Queer Representation in American Children’s Television: A Timeline

SPOILERS below for the series finale of The Legend of Korra.

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I’m so freaking psyched about the Legend of Korra finale. I mean, so psyched. Happy-crying, talking excitedly to my cat, reckless-blogging psyched. Plausible deniability or not, it takes a lot of stretching and assumptions to convince yourself that the final shots of the series were not meant to indicate a romantic relationship between Korra and Asami. (If you disagree, okay, but I’m not here to argue the point—others have already done so much better than I could.) And while some people are disappointed by the lack of 100 percent bulletproof evidence of that relationship—a kiss, or a line of dialogue, or something—I think that rather misses the incredible importance of what did happen.

With all of the gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters that currently appear on TV (and make no mistake, there are a lot of them—maybe not enough, but more than anyone could have imagined a decade ago) I think people forget that, in the world of children’s television, things have not progressed nearly so far. And while Korra aged up a lot in its final seasons, it was, ultimately, a children’s show. The series finale aired on Nicktoons. It’s rated TV-Y7.

To give people an idea of the context that makes the Korra ending so important, then, I’ve created a timeline of queer representation in American children’s television. It’s probably incomplete, and it’s definitely short. I have not watched every children’s show ever to air in America, so it’s possible that some of the “firsts” I’ve listed are not, in fact, the first of their kind. I welcome any additions or corrections you might have; feel free to leave them in the comments, preferably with a link to a source. My hope is that this timeline will show people the shoulders on which the Korra finale stands, show how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go, and explain to my sister why, exactly, I woke her up at 6 a.m. EST to flail and cry about some cartoon she’s never heard of.

Definitions

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Define your terms, people! For the purposes of this timeline, I’m defining a children’s series as any series aimed at viewers under the age of 13, OR any series airing on Nickelodeon, The Disney Channel, or Cartoon Network. “Queer representation” is a little trickier; I’m including characters who are confirmed by writers/actors/executives as being not straight, characters in a same-sex relationship with intentional cues that the viewers should read as romantic, and of course any characters who explicitly describe themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or otherwise not straight. I’m not including “coded gay” characters with no romantic plotlines. Obviously there is a lot of blurriness in this area, and I’ve attempted to give as much context as possible for each example.

1998

February 7: The Superman: The Animated Series episode “Apokolips…Now!, Part 1” airs on The WB during its Saturday morning block. In the episode, Maggie Sawyer is hospitalized, and an unnamed woman stands at her bedside. Co-creator Bruce Timm confirms in audio commentary that the woman is Toby Raines, Sawyer’s girlfriend in the DC Comics universe.

November 18: The Hey Arnold! episode “Arnold’s Thanksgiving” airs on Nickelodeon. In the episode, Arnold and Helga visit their teacher Mr. Simmons’ (voiced by out gay actor Dan Butler) house on Thanksgiving, and witness an argument between Simmons’ mother and a character called Peter that implies that Peter and Simmons are in a relationship. Peter tells Simmons’ mother that there are “a lot of things [she] wasn’t expecting,” to which Simmons’ mother looks affronted. She tells Simmons that he should take his friend Joy to the ballet over the weekend, and Simmons, after glancing at an extremely displeased Peter, says he has other plans. Later, Peter offers Simmons’ mother stuffing; she asks him what he means by that. Though nobody in the episode ever explicitly mentions that Peter and Simmons are romantically linked, nor is the possibility that characters of the same sex could be romantically linked mentioned, this is an unprecedented level of canon indication that two characters are in a same-sex relationship. Mr. Simmons’ relationship with Peter achieves approximately the same level of in-universe confirmation as Helga’s mother’s alcoholism.

2003

Unknown Date: Greg Weisman, co-creator and producer of the 1994 – 1997 Disney/ABC cartoon Gargoyles, confirms in an interview that character Lexington was envisioned as gay, but that attempts to address this subject on the show would not have made it to air.

2004

February 28: In an online chat, Hey Arnold! creator Craig Bartlett confirms that supporting character Robert Simmons is gay, and that his scenes in the episode “Arnold’s Thanksgiving” were an acknowledgement of that.

