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I started watchingGreys Anatomymostly because Mrs. Bailey, my history teacher, was a fan.
This was 2008.Greys Anatomyseason five.
The one where a cancer-stricken Izzie has sex with a hallucinated Denny.
The one where George dies after enlisting in the army.
I back-binged the entire series that year.
I did this with so many shows after that.
Anytime I heard there were queer women in a show, I went to YouTube.Naomi and Emily onSkins.
Willow and [sobs in lesbian] Tara onBuffy.
Brittany and Santana onGlee.
Emily and her string of girlfriends onPretty Little Liars.
Interests I had even though I wasabsolutely, definitely, in no waygay myself.
(Id start to come out of the closet, slowly, half a decade later.)
I also polled members of a queer spinoff Facebook group devoted to the podcastWho?
Plenty of similar anecdotes about supercuts rolled in.
In high school I would obsessively watchSouth of Nowhere.
At the time I was secretly in love with my volleyball coach oh!
and the Spencer-Ashley [supercuts] were the age-appropriate lesbian content fix I needed.
I never watchedDegrassi, but preteen me watched every single one of Paige and Alexs scenes together on YouTube.
Honestly this is mega embarrassing butAvatar the Last AirbenderKatara/any female characters supercuts made me gay.
For many of us, these queer Franken-shows were an antidote for a predominantly straight entertainment economy.
Years after it went off the air, I foundThe L Wordon Netflix.
And also here was a show where I could not see myself at all.
I didnt need to speed through to find the gay stuff.
The whole show was the gay stuff.
havent established nearly the same significant cultural footprint,Shannon Keating wrote earlier this week for BuzzFeed.
Or, even if it doesnt resonate, is stillaboutqueer people.
A supercut ofThe L Wordwas something you watched as a supplement, rather than in lieu of the show.
I watched the L Word in 72-minute increments on Megavideo, one person told me.
Plenty of ink has been devoted to explaining whyThe L Wordwas problematic.
It, particularly in its treatment of trans people, does not hold up so great 15 years later.
(The reboot does its best to course correct for this.
Its hyper woke, to an almost cloying degree.
A show where essentially everybody that mattered was queer or questioning.
We havent really had anything like it since.
Sadly, I dont thinkThe L Word: Generation Qis poised to give it to us again.
Im pretty lukewarm on the reboot thus far, but I know Ill keep watching it.
Partly because, again, Im contractually obligated to and, also, partly because I want to.
Where else am I going to get an hour of television where everyone is gay?
One where I wont have to speed through the hetero plotlines or comb YouTube for supercuts.
Though Ill probably look for a Kate Moennig one anyway for, uh, research.
