The last two episodes of Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World took televised same-sex parenting where it’s never been before. First, Dana and Kirsten and Rick and Steve go on an LGBT cruise for some pre-parental bonding. While on board, Dana and Kirsten go through “Mommy Boot Camp,” a Lamaze class from hell and a well-deserved poke at “you must do this” parenting advice. To conclude the season, Dana experiences a personality-altering hormone surge, pads the entire house in order to babyproof it, and goes to the hospital where she gives birth to . . . .
A cliffhanger. Earlier in the episode, though, we learn she’s having a boy, so unless the creators have decided to make fun of ultrasound results, that’s not the big surprise. No word yet on a Season Two.
Happiest Gay Couple broke boundaries in many ways. It took a cruder look at the LGBT community than we usually see outside of comedy clubs, but one imbued with a deep love of the community it lampoons. It used LGBT parenting as a central theme for the main characters. (One could argue that Queer as Folk and The L Word did the same. It seems to me, though that parenting, while important to several of the couples on those shows, was never as central. Maybe it’s just that the larger casts and number of plotlines on those shows diluted the effect of the parenting threads.) Happiest Gay Couple also managed to integrate gay men and lesbians better than Queer as Folk, where Mel and Lindsey always seemed secondary to the boys. (Yes, Rick and Steve are the titular characters, but they clearly form a fundamental yin-yang with Dana and Kirsten.)
This is perhaps more serious analysis than I should give, for the main point of the show was to make us laugh, and it did. It may also have started a trend towards puppet-based shows featuring same-sex parents. The Henson Company, originator of the Muppets, is reportedly shopping around a pilot for a sitcom about a gay male couple in Hollywood who adopts a child. (Thanks to National Gay News.Com.) After Happiest Gay Couple, it would have to be pretty clever to be seen as anything but an imitator. Now, if Sesame Street’s newest Muppet, Abby Cadabby, had another mom (besides the Fairy Godmother who’s been mentioned to date), we’d really have something innovative. . . .
(Rick & Steve – The Complete First Season
