Dec 11, 2020

Gay Representation on Prime Time TV 3: NBC

 


When I was in high school, NBC was the worst of the three networks, offering an amalgam of doddering dinosaur shows and lame kid stuff.  Just look at the 1978-79 schedule.  The NBC offering is obvious.

Monday:  One Day at a Time, Welcome Back Kotter, Little House on the Prairie.

Tuesday: Three's Company, Taxi, Grandpa Goes to Washington

Wednesday: Charlie's Angels, The Jeffersons, Dick Clark's Live Wednesday

Thursday: Barney Miller, Soap, Little Women

Friday: What's Happening, The Incredible Hulk, Who's Watching the Kids

Saturday: CHIPS.  Eric Estrada in a tight cop uniform.  Well, it got one right.

Let's see if 42 years has led to some improvements for the bottom-of-the-barrel network.



Monday: 

Manifest.  Five years after an airplane vanished and presumably crashed, it lands.  The passengers try to return to their lives, but their loved ones have moved on.  I assume that there are some paranormal powers, and a government conspiracy.  Josh Dallas (left) plays one of 9 main and 26 recurring characters.  Wow, this must be the most convoluted series since Lost.!

Passenger Saanvi Bahl (Parveen Kaur) came out as bisexual during Season 2.  Why do they always wait until Season 2 to out the LGBT characters?  Because they think that viewers will drop the show in homophobic disgust during Season 1, but by Season 2 they're invested enough to handle it.



T
uesday:

This is Us.  Three adult siblings, Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz), and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), have problems in the present, with flashbacks to traumas in the past.  There's a stillborn baby, an abandoned baby, some marital problems, drug addiction, a car crash, a heart attack, a traumatic football game, and a traumatic chess match, and that's just in the first 12 episodes. 17 major characters, some played by several different actors as chldren, teenagers, and adults.  Sounds more like homework than entertainment.

An article tells us that This is Us "sets the bar for normalizing LGBTQ characters."  How?  Randall was abandoned by his biological father. William, when he was a baby.  35 years later, at the end of Season 3, Randall tracks him down.  He's dying of cancer, and he casually mentions a boyfriend.  Then he dies and exits the show.  This is normalization?



New Amsterdam. 
Medical drama.  I've never understood the attraction of medical dramas.  People are dying.  How is this entertainment?  

Ryan Eggold (left) is the first billed of 6 regular and 34 recurring characters.  Whew.  Is every actor in L.A. employed by an NBC series?

Regular Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) is revealed to be gay during the first season, for a change.






Wednesday:

Chicago Med Chicago Fire, and Chicago PD.  Three interlocking series with obvious premises, set in...you guessed it...Chicago.  With a total of 115 regular and recurring characters.  How can you possibly keep track of all of them?

Jon Seda (left) plays someone on the PD who is related to someone at the Med and dating someone at the Fire.  I think.

Med had a lesbian character during the first two seasons; then she fell victim to the "bury your gays" motif.  Fire had a character come out as gay during Season 8 (what happened to Season 2?).  PD has never had a LGBTQ character.






Thursday:

Superstore, about the employees at a Big Box store. Scott Baio lookalike Ben Feldman plays the focus character, and Nico Santos plays the flamboyant gay stereotype Mateo.  

Law and Order spin offs.







Friday:

The Blacklist.  Long running series about a cop turned criminal turned informant (James Spader) who teams up with a FBI agent  (Megan Boone) to track down bad guys. I assume they will be falling in love.

Former Brat Packer James Spader has become singularly unattractive, so for a beefcake illustration, let's go with Diego Klattenhoff

In Season 3, a gay or transgender Iranian villain appears in one episode.  

Saturday:

News

Sunday:

Sports

Counting the Chicagos as a unit, there are or were regular gay characters in five of six series.  Not a bad record, except that it's one out of 12,000.  And they usually feel that it is necessary to wait until Season 2 (or Season 8) for the Big Reveal.

5 comments:

  1. Chicago MED-Fire and PD has some attractive guys in the cast and they have plenty of shirtless dudes. But nothing beat Jon and Ponch in "CHiPs"

    ReplyDelete
  2. This Is Us' normalization came from Randall's adpoted daughter, who is a lesbian. However, still second season.....

    ReplyDelete
  3. You get some beefcake with Lou Ferrigno, even if it's nothing like the comic: Where is the mention of nuclear weapons testing? Where are Betty Ross and Rick Jones? (The comic itself often equates the two in their relationship with Bruce.) Where is the Leader? The Abomination? Where is General Ross, Betty's father who serves as a major antagonist in that he correctly identifies the Hulk as a threat to civilization, even as his daughter knows we should contain and cure the Hulk.

    It's like making a Batman series without Robins and Batgirls, any familiar villains, Gordon (though Ross is admittedly more Bullock), and Alfred. Or a Spider-Man series without Norman and Harry, Gwen and Mary, Aunt May, JJJ, Venom, or Doc Ock. I mean, you can, and Teen Titans 2003 did quite well without Donna and Lilith, but it requires so much work that you really shouldn't.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's not Jon Seda in the ChicagoPD related image. That's CPD's Jesse Lee Soffer who played Jay Halstead, brother of Dr. Will Halstead from Chicago Med.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't actually watch those programs, and I have never heard of the actors or the characters, so I just posted someone that Google Images said was Jon Seda.

      Delete

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