Yes, lesbian mom Bette Porter may have lost her campaign for mayor of Los Angeles on Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q—but at least we now have lesbian mom Abigail “Tommy” Thomas helping to lead the City of Angels on our screens.
Tommy, CBS’ new drama, stars multiple Emmy-winner Edie Falco (The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie), in the titular role as LA’s first woman and first LGBTQ police chief. She’s a transplanted New Yorker and veteran cop who was recently chosen for the top spot after a sex scandal involving the former chief and other male officers.
Billed as “equal parts political, procedural and family drama,” the show follows Tommy as she leads an institution still shaken by the turnover at the top—and still overwhelmingly male. She’s competent, confident, and a touch sarcastic, but she’s still settling in to her new role. In the first episode, she has to deal with an incident involving undocumented immigrants, ICE, and LA’s position as a sanctuary city, all while managing the mayor, his flunkies, community leaders, and her own staff members, inherited from her predecessor.
We also see her tense relationship with her grown daughter Kate Jones (Olivia Lucy Phillip), who is married with a child of her own. Kate doesn’t like that Tommy has always put career ahead of family, as she explains in this scene:
Kate: I tried to call you.
Tommy: I’ve just been…. You know what? I’m even going to say it.
Kate: I know you’re busy.
Tommy: Can we just stipulate that I’m a terrible mother? I’ve always been a terrible mother.
Kate: You were a terrible mother.
Tommy: I was not a terrible mother. I was a B, B-minus.
Kate: I don’t even know why I keep trying.
Tommy: Look. Kate, you left home for reasons that had nothing to do with me…
Kate: I left to live with dad.
Tommy: …Or your dad. How is Madison doing?
Kate: You can’t just change the subject like that.
Tommy: (As Abigail Thomas) This is police headquarters. I can do whatever I want to do. You want to yell at me, invite me to dinner.
At the same time, in other scenes, we glimpse hints of connection that may mean their relationship can still be saved. Much as I wish all parents and their children had wonderful relationships, I’m also thrilled to see we’ve gotten to a point (I hope) where queer parents can be shown as imperfect without it feeling like a reflection on all queer parents. We’re no better or worse than anyone else, on the whole. It’s also great to see that television seems to have gotten beyond the “lesbians engaged in wacky antics to find sperm” trope that was common in the mid-aughts (we also see this growth in The L Word: Generation Q) and is even acknowledging that we queer parents have been around for long enough to have grown kids and become grandparents.
The first episode also teased a romantic relationship (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it), but showed, too, that dating in midlife can be somewhat different than dating when younger.
Both CBS and Showtime are owned by Viacom, however. Would it be beyond the realm of possibility to imagine a crossover episode in which the LAPD has to investigate a break-in at Shane’s bar, Tommy swings by to check on things, and runs into Shane, Bette, Alice, and the rest of the L Word gang?
Probably—the two shows each have very different tones. I can’t help noticing, however, that lesbian mom Lena Adams Foster (Sheri Saum) of Freeform’s The Fosters and Good Trouble is also a fictional public official in California, serving in the State Assembly (though dozens of actual LGBTQ parents are in fact serving in public office in many different states ). If I really were to fantasize, Tommy, Bette, and Lena would be working together to better the Golden State. Then Bette and Lena would form a winning presidential ticket, tap Tommy for their Director of Homeland Security (with Lena’s wife Stef, also a cop, as her assistant), and we’d have the best political TV show since The West Wing. I know, I know—Freeform’s owned by Disney/ABC. It’ll never happen. I’ll just be over here, though, writing my fanfic.
Tommy airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.