Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers

September 1974: My friends and I are in ninth grade at Washington Junior High, 13 or 14 years old, aspiring to be cool, hip, and intellectual.  So we watch all of the hip sitcoms that would later be lauded as part of the Golden Age of Television.

Like Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers.

Never heard of it?

It was famous in the fall of 1974.

MTM Enterprises was changing the face of television, making it hip, modern, and "real," set in real places like Cincinnati and Minneapolis, starring people with real home and work lives (they even had sex).  It already had two hits, Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart, and Paul Sand looked like a third.

Especially when CBS put it into the fall schedule between its #1 show,  All in the Family and the Mary Tyler Moore/Bob Newhart block

I wanted to like it:

1. Cute, dour-faced comedian Paul Sand starred.
2. He was a bass player with the Boston Philharmonic (I was in the orchestra!).
3. Friends and Lovers sounded dirty.
4. There was a hot athletic older brother (Michael Pataki, left).  Maybe there'd be some beefcake.
5. And a workplace friend (Steve Landesberg, later of Barney Miller). Maybe there'd be some buddy-bonding.

I was only home to see a few episodes, and they weren't very good.

1. Paul Sand was not at all likeable -- his self-deprecating humor was...well, deprecating
2. The brother never took his shirt off, although Max Gail (later of Barney Miller) flexed in one episode.
3. And everyone was obsessed with heterosexual sex.  It was like Three's Company, a few years later.

It actually became the #25 most watched show of the season, doing better than its competition, Emergency! and The New Land, but by January it was cancelled, replaced by the mega-hit The Jeffersons.

Which also suffered from a lack of beefcake.

"It Ends with Us": Not a post-Apocalyptic thriller, a drama about a lady with clunk rings and a hunk named Atlas

    

Link to the n*de photos

It Ends With Us showed up in my Netflix recommendations.  Obviously a post-Apocalyptic movie about the last generation of humanity struggling for survival. The icon shows an elegantly dressed woman talking through her fingers at an elegantly-dressed man, but that must be before society falls apart.

Scene 1: The woman who talks through her fingers in the icon is driving through an autumnal road to a quaint New England town with a sign saying Plethora, Maine.  Maybe the  human race goes extinct due to a vampire outbreak. 

 She stops in front of one of those gigantic "middle class" homes, and hugs and cries with the woman inside.  Geez, she's wearing like a gold ring the size of a baseball on each finger. How will she stake vampires that way?

Wait -- according to IMDB, this isn't about vampires.  It's a drama about domestic abuse!  Why such a misleading title, almost identical to The Last of Us, about survivors of a zombie Apocalypse?

I'm still watching.  I never see dramas, so this will be an adventure in snarky comments. And it will be fun to watch a movie produced by, for, and about straight people, like going undercover in a foreign country.

The lady in the house tells the Finger-Talking Woman -- who has the ridiculous name Lily Bloom  -- that this is her father's funeral (thanks for letting her know!), then criticizes her for taking a job out of town, so she couldn't be by his side every second.  Oh, and she informs Lily that she is her mother. She acts so oddly that I thought she was the housekeeper.  Why would the wife of the dead guy say "your father's funeral" instead of using his name?  

Scene 2: Lily Bloom goes up to her room -- huge, cluttered with girly stuff like pictures of fairies and a ballerina music box.  She brought nothing with her when she moved out?

Mom follows her upstairs to say "He really loved you." Yeah, that's what all abusers say.  "At the funeral, you're going to have to say five things that you loved about him."  Um...er...he was...um...

Left: Dad Kevin McKidd, in 1996. 

Time for the funeral, at city hall, super-crowded -- Dad was the mayor, also a husband and a father.  Give him a medal!  Time for Lily's eulogy, but she can't think of anything, so she steps down from the podium.  Murmur, murmur.  

Scene 3: Back in Boston, Lily sits on the roof of a high-rise apartment building, no doubt planning to jump, but The Man of Her Dreams, Ryle (Justin Baldoni, top photo) bursts in, angry, kicking over chairs.  He joins her on the ledge to discuss how much he hates maraschino cherries.  She wants to know if he is upset over "a woman...or a man."  Acknowledging that gay people exist!  But I'll bet that's all the representation we'll see.  

