The Beverly Hillbillies

The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the 1960s line of hayseed comedies (others included Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Gomer Pyle, and The Andy Griffith Show), slogged on from 1962 to 1971, and your parents watched every week, so you couldn't avoid it.  It was amazingly popular with adults: some of the regular episodes -- not even Christmas specials -- became the most watched episodes of all time.

The basic premise: a hillbilly from Bugtussle, Tennessee or Arkansas, Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen), becomes unbelievably rich when oil is discovered on his property, so he moves to a mansion in Beverly Hills, along with his crotchety mother-in-law Granny (Irene Ryan), his daughter Ellie Mae (Donna Douglas), and his dumb-lunk nephew Jethro (Max Baer Jr.).

Though they became marginally assimilated after nine years, they still wore hillbilly clothes, ate possum pie, and referred to their swimming pool as a "cement pond."  Plots usually involved big city types trying to dupe and manipulate them, but their backwoods wisdom, orneriness, or dumb luck win out in the end.

The message: big city life is dehumanizing.  Only in the country can real be real.

Other plots involved Ellie Mae's dating, Jethro's get-rich quick schemes (odd, since he already was rich), and Granny's dislike of all things big city.

There was never much beefcake in hillbilly comedies.  Max Baer Jr., son of the famous boxer Max Baer, had a nice physique, but rarely showed it on camera.  We were supposed to laugh at his dopiness, not sigh over his muscles.

Bonding was also rather uncommon.  Most of the primary relationships were platonically male-female: Jed and Granny, Ellie Mae and Jethro, bank president Mr. Drysdale and his secretary, Miss Hathaway (Nancy Culp, who incidentally was gay in real life.)









But gay-vague was everywhere.

1. Mr. Drysdale's son, Sonny (Louis Nye) is sophisticated, well-educated, and not interested in girls.  His parents keep trying to hook him up with Ellie Mae (so he will eventually inherit the Clampett millions), but he will have none of it.  He and Ellie are just friends.










2. Hollywood star Dash Riprock (Larry Pennell), a parody of Rock Hudson, is handsome, suave, and not interested in girls.  He vaguely courts Ellie Mae, but his heart isn't in it,  regardless of how much his studio pushes them together.


Apparently the producers thought it hilarious to keep having Ellie Mae run into men who were not interested in girls.







3. Jethro had a "twin sister," Jethrine.  She stayed back in the hills, and didn't show up often, but when she did, it was obvious that it was Jethro in drag.  I got the distinct impression that everyone was just playing along, responding to his drag persona as if she was a different person.

See also: Petticoat Junction; Green Acres

"Terminator: Dark Fate": Lesbian Triangle, 5 Missed Beefcake Opportunities, and Arnold

 The Terminator series (how many have there been so far?) is about machines taking over the world in the near future, trying to kill all humans, and sending a bot back in time to kill the mother of the person who will eventually thwart their plans.  Timelines change, the future is changed, evil cyborgs become good, and it all starts over again.  This time, it's Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).  Well, maybe we'll see Arnold naked.  

Scene 1: A teen couple, Miguel (Daniel Ibanez) and Maria, are kissing under a bridge.  Suddenly a blob opens up in the sky, and a naked lady falls to the ground.  They rush to help her.  

Ugh!  Naked lady!  But Miguel is cute.  Maybe he'll be her ally, and we'll get some beefcake

The police arrive, think they are abducting her, and attack.  She revives and kill s them-- naked lady fight.  Then she co-opts Miguel's clothes.  

And Miguel and Maria vanish from the story!  Boo!

Scene 2:  A cute domestic scene, with grown-up brother and sister Diego (Diego Ramos) and Dani (Natalia Reyes) , Dad who makes breakfast, and cute dog.  Whoah, Diego has his shirt off for about five minutes.   Six-pack abs! Things are looking up!

They go to work at a factory, where they discover that Diego's job has been taken over by a robot.  Foreshadowing!

Meanwhile another blob opens up, and a naked man falls out.  Things are really looking up!  He knocks on Dani's door and talks to her father.

Scene 3: The naked man, now clothed, turns out to be a cyborg named Rev 9 (Gabriel Luna, below).  He goes to the factory and starts killing people.  Naked Lady (Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis) fights him, while explaining that he has come from the future to kill Dani.  

Dani, Diego, and Grace flee through the streets of Mexico City...

Hey, Mexico City.  There will be interesting location shots for a change! 

And out into the desert, which could be anywhere.  Boo!

Diego is killed, and vanishes from the story.  Double boo!

Scene 4: Dani and Grace hook up with an elderly but still kick-ass Sarah Connor.  I like her call-backs: "Come with me if you...don't want to die"; "I'll be back."  

 For the last 20 years, she has been getting occasional transmissions telling her where and when a terminator will appear, so she can kill it.  Now she's ready to help them by killing the Rev 9.  

