Ok, no, that's just in my mind-grapes. The show actually features the children of the hot moms, because....dun Dun DUN!
It's about foster children.
(Why do 'family' networks have to spoon-feed us context and content?)
But obvs I'm watching the show for the HOT MOMS. Like, hello:
Hot Moms Alert.
So, because this is ABC Family (what families watch this channel together, I wonder?), I fully expected the show to downplay the gay and up-play the Fambly ('Fambly' is defined by me as a Family that is way too moral and loving to be realistic and makes you want to vomit into your mind-grapes). But the first five minutes of the show has a 16 year old juvey girl throwing the Dyke word around so I thought 'maybe this is a little less Fambly than I thought and I like it). Plus, did I mention HOT COP MOM?
All of these foster kids (OMG GET IT??) look like they walked off the set of a disney channel movie. I'm pretty sure there's gotta be one in there.
But anyways, HOT COP MOM is more the authoritarian in the house (hot) but it's not anything like overt gender rolling here. Actually, it's fun to pretend Cop Mom is Tarantino's Zoe Bell
and Assistant Principal Mom as Staceyann Chin
Just to make it gayer....
Ahem, but I'm wandering.
Anyways, the show was surprisingly balanced in the 'yes, there are lesbians moms in this diverse family of biological and adopted and foster children' and the 'but this is just a family with normal worries and trite good morning dears would you like orange juice how was work I'm folding laundry' kind of show. There's also kids in it. But who cares, AM I RIGHT?
But no, really, this show is mostly about the kids. But it's the kind of drama where I'm wondering to myself 'yeah, I mean, I'm interested enough but I can't picture a 13-year-old watching this show and enjoying it much' because I'm pretty sure ABC Fambly is targeting the tween crowd and maybe some mom while she does the dishes.
And if it weren't for the novelty of seeing a stable, not-pregnant, non-abused, not-bisexual for Sweeps Week lesbian couple with children, I wouldn't watch the show like....ever.
No really. If this show were about a hetero couple with foster kids--hell, even if the ONE MOM was a cop, I wouldn't watch the show. And I wonder, is this lesbian novelty-anomaly why everyone else in America will watch the show? Sure, there will be some tweens that want to tune in for the tweensy life drama but really, aren't a lot of us--gay and straight and whatever--watching the show because it's about a family with two moms?
I can just see your average American TV-watching family tuning into this show like an exhibit at a nature museum.
NEW AT THE SMITHSONIAN:
Lesbian Moms, an interactive exhibit
materials: air, earth, LA, breakfast foods, humans, children, gay
It's going to win some GLAAD awards. But I'm not sure how many seasons it will get after the novelty wears off. And the sad thing is--and this just shows how much the LGBT community craves media representation--the novelty probably won't wear off for the gay (especially lesbian) audience. I mean, we're STILL re-watching the L-Word on repeat via Netflix, even though we know IT's. So. Bad. For. Us.
So bad.
It's no Modern Family. At least, not so far. It's not a comedy. We can't laugh with/at the gays in this one. We either have to except that this is normal or an anomaly. And the irony here is that gay or straight, it feels like you're watching an anomaly. We never see this kind of family. Hell, I live in Ithaca and I still awkwardly stare at the lesbian couple with their cute gaybies.
Maybe that's why we need this show? Ugh, but why do we need a show? I guess as long as adoptions by gay couples are illegal in most states and same-sex marriage only exists in some, we're going to be needing shows like this. At least to affirm our existence in the world. Or, the possibility of that kind of existence. I don't even know if I want a Fambly. But I want to know that there's famblies like this in the world. And yeah, I know there are. But I don't see them when I walk to the coffee shop and I don't see them in the movies I watch and I don't read them in my books. So, I guess I'll watch this show a little more because it's nice to see something so nice, you know? And sweet Jeysus, I can't watch the L-Word anymore, ever again.
P.S.
OMG I forgot to mention it's produced by J-Lo.
Send in the lols.
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