Twelve Forever: The First Gay Protagonist of Any American Children's Program

In Twelve Forever, a 12-year old girl named Reggie is terrified by the prospect of growing up, so she creates a fantasy world called Endless Island, and populates it with interesting characters like Flower Woman (with flowers for eyes), Brown Roger (a small, hairy thing), and Guy Pleasant (half rock star, half dog).


For antagonists, she conjures up the Butt Witch and her henchman Big Deal, who try to force her to grow up.  She convinces two of her real-life friends, Todd and Esther, to come along.


Sounds like H.R. Pufnstuf meets Peter Pan, except those islands were real.   I'm not so sure about Endless Island. It sounds very much like a psychotic delusion.

I became interested due to an episode in which the Butt Witch tries to break up the romance between two burly wrestlers, Mack and Beefhouse.  Two burly male wrestlers!

The other characters are completely nonchalant about their gender, saying things like "I can't wait to find my soulmate," and so on.

This is definitely a gay -positive show.  Reggie herself gets a crush on a girl named Connelly.

Unfortunately, Reggie is such a self-centered jerk that she's impossible to watch.  When Connelly displays interest, she makes an excuse and runs away.  Repeatedly.

Imagine: you're 12 years old, you find a girl you like, and she makes it very clear that she wants nothing to do with you.   How's that for a crushing childhood trauma?

Later, at the school dance (4 male-female couples and Reggie), Connelly shows up, and a flustered Reggie forces her friends to leave, even though they are having fun.

Isn't it always the way: you find a gay-positive character, and they're unpleasant and possiblypsychotic?

Oh,well, who am I to nit-pick?  This is the first gay protagonist of any American children's tv program, cause for celebration.

"The Conners": Gay Kid Argues with his Mom in this Update of Roseanne's Family

The iconic 1990s sitcom Roseanne (1988-1997) starred the iconic Roseanne as the matriarch of a working-class family in small-town Lanford, Illinois.  It featured an unusual number of gay characters and situations.  Even Roseanne's elderly mother comes out as a lesbian (and immediately finds a girlfriend).  Twenty years later, a revival was cut short after Roseanne was fired for making crazy racist remarks; her character was deleted, and a retooled The Conners launched.  Most of the original cast is still around, including Roseanne's husband Dan (John Goodman), sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), daughters Darlene (Sarah Gilbert) and Becky (Lecy Goranson), and son DJ (Michael Fishman).  I heard that Darlene's son Mark (Ames McNamara) is nonbinary, so I watched Season 4, Episode 10, in which they "celebrate Mark."

Scene 1:  Eating out to celebrate Mark making the Dean's List at school.  My first thought: Dan and Darlene look shockingly old (But I haven't seen them since the first show ended.) Dan was previously quite homophobic, but he's apparently mellowed. Mark isn't nonbinary, he's just a feminine gay boy. 

Also present are Mark's boyfriend Logan and an unidentified middle-aged guy (IMDB states that he's Jay R. Ferguson, left as "Ben."  Maybe Mark's Dad, so Darlene's ex-husband?).

Everyone wonders why Mark was getting Cs at his old school, but now gets As at the ritzy magnet school.  He claims that Logan is inspiring him to study.  But when Aunt Becky (shockingly old) brings out the cake, he refuses to eat any.  Who refuses cake?  Suspicious!

Other people show up.  The young adult Harris (a girl) comes in, gives Mark a gift, yells at Darlene, and leaves (Darlene's daughter, maybe?).  

Jackie (Roseanne's sister, looking the same as she did 20 years ago). has a broken ankle, but tries to hide it, because Neville's ex-wife is much younger.  I'm guessing Neville is her boyfriend or husband.

Neville (Nat Faxon)  and the ex-wife arrive to pick up Logan.  So Mark is dating the son of his great-aunt's boyfriend.  The interconnections are becoming annoying.

Scene 2:  The two daughters (Darlene and Becky), Aunt Jackie, and Dan at breakfast in the iconic Connor kitchen.  So the middle-aged daughters are still living at home?  Last night Mark couldn't sleep because of all the coffee he drank to stay awake studying, so he made a lasagne.  Suspicious, especially since he hates coffee.