October 22/November 27: In the third-season episode “Game, Set Up and Match,” animated series Braceface contains a plotline in which the main character tries to set up her male friend Dion with another man, Houston. The set-up fails, as neither Dion nor Houston is interested in having a relationship at the time. Dion never explicitly confirms his attraction to men, but Houston references having an ex-boyfriend. The fact that Dion declines to date Houston not because he’s another man, but because Dion is happy alone at the moment (along with the many, many ways in which Dion is coded gay) has generally been taken as confirmation of Dion’s sexuality. The episode’s final shot is a pan up to a rainbow in the sky overhead. Braceface was set, created, and initially aired in Canada on Teletoon. In the U.S., the Disney Channel aired the first two seasons, but dropped the third. But, to my knowledge, all three seasons aired on ABC Family in the Saturday morning block. The episode is therefore the first overtly romantic plotline between two characters of the same sex to air on U.S. children’s television.

2005

March 10: 2000 – 2004 WB animated series Static Shock co-creator Dwayne McDuffie confirms on his message board that Rich Foley (based on the canonically gay character Rick Stone from the comics on which the show was based) was envisioned as gay: “It'll never come up in the show because it's Y-7 but as far as I'm concerned, Richie is gay.”

2012

November 5: Greg Weisman, co-creator of the 2010 – 2013 Cartoon Network series Young Justice, confirms that he considers some of the series’ characters to be not straight, but that he is unable to portray that on air: “I also believe we have differently oriented characters in the series, even though we're not allowed to mention it out loud. (And just to be sure, I checked to see if we were allowed, and got a no answer. Everyone seems to want to get there, but we're not there yet.)”

2014

January 26: The Disney Channel series Good Luck Charlie airs the episode “Down a Tree,” in which parents Amy and Bob arrange a playdate for their daughter Charlie with a friend, Taylor, from preschool. Amy and Bob each claim to have met Taylor’s mother, but Amy insists the woman’s name is Susan, while Bob is sure that her name is Cheryl. When Taylor arrives, her parents are two women, Susan and Cheryl. Susan and Cheryl are the first same-sex parents ever depicted on American children’s television.

August 7: Olivia Olson, the voice actor for Marceline on the Cartoon Network series Adventure Time, states at a book signing that Marceline and Princess Bubblegum are ex-girlfriends, but that the relationship could never be addressed explicitly within the show. She later tweets, “I like to make things up at panels. Ya’ll take my stories way too seriously…” The tweet is deleted and nothing further is said on the subject by anyone on the Adventure Time creative team. Together with numerous small moments in canon (most notably the episode “Sky Witch,” in which Bubblegum sleeps in a shirt given to her by Marceline), this is taken by fans as indication that Bubblegum and Marceline are canonically romantically linked.

October 23: The Cartoon Network series Clarence airs the episode “Neighborhood Grill.” The episode contains a brief scene in which a woman (Ms. Baker, the titular character’s teacher) waits for her blind date to arrive at a restaurant. She sees a man enter and look around, and believes him to be her date. Instead, the man greets another man, kisses him on the cheek, and walks off with him arm-in-arm. Writer Spencer Rothbell explained on Twitter that the original plan for the scene was for the first man to show up with flowers, and for the two men to kiss on the mouth. Despite the censorship, Clarence is the first children’s TV show to air a romantic same-sex kiss of any kind.

 December 19: The Legend of Korra two-part series finale “Day of the Colossus”/”The Last Stand” airs on Nicktoons. In the show’s final scenes, main character Korra talks to her long-time close friend Asami, and they confirm their need to have each other in their lives. The two agree to go on vacation together, alone. The two women set off into the portal to the Spirit World (their destination of choice), and take each other’s hand. In the final shot of the series, they turn to each other, take both hands, and stare into each other’s eyes. The scene contains several overt parallels to the ending of Korra’s predecessor series, The Last Airbender, in which main character Aang and his long-term love interest Katara finally kiss: the characters are framed in the same way, and a refrain from “The Avatar’s Love” (the theme that played behind Aang and Katara’s kiss) plays over the scene. Though Korra and Asami do not kiss, and never explicitly mention that they are together, the framing, timing, and body language of the final scene heavily imply it. The majority of fans and news outlets consider this canon confirmation that Korra and Asami are romantically linked. Series co-creator Michael Dante Dimartino posts (without commentary) links to several news articles and blog posts that talk about Korra and Asami’s romantic relationship. Korra becomes the first main character on children’s television to have even a semi-canonical same-sex relationship.

