Isabelle Blundell

Isabelle Blundell is a fictional character from the TV series Alienated. She was played by Iris Graham.

Isabelle is a 16-year-old white girl who lives with her middle-class family in the suburbs of Victoria, British Columbia. Aliens have begun abducting members of her family, and returning them, changed in ways that touch on their sexuality.

She is one of the still rare lesbian characters on television. Isabelle is starting to figure out her sexual orientation, and initially uses the alien abductions to explain her behaviour, and bullies her younger brother by calling attention to his supposed homosexuality as a distraction from herself, because she fears her parents' reaction.

The show situates Isabelle's homosexuality as a normal human element, in contrast with the unnatural alien interference, and its effects on the sexuality of the people in her family, and it also shows as misguided the homophobic tactic of rejecting homosexuality as inhuman, abnormal behaviour.

Isabelle's storyline

Over the course of the series, Isabelle comes to term with her sexual orientation. Although she has a girlfriend in season 1 (Nina), she's still in the closet at home and at school. Nina breaks up with her between seasons (possibly because the actress who played her stopped working on the show), and Isabelle cites her closeted status as a reason for this break-up.

In order to hide her behaviour, Isabelle had told her family that the aliens had abducted her in S1, when in fact, they had not.

At the beginning of season 2, the Blundell family are driven out of their home by the combined pressures of the aliens and of government surveillance, and go to spend the night in a motel. Isabelle has met a girl named Charlie, who is new at her school, and they make out in the car outside the motel.

Later, when Isabelle is asleep in the room with her family (she's on the floor, on a sleeping bag), the aliens abduct her for real, and, because her parents witnessed it, she has to admit that she lied about her previous abduction. This convinces the Blundells that their house is not the cause of the aliens' interest in them, so they return home.

Following the abduction, Isabelle develops a huge pimple on her forehead. This pimple is an alien pimple, however: it starts to emit flashes of light at boys when Isabelle is in proximity to them, instantly making them attracted to her, and making her flirt with them in spite of herself.

Isabelle's flirting with boys understandably creates tension in her relationship with Charlie, and Isabelle must put a stick-on bandage over the pimple to stop it from flashing anyone else, while trying to control the pimple's effects on herself.

In "The Weekly Inquisitor", George Takei, guest-starring as a parodic version of himself, visits the Blundells with the intention of buying their home, which has been exposed as a site of alien activity. When George Takei asks for proof of the aliens' interference, Isabelle's father (unemployed and eager to make money from the house) suggests she show him her pimple.

Isabelle removes the bandage from her forehead, and the pimple flashes George Takei, who instantly becomes entranced with Isabelle, while she acts seductively. Quickly, however, Isabelle re-sticks the bandage, and both of them stop feeling the pimple's effects. (The house sale does not go through, however, because Sarah persuades Roger to tell George Takei the truth about the house.)

Finally, in "Coming Out", Charlie publicly comes out as a lesbian at school, and eventually Isabelle does too, and, as they kiss in front of the crowd in the cafeteria, Isabelle's pimple disappears.

Isabelle also has to confront her father's attitude: he thinks the aliens made her a lesbian, which she denies. Her girlfriend Charlie dismisses the idea as ridiculous, citing historical examples of gays and lesbians, which the aliens had nothing to do with.

Character Quotes

On her sexual orientation:

"The aliens didn't make me a lesbian!"