straight man

It’s a lot more development than I think many people would have expected for this character who, in the sitcom, functions as the straight man.

But he has grown into his role at “Saturday Night Live,” proving to be an especially strong straight man adept at the comedy of embarrassment.

It's certainly not about pleasure, except the straight man's pleasure in exerting control over women.

“I’ve spent more time in the closet than any straight man in San Francisco, but that’s just to choose my wardrobe,” the dapper former mayor of the city says in his 2008 memoir, “Basic Brown.”

“Braugher plays his part straight without actually being a straight man and grounds the wackiness,” television critic Robert Lloyd wrote in his review of the show.