GLBT - Four letters not found in CSI:NY

Wolf359 said:
I would love to have a gay or bisexual character who wasn't a suspect or a victim. Unfortunately, American TV won't take the risk. It also doesn't help that the American Family Association took offense at a kiss between a gay couple on As The World Turns. They referred to it as an "unhealthy and immoral lifestyle." I hate prejudice.
Click to expand...

Better late than never, but...

Similarly, any time the Disney Channel shows Remember the Titans, they cut out the kiss between Gerry and Sunshine in the locker room. They show them talking, then fighting, and they cut out Gerry explaining why he goes after Sunshine.

Regarding the law about diversity- To them, I feel, diversity is having one black character set with white characters. And the day players sometimes are other ethnicities.

It's not surprising to me, either, the comments presented in the article. I think the thing that is more upsetting is that with all the new shows premiered every year, things don't really change at all. It seems like they don't even make the attempt. Some days I think I have a better chance at being struck thrice by lightning than them changing their ways in my lifetime.

But then I think about what was on TV when I was a kid, versus what's on TV now. In 21 years, I've seen some (albeit minor) change in programming to be more culturally sensitive and diverse to the lifestyles of many. When I was a kid, the closest thing to homosexual relationships I remember seeing was a show called "My Two Dads." Nowadays, you have "Will and Grace." So, times are changing... very slowly, but it's changing.

Essentially, I take this with a grain of salt- it wasn't too long ago that no one even talked about it. And while I'm not surprised to see it's still being denied now, I'm holding out hope that one day, it'll be more accepted.
 
Because I'm bored and have tried my hardest to procrastinate today, I went through the episode guide - in the 92 episodes from the first four seasons of CSI:NY, there were approximately 167 cases (I say 'approximately' because some cases were tied to others, etc). 167 cases with victims, witnesses, suspects, relatives and other miscellaneous characters here and there--literally hundreds of people--and only a few of them weren't straight.

I'd be interested to see a chart showing the regularity of certain things on this show (different ethnicities, sexualities, religions, etc) - and to perhaps be able to compare it with some statistics about NYC.
 
The only person I can think right off the bat who's been shown to be gay on CSI:NY was that female photographer who had an affair or something with her model. And surprise, suprise, she was a bad guy who got arrested.

Who were the few others?
 
I believe the other ones mentioned in this thread were: the transgender victim in "The Lying Game", the bisexual victim in "Oedipus Hex", the (presumably) lesbian electrician(?) in "The Ride In", the owner of the car in "Heroes" (who was cheating on his wife with a male prostitute), and the (presumably) bisexual killer in "Stealing Home".

It's more than I originally thought when opening the thread, but we're talking about the city with the largest gay population in the country (according to the Always Accurate - haha - Wikipedia). Don't Chelsea and the Village have pretty big gay populations? Well, those areas happen to be in Manhattan which is, apparently, the only part of New York that is represented on NY these past few seasons.

Personally, I'd like to see the team dealing with a case that is fully encased in the LGBT community - the victim(s), suspect(s) and witness(es) are all gay but it's just a fact of the investigation, not a factor behind the crime. I'd like to see how the individual members of the team would deal with the situation. Honestly, I think they'd all just get on with it - business as usual, with the usual amount of respect and courtesy afforded to those involved (or not, in the case of stupid murderers) - basically, feature LGBT characters prominently while simultaneously showing that they are *gasp* regular citizens of NYC.

(Although the mental image of Flack fending off interested guys would be fun to see - I don't think there is any type of person that hasn't hit on Flack before, the man is just too beautiful, and he's probably used to all of it. :p)

I can think of several gay actors I would love to see guest-star in such a storyline (Chad Allen and Bobby Gant, plzthanx). I'd love to see gay characters (and out actors) feature in a more integrated way (cops/scientists/lawyers/experts/etc), but I'd also love to see a good, respectful, featured sort of storyline for the community. It's not always just a gay person scattered here and there throughout the city.
 
Last edited:
You know what? Considering NY is eagy and more darker, and more streetwise than any of the CSIs I'd expect one GLBT main character in the show!
 
Originally Posted by Wolf359
I would love to have a gay or bisexual character who wasn't a suspect or a victim. Unfortunately, American TV won't take the risk. It also doesn't help that the American Family Association took offense at a kiss between a gay couple on As The World Turns. They referred to it as an "unhealthy and immoral lifestyle." I hate prejudice.
Click to expand...
I think the only Police Drama that has a permanent main character who is gay is Scotland's Taggart. DC Stuart Fraser (Colin McCredie) has been a main character for 14 years. No one objected to the revelation about 10 years ago that the character was in fact gay. It was just kind of "oh right he's gay". And this is a hard bitten gritty Glaswegian cop show that doesnt pull its punches.

