The Year in Gay Television: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Betty

This year ABC Family had a surprise hit on their hands with their new college drama Greek, and gay viewers had a new favorite character in Calvin (Paul James), one of the few gay African-American men on television. Best of all, Calvin’s character was out to viewers from the first episode, had a relationship during the season, and was his frat’s star athlete (before he was inadvertently outed to his brothers and quit). One of the other few gay men of color, Omar on The Wire, will return with the show’s fifth season in January.

While FX’s Nip/Tuck doesn’t currently feature a gay or bisexual male character (there was a bisexual serial killer in Season 3), the show deserves a special mention for not only routinely including gay men in secondary storylines, but for the recent “bromance” between Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) that had Christian questioning whether or not he was gay and in love with his best friend.

Other cable dramas with noteworthy gay characters include Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) on AMC’s Mad Men, Ian Gallagher (Gerard Kearns) on Sundance’s Shameless, Marco Del Rossi (Adamo Ruggiero) on Degrassi: The Next Generation, and the cross-dressing, but heterosexual son on FX’s The Riches.

Cable shows are not immune to the “barely there” syndrome themselves with notable examples including the Sci Fi Channel’s Vincent (Chris Gauthier) on Eureka, BBC America’s Ben Trueman (Michael Obiora) on Hotel Babylon, Sanjay (Maulik Pancholy) on Showtime’s critical darling, Weeds, as well as characters on two FX shows, Dirt and The Shield.

Is Being Gay a Laughing Matter? If Done Right!

While it’s not necessary to look back any further than last year’s erstwhile sitcom Help Me Help You to find tired gay stereotypes mined for comedy, there does seem to be a change afoot in how sitcoms spin gay characters and gay issues for laughs. Not counting animated characters on The Simpsons and American Dad, only two network sitcoms in 2007 featured gay characters: NBC’s The Office and the now canceled Fox series The War at Home.

While last year’s “Gay Witch Hunt” episode justifiably won The Office an Emmy, since then the program hasn’t done much with the show’s lone gay character Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez). When it comes to network sitcoms it was The War at Home’s coming out storyline involving Kenny (Rami Malek) that was the most satisfying on a sitcom this year. It not only involved a blue collar family dealing with the issue of sexual orientation, the story also crossed cultural boundaries as Kenny’s family is of Middle Eastern descent.

While network sitcoms scored poorly on regularly occurring gay or bisexual characters, there were definite bright spots when it came to their handling of gay humor. Leading the pack was NBC’s My Name is Earl, a show that occasionally features “gay Kenny,” as the other characters refer to him. But it was this season’s “The Gangs of Camden County” in which Earl truly shone. Despite being set in prison and involving a secret relationship between two rival gang members, the episode managed to avoid the whiff of homophobia or any gay clichés and even included a very sweet kiss between the two lovers.

Another NBC sitcom, 30 Rock, also featured several gay storylines, including an amusing rivalry between the very heterosexual Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and the very gay Devon Banks (Will Arnett). A recent episode also included a storyline involving the heretofore-heterosexual Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander) falling hard for an adorable deliveryman. It wasn’t a perfect episode, but the show’s heart was clearly in the right place.

Other network sitcoms that handled gay content nicely include a gay brother on The New Adventures of Old Christine, another gay brother on How I Met Your Mother, gay storylines and characters on The Winner, The George Lopez Show, Andy Barker P.I, and Two and a Half Men. One especially laudable episode was “Operation: Ralph” on ABC’s now canceled The Knights of Prosperity. And, of course, there is always NBC’s gay-friendly Scrubs. The common thread to almost all of these episodes was the lack of gay panic involved and usually finding humor in things other than tired, gay clichés. In fact, it often was homophobia or the clueless heterosexual made the butt of the joke.