Grey’s Anatomy’s Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith)It seems that the passing of summer can only be comforting on small levels. One such level may be the return of a new season of television, not bogged down by striking writers.
For us Portlanders it is nearly time to pull up the blanket, listen to the sounds of the rain on the roof and grab the remote and tub of ice cream. (It’s not sad, it’s just winter right?)
But though I fully expect to occasionally be one of those couch potatoes I haven’t quite fallen yet. So I leave the fall TV previewing to the exceptionally prolific writers of AfterEllen and AfterElton.
Let’s start with the men’s preview on AfterElton, since it is so well laid out, complete with TIVO-ability ratings.
I hadn’t heard of True Blood before this preview but this new HBO series about vampires who come out of the closet after the use synthetic blood compound makes it acceptable to live among humans sounds oddly intriguing.
Besides having one of the best titles I’ve heard in a long time, Shirts and Skins promises to be a festival of hot basketball bodies. And they’re admittedly gay. Wow. But it has the potential to go beyond the hottie factor, as basketball is such a traditionally hetero sport. I have high hopes and Logo usually does a pretty good job with their documentaries.
Oh yeah, and Ugly Betty is back, of course. It’s the best, gayest, comedy, like, maybe ever. That’s all that needs to be said…
And though AfterElton manages to bust out 17 pages (I warned you they were a bit verbose) these are the only shows that seem particularly queerly significant to me. Oh, and Dirty Sexy Money of course, which I have missed dearly.
Now onto AfterEllen’s lady preview.
Unfortunately lesbian characters are sorely lacking. We have some hope that a character on 90210 redux will be gay or lesbian, although CW is keeping the identity firmly under wraps at the moment.
It isn’t until page 6 that we get a confirmed bisexual character in Bones‘ Dr. Temperance Brennan (i.e. Emily, almost as hot as her sister, Deschanel).
To dash our hopes even further, planned lesbian character Carrie Rivai of Knight rider may be conveniently de-gayed.
They mention America’s Next Top Model as having a potentially lesbian contestant but Isis, as the first openly trans contestant, is likely to get the bulk of the GBLTQ attention.
When you get to reality shows and cable networks the picture looks slightly brighter (and I’m especially excited about Rachel Maddow, the first lesbian to host a prime-time news show), but on the whole lesbian representation is sorely lacking on the upcoming season.
