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It’s undeniable that over the last decade or two there have been considerable advancements in lesbian and sapphic representation on television. There are statistics to prove this, and these advances can also be seen in the quality of stories being produced. But, there’s one thing that’s always been missing on television. Where are all the sapphic slow burns? 

Certainly, there are a few lesbian relationships that have lasted a long time. Callie Torres from Grey’s Anatomy was the longest-running queer and bisexual lead on a television show, and her eventual wife, Arizona Robbins, was the longest-running lesbian on television. By my estimation, that makes “Calzona” the longest-running lesbian couple in television history.  

But that’s not quite what I mean. Anyone who’s ever watched a procedural, or read fanfiction for that matter, you know what I’m talking about. I mean those will-they-or-won’t-they relationships filled with simmering sexual tension that last for seasons on end. I’m thinking about Mulder and Scully’s ambiguous but always loving relationship on The X-Files, or in a similar vein, Booth and Bones’ morgue-side banter and eventual marriage on Bones. Such relationships are most frequently found in procedurals, at least in part because these types of shows often last numerous seasons and also give the characters plenty of ways to avoid talking about their feelings. These are the types of relationships that not only draw in viewers, but also make these couples, and their respective shows, so iconic. 

There are a few examples of lesbian couples that have more expansive timelines than usual, but they don’t quite fit this formula. Alex and Piper from Orange Is the New Black certainly have a tumultuous relationship over the course of seven seasons, but they hook up only a few episodes in. Bo and Lauren have an unusually epic sapphic romance on Lost Girl, but again, it’s more dramatic than it is gradual. (“Valkubus” fans might argue that Bo and Tamsin actually have the true slow burn of the series.) Technically you might be able to call Emily and Alison on Pretty Little Liars a slow burn, but I’m going to say they don’t count since Alison was presumed missing and/or dead for most of the series and was also Emily’s childhood bully. (This second part has little to do with whether or not they are a slow burn and more to do with the fact that I clearly have some issues to work through with this couple).

In actuality, it seems like the only lesbian couples on television whose relationships might qualify as a slow burn are found in animated series. On Adventure Time, Marceline and Bubblegum finally kissed after a full ten seasons, and Korra and Asami officially got together during the series finale of The Legend of Korra. Of course, despite the fans’ deserved celebration of these moments, what’s missing from animated series like these is the sexual tension we’ve come to expect from slow burns aimed at adults.

Two shows that are on air currently – network procedurals, in fact – initially sparked my interest in this topic. One, NCIS: Hawaii, does portray a lesbian couple, and the other, Big Sky, doesn’t, but conceivably could. NCIS: Hawaii, obviously, is a spin-off of NCIS, and takes the original NCIS formula and moves it to tropical Oahu. One of the main NCIS agents, we quickly learn, is queer, and has an already established relationship (if you can call it that) with a DIA officer. What begins as a hook-up situation in the pilot starts to turn into something more like a relationship a few episodes in. 

In Big Sky, there is not a lesbian relationship (apart from a small lesbian subplot in Season 2), but the format of the series is the perfect setup for a slow burn. Big Sky – which airs on ABC and was created by Big Little Lies showrunner David E. Kelley – follows two women, Jenny and Cassie, who wind up running a private detective agency in Helena, Montana. While they initially have an antagonistic relationship due to the fact that Cassie slept with Jenny’s husband, they eventually come to admire and respect one another. While a show about two detectives who have a complicated relationship seems like the perfect opportunity for a slow burn, that’s clearly not how it’s being set up. Like Rizzoli & Isles before it (though with much less queerbaiting this time around), it still seems difficult for writers to imagine a show with two female leads who could also become romantically involved with one another. 

For fans of lesbian literature, such stories are far easier to come by. First off, there’s fanfiction, wherein the slow burn is one of the most popular fic categories among sapphic (also known as wlw or femslash) pairings. It’s no coincidence that this is such a popular genre among fanfic considering how bereft television is of this particular narrative for sapphic characters. The slow burn is also common among lesbian books as well, with “slow burn romances” being a category one might use to create lists of popular lesbian literature on sites like Goodreads. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of lesbian literature by focusing only on television, but rather am interested in thinking about how this one genre seems to have remained untouched by these so-called advances in representation on screen.

