Roseanne: Gay Middle America

A dozen nuclear-family sitcoms sprang up during the conservative retrenchment of the 1980s, but Roseanne (1988-1997) was vastly different from the standard TGIF Family Ties and Growing Pains.

1. The usual TGIF family was affluent, but the Connors were strictly working class.  Dan (John Goodman) was a mechanic, and Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) worked in a factory and a hair salon before opening a "loose meat" restaurant.

2. The usual TGIF family was kid-dominated, with Dad to offer sage advice and Mom mostly irrelevant, but Roseanne was the undisputed head of the household.

3. The usual TGIF family was aggressively polite, at least to each other, but the Connors argued, fought, and traded insults (with the requisite undertow of affection, of course).

4. There was no teenage hunk; the Connor kids consisted of teenage girls Becky (Lecy Goranson, Sarah Chalke) and Darlene (Sarah Gilbert, left), and preteen boy DJ (Michael Fishman).  Eventually Becky married Mark (Glenn Quinn), and the Connors adopted the shy, artistic David (Johnny Galecki, right), who began dating Darlene, but neither provided many beefcake shots.

5. There were gay people.  Lots of them. And they weren't even living in Manhattan. Including one of the first bisexual characters on tv who wasn't evil or "confused": Roseanne's friend Nancy. Plus Leon Carp, Roseanne's  uptight boss, and his partner (for whom Roseanne arranges a wedding, with drag legend Milton Berle as a guest).

Roseanne goes to a gay bar, and acts the part of the "helpful heterosexual" by teaching all the gays to dance.  She negotiates an amorous kiss.  She deals with the possibility that DJ might be gay.  She plans Leon's wedding.  By the time Roseanne's mother, Bev, came out as a lesbian at age 62 -- and instantly found a girlfriend at a senior citizen gay club -- Roseanne had about as many gay-themed episodes as Will and Grace.

Although Roseanne herself has come out as quite homophobic in her old age, many of her cast members have been involved with gay-positive projects.  Glenn Quinn (right) played a gay-vague demon with a crush on the vampire detective Angel.  Johnny Galecki played a gay character (with a full-frontal nude scene) in The Little Dog Laughed.  John Goodman, who was rather homophobic as Dan, starred (briefly) as a gay man in Normal, Ohio.  Sarah Gilbert came out as a lesbian in 2010.

Michael Fishman hasn't been involved in any gay-themed projects, but he has grown up into quite a hunk.

Chace Crawford and Gossip Girl

I never heard of Chace Crawford, the Travis Turner lookalike, until about 20 minutes ago, but apparently he's muscular enough to get hired to take off his shirt in multiple tv programs, especially aimed primarily at an audience of heterosexual ladies. And pretty enough so that every time he even glances in the direction of a guy, the gossip mongers yell "Aha!  Proof positive that he's gay!"

Born in Dallas, a graduate of the conservative Trinity Christian Academy, Chace got his start in the teen horror movie The Covenant (2006).

I remember the trailer -- he and the girl literally leap into each other's faces to kiss. I'm surprised they didn't crack their jaws.

Next came more teen horror and Twelve (2010), which may have some buddy-bonding: White Mike (Chace) sees his best friend arrested for his cousin's murder.  And What to Expect When You're Expecting  (2012) may have some buddy-bonding among the four guys who are all expectant fathers.

But his main celebrity came with Gossip Girl (2007-2012), a CW series about privileged teens who live on New York's Upper East Side.  Sort of like Beverly Hills 90210, but with skyscrapers instead of palm trees. "Gossip Girl" writes revealing exposes about them; the ongoing mystery is, "Who is she (or he)?

Chace played Nate Archibald (left, using his crotch to advertise 90210).  

He's a rich, powerful "golden boy" who dates most of the girls on the series.  But he does get to do a gay scene when Dan (Penn Badgley, left) writes a book and makes his character gay.

In the first three seasons, there was also a recurring character: Eric (Connor Paolo, left), who had a lot of confused/depressed/suicidal problems.  Big reveal: he's gay!  (The hot pink shirt should have given you a clue.)

