S01.E06: Stealing Home

[OtterMommy]

TBA

Streaming Date: August 12, 2022

[Quickbeam]

Watching this marathon style. I’m not sure how old people are who post here but I’m a bisexual woman in her 60s. The portrayal of gay life was very close to my experience. Private homes, gay bars, all super secret handshake kind of places. The raids were pretty much over when I came of age but I did lose a professor in college for being out gay. 
 

I love that the show cared enough to get this right. Rosie O’Donnell as bartender. 

[gesundheit]

15 minutes ago, Quickbeam said:

Watching this marathon style. I’m not sure how old people are who post here but I’m a bisexual woman in her 60s. The portrayal of gay life was very close to my experience. Private homes, gay bars, all super secret handshake kind of places. The raids were pretty much over when I came of age but I did lose a professor in college for being out gay. 
 

I love that the show cared enough to get this right. 

Me too, that episode really hit hard because previously in the show I'd been thinking it was all a little too idyllic, despite the secrecy, and I understand the value of having that -- hey, if you get to fake the past, why not make it better? But I think this episode was really truthful about both the highs and lows.

The Bert/Max exchange about the clothes was sublime.

[pasdetrois]

So disappointed in the first couple of episodes. Very ham-handed scriptwriting and production. Some of the gags were Broad City-flavor and laborious (the extended crab search). Greta came off as weird, jammed into many scenes and making mysterious pronouncements.

I did enjoy the interactions between Max and her friend (whose name I didn't catch) and their families and friends. That part of the story seems more organic and authentic.

Speaking of, I don't think women of this period threw around the eff word so readily. I always say: shoddy scriptwriting.

[rollacoaster]

12 hours ago, pasdetrois said:

Speaking of, I don't think women of this period threw around the eff word so readily. I always say: shoddy scriptwriting.

The dialog sounded strange to my ear, too. The speech patterns and word choices sounded very contemporary. 

As for the eff word, they used it so casually it made me wonder if women of that time may have used it more than I realized. And if it depended on how and where you grew up: urban vs rural, working class vs middle class, etc. 

Edited August 15, 2022 by rollacoaster

[gesundheit]

4 hours ago, rollacoaster said:

The dialog sounded strange to my ear, too. The speech patterns and word choices sounded very contemporary. 

As for the eff word, they used it so casually it made me wonder if women of that time may have used it more than I realized. And if it depended on how and where you grew up: urban vs rural, working class vs middle class, etc. 

I think it's just poetic license here. The today-language is very deliberate throughout, I was glad that they made that choice once I adjusted to it. (They certainly did use the word back then, but I think it's safe to say not quite as constantly!)

Edited August 14, 2022 by gesundheit

[Mabinogia]

4 hours ago, gesundheit said:

(They certainly did use the word back then, but I think it's safe to say not quite as constantly!)

I have a feeling they used it a lot more than we think. They were, after all, in the middle of a war. Also, the people we are watching aren't your Leave it to Beaver style housewives and businessmen. 

This ep was like a gut punch for me. I was cringing when all the happy couples were dancing because I just felt like something terrible was going to happen. It was very effective because I can only imagine that was what their lives felt like, it's what Greta's whole character is, constantly waiting for her life to fall apart simply because she's trying to be herself. 

This show isn't really what I expected, but I am very much invested and enjoying it. I will say, Max and Clance's friendship is my absolute favorite part. Though, that does bring up the one thing that I find most distracting and it's the names. I feel like Clance and Carson come across more as modern names than 40s names. 

[amarante]

I think the language and other aspects that aren't quite period are deliberate choices to attempt to underscore that the women being depicted were not really typical of their times - they were outliers.

[CrowTRobot]

Was this the episode or was it ep 7 where Esti is crying because they went to see The Wizard of Oz without her and then says through broken English that she wanted to go see the movie?  Because that absolutely broke my heart.  😥

[meep.meep]

It was this episode.  Because also in this episode she learned enough English to be the rabble rouser for one of the team's games.

