The Trans Sitcom

Grace Byron on whether there can be a trans sitcom.

Over the past few years, there has been constant talk of the “Trans Sitcom,” but no certainty as to its arrival. When the “Trans Sitcom” does arrive, I expect it will face brutal scrutiny. It must be moving, but not trauma porn. It must represent “us” when “we” contain multitudes. It must satisfy our hunger while still challenging our expectations. Extremely online trans people (like myself) will offer takes, judgements, reposts, and interrogations. Far-right commentators will critique the show for portraying trans people in a positive light. So far, few shows have tried to wade into the thorny weeds of trans representation, though And Just Like That has cracked jokes about the difficulty a nonbinary sitcom would face.

To this I ask: Can the sitcom be trans? Any answer to this question threatens to provoke. Either the sitcom can’t be trans (why?) or the sitcom can be trans and just there hasn’t been one yet. At least not one with the same visibility or critical acclaim as gay sitcoms like HBO’s Looking or Showtime’s The L Word.

Producing a sitcom centered around trans characters would simply break too many established rules. That doesn’t mean producers aren’t trying: Activist and writer Jacob Tobia almost made a nonbinary sitcom before the pandemic. Laverne Cox is currently set to star in “Clean Slate,” a sitcom by Norman Lear. (Cox previously appeared in the procedural Doubt with Katherine Heigl.)

But trans people don't get the same carefree stakes or economic ease like the girls of Broad City or the upwardly mobile Friends. Trans people face too many obstacles. A trans sitcom would struggle to balance the traditional elements of the form with the dramatic stakes of trans life. The best attempt I’ve seen is HBO’s Sort Of, a sweet Canadian show about a non-binary millennial bartender, but even that veers heavily into drama. A sitcom requires things to stay the same, for recurrent characters and relationships. That's a rarity for many trans people.

Perhaps, then, the sitcom can’t be trans: Aside from the obvious difficulty of convincing executives to greenlight such an endeavor, the issue stems from the sitcom’s format, and how it uniquely is at odds with conveying the realities of trans life.

The history of the sitcom is intimately intertwined with the white nuclear family. The stakes and setting are implied in the portmanteau: A group of characters, often a family or a group of close friends who are roommates, finds themselves in a series of comedic situations. Characters muddle through romantic escapades, curfews, school, jobs, and the ebb and flow of friendships. These shows were originally filmed on a soundstage before a live studio audience and an added laugh track. The settings, as a result, were limited to a few sets.

Unsurprisingly, the sitcom has had a problematic past in its portrayal of marginalized people. Before the serialized format on television, sitcoms started out as radio programs. Stories unfolded once a day at the appointed time. Amos ‘n’ Andy (1928-1960) was an early radio sitcom that continued the legacy of minstrel shows depicting Black stereotypes through white voice actors. Two decades later, I Love Lucy became one of the biggest hits of all time, running from 1951 to 1957. Plenty of shows about families followed: The Honeymooners, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Happy Days, and All in the Family. In the 1970s sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and MASH began tackling social issues and expanding beyond the biological family unit.

Social issues like sex work, war, feminism, and death all became plot points. The Golden Girls expanded the scope of what a sitcom could be, garnering many queer viewers for its nontraditional take on family. And in the 90s, shows revolving around a group of young adult friends like Seinfeld and Friends paved the way for more innovatively filmed workplace sitcoms like The Office, 30 Rock, and Parks and Recreation, which implicitly reinforced the capitalist notion that one’s fellow colleagues can also be like family. More recently, Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi detailed the emergence of the working-class sitcom that tackles “the illusory nature of the American Dream.” Curiously, however, the sitcom strikes a delicate balancing act by simultaneously reinforcing traditional values, while also offering more progressive portrayals of what one’s life can look like. Single and working girls in Sex and the City, Girls, and Looking went on their own quests for social fulfillment.

For a time I thought writing this kind of sitcom was my calling. Clearly, it was not. A sitcom requires archetypes and trans people are rarely popular enough to be archetypes. Carrie Bradshaw will always be cis. The glass slipper does not extend to size 11 and certainly not size 12.

