For LGBT viewers hoping for new shows this season with queer characters front and center, TV has once again disappointed. With only one exception �" ABC's smart, non-stereotypical, gay-in-every-episode and hilarious Modern Family �" there are no new shows featuring major queer characters.
Several new shows have what can best be described as gay supporting characters, but in most instances this means a weekly walk-on only. The new version of the old Melrose Place on the CW has a bisexual character, Ella. NBC's Mercy has an swishy gay male nurse, Angel, on the periphery, but he is a fourth-echelon character with rarely more than one line per show. Trauma, which is set in San Francisco and thus should have a mostly queer cast, has one gay man, Tyler, also very much a supporting role.
Even GLAAD, which last year claimed Marge Simpson's sister Patty as a lesbian to pump up the sadly dwindling numbers of queer TV characters, and is indeed counting that peripheral nurse on Mercy (and Patty, again), couldn't find a silver lining in this year's black cloud of TV homophobia. GLAAD noted with chagrin in its annual report that cable has fewer queer characters than even network.
But wait, you cry, what about �" and then go on to list the usual suspects. Yes, Scotty and Kevin are discussing having a baby together on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. Callie and Arizona are still together on Grey's Anatomy, although they never kiss. Sal is still gay on AMC's Mad Men and still in the closet, although we have seen him in bed with a hotel bellboy. Oh, and Smithers is still gay on The Simpsons.
That's pretty much it. There are a few peripheral queer characters here and there. Another queer nurse, MoMo the homo, on Nurse Jackie. Lafayette on True Blood. Angela is still pansexual �" or is it omnisexual? �" on Bones. Previously queer characters like Thirteen on House are now heterosexual or simply, like the four gay men in supporting roles on Desperate Housewives, off the canvas indefinitely.
Some point to the fact that there are out queer actors playing straight roles on the tube, but most straight Americans don't know these people are queer. On CBS, Neil Patrick Harris stars in How I Met Your Mother, and Katherine Moennig co-stars on the new Three Rivers. Luke Macfarlane, who plays Scotty on Brothers & Sisters, is also openly gay, as is Cherry Jones on 24. (Gossip alert: Jones and Sarah Paulson [Nip/Tuck, Studio 60] have split. Jones did not mention Paulson when she accepted her Emmy for 24 .) Open lesbian Jane Lynch is on Glee, and has had a recurring role on Two and a Half Men for years. Cybill Shepherd's lesbian daughter, Clementine Ford, is on CBS' The Young & the Restless.
On non-scripted TV, Ellen has her own show and will replace Paula Abdul on American Idol. Rachel Maddow has her own news program on MSNBC. (Speaking of Maddow, on her Oct. 7 show, she said, "Any Democratic senators who support a Republican attempt to block a vote on health care reform should be stripped of their leadership titles. Americans deserve a clean up-or-down vote on health care." Maddow: once again saying what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should have said. Go, Rachel!)
Like Maddow, Project Runway's Tim Gunn is a constant reminder that one can be openly queer, erudite, elegant, and still have a great career. Isaac Mizrahi co-hosts The Fashion Show on Bravo. Numerous reality shows have had openly queer contestants, like Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen and Amazing Race. Last month, Big Brother 's Kevin made it to the final three.
GLAAD includes characters on shows from Logo and Here!, but this skews the numbers. Queer cable-access channels have queer shows with queer characters, obviously. What counts are network and non-gay cable shows.
GLAAD's 2009-10 report shows an increase in network characterizations of LGBT characters. But do the math: According to GLAAD's own reckoning, of the 79 comedies and dramas included on network and cable, with a total of 600 series regulars, only 18 were LGBT. And those include Patty and Smithers on The Simpsons.
Eighteen out of 600. In 2009. GLAAD notes only four lead characters who are LGBT on network TV, three of whom are on ABC. GLAAD claims 12 lead characters on cable shows, but of those shows, four are on Logo or Here!, and we would argue that six of the other characters listed as lead are much more supporting roles, two of whom are no longer even on the show, Nip/Tuck. And with the exceptions of Torchwood and True Blood, the shows on which these so-called lead characters appear are themselves marginal offerings at best.
The facts are grim: Network and cable have managed to side-step real life and avoid queer characters in scripted shows and even many reality shows. What's more, TV shows make many of the peripheral LGBT characters people of color, thereby fulfilling two minority categories at once. Among those are Callie on Grey's Anatomy, Angela on Bones, Lafayette on True Blood, Camille on Stargate Universe, Lloyd on Entourage, and Angel on Mercy .