Milestones Not Yet Reached

To my knowledge, only one character in all of U.S. children’s television has ever categorized themselves explicitly as something other than straight: Braceface’s Houston, when he mentions having an ex-boyfriend. On Braceface, Dion never says that he’s gay (or bisexual, for that matter), and on Good Luck Charlie, Susan refers to Cheryl as “Taylor’s other mom,” rather than “my wife” or even “my partner.” For some reason, even as it has become increasingly acceptable to portray gay, bisexual, and otherwise queer characters on children’s shows, and even to confirm same-sex relationships with just about every contextual clue possible, actually saying the word "gay" remains taboo.

There are two kinds of same-sex couples that have so far appeared on American kids’ shows: Long-term, developed couples whose romantic relationship is hinted at, rather than 100 percent confirmed (Korra and Asami, Marceline and Princess Bubblegum, and Mr. Simmons and Peter, in varying degrees), and one-off, ancillary couples whose relationship is more explicit (Susan and Cheryl, the Clarence couple). It seems that the next big step in children’s television is to have a recurring same-sex couple whose relationship is overtly romantic.

And of course, though we tend to talk about LGBT representation as one big, globular thing, there's been essentially no trans representation in children's television in the U.S. Given that gay and bisexual representation is lagging several decades behind adult television, I imagine that will remain the case for a while.

Overall, though, 2014 has been a big year for queer representation in kids' TV. When milestones cluster up like this, it's a good sign. It means that the successes we're seeing now are not one-offs, are not flukes, but are in fact a trend. Despite the censorship, the network demands, the general sense that gay and bisexual characters should be at most alluded to, children's TV isn't just running in place; it's taking real steps towards diversity and representation. And for that, we can thank creators like Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko, like Craig Bartlett, like Greg Weisman, like Melissa Clark, who are fighting against a huge wall of institutional inertia to bring that diversity to the screen.
 
Thank you, all of you, so much. You have no idea how much it's appreciated.

I'm not even sure I have a word for this emotion.

There are plenty of riveting, painful moments in this week's Good Wife episode “The Last Call”—almost too many to count—and I wish I could talk about all of them. Despite having one strong A-plot and two clear subplots, one for each of the women most affected by Will’s death, it was largely an episode of moments. Narrative stepped aside in favor of raw emotion and microscopic detail. I don’t mean this as a bad thing. It’s more or less what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did in “The Body” (there’s a comparison everyone and their mother’s made), and it works. If you want to realistically portray the immediate aftermath of an unexpected loss, well, that’s just about the only way to do it, and The Good Wife does it well. Incredibly well.

It does mean, though, that it’s difficult to talk about everything that went into making the episode good, because more than narrative, more than A-plots and B-plots and arcs and resolutions, the episode relies on each and every individual moment being realistically written, heartbreakingly acted, and intensely personal. Every scene has to give us a slightly different but no less real perspective on the central tragedy than the one that came before; a single false note can throw us out of the episode. (For some people, that false note was the conversation Alicia had with her daughter about God. I loved that scene, personally, but the reasons why would probably constitute a blog post all their own, or, if I were going to be really clear about it, a memoir. For some people, the false note was Kalinda, and well, as with all things Kalinda, that's also its own post.)

Instead, I’d like to focus on one particular moment, out of the many. I’m not sure I’d call it the best moment, though it’s certainly a contender, but I do think it’s the most interesting one. It’s about a minute into the episode: Alicia, who was about to introduce Peter at a correspondents’ luncheon when Eli gave her the news of Will’s death, leaves, and Eli must take her place introducing Peter. Unfortunately, he’s still reading off a teleprompter of Alicia’s speech, which is full of references to Alicia’s dress, her children, her marriage to Peter, etc. Eli is shaken, and can’t quite figure out how to stop reading from the teleprompter.

