Transcript for Episode 4: Archie Bunker Meets a Homo

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the All in the Family episode “Judging Books By Covers.” If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here. The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.

Mike:  Oh. Oh, this was a most enchanting young person.

Archie:  Boy or girl? 

Mike:  A boy.

Archie:  Why did I ask? 

[audience laughs]

Mike:  He was selling peace stickers there in Piccadilly Circus. Look at that expression. 

Edith:  And right after you snapped the picture, he was moving again—and everybody behind him.

Archie:  Yeah, they was all moving, Edith! I want to take a look at this enchanting young person.

Mike: Archie, aren't you going to be late meeting Steve and the guys at the tavern? 

Archie:  Oh, I thought I'd hang around and hear about some more of the enchanting things he done over there. For instance, did he hunt? 

Mike:  You know Roger doesn't hunt. I don't believe in it either.

Archie: Yeah, well, sometimes I got my doubts about you too, Buster Brown.

[audience laughs and applauds]

["Those Were the Days" plays]

Drew:  You are listening to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast that looks at the LGBT-themed episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very gay episodes. I'm Drew Mackie. 

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin. 

Drew:  And in case that intro didn't tip you off, this episode is about All in the Family, specifically the episode "Judging Books by Covers," which is the fifth episode of the show's first season and which is probably better known today as "Archie Bunker Meets a Homo." It aired February 9th, 1971, and yes, that means All in the Family was a mid-season replacement. 

Glen:  [gasps]

Drew:  Yeah. That was a shocked noise, if—yeah. That's what it was. Glen, what do you remember about All in the Family being on when you were a kid? Was it in syndication? 

Glen:  No—or at least, I did not watch it when I was a child. My only All in the Family experience is actually with one of my side jobs writing classic TV trivia. 

Drew:  Oh. So did that force you to watch any of All in the Family? 

Glen:  Oh, no. It forced me to go to Wikipedia. 

Drew:  Okay. So you've seen episodes of All in the Family before this, right? 

Glen:  Yeah. I've watched it, but I've only ever watched it in, like, an intellectual context. I've never watched it for enjoyment. 

Drew:  Right. I think that's the experience a lot of kids our age have because when I was a kid, it was on in syndication and it would be the shows I would like watching, like The Simpsons, and then the moment I hear the opening chords of the All in the Family theme song, that was my motivation to change the channel and be like, "Oh, it's not for me anymore." That show was, at one point, M*A*S*H.

Glen:  I was going to say that was M*A*S*H for me.

Drew:  Right. It's just something that's classic and beloved and a big deal but doesn't seem fun, I guess.

Glen:  No. Although I will say I enjoy the M*A*S*H theme song with lyrics. 

Drew:  That's right. It has really fucked up lyrics. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's about suicide. 

Drew:  "Suicide is Painless" is the title of the theme to M*A*S*H. Yeah. 

Glen:  Actually, my only experience with Sally Struthers growing up was her asking for money for hungry kids. 

Drew:  I can tell you right now that what you said is false, and we're going to get to that shortly. She factored into your life in other ways that you maybe haven't realized yet. 

Glen:  Was she a Muppet? 

Drew:  Sort of. Sort of. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. I knew who Caroll O'Connor was when they recast Helen Hunt's parents on Mad About You as Carol Burnett and Caroll O'Connor. Do you remember that happening? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  I knew him from All in the Family when that happened, and I remember thinking it was weird—not just because they had recast Helen Hunt's parents several times over the course of that show, which is very odd. And then I remember always thinking that it looked drab, and researching the development of the show, I actually found out that was intentional. Norman Lear, who developed the show, originally wanted to do it in black and white, and CBS said no, and his compromise was having a set designed so it looked like it was sepia toned, like an old family photo, which totally makes sense. There's not a lot of color variation going on in that—a lot of olive and sandy-brown colors. 

Glen:  They had to shoot the pilot four times, right? 

Drew:  They did. It was "Justice for All," originally, and their last name was Justice before it was Bunker, and it was for ABC at one point, and Jackie Gleason was considered to play Archie. So it was a long time coming to get on the air, and it was Norman Lear's first hit TV show, which is interesting. 

Glen:  It's interesting that there was so much retooling for a show, which is just an adaptation of a British TV show. 

