Outward

God Plays Matchmaker in UnReal’s Sexy Lesbian Web Spinoff

Amy (Malea Mitchell) and Faith (Breeda Wool) find a gay-friendly God in The Faith Diaries

Jack Zeman/Lifetime

In Aesop’s fable “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” a rural rodent is thrilled when his cousin in the big city shows him the fine foods and fabulous frills available in the metropolis—only to skitter back home when a run-in with vicious dogs reminds him how scary urban living can be.

Watching the first episode of The Faith Diaries, a series of digital shorts from the creators of Lifetime’s breakout hit UnREAL, I worried that this would be the fate of Faith (Breeda Wool), who we first met when she was one of the contestants on Everlasting, the fictional dating show behind whose scenes UnREAL is set. On Everlasting/UnREAL, Faith was the plucky outsider—a guileless small-town cowgirl quite unlike the other scheming bachelorettes who were angling for a wedding proposal from posh British hotelier Adam. But it wasn’t just her country ways that differentiated her from the other husband-seekers; while being wooed by Adam, Faith realized that she was in love with her best friend, Amy.

In the first of the shorts—each three-minute film represents a week in Faith’s life—Faith and Amy (Malea Mitchell) move to Los Angeles, where Faith has been offered a modeling gig on the strength of her congeniality on Everlasting. The country mouse moment comes all too soon, when the basement apartment they’ve rented online proves to be a Craigslist scam. Fortunately, UnREAL’s kinda-sorta heroine Rachel provides an off-screen introduction to her friends Mickey and Ruth, who let the newcomers live in their guesthouse. Naturally, it turns out that Mickey, played with butch brio by Glee’s Dot-Marie Jones, is a big ole dyke—as Faith and Amy learn when they pull up and find her smooching Ruth. Soon enough, Faith and Amy are making out, too, though only in the confines of the guesthouse.

In Week 5, Amy lands a job in a gay bar, and Faith makes a mistake that could only happen to someone who’s never watched television: She pays a surprise visit to the bar and discovers Amy kissing a co-worker. A couple of “weeks” later, Mickey is taking a depressed Faith dildo shopping and giving her a pep talk that goes something like this: “Making love to a woman you adore is a beautiful thing. It’s a religious thing. Hell, it’s a God thing if you want it to be. And Faith, Jesus wants you to screw your girlfriend, with great vigor and religious feeling until she sees His glorious face and moans and sees that face.”

Of course, everything goes wrong, the dildo sees no action, and soon they’re broken up, and Faith is drunk on the bedroom floor. That’s city life for you! The denouement will surprise everyone except, perhaps, dedicated Lifetime viewers: Faith and Amy reconcile after they go to gay-friendly church, see a bunch of homosexuals PDAing in a gay coffee shop, and in a moment of perfect clarity enjoy their own public make-out session.

Binge-watching the 10 episodes of The Faith Diaries is a whiplash-inducing experience. They’re in love! They don’t know how to make love! Toys don’t help! Breakup! God brings them back together! Ultimately, though, it’s a positive story of self-acceptance that packs in as much lesbian kissing as the first two seasons of The L Word combined.

Presented with the destabilizing forces of the big city, the country mouse didn’t run home with her tail between her legs. Instead, she took the best things from her background—her faith, her relationship with Amy—and combined them with the community support she could only find in the city to make a better life for herself and her partner. And while it feels odd to have God play matchmaker, Faith’s final words are the kind of dialogue we seldom hear in mainstream culture: “This was my true test from Him. Not to pray away the gay, but to tell the truth about my love for Amy. And to tell the truth about my love for myself. God is good! God is real good! God forgives me. In Jesus’ name, amen.” To find happiness and acceptance, Faith and Amy—and everyone else in this world—need love, a community, and acceptance, including from God, if that’s how you roll.