After the streaming service that hosted the LGBTQ-positive show Take My Wife announced it would shut down, fans have been urging other platforms to take the show.
Earlier in the month, Seeso, Comcast and NBC Universal’s streaming service, announced it would shut down later this year. For days, #TakeMyWife has been trending on Twitter.
The show has offered LGBTQ representation and representation of actors of color that effectively raised the bar for other television shows. Take My Wife is about the relationship between two comedians married to each other. Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher play fictionalized versions of themselves. The show focuses on the challenges of being a comedian, being in a relationship, and being in a relationship with a fellow comedian. The show considers the tension in a relationship between an experienced comic and a new comic.
#TakeMyWife @AmazonVideo @netflix @hulu & please give a home to a historic, inclusive show! Please consider and thank you for doing so! https://t.co/XuetJ1vzOi
— Sonia (@tablenine) August 18, 2017
#TakeMyWife is all I want to watch, and the second season is stacked with talented queer women – please help find it a new home
— John Bon Anchovi (@johavans) August 18, 2017
Look! Even Vanity Fair thinks #TakeMyWife should be saved! Positive LGBTQ representation in TV/Film is needed. https://t.co/EHkIxzoltm
— Tegan and Sara (@teganandsara) August 17, 2017
The hunger for #TakeMyWife got it trending. Mass press coverage. All queer characters are played by queer and trans actors. So what gives?
— GABY DUNN 🏳️🌈 (@gabydunn) August 17, 2017
It also considers the experience of lesbians in comedy listening to jokes from fellow comics that make them feel incredibly uncomfortable. For example, a comedian tells a rape joke, prompting Cameron and Rhea to tell him that many of the people he knows are sexual assault survivors. Then Rhea and a number of other people shared their stories of sexual assault. In the first episode of the show, Cameron has an interview with a white, male and presumably straight podcast host. The interview goes like this:
Host: Now lesbians by and large are not the biggest fans of the dick.Cameron: No, we like dicks. We just don’t need them to be attached to men because we have our own that we bought at a store.Host: So if you’re not in comedy for that sweet D then why do you do it?Cameron: I think I do it for the same reason a lot of people do standup. I didn’t feel heard as a kid and I have weird issues about my body.
After the interview, Cameron tries to get to know him by suggesting they go someplace to eat. He coldly rejects her and says he has a business meeting with his wife. Then he fails to understand her jokes. It is a painful example of how women in comedy are shut out of the kinds of chummy meet-ups male comics enjoy.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the show tackles issues of identity and the experiences of marginalized groups with grace, because the show’s writer’s room and cast is very diverse. It is rare that a writer’s room is exclusively made up of women, 43 percent of whom were women of color in the second season, in an industry that is so dominated by white straight men. Fifty-four percent of the actors in the cast belonged to the LGBTQ community. And of course, Rhea and Cameron’s representation of queer women on television, particularly as the show’s lead characters, is still rare in the media.
Wanted to tell u what having a show on Seeso allowed us to do. I am so proud of #TakeMyWife. pic.twitter.com/UatqOyrPY7
— Cameron Esposito (@cameronesposito) August 9, 2017
Four percent of regular characters on a scripted broadcast series are LGBTQ characters, according to GLAAD’s 2015-2016 report on media representation of LGBTQ people. Gay men still made up the majority of regular and recurring LGBTQ characters. The results were a bit different for streaming services, however, which had more representation of lesbians and transgender people.
Butcher and Esposito are very aware of the need for a show like Take My Wife in a media environment where queer women are often portrayed as either hypersexual or practically celibate — that is if they don’t get killed off in a few months. In an interview with TV Insider, Esposito said:
I think sometimes the sex gets super sexy or people can’t figure out what to do with lesbians after they kiss each other so the lesbians are killed off, or it becomes very much about crying and coming out.
That opportunity to create something that speaks, I hope, really honestly about what it’s like to be a lesbian literally will affect the way we are treated on airplanes and in legislation for the rest of our lives. We really are creating the space that we get to live in.
If fans of Take My Wife are successful, LGBTQ people will be able to keep one of few spaces for representation of their lives on television.