This post was submitted by Zack Rosen

Next Tuesday, Jolly, Amelie and Rocky will be joining forces on a new TV column called “Telly Monster.” In anticipation of this event, a year in the making, here’s a repost of one of our favorite TNG television posts of all-time. Please enjoy and be sure to tune in to “Telly Monster” starting next Tuesday at noon!

Michael put up a great post yesterday about Cartoon Network’s serialized program, “The Venture Bros.” Besides being one of the most fully realized universes on TV right now, the show does a great job at including a number of gay characters who exist as more than tokens or stereotypes.

While “Will and Grace” and other shows have slowly opened the door to gay characters on prime time TV, they are most often neutered, obnoxious stereotypes or punchlines. The fact is, while live action TV still has light years to go in terms of gay inclusiveness, a handful of underground cartoons have featured well-rounded, sympathetic, realistic portrayals of gay characters that put any of the major networks to shame. While mainstays like Waylon Smithers, Stewie Griffin and Mr. Garrison are most often cited, there are whole cadres of such ‘toons that aren’t lauded quite as often.

The list below is far from comprehensive, as it is drawn from my rapidly fading memory and unfortunately doesn’t include many queer lady or trans characters. But it hopefully will expose you to some great shows you might not have known about, and some equally great gay characters that will make you feel a little less invisible on television.

The final two entries on this list count as, in my opinion, the finest examples of gay couples in television history. (Sorry, Keith and David.) The ones leading up aren’t always so serious, but at least they’re there.

1-8, The Entire Cast of “Drawn Together.”

‘Drawn Together,’ Comedy Central’s animated spoof of Real World, thrives on stereoptypes. But instead of archetypes like “the virgin mormon” or “drunken frat boy,” this show brings together conventions of animation like a Picachu-style Japanese creature, an over-the-hill Betty Boop type and an idiot superhero. Though one of its character, a Link-type video game protagonist, is explicitly gay, everyone of the characters featured swings more ways than an topless octogenarian on a merry go round. The aforementioned superhero’s mild-mannered alter ego has an affair with the Link type, for instance, and a number of orgy sequences feature the entire cast fucking each other.

However, the show’s most salient sexual sequence is still one of a sapphic saliva swap. Princess Clarabell, “Drawn Togethers’ sheltered Disney heroine, is brought our of her shell by the mystery solving Foxxy Love with a hot interracial french kiss. I was unable to find the accompanying song, “This Black Chick’s Tongue” on Youtube, but it does exist. I can hardly claim that in further episodes the two of them settle down together and pursue family or marriage, but it is nice to see comedy central treat all types of sexuality as graphically and irreverently as they do the heteroes.

9. Zoltan Zeramarovich, “The Critic.”

The only trans character I could find, Zoltan is the son of restaurant owner Vlada and is revealed here to be an FTM. While I think the joke here is more about the announcers lack of tact than the boy’s trans identity, I wish I that a show so usually excellent as “The Critic”  hadn’t thrown out a cheap  punchline like that.

However, The “peepee poopie” song he sings here has made me laugh since I first saw it 15 years ago. Dare you not to giggle…

10. Him, “Powerpuff Girls.”

Genndy Tartakovsky will hopefully be known as this generations’ Chuck Jones for his work in creating shows like “Dexter’s Laboratory:” and the unbelievably beautiful (and underrated) “Samurai Jack.” But his most accessible work is “The Powerpuff Girls,” the surreal and occasionally racy ode to three crime fighting little girls with superpowers. As one might assume from a show about a town solely kept safe by a trio of toddlers with bed times, PPG revels in contradictions. The smartest character on the show is a monkey, the most inept is the town mayor, and a subterranean force of pure evil, so dangerous that he can only be known as “Him,” is a mincing, lilting queen whose limp mannerisms and effete vocal delivery are reminiscent of Shelly Duval with a throat full of helium.

Yet aside from all the obvious hints that he is gay (the bathing, the aerobics, the wrists) he is also the most formidable villain in the city of Townesville. Not every gay character has to be a football player, they just have to be respectable.

11 – 12. Fluffy and Uranus, “Duckman.”

I don’t have much evidence that these characters are gay beyond their pastel hues and vocal tones, but I’m also pretty sure that these minor characters in the show about a Jason Alexander-voiced, extremely grouchy private eye just don’t live together and hold hands because they’re buddies. They are the program’s answer to Bert and Ernie — eternally sunny, ambiguously gay voices of optimism — and as such they are frequently dispatched of in ways to rival the many deaths of Kenny McCormick. But who hasn’t wanted to execute an eternally happy gay couple? Be honest…

13 – 14.  Walter and Perry, “Home Movies.”

“Home Movies,” the cartoon about an overly precocious 9 year old with a filmmaking hobby, is  consistently successful when it comes to teasing out the little quirks and inevitabilities of childhood. The show manages to be constantly funny and endearing without ever sugarcoating, and this applies double to resident gay couple Walter and Perry. A takeoff on those pairs of little kids that are never apart, the duo was never ambiguous as much as honestly, openly, exaltingly in love. Whether canoodling together under an apple cart or plotting marriage, as above, I count Walter and Perry as the second best gay couple in TV history and I hope they are still very happy together as they enter college.

15 – 16.  Gus and Wally, “Mission Hill.”

If Perry and Walter are my second favorite TV gay couple, than Gus and Wally are my first. They are the elderly residents of the apartment building at the center of Mission Hill, a brightly colored and sorely missed (by me) depiction of life as urban gentrifier. In a neighborhood that borrows its name from San Francisco’s Mission and layout from Chicago’s Wicker Park, a high school aged boy moves in with his older brother and is exposed to the diversity of life in the city. He is shocked to see this elderly couple making out in the elevator in the show’s first episode, but quickly gets over it and goes on to find out how the two met in  later episode. (above.)  Though they are physically mismatched and bicker frequently (often about one’s attraction to David Niven) they are the only televised example that I know of an affectionate, sexually active gay couple who have made it through the years together and are still very much in love.

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