They exchange job information, which I understand is common for straight people in their first meeting:  Florist, neurosurgeon.  Guess which Lily is. 

Their falling-in-love conversation takes up the next seven minutes of screen time, but they don't make a date for later. Are you sure there won't be any vampires?

Scene 4: Adolescent Lily in her bed,putting flowers into a scrap book. Gratuitous leg shot as she gets up, brushes her teeth, writes in her diary, and puts on her starter set of huge, clunky rings -- well, she couldn't write in her diary with them on, could she?  

Looking out the window, she sees a young man sneaking out of the abandoned house next door and sorting through the garbage for food.  

He gets on her bus!  She gazes in Boy-of-Her-Dreams longing.  Lily's going to have two abusive boyfriends? 

It takes about five minutes of screen time for her to arrange a meeting and get his story: "My Mom kicked me out...because..."  You're gay?  Nope: because she doesn't like him interfering with her boyfriends "beating the shit out of her."  They beat him up, too, but he can't mention it because he's macho.

Lily invites him home to shower and change clothes, and watch Ellen.  A lesbian exists in their world.  He stares at her clunker rings; she criticizes the outfit that she gave him.  So, for straight people, is criticism like flirting?

Scene 5: The adult Lily heads toward the store she's leasing for her new flower shop, while Mom tries to discourage her on the phone: she saw on the internet that "45% of all flowers die."  Just 45% ?

As Lily is cleaning out the old stuff, a woman named Alyssa comes in to ask about the "help wanted" sign.  It's leftover from the previous owner, but Lily might need some help soon: "I'm opening a flower shop." 

"Ugh!  Never mind, I hate flower shops.  They're depressing, full of dying things." 

"You're hired!"  So you get a job by criticizing the job.

Montage of the two bonding over cleaning out stuff, painting, and so on.  

Alyssa's husband Marshall (Hasan Minaj) calls  -- darn, I thought she was a lesbian.  He's across the street with her brother, watching the Big Game, but she drafts him into helping out. 

Ulp: Alyssa's brother is -- Ryle the neurosurgeon!  

They gaze at each other for about three minutes of screen time.  Don't straight people, like, talk?  Finally Alyssa and Marshall get tired of it and suggest a double date.  

Cut to a karaoke bar, with Ryle and Lily trying to ignore their mutual attraction -- they're single adults, what's the problem? --  and Alyssa and Marshall aggressively pushing them together -- they've known Lily for like three hours, why do they care?  After about ten minute of screen time, they kiss.

Scene 6: Adolescent Lily on a picnic with the Abused Guy, whose name is Atlas (Alex Neustaedter).  The Greek god who is holding up the world, not the book of maps. 

Left: Atlas

They discuss Lily's Dad beating up her mom.  In other news, Atlas will be joining the Marines, so they can't continue their relationship. 

Scene 7: BFF Alyssa's birthday party, at her gigantic palace, with a living room bigger than a hotel atrium.  Around a thousand people there, all heterosexual couples.  Why does she want to work in a flower shop, again?

Lily runs into Ryle the Neurosurgeon again, and tells him, "Stop flirting with me."  Then they go up to his room. Mixed signals, lady.

Scene 8: In the morning, Lily walks the six miles down to a kitchen big enough to prepare meals for the population of a medium-sized city.  Apprised that she has spent the night, Alyssa cautions that Ryle the Neurosurgeon goes through women like candy mints.  He's ok for a hookup, but if you're looking for a serious relationship, forget it.  Then why were you so aggressively pushing them together?

More after the break

Cheers: Where Nobody Knows Your Name

In the mid-1980s, Americans were afraid.  We had a crazy president who wanted to start a nuclear war (not as crazy as the Orange Goblin, though). People thought that AIDS could be transmitted through drinking water and mosquitoes.  Unemployment was as high as during the Depression, the violent crime rate higher than ever before in history.

 No wonder people wanted to go to a place "where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came."

Cheers (1982-93) was must-see tv, as in all your relatives and everybody at work talked about it constantly, so you had no choice but to watch.