Scene 3:  The iconic Connor living room.  Mom Darlene gets the truth out of Mark: he's been taking ADHD medication (a prescription stimulant), provided by his boyfriend Logan.  It's the only way he can study enough to succeed at the magnet school, get into a good college, and not be a failure like the rest of the family.  Darlene chaffs: "I didn't fail in life because I didn't take enough drugs.  I failed because I'm not very good at my profession and not particularly pleasant to be around."   She makes Mark dispose of the drugs.

Scene 4:  B plot: The doctor (Jared Farid Ward, top photo) is examining Aunt Jackie, while Becky throws herself at him.  He advises Jackie to stay off the ankle: "At your age, bones take a long time to heal."  At her age?  Jackie is devastated: she's never thought of herself as "old" before. 

Scene 5:  Darlene and Dan playing cards.  Sister Becky comes in and reveals Aunt Jackie's over-reaction to "at your age" and her crush on the doctor.  Recovering addicts aren't supposed to date for a year, but Becky claims that "doctors don't count."  Also, as a recovering addict, Becky knows that taking away your drugs doesn't work: there are always more.  They check Mark's backpack, and find more ADHD medication.

Scene 6: Mark and boyfriend Logan studying in his room. Mom  Darlene storms in, yells at Logan for providing, and kicks him out.  Mark yells: "I'm just trying to get a better life, so I don't end up like you."

Scene 7:  Becky and Harris (Darlene's estranged daughter?) researching the hot doctor to find out why he's single.  It never occurs to them for an instant that he might be gay, even though they have a gay brother/nephew.   Turns out that he is a Harry Potter fan, which turns Becky off.

Scene 8: Jackie overdoing the "old lady" bit with Neville (her younger boyfriend): "I'm decaying as we speak."  Neville: "You're not old, you're crazy."  

Scene 9: Dan and Darlene discuss Mark.  "He can't take the magnet school, so send him back to public school."  "But that would kill his future."  Umm...you can get into a good college from public school, you elitist snob!  

Scene 10:  Jackie's boyfriend Neville drops by and resolves the "old lady" issue: he likes them old.  

Scene 11: Mark has been trying to stay up all night studying on coffee instead of ADHD medication.  Darlene decides to send him back to public school.  "No!  You're dooming me to a life of struggling, like you!  I hate you!"  "Then I'm doing my job."  That was Roseanne's line.

Scene 12:  Dan and Becky investigate a mysterious noise in the camper, and find Harris (Darlene's daughter) living there. Her boyfriend kicked her out.

My Grade:  Way too many characters to keep track of, and Mark is absurdly overreacting to being sent back to public school.  Besides, magnet schools aren't especially demanding; they just specialize in certain fields, like the arts or science.  But at least being gay is a non-issue. C

By the way, several regulars didn't appear in this episode, including Roseanne's son DJ (Michael Fishman, left), Harris's boyfriend Aldo (Tony Cavalero), and lots of miscellaneous wives, ex-wives, and kids.  27 regular and recurring characters!  

Winthrop: A Gay Kid in 1960s Comics

When I was a kid, if you wanted a good comic strip, like The Wizard of Id or Doonesbury, you had to go across the Mississippi to Iowa and buy the Davenport Times-Democrat. A lot of people did.  Rock Island's newspaper, The Argus (what kind of stupid name was that?), ran only thousand-year old strips like Out Our Way and Alley Oop.

And bargain-basement knock-offs.  Instead of Peanuts, with Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy, we got Winthrop, about a similar group of kids, but with none of the humor or ironic wit.

Apparently Winthrop wasn't intended to be a Peanuts knock-off.  Dick Cavalli started it in 1956 as Morty Meekle, about a mild-mannered office drone who was dating Jill Wortle over her father's strong objections.  Eventually he found the "disapproving dad" schtick too limiting, and started centering strips around Jill's preteen brother Winthrop.  In 1966, Morty and Jill vanished forever, and the strip was renamed Winthrop.

But at least it had gay-vague characters.

Winthrop had a set of quirky friends and relatives, most of whom I don't recall. There was a parrot who quoted Shakespeare, a best friend, a girl with a crush on him, a sister, a bully...nothing special.

But Spotless McPartland was nattily dressed, an intellectual, not into sports, and a germaphobe, sort of the Felix Ungar of the comic strip crowd.

And Foster Norman encapsulated the childhood fear of balloons: they might lift you off the ground and send you soaring into space.

