Lez Keep It Real

Introducing the “happiest gay couple in all the world,” Rick and Steve. Thanks to the LOGO network, gay programming has achieved new heights. Now, an animated comedy based on short films by Q. Allan Brocka is reaching even higher.

“Rick & Steve” uses robotic figures and stop-motion animation. And it harbors far less anarchy in its soul, mocking the normative values now favored in gay and lesbian life as wholeheartedly as it endorses them. The series isn’t so much a gay “South Park” as it is a “Honeymooners” for our post-“Will & Grace” age.

Based on short films by Q. Allan Brocka, “Rick & Steve” is arguably even more conventional than that. Though set in the middle of the baby boom, “The Honeymooners” did not concern itself with child rearing, a subject so dear to the cultural interest that it is unavoidable even in comedy’s most seemingly subversive pockets. It says something that the grossest joke on “Rick & Steve” thus far hasn’t been about illicit sex but about procreation.

Illicit sex scares Rick and Steve, a longtime suburban gay couple who wrestle with a request from their lesbian best friends, Kirsten and Dana, to assist in the production of a baby. Another young friend is paired with an older man who is H.I.V. positive. (“You married me when it was cool to have a boyfriend with AIDS,” he growls at his partner.) Everyone on the show is coupled.

Rick and Steve are married too, and they work at their monogamy. One night after they venture to a club, they return home horrified by the idea of guys in leather and the whole promiscuous scene to which they have been momentarily privy. This sends them to a couples therapist, who advises that each engage in the other’s hobby; Rick’s is Men-zuh, an organization of gay geniuses.

“Rick & Steve” derives much of its humor from stereotype: lesbians who yearn to get home to grout tubs and ones who seek “nondenominational cleanser.” Some of it is clever, but none of it challenges heterosexual assumptions about what gay life ought to look like. The difference-versus-equality debates that factionalized nearly every social movement of the 20th century seem well over in the gay and lesbian world. “Rick & Steve” is just more proof of how forcefully one side has won. ~ The New York Times

Though this review isn’t the most flattering, I think it raises one key point. The author states, “Rick and Steve derives much of its humor from stereotype: lesbians who yearn to get home to grout tubs and ones who seek ‘nondenominational cleanser,’” and makes the argument that the show is merely reinforcing GLBT stereotypes. But, the show airs on the LOGO channel … to a overwhelmingly dominate GLBT audience. The point of the show isn’t there to “challenge heterosexual assumptions,” it’s there to make us laugh. Straight people aren’t watching it. Gay people are. And not for any other reason than to incite a chuckle here and there. Sometimes the gay community takes itself far too seriously. It’s perfectly OK, every now and then, to poke fun at ourselves. So, sit back, relax and laugh a little. Because, really … who can you laugh at, if you can’t laugh at yourself?

rick and steve, the new york times, logo, Q. Allan Brocka