Besides, it starred the amazingly cute William Ragsdale from Fright Night. Coincidentally or not, his costar on Fright Night, Amanda Bearse, the most visible lesbian on tv before Ellen, was on Married...with Children. And the cast included two of the voice actors from another Fox show, The Simpsons.
Besides, the phrase "Herman's Head" sounds dirty.
There were even some queer elements.
The premise: a young man negotiates the various crises of his job, his friends, and his hetero-romances.
The gimmick: we can see inside his mind, a room stocked with various memories, anxieties, and hopes, where four aspects of his personality argue over his various schemes. Each is trying to one-up the other and steer Herman toward their preferred outcome.
2. Animal (Ken Hudson Campbell, center), his drinking, belching, crude-joke-making side, concerned with partying. And getting laid.
3. Genius (Peter Mackenzie, left), his logical, intellectual side, concerned with career advancement.
One wonders if the components of Herman's psyche also have sentient components in their psyches, so it's little rooms full of arguing beings all the way down.
Occasionally other components appear, such as Jealousy (Bobcat Goldthwait).
God appears in the guise of Leslie Nielsen (well, what does your image of God look like?)
In the final episode, Herman is dying (1990s sitcoms often had tragic endings) and his soul makes an appearance to say goodbye to the components, as he is the only one who will live on.
A lot -- A LOT of attention is paid to Herman's love life. He screws around more than Jerry Seinfeld, over on NBC: his amours include Heddy, Louise, Mr. Bracken's daughter, Mr. Bracken's niece, Crawford's girlfriend, two supermodels, a Playboy playmate, a rock star, a female executive at the company, a female senator, a visiting princess, guest star Maureen McCormick, Eve (as in the Biblical Adam and Eve), and about a dozen regular girlfriends.
Come on, William Ragsdale isn't that cute. But neither was Seinfeld.
No beefcake, no gay characters except for one of Herman's exes, now a lesbian who wants him to be a sperm donor.
But the fastidious Genius is gay-coded, and having a woman play part of Herman's psyche gave the show a queer feel. It was rather fun to listen to Angel promoting various dating shenanigans: "I want that woman. I want that woman bad."
Not a bad way to spend the half hour of downtime between Married..with Children and bed.
See also: Married..with Children.
If "lesbian ex who wants a sperm donor" counts, then may as well count Dance Me Outside, which doesn't have any gay content at all, but still has a similar plotline. That's how much it doesn't count.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, 90s shows with nihilistic endings make me think you should do Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I don't usually do anime, but I'll look it up
DeleteReally? Then you also miss Sailor Moon, Hetalia, and the whole boys' love subculture. Or the current Voltron drama. And of course, there are plenty of gay manga for your other blog. Anyway, it's REALLY hard to discuss the surprise Kaoru was at the time because spoilers. Before the last third, it still seemed typical, with a few exceptions. (We know not to trust NERV as early as Jet Alone.) But the portrayal of sexuality was typical shonen, for the most part, in 23 episodes. (That is to say, hetero, boys are either perverts or neurotics, every girl is a tsundere. Those exceptions, by the way, are still hetero, but they're just very dark.) Episode 24, wow, just, yeah, it's a tragic romance, but that's what we got in the 90s. And, considering no one makes it out of Evangelion in one piece (or, they all make it out in one piece)...
Delete