Amy gets to kiss a girl who is actually into her! Whoo, big stuff.

As always, things are divided into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out what the hell happened.

The Plot

At Hester High this week, the school is embracing the party spirit when its partner school from Brazil sends a busload of stupidly attractive, flirty students and tells them to have fun for the week. The reason for this? There isn’t one really, but Katie Stevens (who plays Karma) speaks Portuguese so let that be an excuse for her to speak it.

After wringing the principal’s arm last season so that she could become the events leader, Lauren is in charge of setting up a carnival to welcome the students. But, failing to understand the difference between a carnival (fairground rides, sugary snacks, attempts at throwing things to win stuffed animals) and carnivals the way the Brazilians know them (dancing, partying, the whole shebang) the visitors get a slice of North American culture.

As well as being an organisational nightmare for Lauren, who ropes in new boy Theo to help her man one of the aforementioned stuffed animal booths, it’s basically an excuse for the main cast to get their love on.

For Liam though, this won’t be so easy as the lovestruck softie (read: one dimensional loaf of bread) is still pining over Karma and feeling bad that he got drunk and slept with Amy. Obviously, after weeks of Amy explicitly telling him not to say anything to anyone and Liam promising to keep quiet, he tells his best friend Shane. Shane, also known as the guy who outed Amy and Karma last season and cannot keep a secret to save his life. Yup, this is going to end well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXH0SzARAcc

The Gay

Amy got to kiss a girl who’s not Karma! That in itself should probably be a reason to rejoice – for those who are looking forward to Amy moving on from Karma, anyway – but for Amy it’s about her finding herself and coming to terms with her sexuality.

Despite Karma saying that she is 100% totally not in love with Amy, proceeds to follow her BFF round translating for her. There’s a date Amy goes on with a boy that Karma messes up when she doesn’t directly translate what they’re saying to each other, instead playing adlibs and when Amy moves on to date a girl, Karma spies on that too.

She spies from afar though, which is lucky. Amy complains to the girl about Karma and after not really understanding very well, the girl asks if they should kiss. They do and Karma puts her binoculars to her face to get a better look. I’m sure all viewers can relate.

Amy and her new Brazilian love interest won’t last though, the plot was that the students are just there for a week and as Amy was put off by the girl’s fake tan, it’s unlikely that they’ll do the long distance thing either.

As for Faking It’s other canonly gay character, Shane, he is officially single. As I speculated in last week’s recap, he and his boyfriend have broken up so we’ll see if he gets another long term love in the upcoming episodes.

The Ugly

I’m thrilled to report that there was actually very little complain about, which makes a change.
I was put off by the way Shane spoke about women in this episode (he referred to one as a ‘grenade’ to say that she was ugly) and there’s a scene where Liam squirts sun tan lotion everywhere which is a lot more vulgar in context.

I’m also concerned that Faking It will see Karma running back to Liam despite betraying her trust by not telling her that he and Amy slept together, while Amy will be left out in the cold for doing exactly the same. I can’t say for certain that that will happen but I’ll let that theory go once I see how this storyline plays out.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | Gotham – 103 Recap: What Goes Up, Must Come Down

Welcome back to our Gotham recaps! Where I find out what is happening with the world’s favourite breeding ground of dastardly, deranged criminals and the possibly just as deranged people trying to stop them!

This week things got gayer, angstier and we discovered a more sinister side to weather reporting.

As always the recap is divided into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly, so read on to find out what went down.

The Plot

In last week’s recap I noted that Gotham’s weather system is greyer than all of the hair on all of the dye-deprived pensioners of the world, so you’ll be glad to know that we finally have some idea as to why – some blasted blighter has stolen all of the weather balloons!

Is this thief looking to become a ragtag weather reporter? Do they want to get to the root of why Gotham has the most miserable cityscapes in all of TV-land? No, the Balloonman actually wants to strap Gotham’s corrupt officials to it, send each of them up into the atmosphere never to be seen again. Well, until the chilly weather makes them pop and they come crashing back down to Earth. Alas that’s how Detective Jim Gordon finds himself on the case, tasked with finding the fellow behind it.

As luck would have it, one of the deceased literally hits the Gotham streets, allowing Gordon and Bullock (his partner) to investigate. And then, like a man who chowed down on Lucky Charms for breakfast, Gordon finds a form on the dead body (that was stolen from the murderer) and realises that it had been written on the same person who he’d met hours before to take Selina Kyle (Catwoman) out of juvenile detention for the day.

With the person behind bars actually having the right, corruption-eradicating ideas, Jim naturally feels a bit sorry for himself, the city and those who have to live in it. ‘Boohoo’ thinks the morally grey police officer, despite y’know, having been a bystander to the biggest corruption scandals in the city (the mayor not caring about children, the cops being paid off by the mob, cold-blood murder etc.) in the first three episodes of the show.

Across town one criminal is still doing her bit to sully Gotham’s reputation and Bruce ‘Future Batman’ Wayne is furthering plotting how to improve it.

