Television related to Involuntary Celibacy
Various recommendations from mailing list members:
The Simpsons
- Principal Skinner announced he was a 40-something virgin on
one show [since recovered, thanks to Bart's teacher]; the owner
of "The
Android's Dungeon" declared his virginity [and the fact that
he still
lives with his parents] on another; and there's always Smither's
unrequited love for Mr. Burns.
The X-Files
- 'I saw an episode of the X-Files about
an insurance salesman named
Bruckman who has the uncanny ability to see how other people will
die. Peter
Boyle plays Bruckman masterfully and in one scene where Muldar
and Scully take
Mr. Bruckman to the scene of a recent murder commited by a
maniac, Bruckman
seems especially sad and distant so Muldar asks him what's wrong
and Mr.
Bruckman replies: " Oh nothing. It's just that sometimes it
seems that
everyone is having sex except me."
I don't have to be psychic to know that everybody here will know
how he feels.'
Underworld
- 'a brilliant 6-part series, british-made by the people responsible for the "Drop
the Dead Donkey" series. There were an assortment
of incredible psychos in it, and a very interesting study of two
people lacking in love over a very long time - both obviously
"invcel". They finally agreed to lower their
standards of expectation so that neither would be disappointed
with the other, and wound up having mad passionate sex. How
true that can be I don't know, but the change in them both was
actually believable. They were also honest with each
other about their lack of recent experience, and found it more a
bond than a turn-off. Excellent programme.'
Drop the Dead Donkey
- George Dent and Gus
Hedges, who would have to be invcel icons if ever there were
any!
'I read on the web that Gary Coleman of "Diff'rent
Strokes" fame
is shy and a virgin. I know you're thinking: "Gary Coleman? A
virgin?!
Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?". :) It didn't surprise me to read
that.
I mean, the poor guy is 30 years old and about the size of small
child.
He's now apparently a security guard. People
were saying
in other posts that there's the general belief adult virgins have to have
something
wrong with them, besides the fact that they are just shy. I
bet a lot
of us don't have it as bad as Gary does.'
'I seem to remember an episode of Ricki Lake
entitled My Nerdy 30 Something Kid Can't get a Date and May Be a
Virgin or something like that. There were interesting
confrontations between parents and their "loser'" kids
whose celibate lifestyles were abhorrent to their folks. I'd be
happy to appear on this show as I need an all expenses paid trip,
if anyone knows how to set this up.'
Cupid
- 'So, anybody watch this show? I thought it might be of interest
because it tends to feature a large number of guest stars and bit
players with relationship problems and at least implied invcel
status. One episode involved a thirty-something professor at
university who was a virgin and incredibly shy around women.
Somewhere during the show we discover that despite his eloquence,
he
had a blue collar background and an extremely thick
"Bawston" accent
such that nobody took him seriously when he entered academics,
making
him very self conscious.
The dialogue between the two main characters by itself is worth
watching. Occasionally smarmy, occasionally a little too blunt,
there
are often times when I can't help wishing there was a God of Love
like Trevor Hale for me (us), hustling to help people like myself
find true love, romance, happiness, etc.'
"Look, these are simple problems. You women have a speech
impediment:
you can't seem to say the word 'Yes'." (Laughter from the
men) "And
the men! You all think you can handle yourselves in bed and then
wonder why you spend most nights doing exactly that."
- Cupid's Trevor Hale, to a dating support group
'I saw a 'Cupid' about the prof who stands up in the
middle
of a class on dancing and says, more or less, " I am a
thirty-five year old
virgin." This shuts most of the group up as I imagine that
it would in real
life too. I loved this show even though the waitress was gorgeous
and, as
others on this list have suggested, everything ended up like
a fairy tale. I simply have never seen a show in which virginity
in older
males was ever dealt with at all.'
Babylon 5
- 'While two of the main characters, John Sheridan and Delenn,
were in a
relationship and did get married and this is Sheridan's third
marriage,
there are characters who this didn't happen to. This isn't
a series that
really deals with invcel in any way, but has invcel characters.
Marcus Cole - There is a very good chance he was an
invcel. He
admitted to Susan Ivanova, whom he was madly in love with, that
he was a
virgin. The only reason I don't say that he is an invcel,
is that his
reason for being a virgin is not meeting the right woman.
If the character
didn't feel that he is invcel, then I don't think he is.
For the two years that
they knew each other, Ivanova at first thinks of him as an
annoyance, and
then only thinks of him as a friend. She finds out his true
feelings for
her when Cole uses an alien healing device to transfer his life
energy to
Ivanova to save her from death. Cole dies as a
result. Ivanova is so
depressed that she leaves Babylon 5 never to return until 20
years later, and has
Cole put in a cryogenic chamber in case some new technology can
revive
him.
Susan Ivanova - While she has had relationships in the past, she
is
basically celibate for most of the series. Because her
relationships were
so bad, it is hard to say whether her celibacy is really
involuntary.
After the death of Marcus, it is generally assumed that she
remained celibate,
but the problem here is that the actress who played her was
forced out, before
the final season was filmed. She was meant to have a
relationship in the
final season, so it is really hard to say whether she was truly
invcel.
Lennier - The aide to Delenn, the ambassador from Minbar.
He was probably
also an invcel, but given the nature of Minbari culture invcel
has a
totally different meaning to them. For most of the series
he is madly in
love with Delenn, but only tells Marcus. His love for
Delenn eventually
causes him to try and let Sheridan die in a spaceship accident,
but leaves
forever realizing the dishonour of this.
Vir Cotto - The aide to Londo Mollari, the Centauri
ambassador. While he
may be invcel by our standards, and definitely invcel by Centauri
standards (drinking, adultery, and promiscuity were common for
them), he may not
have been involuntary because of his desire to find true love,
something
that many other Centauri don't understand why he wants to.
Also, he was
engaged to be married at one point, but that fell through.
(Arranged
marriages are the norm for Centauri nobility.) Twenty years
after the
series he does have at least 2 wives, but being emperor he
probably has no
trouble finding women.'
Blakes 7
- 'This was another science fiction series in the late 70s/early
80s. It revolves around
several people trying to overthrow the totalitarian Terran
Federation.
While it has been speculated that a few of them may have been
having sex
with each other, there really isn't much evidence to support
it. Even if
those few were, there were more men than women, and no one was
gay. Only
one of the characters on the anti-Federation side is certain to
have had a
relationship at all, but that wasn't something they talked about
a lot.
The only main character who seems to have sexual relationships
(lots of
them) is Sevralan the supreme commander of the Federation
military. She
basically just used men, and threw them away when she was tired
of them.
Of course, this was never meant to be a statement that the
characters were
necessarily invcel. At this time the main viewers of
science fiction were
young, usually children, and usually male, so relationships would
not have
been something done because of ratings.'