Do we like Tim Minear?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and no scandals found, but the record is thin and a chunk of queer fans are cross with him.
Tim Minear is a TV lifer. He co-created 9-1-1, the first-responder drama now in its ninth season, and he is the bloke fans ring up when they want to complain about it. His name is also tied to cult genre telly and the Ryan Murphy shows, but the sources I could open for this card mostly cover the last couple of years.
The big stoush is Bobby. In Season 8 the show killed off a main character, and fans have been furious ever since. In a Washington Post interview in January 2026 Minear defended it as something to shake the show up, while admitting “tons of regret about it”. Being cross with a showrunner over a plot twist is fan drama, not scandal, and it says nothing bad about his character.
The other flashpoint is Buck and Eddie. Minear told the Post that he loves the “Buddie” fans and is one of them, and that the possibility is what's exciting. Some fans heard that as an admission of queerbaiting, while others felt vindicated. In May 2026 he talked about fans wanting the end of the story but did not spell out what he meant.
On the harm test, nothing turned up. I found no nasty words about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no pattern of working with people who push that stuff. He has put a bisexual lead character and a same-sex romance on mainstream network TV. That is real, though plenty of queer viewers think it has been slow and cautious. In a 2025 interview he said Buck's story was “more fluid” than just shutting things down.
Good-person side: no lawsuits, no allegations from staff or co-stars, and no court record turned up in my searches. I also found no big charity work, so this is a clean-but-thin pass, not a glowing one. Several searches came back with other people named Tim, and that's honestly the whole list.
So would we support him? Yes. The worst of it is a showrunner who likes teasing his fans and sometimes lets them down. If the Buddie wait ends in the show actually saying it out loud, a lot of queer viewers will forgive the delay.