Future Bats has gone on hunger strike for reasons unknown to the billionaire heir’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth. But, after a heart to heart we find that poor Bruce is hung up on who was behind his parents’ murder. He’s got the case files scattered across a desk and has been poring through them for clues. Despite not liking the character or the “hero” that he grows up to be, I can’t fault his reasons for doing this and giving that the entire police department is as useful as a chocolate teapot, he’s probably the only one who’s going to solve the case.

As for the other criminal antics, those are courtesy of mob boss Fish Mooney. She’s decided to send a team of goons to beat up fellow mobster Carmine Falcone’s girlfriend (after he had the same done to Mooney’s boyfriend the following episode) and he is rightfully ticked off. He doesn’t think Mooney’s behind it though and so she gets away with it. If she had moustache I’m sure she would have twirled it plenty this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEg332m4ZQk

The Gay

There was a lot of gay this week! Well, ok, there was a moderate amount of lesbian activity but it was so heartbreaking that it felt like a lifetime.

Still hot on the trail of who killed Mooney’s former assistant, Penguin, Renee Montoya dons her best pantsuit and heads over to…Barbara and Jim’s apartment? She actually has a key which is a surprise to both the viewers and Barbara who comes out of the adjoining room ready to high kick an intruder.

It’s soon explained though as this week’s episode of Gotham confirms that the two used to be lovers and they lived together too. It doesn’t sound like it was all sweet nothings and roses mind you, as the two have a heated debate about Barbara’s continued drug use (Renee notes the drugs on the living room table) and what got her hooked on the stuff in the first place.

Renee, now sober, regrets that she was the one who introduced the drugs to Barbara.

Barbara is too. Then, while my heart was cracking to a million and one itty bitty pieces Renee tries to kiss her, but Barbara doesn’t return it.

The reason for Renee showing up at all was to tell her that Jim is as corrupt as all those other chumps and that he killed Penguin not so long ago. ‘Ask him’ Renee says. Barbara isn’t exactly straightforward with her probing once Jim comes home from work, but Penguin shows up not long after proving that he’s alive whilst simultaneously scuppering Renee’s plans to make Jim look like morally corrupt pillock in the process.

The Ugly

This week’s episode of Gotham was actually rather disappointing, if I’m honest. It saddens me to say that ‘Renee and Barbara were the only redeeming things about it’ but that’s the God’s honest truth.

Everything was just a bit too convenient for my liking. For example, Catwoman takes Jim back to the scene of where Bruce’s parents were killed, he goes down into the sewers to go trudging through the waste and find a wallet that proves she was there, while she picks the locks of her handcuffs with a pen she swiped from the precinct. Obviously she escapes because this is a TV show but the entire thing felt really, really silly.

Then, Penguin stumbles into town and immediately kills a guy. In broad daylight! With blood everywhere! Then, he hits up a local eatery looking for a job, kills one of the employees to for his shoes and finds himself at the heart of another mob boss’ territory which he’ll be able to use to gather information inevitably getting revenge on his former boss. Gee whizz it’s almost like an unseen cosmic force is guiding him! Or y’know, a ham-handed writer hasn’t read the script back to see how ridiculous it all is. That seems more likely.

I’m hoping that the show is able to find its footing in the coming weeks because as it stands it could be a valid entry point to the comic book world outside of the comics or the many movies. So keep an eye on this one (it airs every Monday) and I’ll be back with another recap next week.

The Plot, The Gay, The Ugly | How to Get Away With Murder – 103 Recap

Welcome to this week’s How to Get Away With Murder recap! HTGAWM, also known as the show where one no-nonsense lawyer teaches a bunch of up and comers the ways of the justice system, with her students trying to awake and alive despite having diets that consist almost entirely of instant ramen!

This week on the show, more crimes were committed and the overarching mystery from the show’s premiere got even more delicious.

As always, our recaps are sectioned in The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so keep reading to find out what went down.

The Plot

There are two murder cases on Annalise’s mind this week, as the talented and intimidating lawyer has to ponder whether or not she’s going defend the school’s star quarterback in the murder case of fellow student Lila Stanguard.

But, before Annalise can make a decision she has to go and bust out a client’s friend out of jail in the name of good business practices, she explains to her grumbling gaggle of recruits.

Things aren’t easy, breezy and beautiful though as on their way out of the precinct they’re surrounded by SUVs and several government officials jump out and inform them that the freed woman is not who she says she is. No, she’s not just a highly strung suburban mother who got caught being ‘intimate’ with a stranger on a park bench, she’s actually a wanted fugitive whose fingerprints were found on a fragment of a bomb that killed a janitor during a protest demonstration several decades ago.

Annalise takes the case only to discover that plot twist! It was the ringleader (who is already in prison) who was behind it all. They go to visit the man, who, despite having been locked up for years, seems pleased as punch to see his ex-activist teammate. She also happens to be his ex-activist…lover? Wild. They hold hands across the table and stare longingly into each other’s eyes and the man agrees to take the fall for her if they put him on the stand in court. Ah, middle-aged heterosexual love is a beautiful thing.