He floated, balloon in hand, over the landscape, week after week, year after year.  He couldn't come down; he was lost  He looked on from above, occasionally making ironic comments about a world that no longer made sense, with rules that he no longer understood.

Even his name was evocative: "Foster," a foster child, someone who doesn't really belong, and "Norman," close to "no man," a boy who will never become a man.

I understood being an outsider, looking onto a world that made no sense, where the cries of "What girl do you like?" filled the air, and same-sex bonds were trivialized and ignored.

I was floating, observing but not belonging.  I was the boy with the balloon.

See also: Gay-coded Peanuts.

"Bless this Mess": "Do My Meat" in a Small Town in Nebraska

Bless this Mess, a 2-season, 28-episode sitcom on Hulu: "newlyweds decide to move from New York City to rural Nebraska."  Huh?  That's the wrong direction -- you abandon your homophobic small town for the safe haven of a big city.  But I guess if they're heterosexual, one place is as good as another.  

It's doubtful that there are any gay characters, but if there are, they will be introduced in Season 2.  So I reviewed Season 2, Episode 13, which had the cryptic title "Volsung and Beef Boy."

Scene 1:  Big city transplants Mike and Rio (a woman) at the country-style house of their frenemy Beau.  They came to watch his teenage son Jacob, aka Beef Boy (JT Neal, top photo), judge raw meat: "these two are top sirloin..that one is.steakhouse quality" Apparently this skill has made him famous at 4-H Clubs county-wide, and could lead to a career.  

Also his father's love: if he wins the Meat-Judging Contest on Saturday, Beau will gift him with a belt buckle reading "Meat Champ" (if that's on your belt buckle, won't people want to check your meat?).

Scene 2: Mike( (Dax Shepard, left)  runs into Jacob "Beef Boy" at the General Store: "You have a real talent.  Here -- do my meat!"  (do mine next!  These homoerotic innuendos are obviously intentional).   

But Jacob actually doesn't like judging meat; it's his father's interest, not his.  Mike can relate: he used to have a band called Volsung (iconography and lyrics from Norse mythology), but his high school guidance counselor made him quit and go to college, where he studied journalism, became a reporter....and ten years later got laid off and had to move to Nebraska and become a farmer.  Grr...

Scene 3: B plot about Rio learning to drive.

Scene 4: That night Mike and Rio discuss their days.  Rio hated the driving lesson, and Mike is playing his guitar again.

Scene 5: Frenemy Beau (David Koechner, left) and son Jacob knock on the door.  Beau is upset because Mike has been filling his son's head with "fairy tales."  Now he refuses to judge meat!  "I'm not Beef Boy anymore!" Jacob exclaims.  "I'm a musician.  Mike and I are starting a band!"  He rushes in with a backpack, planning to stay with Mike.

Beau: "My boy is a golden god that smells like snow cones.  His future is meat.  Fix this!" He's been sniffing his son?

Scene 6: Jacob sings for Mike: "Did you ever get so sad that you tried to eat grass?"  He's awful.  Mike suggests that he go into meat-judging, and keep music as a hobby, but Jacob rejects the idea: "I got no passion for meat."  Maybe you like ladies?  

Jacob has researched Mike's old band, Volsung, and bought one of their t-shirts online.  Mike agrees to sing with him for nostalgia.  

Scene 7: Mike and Jacob practicing a Volsung song.  

Jacob: "Did you see my sex-god face?"  

Mike: "Well, I don't..."  

Jacob: "Here it is again. Are you turned on?"  He's a minor!  It's a trap -- don't answer.

Mike: "I'm going to say yes so we can move on."

Scene 8: The B Plot about learning to drive.  Later, Beau and his wife discuss the Jacob problem: "Do you think we get too angry?  Maybe we should try a different approach to get through to him."

Scene 9: Beau listening to Jacob and Mike play.  He pretends that he loves it.  "Maybe you could perform  during meat-judging contest.  Everybody in the county will be there."  

Scene 10: The meat-judging contest.  A dozen people with red hats and clipboards.  Jacob tells Mike the plan: "As we discussed, I will judge meat for a few minutes, then yell 'rancid meat'!  Then you run onto the stage in Viking gear -- I have mine under my clothes -- and we unleash the raven!" Because Odin had a raven.  Get it?