Drew:  It is. Yeah. A lot of people are surprised to know that [it's] not created by Norman Lear, just developed. It started out on BBC One as Till Death Do Us Part, which aired from 1965 to 1975. But because it's British TV, it's only five episodes.

Glen:  Sanford and Son was also an adaptation. 

Drew:  That's right. 

Glen:  Is it weird for you to have me throwing the trivia out at you? 

Drew:  No. This is—you just said you have a background in this sort of TV trivia. Right. So, Till Death Do Us Part was a pretty big hit in England. I would say that the American flip of it did even bigger business in America—certainly ran for 205 episodes in nine seasons and won a ton of awards and is unique among TV shows in that it's one of the few times when all the lead characters all won an Emmy for their performances. Very few other shows can claim that. Among the ones that can—guesses? 

Glen:  Frasier. 

Drew:  No. Golden Girls and Will & Grace. They all won their respective major acting awards. 

Glen:  With Golden Girls, who gets supporting? I guess Estelle Getty. 

Drew:  Estelle Getty, I think so. Yeah, because the other three were often running against each other, which is super awkward. Yeah. If you don't know about All in the Family, All in the Family is about a curmudgeonly patriarch who's a bigoted jerk and kind of an asshole, played by Caroll O'Connor, and he inflicts pain on his three immediate family members, and they just endure it. And Norman Lear saw this as a way to lampoon prejudice and racism and bigoted things and ignorance, and I guess it does do that. But it's really hard to watch now because I feel like the show—even the episode we're talking about, it puts you in Archie's shoes and makes you sympathize with him, and it's sort of an awkward sensation. It was back then, too. It was controversial. That was one of the big criticisms against the show is that it seemed to be endorsing things it was making fun of. 

Glen:  The surprising thing for me watching it was that Archie's views didn't seem outdated. The theme song alone seems like a GOP platform: They sing about the welfare state and how that's bad and how they miss the times when everybody pulling their weight. It's like, "Ugh. Guys, come on." 

Drew:  And gender roles. 

Glen:  Oh, yeah. "Men were men, and girls were girls," or whatever it is. Ugh. 

Drew:  So the weird thing about that is that they say, "We could sure use a man like Herbert Hoover again." And I didn't say "Sheriff Lobo," even though I was just talking about how The Simpsons' parody of the theme song resonates more strongly in my mind. But as a kid, I'd seen Annie, and I'm like, "I thought we were supposed to hate Herbert Hoover. There's a whole entire number about how he's an asshole," and that's—I guess Archie and Edith didn't get that memo. 

Glen:  All I'm saying is there's going to be a politician who runs on "Those Were the Days" in 2018. 

Drew:  I'm shocked that there hasn't been that. A little bit about Norman Lear. He's an amazing guy, even if he got his start ripping off British shows. He did a really good job ripping it off. We have to give him credit. In addition to All in the Family and Sanford and Son, he's also responsible for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. It's weird to think about, but as we're recording this he is 95 years old, still active in Hollywood, and he's an executive producer on the new One Day at a Time, which if you haven't watched it you should because it's kind of an amazing thing. 

Glen:  Yeah. You cry through the first season. 

Drew:  I cried during the second season, too. I actually got to attend a taping of One Day at a Time—the new One Day at a Time. 

Glen:  Wait. Did it involve a time machine? 

Drew:  No. No. It just involved driving to Universal City. And it was a really fun experience, but also, he came out and talked to us ahead of time and talked to us about how we're living in trying times and kind of bitching about Trump a little bit, and said that the thing that'll bring us together is telling stories that remind us of how we are all very similar despite superficial differences. And it was very inspiring, and I think he's a great person. Yeah. Watch One Day at a Time, even if you are not a Cuban family living in Echo Park. You will get a lot out of it. It's very well done. And Rita Moreno is another national treasure. We are not here to talk about One Day at a Time. We are here to talk about All in the Family. All in the Family was the top-rated TV show for its second season, '71-'72, but it was not an instant hit. It was not even in the Top 30 for its first season. I couldn't find the specific Nielsen ratings for this week. Most weeks back in time, you can. Couldn't find it for this one. When it first aired, probably not that many people watched it. It was a word-of-mouth thing, and towards the end of its first season and through the summer, the ratings kept getting higher and higher because people were really getting something out of it and turned it into a hit and turned it into the legendary show it is today. 

Glen:  Cheers also has that backstory. 

