Indie Series: ‘You, Me, and Goodbye’ Attempts To Find The Sweet Spot Between Representation And Creativity

The arts and entertainment space has always lacked fair representation. Be it gender, race or sexuality, those comprising the minority have struggled to find a fitting platform to have their experiences shown, so it is always a win when creatives are able to pull it off.

OML aims to do precisely that. Formerly known as One More Lesbian, this organization was launched in 2009 with the goal of bringing attention to the dynamics of same-sex relationships among women through visual media. Over time, they have broadened their scope and started covering issues pertaining to the larger queer community. As the group approaches its 15th year on YouTube, they have 917K subscribers and over 450 million views to their name. Considering they brand themselves as “Curators of the world's finest LGBTQ+ film, television, and video content on one site,” this is no trivial matter.

Yet, the team has some major shortcomings that are tough to overlook. By focusing too much on depicting themes that have been historically obscured from the public’s view, some OML creators seem to have lost touch with the practices that could add value to their art.

The recently released You, Me, and Goodbye is a demonstration of this imbalance. Premiered on July 2022, this seven-part series is about a suppressed romance between two high-school girls who are former best friends. After being estranged from one another for nearly three years, Spencer Hawthorne and Frankie Birch meet again at a mutual friend’s graduation party. This gives them the opportunity to reevaluate their relationship, explore its true nature and come to terms with what the future holds for them considering they’re both in a transitionary phase of their lives.

It's a tried and tested formula that usually works, except the nature of the romance in question is one we don’t often see. It sounds great on paper, especially in the context of LGBTQ+ representation, but the manner in which it plays out on screen blemishes its potential.

You, Me, and Goodbye is essentially the web series equivalent of angsty pop-punk music — it potentially serves a purpose to those within a very specific age bracket i.e. high school kids, but for anyone older than that, it’s an uncomfortable watch. The show wasn’t exactly put together with longevity in mind; in fact, it ages so fast that you feel like an outsider by the time you’re halfway through. This means that it’s that blend of grown-ups trying to display the young-adult condition, and whereas this may seem compelling at first, the more you watch, the less natural it feels.

The limitations and cliches of the two main characters stand out from the get go. In a nutshell: the bad girl (Hawthorne) pulls the good girl (Birch) out of her shell. There isn’t much more to it, though the creators felt that stretching this out over an hour was a good idea if they could use it as a vessel to show two girls in love. There’s no doubt that queer representation is much needed, but to fulfill it via a dull plot doesn’t help much. Representation, especially of this nature, works well when it looks natural, and this entire series falls short.

Whereas Alexandria Michelle and Mia McGlinn, who play Hawthorne and Birch respectively, are convincing as actors, the overall execution by the production team is not at its best. Though it would be unreasonable to hold independent content creators to the same standards as major production studios, OML has been around and established for a while; expectations should be higher for them than for the average entry-level film crew.

The audio mixing makes it challenging to follow what the characters are saying. This is a major drawback considering this series is centered on dialogue and acting rather than plot. The series seeks to give viewers an intimate look into friendship and queer love, but this only goes when you miss so much of what they say. It forces you to put your headphones on and then tolerate the fluctuation from left to right. All in all, it’s not fun and this takes away from the seriousness of each setting.

Adding to that is the lack of continuity in the exchanges between the lead characters. Each episode is ripe with ads, but they’re scattered so much that they ruin the flow of the story. Instead of placing them between scenes, they’re pretty much all non-sequiturs that seem like they were meant to catch viewers off guard and infiltrate their attention. By suddenly transitioning to an ad in the middle of a dialogue, those watching are bound to lose track of what was being said and forced to rewind.

Some scenes do not appear properly executed because the editing does not live up to the series' potential. This goes to show that even good acting alone can’t save a project — the way the scenes are chopped up takes away from the effect the content could’ve had if the editing had been more precise.

There’s a lot that Katie Hightower and Mia McGlinn didn’t think of when they wrote this series. The script is boring and the dialogues are unrealistic. The scene when a security guard tells Hawthorne to “go listen to Brandi Carlisle somewhere else like you teenagers do” demonstrates that the show was written by outsiders even if they themselves identify as queer, because that’s simply not how people talk. This is precisely why Michelle and McGlinn deserve credit for their acting, but it’s also a little confusing since the latter also wrote the series.

The bad girl makes the good girl feel “alive”  has been done a million times before and it’ll be done a million more times. For You, Me, and Goodbye to be yet another example only makes the series less remarkable despite all the other things it hopes to accomplish.