“Menage a Phyllis” (November 2, 1974)

In the third-season episode “My Brother’s Keeper,” Rhoda famously said the word “gay,” turning a plot about her association with Phyllis’ brother on its head. Two seasons later, Phyllis shows up in another episode that discusses gay issues but weirdly doesn’t say that word. Regardless, there’s perhaps more to be made of the newsroom’s opinions about what codes as gay, and Dan Steadman returns to discuss this and what we’ll call the “Murray Slaughter problem.”

Read Dead Buckley’s 2018 piece “Queer Coding on the Mary Tyler Moore Show”

Episodes referenced:

• Dan’s previous episode, “Mike Seaver Actually Said the Word ‘Gay’”
• Our previous Mary Tyler Moore episode, “Mary and Rhoda Meet a Homo”
• Our episode “Phyllis Dates a Homo”
• Our episode “The Dream On Guy Has a Gay Dad”

“Cousin Geri” (December 24, 1980)

Fun game for listeners: Take a shot every time Drew mentions the phrase “gigantic bitch” in connection with Lisa Welchel’s Blair, who is in rare form this episode as she shuns her disabled cousin Geri for reasons that aren’t the ones you’re probably assuming. In this discussion, we bring up why Geri Jewell is a trailblazer as far as being queer and also one other thing and also why “actress recurring on Deadwood” is lowkey code for lesbian.

Erin Fletcher, we want you back for that Saved by the Bell episode.

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And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

This is a TableCakes podcast.

“Gay Bash” (November 10, 2004)

For better or worse, Drawn Together represents a very real trend in mid-2000s humor. It specifically sought out to tell the most offensive jokes it could get on air, but that’s what makes it surprising that the episode where Xandir admits he’s gay isn’t the parade of easy jokes you might expect. The B plot sucks rancid balls, to the point that we don’t even use clips from it in this discussion, but you might be surprised how this animated reality show makes its token gay a sympathetic guy.

Check out Bradley Smith’s YouTube interview with series creators Dave Jesser and Matt Silvertsein, from which we grabbed a few anecdotes about the development of Drawn Together.

Listen to our Cartoons That Made Us Gay episode about the Legend of Zelda cartoon.

Listen to the Best Movies Never Made podcast, hosted by Golan the Insatiable creator Josh Miller.

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And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

“Dye! Dye! My Darling!” (August 2, 2000)

Spend a little time in a Daria fan community and you’ll find folks who ship the title character with her best friend, Jane. The show actually never does a gay episode and only gets the slightest bit queer in the first movie, Is It Fall Yet?, which has Jane affirming her heterosexuality despite how very queer she might seem. In this episode, we’re discussing the nonetheless existent lesbian vibes between Daria and Jane — and who better to offer input on this than Talking Simpsons cohost Bob Mackey? Sure, he’s straight, but it turns out that straight men can relate to female characters too. (We were shocked!)

As it turns out, Bob and Henry’s What a Cartoon podcast covers not only the Daria episode that immediately precedes this one, “Fire!” and also “The Misery Chick,” which as we discuss is a crucial turning point in the development of Daria Morgandorfer.

This week, Glen and Drew are guests on Talking Simpsons, discussing "Three Gays of the Condo" and why it's not great! If you need more of our voices in your life, have a listen here.

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And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

“Lucy and Jim Bailey” (November 6, 1972)

Basically, Lucille Ball did a solid for one gay performer, but in doing this, she also helped make gays a little less scary for America. Jim Bailey was a female impersonator who who had already made appearances on late night TV for this uncanny ability to turn himself into female celebs. Lucy, however, gave him a showcase on her popular prime time sitcom, showing her viewers that not only were drag queens not scary, but in fact they can be a lot of fun.

Watch the episode of The Lucy Show where Lucy almost drowned on Tubi. And read the book that details both versions of the story on Archive.org.

What the episode of the Desilu-produced game show You Don’t Say.

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And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

People use the term “the lost years” differently when speaking of Saturday Night Live, but this podcast is using it specifically from the time Lorne Michaels left the show after season five up until season eleven. Aside from Eddie Murphy’s presence on the show, these are the sketches that are less remembered today because they weren’t rerun on Comedy Central in the 2000s as much and they’re largely absent from the cache of episodes preserved online today. And that’s too bad, because this is when the show boasted some legends in the cast — Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Billy Crystal, Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Martin Short and Damon Wayans among them, as well as queer cast members Terry Sweeney, Denny Dillon and Danitra Vance.

