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.[1] It is created and produced by Robert Smigel and J. J. Sedelmaier as part of the Saturday TV Funhouse series of sketches.[2] It follows the adventures of Ace and Gary, voiced by Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell, respectively, two superheroes whose sexual orientation is a matter of dispute, and a cavalcade of characters preoccupied with the question.[3]
The Ambiguously Gay Duo is a parody of the stereotypical comic book superhero duo done in the style of Saturday-morning cartoons like Super Friends. The characters are clad in matching pastel turquoise tights, dark blue domino masks, and bright yellow coordinated gauntlets, boots, and trunks.
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 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:
Ace [patting Gary on the buttocks]: 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, all while blithely making various suggestive gestures and comments.
Smigel was an executive producer for The Dana Carvey Show in 1996. They wanted to do cartoons on the show, to differentiate themselves from SNL. Writer Dino Stamatopoulos pitched Smigel a parody of Wallace and Gromit, where it was implied that the dog was giving oral sex to the human. Smigel thought the premise would be "unacceptable" to air on ABC. After the conversation Smigel came up with the idea of using superheroes instead.[4][5] "Anyway, for some reason, the AGD idea just came to me at the end of that conversation. What if we did two superheroes and everyone suspects they're gay? It was always more about the people obsessed with their sexuality than the heroes themselves." Smigel recalled.[4]
The shorts were intended to satirize suggestions that early Batman comics implied a homosexual relationship between the eponymous title character and his field partner and protégé Robin, a charge most infamously leveled by Fredric Wertham in his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent,[6] the research methodology for which was later discredited.[7]
In June 2020, Robert Smigel told The Daily Beast that the engine of the show was an "obsession with sexuality" and that he thought that it was funny because the homophobes and everyone are obsessed with finding out whether the superheroes are gay or not, calling it "sport and titillation."[8] He added that the point of the cartoon was that it doesn't matter whether the superheroes have sex or not and said that since there has been "an incredible amount of progress" since the series premiered, he would not write the cartoon today.
The first episode debuted on The Dana Carvey Show, and was re-aired on Saturday Night Live in September 1996. Subsequent episodes debuted on Saturday Night Live.
On January 12, 2002: (Josh Hartnett/Pink), The Ambiguously Gay Duo makes a surprise appearance in The X-Presidents episode "The Hunt for Osama." The Ambiguously Gay Duo show up in their Duocar where they help the X-Presidents capture Osama bin Laden. The skit was written by Smigel, McKay, and Louis C.K.. On April 29, 2006: The Ambiguously Gay Duo co-hosted Saturday Night Live: The Best of TV Funhouse.[9][10] 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 Fallon. The show ended with the duo taking cast members Jason Sudeikis and Andy Samberg to their secret headquarters — both naked — in the Duocar, with announcer Don Pardo begging to be taken with them and a spurned Jimmy Fallon looking on from his apartment window with tears in his eyes. Colbert was not present during the taping of this episode, as he was hosting the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner that same night.[11]
In May 2011, a live-action skit based on the series appeared in a Saturday Night Live episode, with Jon Hamm playing Ace and Jimmy Fallon playing Gary.[12][13][14][15][16] Daniel Villarreal criticized the skit as biphobic and questioned whether two non-gay actors portraying the parts was progressive or problematic.[17]
In 2015, Bif Bang Pow Toys produced and released a new 8" retro action-figure line of Ace and Gary titled the Ambiguously Gay Duo 8" retro action figure series. They were both individually packaged on a card but sold together in a set at the Entertainment Earth Catalog and website and at other toy and comic book stores as well. That same year, Bif Bang Pow Toys produced the Ambiguously Gay Duo Tin Tote (Lunchbox) action figure set of three 5" action-figures of Ace, Gary, and Bighead.
The original idea for a live-action movie first came up in 2000 when someone pitched the idea to Smigel, he initially balked. "But then I thought, 'What about a live-action one with Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Fallon?'" Smigel recalled.[18] Lorne Michaels loved the idea, but ownership disputes between Universal, who still held rights from the Dana Carvey Show days, and Paramount, who produced SNL films, kept the project from being made. The idea was shelved until years later, when Carell told his Bruce Almighty co-star, Jim Carrey about it.[18] In 2005, Universal commissioned a script and Smigel brought Colbert over to write it, once finished they pitched it to Carrey, but it never made it into production.[19][18][20] Some of the jokes were included in the 2011 live-action episode.[21] Smigel recalled that one of Colbert's ideas for the script was an opening sequence that featured a naked muscular male chest, with the credits appearing on it formed by water and soap.[22]
Matt Goldberg of Collider said that the series was a "one-note joke" but that it worked well as a "great parody of superhero cartoon shows."[23]
Adam Polaski of The Good Men Project praised the animation and the live-action sketch in 2011 as a satire that spoofs "the inherently homoerotic nature of superheroes... [and the] stereotype that gay men are obsessed with sex."[24]
Francis Rizzo III of DVD Talk, while calling the cartoons "silly" and "formulaic", praised the voice work from Colbert and Carell, along with how the series served as a "visual parody of old cartoons", especially the homoerotic theories about Batman and Robin.[25]
TVLine writers said in 2018 that if the crime fighters had reappeared that year, viewers might have found out whether the two protagonists had changed, whether they'd be "out and proud, rebranded as the Unambiguously Gay Duo", and whether they'd fight to mend "the social divisions in our country."[26]