Mar 11, 2019

A Gay Teen on the Disney Channel

Andi Mack is a Disney Channel teencom with an unusual premise: Andi discovers that Bex, who she thought of as her older sister, is actually her mother.  Celia and Ham, who she thought were her parents, are actually her grandparents.  And Bowie (Trent Garrett), the boy who got Bex pregnant 13 years ago, returns and wants to be part of Andi's life.

That's quite a lot to take in, but the actual show is mostly about Andi and Bex going out on dates, getting crushes on boys, getting boyfriends, and so on.  Andi's main crush is Jonah (Asher Angel).  She also has two best buddies, Cyrus (Joshua Rush) and Buffy (Chelsea T. Zhang).



In Season 1, there is only a gay-subtext relationship between Cyrus and Jonah.

They double date, and when the girls ditch them, they go on a date alone and buy matching jackets.

When Jonah texts that Cyrus is "girly," he is heartbroken, and tries to macho it up; but it turns out that Jonah meant to text "gnarly" (a slang term from the 1970s meaning "cool").

During the Season 2, in the episode "Hey, Who Wants Pizza" (October 27, 2017), Cyrus sees Jonah and Andi together, and tells Buffy that he is jealous.  She asks if he likes Andi, but he says no, which allows Buffy to conclude that he is gay, and likes Jonah.  It is unclear whether he just realized it, or whether he has known for awhile.

In the next episode, he has an awkward date with his girlfriend Iris, but won't tell her why he doesn't want to kiss.  They decide to be "just friends."

Later he's nice to T.J., (Luke Mullen),  the boy he's tutoring, and Buffy thinks he might "like" him.

In Episode 13 of the season, "Cyrus' Bash-Mitzvah" (February 23, 2018) Cyrus tells Andi that he is jealous of them together.  She knows that he doesn't "like" her, so she concludes that he likes Jonah.  Unfortunately, Jonah has just asked Andi to become his girlfriend.

Four more episodes have aired, and Cyrus has not told anyone else, including Jonah.

Which provides an interesting question: what do you do when your best friend has crush on your boyfriend?

 Cyrus, meanwhile, is not moving on.  He hasn't expressed more than a gay-subtext glimmer with any other boy, or actually said the word.

It's a start, but I would like to actually hear the word.

 5 episodes left in the Season.


6 comments:

  1. I'm sure a joke about the "curse of Ham" applies here.

    This is actually how Vili Fualaau and Mary-Kay Letourneau's kid was raised, with Fualaau's grandmother basically acting as the mother. (Of course, Letourneau legally couldn't be around any children. I can't see Disney doing that here.)

    Who says gnarly in 2018? Surfers referring to an injury and classic gamers referring to a Mario level which actually is a bit gnarled in shape (Makes me wonder if Outrageous was deliberate...) are the only ones who do.

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    1. Lots of kids of teen mothers are raised by their grandparents, but usually without prevarications.

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  3. In the episode "One in a Minyan" he finally comes out as gay. Its the first time that word was said, as well as the first time he actually specified his sexuality. It sure looks like they're pushing to pair Cyrus and TJ together, but we'll have to see.

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    1. That always bugged me. The famous "one in ten" statistic the title alludes to was not actually in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Only 2% of men were lifelong sixes, while a full one in three men admitted to a same-sex experience.

      More importantly, the numbers changed from the past three years to the past ten years to since puberty to lifetime. And these were experiences, not just mental preferences.

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  4. The episode occurs at his Bar mitzvah , so “one in a minyan “ seems appropriate. It probably is supposed to reflect “one in a million,” since you’d have to know a lot about Judaism to realize that a minyan is 10

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