Nov 6, 2019

"You're Not a Monster", But You're Not Gay, Either

As Jimmy Durante would say, "Everybody wants to get into the act."  (Google him.)  Netflix, Vudu, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and now IMDB.  Not content to be a repository of usually-accurate information about movies and tv shows, the web giant has started a streaming service.

So far it's free (with commercials. Remember those?), with a large archive,  everything from the 1980s gay fave classic Who's the Boss (any day with Tony Danza is better than any day without Tony Danza) to 2010s gay fave  The Middle (whose idea was it to display Axl in his underwear in every episode?  I'm sending them a cake).

Plus original content. Mostly entertainment news: IMDB at the Emmys; IMDB at the Comic Con, What's on TV, What We Know So Far.

But there is also a non-entertainment-based series: the animated You're Not a Monster, about a psychiatrist (Eric Stonestreet, half of the gay couple on Modern Family) whose patients are movie monsters (most voiced by comedians like Amy Sedaris and Patton Oswalt). He shares his office with the sarcastic vampire John (Kelsey Grammer of the gay subtext classic Frasier).

The series was created by Frank Lesser, a writer for The Colbert Report who published Sad Monsters.  One of the monsters is a gay Frankenstein.

With all of that gay context, I thought, surely some of the patients are gay. So I watched all eight 5-minute episodes.

Frankenstein worries that his popularity has faded.

Freddie Krueger is depressed because of the lack of civility in the world today.

The Headless Horseman has dating problems (because he wants to take their heads)

The Phantom of the Opera is hitting on his music students.

Every one of the patients is involved in heterosexual dates and romances!  Every one!


Doctor Max is heterosexual, too ("she just broke up with me six months ago.  How can she be seeing other people already?).

And even John (in bat form, he's dating a female pigeon).

Ok, they have a mentor/buddy/pain in the neck relationship (so to speak). They can be queered.

But with all that gay context, a subtext is hardly enough.

My grade: D-.

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