BURY YOUR GAYS: If a pay phone rings in New York, did the lesbian really die at all?

by Lauren W

First off, I'm cautiously apologetic about my absence from All Things Lesbian. My absence largely stems from the fact that I have genuinely still not gotten over the fact that Person of Interest has come to an end and I was dreading writing this post. It is 100% the best show of the decade, and it will take something extra special to top it.

Secondly, there are quite obviously going to be SPOILERS in this post so please do not read on if you are planning to watch POI at some point in your life. (And I'm begging you: please watch it. It is truly genius and you will not regret it.)

Back in April, I wrote something similar to this following the whole death of Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) debacle. (Click HERE to read it).

A face so perfect it could sink a thousand ships.

The cliff notes version of my April post is as follows: all of the lesbians on TV die, Person of Interest could be our last hope for a happy gay ending, the show starts May 3rd and you should all watch it. Blah Blah Blah.

So, I intend this article to be a follow up to that, now that we know the outcome. A "Part Two", if you will.

As I've stated before, POI is not a show that saves it's MVPs just for the sake of it. The writers never shied away from killing off it's main characters and even led us to believe that Shaw (Sarah Shahi) had sacrificed her life for the team in the show's fourth season.

Alas, the TV Gods saved the bisexual sociopath in the end.

Season 5 of the show was a whirlwind: There were 2 (and sometimes 3!) episodes per week, which meant it was over before you could say "Artificial Intelligence: Modern Warfare".

And it was all going so well. Shahi and Amy Acker (Root) were killing it Every. Single. Week. Episode 4 came as a Shaw-centric episode which brought us the likes of this:

*Bohemian Rhapsody voice* Is this the real life... is this just fanfiction?

Oh, and this:

Aaaaaand this:

You can thank me later.

We saw Shaw escape Samaritan's clutches, the couple being reunited, overt flirting in the middle of a shoot out... they even held hands. (If you never watched the show, you probably won't understand why this pair holding hands killed so many fangirls, but listen to me when I say it was IMPORTANT.)

And then, the thing happened...

The thing.

I was holding out (false) hope that neither one of them would die but then Root was gone in a flash. Killed by a bullet. (Not a stray bullet, though - she swerved in front of it to save Harold. A true hero and a mighty fine Gryffindor/Slytherin cross-breed indeed).

Everyone went insane. Some die hard fans refused to watch the final four episodes that followed. Personally, I couldn't eat for three days straight after I learned of what happened.

I need to make a sidebar at this point to wax lyrical about how strong an actress Amy Acker really is. She's so versatile and one of the most (if not the most) talented actresses on television if you ask me. For the second time, she played a character who transcended and transformed into a God (the first instance being Illyria in Angel), and absolutely nailed it. The subtle nuances that you cannot help but notice when you watch her play Root in comparison to when she plays The Machine are impeccable. I can't even begin to sing her praises enough. She's a literal ray of sunshine.

An honourable mention also goes to Sarah Shahi. She really got to show off her acting chops this season and played Shaw's character absolutely perfectly. Having an Axis II Personality Disorder can't be the easiest thing to portray, but Shahi got the whole "acting with your eyes" thing on point. She really has come a long way since Carmen de la Pica Morales. If she doesn't get to play a comic book hero at some point, there's something wrong with the world.

Don't worry, Carmen. We still love you too.

Anyway, let's not beat around the bush. Root died. She was gone. But then...

In the last (ever) scene of Person of Interest, we saw Shaw wearing what we can only assume was Root's leather jacket walking down the street with Bear. And then a pay phone rang.

Of course, we didn't hear what Machine!Root said on the phone and the writers stated that they left everything open ended so that the viewers could create their own ending. But obviously, lesbians are loyal as fuck to their fictional sisters and it could only mean one thing: Root was alive.

Look at that face. Try and tell me that Root isn't alive.

Furthermore, since the finale aired, Michael Emerson (who plays Finch on the show) revealed that there was a scene in which a mysterious figure riding a motorcycle appeared towards the end of the episode, but it got cut. And who likes to ride motorcycles?