As promised, he goes on the stand but because nothing can ever go right for these people, he dumps the defendant right in it. ‘She was the one who suggested the bombs’ the dirty, no-good criminal explains, incriminating her and potentially seeing her go to prison for 10 years. His betrayal is soon explained though as Annalise accuses the man of having spoken to the government to set up a deal. She’s right, because this is Annalise Flippin’ Keating we’re talking about, and he soon buckles under her questions to reveal that he’d be given early release for testifying against her client.

They break for a few hours and Michaela uncovers some pretty big evidence. But before she can even finish her sentence, Annalise gets a phone call from Frank saying that their client has gone missing. We skip across town to see the client and the man who “betrayed” her sitting next to each other on a bus, kissing and all loved up. Love’s young dream.

With that case flushed down the toilet, Annalise still has to figure out whether or not she’s going to take the quarterback’s case, which involves enlisting her cop friend/ex-lover to find out how her husband is involved in the case. She needs to find out if her husband’s alibi checks out so that if he didn’t kill Lila then maybe the quarterback did.

‘It checks out’ the cop tells her after a bit of investigating, but in his actual sleuthing scenes we find out that not only is her husband’s alibi a lump of old baloney, there was actually a six hour window during which he could have killed the girl. It’s all very, very messy.

The quarterback meanwhile, makes his case to Annalise and her students. He tells a cock and bull story about cheating on Lila with Rebecca. Wrong move buddy boy, Rebecca is actually Wes (one of Annalise’s students)’ next door neighbour and in an effort to bust her out of jail, where she’s being held as a suspect in the murder already, Wes goes to see her. Rebecca doesn’t want to hear any of it though, unfortunately, and she calls the guards to have Wes taken away. He manages to shout ‘the quarterback is pinning it on you!’ as he leaves she pays any attention to that, but it might have cause more trouble than it’s worth.

Luckily for Rebecca, Wes pleads with Annalise to help her out because she’s poor and needs the best team she can get. The law is meant to work for everybody, not just the rich kids and those who are incredibly privileged. Aw, he’s got a good heart in him that lad. Annalise agrees and takes on the case. It might be a short one though as by the time they get to the jail to see Rebecca, she’s already confessed to Lila’s murder.

But did Rebecca actually do it? And how does she fit into everything? It’s not clear but we do see Rebecca again when the show has one of its flash-forward scenes. Wes, Laurel and Connor are trying to move the body of Annalise’s freshly dead husband, Michaela is crying in the corner and Rebecca looks shaken up. Laurel manages to talk Michaela round though and the team pushes on to ditch the corpse.

Their plan hits a bit of a snag though as whilst they’re putting the body in the car, Michaela makes the shocking revelation that her engagement ring is missing, presumably lost somewhere in that body bag, at the crime scene or somewhere just as incriminating in between. She freaks out, having wanted no part in this in the first place whilst the others manage to convince her to go with them to a bonfire which will serve as their alibi.

The Gay

There was plenty of queer activity in this week’s episode, but I can’t say that it was particularly good. We meet Michaela’s fiancé Aiden at which Connor makes various ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ suggestive jokes given that he and Aiden knew each other in boarding school.

For reasons I can’t adequately describe other than ‘Connor wanting to be an asshole’, he tells Michaela that he and Aiden hooked up back when they were teenagers. It’s heartbreaking really, to watch one man effectively get outed and to see his fiancé realise that she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.

Aiden promises that he is Totally 100% Heterosexual and things between them seem to be fine, but Michaela threatens that she’d destroy his career in politics if he ever cheats on her.

The Ugly

Rather than having issue with the way that Michaela handled the Aiden/Connor bombshell – her reaction was valid and she never says she’d have an issue with him being bisexual, just an issue with him being gay since she wouldn’t want her future husband to be a gay man which is understandable – I actually have more of an issue with the missed opportunity.

Bisexual Aiden would have been brilliant! The writers could have written him as bisexual and left him and Michaela happy together, without doing the typical ‘cheating bisexual’ trope.

So it’s not a huge deal, just a minor sadface of an event. I’ll be back next week with a new recap nonetheless.

Pretty Little Liars Christmas Special: Everything We Know So Far

Spoiler alert! The midseason finale of Pretty Little Liars was a big’un. Things are always dark in Rosewood aka the murder capital of the world but in that episode it really lived up to its (unofficial) nickname as fan favourite Mona Vanderwaal was killed off. We even saw her dead body; it was grim.

The liars also fell out with Ali in a big way as the queen of lies and deception began to plot against Emily, Spencer, Hanna and Aria despite the group previously being her best friends and it left us with a plethora of new questions and an intricate web of mystery.

What other secrets is Ali holding? Does she have the power do blackmail the liars? And has she been ‘A’ all along? Aaargh! So much has been left unanswered but we’ll be one step closer to a solution later this year when Pretty Little Liars returns for its Christmas special.

So what do we know so far? Like many of the Halloween specials before it, PLL’s Christmas themed episode is centred around one big party. The theme is ‘Winter Wonderland’ so we’re told and so the liars –plus Ali and her henchpeople – are suitably dressed in icy blue and white attire. I’m not quite sure how dresses are appropriate for Winter weather but it’s Pretty Little Liars so let’s just go with it.

