#red webseries

[Spoiler alert!! The following paragraphs may contain information that you don’t want to read before watching RED Season 4]

First of all, I’m a woman who is very much aware (and has suffered) the Lesbian Death Trope and Bury Your Gays across lots of TV Series and, hence, I came to watch this fourth season with just a thought: “please, please, please, for the love of Lexa do not fall into the trope. Don’t make them split up, and do not kill them”. 

However, at the end of the season finale, I just could think: “this isn’t common. Thank you for portraying this”.

As I was watching the episodes I could feel myself becoming more and more uncomfortable, and at first I didn’t know where this feeling was coming from.  Then, I realised: the relationship between Mel and Liz was falling for the romantic love myths that society imposes on us, one by one. 

As many other wlw on the media and I know this quite well as I did reasearch about this, (like actual serious research), Mel and Liz are having the kind of relationship that you can’t abandon, but also makes you inherently unhappy. It is a relationship that never gets to fill your soul, but also you cannot end because you feel like you can’t live without the other person.

So, the problem is portrayed since the very beggining: 

- Liz and Mel are having a relationship in which they have gone through a lot emotionally (an abortion in which the father was Mel’s exhusband, Liz’s drug addiction). They are also broken because of their lies (each of them on their own way), but yet they believe their love is stronger than their pain, so they continue no matter what.

- Through the first part of the season, they try once and again to forget this pain and come back to that state of the relationship in which everything was fine, they were in love and just living the present.

So the thing is, they try desperately to come back to the “falling in love” moment, to when they had all the time in the world to discover each other. They try to retrieve that passion that brought them together, and most of all, they try to maintain that infatuation they had with each other.

Why is that? Well, because society tells us that that is true love, the “meant for each other” part, the “half orange” you have to look for and retain as longer as you can.

So, what happened in this season that made me think  “this isn’t common. Thank you for portraying this”?  Simple. In my opinion, the season had the best ending I could ever imagine, because they splitted up. 

"Oh my God, how could you think like that?!”

Well, first, the season was centered on Liz’s character development: On the one hand, as Mel’s girlfriend; on the other hand, as a drug addict in recovery. This two parts of her life are very much connected, and the creators of the webseries do not fail at representing her mixed feelings from the very beggining. 

Liz’s development takes us through a journey that made me feel very uncomfortable because of how they represented her submission to the relationship (first more subtle, then more visual). Two main characteristics of this submission I recognized: 

1. She was always there for Mel, no matter her feelings or emotions. 

2. She started to feel jealous, which can be translated as being insecure about herself. 

The second characteristic is the most important fact about the season in my opinion, as it is the one that makes Liz wonder about herself, her changes of behaviour and her own emotions apart from Mel. 

The drug addict support group plays here a crucial role, because it is there where Liz realizes she can’t continue like this, and most of all, she realize that the source of her emotions and instability is the crazy and exhausting love she feels for Mel. She suddenly understands that she needs to learn a healthier way to love, or it will be her downfall. In other terms, and as she literally says to Mel, she is “tired” of living on an emotional downward spiral, and finally puts her mental health first.

That is the development I loved, and that is why I fully support this split up. Liz has become a human being I admire, as this strong woman who takes care of her mental health (and hence Mel’s too), and takes away the bad influences in her life, even if that means having to split up with her girlfriend. Also, we can’t forget she’s doing this while being a drug addict, which makes it even more important on a representative aspect.

I do believe they need to split up to fully understand what is wrong with this way of loving that society tells us to look for. They need to learn how to love each other without forgetting themselves. They need to learn how to be together without feeling the insecurity of losing the other.

And if on a Season 5 they end up together again in a much healthier relationship, I truly believe that, by that moment, I could have witnessed the best representation of a wlw relationship I have ever seen in my entire life.

been a fan of this series since it started, the love story between mel and liz is so mesmerizing , and now my girl is hooked as well, even bought the by demand episode.