Grey's Anatomy - Lesbian? Queer? Now What?

Before we start talking about the Abracadabra! Lesbian Be Gone! news re: Brooke Smith who played Dr. Erica Hahn, we need to acknowledge how badly Hahn's and Callie Torres' (Sara Ramirez) coming out was handled. Viewers experienced the allegories either as sidesplittingly funny (South of border!) or as yet further proof that when it comes to queer women (emphasis especially on women), the writers are still required to write in code, if they want to write at all.

Callie's coming out also showed the sitcom-character one has come to expect from former must-see TV-show Grey's Anatomy. Emphasis on sit. As in: don't leave the hospital, don't talk to strangers. Even if nothing you do inside the four walls of Seattle Grace makes sense, mind you, this is your jail, so deal with it. Usually characters find conveniently placed patients (from the outside world! ;) to share wisdoms, truths, and secrets with, to learn something from, but no such luck for Callie.

Here's a (somewhat strangely comforting) thought: Perhaps this is exactly what the writers wanted to tell us? That they wanted to write this storyline about two lesbians but had to do it - history repeating itself - in code a.k.a. "tasteful" and so as not to "offend" the mainstream viewer, who's still chewing on that gay marriage thingy and as if that weren't enough has to make up his or her mind and cast their vote today. The horror.

What was so bad about the coming out you ask?

Let me imagine for a second that I am an educated woman, a doc at Seattle Grace hospital, live in Seattle, fall in love with a female colleague. This is new territory, I'm totally insecure but also completely excited about it. What could I do? I'm a doc, so I do what I've learned: I research. Piece of cake. Yummy. (First I'd do #1, though that's not dramatic enough for GA, and 2, 3 and 4 aren't all too visual. More below.)

1. Talk to my prospective lover. (GA chicks talk all the time about anything, but....)
2. Use the IT to find queer sites and forums. Newbies show up daily, so there should be answers.
3. Call a GLBT hotline. Ask my questions.
4. Check out the gazillion of books written by and for queer women.
5. Seattle? Check The Stranger. Read the ads. All of them, including the one for Babes in Toyland. The future is near. They got cool chicks that will explain anything - anything to me.
6. Seattle? Go to the Wild Rose, check out what other lesbians look like, play pool, make friends. ;)
7. Seattle? Spend half the night dancing at Neighbours, the other half sharing information with the chicks I picked up there. Or who picked me up. Matters not.
8. Call five of my best friends. I'm (I being the fictitious Greys-Anatomy-character) the only person I know who doesn't know anybody who's queer. So I let my friends tell me what their queer friends told them. Hell, fictitious me knew my ignorance would come and bite me, so second hand info has to do. I am, after all, in a hurry. Third date rule etc. Does that rule apply to lesbians? Another question I have to ask them.

Callie could've done IT research or made that hotline call - and perhaps even felt not quite comfortable sharing her confusion with her colleagues. [Insert Melissa Etheridge tune, circa 1999] Considering the network's cold feet/some h8ful comments (posted by the usual few - but very loud - fundamentalists) one could understand confused Callie wanting to keep it under wraps. She could've played hide-and-seek with her laptop/phone, chased by her ever so nosey colleagues. Not completely un-dramatic or unfilmable, methinks.

Too bad Callie was confined to Seattle Grace, what a pity.

That's just from the top of my head. All of the above makes a ton more sense than talking to a man. A heterosexual man. A colleague. A former lover. McSteamy. Or Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), a heterosexual woman who I can't recall being particularly hip to anything queer in Grey's Anatomy. We've seen her limits when Gale Harold played that weird patient and Bailey showed her ignorance re: other minorities (not African-American) in the way she dealt with Cristina (Sandra Oh).

Oh, fictitious me has a fictitious Grey's Anatomy storyline: Callie talks to cutie Mark Sloane (Eric Dane) because she knows that he and Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) shared not only one lover (hottie Kate Walsh as Addison Montgomery, which makes the two best friends "suspiciously close" to begin with), but had actual threesomes and sometimes - conveniently drunk, always a handy excuse - they would (insert allegory for "touching all over and so on and one thing led to another...." so as not to offend the mainstream Bible-quoting hater who just had to read this post and now has granny panties in a bunch or two and fingers ready to type h8ful comment). And they're no strangers to chicks and their girlfriends, the more the merrier, so.....

We hear that any queer storylines have been re-written.....