[shantown]

I get that Max is struggling with who she is comfortable being, but that was a harsh conversation with Bertie. I felt terrible for both of them. Bertie was looking for just as much of a family connection as Max was. And I don't think Clance was trying to be anything but helpful in the scene after Bertie left, but you can just see Max break a little further. And then later when she puts the suit on and you can see her breath a little lighter. Max has been by far the strongest, most fully written characters so far and Chanté Adams is knocking it out of the park (baseball pun only slightly intended).

I was on such a high for so much of this episode with the win streak, and the players bonding, and the pep talks, and the parties. I thought for sure the episode would end with everyone dancing together. That banging on the door started and my stomach dropped so fast I had to pause the episode for a moment. The panic in that last minute of the episode was a lot. The show had been playing very loosely with the language and norms of the time, and had been referring to the racism/sexism/homophobia of the era at a pretty surface level. That last scene really brought reality crashing down. Kudos to the writers and actors for making the fear and confusion and anxiety so palpable.

[Mabinogia]

13 hours ago, shantown said:

The show had been playing very loosely with the language and norms of the time, and had been referring to the racism/sexism/homophobia of the era at a pretty surface level. That last scene really brought reality crashing down. Kudos to the writers and actors for making the fear and confusion and anxiety so palpable.

I do wonder if that was done on purpose, because those last moments were a gut punch because everything before it felt so, as you say, surface level. Having read some interviews with one of the women who was a Peach, I think it was done on purpose because she's said that the league was a bit of a lesbian safe haven/clubhouse. It was a place where these women who had lived their lives in hiding for so long were almost able to be themselves, or the closest some of them had ever gotten. 

Because of that, I can imagine some of them, like Greta, letting their guard down, starting to take more risks only to have reality beat the shit out of them. It was such a devastating scene because of how accurate it was. One of the best things about this show for me, is that it had me doing research on a part of history I didn't realize existed. Much of what this show is depicting is historically accurate. That just makes it all the more painful to see what happened to these people who dared to be themselves. 

I do agree about the Max and Bertie scenes. All the scene's between them have been so powerful and so tragic because Max is so, understandably, conflicted about who she is and is pushing away the one person who understands. 

And it cannot be said enough, Clance is my MVP for this series. I have loved everything about her. 

[Scarlett45]

On 8/20/2022 at 8:37 PM, shantown said:

And I don't think Clance was trying to be anything but helpful in the scene after Bertie left, but you can just see Max break a little further. And then later when she puts the suit on and you can see her breath a little lighter. Max has been by far the strongest, most fully written characters so far and Chanté Adams is knocking it out of the park (baseball pun only slightly intended).

I love Clance, but I didn’t like that she called Bert a freak (I am not surprised, and I don’t hate her for it, but I wish she had not said it). 
 

Although as CLOSE as Max and Clance are, I’m surprised Clance never suspected. (I can see Max not telling her, but Clance must have noticed how she looks at certain women). 
 

Max looked good in the suit though. Poor Bert, who (logically) assumed that Max was accepting and had his heart stomped on. 

On 8/17/2022 at 9:19 AM, CrowTRobot said:

Was this the episode or was it ep 7 where Esti is crying because they went to see The Wizard of Oz without her and then says through broken English that she wanted to go see the movie?  Because that absolutely broke my heart.  😥

Yes that hurt me too. No one bothered to ask her! In the previous episode Lupe made comments about how she is was blamed for the fight and the racism and prejudice she faced, while Carson was given a gold star. I did feel for her, but I couldn’t help but think “Max can’t even play!” Of course I know that doesn’t make how Lupe was treated any better or her feelings any less real, it just made me upset. We can also look at it in regards to the women who are more feminine presenting and better able to “pass” as heteronormative in a society where being anything else could have you sent away. 

On 8/21/2022 at 10:04 AM, Mabinogia said:

Having read some interviews with one of the women who was a Peach, I think it was done on purpose because she's said that the league was a bit of a lesbian safe haven/clubhouse. It was a place where these women who had lived their lives in hiding for so long were almost able to be themselves, or the closest some of them had ever gotten. 

That doesn’t surprise me. 

[Scarlett45]

On 8/13/2022 at 8:35 PM, Quickbeam said:

Watching this marathon style. I’m not sure how old people are who post here but I’m a bisexual woman in her 60s. The portrayal of gay life was very close to my experience. Private homes, gay bars, all super secret handshake kind of places. The raids were pretty much over when I came of age but I did lose a professor in college for being out gay. 
 