I have never reacted to anything I’ve seen or read, ever, the way I reacted to that scene. It was an entirely novel experience for me. I started laughing and crying simultaneously, the two feeding off each other. It was funnier because it was so painful; it hurt deeper because it was so funny. It wasn’t cathartic, the way joking about a personal tragedy can be, nor did it have the sting and edge of dark humor. It didn’t break the tension, and I didn’t come out of it feeling any better. It was just—this joke, this perfectly normal joke that could conceivably be worked into any episode of The Good Wife, but it was here, instead, and somehow it was massively funny without breaking the tone of the episode, and without providing a single moment’s pause in my grief as a viewer. It’s not the moment in the episode I relate to most personally—those moments all belong to Alicia—but later, when the episode was over and I was talking to my sister, it was talking about that moment that made me cry, really cry, over what I’d just watched.

Quite simply, it was the most Good Wife thing The Good Wife has ever done. There’s not another show on television, now or in history, that could’ve pulled it off. Buffy couldn’t have pulled it off. Not because Buffy didn’t have the skill, although it took enormous skill to make the moment work, but because it’s just not what Buffy is. It was a triumph of tone, five years in the making. And if I still had any doubt, it’s proved to me once and for all that The Good Wife is the best it’s ever been—and that The Good Wife’s best is among the best television has to offer.

Honestly, I'm surprised I was coherent enough to blog about this.

SPOILERS for the most recent episode of The Good Wife, for the most recent season of Game of Thrones, and for major plot elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and House.

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It’s kind of weird to me that people keep comparing the latest episode of The Good Wife to Game of Thrones’ “Red Wedding.” The Red Wedding, though obviously shocking to those who hadn’t read the books, was fundamentally a follow-through of the series’ basic premise. Sudden deaths of major characters are written into GoT’s DNA. They’re inextricable. They’re part of the package.

The death of The Good Wife’s Will Gardner, on the other hand, is a swerve. Nobody could have predicted it. The show has never done anything like it before in four and a half seasons. Viewers simply do not sit down to an episode of The Good Wife prepared for the idea that a main character might die. On the one hand, that makes the death truly shocking; it leaves viewers shaken in a way that a death on Scandal or Lost, shows that are built on twists and sudden deaths, simply can’t. On the other hand, it runs the risk of being too shocking, and making viewers feel tricked or betrayed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve seen a certain amount of both reactions to Will’s death. As far as I can tell, the latter is primarily from bitterly disappointed Will/Alicia shippers, who seem to have felt they were promised or owed either a successful Will/Alicia relationship, or that Will would not die, or that Will would die in a certain way, if he ever did.

Every TV show makes an unwritten contract with its viewers: “This is the kind of show I am. These are the lines I can’t cross.” The Good Wife has only ever made two promises. First, it promised to take place in a reality very close to ours, one where not only will fantastical things not happen, but events will have realistic and long-term consequences. Alicia’s not going to run into a dragon or a witches’ coven, but equally importantly, if Peter ever has another affair and it’s publicized, his polling numbers are going to drop drastically.

Second, The Good Wife promised to be a show about Alicia. It promised to follow her, to examine her, to watch her grow. If Alicia ever leaves The Good Wife, it will cease, in some fundamental way, to be the same show.

That’s it. That’s all it promised its viewers. It never promised Will/Alicia as the endgame. It never promised that any character other than Alicia would live, and it never promised that there would be a warning if one of them died.

Other shows have pulled off, or almost pulled off, turns this surprising, this late in the game. Buffy the Vampire Slayer created a little sister out of thin air four years into its run, and the ensuing season was arguably the best the show ever did. Half of House’s main characters quit their jobs in its third season finale, and though the show went downhill after that, it wasn’t the change that did it, but the refusal to change—all three characters remained fixtures on the show for years to come, long after they’d stopped serving a narrative purpose.

