Tampa Baes is a Fascinating Hot Mess
Tampa Baes is a Fascinating Hot Mess
A Head-Empty Review
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I watched all of Tampa Baes, and it kind of melted my brain.
Billed as an eight-part docuseries (it’s literally just a reality show), Tampa Baes follows twelve – yes twelve – lesbians living in Tampa, Florida. Ostensibly, the show centers on Cuppie (a nickname of unknown origin), a travel nurse and strip club bartender who has just returned to Tampa after time away. Cuppie is loud, loves to party, and always carries around a large fan wherever she goes.
Unfortunately, the show begins to branch out from Cuppie after the first few episodes, focusing more so on the eleven other women in the cast. First of all, this is just way too many characters for one show, and second of all, I found myself missing the entertaining and generally good-spirited Cuppie – who initially rubbed me the wrong way – when compared to some of the other more chaotic cast members.
The dramatic premise of the series is the idea that there are two “warring” couples in the Tampa lesbian scene. There are Haley and Brianna (aka Murphy), who live in a huge house filled with neon signs and stripper poles, and seem to actually care about being at the top of the lesbian food chain. Then there are Summer and Marissa, who are less well-off and seem to not care much about the supposed competition for the top spot.
The first few episodes of the show are, to be honest, kind of boring. The girls drink, they party, they get into fights, they talk about each other in confessionals. The so-called rivalry between the two couples seems totally silly and also kind of made up, and the stakes don’t seem very high, which is especially confounding considering how much resentment seems to be bubbling beneath the surface between some of the baes.
But then, in Episode 4, entitled “Battle of the Baes,” the drama ratchets up quite a few notches. While having a ‘girl’s night out’ with some of the baes’ moms, a shocking fight erupts. In a really surprising revelation, Summer reveals to Haley that Brianna once asked her to “fuck at Crossfit” three years ago, and also apparently touched her inappropriately a number of times. Haley does not take this accusation well, and for some reason brings Cuppie (who used to date Marissa) into the conversation, accusing Marissa of cheating on Summer with Cuppie. (Cuppie is understandably bewildered, and is like, “Why am I in this?”)
The fight starts to get even more heated when Brianna – who I swear has no light behind her eyes and kind of terrifies me – stands up on a table and starts yelling at people. Haley then throws a drink at someone and starts attacking Mel, a cast member who, again, has literally nothing to do with any of this. Also, in the bathroom, Brianna literally shoves a bae named Olivia into one of the stalls, which is all the more alarming because Olivia is her good friend and one of her closest allies.
At this point, lines are drawn in the sand between the two couples, and all the baes must pick sides. This becomes particularly problematic for Cuppie, who is friends with them both, and two other baes, Ali and Nelly, who are good friends with Marissa and Summer but are shocked by everything that’s transpired. When Marissa and Summer sit down with Ali and Nelly for drinks, Summer issues them an ultimatum, saying that if they even interact with Haley and Brianna at all then their friendship is over.
Frankly, this moment was pretty shocking, but I also think it was a missed opportunity on the part of the show to delve into some of the issues that were brought up in the previous episode. What it sounds like – though Summer doesn’t explicitly frame it this way – is that there is an issue of sexual harassment with Brianna, especially since several other girls corroborated Summer’s accusation that Brianna often behaves inappropriately. But Summer herself never discusses Brianna’s behavior in these terms, even when decreeing her ultimatum to Ali and Nelly. Not only would her ultimatum make more sense if it was an issue of personal safety, but the show also could’ve taken this moment to discuss the very real issue of harassment, assault, and abuse within the lesbian community, something that too often gets swept under the rug. Without this framing, the conflict still feels more trivial than perhaps it should.
Though the drama between Summer/Marissa and Haley/Brianna is given central importance on the show, there are a whole eight other baes in the cast who also have their own storylines, with varying degrees of interest. Most glaringly, the show’s only two black cast members, Jordan and Mack, aren’t really given anything to do. Jordan mostly talks about her long-distance girlfriend and has a brief storyline where she comes out to her grandparents, and Mack reconnects with her brother but doesn’t get to do much else.
Shiva, who I initially liked, has a weird moment where she records Mack speaking loudly in the back of a car (not great) and also essentially outs a woman she has a crush on who has a boyfriend at the time of their meeting (also not great).
Part of the problem with the show’s construction is that it's tonally all over the place. It rather jarringly oscillates from drunken shenanigans and fighting to the baes having deep conversations about mental health and familial trauma, some of which don’t land particularly well. One of the most unnatural elements of the show is the way they try to bring the baes’ families into the fold, leading to moments that often feel rather scripted. In particular, one scene depicts Shiva having her friends over for dinner and having her mom (who is from Iran) cook for them. The baes all ask Shiva’s mom about what it’s like to be gay in Iran, and not only does the poor woman not really seem like she wants to be answering these questions, but the conversation and the dinner party itself feel overly produced.
On the positive side of things, one of my favorite things in the later episodes was getting to know Cuppie a little bit better and learning about her struggles with anxiety and how therapy has really helped her. One particularly interesting conversation between Cuppie and Mel revealed that they both had difficult upbringings and actually dated the same person at one point. (Not surprising in the lesbian community, but it at least felt like a natural conversation point between two women who were getting to know each other better). Cuppie’s discussions of her journey with mental health actually felt like they came from her, rather than the producers, even if the tonal shifts within each episode still felt somewhat jarring.
While some amount of gravitas in the show is probably needed, Tampa Baes is at its best when it lets the baes have fun and let loose. One of the most successful exercises in the show is the softball game in Episode 3, which definitely causes some of the tension to keep simmering but more importantly is just fun to watch.
As the tension between Summer/Marissa and Haley/Brianna rises in the last few episodes, the show becomes both harder to watch and also impossible to look away from. Though Tampa Baes ends with an engagement between Summer and Marissa, the last moments of the show are a shocking cliffhanger – one of the couples got married, and we’re led to believe it’s someone other than Summer and Marissa.
All in all, it’s definitely not a great show, but it does have an unexpected way of hooking you about halfway through. (If you can get through the first few episodes). It would probably be much improved if they cut about half of the baes from the cast (twelve is just too many), and let Cuppie take center stage again. (I rather unexpectedly came out of this experience a big Cuppie fan. Who would have guessed?)
Somehow, Tampa Baes is both too trashy and not trashy enough, and it often has trouble finding its tonal balance. Perhaps we could have expected this based on Amazon Prime’s insistence on calling it an “unscripted docuseries” rather than what it actually is – a condensed reality show – but such semantics don’t really matter in the end. Unfortunately, I will be watching Season 2 because I need to know who got married and want to see more of Cuppie and her fan, but I can’t say I’m exactly happy about it.
Before you leave, I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) in January to celebrate the one-year anniversary of this newsletter. So if you have any questions for me or any topics you want my opinion on, let me know! You can leave a comment here, DM me on Twitter, or e-mail me at kira.deshler@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.