According to Anna McCarthy, ABC’s president, Robert A Iger, said of Ellen that it “became a program about a character who was gay every single week, and… that was too much for people.” McCarthy describes this perspective as maintaining the “fantasy of queer identity as something that can be switched on for special occasions” along with a “fear of a quotidian, ongoing lesbian life on television.” Since Ellen’s coming out episode in 1997, a number of queer characters, generally secondary characters, have appeared on both broadcast and cable television. Choose a program with a queer character from the 2000s or 2010s that you are familiar with and examine whether or not that character’s relationship to their sexuality is truly serialized or only focused on occasionally.
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In New Girl (Fox, 2011-2018), Jess’s friend, Sadie, is a lesbian OB/GYN. While Sadie only appears on 8/146 episodes, her queerness comes up in each one. Throughout the show, she discusses her wife, Melissa, their IVF journey, and later, their divorce. Her character is allowed to go through many of the same relationship milestones that the straight characters are though, notably, the viewer never gets to see Melissa date.
One of the things done well in New Girl’s characterization of Sadie is how they allow her to be a sexual being and make sexual comments without painting her as a predatory lesbian. The characters note that as an OB/GYN Sadie spends most of her life looking at vaginas, a straight male character even asking for her “vagenius” advice. She is allowed to be sexual and talk about queer sex without being painted as someone who makes the straight women around her uncomfortable. Her queerness is allowed to be part of the humor of the show without it being the butt of the joke. She is allowed to be a humorous character and a lesbian. Her queerness is not singled out as a serious topic which, in a sitcom, allows her full integration into the show instead of treating her a preachy PSA.
Of course, this show still leaves much to be desired. Sadie is one of the only queer characters and only appears in a small fraction of episodes. The show doesn’t deal with the world of lesbian dating which ignores a large part of queer culture. Overall, Sadie is not poor queer representation, jsut not enough.
A perfect example of this can be seen within the show Glee that was released throughout 2009-2015, particularly through the character of Kurt Hummel. Unlike previous shows that treated queerness as a one time event or special feature, Glee made Kurt’s sexuality an ongoing part of his story. His experiences with bullying, dating, and overall acceptance between his family and friends were woven throughout various episodes in the series, rather than being contained in isolated moments. Glee utilized Kurt’s character and identity to explore the challenges and joys of being openly gay as a high school boy and beyond as he got older. This made his personality feel continuous and not temporary because it was integrated into the whole storyline of the show. It wasn’t something that appeared only when convenient for a plot twist or overarching social message.
However, at the same time, Glee also reflected some of the limits in mainstream representation. While his sexuality was consistently present, it was often framed through themes of tolerance and moral lessons for straight audiences rather than deeper explorations of queer life itself. The show celebrated his difference but sometimes softened or sanitized it to remain palatable for a broad network audience. In this way, Glee advanced queer visibility beyond the ” special occasion” model that McCarthy critiques. Yet, it still maintained elements of that fantasy, offering representation that was regular and meaningful, but ultimately still remained within the boundaries of mainstream comfort.