Early trans characters on screen were often villains in horror movies or victims in police procedurals like Prime Suspect. Trans characters have fared slightly better when presented as part of large casts, films and TV shows like Orange is the New Black or Euphoria that aim for a rainbow coalition aesthetic to portray the breadth of human experience. More often than not, shows focused on trans people are serious dramas like the groundbreaking Pose, an FX series about Black and Latina trans women in the ball scene during the AIDS crisis. But shows produced by trans people have often faced an uphill battle behind the scenes. “Fuck Hollywood,” director and EP Janet Mock said at the premiere of Pose’s final season, referring to issues over pay parity and the treatment of trans women creators.

Too often the mainstream prefers to silo or tokenize trans media. This isn’t to say some haven’t had some amount of success. Trans influencers and starlets have certainly come to fruition. Enter Jacob Tobia, Joey Solloway, Kim Petras, and Sam Smith. Oftentimes such creators are boxed in by trans people’s desire for realistic representation or respectable, positive role models. These influencers' goals and aesthetics have often ping-ponged back and forth trying to please both sides of the debate.

The idea that queer and trans representation needs to push forward a positive agenda comes at the expense of trans people. “Good” representation can be a cage just as much as negative stereotypes. The fantasia of the perfect trans person can stifle the ability to illustrate people shaped by numerous experiences and emotions—not just happy-go-lucky hope. Trans life can be marked by just as many emotional registers as cis life. This is all the more troubling for the sitcom, which requires that all setbacks be temporary. Even as the sitcom has become more elastic to encompass those outside the nuclear family, the genre struggles to capture the storms of real life. That’s on purpose. Sitcoms are meant to make us feel good about the capitalist slog.

Dramas, as a genre, are less constrained by the comedic expectations of a sitcom, and are often more evocative mediums for trans storytelling. For example, Hunter Schafer’s turn in Euphoria has been more turbulent. While the show has been an uneven ride—with notably less Schafer in the second season—trans life is also shown with kaleidoscopic prowess. Schafer’s Jules has fucked chasers, dated Zendaya’s Rue, and experienced the highs and lows of transition. Plenty of her plotlines aren’t even about gender. The one-off episode Schafer wrote, “Fuck Anyone Who's Not a Sea Blob,” is a beautiful, fragmentary fantasia about womanhood, therapy, online predatory behavior, and Jules’ ambivalent feelings about hormone replacement therapy. In a 2022 interview with Lorde, Schafer stated that she felt “there's specific frequencies that trans girls, in particular have. I can hear it in their music. I can see it in the style, there's an aesthetic and a sound.”

This sensibility is not always reflected in trans media. For the most part, trans viewers are cringing our way through corny jokes about they/them pronouns while a very real world threatens our existence. The appearance of Sara Ramirez as Che Díaz in And Just Like That has delivered a metafictional case study in the idea of authentic representation. Che has become a household meme, constantly cracking jokes about being nonbinary and trying to teach Miranda how to put on a strap. (Miranda also has little to no context for their romantic relationship, something the show struggles to define without going into Nonbinary 101 theatrics.) Che’s character and their antics are a campy mess. The first season took on "woke culture" and identity politics with an even cringier affect than Sex and the City. The original show put trannies in their place—as sex workers; the new show gently tries to bring in a few nonbinary characters to even the playing field such as Rock, Charlotte’s nonbinary kid who almost receives a gender-neutral “They Mitzvah.” (Apparently the name Sock was taken, worn out by too many memes.)

As a character, Rock is simply undefined. Che, on the other hand, seems to be a conduit for too many plot points. The character’s arc feels almost lifted from Ramirez’s own experience playing a non-binary role that fell under intense scrutiny: In the show, Che is developing a nonbinary sitcom where Tony Danza will play their bumbling, out of touch father. Che’s character feels algorithmic beyond cliché; the struggles they face seem to be directly imported from the real-life Twitter fallout over the character’s rollout.

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