The premise: Sam Malone (Ted Danson) flopped as a ball player due to his alcoholism, so he opens a bar in Boston (really?) and begins love-hate sniping with his stuck-up Ivy-League grad student barmaid Diane (Shelley Long), and later with neurotic bar manager Rebecca (Kirstie Alley).

Other cast members included earthy barmaid Carla (Rhea Pearlman), dimwitted bartender Coach (Nicholas Colassanto), replaced after the actor's death by Woody (Woody Harrelson), and two bar patrons, the rotund Norm (George Wendt) and the talkative Cliff (John Ratzenberger).

In spite of the theme song,  no one knew any gay names.

Gay patrons came to the bar in only one episode.  The gang sees two metrosexual guys talking and laughing, thinks they're gay, and is about ready to string them up, when Diane reveals that the real gay guys, two bears, have been masquerading as part of the mob.

Carla is particularly homophobic.  "If they keep coming out of the closet, there won't be any men left, and I'll have to. . .ugh!" she says, imagining sex with Diane.

Not only is the bar gay-free, there aren't any significant homoerotic subtexts.  Cliff and Norm are buddies, but reject any hint of affection.  The female characters seem as boy- crazy as Betty and Veronica in Archie comics: Carla has a dozen kids with many different men; Diane leaves two men at the altar; Rebecca has an unrequited golddigger crush on a millionaire.

Sam was the hunk of the series -- Ted Danson even posed for Playgirl (not nude) -- and two other male cast members warranted gazing.

 1. Woody (before Woody Harrelson, left, got craggy and redneck).

2. Hockey player Eddie (radio personality Jay Thomas, previously seen on Mork and Mindy), Carla's love interest for a season.  But since almost all of the action occurred on two sets, the bar and Sam's office, there was little opportunity for disrobing, thus no beefcake.

Not a lot of gay allies in the cast.  Kirstie Alley was rather aggressive in "defending" John Travolta from the "insult" of gay rumors. Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson have both played swishy gay stereotype.

In 1993, stuffy psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) spun off onto his own series, Frasier, which lasted for another 11 years.

The Bad Boys of Boston

When you think of Boston, you think of Harvard, Boston Commons, the elegant shops and restaurants of the Back Bay, the gay bars and bathhouses on Tremont and Boylston.  Most traveler never get any farther west than the Museum of Fine Arts.

But there's another Boston: Jamaica Plain, out past Brookline,  Mattapan.  Hyde Park.  And "The Combat Zone," east of Washington and south of Boylston, near the Tufts Medical Center.  Neighborhoods of unmown lawns and broken windows, unemployment, poverty, and battling gangs, where kids grow up fast and tough, where fun, friends, work, and school are equally dangerous.

Several photographers have taken the train south and west to document these bad boys, their games and sports, their fights, their gay and heterosexual loves.

Here John Goodman (the photographer, not the actor) shows a carload of cute guys in the Combat Zone in th 1970s, driving with their Saturday night entertainment, a six pack of Schlitz beer.

Jules Aarons (1921-2008) spent his career investigating Boston street life.  Here two boys in the 1950s chat beside their car.

A muscular South End boy in the 1970s offers his friend a light.

Jerry Berndt (1943-2013) taught at the Art Institute and photographed Boston street boys from 1955 through 1985.  These smoking boys look like they're from the 1980s.

Jack Lueders-Booth (1935-) taught at Harvard and, in the 1980s, photographed the Neighborhoods of the Orange Line.  He found this father and son working on their car in Jamaica Plain.

 Sally Mann (1951-) specializes in images of decay and death, although she mad an exception for this very muscular Boston boy.

Who is Gay in "Get Fuzzy"?

Stephen Pastis (born 1967) and Darby Conley (born 1970) both belong to the new generation of comic strip artists who create "edgy" material rather than endlessly repeating gags about husbands asleep on couches and pot roasts in the oven. Their strips, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy, began at the same time (1999 and 2001, respectively).  They both feature a grumpy, bigoted animal and his goodnatured sidekick.

But they could not be more different.

