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It’s tough to come out here and holler that 2018 was a great year for the LGBTQ+ community. Considering everything that’s happening geopolitically, that would be a stretch. But in entertainment … this was a pretty fascinating year, one with plenty of mile-markers along the way that indicated progress, yes, but which also just told some incredible stories, with incredible insight and kindness, and featured some incredible performances.
So many, in fact that even with a baker’s dozen slots to fill, our list of the most important LGBTQ moments in TV and movies this year was positively overflowing. So with due apologies to …
- the Bash storyline on GLOW
- the Theo character on The Haunting of Hill House
- the sexy lesbian romance of Duck Butter
- Kaycee becoming the first lesbian to ever win Big Brother
- Adam Rippon’s championship performances in the Olympics and on Dancing with the Stars
- Dan Conner helping his grandson choose between two boys he likes in The Conners premiere
- the line “being young and gay and mean is not a personality” from Big Mouth season 2
- the supporting cast in The Miseducation of Cameron Post
- the prom-posal on One Day at a Time
- Saturday Night Live writer Bowen Yang’s Erin Brockovich lip sync on Instagram
- Alyssa Edwards teaching small children to dance on Dancing Queen
- and a bunch of great gay-themed movies that aren’t available to stream yet, including The Favourite, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Collette, and Boy Erased
We present our list of the most important LGBTQ+ moments in entertainment for 2018:
'The Assassination of Gianni Versace'
Date: January 17
We got what may well have been the strongest piece of LGBTQ programming right in the first weeks of the new year, with producer Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith bringing the story of the murder of fashion legend Versace and the sordid details about his killer, Andrew Cunanan, to light. And while the usual Murphy obsessions like celebrity and tackiness were there, the show kept a center of gravity around the ways in which the pervasive and suffocating homophobia of the time (the mid-’90s! not all that long ago!) helped to create, and later keep hidden, this killer.
'RuPaul's Drag Race'
Date: January 25 (All-Stars 3) and March 22 (Season 10)
We got not one but two utterly addictive seasons of Drag Race this year (two and a third when you consider the new season drops this week), starting with a contentious and controversial All-Stars 3 that nonetheless gave us such gags as Jungle Kitty and that meme where Kennedy Davenport says “Fuck my drag, right?” And then season 10 happened, gifting us with Monet X. Change’s A+ Nicki Minaj lip-sync, Monique Heart’s affinity for brown-cow print, and the piece of Warholian performance art that was Miss Vanjie.
'Queer Eye'
Date: February 7
Netflix brought Queer Eye back to TV in 2018 with a brand new Fab 5 who were not merely making over straight guys this time. These new experts included Tan the fashionista, Jonathan the hair and grooming guru, Bobby the guy with the charge card for interior design overhauls, Karamo the ever-ephemeral “culture” guy, and Antoni, the ostensible food guy/controversial dreamboat. Since it’s 2018, there was much occasion to wring hands over whether the new Queer Eye was Good For the Culture, but mostly they just helped out some poor schmo and got the rest of us to shed a sympathetic tear or two.
'Everything Sucks'
Date: February 16
Netflix’s ill-fated series about high-school outcasts didn’t last beyond its first season, but it did give us the pitch-perfect character of Kate, whose burgeoning gay identity emerges in fits and starts, including a fixation on the music and persona of Tori Amos which is so true to mid-’90s latent gayness that the show could have survived on that alone.
'Schitt's Creek,' "Open Mic"
Date: February 27
The great Canadian comedy series finally managed to break through in a big way in the States this year thanks to its old seasons showing up on Netflix. This meant that Americans didn’t need to have a Canadian hook-up or even the cable channel Pop to enjoy one of the best comedic ensembles of the year. Nor did they have to wait so long to get a look at “Open Mic,” which features one of the most romantic moments in a TV show this year, as angel-faced Patrick serenades perpetually-irritated David during their store’s open mic night.
'Love, Simon'
Date: March 16
Some of the biggest headlines about LGBTQ entertainment this year were about Love, Simon, given that this was the ultra-rare big-studio teen rom-com featuring a gay protagonist. It wasn’t exactly the gay-stravaganza that many had hoped — Nick Robinson in the lead role of Simon was a straight actor playing a gay role, and the character was often so reticent to embrace his gayness that the movie sometimes felt abashed — but it came through in the end with the kind of borderline-hokey romantic moment that straight rom-coms get all the time. As a triumph of art, Love, Simon lagged behind a lot of these other moments, but as a moment of mainstream visibility, it was a necessary step and a hugely likeable one at that.