It would be nice to see a gay character in NY that wasnt a victim or a murderer. It could make an interesting storyline if a recurring character was in fact gay, someone related to one of the main characters or an old friend.

They want to delve into the characters personal lives. Well why not try to make it realistic and interesting.... ...

Who am I kidding this is CBS they would probably make it overblown, stereotypical and condescending...:(
 
Last edited:
I didn't get a chance to read through the whole thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned but I always thought it would be cool if Stella was a lesbian.

I mean she's a strong, secure, confident woman and I think that Melina as an actress could rock it.

Plus, Stella really has terrible luck with men. :lol:
 
i live in the uk and they show gay people all the time
in fact most people on the soaps and daytime shows are gay
 
littlemegs said:
i live in the uk and they show gay people all the time
in fact most people on the soaps and daytime shows are gay
Click to expand...

I do think it's correct that the UK shows gay characters to a greater extent than some other places in the world, but it's clearly a huge overstatement to suggest that most people on soaps and daytime shows are gay.

Even when gay characters do appear on shows they are often subjected to the same stereotypes that you would get elsewhere. Not always of course, but the majority of gay characters seem to be shown to suffer from prejudice and are often the victims of crime and discrimination.

It is a shame that there aren't more gay characters on primetime television, I'd especially like to see strong characters that aren't being stereotyped. Hopefully things will move more in that direction, sadly it does seem to be a slow and difficult process.
 
Faylinn said:
It's more than I originally thought when opening the thread, but we're talking about the city with the largest gay population in the country (according to the Always Accurate - haha - Wikipedia). Don't Chelsea and the Village have pretty big gay populations? Well, those areas happen to be in Manhattan which is, apparently, the only part of New York that is represented on NY these past few seasons.

Personally, I'd like to see the team dealing with a case that is fully encased in the LGBT community - the victim(s), suspect(s) and witness(es) are all gay but it's just a fact of the investigation, not a factor behind the crime. I'd like to see how the individual members of the team would deal with the situation. Honestly, I think they'd all just get on with it - business as usual, with the usual amount of respect and courtesy afforded to those involved (or not, in the case of stupid murderers) - basically, feature LGBT characters prominently while simultaneously showing that they are *gasp* regular citizens of NYC.

(Although the mental image of Flack fending off interested guys would be fun to see - I don't think there is any type of person that hasn't hit on Flack before, the man is just too beautiful, and he's probably used to all of it. :p)
Click to expand...
Hehe, that would be funny. Or Danny being hit on by a gay guy and saying 'I don't cuddle'.:lol:

It would be wonderful to see a case in the GLBT setting. I agree that all the characters would probably just get on with the job, affording respect and sympathy to those who deserve it and scorn and pissy-ness to those who deserve it, regardless of sexuality.

I love the idea of Hawkes/Adam by the way. They are my two top characters to be gay or bi. Mac, Stella and Danny all have enough storylines/character stuff going on as is. Danny especially has enough angsty twitchiness without adding sexulity issues. I'm not saying being GLBT is always or necessarily angst-ridden, but it would be for Danny because he's Danny, the Angst King.

Sam being gay could be very interesting, might explain her distance from her family.

I can see Flack being gay/bi, but not transgender/transsexual- I don't want to see him picking out dresses, because they would be fugly like his ties, probably.:lol:

Does anyone read John Connolly's books? There are two assasins/killers featured in them called Angel and Louis who are gay, and they're not overblown gay sterotypes either. His latest book, The Reapers, is all about Angel and Louis, and the fact that they are gay is used to explore both their pasts and their present lives, but it's very subtly done. Their relationship is realistic and nice, and the fact of their sexuality doesn't affect the plot of the book massively, rather it adds to/deepens it, and makes the two even more compelling. And the best is, they're not killers because they're gay, they don't kill people based on sexuality, they are two very dangerous but interesting men who happen to be gay. They live in NYC too! I know books are different to tv, but I do think it goes to show that characters in crime fiction can be glbt without it taking anything away from the book.

Oh, and UK tv does have a lot more GLBT stuff goin' on. In the soap Hollyoaks there was an ongoing storyline involving a gay priest.

I wonder if Sid has ever dabbled in the GLBT world?
 