I love that the show cared enough to get this right. Rosie O’Donnell as bartender. 

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Rosie looked really good in the role. 

[Mabinogia]

15 hours ago, Scarlett45 said:

I love Clance, but I didn’t like that she called Bert a freak (I am not surprised, and I don’t hate her for it, but I wish she had not said it). 

While modern me cringed when she said it, I am kind of glad she said it as it makes sense for the time and the character, and it shows how the world you are born into influences you. That is probably the nicest thing someone, even a good, nice person, in the 40s would say upon meeting a trans person. It is sad but even the nicest people with the biggest hearts are victims of ignorance. I do think that Clance would be inviting Bert over for tea once she got to know him. Girls got a huge heart. It's what I love about her. 

[Scarlett45]

9 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

While modern me cringed when she said it, I am kind of glad she said it as it makes sense for the time and the character, and it shows how the world you are born into influences you. That is probably the nicest thing someone, even a good, nice person, in the 40s would say upon meeting a trans person. It is sad but even the nicest people with the biggest hearts are victims of ignorance. I do think that Clance would be inviting Bert over for tea once she got to know him. Girls got a huge heart. It's what I love about her. 

Yes. And Clance wasn’t trying to be mean or hateful to Bert just because. (I couldn’t see her saying such a think to his face because it would rude and mean AF) She was speaking to Max thinking she was comforting her. 

[ombre]

I'm in the middle of this ep so I'm not reading the thread yet but... Boy, it seems too early for "friend of Dorothy" to be a meaningful phrase. For an ep that's doing a lovely job of talking about queer history, it rather snapped me out of the moment! 

[shantown]

Rewatching again and struck by the two totally different interpretations of Wizard of Oz - Clance's rant viewing Dorothy as the evil invader, and then the next scene with Carson comparing finding the secret LGBT community bar as like finding Oz and toasting with Vi (Rosie) to Dorothy. Really was another nice parallel within the show.

[buckboard]

9 hours ago, ombre said:

I'm in the middle of this ep so I'm not reading the thread yet but... Boy, it seems too early for "friend of Dorothy" to be a meaningful phrase. For an ep that's doing a lovely job of talking about queer history, it rather snapped me out of the moment! 

The phrase "Friend of Dorothy" apparently was used during WWII, although you're correct, it wasn't as commonly used as it was a few years later.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

9 hours ago, ombre said:

[Bastet]

It was nice to watch this one a second time, as, the first time, as soon as we were introduced to the gay bar, I knew a raid was coming, and I was so tense waiting to see if it was going to happen this episode or later I couldn't properly take in everything in between that first scene and the final one when I knew for sure it was coming now.

The "playing for the other team/I'm going to tell" confusion when Carson follows Lupe to the bar, and the way Jess cracks the hell up when she realizes what's going on, is fantastic.  As is Vi's conversation with Carson, knowing she's blown away by a place where being themselves is possible.  Rosie O'Donnell did a great job, and I'm glad this time around she got to play it naturally, instead of being forced to play Doris as straight in that scene on the bus in the movie (where she talks about her boyfriend).

Good movie allusions throughout again, especially the stinky socks -- this time expanded on to several "lucky streak" superstitions.  I love Greta's turn at the pre-game speech for their win it and we're in final game, when she spills the beans on how the league had wanted to trade some Peaches to the two teams assumed to be going to the championship and says they've already done what was thought to be impossible -- be so good, the league had to keep them together.  So they got this last game; "I don't believe in luck, I believe in us."

Esti being left out of the group outing to the movies was painful, when she got out her rehearsed "I wanted to go to the movies" in English and then cried "I had a dress picked out, I was going to look like Judy Garland" in Spanish.  And when it was her turn to give the pre-game speech and she said in Spanish, "Even if you ignore me and treat me like a ghost," and then in English, "You, me, we - Peaches."  When Jess knows there's something wrong when Esti is nowhere to be found after their big victory, and gives Lupe the latest of Esti's many notes home, this one found tossed in the trash, to translate -- <sob>!  She's been lying this whole time, telling her mom a fantasy version of this shot at a better life, where Jess and Lupe are her best friends, looking out for her, teaching her the language, etc.