The sketches (and click here if you want to watch them):

• “SoHo Lesbians” (S6E10: Debbie Harry)
• “Little Richard Simmons” (S7E1: No host)
• “James Coburn Is a Homosexual” (S7E11: James Coburn)
• “Focus on Film: Making Love” (S7E12: Bruce Dern)
• “Penny Lane” (S10E11: Roy Scheider)
• “Pinklisting” (S11E1: Madonna)
• “Mr. Monopoly” (S11E12: Griffin Dunne)
• Monologue (S11E16: Catherine Oxenberg)
• “Lesbian Pick-Ups” (S11E18: Anjelica Huston)

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Listen: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Google Podcasts • Himalaya • TuneIn

And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

“Evolution” (August 19, 1999)

If you came of age in the late 90s or early 2000s, you live in a world informed by Sex and the City — whether you realize it or not. It’s probably one of the most influential TV shows to air during our lifetimes, and so it’s more than time that we look at one of its many LGBTQ-themed episodes. Joining us to discuss Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte is returning guest Gwynedd Stuart, who has big feelings about why this show matters.

Listen to Gwynedd’s previous episode about Soap.

Most of Drew’s background on how SATC ended up at HBO comes from this Vulture article. And here is the 1991 New York Times article about Woody Allen and Mia Farrow waving at each other from across Central Park.

Listen to Drew discussing Bowser, King of the Koopa, on the Retronauts podcast.

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And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

"Homes and Jojo" (May 1, 1989)

Newhart is a show about white people who live in the snow, and while 70s-era Bob Newhart sitcom is the one pop culture remembers better, this is the longer-lived, more-Emmy-nominated of the two. What the 80s-era Bob New1hart sitcom has working in its favor are future Simpsons showrunner David Mirkin, who gives a host of wacky townspeople not unlike what you’d find in Springfield, and the duo of Julia Duffy and Peter Scolari, who male a perfect yuppie couple worthy of mockery. It’s great. Here, learn about it.

Listen to Smart Mouth, GEE”s sister show, and in particular check out the episode “Queer Food” with John Birdsall, because if you’re listening to this podcast you’re probably queer and probably also you eat food.

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Listen: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Google Podcasts • Himalaya • TuneIn

And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.

“Blank Relay” (August 13, 2000)

Honestly, we could have picked just about any episode of Strangers With Candy to focus on for this podcast about queer themes, but we ended up deciding on the one where we see Jerri Blank at her most girl hungry. It’s light on Mr. Noblet and Mr. Jellineck, but we can always circle back to this one in another two hundred episodes, right?

Watch the Exit 57 “Down in the Basement” sketch, which does not translate especially well to an audio-only format.

Watch The Trip Back, the 1970 PSA featuring Florrie Fisher, the real-life inspiration for Jerri Blank.

Listen to the two-part Rasputin episode of the Unexplained podcast.

And we dropped a whole hell of a lot of Sam Pancake Presents the Monday Afternoon Movie episodes. Here are all of them:

• Angel Dusted with Gedde Watanabe (the one where Helen Hunt doesn’t jump through a window)
• Desperate Lives with Arden Myrin (the one where she *does* jump through a window)
• It Happened One Christmas with Sarah Thyre
• The Cat Creature with Becky Thyre
• And finally Crowhaven Farm and A Vacation in Hell, both with Rose Abdoo

“Joey’s First Crush” (January 28, 1987)

Few other shows changed as much as Gimme a Break, which began as a fish-out-of-water sitcom that had Nell Carter playing mom to three white girls in California but ended up with Nell and her best friend, Telma Hopkins’ Addy, co-parenting two white boys in New York. Minus the kids, it’s basically a female-female twist on Perfect Strangers, only they don’t get steady boyfriends. Perhaps in an effort to make the show seem less gay, they tossed in a happily married character… who was played by newcomer Rosie O’Donnell. This episode, which is the second of Gimme a Break’s outings to feature actual gay characters, showcases a lot of how this show ended up pretty damn gay.

… Now that I think about it, maybe the only sitcom that changed as much over its run was Ellen — and that’s pretty notable, right?

Listen to our previous Gimme a Break episodes.

Learn all about Betty and Barney Hill in the Monday Afternoon Movie episode about 1975’s The UFO Incident.

Watch:

• Andy Gibb dueting with Nell Carter on Gimme a Break
• Gimme a Break’s famous Motown medley
• Rosie O’Donnell on Star Search

“Lisa the Drama Queen” (January 25, 2009)

So here’s an interesting one. In its twentieth season, The Simpson did an episode inspired by Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 Peter Jackson movie that has Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey playing schoolgirls who flee into a fantasy world and also each other. More than a decade later, this story would play out again, only with Lisa Simpson and a new character voiced by Emily Blunt, and that might seem like a strange combo, especially because the Simpson version nixes the sex and violence of the original, but it nonetheless works.

Special thanks to the writer of this episode, Brian Kelley, for sharing his memories of how this episode came to be.

For a limited time, you can still screen Heavenly Creatures via the GEE Patreon, but that window is closing. Info here.

Listen to Drew on the In Retrospect podcast’s episodes about the “lesbian/Lebanese” joke (part one & part two)

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Follow: GEE on Facebook • GEE’s Facebook Group • GEE on Twitter • GEE on Instagram • Drew on Twitter • Glen on Twitter

Listen: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Google Podcasts • Himalaya • TuneIn

And yes, we do have an official website! We even have episode transcripts courtesy of Sarah Neal. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This episode’s art was designed by Ian O’Phelan.