The Worst Representations of Gay Men on TV in 2012

...And now for the worst. This was a truly terrible year, one completely cluttered up with just awful portrayals that combined bad TV with bad stereotypes. Watching many of these shows was just a painful exercise. They were self-indulgent messes, replete with awkward and horrifying characterization. They aren't complex, they aren't interesting, they aren't praise worthy. They're just bad. The worst part being that the shows could so easily have been good, but just consistently chose not to be. In fact, this year was so bad, I had to expand my normal half-list of five into a full list of ten just to cover everything that was horribly, horribly wrong.

Let the pain begin...

The Ten Worst Representations of Gay Men in 2012

10. T.J. Hammond, Political Animals

Political Animals was a show that I generally liked. I actually quite often liked T.J. the slutty, drug addict son. But most of the time he was just alternating between sleeping with just about anyone and doing copious amounts of drugs. There was nothing particularly complex or interesting about him, he was just poorly written and came off incredibly awkwardly. Inevitably the best episodes of the series were the ones that marginalized him as much as possible.

9. Oscar Martinez, The Office

"Gay Witch Hunt" is one of my favorite episodes of TV. Which really marks the stark deterioration of both Oscar and The Office over the course of its history. He used to be, like everyone else who worked in the office, a fairly normal guy, but one who happened to be gay and a little pompous. Now he's devolved, again like everyone else in the office, into his worst traits. He is an arrogant jerk and his plot-line for this season has been that Angela's boyfriend the state senator is cheating on her with him. How sad for a character that used to be on the Best list.

8. Smash... just Smash

NBC decided to rip off Glee and do it as a Broadway show. The result was, quite predictably, terrible, with more than one "what were you thinking?" moments per episode. It's almost impossible to nail down what was actively offensive as opposed to simply offensively bad. Nor is it possible to single out any one character in a show this aggressively  in-your-face bad. So, I'm just saying the entire show, and placing it on the low end since it was good enough, at least, to spread the misery around. The lowlights include the dance crew whose sole personality traits were "gay," the entire Tom dates a Republican arc, and pretty much anything involving Ellis.

7. David Murray, The New Normal

The New Normal is pretty much all around terrible. A screechy, self-indulgent, moralizing mess that is simply an excuse for Ryan Murphy to climb up on his soap box and pelt us with sermons. It is sloppy, inconsistent, and will be actively offensive one scene and then follow it with angry tirade about how we should not be offensive. David is, mostly, the straight man, but he is the exact same screechy moralizing jerk that everyone else on the show is, as well as generally being an arrogant dick. Mostly he is there to make Bryan look like someone a person could actually fall in love with.


6. Cameron Tucker, Modern Family

Oh Cam....this has not been your year, has it? Cam usually manages to just skate by based on farm stories. Having that one quality in addition to being gay normally saves him, in my opinion, from the truly terrible gay characters. But man, they really went over-the-top with his theatrics and neediness this season.

5. Patrick, Anger Management

Anger Management is a sitcom that could be, and should be, better than it is. And Patrick is a character that could be, and should be, better than he is. He's a gay guy with anger control issues. That could be something interesting. An angry character instead of a bitchy one. But he is a bitchy character. Just a stereotypically effete, bitchy guy. Setting a show in a therapy session should make delving into deep, complex characters easy, but no, everything about the show is incredibly superficial, including Patrick.

4. Kurt Hummel, Glee

Kurt has to be excited that this year features so many terrible characters, because it really makes him look better by comparison. Glee was a show that distracted its audience with bright colors and catchy songs, causing them not to realize just how awful a show it is. Kurt gets continuously saddled with horrible plots, often just to make a point. Which is something special in a show as utterly incoherent as Glee is.

3. Mitchell Pritchett, Modern Family

The former winner of worst gay guy on TV, has now fallen to third place! Mitchell is gay and... and... there's no "and" there. He's just gay. The worst part being that he's gay and in a completely sexless relationship. I always say that Modern Family is best viewed as a group of people who died and are now in Hell together, and that's no more evident than with Mitchell and Cam's relationship. They are just two awful people making each other miserable.

2. Louis, Partners

Partners was just awful. It would have been dated in 1990, an unfunny collection of stereotypes with jokes that would have been rejected from Will & Grace scripts. Louis was the worst aspect of the show, being a completely self-absorbed, narcissistic asshole utterly unattached to reality. And yet was supposed to be lovable. He would be terrible for the entire episode, and then we were asked to think he was adorable.

1. Bryan Collins, The New Normal

I could almost cut and paste my criticisms of Louis and put it here. It is amazing that a TV season would feature two such odious gay characters who are terrible in the exact same way. But Bryan was just so much worse as a transparent Mary-Sue of Ryan Murphy (so transparent that Murphy just stuck a "b" in front of his own first name). He's screechy and moralizing, and yet a complete jerk. He's completely untethered from reality, and yet treats everyone terribly. He's every bad gay stereotype without any attempt at creating an interesting character. He is a character with literally no redeeming qualities. Just an oil slick of awfulness. The New Normal is just Ryan Murphy's self-indulgent fantasy lie, and Bryan is who Murphy thinks he is. Murphy seems to think that he is charming and adorable, but he really is just an awful, awful human being.