This Pride, Let’s Ask: Why Can’t We Be Friends?
It’s 2025–why are there next to no straight and gay male friendships on TV? Yes, I have an idea to change that.
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Author’s Note: I’ll focus mostly on straight male (SM) with gay male (GM) friendships, being that’s my primary experience, but certainly other friendship dynamics can be equally meaningful.
Sex Education is my favorite show for many reasons—one of them is the friendship between two of its main characters.
The show centers around two childhood friends in high school: Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), who is Nigerian and family emigrated to the UK, and Otis (Asa Butterfield) who is white. Forget on TV—having a meaningful friendship with empathy, depth, and love, between men is straight up rare in life, let alone interracial and since childhood. And all this in context of a male loneliness epidemic.
And that’s why my friendship with Rudy is so meaningful to me.
Rudy is one of 10 friends I’ve known for 20+ years—and one of five I’ve known for 25+ years. Despite struggling with depression and loneliness in various forms as an only child, adolescent, and adult, the more I learn about this epidemic, and its consequences, the more blessed I feel.
And Eric, like Rudy, is also gay.
And that’s one of the things that made Eric and Otis’s friendship so special to me; there were aspects of their relationship that reminded me of my childhood friendship with Rudy. But since Will & Grace debuted decades ago, the straight woman with a gay male friend dynamic has had countless representations. But a straight man and a gay man being friends? A regular, meaningful friendship with actualized characters? Outside of Sex Education, I’ve seen very few, and next to none in US television.
We’ve come so far in other areas? Why has this simple pairing been so elusive on TV?
You could say the reason straight man, gay man (SM/GM) friendships on TV are almost invisible on American TV, is yes, they are less common in real life, but that doesn’t stop meaningful stories. In fact, uncommon dynamics combined with other commonalities/relatable situations is half of the purpose of TV. Full House - single dad lots of friends, in one house; Suits, a middle aged lawyer is friends with, and employs, a 20 something rando who never finished law school. Odd Couple. Odd Couple Reboot. ALF. Shit, there’s several Netflix shows where mfs are friends with aliens.
Really? All that but we can’t be friends?
And in major cities like NY, DC, ATL, Miami, Austin, SF, LA, etc. SM/GM friends are gonna be a lot more common—and let’s face it, that’s where the large viewerships are.
I believe one of the real reasons this is so rare is the false narrative that a main, out gay male character means a ‘gay’ show. No matter who else is on it. So, the show’s gotta be ‘one or the other.’ E.g. ‘straight or gay.’
But that stereotype is the exact reason to make more shows with this dynamic. It can have plot lines involving gay characters and what they face, but at the end of the day, two friends are gonna talk about life, work, relationships, and cut ass just like anyone else.
It can prove that being in close proximity with a gay man doesn’t ‘make’ anyone gay—it just can add to someone’s close, meaningful group of friends.
Of course, I’m not going to say all this with out a suggestion and shameless self and Rudy promotion: continue ‘Psych’ with Rudy and I. Speaking of ‘Suits’ earlier—how we deadass got a Suits: LA before a ‘Psych: NY?!’
In addition to Sex Education, the other show that reminded me of my friendship with Rudy was Psych. Again, don’t many see childhood, meaningful interracial friendships with character depth on TV—as opposed to tokenized or superficial— that often. Psych was one of those rare occasions. Gus and Shawn would even say they loved each other. And, aside from J.D. and Turk on Scrubs, who were friends as adults, I almost never saw that either.
For those who aren’t familiar with the series: Shawn Spencer (James Roday) and Burton ‘Gus’ Guster (Dulé Hill) are best friends since childhood living in Santa Barbara, California. Shawn was raised by his police officer father to be extremely observant of his surroundings, to the point that he noticed things most adults didn’t. As an adult, Shawn is still figuring things out, while Gus has a full-time, big boy pharmaceutical job. Shawn starts using his observation skills to solve open cases, claiming to be psychic. He draws Gus into his shenanigans, who somehow (barely) balances this with his full time job and finding love, while keeping Shawn’s secret.