Aria will also be dancing with her boyfriend, English teacher Ezra Fitz, but it won’t all be slow dances under the disco ball for Rosewood’s most famous, definitely illegal couple. The episode is called “How the ‘A’ Stole Christmas” so the infamous villain (or the villainous group) will be back to cause mischief like the Grinch, but with more black hoodies.

Furthermore, A’s plotting includes some Christmas-themed spooks. There’s no word yet on what they are yet but Mona Vanderwaal makes a return as the ghost of Christmas past, with Janel Parrish who plays the deceased teen explaining that she’s “going to be in the Christmas special as the ghost of Christmas past, present and future, and in the second half of the season there will be more Mona flashbacks”.

In a more festive holiday spirit though, the liars, along with Paige, Jenna, Lucas and Sydney, visit the Shady Days Nursing Home to sing some Christmas carols!

Even Ali celebrates the right way as the cunning teen gets her smooch on at the party with someone dressed like Santa Claus, according to Pretty Little Liars writer Bryan Holdman. It’s unclear just who is dressed up as Santa though (some fans are hoping that it’s Emily, despite her and Paige looking pretty loved up in the teaser photos) so that will be one of many big reveals when the episode airs in December.

Weekly Recap: Gotham, Faking It and HTGAWM Have Strong Second Weeks

Hundreds of channels! Hundreds of TV shows for you to choose from! But definitely not enough time to watch everything! With the Fall TV season upon us, with even more shows debuting, you’re probably a bit overwhelmed. Furthermore, every show you choose to watch runs the risk of disappointing you.

New programs might fall flat, returning programs might step on your toes like a giant in heavy, metal clogs and when there are gay characters involved you know the risk of stuffing it all up are only that much higher. So to save you the trouble, we’ve taken a handful of promising shows from this year’s fall lineup and will watch them, recap them and deliver the verdict on how well they fared each week.

For readability, things have been broken down into ‘The Plot’, ‘The Gay’ and ‘The Ugly’ which are pretty self explanatory. Read on and see what we thought!

Gotham

The Plot

On Monday night we sauntered over to the city, the city of Gotham, where every piece of scenery is out of a time warp, everything is devoid of colour and it hasn’t stopped being overcast in about three decades.

This week, Bruce ‘Snot Dribble’ Wayne is toughening himself up (the show is set in the years before he becomes Batman) by sticking his hand over a candle. I’m not entirely sure why he doesn’t just go on an extreme adventure holiday or something a lot less painful but his eye-rollingly stupid antics have at least been carried over from the season premiere (he stood on the roof of his mansion as if he was threatening to jump off) so that’s consistent, I guess. It also lets new detective on the block James ‘Jim’ Gordon step in and assume the father figure role for young Bruce, also helping Jim build up his ‘good cop whose morals are being tested’ persona.

When Jim’s not being a friend to troubled children, he’s also saving the homeless youth! The big police plot of this week features he and partner Detective Harvey Bullock as they attempt to thwart a couple of child snatchers who are rounding up homeless kids and shipping them overseas for unknown reasons. After a run in with the Mayor of Gotham, who is as corrupt as a two decade battery and doesn’t care about the children’s wellbeing, they eventually save the day and stop the snatchers. We don’t find out where the kids were being shipped but we do at least get some good scenes with young Catwoman (known as Cat in the show) as she is saved from the juvenile system.

The Gay

There was somewhat less of our queer, justice dealing favourite, Renee Montoya, who dogood’ed her way into our hearts last week with her tailored suits and the maintext history she has with Jim Gordon’s girlfriend, Barbara. This week, Renee and her partner Crispus Allen were trying to uncover a corruption plot featuring the disappearance of Penguin, the villain whose life Jim spared last week and has now turned to cold-blooded murder.

Barbara, meanwhile, rats out the Gotham police force to the local newspaper after Jim explains that the Mayor won’t let him rescue the children. It’s a really short scene but it’s significant just because Barbara’s moral code is clearly so black and white (just like Renee’s) in comparison to Jim’s grey one and this could potentially be what breaks her and Jim up. Good news for Barbara/Renee shippers but less so for the future Police Commissioner.

There’s also a scene with mob boss Fish Mooney, who is planning to usurp fellow crime leader Carmine Falcone. Falcone shows up, asks who her lover is and then proceeds to have his goons beat her lover (a male bartender at Mooney’s club) to a pulp. Lovely. There have been rumblings that Mooney is Not Straight though, so with this lover scared off maybe she’ll find the arms of a woman next time.

The Ugly

A big problem for Gotham’s writers is not being too obvious about upcoming storylines. This is a prequel to all of the comics and movies we’ve seen featuring Gotham’s superheroes but sometimes it feels like certain lines are included just to wink at viewers who are clued in. It probably seems weird to those who know nothing about the universe, which is unfortunate.

We’re only two episodes in though, so while it’s a little off-putting, there’s plenty of time for Gotham to find its footing.

Faking It

The Plot

This being Faking It, almost everything about the plot is gay! The not-gay action here is the subplot with Shane and Liam.

