Bronson Pinchot: A gay icon of my childhood turns out to be straight. Then it gets worse. But at least we see his dick

For many years, tv has disguised gay couples as heterosexuals with some other reason for being together -- they work in the same office, or share an apartment, or are brothers.  So censors, skittish network executives, and shrieking homophobic audiences remain clueless, but if you're "in the know," the gay subtext is obvious.

Bronson Pinchot broke into film as Tom Cruise's buddy in Risky Business (1983)..  After several years of playing swishy gay-vague characters, such as Dennis on Sara and Lloyd in After Hours, he was cast in the gay-vague buddy sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986-1993).  He played Balki Bartokomous, an exuberant free-spirit from the faux-Greek country of Mypos, who descends upon his stick-in-the mud distant cousin Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) in Chicago.  You can anticipate the the standard "let's do something wacky"/"but I have a dentist appointment" plotlines.

It's supposed to be a brief visit, but the two end up falling in love, their affection explained as fraternal love, and Balki stays on.

I watched during the first season when Perfect Strangers led into Head of the Class and Night Court on Wednesday nights.  A surprising number of plotlines could be read as negotiating a same sex romance.

Larry: "Balki is cute and all, but how can I build a future with someone who doesn't even know how to fill out an IRS Form 1088-B?" 

Balki: "Larry is good in bed, but he's so shy and reserved. How can I draw him out of his shell?" 

Apparently the network had a problem: the guys were too obviously a gay couple.  So during the second season plotlines increasingly involved dating girls, culminating in steady girlfriends Jennifer and Mary Anne (Melanie Wilson, Rebeca Arthur).

Obviously a screen.  Could they be sitting farther apart on that couch?

More after the break.  A lot more.

I remember the exact episode when I stopped watching: during the third season, February 3rd, 1988.  Not because of the heterosexism, because of the increasing stupidity of Balki's home country.  He serves a Myposian dish, "bibi babkas," to Larry and their girlfriends.

"You idiot, a babka is a Jewish pastry!" I said to the screen.  "That's it -- this show is doomed."

My roommate responded with Balki's catchphrase: "Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."

It actually continued through eight seasons, with the pair becoming more and more obviously heterosexual every day. He gets a job in the department store where Larry works, and decides to become an American citizen.  

Eventually Larry becomes a photojournalist, and Balki a cartoonist   They marry their girlfriends, but they continue living together.  

In the series finale, on August 6, 1993, they simultaneously become fathers.  The heterosexist mandate triumphs. Sort of.

Mark Linn-Baker continues to act, most recently in a four-episode plot arc on Succession.  He has been married to women twice.

You may have seen Bronson Pinchot in Ray Donovan, A Million Little Things, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Our Flag Means Death.  He also narrates audiobooks and restores old houses. 

Update: A guy who plays only gay and gay-vague characters during the homophobic 1980s must be gay in real life, right?  Why bother to research it?  So I didn't -- until I revised this article for the NSFW site.  I discovered that not only is Bronson straight:

In a 1987 interview in Playgirl, Bronson bragged about his habit of grabbing women's butts. He also had the habit of inappropriately grabbing, touching, and fondling female costars, women during interviews, and even random women from the studio audience. women during interviews, touching the breasts and genitals of female costars, and -- well, the examples proliferate, explained at the time as Bronson being playful and wacky. Until the Me, Too era landed him some sexual assault allegations.

A comment on the fan blog tells us: "As a gay kid growing up in an unsafe environment, Perfect Strangers was one of the few safe spaces I had to come to terms with who I was. He he was part of a major force for (mostly) good in my life and it does feel like a betrayal that he would have something like this in common with the people Perfect Strangers helped me escape from."

Geez, are you sure you want to see this guy's dick?