Now add New York to that formula.
Judging that mfs are untrustworthy because someobody got on off brand timbs and/or wild contour? Knowing it’s an undercover because his bum ass badge outline in his back pocket and mf wearing police academy Nike Boots? Evading opps on the 6 train to catch the culprit before he escapes to North Brother Island or gets lost in a rave on Randall’s? C’mon son. This shit writes itself.
There can even be references to public safety alternatives to police— ‘psychic’ methods aka using deductive reasoning and subsequent de-escalating or non lethal force, doing a better job than the NYPD.
We both act—Rudy is a legit triple threat, like Dule Hill (Gus)—he can dance, sing, and act. (I first learned of Rudy’s talents when he knew the boys and the girls dances before I knew who my dance partners was).
And, like Shawn, I ride a motorcycle and believe in inter-snack communication.
This is what the people want—we asked the people. Yes, Rudy has no idea about any of this. But it wouldn’t be true to the show for Shawn to not embarrass Gus.
We need each other. Men need each other. More demonstrations of different kinds of male friendships allow men to have more meaningful ones. These examples, and my own, represent that love and empathy can exist in between male friends, which is vital to our mental health and wellbeing in the long run. A large factor in the male loneliness epidemic study is lack of lasting male friendships post-college, which even worsens post marriage or divorce. And our friendships with each other will even allow us to be better men in relationships with our romantic partners. Because, along with going to therapy, fulfilling friendships allow us to reduce the amount of emotional labor imparted on those partners.
Whether or not a friend is gay, normalizing this pairing demonstrates how all kinds of masculinity can make for great friendships—allowing a man’s internal emotional spectrum to become less constricted and the external range of people with whom they can share meaningful friendships to become greater.
Frequently, we just are waiting to see an example of what we want normalized by someone else before we can normalize it in our own life. Media has that power. Media is always a contributor to societal acceptance. From the first interracial kiss to Mr. Roger’s sharing a pool with a Black man to Ellen coming out on her show and so many more—representation matters. But representation can also easily be tokenized and deemed complete, while a world of layers remain unexplored. We have a long way to go. As one of my favorite actors Idris Elba said in his incredible speech on diversity in TV in the UK - we need ‘empires of the mind,’ diversity of imagination.
True diversity is about there being no gatekeeping, no guardrails on love, friendship, and experience. In 2025, not having demonstrations of meaningful gay and straight male friendships on TV is a straight up embarrassment and shows we don’t have enough of the right people in the right (write) rooms. Hopefully the entertainment world can catch up to Rudy and I circa 1999.
I agree ! Good media has definitely helped me ease some of my own internalized fears and made things easier to encounter in real life or at least expanded my own thinking/dreaming/self-expression. Also simply just crying/ having a big emotional reaction to media shows can also signal important things too. I want to check out those shows now !
Wow this is an incredible take on an issue I haven't heard brought up before. It's sooo true!
Some of my straight male friends seem to have an aversion or fear of crossing circles with gay male friends, especially 1:1 (great point). It is a hard boundary for them. In contrast, I've seen some straight male friends explore and integrate with gay friends/ their own gender expression and they are so much happier and confident in making masculinity and sexuality their own. Toxic masculinity certainly seems to be a powerful and constricting self-image to enforce.
I typically think of SM's "constricted emotional spectrum" in the context of romantic relationships with women. You have helped me see that SM shouldn't just seek to be emotionally attuned for meaningful romantic relationships (or sometimes fake it/capitalize on it for this purpose only), but SM/GM relationships could help them expand meaningful and fulfilling friendships and their own masculinity in a whole different direction/dimension of their lives.
This is my favorite line: "allowing a man’s internal emotional spectrum to become less constricted and the external range of people with whom they can share meaningful friendships to become greater"