If you’re not already watching Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place, you should be. Both are intelligent and very very funny half-hour comedies, previous seasons of both are available on Netflix for rapid bingeing, and both feature bisexual representation.
Brooklyn 99 is a workplace comedy set in a Brooklyn police precinct. The cast is refreshingly diverse, and one of the main characters, Captain Raymond Holt (the amazing Andre Braugher), is an out gay black man. Many of the major story arcs in previous seasons have dealt with Captain Holt’s career and the hurdles he’s had to cross in order to get to where he is. The show has even had an episode that dealt with police profiling, as Sergeant Terry Jeffords (the adorable Terry Crews) was arrested on his own street for no reason other than that he was out at night, wearing a hoodie, and didn’t have his police badge or ID on him.
I’m making this sound like a “serious issues” show, but I swear to you, it’s very funny! Stay with me here.
In the last season, another character came out on the show. Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz) revealed first to her fellow detective Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), and gradually to the rest of the squad, that she’s bisexual. The show has subsequently showed her dating women, which is a nice follow-through on the reveal.
It would have been so easy for the writers to keep Rosa dating men, and I appreciate that they chose a more realistic route. The actor and show runner Dan Goor talk more about this here.
The show has since been cancelled by Fox and picked up by NBC (thank goodness) for a final-season victory lap starting today, but you can start bingeing it on Netflix right now.
It’s being paired on NBC with The Good Place, another innovative, intelligent comedy that somehow manages to completely reinvent itself every season. Its third season continues tonight and you can catch up on the first two seasons on Netflix.
The premise of The Good Place, at least at the outset, is that self-described “Arizona trashbag” Eleanor (the always adorable Kristen Bell) is dead and wakes up in, well, The Good Place, run by kindly angel Michael (silver fox Ted Danson) – but she knows, with the life she’d lived, that she really belongs in The Bad Place. She enlists the help of her afterlife “soulmate” Chidi (the surprisingly jacked William Jackson Harper), a professor of ethics, to teach her how to be a better person.
I won’t spoil the events that unfold, but will say that the show manages to find comedy in actual, real philosophical concepts, and also, keep an eye on the background for a constant stream of hilarious puns!
There have been hints throughout the series that Eleanor is attracted to her afterlife frenemy Tahani (the impossibly smart Jameela Jamil), and in a recent episode Eleanor’s bisexuality became canon when she flirted with and came thisclose to kissing a woman. The Mary Sue covered this in a lovely summation that features quotes from the actors.
The Good Place is taking a different approach by not having a “very special episode” coming-out party for Eleanor; her sexuality is just woven into the series and doesn’t define her, it’s just a part of her whole personality. It’s a way of representing the B in LGBTQ that completely normalizes it by NOT talking about it, which is a refreshingly new take.
Bottom line, both of these shows are great, they’re perfect family veiwing, and I heartily recommend bingeing both immediately!
