Have Things Changed Since Ellen?

In her article on Ellen and gay and lesbian visibility, Bonnie Dow argues that Ellen was “largely geared toward the comfort of heterosexuals,” and did not differ from other televised historical representations of gays and lesbians. She also elaborates on the four rules of portraying gay people: they were relegated to one-time appearances rather than recurring character status, they were never incidentally gay, their lifestyles are depicted in terms of how they affect heterosexual characters, and they ignored gay and lesbian sex and desire. While I argue that these rules still hold on contemporary television, there are exceptions. The ABC series Happy Endings is an ensemble comedy about six friends hanging out in Chicago and is often compared to the iconic sitcom Friends. Unlike Friends, however, one of the main characters is gay. In addition to being gay, Max is aggressively masculine. He is a slob, is a little overweight and unkempt, regularly wears flannel, and loves drinking beer and watching sports. He just happens to be gay. The series regularly shows Max pursuing and talking about sleeping with other men—and his conquests are always other traditionally masculine gay men. On Happy Endings, being gay is incidental. We often only discover characters are gay after Max says he is dating them or has slept with them, which also challenges Dow’s assertion that gay sex and desire are ignored. Finally, because Max is one of the six main characters, he is obviously recurring, and his character often headlines plotlines of his own rather than affecting or tagging along with the heterosexual main characters’ storylines. I can only hope that more characters like Max appear on television because I adore him.