Scene 11: The B Plot.

Scene 12: Nervous, Jacob takes the stage and begins meat-judging.  He gets so much adulation that he forgets to give Mike the signal, and turns his judging into a sexy rap: "Though #1 displayed a uniform color and was firmer, #2 displayed much less...bone."  I prefer more bone.   He looks like a construction worker-stripper, but nothing actually comes off.  Stil, everyone cheers, and a row of high school girls swoon.

Later, Mike and Rio congratulate Jacob on his victory.  He realized that he has no passion for either meat or music; his true passion is being cheered.  So, Magic Mike in your future?  Then: "I'm gonna bounce.  Some of the kids want me to autograph their meat."  Taste it first.

Mike takes the stage and begins singing a Volsung song.  The end.

Beefcake: Jacob is cute; the other two male cast members, not so much.

Gay Characters:  Jacob is not canonically gay -- he has a girlfriend in another episode -- but here he doesn't display any heterosexual interest: no "as a musician I'll get girls," both boys and girls cheering as he judges the meat.  Plus asking Mike if he's "turned on"  by his "sex-god face" suggests that he wants to be a sex-god with men and women both.

Homoerotic Innuendos:  Obviously intentional, but the joke is that everyone is oblivious.

Follow Your Dream: I expected Dad to accept Jacob's interest in music, not meat, a sort of parallel to being interested in boys, not girls (or girls, not boys).  But it didn't happen.

My Grade: A- for the episode, C for the series.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", 2012 or 2018: Mikey finds a Boyfriend

 

I've never been particularly interested in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies or tv shows.  Mutated turtles who talk like valley dudes and are named after Renaissance painters?  Too weird, although  I did review two of the movies a few years ago (See Which of the Ninja Turtles is Gay?)

But I was drawn into a promo on Netflix that featured "Mikey" overtly in love -- eyes turning into little hearts -- with a guy!  

It's Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2018-2021), originally on Nickelodeon, with the premise and character personalities slightly altered.  The turtles are young teens with Anglicized names: Leo the leader (Ben Schwartz), Donnie the tech guy (Josh Brener), Raph the muscle (Omar Benson Miller), and Mikey (Brandon Mychal Smith), "an affectionate and sensitive artist" (lots of gay code words there).  The "overtly in love" scene is from Episode #4.

Scene 1: Evil black-skull ninjas practing.  Master Shredder enters and congratulates his "greatest pupil."   He announces that he's found an old enemy, Hamato Yoshi, hiding in the sewers of New York, transformed into a giant rat named Master Splinter.  He wants Black-Skull to destroy him and his turtle-ninjas.  A switchblade-wielding thug named Xever will assist, since he knows the area.

Scene 2: The Turtles patrolling on the rooftops of New York.  Mikey wants to return a lost cat to its owner, but the others warn: "You can't show yourself to humans.  They'll freak out."  Mikey doesn't listen, and the owner freaks out.  "The humans will never understand you!" 

Suddenly Mikey sees a poster advertising an appearance by martial artist Chris Bradford.  "That guy will understand me! He's my soul mate!  Maybe he'll show me his secret kata."  Only if you buy him dinner first.  

His brothers disagree: "He's a famous celebrity!  No way will he be interested in you!"

They're attacked by Black-Skull and his team, but everyone scatters when the police arrive.

Scene 3: Back in the sewer, Mikey reads about Chris Bradford in a magazine and makes "yummy" noises.  "I wish we were friends!"  Their human ally, April, points out that she is his friend.  "You don't count -- you're a girl."  

April suggest "friending" him on social media.  Mikey tries it, his eyes turning into little hearts.  Bradford accepts the friend request immediately! '

 "Don't get your hopes up," April warns. "He's probably got thousands of friends."  "But none like me -- we're soul mates!"  

Scene 4: Bradford leaving his boxing club.  Mikey appears; Bradford attacks, but calms down when he announces that they're social media friends.  They shake hands; Bradford invites him in.

Later, Mikey enthusiasticlly describes their date to his bored brothers.  "And then he put on his akama..."  So before he was naked?  Did they hook up on the first date?  

Raph jokes: "Maybe he'll wear it when he takes you to the prom."  This seems to be a homophobic jibe, implying that Mikey's interest in Bradford is romantic, therefore "wrong."

