Two new dramas are embracing a darker, truer slice of queer life, asking: Are miserable middle-aged lesbians having a renaissance? The Beast Within Me and Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus center on depressed lesbian writers—Clare Danes’ Aggie and Rhea Seehorn’s Carol—who refuse to play the roles the world demands. Their queerness isn’t the plot; their honesty is. Like Melissa McCarthy’s Lee Israel, tired of “eating sh*t,” these characters remind us that representation means showing our whole lives, not just the sunny parts—especially now, when sapphic characters keep getting cut.
