Well, Heroes has gone and done it: They've kissed the lesbian. The kiss, which occurs between Claire the indestructible cheerleader (Hayden Panettiere) and her college roommate Gretchen (Californicatiom's Madeline Zima) has been teased for months, and will finally air this Monday. Like shark-jumping, lesbian-kissing is a wet, toothy affair that demands a great amount of agility and courage on the part of the actors, and invariably results in a precipitous tumble in show quality seconds after it airs. (And, in some extreme cases, elicits an outright cancellation.) We've gotten an advanced peek at the kiss in question -- let's see how it measure up to some of TV's greatest girl-on-girl suck-face-fests!
Claire and Gretchen (Hayden Panettiere and Madeline Zima) -- Heroes, 2009
Gretchen is fatally obsessed with Claire, leading her to do a number of stalker-like things like -- gasp! -- Googling her roommate. Their climactic confrontation results in Gretchen leaning over and planting one on Claire's stunned, indestructible-cheerleader lips. There's a distressing lack of give-and-take here. The lesbian TV kiss always features the experienced guest-star aggressor and the ostensibly "straight" series regular being ambushed, but then slowly relaxing into the liplock. But Claire here just seems utterly disinterested, as though she's just thinking about slicing off her head with an electric carving knife, with the intention of putting it in the dishwasher, then reattaching it, lesbian-cooties-free, and hoping nothing of this incident would ever be spoken again.
Now, compare that to some of the most famous lesbian TV kisses in history:
1. Abby and CJ (Amanda Donohue and Michele Greene) -- LA Law, 1991
2. Roseanne and Sharon (Roseanne Barr and Mariel Hemingway) -- Roseanne, 1994
3. Rhonda and Suzanne (Lisa Edelstein and Kristin Dattilo) - Relativity, 1997
4. Ally and Ling (Lucy Liu and Calista Flockhart) -- Ally McBeal, 1999
5. Willow and Tara (Alyson Hannigan, Amber Benson) -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001
6. Xena and Gabrielle (Lucy Lawless, Renée O'Connor) -- Xena: Warrior Princess, '95-'01
7. Rachel Green and Melissa Warburton (Jennifer Aniston and Winona Ryder) -- Friends, 2001
8. Marissa Cooper and Alex Kelly (Mischa Barton and Olivia Wilde) -- The O.C., 2005
9. Erica and Callie (Sara Ramirez, Brooke Smith) -- Grey's Anatomy, 2008
[Research with help from The Frisky and AfterEllen]