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The queerness of NBC’s new hit comedy “Crowded”

On this Sunday’s episode of NBC’s new family comedy Crowded, 20-something Stella (Mia Serafino) kisses a girl right in front of her parents (Carrie Preston and Patrick Warburton). That’s not something that happens on network TV too often.

“I think my character might be one of the first what we call sexually fluid characters on network television, which is kind of cool,” Mia told us after a panel for the show at TCA this past January. “I think it shows that I don’t want to be defined as bisexual or lesbian just like who I’m attracted to, which is kind of a millennial thing. So it’s kind of cool they’re letting me explore with that and go further.”

Crowded is based on creator Suzanne Martin (Hot in Cleveland, Ellen) and what happened with her millennial daughters (Stella’s younger sister, Shea, is played by Nickelodeon fave Miranda Cosgrove) moved back home. One of those daughters happens to be gay.

“I always wanted the second episode to be her coming down the stairs and her kissing a girl, and the parents going ‘What?’ and then making that sort of the story,” Suzanne said. “And when I did it, the network was sort of like, ‘Shouldn’t that be the A story?’ And I just wanted it to be nothing, just the way that a step-mom on the show is black and I want it to be nothing. I want no one to say-in the pilot we don’t say why or how. You don’t talk about stuff like that when it’s in your family.”

After kissing the girl goodbye, Stella saunters into the kitchen where she tells her family, “Just because I slept with a woman doesn’t make me a lesbian.” Her father looks confused and replies, “Doesn’t it, though?”

“I was so excited when I read that because I feel like people kind of steer away from [sexual fluidity],” Mia said, “but it’s very much a part of who my character is. It’s cool she doesn’t care what people think. She’s gonna do what she wants to do, even if it’s kissing a girl right in front of her parents with no explanation.”

The joke surrounding the moment of the kiss is that it’s not about the kiss at all.

“She comes down, and the mom goes crazy and [says], ‘You cut your hair!’ Which would be so much more upsetting for me if her daughter cut her hair,” Suzanne said.

“I was so happy that in the second episode that that worked out,” Suzanne said. “That story goes away and week to week she can be with girls she can be with guys, and it actually is revealed in that episode that the mom once slept with a girl. I just feel like there’s sort of a whole new world of all that and I want to have that on the show, because I think that’s the reality of young people these days.”

Suzanne said that she finds sexual fluidity “fascinating” and the Crowded writers’ room includes out lesbian Sabrina Jalees as well as another unnamed writer who proclaimed their fluidity early on.

“Our first day, I go around the room-because I always think truth is funny so I want everyone’s truth to come out,” Suzanne said. “And one person on staff said, ‘Well, I prefer women, but I’m also with men,’ and it was like, ‘I have to know more about that.'”

“[Sabrina] is so great,” Mia said. “We have a lot of great young writers so it’s fun to have their young voices. It’s been like a really great balance in the writers’ room and I’m friends with some of them so it’s fun to hear the little back and forths get into. It’s like millennials vs. like the old school veteran writers, so I think it makes for a good mix of generations.”

While Stella’s sexual identity is not a focus of the show, her being so open and free with her mother is. There is no real line between mom/daughter/friend in the Crowded household, which brings a lot of rich humor not often shown on television.

“She gets in a lot of trouble but she’s definitely sincere always,” Mia said. “She kind of has a heart of gold but she’s always challenging the lines of ‘Are they my friends? Are they my parents?’ She has no awareness that her parents aren’t her friends so she kind of tells them everything. They’re accepting, like Patrick’s character needs to process [her sexuality] more but yeah, they’re pretty hip parents as far as that goes.”

Suzanne says we won’t see much of Mia’s dating life in Season 1-it’s more about the family relationship–but she wants to dig into that in Season 2, should the show be picked up.

“Next year I want to get much more into the girls’ dating lives. Because living through that with my daughters, it’s just so rich with stuff and that is actually what a big difference is,” Suzanne said. “My mother had no idea what I was up to, and I think she was happy not knowing. I know way too much. I swipe the Tinder, I know about the Ubers of shame, I know way too much. You do find yourself thinking, ‘Don’t you have friends you can tell these things to?’

“It’s interesting,” she continued, “because your parents’ sexuality is disgusting. We all agree on that. Your kids’ sexuality is unsettling. It’s not disgusting because you want that for them.” She notes that Stella’s mom, Martina, makes it known in the same episode that she slept with a woman before, something her daughters knew, but that her husband wasn’t aware of.

As for if Mia will be dating women in the future, Suzanne pretty much assured it.

“You never know what’s going to come down the stairs,” she said. “And I think that’s fun.”

Crowded airs Sunday nights on NBC 9:30/8:30c. You can watch the pilot on NBC.com now.

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