These two bros for life get a thirdwheel in the form of Theo, a new addition to the cast and Liam’s potential new bestie. Ditching Shane’s plans for a Frozen sing-along costume party, the three go out to a bar for some not-so-legal underage drinking and after a fight with the patrons they end up hightailing it the hell out of there. Liam is hurt and still upset that Shane didn’t tell him that Amy loves Karma and Karma (Liam’s crush) was only faking being a lesbian.

Maybe it’s just my continued apathy for Liam but I think he was probably being a crying pissbaby about this! Shane was trying to be a good friend to both he and Amy, protecting them both in the process, something which Liam doesn’t give Shane a chance to explain, so for now they’re on the outs.

The Gay

Shimmying over to Casa de Raudenfeld and Karma and Amy are having a girls’ weekend! Except Amy having told Karma she’s in love with her and them trying to figure out a way to be platonic friends and not suffocating close ‘soulmates’ means that awkwardness soon ensues.

So, what’s a girl to do? Amy brings in her step-sister Lauren, who came out (read: was outed) as intersex in last week’s episode and who soon invites her #Karmy shipping buddies over to get the party started.

The party atmosphere soon devolves after a game of truth or dare goes awry with Karma having to discuss what it was like to have sex with Liam, Lauren almost reveals that Amy slept with Liam too and Lauren is nearly outed once more. There’s also a scene where Amy and Karma almost kiss which nearly made my head explode but overall it’s nice to see that they’re dealing with the tension in a genuine way.

Also, Shane and his boyfriend may have broken up? An advice seeking session saw Shane putting the phone down on him. The scene seemed shoehorned in so here’s hoping it will get covered next week.

The Ugly

Following the truth or dare sesh, the next morning Lauren does come out to her two best friends and her and Amy have a heart to heart which made me realise that Lauren is without a doubt my favourite character on the show. But, Amy and Karma nearly outed her the previous night and neither had an apology for Lauren which was downright rude. For a show that’s already been heavily criticised for this you’d think they’d do more to leave it out, but alas, hopefully they’ll move on from it.

How To Get Away With Murder

The Plot

Fresh on the TV block this year, How To Get Away With Murder (HTGAWM) is now in its second week as Viola Davis plays the insanely talented and powerful lawyer, Annalise Keating.

This week’s case features a widower being put on the stand for his wife’s violent, brutal murder. Whether he did it or not, it’s the team’s challenge is to make sure the jury thinks he’s innocent but this is a job that becomes all the more difficult when it’s revealed in court that he was also a suspect for his first wife’s murder too. Yikes!

After some leg work by Alfie – and some mumblings from his fellow classmates that he is Annalise’s favourite – and a point made my Laurel that as a hunter, the client couldn’t have done the murder because the kill was too messy, he actually goes free. It actually turns out that the client’s daughter did it and tried to frame him but they don’t dob her into the police because, well, that’s not their jobs.

Annalise’s life isn’t all roses and won court cases this week though as she’s gradually starting to suspect her husband for the murder of one of his students. He knew the girl well according to emails (that Annalise has snooped through, naturally) and so she turns to her lover, a police officer (who was put on probation after helping her out last week) to check out his alibi. To make matters worse, her husband is worried that their marriage is going through a rough patch so after almost breaking down to her boyfriend, she has sex with her husband and hides her tears afterwards. I’m pretty sure I watched the whole thing with a shocked look on my face because Viola Davis is such a good actress that it hurts.

We also find out more about the shocking reveal at the end of the premiere that Annalise’s husband has been murdered. The above storyline happens in the past (with her husband’s murder taking place two months later) but it’s threaded together impeccably well. What we learn is that Wes is trying to protect his neighbour Rebecca after she becomes his girlfriend at some point during the two months. It’s not much but it’s a delicious mystery to follow.

The Gay

Connor is the only gay lead in the show (so far) but he’s being represented incredibly well!

After getting a guy into bed last week to help solve a case, he enlists him again for some computer hacking. Some overtime, a delayed dinner date and some refused apologies later and the two have a bit of a rough patch. It lasts for all of 5 minutes though because Connor soon wins him over with food and sex, of course.

I can’t fault the way he’s being presented and I’d love for there to be a queer woman on the show who’s given the same opportunities, but if you’re looking for any gay content at all, How To Get Away With Murder’s plot and representation means it’s highly recommended

The Ugly

I can’t say a bad word about this show! The only downside to it is that it doesn’t air seven times a week, so I’m impatiently waiting for the next episode, but I can live with that. Just about.

Pretty Little Liars’ Sasha Pieterse Discuss Emily and Alison’s Relationship

Life can be hard for the budding, young, gay lady when she’s crushing on a straight girl, not least when that straight girl also happens to be her best friend and it comes at a time when she’s trying to deal with her not-so-heterosexual feelings.

Feel sorry for Pretty Little Liars’ Emily Fields then, the gay teen in that analogy, as not only was she forced to acknowledge the fact that she was in totally-definitely-not-heterosexual love with her best friend, Alison DiLaurentis. Then Alison proceeded to disappear, presumed dead with no chance of returning alive, or returning Emily’s feelings. But then earlier this season on PLL, Alison came back, alive, well and hinting that she liked Emily back too.