Three women together.  I'll bet Grace and Dani fall in love. Or Dani and Sarah.  Or Sarah and Grace.  Or all three.

Scene 5: Grace needs some kind of medicine, so they raid a pharmacy.  The pharmacy tech offers to help, and carries Grace outside.  Hey, he's cute.  Maybe he'll join them, and....

he vanishes from the story.  Boo!

Scene 6: They decide to go to the source of  Sarah's messages, in Laredo, Texas..  Across the border.

You realize that all of Mexico is not "across the border," right?  It's 600 miles from Mexico City to Laredo.

Coincidentally, Dani's uncle is a coyote, illegally transporting people across the border.  He's a bit crotchety, but there's a cute guy sitting on the couch, reading a magazine.  Maybe he will...

He accompanies them to the border without saying anything or getting a face shot.  They are all captured by the ICE.  Sarah breaks them out -- well, Dani and Grace, anyway.  She leaves the guy to his fate.  Hey, he was helping you, and you abandoned him!  Boo!

Scene 6: They reach the source of the transmission -- a cabin in the Laredo forests, occupied by Arnold! The original terminator, a thousand years old but still buffed, retired, going by the name Carl.  He has started a family with a single mom (their relationship is not sexual, he specifies).

Arnold!  Things are looking up!

Plus his adopted son Mateo (Manuel Pacific) is cute.  Maybe he'll join them....

Nope, he vanishes from the story.  Boo!

Scene 7: Carl helps them destroy the Rev 9.  Grace dies.  I guess she and Dani won't become lovers.  Which is probably a good thing, because:

Spoiler alert!

Scene 8: Fast-forward to the future.  Sarah and Dani are living together, in what I assume is a romantic relationship, and Grace is their daughter!  

That must be why they missed so many beefcake opportunities.  What lesbian wants to look at hot guys?  Bring on the kick-ass babes!

Apparently they are not a canonical lesbian couple because the producers are homophobes or cowards, or both.  But the lesbian community has latched onto them anyway. 

Dark Shadows: Barnabas and Willie

In the spring of 1969, my friends and I began running home from school as fast as we could (my house was the closest) to catch the last ten or fifteen minutes of Dark Shadows (1966-71), a soap opera about the brooding, guilt-wracked vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) and his immensely wealthy, occult-obsessed family.

He enters the story when the slim, stuttering ne’er-do-well Willie Loomis (John Karlen, left), prowling around the Collins estate on the stormy coast of Maine, discovers a secret room in the old mausoleum, and inside it a chained coffin.  At this point, most people would flag down the next bus to Boston, but the none-too-bright Willie decides to open the coffin.  A bejeweled hand shoots up and grabs him by the neck.

The next day Barnabas Collins presents himself as a long-lost “cousin from England” and talks his way into possession of the ancient, decrepit Old House.

Willie inexplicably moves in with him, telling his friends that he has taken a job as Barnabas’ servant; yet he is obviously more than a servant.  The two spend an inordinate amount of time together, and are on an altogether chummy first-name basis, a liberty taken by no other servant on the estate.

The truth, of course, is that Barnabas bit him, and now they are co-conspirators if not secret lovers.  What is a vampire’s bite, after all, but a form of sexual congress?

Gossip about the early years of the series reveals that the producers were so skittish about potential homoerotic readings of the relationship that they gave Willie a heterosexual crush, and mandated that same-sex neck-biting must always occur off-camera.

But the heterosexual crush backfires, as the writers have Willie confiding in Maggie Evans about his problems with Barnabas.

Maggie: Where's Barnabas?

Willie: I don't know where he is.  He left without saying anything to me.

Maggie: You seem very angry with him.

Willie: I don't care about Barnabas.

Maggie: You don't really believe that, do you?

Eventually the strain of living with a vampire is too much for Willie; he has a nervous breakdown, and is confined to Windcliff Sanitarium. Later, Barnabas misses Willie, and asks him to return.  Willie eagerly agrees.  Later that evening, their friend Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) is sitting alone in the drawing room of the Old House, evidently keeping guard, when someone comes to the door.  “Barnabas isn’t here  – he’s with Willie,” she says with a diffident glance upstairs – to the bedrooms. Exactly what is Barnabas doing up there to welcome Willie home?  

When Barnabas announces his plans to cure his vampirism by transferring his spiritual essence into a different body, Willie worries that the new Barnabas will not be attracted to him (or, perhaps, that he will not be attracted to the new Barnabas):
Willie: Suppose he don’t like me?
Barnabas:         He will be exactly toward you as I am.
Willie: You don’t know that!  You might come out of this all different. . .It won’t be the same.

Although Barnabas barely acknowledges his affection, Willie obviously cares deeply for him, with an unstated and perhaps unconscious homoerotic desire.

