The Ambiguously Gay Duo

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.  It is created and produced by Robert Smigel and J. J. Sedelmaier as part of the Saturday TV Funhouse series of sketches.  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.

The Ambiguously Gay Duo is a parody of the stereotypical comic book superhero duo.  The characters are clad in matching pastel turquoise tights, dark blue domino masks, and bright yellow coordinated gauntlets, boots and shorts.  The shorts were intended to satirize suggestions that early Batman comics implied a homosexual relationship between the eponymous title character and his sidekick Robin, a charge most infamously leveled by Fredric Wertham in his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent.

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 or not Ace and Gary 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 and bystanders gasp and stare)

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 while blithely making various suggestive gestures and comments.)  There are twelve animated, in-canon shorts.  Episode #12, titled “The Dark, Clenched Hole of Evil” debuted on May 15, 2011, and was unique in that, as a plot twist, Ace and Gary were “fleshed” and portrayed in costume by famous Commando Veteran Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon.

Wonder what type of underwear Ace and Gary wear?  I know it’s on the outside like every other super hero’s, but what brand is it?  I may have to visit Comic-Con to find out.