"Green Eggs and Ham": A Gay Subtext Buddy Roadtrip?

If you're under70, chances are your parents read you Green Eggs and Ham (1960), a Dr.Seuss book in which the pushy Sam-I-Am coaxes his glum dining companion to try the green stuff in various configurations:  in a boat, with a goat, in a box, with a fox, and so on.  It's maybe 300 words long, but it was probably effective in pushing a lot of broccoli.

When I heard that Netflix was releasing a 13-episode adaption of the story,  I had two thoughts:

1. How?  That's a long time to be pressuring somebody to have breakfast.
2. Will there be any gay characters?



How:

They turned it into a road trip comedy/  The irrepresible, childlike, rather needy Sam-I-Am (voiced by Adam DeVine -- sigh) has stolen a rare chickagiraffe from the zoo, and must travel to Meepville to return it to the wild.

But Sam is not what he seems.  Wait -- did he just steal a car?  And...um....a credit card??? This isn't your mother's Dr. Seuss.

Meanwhile, failed inventor Guy-Am-I (voiced by Michael Douglas -- Silver Daddy sigh)  is on his way to Meepville to take a failure-job watching paint dry.

The two cross paths in a diner (where Sam does proffer green eggs and ham), and one misunderstanding later, they are thrown together, chased by the police, BADGUYS, and a diminuitive multibillionaire who wants the animal for himself.  They end up in every situation in the book: in a boat, with a goat, with a mouse, in a house, in a box, with a fox, and, more existentially, here, there, and everywhere.



I like the sinuous malleability of the Doctor Seuss world, and the many visual gags, often involving taking metaphors literally: bean-counters actually count beans; bread-winners win bread; homemakers build homes; in a small town where there's nothing to do but watch the grass grow, that's what people do.

No characters from other Dr. Seuss stories appear; this isn't Seussical: the Musical.  But there are frequent clever references.  When Sam is trapped onstage at a high school graduation, he begins his speech "Oh, the places you'll go."  A fish family forced to flee their home takes a head count:  "One fish, two fish, blue fish -- where's the red fish?"

But Sam's questionable morality made me uncomfortable, even though he reformed in the end.

And the action didn't really build; it was "what situation will they get into next?"  I caught myself fast forwarding, thinking "Will they ever make it to that darn Meepsville).

And I especially fast-forwarded through the scenes where they interact with two other travelers:  the feisty 10-year old EB (probably to give kids someone to identify with) and her mousy, afraid-of-life single mother Michellee (Diane Keaton), to give Guy someone to...well, you know.



Gay Characters:  

Sam doesn't display any heterosexual interest, and his starry-eyed, touchy-feely approach to Guy definitely suggest a romantic inclination ("If you look into someone's eyes, you can see their soul"; "I could watch you working all day."

He characterizes them as a "family," and as parents to the chickagiraffe, of which Guy is the "daddy."

And the story doesn't end with a hetero-kiss.  Instead, Sam and Guy are  are drawn into a new adventure.

But the tacked-on Guy-Michellee romance seems a deliberate attempt to defuse any gay reading, and almost every minor character expresses heterosexual interest.

I expected something more diverse from a series that lists Ellen Degeneres as the executive producer

See also: The Gay World of Dr. Seuss