Faulkner

Just stumbled on Freema on New Amsterdam, the NBC medical drama (where she has the most gorgeous braids and is paired with Daniel Dae Kim). It’s just so gratifying to see what an actress she’s become. She, Karen, and Billie were all great on DW, if a bit green to start, but they’ve become such seasoned and rich performers. Billie, of course, is so respected as a stage actress now.

What on EARTH? Stunned.

From Ghana 🇬🇭

She’s certainly better, and they’re playing her opposite Michelle Stafford, which is a more even match than Hunter King. It feels like they realized they were playing Sally too young, and CH has enough gravitas to joust with the vets. Still it’s Josh Griffith’s Y&R in 2021, so she’s not written nearly as well as she could be.

Yeah, today was a mess, and that was one of many WTF moments.

You make great points. In many cases, the types of small-town settings for soaps are the type of places queer people often leave for bigger cities with more dating options (London, NYC, Los Angeles). The City would have been a great opportunity to showcase LGBTQ characters. I know they attempted something with Azure, the trans model, but you can’t tell a credible NYC story without gays and lesbians. There are SO many issues that gay men that are unique that aren’t tied to blatant homophobia and gay-bashing, HIV fears, or coming out to friends and family. I would love to see gay characters who are older than 30 or 40 on these shows for once. In theory, trans characters should have more romantic “options,” but there are a lot of very complicated issues there as well. Notably, hesitation from cis people to pair up with trans people, and how to dramatize that. But it’s also an opportunity to show them learning and growing.

It’s sort of amazing: NLG and Lauren Koslow are the only women born before 1960 who’ve been reasonably consistently written for (if not always written well, NLG rarely) on soaps over the past several years. Cyrus is such a lukewarm villain. This show used to be so good at baddies.

Dude is pretty marketing-savvy. Never thought I’d see an explicit song about gay male love and sex (name-checking a contemporary gay movie classic and accompanied by a music video featuring him giving Satan a lapdance) shoot to No. 1. Yet here we are, in the Year of our Lord 2021.

Male bisexuality is so frightening, confusing, and threatening for a lot of people, I think. Some gay men included! We’re more likely to get bisexual female characters like Otalia on GL and Mariah on Y&R. Rex on OLTL, of course, is a character that should have been bi. And apparently almost was.

He’s such a punk-ass bitch, and it’s hilarious.

I’m like, are they really doing this Paris booty stuff? And why does her stomach sound like a hooting owl mixed with a growling dog?

Actual conflict in nearly every scene is... an advance. Used to be the bare minimum a viewer could expect.

That’s the thing—don’t want to get my hopes up. It might appear to be slowly and carefully told but just end up being a big letdown. And this regime hasn’t earned my trust to believe otherwise. Not yet, at least. I wish that, if there’s a Newman angle, they’d done the legwork to put Amanda back in their orbit. Like it would have more impact if Amanda were working at Newman or something. That would add an extra layer of betrayal and pain on Amanda’s part.

Here’s the thing, though: with soaps cycling new characters in and out, there could (theoretically, of course) be opportunities for new love interests to pop in and out of the lives of LGBTQ characters. Similar to the way Chloe comes in to provide angst for Brady and others on DAYS. I’ve said it many times, but bisexual people have had very little representation even in primetime. Especially compared to the numbers out there IRL. Transmen (FTM) are also barely featured. Then there’s only been a handful of non-binary characters (like Asia Kate Dillon’s character on Billions).

TOTALLY understood. Thank you for your contributions over the years. This almost feels like an early cancellation notice for both Y&R and B&B lol.

It’s a pretty interesting inside look at Warner Bros.

More from Ray Fisher re: Joss Whedon and Warner Bros.:

From Spain 🇪🇸

Bradley Bell has entered the chat... No, I kid. He’s certainly not the only one. But, yes, I’d prefer stories with queer characters enduring the same infidelities, etc that straight characters do. I haven’t watched Hollyoaks regularly in years, but don’t they have a gazillion LGBTQ characters in high-profile roles? I just don’t think we’re ever going to see something like that when viewers are mostly Facebook grandmas. We’d need to have a totally new soap on streaming.

If primetime did a better job of it, I’d hold out more hope, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen in hyper-conservative daytime. If anything, they’ve gotten less inclusive to LGBTQ in the past decade as a whole. I never thought I’d see two women kissing and making out on Y&R, but they quickly put an end to that. I always thought it would be interesting to have a soap legacy character who’d been off canvas for many years return as openly trans.

LOL

Lil Nas X has his second No. 1, buoyed by the Satanic controversy: