The New Adventures of Superman (1993-97). Granted, there are only a finite number of titles that will tell you what the series is about, but is it really smart to go with something so similar? Unless you assume that your intended audience was born after 1997 and has never heard of Dean Cain.
This is a Hallmark Channel Man of Steel, with small-town "people care about each other here" and "family is everything!" interspliced with saving the world.
I just needed to watch half of an episode to get turned off by the heteronormativity. But at least there are plenty of hunks around:
1. A middle-aged heterosexual Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) moves back to his hometown of Smallville along with his wife Lois Lane (who goes to work for the ultra-retro Smallville Gazette) and teenage sons:
2. The athletic, heterosexual Jonathan (19-year old Jordan Elsass), who inherited his father's physique.
3. The neurodivergent, androgynous, heterosexual Jordan, who inherited his father's superpowers, proving that you don't need to be buffed to fly.
4. They reunite with Clark's old girlfriend, Lana Lang (he is only into girls with L.L. initials). Lana is now married to the alcoholic, abusive, superhero-hating, heterosexual Kyle (Erik Valdez). They have a teenage daughter, Sophie, who starts dating Jordan, to the consternation of both feuding paterfamilias.
5. Also to the consternation of Sean Smith (Fritzy Klevans-Destine), the obnoxious, abusive, superhero-hating, heterosexual jock dating Sophie before she dropped him for Jordan. She was looking for a man like Daddy, but decided on a man who could fly.
You got an actor named Fritzy Klevans-Destine, and decided to name his character Sean Smith?
6. But Smallville is not all jocks and superheroes whipping it out to see who is bigger. Clark goes to work for Lana's father, General Lang (Dylan Walsh), a gung-ho heterosexual army guy who tracks down threats to national security so Clark can eradicate them. Truth, justice, and the American way.
7. First threat: A superhero-hating Mysterious Stranger, later revealed to be the evil, heterosexual John-Henry Irons (Wole Parks), who had a relationship with Lois Lane on a parallel Earth.
The actor is gay in real life.
8. Next: Subject 11 (Daniel Cudmore), a heterosexual human who acquires superpowers in a nefarious experiment and goes on a rampage.
9. And Lois has problems of her own, investigating the heterosexual CEO Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner), who turns out to be Superman's half-brother, an evil Kryptonian bent on destruction.
10. The boys have problems of their own, too. Mos involve girls,but they do try to help heterosexual classmate Tag (Wern Lee) when he accidently develops superpowers that he can't control, and turns evil.
Apparently in Smallville, superpowers are as easy to catch as a cold.
11. But usually they are just dealing with hetero-romance and the endless supply of superhero-hating bullies at Smallville High, like heterosexual Timmy Ryan (Zane Clifford)
You may have noticed that this series is very retro: bullies everywhere, no people of color except for villains, and no gay characters even hinted at. Writer Nadia Tucker states that she was fired for trying to introduce some storylines with positive black and Asian characters and women who were more than damsels in distress.
There are LGBTQ characters in other series in the DC universe, but they are set in big cities. As we all know, small towns are gay-free.
I'm shocked that in our modern woke era a series does not have gay characters even if it takes place in a small town
ReplyDeleteI do find it odd that DC didn't use Conner to promote this shoW. He's a womanizing hetero dudebro when he first appears, but Tim Drake juggles two girlfriends in that same era as well, and his current love interest mostly hung around Tim in the 90s because Tim's stepmom was a milf.
DeletePart of the great Robin personality switch. Except now that we're allowed a gay Robin, I have to forget the 80s when Dick is a biromantic demisexual and Jason and Tim are hetero horny. And Superbat? Bruce hates aliens, and Dick will come back to Barbara, even if they never dated and he was jailbait at the last time neither was seeing someone else.
Lots of tv shows don't have gay characters. Only about 2% of regular prime-time characters are LGBT, usually in dramas with large ensemble casts. Children and teen programs had no regular LGBT characters at all until around 2018
ReplyDeleteYes but shows on the WB network are very gay inclusive specially the super hero shows but even in "Riverdale" nothing was really done with the gay characters
DeleteThere's also the unofficial embargo on by men. Only 2% of men are Kinsey 6's. But 0's are a mere plurality, not a majority.
DeleteSo hetro, yet we watch this fantasy.
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