Of course there would. Lesbians get to do that, as long as they’re hot. (otherwise they just fix cars and shit) Gay guys are there to be funny, not sexual. Hell, I’m half surprised they have a long term gay couple at all, it’s usually a single gay guy. You get the gay ‘sensibility’ without the messy sex stuff. We’re the nice guys, the stylish ones, we want to adopt foreign children and be the fun guy you can show off at parties as your gay friend…you know because you have such a DIVERSE circle.
Reminds me of an episode arc on Queer As Folk where the most flamboyant of the guys got a TV news segment as their ‘queer guy’. (this was about the same time as Queer Eye For the Straight Guy was running) He did all the little decorating tips, how to dress, etc and everyone loved him. Bryan, being his usual blunt self, congratulated him on being the perfect little queer eunuch that everyone would love.
To be fair, things are changing some but it’s still slow.
Do we see more lesbian kissing than gay male kissing on network TV? Off the top of my head, I can only think of two network television shows that have depicted a female same-sex couple kissing. I’m sure there’s been more than that, but I don’t think there’s been a lot more than that. What TV Tropes calls the “Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss” usually involves at least one straight woman.
I think there’s a difference, Phil and Claire are a lot more affectionate (remember Clive Bixby?). And not all we see are public displays either, this is a mockumentary at least technically, the whole conceit of the show is that the viewer gets to see things that are private. However, it does seem like the show runners are taking this criticism to heart. Also, it seems as though those who are outraged over this double standard (not so much here but definitely elsewhere on the internet) are forgetting how novel MF is in introducing a same sex couple that’s adopted a child. I think that is a major contribution to acceptance that might be undone of seed were emphasized too much.
I wasn’t imagining that either; I was simply drawing a parallel between the lesbian version and the way it is now.
As *another *fat man, it’s not his weight that turns me off, it’s his neediness, and that of Mitch as well. Their relationship is like a rubber band, that gets pulled in one direction or another . . . or both. Someday it’ll snap and become two independent needy guys. Not that that’s untrue of other couples in the show.
Yeah, but if you’ll notice, the private scenes with Phil and Claire getting it on are almost always played for comedy (kids interrupting, Phil’s terrible role playing, etc). While it would be ground-breaking to have similar scenes between Cam and Mitchell, I’m not sure enough of the audience would have that “remember when that happened to us?” moment to give the uncomfortable funny they seem to aim for on that show.
I think it’s a litte unfair to attribute a reluctance to watch Mitch and Cam making out to homopobia. It’s more of a fatphoba, IMO. Heck, who wants to see Jay and Gloria making out on screen? They never, ever show them swapping spit (thank God) and that is because nobody wants to see PDAs from anyone except the most attractive.
OK, if you were comparing Camryn Manheim, who is pretty- at least when I saw her last, with Eric Stonestreet, I could understand that, but Mindy Kaling???
Btw, does anyone else think Eric Stonestreet looks like he could be Glenn Shadix’s brother?
Camryn Manheim, at least when she was on The Practice, was pretty without being sexy. Mindy Kaling’s the opposite. And I don’t know who Glenn Shadix is.
No, but she is in a secret intermittent incestuous relationship with her redheaded younger brother.
Meh. I like Cam and could be friends with him, and if I were gay might go out with him. Mitch I would not care to hang out with, and if I were dating him would likely have snapped his neck after the third insulting Tennessee remark.
That’s my problem. I’m not as concerned about the amount of PDA as I am demonstrable attraction to one another; they’re always bickering like a married couple but you don’t really feel there’s a heart to the relationship. Cam’s a drama queen and Mitch is a snarky bitch, they have few common interests and neither is particularly attractive, so what drew them/keeps them together?
There was an early episode in which Cam heard a noise coming from the nursery over the baby monitor and went from sound asleep to on the move with a bat in his hand to protect his cub and Mitchell was impressed. I wish they’d have more moments like that one which show the guys at their best.