It’s about follow-through. Buffy’s monumental twist worked because the show can be neatly split into two eras: pre-Dawn and post-Dawn. The show was never the same again. House’s, on the other hand, failed, because the writers tried to drastically change the characters’ world without actually changing the show. If The Good Wife is to remain the excellent show it’s proved itself to be in the last few seasons, it must forever be a show that is, at least a little bit, about grief and loss. It has to be a changed show, and the changes have to last.

If nothing changes, and the world of The Good Wife goes back to normal after a week or two—or if they start killing off a character every sweeps week—then we can start talking about jumping the shark. For now, though, nothing the show has done has intrinsically broken it. The Good Wife doesn’t owe us anything except what it promised on day one. And the writers don’t owe us anything except the best possible story they can tell. And I’ll tell you this—you can agree with what the Kings did or disagree, like it or dislike it, but you can’t argue that they put anything above the story.

"Live"-blogging episodes 17-20 of Pretty Little Liars season 4

My sister has been asking for this for a while, and apparently I haven't been very supportive of her in her time of need (she's having an existential crisis because she has liked two episodes of The Walking Dead in a row), so here it is: A live-blog of Pretty Little Liars, episodes 4x17 - 4x20. I may put up an Actual Things I Said Out Loud for all of season 4b in the near future, but for now, here you go, Holly. Hope you're happy.


4x17, "Bite Your Tongue"

Since when is Aria right? (Actually, I take that back; Aria is pretty fucking dumb, but she’s often right about friendship/emotional stuff.)

Yes, Allison has shown so much indication of being willing to never contact you again.

Oh, hey, Mike’s a character!

Wait, is that the same actor Mike used to be? Is this going to be another Jason DiLaurentis situation?

Dude, Hanna, why are you reading a thriller? Is your real life not enough?

Oh lord, it’s some kind of twisted therapy.

Mona!

Mona has friends?

Dude, Mike, there’s “mistakes,” and then there’s “psychological torture.”

Emily’s dad! We’re just seeing all kinds of long-lost characters. Who’s next? Lucas? Sean? Spencer’s sister?

Emily, you know your father is in no way responsible for Spencer following you, right?

Things I still don’t care about: Ezra and his not-son.

Wait, who is this guy Hanna is talking to? Should I know who this person is? THIS SHOW HAS TOO MANY DAMN CHARACTERS.

“Hanna, please stop reading.” Emily, you’re the worst.

Mona, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re really obviously evil.

Spencer, it’s one test. You’re like basically already into college, aren’t you? Just bomb it. Or like talk to a teacher. Or something.

Hanna, you read books in the best way.

The group is not a “safe place!” Mona is there!

Also, it’s pretty much High School Administration 101 to discourage disturbed former bullies from associating with their victims’ family.

Who is this guy? Am I supposed to know this guy?

Okay, PLL, thank you for the fancy cinematography.

Oh my God I hope this all comes down to the time Hanna had to volunteer at the dentists’ office.

Aria, oh my God, stop it.

Emily, you’re always wrong and you always give terrible advice.

I CAN’T BELIEVE IT THEY ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT SEAN! (Apparently he’s at boarding school.)

Mr. Fitz! He’s eating boysenberry pie! HE’S A, HE’S A!

What kind of town is this where they’re ALWAYS running into teachers outside of school?

I MEAN SERIOUSLY, HANNA.

That waitress is terrible. That waitress is a terrible waitress.

Maybe I’m missing something, because to be fair I’ve never had boysenberry pie and I’m not a huge beer drinker, but what’s so gross about that order?

HA IT’S BOARD SHORTS HA! But wait, how did Board Shorts get that nickname? I thought it was literally because they saw a picture of a guy wearing board shorts. But now I’m starting to think that that was not the case. Why has there been so much plot on this show? It’s impossible to remember all of it!

“Welcome to John Adams High! Where you are gonna die!”

No, she panicked because somebody was trying to kill her.

Heh. You guys all had a really terrible night.

Oh, I’m a terrible person, but the Super Best Friends doing a dental exam is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

It’s a note! They left an A note in Hanna’s mouth! This is like the creepiest this show has ever been!