Get Fuzzy (the title means something like "think outside the box") is set in a naturalistic world, with recognizably normal streets and houses, people who have jobs, buy groceries, and get back injuries.  Cats and dogs can talk, read books, and use money, but they are still dependent on humans; they are less house pets than adopted children.

The central character, Rob Wilco, is a 20-something advertising executive living in Boston, a nerd who reads Harry Potter and follows New Zealand rugby, a liberal who supports Greenpeace and animal rights. Occasionally his friends and members of his family show up, but most strips involve interactions with his pets/children:
1. Satchel, a gentle, dopey, and somewhat feminine dog
2. Bucky, an angry, bigoted cat.

The first years of the strip were the best, with plot arcs involving Bucky's feud with the ferret next door that eventually ends up on Judge Judy; a trip to Canada, where Satchel reconciles with his long-lost father; and an extended visit by the Manchester-accented Mac Manc McMax.  More recently, the strips have been gag-a-day jokes about Bucky saying something idiotic about liberals, Canadians, vegetarians, women, or humans in general, and Rob shutting him down.

Gay references -- without using the term -- are scattered throughout the strips.  Mac misunderstands the term "drag racing."  Rob suggests a domestic partnership between male dogs.  Satchel, who has been hiding in the closet, announces that he's "coming out," and Bucky says "I've been waiting three years for you to say that."










Although Satchel often falls in love with female dogs and humans, he has many feminine traits, which Bucky uses as evidence that he's gay. In one strip, he asks Rob, "Why are you hiding it from me?  There's nothing wrong with it?"  Rob says that "He's not...", whereupon Satchel rushes into the room to announce that his new Barbra Streisand album is "Fabulous!'  Bucky points and stares.




Perhaps more interesting is the fan speculation that Rob himself is gay.  He's a single parent with two adopted "children."  He is young, attractive, and well-off financially, certainly able to attract partners, but he is never shown dating women.  When relatives comment on his lack of female dates, he angrily tells them to drop the subject.

Of course, Rob is never shown dating men, either.  In early strips he was sometimes shown hanging out with a male friend named Joe, but in 2007 Joe was definitively dropped from the strip -- he got a job in France and moved away.

To alleviate suspicion that Rob is gay?

See also: Pearls Before Swine.

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody

Disney channel teencoms (Even Stevens, Hannah Montana, The Wizards of Waverly Place) can be queered even more easily than Nickelodeon teencoms (Drake and Josh, ICarly).   Same-sex desire and romance always lie just beneath the surface, as if the producers are deliberately trying to come as close as possible to including gay people without actually Saying the Word.

The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (2004-2008) was about twin brothers, the teen operator Zack (Dylan Sprouse) and the bookish intellectual Cody (Cole Sprouse), who live in an upscale hotel (or later on an upscale cruise ship). It became one of the most popular teencoms of all time, lasting for an unprecedented 83 episodes before spinning off into The Suite Life on Deck (2008-2011). And it offers an unprecedented look at the strategies of Not Saying the Word.

1. All of the teen characters express heterosexual interest, but spoiled heiress London Tipton (Brenda Song) and working-class candy-counter girl Maddie (Ashley Tisdale) form a strong Betty-and-Veronica style bond. They become partners for a school parenting assignment; upon quarreling, London cries "I want a divorce!"  They dance together.  They break up and reconcile.

2. The hotel manager, Mr. Moseby (Phill Lewis) is uptight, supercilious, not interested in women, gay-vague.    The maitre d' of the hotel restaurant, Patrick, is also gay-vague (played by gay actor Patrick Bristow).

3. Everyone behaves as if same-sex dating and romance is an ordinary part of their world.  Mr. Moseby pretends to "date" Zack.  At a party, two boys are obviously dancing together.  Zack and Cody pair up for a dance contest.

When Zack asks Cody to come along on his date with a popular girl, Cody believes that he has an ulterior motive: “I’m not dating her creepy sister, or her brother. . ."  He pauses.  The laugh track is silent;  he is not joking.  He concludes: "Or her dog."  Now the laugh track goes into hysterics.  This is the punchline, the absurdity.  Gay dating is perfectly ordinary; Zack might indeed expect Cody to date a boy.