Withering Glance: Gays inhabit TV land, then and now

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

RN: Pop-quiz time: Name your idea of the gayest characters in TV history, and no, "Uncle Arthur" is too easy. Go.

CP: Since it occurred so early in my TV-watching life, I would have to mention loud Lance Loud, the rangy, unapologetically gay eldest son in the family on the PBS proto-reality series "An American Family" in 1973.

RN: What about "Family Affair"? Even as a kid I suspected something fishy was going on between Uncle Bill and Mr. French. My guess is that Dr. Benton Quest and Race Bannon of "Jonny Quest" were more than fishing buddies, too. I think that "Saturday Night Live" patterned their hilarious "The Ambiguously Gay Duo" on them.

CP: Reaching back even further, I dimly recall having a crush on Clutch Cargo, the lantern-jawed hero of the 1960s cartoon. Snowy-haired Clutch, who was joined on global adventures by the boy called Spinner and his dog Paddlefoot, is the guy after whom Anderson Cooper modeled much of his career, as well as his look.

RN: Interesting. I've always thought of the Coop as a silver-foxed Elroy Jetson. There goes that theory.

CP: What's gay in soaps-land, which is your sovereign territory?

CP: What happened to Nuke?

RN: Don't worry, Luke and Noah, gaytime TV's first gay supercouple, continue to suffer, exquisitely, on "As the World Turns." I just discovered Griffin, the shockingly well-adjusted 15-year-old gay teen on "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." He's played by 23-year-old Brando Eaton, who has the name and the body of a porn star.

CP: When an actor's name works equally well in reverse order, you know you're not talking about the moniker on his driver's license. Why haven't they launched a daytime serial simply titled "Shirtless"? It would dovetail perfectly with the ads for laundry detergent.

RN: Apparently, you are unfamiliar with a little show called "The Young and the Restless." How about nighttime? From the looks of it, "Spartacus" could double as gay pride parade float.

CP: You really should refer to that Starz series, which has bought ads in all the gay 'zines, by its full title: "Spartacus: Blood, Boobs and Body Oil." For current TV, I love Marshall (Keir Gilchrist), Toni Collette's son on "The United States of Tara." He wears a tie to high school, loves Noël Coward and doesn't fit in with the sour queens who own and operate the "gayble" in the lunchroom.

CP: As for "Glee," I heart it, but I wonder why they couldn't have made the football captain gay and the designer-loving kid straight? On "Nurse Jackie," the gay nurse named Thor [Stephen Wallem] is a big lug, bearded and suffering from diabetes. Am I going on a bit?

RN: No more than I am. Sounds like maybe we should turn off the TV, pick up a book or get some fresh air. Who am I kidding? Hand me the remote.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com.

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