'Disobedience'
Date: April 27
Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams played a pair of Jewish women, raised in a Hassidic community, who re-connect after prodigal Weisz returns for a funeral. As the movie goes on, we learn more about how close these two friends used to be and what helped run Weisz’s character away in the first place. The gay love story at the center of this movie emerges unexpectedly, and when the surprises come, they’re more emotional than anything else. Weisz and McAdams play their parts perfectly, getting at the love, reticence, and essential attraction between them. One of the straight-up hottest sex scenes of the year, too.
'Pose'
Date: June 3
Ryan Murphy and Steven Canals’ series about the house balls in 1980s New York City was a landmark series for reputation both in front of and behind the camera, as trans talent convened on this show in a major way. That kind of authenticity was such a boon to this show that, ragged as it could be at its edges, charged fearlessly into its characters lives, tragedies, and triumphs. Featuring some standout performances — Billy Porter as emcee/mentor PrayTell was a major highlight and is already attracting awards attention — and a season finale that was an unqualified triumph, Pose has people clammoring for more in season 2.
'Alex Strangelove'
Date: June 8
Netflix’s answer to Love, Simon was a tale of teenage sexuality that felt more honestly sexual, for whatever that was worth. And while Alex seemed to fit more tonally with the under-the-radar gay indies of the ’90s and early 2000s, that didn’t mean it was any less enjoyable, nor that the central attraction between Alex (Daniel Doheny) and Elliot (Antonio Marziale) wasn’t deeply hot and refreshingly specific.
'Nanette'
Date: June 20
In many ways, the only stand-up special that truly mattered in 2018 was one that spent a great deal of time (seemingly) advocating against stand-up comedy. While the comedy community spent much of the summer wrangling with what Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette meant about boundary-pushing in comedy, LGBTQ audiences saw in her funny, bold, touching, and often scorching monologue a lot to relate to. As Gadsby kept encountering the limits of jokes to communicate the truth of things like homophobia and assault, LGBTQ audiences recognized the struggle. Nanette is a funnier comedy special than it’s remembered for, and Gadsby is far more than a mere crusader, but for this one minute in time, she got audiences to resist the comfort of breaking that tension and laughing it off.
'We the Animals'
Date: August 17
If there’s one gay-themed film from 2018 that deserves to be re-discovered in 2019 and beyond, it’s director Jeremiah Zagar’s We the Animals, a hazy, delicate memoir of three brothers growing up tethered to the volatile love story of their parents (Sheila Vand and Independent Spirit Award nominee Raul Castillo) struggling to make it, both financially and romantically. The three brothers in this family often function as an ecosystem unto themselves, and there are times when you’ll think of last year’s The Florida Project. But then the youngest, Jonah, begins to emerge from the pack. He’s different, and he knows it, and as he steadily tumbles down his own rabbit hole towards the person he’s going to be, We the Animals becomes that most unlikely of creatures: a sensitive and true-to-life story about a pre-adolescent gay kid, told with all the tenderness and specificity that we would all want our stories told.
'Big Mouth'
Date: October 5
The second season of Big Mouth would have probably made this list for the line “being young and gay and mean is not a personality” alone. Ever since season 1, we’ve longed for the show to delve further into Matthew, the intimidatingly confident gay tween whose withering morning announcements and acidic put-downs gave off the impression that the only gay kid on the show was the only one who wasn’t riddled with insecurity. Which … seemed far-fetched. In season 2, we saw Matthew encounter single man-of-a-certain-age Elliot (voiced by the legend Harvey Fierstein), who took Matthew down a few bitchy pegs. But rather than leave it at that, Big Mouth had these two characters come to a kind of understanding about each other, two gay males at very different stages of life and points on the LGBTQ timeline.
And then! Later on in the season, we got the delightful development of Jay (voiced by the sublime Jason Mantzoukas) discovering a burgeoning bisexuality in himself. That he discovers this by both making out with Matthew at the shame-free slumber party and by learning he likes humping both his (female-presenting) pillow and his (male-presenting) couch cushion is both a long story and absolutely perfect.
'She-Ra and the Princesses of Power'
Date: November 13
In this most unlikely success story, the remake of the original cartoon series She-Ra offers a surprising and satisfying queer perspective, in a similar vein to a show like Steven Universe, if not quite as explicit in storyline terms. But the queerness of a character like Catra is both uncommon and hugely welcome on a series like this, and an episode like “Princess Prom,” which puts the queer sensibility of the show on front street, with Catra and Scorpia attending the Princess Prom together.
