The premise: 14 years ago, Marcy Bradford was canoodling with two men at the same time. She never informed either that she was pregnant, and raised Nicole (Stacy Keanan) alone. Then she dies, and a family court judge tracks down the men and gives them both custody. Fortunately, they are both still single, and eager to co-parent a daughter they never heard of before:
1. Suave ladies's man Joey (Greg Evigan, the trucker-adventurer of BJ and the Bear)
2. Skittish button-down Michael (Paul Reiser, who would go on to star in the popular Mad About You).
Housefuls of parenting men were surprisingly common in the 1980s, like the housefuls of single dads in the 1960s, but with double or triple the hetero-romantic plotlines.
Filling out the cast were former football star Dick Butkus as the owner of the diner downstairs, and two boyfriends for Nicole, so she could be like her mom:
2. Zach (Chad Allen of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, who is gay in real life).The familiar cast was augmented by familiar guest stars, such as Scott Baio (Charles in Charge), New York mayor Ed Koch, Russell Johnson (The Professor on Gilligan's Island), and Richard Moll (Night Court).
This was long before anyone in Hollywood would acknowledge the possibility of gay men being parents, so the dynamic duo live in a strictly gay-free New York City. No gay characters, no pretending to be a couple to get some special gay-only privilege, no being mistaken for gay, not even for a double-take instant.
My Two Dads was strictly about heterosexuals.
Even the howls of outrage by watchdog groups was not about any implication of gayness, but because Nicole's mom was fornicating with two men at the same time.
And that's why sWILL & disGRACE's "joke" about Greg Evigan doing a show called "Hey F****t" was unfunny and offensive: Chad Allen was on this show. NBC put him on the last season to make up for the cancellation of OUR HOUSE, where he played Wilford Brimley's grandson, after two poorly-rated years up against 60 MINUTES and THE DISNEY SUNDAY MOVIE.
ReplyDeleteNot a great show by any means, but it was less bad than FULL HOUSE, which premiered two days later and never should have aired in the first place. Miller and Boyett are two of the hackiest hacks who ever hacked, and that show was bad even for them. The (superior by default) show it replaced on ABC, WEBSTER, also had Chad Allen on it for a year before he defected to NBC.
I always saw Will and Grace as an artifact of its time. People forget just how bigoted the 90s and 00s were.
Deletebrandon call was in step by step; you've mentioned him, at least in passing, someplace on a post?
ReplyDeleteProbably, but I can't think of where.
DeleteI have done the "two men, one woman" thing (with plenty of interaction between me and the other guy), but she never got pregnant, or if she did, she got an abortion without telling me.
ReplyDeleteI don't think she was with the two Dads at the same moment. She probably dated Michael when she wanted intellectual companionship, and Joey when she wanted hotness.
DeleteThese shows with single dads always seem a bit gay even "My Three Sons" but I guess at that time nobody imagined gay men as parents so it was over looked
ReplyDeleteOn "My Three Sons," Dad brought in "Uncle Charlie" to do stereotypic housewife things like cook and clean. I don't know whose uncle he was; maybe the kids were just instructed to call him "uncle" to avoid...um...questions.
DeleteLOL- he was the gay uncle
ReplyDeleteThinking of Chad Allen. I wonder how close he was with Jonathan Brandis. I wonder if they ever fooled around.
ReplyDelete