That one’s ambiguous, as Mitchell was bothered by his own wimpy reaction. A better example was when Mitchell and Cam, on their way to Luke’s birthday party, stopped at a gas station, and Mitchell pissed off some large fellow at the pump, who threatened to beat him up. Cam, in full clown regalia, immediately got out of the car and made it clear that if any beatdown was going to be delivered, it would be by him and the other fellow would be receiving it. Mitchell was visibly impressed and even boasted about it to Claire later. “My boyfriend’s a badass!”
This assumption hasn’t been established. Could you list these lesbian couples on network tv that kiss on-screen? Last one I remember was Willow and Tara back in 2001. Of course, I don’t watch nearly as much network TV as I used to, so I just may not be aware of them.
The point made about Jay and Gloria never showing affection either is a good one. Only pretty people get to show affection, and Mitch & Cam are definitely not in the pretty people category.
EDIT: I dislike the Cam & Mitch characters because they’re both over-the-top caricatures, I see no reason why they would be together, and I know I said caricatures already, but seriously, they really dialed the stereotypes up to 11.
If given a vote as to having characters being more affectionate to each other I will always vote no. It always makes the show more boring.
You’re trying to tempt me with the beautiful Julie Bowen in a lesbian relationship, but tv has gone down that road before with bad results.
After a not watching for a while I tuned in to “House M.D.” to find the gorgeous Olivia Wilde in lesbian relationships. Interesting, but it kind of sucked. It didn’t really have anything to do with the show. Don’t torture me with the details of their personal relationships when they should be torturing a patient with invasive tests.
And on “Heroes” the only interesting thing Claire did after the first season was get her head sliced open by Sylar so he could play with her brains. She dragged down ever plot she was put in. But hey, she’s rather attractive, so who wouldn’t want to see her find a girlfriend? That is when the show became unwatchable. I actually preferred to watch commercials on other channels. About the only thing that makes for worse tv viewing then teenagers and their serious relationships is listening to someone crying for long periods of time.
The “Ellen” show was too long ago for me to remember too many details, but the great thing about it was not focusing too much on relationships. But then she came out and when they focused on that it dragged the show down. Ellen is a great comedian. She knows what’s funny in any situation. There was a ditzy red head on her show, not the greatest character, but Ellen had chemistry with her. Maybe she even had “chemistry” with her. There was nothing romantic between them but Ellen’s interaction with her made things funny. Putting them in more contact with each other wouldn’t have improved things.
I think Cam and Mitchell are playing things about right. The important thing is how they play off each other, not how much they are smooching. With the writing and direction Modern Family that hasn’t been a problem.
If the writers want couples to get more feelly on the show, please, someone throw a pie.
I can think of one lesbian kiss from last season, but it doesn’t really fit the concept of the OP:
On Parenthood, the away-at-college daughter, who hadn’t been seen for two seasons, appears in only one episode, when she comes home from college with a friend in tow. Her little bother walks in on them kissing, then blabs to the parents. Who of course don’t care, they love their daughter, blah blah blah. Not knowing the brother blabbed, the rest of the episode the daughter gathers her courage to finally tell her parents she’s dating a girl, but it turns out they don’t care they just love her.
It’s unclear whether the daughter is actually gay, just experimenting in college, or just loves this one particular women as opposed to being attracted to women over men. In any case, the whole thing was a one-off, played unironically in an over-the-top very special episode / after school special kind of way.
Unsurprisingly, of the girls of that generation on the show, the experimenting coed just happened to be the hot one.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn’t even a network show, so it doesn’t count here.
Glee has had more than a dozen LGBT characters but few of them have been Ls – the only major one is Santana.* She has had two different girlfriends on the show though, and shared on-screen kisses with each of them. Her first girlfriend, Brittany, was a fairly important character on the show in her own right, although her second girlfriend appeared in only a few episodes before vanishing with little explanation.
*I have a lot of complaints about the way this character has been depicted and how her storylines have been handled, but she is a lesbian and Glee is a current network show.
Some solid examples given that I’m totally unaware of, not having watched either House or Glee.
Glee should be the perfect example, I would think. Lots of gay characters of both genders. My blind, uninformed guess is that the lesbian characters probably kiss a whole lot more than the male characters, supporting Skald’s assumption. Is that the case?