The Top Five Buffed Big Brothers of Nuclear Family Sitcoms

 Ever since Tony Dow started flexing as the hunky big brother on Leave It to Beaver (1957-63), nuclear family sitcoms have been juxtaposing 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.  A few recent examples come to mind. Oddly, they are all in gay-free or gay-skittish shows.  I wonder if there is a connection.

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

 

2. Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009). Drew (Tequan Richmond) 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.

3. The Middle (2009-2018): Axl Heck (Charlie McDermott) 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.)

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

5. Young Sheldon (2017-).  Georgie Cooper (Montana Jordan) is all brawn to Sheldon's brains in a gay-free 1990s.  Unfortunately, they abandoned the muscle-building plotline to concentrate on Georgie as a teen dad.

Justin Berfield's Very Special Episode

I hate it when you watch a tv program for countless episodes under the impression that a character is gay, only to find out that he was straight all along -- or, more likely, the producers noticed the gay subtext and retconned the character to "correct" him.

On Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006), about a dysfunctional family, dimwitted hunk Reese (Justin Berfield) never expressed any interest in girls for five seasons, even though nearly every male teenager in mass media, including his brother Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), is scripted as indefatigably girl-crazy. 

 He was also over-emotional and interested in cooking, two gender-transgressive traits that could easily mark him as gay.  

To make matters worse, the scripts kept dropping unmistakable hints.  

Reese says “Sorry, I’m gay” to dissuade an amorous girl.

He “courts” an attractive male classmate.

He sells "his services” to neighborhood men and then blackmails them in an amazingly blatant parody of male prostitution (he even lounges at poolside in a swimsuit like a kept boy). 

Fans began to speculate that a special “coming out” episode was planned. Then, in the Season 5 finale in May 2004, Reese is distraught over a breakup with a never-before mentioned girlfriend. “You are mistaken!” the producers seemed to squeal. “Reese was straight all along!  There are no gay teenagers!”

Justin Berfield is the subject of gay rumors in real life, too, but he adamantly refuses to make any public statements.

See also: The Top 10 Hunks of Malcolm in the Middle

Frankie and Erik in the Middle

The heir of dysfunctional family sitcoms like Roseanne and Married...with Children, Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) was about the middle boy (Frankie Muniz) in a family of miscreants, who happened to be an academic overachiever.

I've already posted on the rather explicit gay subtexts of Malcolm's older brother Reese (Justin Berfield), and the lesser but still substantial subtexts of his oldest brother, Francis (Christopher Masterson).  But how do the other two boys in the family fare?

Not good.  All of the show's heterosexism seems to distill onto them.

Malcolm spends the series hot for one girl after another, with no close male friends except Stevie (Craig Lamar Traylor), who uses a wheelchair and has a lung problem that allows him to say only a few words at a time.  Not a lot of buddy-bonding there.

When Malcolm joins the photography club, his mother believes that he joined only to meet girls -- that's the reason any boy does anything, isn't it?  "What's her name?" she asks, over and over.  Malcolm insists that there's no girl. . .but, in a plot twist, there really is one!  Boys play sports, join clubs, choose classes and careers, for one of two reasons: to meet girls, or to impress The Girl.  Period.

Not a lot of gay interest in Frankie Muniz' later career, either. The hetero-horny Extreme Movie (2008), with Ryan Pinkston.

Pizza Man (2011), who wins The Girl of His Dreams.

What about the youngest, Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan)?

No better.

When the boys get a hot female babysitter, they try various strategies to win her over, but Dewey has the best: he has a "bad dream."  She promptly invites him into her bed, and he grins with triumph as his brothers watch.

After Malcolm, Erik starred in Mo (2007), about a teen with Marfan Syndrome who "discovers girls."

At least he's rumored to be gay in real life.

See also: The Top 10 Hunks of "Malcolm in the Middle"