Welcome to the fourth installment of the Drive-Bis! If you’ve been paying close attention to the media for the last quarter of a century in the hopes of more than a line or two of bi representation, you might be feeling a bit underwhelmed — but I’ve got a whole arsenal of them to cover, so don't worry!
If you’re wondering what the term “Drive-Bi” means, here’s a quick summary. And please note that there may be SPOILERS ahead.
The late, great Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy once said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by.” Drive-Bis make a similar whooshing sound as they blaze past on the big or small screen — but often leave me feeling that something is wanting. It’s like catching a quick glance of a hummingbird in flight — bright, brilliant, blisteringly fast — but I wish I could examine it more closely.
This latest collection of Drive-Bis are entertaining and often funny, but leave me feeling that I’ve missed out on something that could have been brilliant, if we’d been allowed more than just a fleeting glimpse of it.
Well, let’s dive in, shall we?
1) Creed Bratton, The Office
Ah, Creed, the silver-haired wildcard of Dunder Mifflin’s beloved Scranton branch. What I love about a character with a deep, unplumbed history like Creed’s is that nothing seems out of the realm of possibility. He’s the kind of comic figure who is full of hidden surprises.
However, his comment in the episode “Gay Witch Hunt” (at 4:44 in the video above) about the orgies he attended in the sixties hits, but under-delivers. It’s the Boomer equivalent of saying “a hole is a hole”, sure, but the writers have spent so much time establishing Creed’s racy sexual past that it would’ve been fun to hear that he had a same-sex getaway driver at some point — and without the dismissive allusion to “the Sixties”. Since The Office has long since hung up its Dundies, we’ll never really know, though I like to think that since the actor shares the same name as his character, the writers might have let him include a few stories from his own life — and that this one stuck.
2) Remy (the Landlord), New Girl
Remy is played by legendary actor Jeff Kober, whose IMDb resume is as long as my arm. He’s one of those creepy male bi characters of whom we only get the occasional glimpse. I’ve been doing a comfort re-watch of New Girl recently and I had totally forgotten that Remy tries to get a threesome going with his own tenants. Pretty soon after that incident, he disappears, popping up for only one more episode. His bi-curiosity is very much on the back burner, then — gone quicker than you can say “landlord special”.
3) Dill Penderghast, Easy A
I love me some Stanley Tucci. I rode in the same elevator as him once and the sexual energy that radiated off that short king was so powerful it just about flattened me against the wall. Even though we didn’t speak to each other, I think we made a connection. Tucci has played his full share of queer supporting characters over the years and there’s been a lot of discussion about this. His role in Easy A is one of my personal favorites. “Oh, but the character’s a straight dad”, you might object. No! He specifically talks about “being gay once” in order to try it out. This man has had some queer experiences. Though, unfortunately, we don’t get to learn much more about them.
4) Chorus Girls from the “Do We Shock You?” Number, Schmigadoon! (Schmicago)
If you think these kinds of Drive-Bis only happened back in the 2010s, think again. Sadly, bisexuality is still being used as a punch line in this year of our Lord, 2023 — in the musical Schmigadoon.
Now let me be perfectly clear: I LOVE musicals and I LOVE affectionate send-ups. The song “Do We Shock You?” is an almost perfect parody of “Hey Big Spender” from Sweet Charity. But why bother to include the queer joke? There’s plenty of other shock value we can take from 1970s Broadway. There’s plenty of room to get queer with it without including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line in what is already the queerest musical setting of all, a KitKat-esque club taken straight from Cabaret. Why bother? Couldn’t we have a scene about the sapphic backstage antics of these chorus girls instead? How I yearn to get more of a glimpse into the world hinted at by that one meager line.
All right, I think that’s enough to tide everyone over.
As with any other type of accident, after a Drive-Bi, don’t forget to take records and especially note down whether you have suffered from any form of whiplash, physical or cultural.
And, until next time, stay safe on those highways and bi-ways out there.
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