I love the conversation between Max and Carson (and appreciate it starts with the realism of Max counting people exiting the locker room to make sure Carson is the only one in there before she goes in; she doesn't have the freedom to just walk in like Carson did at the factory).  The warm bread with butter vs. pizza metaphor was fantastic for their experiences with sex with a man vs. sex with a woman, as was them bonding over needing something in between to describe people like them compared to the two archetypes they've known of women.

Max's whole process this episode of that trying to figure out who she is -- certainly not a Toni, but not a Bert, either -- was great, and I love her wearing the suit Bert made her in the way she feels like herself.  And that he accepts her apology (after being wonderfully straightforward about having his pride and feelings hurt) and encourages her to go take her chance with the woman she's making eyes at.  Nice change from when Max told Clance she's spending time with Bert, but referred to him as her "Aunt Bertie" and then freaked out when he showed up at the house, and didn't correct Clance when she offered her sympathy about having "a freak" in the family.

They wove The Wizard of Oz through this episode very well, and my favorite is Clance - freshly fired up about the "Thank you for volunteering" bullshit from the factory - going off on Dorothy as a colonizing villain.

And then, of course, Carson and Greta escaping the raid into the theater side door as the "There's no place like home" scene plays.  Those final minutes, going back and forth between the joyous freedom at Bert and Gracie's house and at Vi and Edie's bar, and then all hell breaking loose at the bar when the cops invade -- I was not one bit less tense the second time around.  Brutally well done.  I mean, holy fucking shit well done, setting up how it's a haven, yeah, but danger always lurks, so it generally doesn't long last in once place.  Outside of documentaries, I don't often come across such honesty (there's also a good episode of Cold Case, "A Time to Hate").

Edited September 7, 2022 by Bastet

[Mabinogia]

On 9/6/2022 at 8:19 PM, Bastet said:

And then, of course, Carson and Greta escaping the raid into the theater side door as the "There's no place like home" scene plays.  Those final minutes, going back and forth between the joyous freedom at Bert and Gracie's house and at Vi and Edie's bar, and then all hell breaking loose at the bar when the cops invade -- I was not one bit less tense the second time around.  Brutally well done.  I mean, holy fucking shit well done, setting up how it's a haven, yeah, but danger always lurks, so it generally doesn't long last in once place.  Outside of documentaries, I don't often come across such honesty (there's also a good episode of Cold Case, "A Time to Hate").

I really think this ep should be submitted for an Emmy. As you said, it was so forking well done, the false sense of happiness, finally finding their safe place only it's not safe and all hell breaks loose, and it really brilliantly shows how these women had to live in constant fear of being caught. It really helps make sense of Greta's character and the way she seems like she's back and forth but she's really just trying to protect herself. I can't imagine having to live my life in hiding that way. I am not ready to rewatch this one, I need to be in the right head space for it, but I do intend to because it was just so well crafted. 

[ombre]

On 9/6/2022 at 5:01 PM, buckboard said:

The phrase "Friend of Dorothy" apparently was used during WWII, although you're correct, it wasn't as commonly used as it was a few years later.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_of_Dorothy

Yeah, every time I've heard anything about that phrase it's been in the 50s.  Which makes a certain amount of sense - the 40s had their problems, to be sure, but wartime homosocial spaces did make *some* things easier!

[Scarlett45]

On 9/6/2022 at 7:19 PM, Bastet said:

The warm bread with butter vs. pizza metaphor was fantastic for their experiences with sex with a man vs. sex with a woman, as was them bonding over needing something in between to describe people like them compared to the two archetypes they've known of women.

I thought that was a pretty good analogy. In 2022 it’s more socially understood that sexuality is a spectrum and while 

Spoiler

we learn later that Max and Charlie had been best friends since they were six, so we understand better here motivations to marry him even if she always had an idea she wasn’t 100% straight; I think this scene was good to highlight how she and Max experience sexuality.

It’s clear Max is probably closer to a 6 on the Kinsey scale (or she just wasn’t attracted to that guy at all) because she was acting as if she was getting a Pap smear and then had to watch paint dry!