Mid-Century Modern (2025)
By Chris Gismondi
The Hulu sitcom Mid-Century Modern (2025) revolved around the fabulous lives of three gay best friends living out their golden years together in Palm Springs, California. Written by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick (of Will & Grace fame – 1998-2006; 2017-2020), it featured the white Nathan Lane as Bunny Schneiderman and Matt Bomer as Jerry Frank, and the African American Nathan Lee Graham as Arthur Broussard. Acting legend Linda Lavin (of Alice fame, 1976-1985) played Sybil Schneiderman, Bunny’s acerbic and insightful mother, but she sadly passed away part way through filming. The series ran for one, ten-episode season before being cancelled.
Despite its short run, the series feels intimately familiar with situation comedy and character-driven storytelling. Bunny is the high-strung main character with an overbearing Jewish mother, Arthur or “Arty” is a very sassy, sophisticated, and loyal friend, while Jerry acts as the “dumb blonde” of the group with many jokes made at his expense or due to his misinterpretations of situations. The series was loosely inspired by the beloved show The Golden Girls (1985-1992) and took similar themes of retirement, aging, independence, and sexuality later in life, but placed them onto a primarily gay male cast. Mid-Century Modern walks a fine line with a nostalgic sitcom feeling and raunchy comedy about the sex lives of elderly gay men. It is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, bordering on the crude! The bravery of the comedy was likely seen as more permissible due to the American straight-to-streaming distribution channel that created it, Hulu. Some of the risqué comedy includes jokes about masturbation, OnlyFans, PreP, and pegging.
The show does occasionally tackle more serious issues like death. The series actually begins with the friends gathered at a funeral when Bunny offers vacant rooms to Jerry (so he can relocate as a flight attendant from Atlanta), and for Arty (to relocate after his retirement from the New York fashion industry). Loss was worked into the production again when Lavin died at the age of 87 during filming and writers reacted by having her character Sybil pass away suddenly. The show integrates Bunny and his sister Mindy (Pamela Adion) as they grapple with the loss of their mother and their own legacies.
While the principal cast is white, Arty is a main black character with family origins in Louisiana. His status as a supporting character in the cast is cemented with little back story or character development. The sole exception is when he videochats with his ex-girlfriend Yvonne, who he left after running away from his family as a teenager. She forgives him and recognizes that he didn’t have it easy being a flamboyant black boy in a churchgoing family, implying an implicit homophobia in southern, black religious life. Rather than race being the butt of jokes, it is occasionally the punchline. When Arty spots a very handsome UPS driver he remarks “perhaps he’d like me to demonstrate what brown can do for him,” playing on his dark complexion and the courier’s slogan. Likewise in a confrontation with Sybil, Arty accuses her of being a racist aunt to which she replies: “I never had a problem with you because you’re black. I had a problem with you because you’re a bitch.”
While the show tackles sex, loss, and race, it also delves boldly and cleverly into religion for comedic fuel. Apart from Bunny and Sybil’s Jewish heritage, Jerry’s backstory reveals that he left the Mormon faith and a wife and family behind. In one episode he meets his estranged daughter Becca while working as a flight attendant. In another, he hooks up with a runaway Mormon in the gay resort town of Fire Island, New York. While undressing he sees his temple undergarments and the conversation between the two changes to God, faith, and the intolerance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Politicians take some heat as well when the group confronts a bigoted “family values” conservative politician, mostly through a scandalous act of blackmail.
What I enjoyed the most about Mid-Century Modern was its generational comedy. Yes, it was principally about gay characters and elderly gay life, but it was also an exchange of values and wisdom. For many, the AIDS crisis severed exchange and ties between different generations of the queer community, a rift that is still being repaired. In some ways this series rekindles those ties and often pokes fun at the gap between young gay life and retirement. This theme bleeds beyond the gay characters to Sybil’s cutting wit. In one episode she pretends to fall prey to a telephone scam operator before she berates her with life advice.
The series is a joyous, easy-to-watch, feel good show about chosen and real family. It’s clever and campy, with the cast occasionally breaking into showtunes from Broadway hits like Chicago (1926/1975/2002). Being a serious and comforting watch in one instance, it turns to jokes about deleting your internet search history before you die in another. It’s both outrageous and wholesome, with one episode spoofing the plotline of Indecent Proposal (1993) when being a wingman for a friend turns into pimping him out. It was a brave and brilliantly written series with actors skilled enough to carry the live-audience sitcom genre. In subject or chemistry, it likely won’t be replicated for some time.
Chris Gismondi Bio
Chris Gismondi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded art history scholar. He is also a curator and a former Graduate Research Fellow of Slavery North. His research focuses on the visual and material culture of Canadian Slavery. He is a queer-white settler from Dish with One Spoon, Head of the Lake Treaty no. 14 (1806) territory.