As Barnabas zapped back and forth between time periods and parallel worlds, he encountered different characters played by the same cast members, and John Karlen managed to infuse all of his characters with a sometimes frivolous, sometimes dark and passionate attraction to the vampire hero.

When Barnabas visits Collinwood in the year 1897, he meets Karlen as Carl Collins, a fop only slightly toned down from Oscar Wilde’s green carnation crowd.  Carl grabs his shoulder,  touches his hand, takes his arm, and whispers softly in his ear “You look so nice!  We’re going to be close friends, aren’t we?  We’re going to be buddies!”  And thereafter, whenever he has a problem (usually involving ghosts or werewolves), he throws himself into Barnabas’s arms, overtly presenting himself as a lover.

Many of the cast members were gay, including Joel Crothers, left (who played Maggie Evans' boyfriend and remained her best friend in real life) and Louis Edmonds (patriarch Roger Collins).

When Don Briscoe (werewolf Chris Jennings) took time off to appear in the gay-themed Boys in the Band (1969), he brought Chris Bernau and Keith Prentice back with him.

Most of the others were gay friendly, including Grayson Hall (who was nominated for an Oscar for her role as a repressed lesbian in Night of the Iguana), Katherine Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans), Roger Davis (who went on to star in Alias Smith and Jones),  and the vampire himself, Jonathan Frid.

Most soap operas, like One Life to Live, were unremittingly heterosexist, requiring us to seek out subtexts, but Dark Shadows had ample male characters who were immune to the charms of eyelash-fluttering governesses and sought out each other: David Collins, heir to the family fortune; the fey Noah Gifford (Craig Slocum), who has an unspecified and “sinister” relationship with the golddigging Lieutenant Forbes (Joel Crothers); Aristede (Michael Stroka), a brooding, androgynous “manservant”; the nerdish mad scientist Cyrus Longworthy (Christopher Pennock); and the darkly sensuous Gerald Stiles (Jim Storm) who was not shy about expressing his devotion to werewolf/man-about-town Quentin Collins (David Selby).


No wonder we ran home from school as fast as we could to watch.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Farther Toward Gay Inclusivity than Any Other Cartoon

 Just six years ago, there were no gay characters on children's television at all.  Then it was only adults, an occasional girl with two moms shoved far, far into the background.  

Now it is almost customary for child-adventure teams to include a gay kid.  But the word "gay" is typically just a word.  The gay kid doesn't actually do anything to indicate gayness, like stating that someone is cute, or asking them for a date. 

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, on Nickelodeon, managed to have the gay kid actually being gay, although they eased in very gradually over the course of three seasons.

It's set in a post-Apocalyptic world, where all of the surviving humans live in an underground burrow, leaving the surface to various mutated animals, some monsters, some organized into human-style communities.  

Season 1: Kipo, a 12-year old girl, heads to the surface to search for her missing father, and joins forces with two humans who live there: Wolf  (a little girl raised by wolves) and Benson (a 13-year old boy whose back story is a mystery).  

In Episode 6, Kipo gets a crush on Benson, and he reveals that he is gay.  Of course, fighting monsters and mutant tyyrants leaves him little time to date, but in Episode 10, when they finally make it to Kipo's burrow, he has an eye-glistening falling-in-love moment with Troy (the only human near his age in the burrow-- good choice!).

Season 2: You'd expect Troy to stick around, become a member of the team, right?  He appears only in the first episode, where they promise to get together at the end of the adventure, and he kisses Benson on the cheek.     

In Episode 10, he appears to help Benson escape from the latest threat, a volcanic eruption.

Season 3:  The plot arc is about stopping the series Big Bad, Dr. Emilia, who is trying to stir up anti-mutant fervor.  Troy participates in the adventure in Episodes 1 and 2, and appears in background shots in Episodes 5 and 6. 

Episodes 8 is about the preparation for the  PRAHM, a Party Reconciling All Humans and Mutants.  Benson keeps trying to ask Troy, but loses his nerve or is interrupted by a crisis.  Finally he ends up asking him in front of everyone (which sounds like it would take even more nerve).  Troy reveals that he had been planning to ask Benson.   They hug and kiss, while everyone applauds.

Episode 9 features the party, which is interrupted by Dr. Emilia's final threat.  Troy and Benson manage a dance before the crisis starts.

Episode 10 concludes the story with Kipo's showdown with Dr. Emilia, followed by a flash-forward five years.  

The humans and mutants have formed a society together. Benson owns a restaurant. Troy takes over when he leaves; they kiss.  

Giving up a life of rip-roaring adventure for capitalism and domesticity?  Isn't that the way every adventure story ends?

This was the  only romantic plot arc in the series, not an add-on in the shadow of a heterosexual romance.

In spite of gradually easing into it,  Kipo went farther toward gay inclusivity than any other children's animated series.