That's right: This nerd.

For me, there's no other explanation. Root lived. She faked her own death in order to "become" the Machine and hide from Samaritan until it was safe for her to return.

The whole thing made me think of that old saying about the tree falling in the forest and nobody being around to hear it. You know the one.

Well in my analogy, Root is that fallen tree. None of Team Machine actually saw her die, and just because we briefly saw her corpse means nothing in this show: Shaw momentarily died in the season 2 episode Relevance, too. Did she really die if nobody was around to see it?

So, the updated version of that old saying now goes as follows: If a pay phone rings in New York, and nobody but Shaw could hear it, did Root really die at all?

The "Bury Your Gays" Trope: Is Person of Interest our Last Hope?

by Lauren W

***TRIGGER WARNING: It has been bugging me for some time now that I haven't taken to All Things Lesbian to voice my thoughts about the "Bury Your Gays" trope. Please note that this post may contain some images that could disturb some readers both mentally and emotionally, and death is mentioned more than once. Of course, there are also major spoilers from hereon in. You have been warned.***


If you haven't been living under a rock for the past two months, you'll have heard of the outrage sparked by the loss of our beloved Heda, Clarke's gal pal, and the Commander of the Thirteen Clans, Lexa kom Trikru (played by Alicia Debnam-Carey on The 100).

Alycia Debnam-Carey as Lexa in The 100

Losing yet another lesbian character from our already tiny percentage of television lesbians hurt some people so much that they contemplated suicide, threatened the creator of the show (Jason Rothenberg) and stopped watching The 100 altogether.

In fact, after the death of Lexa, we averaged around one lesbian charatacer death per week, two of which include Denise from The Walking Dead (played by the fabulous Merritt Wever) and Empire's Mimi (Marisa Tomei). And there are more. Many more. (Click HERE for an almost complete list of lesbian character deaths by AutoStraddle).

Alanna Masterson (Tara) and Merritt Wever (Denise), The Walking Dead.

The sad truth is, even the most LGBT-positive shows are not even immune to this damaging trope - think Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Trish from Orange is the New Black, and The L Word's Dana Fairbanks, to name but a few.

What is perhaps most soul-enraging is the fact that heterosexual fans feel like they can chime in with things like "yeah but, everyone dies, it's just a fact of life", or "you wanted to be treated equally, didn't you?"

The truth, unfortunately, is that we're not being treated equally at all. The facts show that for the 18,000+ straight characters on TV, there has been a total of 383 lesbian or bisexual female characters. And guess how many of those characters remained alive at the end of the series in which they appeared? 20%. TWENTY FUCKING PER CENT. How many died? 31%.

And the other 50%, you ask? 28% of them were merely guest stars and had no real storyline to end their character arc at all. 10% were written off completely - they didn't die, but they were no longer visible. The last 10% had happy endings. 10%. Wow. (Click HERE for the source of these figures).

Amber Benson as Tara, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now you have a little bit of background on the whole issue, I'd like to point you toward one show that has not played to any of these tropes thus far: Person of Interest.

I could explain the show in full detail and fangirl over it's entire premise, but many a lesbian watches the show for one thing only: it's LGBT couple, Root and Shaw (played by Amy Acker and Sarah Shahi respectively).

Shahi (left) as Shaw and Acker as Root.

You may recognise them from shows such as Angel and The L Word (oh, Carmen), but when they got together on Person of Interest, angels came down from heaven and celebrated in a wine-filled frenzy.

In the show, Root and Shaw fight crime together and flirt shamelessly. When there was an initial hint that a relationship was on the cards for these two, many fans were (not surprisingly) worried that the whole thing would turn into one big queerbaiting disappointment, and Shaw would end up with the show's male protagonist anyway. But it was not so.

Just before the end of season 4, Sarah Shahi's character sacrificed herself to save Root and her friends, right after she planted a big ol' smacker on her girlfriend's lips.

And lesbians everywhere applauded... And cried.

Of course, sacrificing one's life generally comes with some side effects, which include death. Sigh. Another lesbian/bisexual death on TV for us all to rage about...

