Blood and Water

Blood and Water (2020-present) is a South African teen drama/thriller, think Riverdale meets Gossip Girl. The main story revolves around Puleng investigating a girl that she thinks might be her sister, Phume, who had been kidnapped as a baby.

Puleng’s best friend Zama invites her to a party that she is attending with Chris, a new guy she is seeing. It’s there that Puleng sees Fikile a girl that she suspects is her sister. Chris is part of her close friend group, all of whom attend the prestigious Parkhurst school. In an attempt to get closer to Fikile, she decides to also start attending Parkhurst.

Once there she manages to infiltrate Fikile’s friend group, and we get to know Chris better. When Puleng is surprised to learn that he is interested in men, his friends casually mention that Chris is pansexual. It’s isn’t really a big conversation after that, they all accept him for who he is and Christ just gets to enjoy being Chris.

Chris is clearly attracted to Zama and another student Mark. For a while they try to make it work out as a throuple, but Chris quickly learns that it isn’t all about him. It turns out that all three parties have to be interested in order for that structure to work and Zama and Mark are just not that into it. 

He goes on to explore more relationships with men and women and even grows quite a bit as a character. He comes to develop an opposites attract relationship with class overachiever Wendy and is forced to grow and think a little harder about what makes a good relationship. 

Chris starts out as a pretty stereotypical sex-crazed hedonist, but over the course of the three seasons, the character experiences some real growth. We see him learn how to form real romantic relationships and prove that he is capable of being honest with his partners. He is also a fiercely loyal friend, a definite break from the stereotype of the untrustworthy bi character. Hopefully we’ll get to see him continue to grow in a fourth season.