griffin + taketh away

Is GLAAD Gonna Get Angry With SVU Over Kathy Griffin’s Nixed Gay Kiss?

Last week we saw Kathy Griffin kiss Mariska Hargitay! Okay, it was on television, but still, holy hot. It was for Law & Order SVU, the show lesbians watch in marathons for the chance to see Olivia Benson in cotton tank tops. And it was the episode where Griffin would play a lesbian activist, who the NYPD needed to keep safe or something. But when the episode aired last night, the Mariska-Kathy same-sex smooch was nowhere to be found. Uh oh.

“True to form,” writes an unhappy JR Russell, “SVU’s writers managed to characterise the worst of the lesbian stereotype. You have the crazy, agressive, split personality lesbian, the dead lesbian (because who doesn’t love a victim!) and the loudmouth activist lesbian, who really isn’t a lesbian at all. Yup, the lesbian character is screwing a dude. Nice. Oh, also, she doesn’t fight for anyone but lesbians. Lesbians, of course, should fight for the rights of everyone. It’s their job.”

That, and while SVU cut the gay kiss, they “kept in the part where — formerly gay-friendly – Olivia warns her colleague to stay outside, lest the lesbian in the apartment attack her too. [Ed: You can see that in the above clip.] What we also saw was a scene where Olivia and the lesbian activist character spent time reflecting, and Olivia was comforting her. The character did not just jump on Olivia just because she thought she was there, but because they’d had some shared ‘moments’ (think, Chasing Amy) and because a comment of Olivia’s about the impossibility of her and Elliot getting together had lead Babs to believe that Olivia was indeed gay.”

It’s unclear why the kiss was cut, and we might hear producers talk about the “regular editing process,” but c’mon. The kiss was in the promos. It was trumpeted out by NBC marketing as a way to get viewers to tune in. For nothing. Stooopid.

Tweets Griffin: “They DID cut the kiss w Benson. I AM BABS DUFFY!!”

Here’s the version that aired last night:

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