The top ten buffed big brothers of nuclear family sitcoms, from Tony Dow to Dakota Lotus

 Nuclear family sitcoms often juxtapose shy, weird, un-athletic, intellectual, or otherwise outsider boys and their popular, athletic, muscular, and often dimwitted older brothers.  Sometimes Big Brother is deliberately cast with a bicep boy, but more often it happens organically, as little brother hits the books and big brother hits the gym.  Here are the top ten biggest, baddest, most buffed Big Brothers.

1. Wally (Tony Dow)  on Leave It to Beaver (1957-63).

2. Reese (Justin Berfield) on Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006). Malcolm is a beset-upon genius with two older and a younger brother. Reese turned into a veritable bodybuilder with a strong gay subtext before the showrunners got scared and turned him straight.

 

3. Drew (Tequan Richmond)  on Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009). While Chris was bad at everything and got into trouble constantly, his bigger, taller younger brothre Drew was a golden boy.  He was so beautiful that everyone, not just teenagers, dissolved into a slurry of hormones when he smiled at them.  Women only, I think: this show was extremely skittish about the g-word.

4. Axl Heck (Charlie McDermott) on The Middle (2009-2018) hung around the house in his underwear all the time.  This was supposed to be a weird quirk, not a turn-on.  They didn't know the audience very well, did they? I don't remember if he liked girls or not; I was too busy looking at his "happy trail" to pay attention to the plots. (Except for the one where the sister's friend wants to come out, but doesn't get to say the g-word.)

5. On The Goldbergs (2013-2023),  Barry (Troy Gentile), wrestler and all-around hunk, was paired with the shy intellectual boy in a gay-free 1980s.

More after the break

Inclusivity Alert: Gay References on "The Middle"!

In a jaw-dropping development, The Middle,  the most aggressively heterosexist tv program since Fringe, featured not one but two gay references in Wednesday night's episode.

In case you haven't noticed, the long-running series is about a dysfunctional working-class family in "The Middle," a small town in Indiana: dour dad Mike, perpetually-frazzled mom Frankie, college-aged Axl, over-exuberant high schooler Sue, and weird junior high schooler Brick.

In six seasons, there have been no references to gay people or same-sex desire or relationships, not one, except for an running gag about the swishy stereotype Brad, who doesn't realize that he's gay -- no one does except Mike and Frankie.

Wednesday night's episode, "Flirting with Disaster," had three plotlines.

1. Sue and Brick go to a science fiction convention.  No gay content, but you do get to see the muscular Michael Foster, who has variously played Conan, a bouncer, a Muscle-Bound Writer, and a Gay Protester.

2. Mike's father-in-law Tag asks for help with his upcoming driver's test.

Mike: "When you see someone carrying a white cane, what does it mean?"
Tag:    "That he's gay."
(Mike glares at him.)
Tag:    "What? What do they want to be called now?"
Mike:  "No, it means that he's blind!"
Tag:    "Blind and gay?  That's going to be tough!"

Ok, not bad. The elderly Tag comes across as slightly homophobic, but Mike doesn't.

3. Axl (Charlie McDermott, top photo), who I haven't been following much since he stopped hanging around in his underwear, comes home from college with a hot friend we've never heard of before, Finn (Matthew Atkinson, left).

Frankie flirts with Finn.  He responds.  She relishes her ability to still attract Cute Young Things, but then Axl tells her that Finn is "granny bait": He often uses his attractiveness to get special favors from elderly women.

Ok, it's not what you're thinking -- Axl means extra helpings of tater tots from the lunch lady.

Horrified at being labeled a "granny," Frankie decides that she'll go back to flirting with the elderly security guard at the bank: "At least she thinks I'm hot."

A throwaway line playing on our sexist presumption that security guards are always male.  But it also reveals that there are indeed gay people in Orson, Indiana, that Frankie is aware of them, and that she is completely comfortable being the object of same-sex desire.

None of the kids were around during either of the scenes; they remain unaware of the existence of gay people.  But two references in a single episode of a series that has thus far being utterly silent?  Cause for celebration.

See also: Brock Ciarlelli, the Uncle Tom of The Middle; Axl in Underwear: The Middle.

Brock Ciarlelli: The Uncle Tom of "The Middle"

As a long time fan of the dysfunctional-family sitcom The Middle (2009), I have complained several times about the incessant heterosexism: boys like girls, girls like boys, period, end of story.