But after several girlfriends and years of Emily trying to get over her would Alison and Emily, “Emison”, be able to kiss and make up? Sasha Pieterse, the actress who plays Ali has since explained.

Pieterse acknowledges that questions and alarm bells were sounded by viewers alike when Emison reunited, promptly making out when Alison stayed at Emily’s house explaining that she didn’t want to be alone.

“I don’t think the audience can tell if Ali is genuine or if she’s playing Emily to get close to her or if she just wants Emily’s protection. I wasn’t sure at the beginning of the season where they were going to go with it, and how the fans were going to react”.

Sasha Pieterse

But is it real or, as we have seen somewhat from Ali already since her return, is this another one of her dirty, mind-muddling tricks?

“I think Alison is so scared to show her real feelings that we never really know what’s true and what isn’t. I can’t tell you too much about that, but you will be able to see more. I think the writers do a really good job of finding that balance, and even though these characters live in a heightened reality, there’s still a trueness about being that age and not being sure what you’re feeling. Alison hasn’t really had an opportunity to figure out who she is. Emily has had such a journey with it and she’s grown into herself. You will see more of Alison figuring herself out, and I’m excited to see how the fans react.”

Sasha Pieterse

That Ali is just coming to terms with her feelings (and keep in mind that her time away means that she probably wasn’t able to explore her sexuality or date women – or anyone of any gender – the way Emily has) rings true to the character so with half a season of Pretty Little Liars still left to go there’s still chance yet for the popular couple.

Source: AfterEllen

Two New Lesbian Characters of Color Hitting Mainstream TV

Thats correct, our TV screens are starting to see more lesbian visibility and lesbian characters of Color.

New TNT action drama – ‘The Last Ship’, features out lesbian Lt. Alisha Granderson, played by Christina Elmore.

On her new role and character, Christina says

“I knew that she was a woman in her mid-twenties, that she was a Lt. in the navy and her job was often as the officer of the desk, to take the orders that the captain gives and give them to the helmsmen that steer the ship, and that she was smart and serious and a lesbian.

And those were the facts I had about her. And so going in it was a process for me, sort of learning about her with everyone else. Every time we get a new script, it’s like, ‘Oh here’s a little more of a taste of who she is.’ But because she hasn’t had much things happen to her — she doesn’t talk much about her personal life — I’m able to sort of invent it a little bit on my own and in my head. So that’s been exciting. And the writers are really open to suggestions and ideas and have been sort of — we’ve been doing it together, seeing what she’s like as we go.”

Christina Elmore

The other new character will be coming to TV this fall. Comedian/actress Erica Ash will play a lesbian named Mary Charles (M-Chuck) on the new Starz half-hour comedy Survivor’s Remorse.

Survivor’s Remorse,” a half-hour comedy, follows Cam Calloway, a basketball phenom in his early 20’s who is suddenly thrust into the limelight after signing a multi-million dollar contract with a professional basketball team in Atlanta. Cam, and an unforgettable group of characters, wrestle with the rewards and pitfalls of stardom, love, and loyalty.

On her character, Erica said…

“Her family is very accepting. She’s very lucky to have that and not have to deal with that struggle internally. It makes her a much stronger person to be able to face the world and say, ‘Hey, if you have a problem with it, it’s your problem, not mine.’ So I’m actually very proud to play this character for that reason.”

Erica Ash

She has also said about the role, that her being a lesbian is never made a big deal of; it simply exists without question.

“I definitely think that there’s something for everyone in the show and my character being a lesbian just adds another nuance,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a big crazy thing. That’s who she is and that what I think a person who loves someone wants to be—just allow them to be! And not make it like when someone’s black or white—it’s just who they are. It doesn’t need to be set aside as something big or, ‘Ooh, let’s tiptoe around it!’ She just is a lesbian and she moves forward in that and people who watch it, especially my gay and lesbian audience and community and friends, will watch it and think, ‘Right on!’”

Erica Ash

New Superhero TV show ‘The Flash’ Features Gay Characters in First Season

Producer Greg Berlanti told Huffington Post that the series will debut in September and that there would be at least two gay characters.

Berlanti revealed that gay DC Comics character David Singh (played by actor Patrick Sabongui), will be a recurring role throughout the first season of the show.

He also announced another gay character, whose identity is not yet known, will appear during the season. The second character will also be be a guy who already exists in the DC universe.

Wentworth Miller has also joined the show, and will play Flash nemesis Leonard Snart aka Captain Cold.

The show is set to enjoy extensive crossovers with sister show Arrow, which itself introduced a lesbian relationship between Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), and assassin Nyssa Al Ghul (Katrina Law).

Here is a sneak peek of the new show

What Does Glee’s Final Season Mean for LGBT Characters on TV?

Flashback to early 2009 and you’d be met with a time before Lady Gaga covers by Broadway stalwarts were the pinnacle of the weekday TV line-up and before cheesy renditions of every middle-aged white American father’s favourite song, Don’t Stop Believing’, was used as the only means of justifying a character’s progression.

