During the late 1970s, there was a trucker fad. The truck driver (or sometimes any driver, as in Dukes of Hazzard) became the new cowboy, a loner who followed his own rules and thumbed his nose at the establishment. People started throwing around terms like "smokey" for cop and phrases like "10-4, Good Buddy" for "Goodbye." Maybe the gas crisis made people long for the freedom of gas-guzzling semis.
On tv, the quintessential trucker-hero drama was BJ and the Bear (1979-81). B.J. McKay, played by Greg Evigan, ran a freelance truck-driving business, got harassed by the smokies (especially Southern-fried Sheriff Lobo, who eventually spun off into his own series, starring gay ally Brian Kerwin). As is usual in road tv, the plots involved BJ fixing the problems of the people he met along the way. After resolving the crisis, he would head out into the sunset with his "best friend Bear," a chimpanzee named after the University of Alabama football coach.
Greg Evigan previously starred in A Year at the Top (1977-78), a sitcom about two musicians who sell their soul to the devil in exchange for a year of fame. It offered lots of buddy-bonding.Unfortunately, BJ and the Bear didn't seem to. I never watched the show, but the tv promos invariably showed B.J. picking up a semi-clad female supermodel who was hitchhiking or had car trouble en route to the Swedish Bikini Team tryouts.
As if that superfluous cheesecake wasn't sufficient, in the second season B.J. became the owner of a trucking company, and hired several female drivers with large breasts, including one named "Stacks."
But my friends and I often joked about the producers naming their character after a sexual act.
But my friends and I often joked about the producers naming their character after a sexual act.
And Greg Evigan was nice to look at. His semi-clad pictures, with a bulge that entered the room three seconds before he did, soon flooded the teen magazines.
He wasn't a teenager and he didn't sing, but who was complaining.
A decade later, Greg returned to prime time in My Two Dads (1987-1990), which wasn't about gay marriage: stick-in-the-mud Michael (Paul Reiser) and free-spirited Joey (Greg) were both dating the same women 16 years ago. She got pregnant and dumped them both without informing them that either could be the father. They find out 15 years later, when she dies. The judge orders them to live together and co-parent teenage Nicole.
It was an entirely gay-free universe with no "mistaken for gay" plotlines, but the setup is aggressively queer coded.
More after the break
Giovanni Ribisi, who would go on to Friends, homophobia, and d*ck pics, played next-door-neighbor Corey Kupkus, Nicole's Love Interest. And each of the guys gets a steady stream of girlfriends.
I never saw My Two Dads, either. It was on opposite Married..with Children. A heteronormative Odd Couple, or short guy David Faustino's pecs -- what would you watch?
After some hetero-sleaze movies -- Private Sessions, Stripped to Kill, Lies before Kisses -- Greg played Dan Hathaway in 12 episodes of the evening soap Melrose Place (1996-97): a doctor at the rehab center where the show's tragic-depressed gay guy, Matt Fielding (Doug Savant), is being treated for his drug addiction.
They date (without kissing), but Dan becomes abusive. hitting Matt and throwing him through a glass coffee table. Matt's friends finally intervene in one of the standard "heterosexual savior" plotlines of the 1990s.
Greg has had a long career in soap operas (General Hospital, Pacific Palisades), science fiction (Tekwars), religion (Only God Can), and romcom (The Christmas Listing), but Dan Hathaway seems to be his only role of gay interest.
Unless you count BJ and the bulge.
David Faustino: Bud on "Married with Children" is star-ving, humiliated, butt-nekkid, and a gay ally
