“Family” on ABC Family

ABC Family has recently been rocking my world! They are a “family” channel with some great representation for the community.

Last year they got a lot of media attention with a big-deal, interracial gay kiss on their hit show Greek. Calvin, a main character in Greek, is a mostly open gay character with real stories about relationships and sex, which I think is great for ABC Family viewers to see, especially since he is not extremely angsty or victimized with regards to his homosexuality, but rather is coming to terms with everything in young-adulthood just like all the rest of the characters. The next season of Greek is premiering next Monday at 8 pm.

Tonight, ABC Family showed the season finale of The Secret Life of the American Teenager which also featured gay characters. The show is about a young teenager, Amy, who gets pregnant the first time she has sex, which is unprotected. Throughout the seasons she is trying to figure out what to do with the baby: keep it or give it up for adoption. She chooses to give it up for adoption and is looking for a family who wants a baby. Characters Donovan and Leon are a couple on the show who are friends with Amy’s father and ask him if they could be considered to adopt Amy’s baby. Every character on the show is pretty much absolutely fine with the idea of Donovan and Leon adopting the baby and Amy’s family is really rooting for it! They do not, however, end up adopting the baby but instead they take in siblings from foster care. They made an appearance tonight, on the season finale, when the baby was born with their family.

ABC Family also featured two new shows tonight: Roommates and Sophie. Both are basically sitcoms, with Sophie being more of a comedy-drama. So far Roommates has not had any out, gay characters on it yet but Sophie has. Sophie is about a young woman who “is about to have the worst year of her life” (according to a fortune teller in the pilot episode.) She is eight months pregnant, gets dumped by her boyfriend of 5 years who is cheating on her with one of her best friends, loses her highest-grossing actress who is also one of her best friends (she works at an inherited talent agency) to her ex’s new company, asks her gay best friend, Matt, to move in with her, has her baby, and realizes her ex-boyfriend that just left her is not the father! And this is all in the first episode! Although the character Matt is pretty stereotypical, there is definitely potential to grow since he is a very main character in this show and the only person that seems to truly care about her and knows her best. This is just another way ABC Family is bringing gay representation to mainstream U.S. television.

So this is why I am proud of ABC Family. Hopefully soon they will have more LGBTQ “family members” on their shows and not just gay men, but for now I am thankful for the characters we have!

Roommates and Sophie air on ABC Family Mondays at 9 and 9:30 pm, respectively.

-Shizrae