Today, we continue our look at Disney’s LGTBQ+ characters. We are actually going back to back to the year, 2014 and looking at the show Good Luck Charlie. You see the show was in its final season and in its second-to-last episode introduced a friend of young Charlie who happened to have two moms. I wrote about this at the time and had this to say.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with this. I think it’s a good idea. And neither of the big kid’s channels that show live-action sitcoms have done this. Nick nor Disney Channel have done this before.
It’s funny how much this has changed on Disney Channel and Nick as we are starting to see same-sex couples being treated as normal. In many ways, 2014 was a big step forward in that regard with this shot.
Korra changed the game for LGBTQ+ rep. If it weren’t for that show’s ending, we may not be seeing the acceptance of LGTBQ+ characters in media targeted. Now, this Good Luck Charlie episode aired at the beginning of 2014 and I am being generous in calling it a stepping stone. And I say that as Susan and Cheryl are barely characters in this episode and yeah I know I’m looking at this with a 2021 mindset but when I am told that an episode is going to feature a same-sex couple, I’d like to see them interact. Susan and Cheryl spend the entire episode apart from one another. That may seem minor but considering this is the only time we ever see these characters, that is disappointing.
What’s even crazier is all the backlash these two received so much backlash from conservative parents because of the typical fear of things that aren’t heteronormative.
These characters aren’t even part of the A-plot or the B plot. They are barely even characters in the C plot that involves them. We can look to the Good Luck Charlie Wiki entry for Susan and see this.
Susan went to watch sports with Bob, but she regretted it as Bob spent the entire game talking about bugs with her. When Amy goes to Bob to complain about Cheryl’s sentence finishing
The characters are fine but they don’t get a whole lot to do in the episode. Like I mentioned in my introduction, Susan and Cheryl only spend time together at the beginning and end of their story. I think the episode was comfortable having a same-sex couple but not having them spend any time together. I get it that parents don’t always spend 100 percent of their time together when the child has a playdate. However, when an episode features a same-sex couple for the first time, it’d be nice to see them share more than two scenes together.
Ah well, not too much else to say here. Join me next time as we head to the land of fairy tales as we look at Once Upon A Time’s first official LGTBQ+ couple.
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