In December 2004, Josh Schwartz, creator of the hit teen series The O.C., gave an exclusive interview to Out.com. He revealed that Marissa, the female lead of the show who up until then had been entirely heterosexual, would be exploring a relationship with a girl on the new season. The interview included this exchange:    

Out.com: What made you want to do a woman's story? Why not have Seth explore? He's been through it all with Summer [his girlfriend].
Josh Schwartz: There's enough people claiming there's a homosexual subtext between Seth and Ryan [the male lead], so why make it the text? [Laughs] Seth is so tied to the Summer storyline. He wasn't really available.    

Schwartz's reasoning here seems odd, to say the least. The previous ‘homosexual subtext' between Seth and Ryan would have meant that a storyline in which one or both of them explored a gay relationship would not have come completely out of left-field (as it did with Marissa). And Seth is no more ‘tied' to the Summer storyline than Marissa is ‘tied' to the Ryan storyline. (Those two heterosexual relationships, to which the characters always return, are the center of the show).    

But a storyline where Seth or Ryan explored a relationship would not have allowed for the scenario that (usually male, usually straight) TV executives are so fond of. Attractive bi-curious girl ‘goes gay' for an episode or a couple of episodes, before returning to heterosexuality as if nothing had happened. Where bisexuality has been depicted on television, it has almost always been in these temporary terms, rather than in terms of a long-running character who is consistently bisexual. And the person involved has almost always been a woman.    

This portrayal may have its negative side (reinforcing the idea that female bisexuality is a phase, that it is something done to titillate men, that it will always end with the woman going back to men). But the positive aspect is that it has at least made people more accustomed to the idea that a woman's sexuality could be fluid. Whereas when it comes to men, this idea is still seen as much more foreign, improbable, funny, or even threatening.  

Two quite similar episodes of Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, both of which aired in 2000, illustrate the point. In episode 3:13, ‘Pursuit of Loneliness', Ally meets a man, Hammond Dearing, to whom she is strongly attracted. However, she is completely thrown when he tells her that he is bisexual.

The scenario is played for some (frankly bi-phobic) laughs, with Ally's friend Elaine telling her that “This is worse than the last one - he just turned out to be homeless”, a fixated Ally stammering “bi!” instead of “hi!” when she sees Hammond, and a visualization of Hammond in bed with another man accompanied by horror-movie music. Hammond is given a chance to argue against Ally's fears and prejudices about bisexual men, and she eventually admits she's been guilty of bigotry. But the episode ends with her telling him she “just can't get by it” (ho, ho).    

In Sex and the City episode 3:4, ‘Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl', Carrie Bradshaw is dating a younger man named Shawn, who turns out to have dated both men and women in the past. Cut to an angst-ridden brunch with the girls, where Miranda agrees with Carrie that “of course” Shawn's bisexuality will be “a problem” if Carrie is going to continue dating him. (There is a particular irony in this, given that Cynthia Nixon, who plays Miranda, was recently revealed to be bisexual herself).

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