“Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?” Oh, hey, “Glee,” it’s nice to have you back. And thanks for getting down to business. After all, it was just a few weeks ago that my Facebook mini-feed was blown up with video links to Sue Sylvester’s “Sneaky Gays” PSA, and with “Modern Family” on hiatus and Scevin over on “Brothers & Sisters” living the dull life, I was starting to get frantic I wouldn’t have an obligatory gay joke to post on Tumblr this week. But alas, you pulled through-and I can’t help but look forward to Kurt’s rumored gay-by-May romance.
The sad thing, however, is that I’ll most likely get bored with that gay fling storyline. As teased in the upcoming previews, Sue asks coiffed Kurt and sassy black Mercedes, “How do you two not have a show on Bravo?” Honestly, I want to see that show. I’m ready for Will & Grace 2.0 (Before Harry Conick, Jr., of course).
The stigma, though, is that the gay best friend plot is as flaccid as the search for Gaga’s discostick. We’ve been there. Done that. Male hunk celebrities can be gay now and in love. Let’s move on! And so, gays on television are getting “promoted” from being best friends to being boyfriends. I can’t help but wonder if the real Wills and Graces of the world cancel their relationships this easily, too.
It’s commonly said that at Northwestern, when it comes to relationships you’re either married or “just hooking up.” Last week, I was proposed to. Unfortunately, it was my female roommate popping the question. Now she gets some terrible joy out of yelling “Why won’t you marry me?!” as we walk down Sheridan. In reality, we balance each other quite nicely, except for the fact that my yin has no interest in her yang. Like Kurt and Mercedes, it just works, and most of the time there is no need to make a spectacle out of it-unless there’s some fear that one will leave the other sooner or later.
Indeed, the craze over wanting a gay best friend seems to have simmered a bit because at NU-brimming with our theater gays and our journalism fashion-politico gays and that crop of them living in the fraternity quad-it’s second nature for girls to have a “token” gay. There are no questions of “replacement” because it sounds absurd that a fag will ever be sans his hag.
It works conversely, too, which is either problematic or endearing-how can an agenda-less friendship feel so right without teetering into codependence? Well, because both of us can have boyfriends. We don’t operate in phases of either/or, as television would seem to suggest. Instead, we’ve taken the ménage à trois triangle of awkward jealousy and fashioned it into something more asymptotic and spacious. “Will & Grace” fans will remember the sour spite that tore the duo apart. For a show that claimed to be so progressive, who came up with that rule? Gays are like dolphins, not sharks. We don’t eat the competition.
So, girls-whether your name is Mercedes or Grace or whatever Jennifer Aniston’s name was in that one movie with Paul Rudd-let’s make a deal. When we get boyfriends, let’s promise to never give them more screen time than we owe each other. Until then, move over. I need a better view of Puck.
