Fall Television

OK, the new TV season is well underway. I caught the season premiere of Survivor last night. This is what, number 13? This edition seems to be way more fresh right from the start, simply because they have so much diversity. Their "social experiment" this year, is based on race. They have divided the 20 contestants into 4 different tribes....all based on ethnicity. They have white, black, Asian, and Latino. Thirteen of the 20 contestants are from California, with 2 in my backyard. Perhaps I like Survivor already this year since it reminds me so much of where I live with all of the diversity. I'm still unsure if one of the women on the show is a lesbian or not, but my intuition points that she is. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds. No T's, unfortunately.

Another show that I've found previously interesting is a Disney teenage show called Hannah Montana. A teammate's child introduced me to the show earlier this year while on one of our roadtrips, and I caught another episode on a plane. It was actually kinda amusing. The premise of the show is a girl from the south becomes a kid rockstar and moves to LA. But, in order for her to hold on to somewhat of a real life, she has two separate personas...a rockstar one and a real life one. She wears a wig on stage, along with a lot of makeup, to hide her true identity. Her reason for doing this: She wants her friends to treat her like a real person. Hmmm...sound familiar?

One show that just recently started up again that has had transsexuals on in the past is Nip/Tuck. It will be interesting to see if they delve further into any of the past incidences with T's, or bring new ones to light. We found out last season that the troubled son may have a little thing for post-ops, and this season started out with one of the surgeons realizing he may have a man-crush on his own business partner. Hmmmmmm.

Nip/Tuck takes over the time slot of Rescue Me which ended it's season just recently. In the past, I have not been a Dennis Leary fan at all, but I've been watching this show from the very beginning and have to say that I have enjoyed it quite a bit. Yes, I realize the show is very dramatized (as is Nip/Tuck), but they are entertaining. Rescue Me is about a firehouse in New York, that has mainly had nothing but a bunch of semi-wannabe macho guys trying to prove that their dick is bigger than everyone elses. (OK, really, they had one episode about that.) It's usually a very light-hearted look at men, and sometimes they like to poke fun at the way men think. In one of the first episodes, they had a T subplot, where they tricked one guy into dating her. We never really saw her, but they created numerous situations that were described by one of the firemen. They've also had one of the main character's son come out as gay. This season, they had one of the main characters come out as being gay, as well, then bi, then in the season finale, when he's banging a brother-sister combo, we're not sure what he is. Initially, his crew gives him a little trouble about being gay, but they have a big sit down conversation over the whole thing...which is way better than beating the living daylights out of the guy. Eventually, they come to accept him quite well, and one of them actually envies his bisexual situation...that he's able to hit on both men and women.

OK, well, out of the shows I watch, those seem like the only ones that have any LGBT reference. I'd love to see one of the characters on Battlestar Galactica or the two Stargate shows come out as being gay or lesbian, but it doesn't seem like any of them are moving that way (even though the actor playing Apollo seems very gay). I think the sci-fi community would be much more accepting of it than most, though, but who knows. I don't see them tackling it on Smallville, Prison Break, or 24, nor do I see anything popping up on CSI, although they have included a few T's in various cases. Oh, and we have yet to fully see how the Kenny character plays out on the War at Home.

Of course, there may be some surprises in the spring. I have a little inside information that there may be an FTM pair on CBS's Amazing Race. If it does happen, I think it would be a great benefit to the T world...especially from the side that doesn't make it into the spotlight as much. We'll have to wait until the spring to find out, though.