What is so satisfying about slow burns in the first place? I’ve written about this before, but I think what is so appealing about these relationships is the tension and the angst that they involve. Some of this tension is sexual, yes, but it’s also about the experience of watching the will-they-or-won’t-they relationship play out on-screen. In the best slow burn relationships, this tension is also paired with a clear display of care and affection between the two characters, despite the often confusing or disjointed nature of their relationship. There is something particularly queer about this dynamic, as I’ve previously argued, despite the fact that these relationships are almost always heterosexual. 

The contested, unspoken nature of these relationships also leads to a lot of passionate fan activity. When a series has a long-standing will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic between the two lead characters, the status of this relationship is often the most central topic of discussion among fans and in many cases the thing that keeps viewers hooked. Even in situations where things are rather contentious – such as on The X-Files, where there was a strong pro-Scully/Mulder contingent and a strong anti-Scully/Mulder contingent while the show was on air  – the nature of these relationships are still of central importance to fans. 

So why can’t such a dynamic be translated to lesbian couples? Well, obviously it could, but it’s just not happening. (I should note here that another exception to the rule might be the current iteration of Doctor Who, starring Jodie Whittaker, in which one of the doctor’s companions has revealed she has feelings for the doctor in the final season.) Or, perhaps part of the reason we aren’t seeing this as often anymore is because there are fewer 22-episode seasons of television on right now. 

Maybe what we are longing for is simply a bygone era of television where series had hundreds of episodes to work through whatever plotlines they were spinning. However, as Michel Ghanem, aka tvscholar, noted in my last newsletter, network television isn’t actually disappearing. The example Michel gives is that a CBS show called Ghosts, which I imagine most of you have never heard of, has significantly higher viewership than Succession, which I imagine most of you have heard of. So network television shows are not disappearing, per se, but rather are being somewhat eclipsed by streaming shows in terms of the discourse about television. Moreover, if 22-episode-long seasons are indeed becoming slightly less common, that’s probably not a bad thing, since this wasn’t a very sustainable production model to begin with. 

But, where does that leave us? Is it too much to ask for fictional sapphics to have a slice of the slow-burn pie? Why don’t we circle back to one of my original examples, the CBS series NCIS: Hawaii. If I’m being honest, I was immediately invested in the relationship between the two characters in question, Lucy and Kate. It falls into the classic lesbian trope of the cheerful, smiley character who falls in love with the stoic, hard-to-reach character and eventually loosens her up. (Also, one is tall and one is short, and one is blonde and the other a brunette. Literally all of the tropes.) 

But the relationship progresses quite quickly, with them hooking up (not for the first time) in Episode 1 and then having a potentially relationship-ending fight in Episode 11. I recently saw someone post on Tumblr about how one of the executive producers on NCIS: Hawaii is Jan Nash, who also wrote on the beloved/despised lesbian classic Rizzoli & Isles. This user’s theory is that NCIS: Hawaii is clearly trying to portray itself as a diverse show within the franchise and gain a devoted fan base, which is why Lucy and Kate’s relationship was written. (Anyone who has ever worked on a show with a large lesbian fandom knows how passionate these fans can be.) But, rather than do a slow burn – which could be interpreted as queerbaiting, someone like Nash might chime in – they jumped into the relationship right away so there would be no ambiguity.

Whether or not these are the conversations that actually happened in the writer’s room, I find this to be an intriguing theory, especially as someone who has written and thought a lot about the topic of queerbaiting. One of the problems with contemporary conversations about queerbaiting – which, as many Twitter conversations do, often occur without a lot of nuance – is that we lose the space to talk about ambiguity and subtext, something that has always been central to slow burn relationships.

None of this is really a criticism of NCIS: Hawaii – which I do actually find charming even though it is essentially thinly-veiled military propaganda – especially because I don’t know where they will take Lucy and Kate’s relationship in the future. Their relationship could last for many seasons, for all I know, which would be a welcome departure from the always-brief lesbian relationships that appear on procedurals. And even if it’s not a slow burn, whatever strategy the writer’s hatched clearly worked, as the #Kacy fandom is now going strong on social media.

At the same time, it’s also clear that we need to start moving away from cop shows, as these series are almost always pro-cop, even if they are ostensibly critical of the system itself. (I might add here that there are plenty of procedurals not about cops. For example, Evil is about hot people with sexual tension investigating the paranormal and trying not to kiss.) But putting aside this question for just a moment, where does that leave us? Surely slow burns need not be synonymous with queerbaiting, and queer people deserve this type of delicious angst just as much as straight people do. Its absence is certainly not the end of the world, but aren’t we missing something? I’m still waiting for something that truly simmers, not just flashes bright and then burns away.

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