Undeleted Photos

I can’t sleep on planes. I don’t know why; I’m not an anxious person, and have plenty of pot gummies. You’d think I’d be able to play one of the boring little games on my phone specifically for the purpose of shutting down when I’m trying to get to sleep. But I’ve flown an eight-hour red eye to Ireland and not slept a wink. So one of my favorite plane pastimes is deleting iPhone photos. I’m otherwise terrible at finding time for the task, and as a natural documentarian, at any given time I’m hoarding over 20,000 photos, so I love an opportunity to get rid of hundreds of unnecessary screenshots and duplicates.

My trip last week to Arkansas was a great photo deletion time, but not a single photo was zapped. Why? Because for the first time, I downloaded episodes of shows I’m watching so I could see them on the plane. Since we were staying with family, I decided to use travel time to fall into that little zone-out plane escape pseudo-nap time. I was on muscle relaxers for my bad back, weed gummies, a travel pillow around my neck clasped at my ears to drown out the airplane noise and nothing but a sweet binge fest to and from Arkansas.

I got hooked on The Ultimatum: Queer Love during Pride Month. The concept of the show, similar to reality shows with the straights, is that five couples arrive in a generic palm tree setting for eight weeks; in this case they’re Millennial and Gen Z lesbians. One partner in the couple has issued an ultimatum to the other: marry me, or fuck off (regardless of whether we’ve been together five or even 10 years). Couples agree to swap and date others, even living in a “trial marriage” with another woman for three weeks, and then coming back together for three weeks with their original partner. By the end of the show, everyone must choose whether to become engaged to their original partner, a new partner, or leave alone. Lesbian chaos. Season one was a wild ride. As Betches.com says: “Out of five engagements, only one couple is still together. That’s a 20% success rate, or as we like to call it: ‘Netflix Reality Average.’”

I was deep into season two, which explains watching it on the plane as anyone who’s also been on a binge would understand. There are countless posts and memes on social media, with a few common themes. First, the LGBTQI+ community doesn’t always agree but is united in the idea that the straight host needs to go.

From Mathew Rodriguez at them.com: “The Ultimatum: Queer Love host has come under intense scrutiny not only for her poor mediating skills during the second season reunion, but also because she is, well, not from the community the reality dating show purports to represent. The dislike for Swisher has even resulted in a Change.org petition to remove and replace her with a friend of Tiff’s, one of the first season’s cast members. If the original, non-gay version of The Ultimatum gets a pair of heterosexual hosts in Nick and Vanessa Lachey, why are the queer women left with one straight host?”

Also: “In the straight version, the participants are more reticent to cross boundaries, and have more trouble when it comes to connecting emotionally. But in the queer version, the dating period mirrors many queer circles—it’s common for queer women to date within their circles, stay friends with their exes, and form friendships that teeter on romantic. While the act of dating within the same circle may be both normal and entertaining, the added element of timing and marriage complicates the relationships on The Ultimatum: Queer Love.”

One of the benefits of an all-female/non-binary cast is that everyone has a shared experience, especially when everyone is queer. Because of this, many of the cast members have learned how to navigate their way through a world that doesn’t always accept them for who they are. Before and during the show, they’re coming to terms with their identities as related to their partners and vocalizing this in a way that’s relatable to anyone, gay or straight. Queer Love features a higher level of communication, eloquence, and self-reflection—in Season 2, several people have “acted out,” but unlike cast members in the hetero Ultimatum seasons, they’ve taken accountability.

One thing that occurred to me was that there’d be a major benefit to including a couples therapist session in the show. You’re throwing together mostly twentysomething aged kids (a few barely in their 30s) who’re talking about major lifelong decisions, then crashing those decisions into potentially other permanent emotional decisions. At least add professional advice for five minutes, as a courtesy.