Charlie McDermott's Axl has some gay subtext scenes.

I thought that preteen Brick was gay, but no, the minute his character hit puberty, his "hormones" kicked in, and he became girl crazy.

And that's about it.

There is a recurring gay character, sort of: the uber-stereotypic swish Brad, Sue's high school friend.  The joke is: no one realizes that Brad is gay except Sue's parents, Frankie and Mike.

Certainly not Sue, who is unaware that gay people exist.  Not even Brad, also unaware.

Wait -- don't these teenagers watch Glee?  

So who is this person with the 5,000 teeth who has won two Young Artist Awards for his contribution to the erasure of gay people from the world?

His name is Brock Ciarlelli, and he's 19 years old, a Littleton, Colorado native currently studying at Chapman University.

Other than The Middle, he only has two projects listed on the IMDB: a walk-on in the thriller 2.0 (2010) and the tv movie Beth and Ali (2013).

Asked if he minded playing a gay character, he said "no."

Asked about his character's obliviousness to his gay identity, he said: "to me, that says that sexual orientation doesn't matter."

I've got news for you Brock: sexual orientation matters a great deal to the LGBT kids who are told daily that no gay people exist.

Brock and other teen favorites, such as Nickelodeon's Nick Cannon, are involved in an anti-bullying program where they talk to kids in classrooms via Skype.

That doesn't make up for being an Uncle Tom.

Postscript: In the October 14, 2015 episode, Brad comes out to Sue, sort of:

Brad:  "Sue, I have something to tell you.  I'm...."
Sue: "I know."
Frankie (voiceover): "Since Brad had the courage to tell Sue who he was...."

Ok, the word "gay" was never used.  It still must never be spoken, only implied.

See also: Axl in Underwear; Raising Hope/The Middle

The Beefcake is Back: Axl in Underwear on "The Middle"

Beefcake alert -- I just saw the season premiere of The Middle.  The episode itself wasn't great -- about Sue going off to college.  But Axl (Charlie McDermott) spent the entire first two acts in his underwear.

He was fully clothed most of last season.

It's nice to see the beefcake back.

I've been watching The Middle since it premiered in 2009.  It's a striking contrast to Modern Family, which comes on ABC shortly afterwards: two "family sitcoms," but the families are rich/poor, big city/small town, West Coast/Middle America, and inclusive/not-inclusive

White -- all white all the time.  Christian.  And heterosexual.  I was holding out for quirky youngest kid Brick (Atticus Shaffer) to be gay, but nope, he "discovered" girls, and now he's as hetero-horny as his brother Axl.

The flamboyantly feminine Brad, one of high schooler Sue's friends, appears occasionally.  But the joke is that no one thinks that he's gay except Sue's parents.  Not even him.

Other than that, nothing.  Not a word or a scene suggesting that same-sex desire, behavior, or identity exists.  This is a complete, utter heterosexist wasteland.

To what can we attribute this void?

Maybe the producers, Eileen Heisler and Deanne Heline believe that all gay people live in L.A. or Manhattan, so Orson, Indiana must obviously be gay-free.

Or the suits at ABC

Or the cast.  Most are not exactly gay allies:

1. Patricia Heaton (Mom Frankie), formerly the wife on the heterosexist Everybody Loves Raymond, is openly conservative, although she states that she has gay friends.  She complains that the kids of The Middle would never display themselves as sexual objects, like the kids of Glee.  Um...Axl and his friends are displayed semi-nude in nearly every episode because....?

2. Neil Flynn (Dad Mike), formerly the sardonic janitor on Scrubs, doesn't have any gay roles on his resume and hasn't made any pro-gay statements.

3. Charlie McDermott (the shirtless Axl) has played in several movies with "aren't gay people ridiculous?" jokes, such as Sex Drive (2008) and Hot Tub Time Machine (2010).

4. Eden Sher (the over-enthusiastic Sue) has a gay best friend.

5. Atticus Shaffer (Brick) had a role in the homophobic Year One (2009), but he was only 11 years old at the time, so you can't really blame him.  He hasn't made any pro- or anti-gay statements.

I guess we'll have to make do with subtexts.

See also: Raising Hope/The Middle and Brock Ciarlelli: The Uncle Tom of The Middle