Oh, it’s that parrot. I vaguely remember that parrot being a thing.

  

 4x18, "Hot For Teacher"

How many times do I have to tell you girls not to trust anyone?

You know that one A is a dude. Why on earth would you assume there’s only one?

Seriously, why is Aria lying about seeing Ezra? I’m so confused.

Oh, Crazy Spencer. I’ve missed you SO MUCH.

Emily, I know this may be damning you with faint praise, but I think you’re probably the best dressed of the Super Best Friends. (For those wondering, the order goes: Emily, Crazy Spencer, Hanna, Normal Spencer, Aria.)

Shana, have you never said the word “fanfiction” out loud before? Because that’s not where the emphasis goes.

Sherlock Holmes!Hanna is a wonderful new flavor of Hanna.

Creepy Double Entendre!Ezra is also a wonderful new flavor of Ezra.

Spencer, you’ve been doing crazy Adderal research for days, and you just thought to search “Ezra Fitz Ravenswood address”?

Therapist, you are creepy.

A while back, PLL passed the Lost Inflection Point—the point at which it becomes clear that a show cannot possibly provide a satisfactory answer that justifies all of its mysteries. Shows that have passed the LIP are great fun. They’re like the all-night benders of TV shows; all about the fun and experience in the moment, and save the consequences for the morning.

Yes. Yes, Alison wants a twin poster. The twin poster will solve everything.

You know, sometimes it forgets it a little bit, but I’m really gratified by how much this show does care about these girls’ friendship.

Ezra, you really are the creepiest, and if Aria weren’t an idiot/seventeen, she would see how insanely manipulative you are.

That’s the only time I’ve ever seen chickpeas used as a scary reveal.

This moment in which Ezra creepily looks at pictures of teenage girls on his stalker computers seems like a good moment for me to remember that his actor went to my alma mater.

Somebody is definitely going to accidentally sell that bag of coffee.

The weirdest part about Sherlock!Hanna is that she’s actually a fairly competent detective.

Spencer I love your brain. Although you probably could have lied a little better just then.

Alison looks really different in this episode, but I can’t really put my finger on why.

4x19, "Shadow Play" 

I really like Mona’s shoes. Also, does she have blue hair now? Since when does Mona have blue hair?

I love how Spencer’s parents just leave their teenage daughter home alone, like, all the time.

Emily, hasn’t everybody in this group had to interrogate their significant other at some point?

Also, Spencer, why are there foxes on your boobs?

Oh no, Aria’s talking about writing. This can go nowhere good.

OH MY GOD, EZRA AND ARIA ARE HAVING A CREEPY STATEMENT CONTEST.

Am I going to have to have read Chandler to understand this episode?

Why are like 70% of the things I say about PLL these days questions?

PSYCHOTIC BREAK, EXCELLENT.

14-year-olds watch this show and even though it probably gives them terrible ideas about what constitutes a healthy relationship I think it’s excellent.

I’m not even going to bother guessing whether any of what’s on my screen is really happening.

Wow, Hanna is wonderfully well suited to the black-and-white era.

All of their clothing is 900% better than usual.

I’m really sad that none of them are affecting 1940s movie-star accents.

Edgewood 50139! Old-school phone numbers! (Fun fact: I stopped the episode here so that I could research telephone exchange names. “Edgewood” was code for ED, or 33, so Spencer is asking the operator to connect her to 335-0139. This is strange, since most TV shows and movies—including PLL, if I remember right—use the non-existent 555 area code, to avoid broadcasting a real person’s phone number. PLL could have done so in this case by having Spencer dial “Klondike 50139.” “Klondike,” code for KL, or 55, is a fictional telephone exchange that was used in old movies and TV shows for the same reason we use the 555 area code today. “KL-50139” would have translated to 555-0139—a non-existent phone number in any time period.)

Now I forget who Spencer was calling.

Actually, Toby’s actor is attempting a 1940s movie star accent. He’s not succeeding, but he’s definitely attempting.

I know I said I wasn’t going to guess what was really happening and what isn’t, but how could Spencer’s weird black-and-white dream world extend to scene’s she’s not actually present for?

