Review: OWD 3.19 "Vanessa meets Sera"

Now is the time to discuss episode 3.19 of Out With Dad, “Vanessa Meets Sera”.  This episode continues the spin-off series Vanessa’s story with a rather different setting as Vanessa discusses her life and current predicament with her brother’s friend Sera.  There two non-story related things in this episode that are interesting.  First, this episode is the first cross-over of Out With Dad, as the character of Sera is the star of another Toronto webseries called “LESlieVILLE”.  Also, this episode was filmed in an interesting location, a solarium overlooking a Toronto street.  This caused some technical difficulties, but the final product looks very nice.

As for the story, this episode is almost entirely a conversation between the two characters.  Sera has come to give Vanessa some perspective about accepting herself.  It is, as Vanessa asks, a conversation about “gay things”, but it is also about labels and belonging to a group.

Sera begins with a story about High School, Xena, and labels.  When Sera found an online group of lesbian fans of Xena, she found comfort in knowing there were other people like her, and they all fell under the “lesbian” label.  This is an interesting perspective, because knowing there are people who are like you provides you with people you can identify with. The problem Vanessa has with this is that she doesn’t really see herself as belonging to a group, or having a label.  Vanessa’s attraction to Rose has not become an attraction to girls as opposed to boys.  But Vanessa does seem most likely to think of herself as bisexual. Despite her insistence that there’s only been one girl, she was at least somewhat interested in the girl at the flop house.

Sera seems to convince Vanessa that loving someone doesn’t have to depend of gender, and that Vanessa’s parents really do care about her, they just can’t accept her being anything but heterosexual. I think we’re seeing Vanessa finally get some of the support she needs to deal with things in her life.  There are far too many situations that end tragically because people are kept from the support they need. And having someone, especially a close friend, can help you get through almost anything.