Survival of the Fab-est: How Gay TV Characters Evolve

Genus: Super (Same-Sex) Manus

Lay Terminology: “The Homo Hero”

On the flip side of the Psycho Killer, portrayals of gay men as selfless heroes have, unfortunately, been few and far between. A character like Omar on The Wire (Michael K. Williams) introduced in 2002, with his Robin Hood-like commitment to helping the disenfranchised and strict personal moral code, came close to this kind of positive light. Except that he happened to be a criminal and didn’t exactly meet the best of endings.

Williams (left) & Barrowman

This makes it all the more striking to have a character like Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) of Dr. Who and Torchwood, introduced in 2005. Not only one of the few gay or bisexual characters currently on TV to be the central star of a series, he is also the only one to be cast firmly in a heroic role. But even Jack is far more a Han Solo-like rogue than a Luke Skywalker do-gooder. And those 22nd century scientists will no doubt be mystified as to why there wasn’t a Gay Hero on a series celebrated for its diversity as well as its message that anyone can be a hero; you know, the show called Heroes.

Genus: Backgroundigays

Lay Terminology: “Barely There Gays”

There are those TV characters who can clearly be assigned to a rung on the evolutionary ladder; and then there are those who aren’t on the ladder at all because they’re stuck carrying it around, propping it up, and decorating it.

In other words, when it comes to gay men on television, the vast majority are secondary characters whose primary existence is serving the needs of the central hetero sapiens. There are many such characters, but they so often recede into the background that they’re almost forgotten the second they’re introduced. With careful scrutiny, however, we can identify several sub-genera of these secondary characters — subs who occasionally become dom.

Sub-Genus A) Window Dresserera: Colorful background characters who exist to show off the quirky, offbeat milieu of the show and/or the unconventional characters who inhabit it. First sighting: thirtysomething, 1989; a pair of gay male characters (Peter Frechette and David Marshall Grant), friends of photographer Melissa, are introduced to represent the bohemian circle in which she, unlike her yuppie friends, moved. After earning the show some publicity by going to bed together, they didn’t have much more of a storyline and eventually went the way of the dodo.

Next appearance: Northern Exposure; gay couple ties the knot in 1994 as further evidence of how delightfully eccentric those crazy Alaskans are. Premise replicated almost identically at present on Men in Trees, with similarly “blink and you miss them” gay couple (Mario Cantone and Orlando Jones). Ditto Desperate Housewives, where the new gays in town (Tuc Watkins and Kevin Rahm) were introduced in a clear effort to breathe in new life after two lackluster seasons, and have merely presented more opportunities for the straight characters to camp it up (ie. wacky Halloween costumes; rampages against lawn art; pimping out offspring for contractor services; etc.).

Sub-Genus B) Galus Palus: Gay men used as sounding boards for central straight characters. Sex and the City featured not one but two Gay Gal Pals (Willie Garson as Stanford, and Mario Cantone as Anthony) who enabled Carrie and Charlotte to express sentiments they couldn’t while sipping cosmos with their girlfriends.

Sub- Genus C): Ables Assistantes: The majority of TV shows unfold in the workplace, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the majority of gay characters on television are also defined by their jobs. What’s unfortunate, however, is that these jobs primarily consist of helping straight characters with their own problems. See exhibits C1-C3): NYPD Blue’s John Irvin (Bill Brochtrup), Spin City’s Carter Heywood (Michael Boatman), and E.R.’s Chaz Pratt (Sam Jones III).

From left to right: Brochtrup, Boatman & Steven Bailey

At worst, these characters are so poorly defined and have so little to do they essentially disappear, as with Joe the bartender on Grey’s Anatomy (Steven Bailey). Even The Office’s Oscar (Oscar Nuñez), who stood out for one shining moment in the brilliant “Gay Witch Hunt” episode, has slipped quietly back to his corner office behind the file cabinets.