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Rick & Steve may seem kiddie and cute, but the storylines are anything but. As Barry Lowe discovers, there’s even plenty of sex in this hilarious toon fest.
I’m a sucker for a good animated series and Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in the World is not only good – it’s great. It’s also offensive, silly and laugh-out-loud funny. And Series 1 is available on DVD now and won an animation award in Italy recently.
Rick and Steve, who are anything but the happiest gay couple in the world, are the brainchild of Q Allan Brocka, born and raised in Guam before he moved to the United States.
The series began as homework for his film course, he revealed in an interview. “It was all made out of Lego and shot in stop-motion animation. The assignment was to make a film about relationships, so I made a film about a gay couple and a lesbian couple who hate each other but decide to have a baby together.
“The best thing I ever did was, just on a whim, put ‘Episode One’ in the title, not even thinking of making more, just to make it feel like a TV show. Because of that, everyone asked when other episodes would be coming out. I made more short films until Lego sued me to stop.”
Even though Brocka no longer uses Lego, there’s a decided Lego-look to his characters as well as similarities to German Playmobil toys. Eventually LOGO, the US cable channel aimed at the GLBT audience, commissioned the first series, which aired in 2007.
They have since asked for a second. In the meantime Brocka wrote and directed two popular gay features: Eating Out (2004) and Boy Culture (2006).
There’s a joyous, prime-colour kiddie quality to Rick & Steve, but the storyline is anything but childish. Filipino-American computer genius Rick, and Steve, his almost thick-as-shit real estate boyfriend, decide to donate sperm to their lesbian friends Kirsten and Dana. Trouble is bulldyke Dana can’t stand fluffy gym-gay Steve. When Rick and Steve decide to mix their love juice together in a sort of sperm stew, it’s Dana who becomes pregnant through the unlikeliest of accidents.
Rounding out the couples is 19-year-old drug-crazed twink Evan, who’s in a relationship with 50-year-old paraplegic and AIDS sufferer Chuck, voiced by Alan Cumming. But my favourites are the obnoxiously PC dykes Ebony and Ivory, whose baby Echinacea they refer to as she-he because they have avoided looking at her/his genitalia to determine her/his gender as they don’t wish to influence the child’s behaviour.
Apart from the aforementioned Alan Cumming, the voices are supplied by Queer as Folk’s Peter Paige (Steve), Wilson Cruz (Evan), Emily Brooke Hands (Kirsten), Taylor M Dooley (Dana) and Will Matthews (Rick), with Margaret Cho and Lorna Luft guest voicing on some episodes.
And, yes, a warning. The series contains animated puppet sex (somewhat difficult as the characters seem devoid of genitalia – which is perhaps why Ebony and Ivory haven’t dared to look). And a pussy (voiced by Liza Del Mundo).
happiestgaycouple.com
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