Boob Tube: Goodnight, Sweepheart

With Halloween now upon us, and the holiday season about to unfurl in all its gaudy glory, we TV fans all know just what time it is: November sweeps! Given longstanding tradition, that means that previously heterosexual female characters on hit TV shows are about to spontaneously combust into flashy displays of Sapphic yearning. And we know what to expect from these depictions, too. Like lesbolicious falling stars streaking across the nighttime sky of the TV landscape, Sweepsbians make their brief, bittersweet appearances, and then fade away forevermore.

It’s an old dance. We all know the steps. Your typical sweepsbian storyline is, at best, ill-conceived and poorly penned eye candy. At worst, and most often, they end up reinforcing hideously trite cinematic clichés about the nature of lesbian lust (i.e. equating it with death/evil/madness or tacitly serving up the message that nice girls can kiss other girls in college, as long as they go running back to men come December).

With The Good Wife, 90210, and Flashforward each poised to capitalize on the grand tradition of Sweepsbianism with newly introduced, Sapphically-leaning characters, I have discovered, in the most unlikely of places, a Sweepsbian storyline that is actually being handled with decent pacing, sensitivity, and a surprisingly affecting dose of conflicted longing. Believe it or not, Boob Tubers, this thing starting to develop between teenage superhero and former cheerleader Claire Bennet and her new college roommate on Heroes is LOTS of fun to watch!

Instead of culminating with one, this time it started with a kiss...

Two weeks back roomie Gretchen (played by Madelina Zima, Californication) surprised Claire with a kiss by way of admitting her crushy feelings. This week, the two found themselves thrown together (quite literally at one point, in the trunk of a car… HOT!) and forced to grapple with the attraction growing between them after they were kidnapped by their new sorority sisters. It turns out to be part of a hazing ritual, during the course of which they are tasked with completing a scavenger hunt in a creepy slaughterhouse.

Seriously, though. That trunk scene? Get a load of this dialogue:

GRETCHEN

(shy, but distinctly vixeny)

Well, look at us. All tied up, in the dark.

CLAIRE

(ironic, nervous)

They have entire websites devoted to this.

Just then a bump in the road