But then Summer 2009 rolled around and brought the pilot episode of Glee with it, hitting TV viewers with the force of a ton of bricks with all of the subtlety of those aforementioned building blocks dressed in a sequinned leotard performing a Madonna song because damn, Glee really can’t get enough of its blonde, Italian female pop icons.

Over the course of the instantly ordered 12 episodes that followed (television network FOX deeming the initial episode’s popularity that strong) Glee introduced a canon gay man and some only slightly trophy lesbian subtext so with an army strong fanbase being built up over the remainder of the season, the face of television would never be the same again.

Then season 2 of Glee crept in, still with the same lack of subtlety and still with the emotional force that would rip your heart to shreds like a lover with a vengeance before singing it back together with equally as painful (yet beautiful) covers of songs that fit the situation just right (look to season 2’s ‘Rumors’ episode – specifically the scene where Santana serenades Brittany with Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Songbird’ – for both).

Then over the course of that season and the ones that have thus far followed it brought with it a confusing collection of behaviours that were as far from the progressive attitude that it had helped usher in as Glee’s setting of Lima, Ohio are from the Hollywood lot in which Glee is filmed.

A really brief amount of example scenes are; a scene suggested that the struggles of a disabled female teen mom were any less valid than white, able bodied gay man, any scene that involved ‘Finchel’ the emotionally abusive coupling of Finn and Rachel, a scene where Finn actually drags Quinn (the aforementioned disabled teen) out of her wheelchair to prove a point.

Every scene in which Brittany and Santana were denied an on-screen kiss (they had to wait three entire seasons) and one key moment where fans of Brittany and Santana were ridiculed using in character dialogue. Did any of those things fill viewers with the titular glee? I should hope not.

In truth, Glee is a show that viewers have been waiting to get cancelled. With Ryan Murphy’s singing and dancing brainchild haemorrhaging viewers from the end of season 2, failing to stop the rot thanks to its reliance of both casual and overt racism, sexism, lesbiphobia and transphobia to boot, the stats show that too.

To answer the question I posed in the headline: that may as well have been rhetoric, because frankly, it really doesn’t matter. Yes, we’ll see an arbitrary numbers drop in the amount of LGBT characters because of those that Glee had offered us but the gaps will be filled by other, much better shows (see: The Fosters, Pretty Little Liars, Lost Girl, Orange is the New Black etc.) that take more care with presenting queer identities.

What Glee eventually became leading up to its sixth and final season was never like the incredibly progressive bubble that society tells us that we’re in and much like the ‘modern and accepting’ year of 2014, what we actually got was a progressive veneer and a promise that the world loves non-white, able-bodied, non-heterosexual identities when the prejudice still festers – itchy and infected – under the surface.

We shouldn’t have to settle for drive-through burgers of grease and gristle when the progressive prime steak is always going to be better; not now and not ever. So to answer my own question once again; I don’t care. Just give me something else to add to the pile of TV shows that delight me more than Glee ever did because God-knows this showtune hardened writer could use them.

Kathy Bates Discusses Her Lesbian Role In ‘Tammy’

LGBTQ favourite Kathy Bates talked to Michigan gay weekly Pride Source about her lesbian role in ‘Tammy’ – also staring Melissa McCarthy (who I’m addicted too), Susan Sarandon, Dan Aykroyd.

In ‘Tammy’, Bates plays Lenore, a lesbian woman in a relationship with Susan (played by Sandra Oh of Grey’s Anatomy.)

“She brought a lot of love and warmth, and it was her idea to have wedding rings — because of course! — which I hadn’t thought about, and also, really, to think that our relationship is the healthiest relationship in the movie. It was important for me to be able to ad-lib how difficult it is, or was, especially 20, 25 years ago, for lesbian women to come out,” she recalled of one scene she shares with McCarthy. “I think almost more difficult than for men to come out as gay.”

Kathy Bates

As for who her dream co-star would be if she tackles another lesbian role, Ms Bates said…

“I shared a plane trip with Uma Thurman once and I thought she was pretty cool. I could see doing a movie with her and having a lesbian relationship — although I’m much too old for her!”

Kathy Bates

Watch the funny trailer for Tammy here…

Gay Women In Comics, and There are Plenty

Here are some of my favourite lesbians and bisexual women Super heros.  The characters cover the full range of heroes, anti-heroes, villains, and supporting cast.

tank-girlTank Girl

Real name: Rebecca Buck
Comic: Tank Girl

My first comic crush, Tank Girl is a tank driving, bounty hunted bad-ass. Her character is well-known for her lack of manners, bad behaviour, and carelessness with the hearts of her lovers. Besides this, she can usually fight her way out of any pickle.

MystiqueMystique

Real name: Raven Darkholme
Comic: X-Men

Mystique’s first made an appearance X-men universe in the comic Ms. Marvel. One of the most famous X-villains, Raven had a lifelong on-again, off-again affair with fellow mutant Destiny. Writer Chris Claremont stated that he originally planned to have Mystique and Destiny be Nightcrawler’s biological parents, but due to the Comics Code Authority, Marvel refused to do this. However, years later Mystique and Destiny were confirmed to be a lesbian couple.

