Dopesick spoilers follow.
It's becoming increasingly clear that mainstream TV shows are getting better and better at queer representation – stories about queerness are becoming more common, and other shows are beginning to understand that queer representation is deeply nuanced – but even with that in mind, it feels like there's a limit on the ways in which these stories are framed.
There has been a move – for the most part, rightly – towards more positive and understanding kinds of queer stories. But they often focus on middle-class characters in urban settings and don't explore the ways in which people from different economic backgrounds might relate to their queerness, their family, and coming out.
Dopesick, the new miniseries about America's opioid crisis that's coming soon to Disney+ in the UK, challenges the assumptions and expectations of contemporary queer stories in the way that it explores the challenges faced by queer mine worker Betsy (Kaitlyn Dever).
Betsy exists with a fundamental tension in her heart; she's in a happy relationship with another woman who she works with, but feels unable to come out to her parents. At a family dinner, Betsy is advised by her parents not to "get too friendly" with Grace (Cleopatra Coleman), unaware of the fact that their daughter is in a relationship with the woman who gives them so much anxiety.
The world of Dopesick (a show that moves around in time a lot, with Betsy's story taking place in 1996) is one that struggles to make peace with the idea of queerness. One woman even says to Betsy, "We know you're trying to steal a husband down in those mines. Don't forget, we've got our eye on you."
Even outside the rural landscapes of Betsy's home life, the people making vast sums of money selling Oxy approach the idea of queerness with a glib coldness, with Amber (Phillipa Soo), saying to Billy (Will Coulter), that he "sounded like a f**".
This language and the treatment of queerness – in the lives of the queer characters themselves, and the ways in which straight people talk about the idea of it – might seem jarring compared to the recent trends in representation, but that's one of the things that makes it so vital.
These scenes aren't designed to be malicious to the audience, but to illustrate the lived experience of queer lives in this time and place.
Betsy's inability to come out to her parents drives a wedge between her and Grace early on in the show. Grace insists that Betsy is spending too much of her life "living underground", a loaded double-meaning that captures both her working in the mines, and also her being closeted.
Betsy wants to keep her head down and figure out what to do (about her family, about moving to a gay-friendly town in Arizona with Grace) in a year. So much of the ways in which Betsy tries to navigate queerness is through the language of hiding and secrecy. Dopesick is able to capture the tension that can exist in so much of queer life: the desire to live openly and happily, and the compromises you might need to make in order to stay safe.
The show never judges Betsy for these choices. At no point does it tie the legitimacy of her identity to the need for her to come out. Instead, it understands the challenges that queer people face.
In the second episode of Dopesick, Betsy attempts to come out to her mother. It's something that she's struggled to articulate to anyone but Grace; there's a hesitance in the way she tries to explain it to her doctor (Michael Keaton's Samuel Finnix), constantly aware of the fact that not all responses to her coming out would be good.
In her coming out speech, the most striking things are the way that Betsy stresses that, in spite of her queerness, she's still "the same person", capturing a very specific anxiety about coming out: the fear of being seen different, seen as deceitful.
As she explains all of this, saying that she "can't live like this anymore", and just wants to be herself, it feels like someone who's been underground for too long seeing the light for the first time. Betsy's need to come out is rooted in the need to be herself.
Dopesick is a show about pain – physical, emotional, addictive – and even before the injury in the mines in episode one that leads to Betsy taking Oxy, the show is able to illustrate a different, more subtle kind of pain through the gulf created between Betsy and her family through her queerness.
After coming out, her mother's only response is "Did you say something to me?" This quietly heartbreaking rejection captures so much of what makes the queer representation of Dopesick different to other shows that are on TV right now. It never loses sight of the fact that Betsy's story is one worth telling.
In many ways, she's the heart of the show. Her narrative foregrounds the human damage done by Oxy, and she's never made to simply be a victim. She's someone finding ways to deal with pain, and how to be herself openly and safely.
There might be an impulse to look at the representation in Dopesick as being old-fashioned or regressive, but to do so would be an oversimplification. By telling stories that still so often fly under the radar, even in an age of ever-increasing queer stories, it's able to add to this ongoing conversation with nuance and empathy.
The show understands the reality of the time and place in which its set, never reducing its characters to caricatures of victimhood or bigotry.
A show like Dopesick was always going to be political, and the strength of its representation comes from the clear and honest ways that it looks at these issues, rather than oversimplifying them in a way that would fit in with more contemporary arguments and stories about representation.
Dopesick is currently airing in the US on Hulu, and will be arriving on Disney+ in the UK on November 12.
