A gay guy playing a horny straight character? I don't see how that counts as gay representation.
Besides, I could never figure out what that "tossed salads and scrambled eggs" line meant.One would expect that, after playing Frasier since 1984, Kelsey would be tired of him. The audiences, too. But in 2023, a reboot of Frasier appeared. I watched the first episode.
The premise: After the death of his father, Frasier returns to his old stomping grounds, Boston. He wants to reconnect with some old friends, like the always-drunk, femme-British professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst, who is apparently straight in real life) and his estranged son, Freddy (Jack Cuthmore-Scott).
In the A plot, Frasier does a guest lecture in Professor Cornwall's psychology class at Harvard. The department chair (Toks Olagundoye) is thrilled, and offers him a professor job. That's not at all how it works.
He says no, he's on his way to a guest lectureship in France, but she is not deterred: landing the famous Frasier Crane would secure her a job as the Provost. That's not at all how it works.
She and Cornwall scheme to force him to stay.
More after the break.
In the B plot, Frasier and Freddy haven't spoken in years. The elitist snob disapproves of Freddy's working-class firefighting job. When he drops in for an impromptu visit-reconciliation, in between criticizing his job and apartment, Frasier learns that Freddy has a girlfriend, Eve
Later, in the hallway, the viewer learns that Eve is Freddy's roommate, not his girlfriend. He begs her to continue the facade, because he doesn't want his Dad to know the truth about him.
"You mean he doesn't know about John?" So Freddy is gay, and Frasier, being a Freudian, disapproves.
Except: after some shenanigans, the truth comes out: John is Eve's baby. Freddy took them in after her husband, his best friend, died.
What a nasty queerbaiting trick!
Besides why doesn't Freddy want his dad to know that he took in the widow and child of his dead friend? Sounds rather noble. It was just necessary to set up a disgusting queerbaiting joke.
The other regular is Frasier's nephew and assistant, David (Anders Keith), who also has femme gay characteristics, but is identified as straight when he sees Freddy's apartment and asks how many girls he's kissed there.
Professor Cornwall has an estranged daughter of his own, from one of his ex-wives. Straight.
The Department Chair keeps hitting on Freddy. Straight.
Freddy's firefighter coworkers? All straight, even Jimmy Duran, left.
One of the ladies mentions a wife, in a throwaway line, but the character never speaks again.
Bulldog, the hetero-horny sportscaster from the previous series, appears in one episode. He turns out to be gay; all the girl-hooting was a facade, har har.
My grade: We're back in the 1980s, where gay people can never be mentioned, except in queerbaiting jokes.
Bonus: When you search for Anders, you get Tommy Anders. I don't know who that is, but he looks like a teen idol. His signatrue says either Vol. 2, or "checkmark heart 1.2."
No comments:
Post a Comment
No offensive, insulting, racist, or homophobic comments are permitted.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.