Unfortunately, he's the only gay person in Manhattan, so he has relationship problems.  He dates the bisexual Elliott for a while, and then he makes out with Asher,  but Asher gets all homophobic and defensive.

At least when teens appear in programs aimed at adults, they are allowed to Say the Word.  Teens in programs aimed at other teens must always pretend that there are no gay people in the universe.

Johnny Dangerously

 I spent 1984-85 teaching at Lone Star College, aka Hell-fer-Sartain State
College.  A student took off his clothes in my class, I got some nice visits from Bruce and Viju, but otherwise it was miserable.

I read a lot of science fiction and went to a lot of movies.  The one I remember most was not based on a novel by a gay writer, like The Razor's Edge and A Passage to India; it didn't have extensive beefcake or bonding, like  Terminator, The Falcon and the Snowman, and Nightmare on Elm Street; it didn't even have an extraordinary amount of homophobia, like Dune and The Breakfast Club.

The movie I remember most clearly from my year in Texas is Johnny Dangerously.

It's a spoof of those 1930s crime dramas like Dead End, with two men on opposite sides of the law: Johnny (Michael Keaton)  and his brother Tommy (Griffin Dunne of American Werewolf in London).  Originally a good kid, circumstances force Johnny to go to "the dark side," where he becomes a successful gangster, even paying for Tommy's law school tuition. 

Meanwhile rival gang leader, the flamboyantly gay-vague Danny Vermin (Steve Piscopo), exhibits a love-hate attraction for the dashing young gangster. 

Later, Tommy disapproves of Johnny's gang activities, so Johnny agrees to "go straight."  He's framed for murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair.  Then Tommy is captured by Danny Vermin, so Johnny escapes and mounts a daring nick-of-time rescue. 

There isn't a lot of beefcake, though Joe Piscopo (top) and Michael Keaton (left) have displayed their muscles elsewhere.  There are some of the standard 1980s homophobic slurs. Johnny and Tommy get girls -- Johnny's is played by Marilu Henner of Taxi.  Not a lot of gay connections in the actors' other works.

But sometimes a classic gay subtext, complete with a same-sex rescue, is enough, especially on a bleak January afternoon when you're playing hookey from your job at Hell-fer-Sartain State College.

Blackpool: Gay Musical Comedy Murder Mystery

Blackpool is a resort town in the industrial north of England with a tawdry reputation, sort of like Atlantic City in the U.S.  The British tv miniseries Blackpool is a musical/comedy/drama about a run-down arcade in Blackpool where a young man is found murdered.  Detective Peter Carlisle (David Tennant, right) is sent to investigate.

He finds himself immediately at loggerheads with Ripley Holden (David Morrissey, left), the arcade's somewhat seedy owner -- and prime suspect; eventually he falls in love with Ripley's depressed, neglected wife.

A major plot twist comes when Ripley's awkward teenage son, Danny (Thomas Morrison), confesses to the murder.  But of course he's not really the murderer.  And in a big reveal, he turns out to be gay.

I could do without the big reveal -- why not have everyone know he is gay throughout, rather than having us endure another long, boring "I'm tired of hiding" speech? But  I like Danny being a rather dim working-class lout rather than a Hollywood gay stereotype.  And I liked Ripley's reaction. He gains a new insight into his son, the two become closer than before, and in the end -- after the murder is solved -- he gives Danny the arcade.

David Tennant, named "Sexiest Man in the Universe" by the British gay magazine The Pink Paper, has been a familiar face on tv and the British stage for years. He played Doctor Who as probably bisexual, along with John Barrowman as the bisexual Jack Harkness.  David Morrissey, also a former Doctor Who, currently plays the sinister Governor on the post-Apocalyptic series The Walking Dead.  They've both appeared nude in other projets.

Blackpool was 21-year old Thomas Morrison's professional acting job.  Afterwards he had guest spots on Holby City, The Doctors, Casualty, and Any Human Head, and played Hooper (Ryder's platoon commander)  in the 2008 adaption of the gay classic Brideshead Revisited.  

In 2011-2012 he starred in the medical drama Monroe as an unconventional hospital porter.  He hasn't appeared nude elsewhere.