Paige, meanwhile, has way stranger fashion in black and white. On the other hand, Paige! Once again a real person, on screen!

You know, it’s not like the heels these girls wear in 2014 are any lower than their 1940s heels. So why is it that only the 40s heels click on the pavement?

Split screen!

Further developments in the Not-Guessing-What’s-Real Department: No, definitely none of this is real.

HANNA’S A SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR? THAT’S AMAZING.

Have Aria and Paige ever spoken in real life?

Paige is getting more of a story in this incredibly not-real episode than she has for like the past two seasons.

Ezra and Toby, drinkin’ in the lodge.

On the other hand, this conversation between Spencer and Allie is probably about as real as 90% of the conversations we’ve seen between Allie and any of the Super Best Friends.

Wait, is Dream Toby a private investigator or a police detective?

You can’t fool me with black and white, show. That’s not champagne. That’s water.

Dream Ezra is still only like 70% as evil as real Ezra.

YES, SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR HANNA IS EXCELLENT.

Paige and Emily, you two are adorable in every time period ever. Though I’m a little perplexed that Spencer’s dream focuses so heavily on your love life.

Seriously, Spencer spends half her dream getting couples together who are already together in reality.

Also, Spencer seems to be aware on some level that Aria is still seeing Ezra.

“Everything that’s happening to him and me, I don’t feel like it’s ever happened to anyone else before.” Spencer sure knows Aria well.

Oh, but this is a very pretty episode.

My internet keeps acting up and the episode is pausing like once a minute and this is TORTURE.

Wow, Spencer had that whole dream in like three seconds, that’s pretty impressive.

Spencer, you can’t possibly be surprised by this turn of events. You just dreamed it, seriously.

4x20, "Free Fall"

Creepy double entendres from Ezra, I’m never gonna give you up.

The ranking of Crazy Spencer’s fashion sense is being revised downward, but at least her clothing is terrible in a normal way.

Spencer doesn’t have everybody fooled. Spencer has Aria fooled. And only Aria.

How long ago was two years ago, even? Was it pre-A? Pre Allie’s disappearance? Was Aria in Iceland? I can’t keep track of this show’s timeline.

Hanna, darling, you are bad at interventions.

Spencer, you would be so much more convincing if you didn’t look literally dead. On the other hand, you’re right. On the other hand, you’ve apparently decided that your movie dreams are reality. On the other hand, your friends are pretty quick to jump to the conclusion that you’re straight-up lying.

And wait, didn’t Hanna and Emily have perfectly good reasons to believe that Ezra’s up to no good that aren’t entirely dependent on Spencer’s word?

Mona, did you just call glasses “corrective lenses”?

THANK YOU, Hanna. Thank you for being reasonable.

Wow, Spencer’s mom, you’re not overly interested in your daughter’s life, are you?

Aria. Aria. Your boyfriend is evil. Just accept it.

Oh lord, Aria. Even if your boyfriend weren’t evil, that was a really stupid statement to agree with.

Spencer, honey.

Okay, 1) Where the fuck is Aria? Is she at Ezra’s cabin? Why doesn’t she know the password? Didn’t she come in here once before without having to enter a password? And 2) Ezra really needs to choose better passwords.

Oh, look, Spencer’s mom has entered the “aware” phase of her neglect/love parenting cycle.

Really, Ezra? You weren’t worried that Aria might, like, idly flip through the coffee table book one day?

Ezra senses a disturbance in the Force.

Aria, you idiot.

Why is there a ski lift? Is this a skiing mountain? And even if it is, is this skiing season? I’m confused.

ARIA, YOU’RE SUCH AN IDIOT.

Toby is here for the second intervention of the episode.

I’m really confused, though, because apparently Spencer is a recovering drug addict and we were just never told about this.

Also, just putting this out there: Spencer's mom is worse at interventions than Hanna.

I've just made the weirdest discovery of all time.

SPOILERS for Sleepy Hollow season 1, Doctor Who series 5 and 6, The Vampire Diaries season 5, Torchwood season 2, and, perhaps most saliently, Angel seasons 3 and 4.