But wait! There was hope! Shahi left only for maternity leave, and it was revealed that her character survived! I know, right? You don't believe me. A bisexual female character on television survived.

When the show returns next month, it will be it's last season. I have never been more upset about the loss of a TV show since Buffy ended in 2003, but I digress.

Since the announcement of the air date for Person of Interest season 5 (it's May 3rd, by the way), fans of "Shoot" and indeed other fandoms have been worried about the fact that it may kill one of them off at the end of the series.

Is this a threat or is it just foreplay? You decide.

Of course, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. The show has been known to kill off some of its major players before (see Taraji P. Henson's Joss Carter), and the subject matter of Person of Interest means that all of its characters are often on the brink of death.

However, this show is yet to let us down. It lived up to its promise that it was not interested in queerbaiting, and that Root & Shaw are canon. It brought Shaw back from the dead, so to speak, and gave us a character with a serious personality disorder who is portrayed in a generally positive light. It treats its people of colour with respect, and gives them personality that is not defined only by their race. It gives us non-heterosexual characters that are not only about their sexuality, and they are not made to look like outsiders because of who they love.

What I'm saying is, we should hold on to hope for Person of Interest. When you compare it to shows such as Pretty Little Liars, which has killed off pretty much all of its black and LGBT characters, (R.I.P. Maya, Nate, Shana, CeCe, etc) POI has a pretty good track record (Carter notwithstanding). The 100 is twice as bad as most of the main offenders, as just weeks after the death of Lexa came the death of one of the show's few people of colour, Lincoln (played by Ricky Whittle).

Taraji P. Henson as Carter, Person of Interest

So is Person of Interest our only (current) hope for a happy lesbian ending? Only time will tell. It is, so far, one of the few remaining shows on television that has not killed off one of its LGBT characters. All we can hope is that it stays that way.

In the meantime, you can catch up with POI on Netflix if you are in the USA or the UK. Trust me, it's so, so worth your time. I can't stress that enough.

Person of Interest returns to CBS for one last season on Tuesday, May 3rd at 10pm, with episodes twice a week on Mondays and Tuesdays from May 9th onwards.

TV FANGIRL MOMENT OF THE MONTH: The 100 Lesbians

by Lauren W

Okay, okay, I know. I said that this new segment was going to be entitled "TV Fangirl Moment of the Week".

Well, everyone knows how bad a procrastinator I am. I can't help it; I've tried to stop, but when it comes to shirking your responsibilities (even if my responsibilities include to document my fangirling), you will find no one better.

So, I've decided to change the title to "Moment of the MONTH". I'm not gonna lie, it might be weekly, monthly... 23-daily, even. But "TV Fangirl Moment of the 23rd Day Since My Last Article" isn't catchy enough. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

ANYWAY. Here it is.

(Image Credit: lexa-the-commander @ Tumblr)

YES, YES, YES.

The 100 surprised everyone last week by making its lead female character bisexual.

Clarke (left, played by Eliza Taylor) is the show's leading lady and leader of the Sky People. (Don't ask, it's too difficult to explain unless you watch the damn thing). And the girl she's kissing (right, played by Alycia Debnam Carey) is the leader of the Grounders. (Again, don't ask).

My point is, they're two strong, powerful women with control over a ton of people... AND THEY'RE MAKING OUT. If this isn't fangirl-worthy I don't know what is.

This is also a massive step for gayness on television. The producers have confirmed that Clarke is indeed bisexual, making her the first leading bisexual character on any show. (I'm not including Orange Is The New Black here, as all of the gay and bisexual ladies in that show are arguably "the leading lady".) In any case, it's the first action-led TV show I've seen led by a bisexual character. (And I'm not including Lost Girl in this case either, as I class it as a fantasy show. So calm down.)

Anyway, up until this point, The 100 has been completely void of any LGBTQ characters. But now we gay ladies have something to get extremely excited about. Squee.

Did you see this milestone lesbian kiss happen? And what were your TV fangirl moments of the week/month/decade?