Scene 5: Bradford boxing.  Mikey appears.  He rolls his eyes and recoils at a hug, but pretends to be happy to see him.  "Now tell me everything about you, including your sensei." Uh-oh, ulterior motive!

Scene 6:  Out to dinner (actually, pizza on the roof).  Bradford continues to feign interest in Mikey while pumping him for information.  "Tell me about your sensei."  But Mikey won't talk about Master Splinter; it's a secret.

Later, in the bedroom (what, precisely, are they up to?), Bradford promises to show him his secret Death Dragon move, if he doesn't tell anyone else about it.

Scene 7: Mikey describing the Death dragon move to his brothers.  Bradford texts and asks him out; he leaves. 

Cut to Bradford -- have  you already figured out that he's Black-Skull?  -- telling his associate Xever: "The freak is on the way.  The trap is set." 

The other turtles are practicing the Death Dragon move.  Master Splinter sees them, and remembers his arch-nemesis Shredder using it, back when he was human.  They realize that Bradford is Shredder's associate, using Mikey to get intel on Splinter.

Scene 8:  Mikey arrives at the darkened dojo for the date.  Bradford and his associate Xever attack, subdue him, and tie him up.  "You actually thought that someone like me could be friends with someone like you?" he sneers.  

Scene 9: The other turtles to the rescue!  A very quick rescue -- they don't realize that Bradford planted a tracking device on Mikey, and now knows where their secret hideout is. 

Except the turtles do know.  They capture all of the ninjas except for Bradford and Xever.  After a battle, they flood the tunnel so the baddies are swept out into the sewer.

Scene 10: Pizza back at the lair.  Master Splinter is despondent: "Shredder now knows that I'm alive and training ninjas, and he'll try to destroy us again."  

Mikey is despondent, too.  "This was all my fault.  I should never have tried being friends with a human."  "You're an awesome guy.  You deserve better friends than Bradford."  Mikey unfriends him.  The end.

Is Mikey Gay:  There are many hints that Mikey has a romantic interest in Bradford (and a few hints that he has an erotic interest), but he uses only "friend" terminology throughout.  His brothers tease him about having a romantic interest, but don't seem to think of it as a real possibility.  Therefore I doubt that Mikey is canonically gay, but the subtext is obviously intentional.  

Whoops, I made a mistake.  When Netflix shows you something on the home page, you naturally assume that it's new, not something that's been in their vault since the Stone Age, but this is actually a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series from 2012-2017, starring Jason Biggs/Seth Green, Rob Paulsen, Sean Astin, and Greg Cipes. 

No one in that group is particularly gay-friendly, so I doubt that they would approve of making Mikey canonically gay.  Besides, the fans would start screaming:  "Why does eve single character on every single show have to be gay? Leave us at least one straight guy!"  Right, "every" means "more than zero."

We'll have to make do with subtexts.

David Cassidy's Comic Book Career

In 1972, when I was 11 years old, David Cassidy was everywhere.

On tv, as Keith Partridge on The Partridge Family.  On Saturday morning cartoons. 

On the radio, where the Partridge Family was still cracking the Top 40, and his own singles were cracking the Top 10.

In 17 paperback novels (The Ghost of Graveyard Hill, Terror By Night, Marked for Terror).

In every teen magazine on the newsstand.

So it made sense that he would push into comic books.  The bargain-basement Charleton Comics, which specialized in cannibalizing other properties, published 14 issues of David Cassidy (1972-73), most with photographs of David on the cover.

Yes, I bought them.

The stories inside were banal, mostly involving David helping a fan, or getting into humorous misadventures on the way to a concert. His fans were portrayed as 100% female.  Men were competitors for girls, manipulating agents, scheming managers, 100% bad guys.

But at least most issues found a way to get David out of his clothes.

By 1973, when David's star was in decline, apparently stories about meeting fans or trying to seduce the one girl in the world who wasn't into him weren't selling well, so the plots moved toward action-adventure, with David meeting spies and pirates.  This says "Outlaws, groovy chicks, and a fiddle bit keep David busy."

A few years later, when his songs were no longer charting, the real-life David also tried to re-invent himself as an action-adventure star with David Cassidy, Man Undercover (1973)..

See also: David Cassidy, Man Undercover; Charlton Comics