Okay, so I just finished the season finale of Sleepy Hollow, and I have a problem. For those of you who didn’t watch (and yet decided to read a blog post full of spoilers), the first season of Sleepy Hollow ends with Ichabod and his wife Katrina’s long-lost (thought dead by everybody but the viewers) son, Jeremy, turning out to be the second Horseman of the Apocalypse, played by John Noble. In the very last scene of the episode, Jeremy, having broken the second seal of the Apocalypse, buries Ichabod alive in the same coffin in which Jeremy himself had been buried alive 200 years before (magic having accounted for his slow aging and failure to die).

Now, I have no problem with this plot development per se. Actually, when you get right down to it, I have no problems with Sleepy Hollow whatsoever, because although it is insane, it’s a lot of fun. My problem is that I have seen this plot development before. In fact, the more I think about it, the more “long-lost child turns up, having aged considerably, and buries their parent alive” looks like it is having a bizarrely specific heyday as a sci-fi/fantasy trope.

For instance: Consider The Vampire Diaries. At the very end of season 4, Stefan gets locked in a safe and dropped into a lake by his doppelganger, the very evil Silas. At just around the same time (about two episodes later), Katherine discovers that this witch/gypsy chick named Nadia who’s been hanging around is actually the daughter that was taken from her 500 years before, who grew up, got herself turned into a vampire, and went off in search of her mother. Naturally, Nadia is kind of evil (Katherine is her mother, after all). Okay, I’ll grant you that it’s not exactly the same—the parent isn’t the one buried alive, and the child isn’t the one who did it—but it’s a little coincidental.

So let’s look at another case: Torchwood. In Torchwood season 2, the immortal Jack Harkness’s long-lost (thought dead!) little brother, Gray, shows up—I don’t remember how, considering Gray was born three millennia in the future, but whatever. Gray, naturally, has aged considerably, and one of the first things that he does upon reuniting with his brother is to take Jack two millennia back into the past, and bury him alive under what will one day be Cardiff. Because of course, Gray is evil. See? That’s like, exactly what happens in Sleepy Hollow, except it’s a brother, not a child.

Then, to stay within the same fictional universe, we have Doctor Who, series 5 and 6. It’s well known by now that Amy and Rory’s baby, stolen from them pretty much the second we find out she exists at all, turns out to be River Song, who is of course considerably aged from babyhood. She’s also, it transpires, kind of evil. River Song never buries anybody alive, but in series 5, both the Doctor and Amy get essentially buried alive in the Pandorica, and though I can’t for the life of me remember how, I’m pretty sure it’s somehow because of River. Or the Doctor’s name. Or something.

Finally, we have my personal favorite and (in TV Tropes parlance) most triumphant example, Angel. In Angel season 3, Angel and his vampire ex-girlfriend Darla have a baby, named Connor. It’s never really explained how two vampires had a baby, except possibly because an evil god decided they should in order to end the world. I don’t know, Angel got really confusing after a while. Anyway, Connor gets kidnapped like three days after he’s born and taken to a Hell dimension, so everybody’s pretty sure that he’s dead. But then like a week later, he shows up, aged considerably from babyhood, and then he locks his father in a coffin and drops him into the ocean. Because, y’know, Connor’s kind of evil.

All of these examples are from the last 15 years, and I’m starting to become concerned not just that “long-lost, thought-dead child shows up, aged considerably, and is evil” is a trope, but that for some reason, it seems to be linked to live burial. But that’s still not really my problem.

My real problem is that of the five I’ve listed, Angel is the one that happened earliest (in 2002). This leads me to fear that for the past decade, sci-fi/fantasy television has been looking to season four of Angel for its tropes and devices. I don’t know how many of you have seen the fourth season of Angel, but if I’m right, that means that sci-fi/fantasy is on the path to becoming a very strange, nonsensical, and infuriating place.

So please. If you can think of any example of the long-lost child trope that is connected to live burial that happened earlier than 2002, let me know in the comments. I would love to have my faith in the future of sci-fi/fantasy restored.