Sid has probably dabbled in a little bit of everything. :lol:

I love the idea of Hawkes/Adam by the way. They are my two top characters to be gay or bi... Sam being gay could be very interesting, might explain her distance from her family.
Click to expand...
I definitely think Adam is the most likely character to be bi (we know he's into the chicks, so I think gay is probably out of the picture), and I could definitely see Hawkes being bi as well (probably because I like him that way :lol:). But yeah, Adam I could definitely see.

The idea of Sam being bi is intriguing as well - I tend to think bi rather than gay since we've seen something to indicate she might have been in a relationship with at least one skeevy guy. Nothing definitive, but I'm leaning toward bi. Anyway, that could be interesting because she seems like the type of girl to have a good time, and I could see her having said good time with men and/or women. (Not that partying automatically implies getting busy with someone of the same sex, etc etc - this is just my reading of the character and what I personally think would be interesting to see.)

I won't hold my breath, though. :lol:

The John Connolly books sound interesting - I'll have to check those out. :) On the other side of the coin from assassins, I love the Donald Strachey Mystery movies (based on books, which I admittedly have only read one of) - the movies do tend to revolve around a gay storyline because the main character is a gay private investigator (and that affects his client list), but the latest movie "Ice Blues" found Donald working on a case that wasn't about the gay community, and it worked. He kicks ass, takes names and goes home to his partner - their relationship is easily the best part of the series.

Why yes, that was me shamelessly pimping the movies, why do you ask? :hugegrin: I want others to share in the low budget, occasionally corny, made-for-TV movie goodness.





Pimp pimp pimp *whistles innocently* :angel:
 
Last edited:
I think there needs to be alot more gay characters on CSI:NY and pretty much any show, I would love it if they added a gay character to the cast. I think it's long due for a gay main character.
The creators of CSI are most likely straight and only think straight like, in fact gay people probabally almost never cross thier mind. So they don't think about homosexuals alot at all. They probabally are also too afraid that their ratings will drop becuase there are many people who do not like gays, so if CSI or any other show had a gay person on it; they may not even watch the show becuase of it.
However it might make people watch it as well, especially gay people. They might be like "Oh there's a gay person on it now? I'll totally watch it!"
 
Haven't read all the posts of this thread though I agree there's an effort in the TV world in general that needs to be made about homosexuality. The stories on these shows are often time influenced and inspired by reality and homosexuals are a part of this reality just like any gender, race, religious individual. We're living in times were homosexuality is more accepted than before yet some places in USA or other country in the world lacks that open-mindness others has. The debate about gay rights actually taking place in America could lead to so many interesting characters and story lines, not just murder victims but as living people dealing with their homosexuality with the rest of the world, in their working place, community, etc. I'm probably sure there are interesting taboos in the law enforcement world that could be shown on-screen...

I have to say that my favourite gay character ever in a recent TV show is Lafayette from True Blood. I don't know if he was mentioned in the thread previously but Nelsan Ellis portrays his character with an originality and open-mindness that is SO refreshing to watch on TV. He didn't go with the stereotypes usually used when there is a gay character on a show. Nothing extreme or that feels too much.
And I'm SO glad that the producers and writers decided to not kill Lafayette as it happens in the books. They instead decided to bring in a new character to develop a love story with Lafayette. That'll be interesting to watch for sure :lol:

ETA : Now that I think about it... I also love that even though it is a comedy show Modern Family has an interesting gay couple who adopted a child. Also, there was a gay couple in Six Feet Under (another great creation of Alan Ball) that were just as interesting to watch. Sorry if they were already mention!

ETA2 : Oh! And I totally forgot about Chuck! There's a lot of "bromance" on the show. I don't know if anyone else watches the show?...
 
Last edited:
Did anybody take a look at Southland. One of the main characters is gay. And it is a cop show. The character played by Micheal Cuddlits (sorry spelling) has a heavy past (violent father, married, divorced), this is obviously a conflicted man. The revelation that he was gay was very subtly done, and the way the actor played the character is fascinating to watch. Behind the macho facade and manerisms that comes with the territory, there is a highly sensitive human being lurking there. Beautifully written !

Also the fact that all this is revealed, basically thru the eyes of his rookie partner (played by Ben McKenzie from the OC), also somebody with a heavy past and who doesn't fit with the usual cliched prejudice some people might have about rich blond california kind of surfer type guys.

The relationship between these two is a beautiful, subtle dance about two hurt people, not easily able to trust. One is gay and one is straight. It's not easy, but its evolving. I hope the second season is as good the beginning.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top