"Big CIty Greens": Disney Channel Cartoon with Gay Characters (If You Freeze Frame and Use a Magnifying Glass)

 

Big City Greens is a Disney Channel animated series about a family of hillbillies -- Dad Bill, tween son Cricket, preteen daughter Tilly, Grandma -- who move to the big city (named Big City), where they start a farm.  Sounds like the Beverly Hillbillies so far.  It's reputed to have a gay character, so I watched the season 1 episode "Valentine Dance."

Scene 1: Cricket complains as the family (plus Bill's lady friend) go to a "mushy Valentine's Dance."  Tilly supports "love in its many forms," but Grandma disapproves: "in my day, you didn't dance until you were married."

Inside -- two male-female couples dancing -- Tilly vows to be like Cupid and "make someone fall in love tonight."  Cricket meets his friends, who ask if he's going to "ask a girl to dance."  He says no, since "dancing with a girl is the gateway to falling in love.  Love takes away your freedom. Better to just do dude stuff, like those two guys."  

We see a blue-purple gay couple dancing together.  So there are gay people in Big City, but Cricket, being from the country, is unaware that they exist.

Scene 2:  The adults get their assignments: Dad Bill mans the snack table, and Lady Friend and Grandma will work as a chaperones.  Wait -- is this a kids' dance?  Looks like mostly adults on the dance floor.

Meanwhile, Cricket and his friends are reveling in their freedom from girls, yelling: "Boys! Boys! Boys!"  That's my motto, too.   Suddenly a girl interrupts to ask Cricket to dance.  Gasp!  It's the Girl of His Dreams, all glittery in slow motion!  Heterosexist cliche, but I guess if you're five years old, it's new to you.  

Uh-oh, now Cricket is torn between loyalty to his friends and his libido.  He runs away, only to bump into the teenage Gloria. He reveals his conflicting emotion, and she diagnoses: "You have a crush on this girl!"  

Scene 3:  Tilly has taken the bow and arrow from a statue of Cupid, and is shooting people at random: Gloria, plus the male half of three male-female couples.  But no one is falling in love, so she prays to Cupid for guidance.  

She shoots her last arrow at the blue half of the gay couple, saying "You poor pitiful creature, you're about to fall in love!" (he has a boyfriend!  But I guess that doesn't count).  He bends over at the last moment, and the arrow boomerangs and hits Tilly.  She falls in love with a statue of a muscular man.

Meanwhile, Cricket is horrified by flashes of visions about marrying The Girl, feeding her grapes, kissing her, and so on.  He rushes into the gym and climbs into the swimming pool, hoping that the water will keep his heterosexual feelings at bay.  But The Girl is there, for some reason, so he runs back to the dance. 

Scene 4: If he can just surround himself with guys, Cricket won't fall in love (that never worked for me).   But all of his guy friends are now dancing with girls!  His last defense has fallen!  Wait -- maybe if he turns on the sprinklers, he can dampen the boys' ardour and save them.

Lady Friend stops him before he can dampen the party, and wants to know why he's so averse to falling in love.  "Because love creates nothing but pain."  She says that love creates joy, too, so Cricket decides to face his destiny.  He finds the Girl of His Dreams and tells her that he's ready to embrace his love.  But he was acting so weird that she asked another boy to dance instead.  

Scene 4: Cricket ends up dancing with the teenage girl (whose boyfriend never showed up), Dad dances with Lady Friend (actually his ex-wife, Nancy), Tilly dances with the statue.  We pan out to a dance floor occupied by eight boy-girl couples, and if you freeze frame and look carefully, the bottom halves of the gay couple from Scene 1.  

By the way, the gay couple is Alexander (the blue one) and Terry (the purple one, who never speaks).  They appear in six episodes.  According to series creator Chris Houghton, they are intended to be a gay couple, but no one ever identifies them as such, to provide deniability: "They could just be best friends." Just in case Mom and Dad don't want Junior to know that gay people exist until he turns 21. If then.

But that tiny bit of representation is drowned out by incessant heteronormative "love means boys and girls!"