The Ambiguously Gay Duo
Encyclopedia
The Ambiguously Gay Duo is an American animated comedy sketch
that debuted on The Dana Carvey Show
before moving to its permanent home on Saturday Night Live
. It is created and produced by Robert Smigel
and J. J. Sedelmaier
as part of the Saturday TV Funhouse series of sketches. It follows the adventures of Ace and Gary, voiced by Stephen Colbert
and Steve Carell
, respectively, two superhero
es whose sexual orientation
is a matter of dispute, and a cavalcade of characters preoccupied with the question.
of the stereotypical comic book
superhero duo. The characters are clad in matching pastel turquoise tights, dark blue domino mask
s, and bright yellow coordinated gauntlets, boots and shorts. The shorts were intended to satirize suggestions that early Batman
comics implied a homosexual relationship
between the eponymous title character and his sidekick
Robin
, a charge most infamously leveled by Fredric Wertham
in his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent
.
The typical episode usually begins with the duo's arch-nemesis Bighead, a criminal mastermind with an abnormally large cranium. Bighead is usually briefing his henchmen on a plot for some grandiose plan for world domination, interrupted by a debate as to whether or not Ace and Gary (The Ambiguously Gay Duo) are gay. Once the crime is in process, the police commissioner calls on the superheroes to save the day, often engaging in similar debates with the chief of police.
Ace and Gary set out to foil the evil plan, but not before calling attention to themselves with outrageous antics and innuendo, and behaving in ways perceived by other characters to be stereotypically homosexual, as in this conversation from the first episode:
Similar gags appear in almost every episode.
Episodes not following this general formula have featured Ace and Gary answering fan mail or offering child safety tips. One such episode entails Ace and Gary giving children a ride home in their Duocar and offering home decorating tips while blithely making various suggestive gestures and comments.
Sketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...
that debuted on The Dana Carvey Show
The Dana Carvey Show
The Dana Carvey Show is an American sketch comedy television show that aired on ABC during the spring of 1996. Dana Carvey was the host and principal player on the show while Louis CK served as head writer....
before moving to its permanent home on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
. It is created and produced by Robert Smigel
Robert Smigel
Robert Smigel is an American actor, humorist, comedian and writer known for his Saturday Night Live "TV Funhouse" cartoon shorts and as the puppeteer and voice behind Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.-Early life:...
and J. J. Sedelmaier
J. J. Sedelmaier
J. J. Sedelmaier is an American illustrator, designer, author, and film director/producer. He and his wife Patrice run J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc., an animation/graphic design studio they established in 1990 in White Plains, New York, to create and produce animated television commercials...
as part of the Saturday TV Funhouse series of sketches. It follows the adventures of Ace and Gary, voiced by Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
and Steve Carell
Steve Carell
Steven John "Steve" Carell is an American comedian, actor, voice artist, producer, writer, and director. Although Carell is notable for his role on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he found greater fame in the late 2000s for playing Michael Scott on The Office...
, respectively, two superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
es whose sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
is a matter of dispute, and a cavalcade of characters preoccupied with the question.
Background
The Ambiguously Gay Duo is a parodyParody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the stereotypical comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
superhero duo. The characters are clad in matching pastel turquoise tights, dark blue domino mask
Domino mask
A domino mask is a small, rounded mask covering only the eyes and the space between them. Since the 18th century, the domino mask is worn during carnival. Venetian Carnival masks were known as domini because they resembled French priests' winter hoods, being black on the outside and white on the...
s, and bright yellow coordinated gauntlets, boots and shorts. The shorts were intended to satirize suggestions that early Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
comics implied a homosexual relationship
Homosexuality in the Batman franchise
Homosexual and pederastic interpretations have been part of the academic study of the Batman franchise at least since psychiatrist Fredric Wertham asserted in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent that "Batman stories are psychologically homosexual"...
between the eponymous title character and his sidekick
Sidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
Robin
Robin (comics)
Robin is the name of several fictional characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, originally created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, as a junior counterpart to DC Comics superhero Batman...
, a charge most infamously leveled by Fredric Wertham
Fredric Wertham
Fredric Wertham was a Jewish German-American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of violent imagery in mass media and comic books on the development of children. His best-known book was Seduction of the Innocent , which purported that comic books are...
in his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent
Seduction of the Innocent
Seduction of the Innocent is a book by German-American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a negative form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. The book was a minor bestseller that created alarm in parents and galvanized...
.
The typical episode usually begins with the duo's arch-nemesis Bighead, a criminal mastermind with an abnormally large cranium. Bighead is usually briefing his henchmen on a plot for some grandiose plan for world domination, interrupted by a debate as to whether or not Ace and Gary (The Ambiguously Gay Duo) are gay. Once the crime is in process, the police commissioner calls on the superheroes to save the day, often engaging in similar debates with the chief of police.
Ace [patting Gary on the buttocksButtocksThe buttocks are two rounded portions of the anatomy, located on the posterior of the pelvic region of apes and humans, and many other bipeds or quadrupeds, and comprise a layer of fat superimposed on the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius muscles. Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to...
]: Good job, friend-of-friends!
Villains/Bystanders [gasps, and ghastly stares]
Ace: What's everybody looking at?
Villains/Bystanders [in unison]: NOTHING!
Similar gags appear in almost every episode.