Miss-AmericaMiss America

Real name: America Chavez
Comic: Young Avengers

Miss America story starts when her mothers sacrifice their lives to save their home planet, Utopia, forcing her leave home to fight injustice in more crime-ridden dimensions. She teams up with other superheroes including Loki, Hulkling, and Wiccan. In Young Avengers #12 she flippantly mentions that she is a lesbian.

Scandal-SavageScandal Savage

Real name: Scandal Savage
Comic: Secret Six

One of the most bad ass characters around, Scandal is the daughter of immortal caveman Vandal Savage. She was dating Knockout at the time of the other’s death, and is currently involved with Liana Kerzner. She has a healing factor, and wields her Lamentation Blades with deadly skill.

BatwomanBatwoman

Real name: Kate Kane
Comic: Batwoman 52

Easily the most prominent lesbian character in superhero comics, Kate’s backstory is tragic and includes the loss of both her mother and twin sister at the hands of a terrorist organisation. As an adult, she joins the Marines to please her father, but is eventually outed as a lesbian and is dishonorably discharged. Upon her return to Gotham as a socialite, she parties and binge drinks every night until an encounter with Batman incites her to begin fighting crime.

Renee-MontoyaRenee Montoya

Real name: Renee Montoya
Comic: Batwoman 52

One time girlfriend to Batwomen, and former Gotham City police officer, Renee picked up the legacy of her friend Vic Sage after he passed away from lung cancer, becoming the second Question. As her desire to fight the good fight intensifies, she reconnects romantically with Kane. Unfortunately, in recent iterations of Batwoman, Montoya is no longer a superhero and simply a member of the police force. Although her big relaionship was with Batwoman, she has also had a long term relationship with Darla Hernandez. Currently she has the co-feature/back-up in DC’s flagship title, Detective Comics.

Maggie-SawyerMaggie Sawyer

Real name: Maggie Sawyer
Comic: Batwoman 52

Created back in the 1980s when the comic code prohibition against lesbian comic characters was in effect, Maggie was as ‘out’ as one could possibly be, even getting a girlfriend named Toby Raynes. Originally created as a supporting character for Superman, Maggie was later shifted over to the Batman universe, first as a cast member in Gotham Central and more recently as a potential love interest for Batwoman in Detective Comics.

Ramona-FlowersRamona Flowers

Real name: Ramona Flowers
Comic: Scott Pilgrim

Ramona Flowers is a subspace-traveling, mallet-weilding, endlessly desirable bisexual woman. How else would someone end up with seven evil exes? She’s guarded and maybe a bit cold, but she isn’t particularly interested in how most people feel about her. However, when she’s jealous or upset her head glows.

GwendolynGwendolyn

Real name: Gwendolyn
Comic: Saga

Gwendolyn is the most enigmatic characters in new Saga series. Her story, well Gwendolyn is on the hunt for her ex-fiancé, Marko. She doesn’t want him back, but he stole a family heirloom from her, a set of rings that allow languages to be translated between two speakers. After becoming infected with Heroine (a parasite that alters brain chemistry), Gwendolyn sees a naked mirage of the first woman she ever slept with, Velour.

Gay and Lesbian Characters in Video Games

An interesting video Kathleen MMs, discussing Gay and Lesbian characters in video games.

“I’m a nerdy queer college student who enjoys analyzing character development and story in video games. My channel is dedicated to video game reviews fuelled by my ramen diet, nerdy vlogs, and fangirl overload. I should go…”

Kathleen MMs.

Top 5 : Lesbian scenes in gaming

Unbeknown to many is that there are quite a few lesbian video game characters. Here 5 Lesbian scenes to we’ve seen…

  1. Sims 3 (DIY make-outs). When you think “The Sims,” you probably don’t think “hot lesbian kissing.” But you’re wrong. The Sims is the ultimate tool for do it yourself lesbian make out sessions. You can build your dream girls and view their intense love making from any angle. It might make you feel like a creepy pervert but virtual lesbian action doesn’t get better than this.
  2. Mass Effect 3 (FemShep and Samantha Traynor). If you play Mass Effect 3 as a FemShep you have the option to romance lesbian crew member Samantha Traynor. Bet you need a cold shower after this.
  3. The Witcher 2 (Philippa and Cynthia). The life of a Witcher is full of surprises. One moment you are fighting monsters in the forest, the next moment you stumble upon a lesbian BDSM session. We love how they pretended like nothing happened. Guess hot lesbian action is no big deal in the kinky Witcher universe.
  4. Dragon Age 2 (Fem Hawke and Isabelle). Play Dragon Age 2 as a Fem Hawk and you might end up in a steamy love scene with tough lady pirate Isabelle. Although things get pretty awkward the next morning…
  5. Fear Effect 2 (Hana and Rain). Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix might have been a so-so game but it had something most games didn’t. A love scene with a chick. Blocky or not it’s still pretty hot.