The web series Skirtchasers and the new normal

It’s amazing the number of shows like the web series Skirtchasers that are focusing their cameras on the LGBT community.

As noted by the GLAAD survey of previous years, LGBT characters are still too few and far in-between in television shows and movies.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying to address this, with TV shows like The L Word, Orange is the New Black, and web series like Her Story, Maybelle, and now Skirtchasers constantly breaking new ground in showing the ‘new normal.’

Skirtchasers vs. The New Normal

So what is the new normal? Simply, it’s having shows that revolve around LGBT characters with stories that aren’t about generating comment or controversy– but mundane everyday stories.

Ironically, we can draw reference to a one-season TV series in 2013 aptly called The New Normal, about a gay couple who adopts a baby from a surrogate mother.

The title of the series alludes to the “new normal” issue of queer people wanting to have a normal life. However, it’s obviously not that normal as Ellen Barkin’s staunchly homophobic character in the series declares her opposition to it.

On the other hand, Skirtchasers is about a lesbian character who finds out that maybe she has more in common with her father who ran out of their family when she was younger.

Here, the issues are universal (infidelity and father-daughter relationships) even though the camera lens still retain their focus on LGBT characters.

Skirtchasers: Both story and queer matters

Elizabeth Keener, an alumnus of The L Word who plays the lesbian Robyn in Skirtchasers, said in an interview with the website Lez Flix: “What’s great about the show is that, it’s beautiful that Robyn is gay; but she could be a straight character, or a bi character or any character. You can put anyone in there, and then you see it’s kind of universal.”

But despite this universality, the story is also still about queer characters. Stan Zimmerman, who wrote the script, said, “We had never seen a father-daughter relationship like this before on television.”

“You see a lot of sons and mothers, and sons and fathers– probably because there are a lot of men writing those tortured stories– so we thought it was really interesting to have a father and daughter be so similar. Both cheat on their spouse and both are into women, and they both have messy relationships,” Zimmerman said.

For more about the five-part web series Skirtchasers from tello Films, check out this month’s latest issue of Lesbian News. Meanwhile, here’s the trailer for the series.