Scripted prime-time shows also devote little time to developing storylines for their LGBT characters. Some may see this as "normalizing" or "mainstreaming" queer characters into programming. It is really silencing them. If every other character in a show is involved in a romantic/sexual relationship on-screen, then to limit the lesbian and gay characters to off-screen involvement is to try and meet the minority quota while also avoiding the issue of the character's queerness. Last season, for example, Grey's Anatomy spent an inordinate amount of screen time on Callie's sexual interludes with Mark, while shunting her lesbian encounters with three different women off-screen.
Where viewers are most likely to see fully developed LGBT storylines is on soaps. Once a landscape utterly devoid of queer characterizations, the soaps have now become a venue to play out long and involved storylines for lesbian, gay and bisexual characters.
Until the show ended on Sept. 18, CBS' Guiding Light had the most compelling lesbian storyline on the tube. Olivia and Natalia and their children were fully developed and thoroughly engaging characters. Olivia was a core role on the show, with links to all the main families. Natalia, at first a peripheral character, became central through her involvement with Olivia. The couple's love story was slow and realistic in its development, and addressed a plethora of issues, including the perils of coming out, Natalia's deeply religious (Catholic) convictions, her teenaged son's homophobia and her decision to leave the father of her unborn baby to raise her child with Olivia.
GL also had another lesbian character, Doris, the mayor of Springfield, who was so deep in the closet she hadn't even been able to tell her own teenaged daughter she was a lesbian. (Crystal Chappell, who played Olivia, loved her lesbian role so much she's producing her own soap, Venice, in which she and various other notable soap stars appear. Chappell herself will play a lesbian designer. More on this in an upcoming column.)
Love triangle
On ABC's One Life to Live, three gay male characters �" Oliver, Kyle and Nick �" have been involved in a typical soap opera love triangle for months. Kyle loves Oliver (a closeted, in-denial gay cop). Oliver is trying not to be gay, although he had an affair with Kyle in college. Nick is in love with Kyle, and the two are seeing each other, but Kyle yearns for Oliver.
Meanwhile, Dorian, one of the central players in Llanview for three decades, is running for mayor against her archrival, Viki. She discovers that the local LGBT group (of which Nick is a member) is supporting Viki, and decides to undercut that support. First, Dorian tries to get her boyfriend/campaign manager, David (Tuc Watkins, who also plays a gay neighbor on Desperate Housewives) to pretend to be gay.
The highly heterosexual David will have none of that, so Dorian hires an openly lesbian (and African American) campaign manager, Amelia. The two plan to play to win, and in the coming weeks Dorian will announce she's in love with Amelia, and will marry her.
Sources say Dorian's first act as mayor will be to perform a mass lesbian and gay wedding ceremony in which Kyle and Nick are scheduled to marry. ABC sources tell us that Oliver may queer that deal by coming out at the last minute.
Suspension of disbelief is required, of course. Dorian is notoriously heterosexual and practically invented cougardom, but no act of cunning is beneath her when it comes to getting what she wants. Amelia seems cut from the same cloth. And Llanview is in Pennsylvania, which doesn't recognize same-sex marriage.
But these are quibbles. The storyline couldn't be more hot, the characters more engaged/engaging. Dorian and OLTL are flipping the usual political stereotype: the gay/lesbian pol who marries straight to win public approval. This flip allows for a slow-arc storyline examining the real queer characters on the show. What if Amelia really does fall for Dorian?
Meanwhile, back on CBS, As the World Turns has taken its beloved gay couple, Luke and Noah, and tossed in a third party: Noah's college professor, Mason (Forbes March, who was formerly on One Live to Live). The potential for romantic drama is rising. Noah and Mason have repeatedly ended up alone together, and last week, Mason made a pass at Noah. Since Luke has been hyper-engaged in familial drama, he's been less than attentive to Noah, while Mason has been ever more so. Tension grows among the three men in the coming weeks, and Mason begins to fight for Noah's affection.
On CBS' The Young & the Restless, there are two openly gay male characters and one bisexual: Rafe, Philip and Adam. The queer storyline has yet to materialize, even though Adam remains a central character. Sources tell us that Philip will be involved in a front-burner storyline soon; we'd like to see Rafe and Philip together, and see Rafe wear something other than a business suit, and do more than deliver legal briefs.
And finally, after 20 years in a starring role on Fox, a nude Marge Simpson is on the cover of the November issue of Playboy .
At least it isn't Patty. Stay tuned.