Stephen Dunham

Stephen Dunham has died of a heart attack at age 48.  His obituaries all talk about his work in Dag, but I knew him from the 1999-2000 tv season, when a sitcom called Oh, Grow Up appeared just after The Drew Carey Show on Wednesday nights.

That season was full of Friends rip-offs, ensembles of young, attractive people who had lousy jobs but lived in fabulous apartments and were concerned primarily with hooking up.  But, except for Will and Grace, they were all aggressively heterosexual.

Not Oh, Grow Up.

Stephen Dunham played Hunter, the "Joey" character, a promiscuous hunk who discovered that he had a teenage daughter.

David Alan Basche played Norris, the wisecracking "Chandler" character.

John Ducey played Ford, the insecure "Ross" character, recently divorced.  And recently out (photo is from Squarehippies).












There was nothing on prime time like it; a gay character who wasn't a feminine stereotype, like Will Truman, and who lived with a pair of caring heterosexual male chums (unlike Will Truman, who hung out only with straight women).

It only lasted for 13 episodes, but those episodes resolved all of the plot arcs, so it had closure, like a miniseries.  It's not available on Hulu, and it hasn't been released on DVD.

I guess you had to be there.