Sometimes you need to take a break from the real world, and Frog and Toad is the perfect calming, queer cartoon to help you do that.
Frog and Toad follows in the tradition of the beloved children’s books, as well as Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, in that it centers around a “friendship” between two male characters that is very obviously more than a friendship to anyone who is watching.
While the two never kiss, don’t live together, and never explicitly state their romantic love for each other, it’s hard to see them as anything other than a couple. As LGBTQNation points out, “the show is wall-to-wall moments of Frog and Toad doing wonderful, lovely things for each other.”
Showrunner Rob Hoegee said that he wanted to keep the inherent queerness in the stories and that a “significant number” of his cast and crew were LGBTQ+. “You can’t deny it,” Hoegee said of the books’ queerness. “It is part of the books, it’s part of the legacy.”
“What we wanted to do here is create a faithful adaptation of the books,” he continued. “For people, a lot of readers of a certain age, Frog and Toad as characters seen through a queer lens is hugely important to them. We can’t deny anyone that meaning to them, as far as these characters go. If that’s how you see these characters in the book, it’s fair to say that you will have the opportunity to see a similar viewpoint in the show as well.”
Back in 2016, the daughter of Arnold Lobel, the author and illustrator of the Frog and Toad books, told The New Yorker that she viewed the books as her father’s way of starting to come out, which he eventually did four years after the first book in the series was published.
Frog and Toad are “of the same sex, and they love each other,” Lobel told The New Yorker. “It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.”
“I think Frog and Toad really was the beginning of him coming out,” she added.
Lobel died in 1987, just thirteen years after he came out. The 54-year-old author died from complications related to AIDS.
Now, his legacy and message of love will live on in a whole new way through the animated series.
Frog and Toad is now streaming on Apple TV+.