Episodes not following this general formula have featured Ace and Gary answering fan mail or offering child safety tips. One such episode entails Ace and Gary giving children a ride home in their Duocar and offering home decorating tips while blithely making various suggestive gestures and comments.
Characters
- Ace is the leader of the duo. He is mentor to Gary, refers to him as "friend of friends," and has a wide array of superpowers, including most or all of Gary's powers.
- Gary, Ace's sidekickSidekickA sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
, is the younger of the duo. Gary is less experienced, and has fewer superpowers than Ace. His powers include super strength, breath, stamina, flexibility, flight (although Ace and Gary use the phallic-shaped Duocar more often than fly), and "laser vision". - The Police Commissioner is the duo's primary contact, and when trouble arises, he makes the call to their hangout. His calls tend to interrupt a workout of some kind, with one or the other of the duo shirtless. The commissioner, voiced by Steve Carell, believes Ace and Gary might not be gay.
- The Chief of Police is seen with the commissioner, apparently waiting to find evidence in support of his confident belief that Ace and Gary are, in fact, gay. He and the commissioner are endlessly engaged in debate over their positions on this subject.
- Bighead is a mad scientistMad scientistA mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...
with a very large, bald head, and is usually the brains behind most of the evil schemes. Second only to his primary vocation of mad scientist is his obsession with outingOutingOuting is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
the superheroes as gay, which tends to annoy his co-conspirators because they do not care about the duo's sexuality and only want to defeat them in order to rule the world. He is constantly criticized for the amount of energy he invests in this pursuit. Bighead is voiced by Robert Smigel. - Dr. Brainio is another mad scientist with a brain suspended above his head and attached by a trio of cables and tubing. He occasionally partners with Bighead, but is quite a bit more undecided about Ace and Gary. Dr. Brainio is voiced by Stephen Colbert.
- Orbitrox is a small, green, free-floating droid who sides with Bighead on the question of Ace and Gary's sexual orientation. Orbitrox has proffered evidence of their having visited gay barGay barA gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s, but emphatically denies visiting himself, snapping in subtitled form, "Back off dickweed, it's research!" - Kijoro is the duo's mentor whose spirit resides in the "Fortress of Privacy" (a parody of SupermanSuperman (comic book)Superman is an ongoing comic book series featuring the DC Comics hero of the same name. The character Superman began as one of several anthology features in the National Periodical Publications comic book Action Comics #1 in June 1938...
's Fortress of SolitudeFortress of SolitudeThe Fortress of Solitude is the occasional headquarters of Superman in DC Comics. Its predecessor, Superman's "Secret Citadel", first appeared in Superman #17, where it was said to be built into a mountain on the outskirts of Metropolis...
) and offers advice from time to time when Ace and Gary seek counsel. He takes issue with the fact that Ace and Gary's arrangement of the fortress doesn't follow the blueprints.
Episode guide
| № | Title | Airdate |
|---|
Other appearances
- January 12, 2002: (Josh HartnettJosh HartnettJoshua Daniel "Josh" Hartnett is an American actor and aspiring producer. He first came to audiences' attention in 1997 as "Michael Fitzgerald" in the television series Cracker. He made his feature film debut in 1998, co-starring with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later for Miramax...
/PinkPink (singer)Alecia Beth Moore , better known by her stage name Pink , is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actress....
), The Ambiguously Gay Duo makes a surprise appearance in The X-PresidentsThe X-PresidentsThe X-Presidents is a NBC/Saturday Night Live Saturday TV Funhouse cartoon created by Robert Smigel and J. J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc., that features former American Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush as a superhero team. This recurring sketch...
– the Hunt for Osama. - April 29, 2006: The Ambiguously Gay Duo co-hosted Saturday Night Live: The Best of TV Funhouse. The hosting duties included the opening monologue performed by Ace and Gary, plus new animated/live-action material during the pre-commercial and post-commercial bumpers. It was revealed during these bumper segments that they seem to have an undying obsession with former cast member Jimmy FallonJimmy FallonJames Thomas "Jimmy" Fallon, Jr. is an American actor, comedian, singer, musician and television host. He currently hosts Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, a late-night talk show that airs Monday through Friday on NBC...
. The show ended with the duo taking cast members Jason SudeikisJason SudeikisDaniel Jason Sudeikis is an American actor and comedian currently starring as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.-Early life:Sudeikis was born Daniel Jason Sudeikis in Fairfax, Virginia, the son of Kathryn , a travel agent who was president of the American Society of Travel Agents, and Dan...
and Andy SambergAndy SambergDavid Andrew "Andy" Samberg is an American actor, comedian, rapper and writer best known as a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island and as a cast member on Saturday Night Live...
to their secret headquarters — both naked — in the Duocar, with announcer Don PardoDon PardoDominick George "Don" Pardo is an American radio and television announcer. He is best known as the voice of the long-running late night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live....
begging to be taken with them and a spurned Jimmy Fallon looking on from his apartment window with tears in his eyes. - Two contestants on the Almost Live special of Most Extreme Elimination ChallengeMXCMXC was an American comedy television program that aired on Spike TV from 2003 to 2007. It is a re-edit of footage from the Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle which originally aired in Japan from 1986 to 1989...
dressed up as Ace and Gary. They were ultimately eliminated.