Drew:  Yeah. Was it also a mid-season replacement? 

Glen:  It wasn't a mid-season replacement, but it was terrible in the ratings first season and almost got canceled. 

Drew:  And the network knew they had something good and stuck with it and fostered an audience, and that's not something that really happens very often today. It aired on February 9th, 1971—a Tuesday. It aired at 9:30, following Green Acres and an hour-long episode of Hee Haw, which were exactly the type of rural entertainment shows that CBS was trying to distance itself from in putting All in the Family on the air, which totally worked. They flipped their entire image, and this extended Norman Lear network of shows kind of took over. But it's weird thinking back to Green Acres and Hee Haw and Petticoat Junction, and it being a time when folksy hillbilliness was what people wanted to watch on TV. 

Glen:  I love Beverly Hillbillies. 

Drew:  That's the best one out of the bunch. Even Green Acres is no Beverly Hillbillies. 

Glen:  Oh god, no. 

Drew:  No. It's interesting that this is the fifth episode of the show because they're taking an interesting, surprising stance on an issue that wasn't really talked about on sitcoms before this. It was talked about on medical dramas and law procedurals, always in a negative context. All the LGBT-themed episodes that aired in 1971 before this are not putting gay people in a great light. 

Glen:  Oh, like gay serial killers? 

Drew:  Yeah, like lesbian assassins or people who are mentally ill because they're gay or just things that got protests from people who were activists post-Stonewall. And also, Stonewall was only in 1969, so it wouldn't be completely unreasonable that a family like the Bunkers would have been talking about gay stuff since that would have been in recent memory, and it didn't really go away after that. It lingered. I cannot say with certainty that it's the first—would you say this is a positive portrayal of gay people? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  Okay. It is possibly the first on an American sitcom. I can't say for sure. It's hard to find if anything else might have come before this. It's certainly the first very important one on what turned out to be a major show. This was directed by John Rich, whose long TV-directing career had him helming episodes of many of the Norman Lear sitcoms but also Bonanza, The Brady Bunch, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Benson. It was co-written by Norman Lear and Burt Styler, who wrote for a ton of shows including Carol Burnett, The Flying Nun—which I wrote as The Frying Nun. 

Glen:  Frying Nun? I'd watch that cooking show. 

Drew:  Yeah. And My Favorite Martian. So the episode opens with Gloria—played by Sally Struthers—who's Archie's daughter, getting ready for a very fancy lunch. 

Glen:  She has fancy nuts. 

Drew:  She has fancy nuts, and she has a cute '70s head of curls, and she's kind of a babe. And when you hear her voice, does she remind you more of Charlene Sinclair from Dinosaurs or Rebecca from TaleSpin? 

Glen:  Is the answer both? 

Drew:  She was both. Yeah. I can't decide which one is the more dominant Sally Struthers association for me, aside from the ads where she implores you to help poor children. 

Glen:  For me it would be Dinosaurs. I was not a TaleSpin person. 

Drew:  Ah. But we've talked about how weird it is that her character on TaleSpin is—

Glen:  Rebecca. 

Drew:  —Rebecca from Cheers and named Rebecca and dresses like—okay. 

Glen:  I think it's more unusual that there's an animated children's Casablanca, but whatever. 

Drew:  Right. Very, very weird show. Dinosaurs also a very weird show. Sally Struthers has had an interesting career. 

Glen:  Yeah. Dinosaurs ends with extinction. 

Drew:  Which is maybe how every TV series should end. Their final episode should just be killing off the entire cast. 

Glen:  No. I don't like that. 

Drew:  Oh. Worked for Six Feet Under. 

Glen:  Spoiler alert. 

Drew:  It's been on for a while. So Meathead, also known as Mike, also known as Rob Reiner, comes in. They scuttle off, maybe to have a quickie in the kitchen before this fancy lunch happens. 

Mike:  What's for lunch? 

Gloria:  You'll see, and no grabbing any samples. 

Mike:  There's only one thing I want to grab. 

Gloria:  Oh! Michael! [laughs]

[audience laughs]

Glen:  Or to prepare the food. 

Drew:  They're being very randy with each other. He wants—yeah. 

Glen:  Yeah. Archie makes more than one comment, probably, about their randiness and how good couples don't have that much sex.

Drew:  Which is a weird—I guess that's a conservative belief. Like, you just don't ever have sex? 

Glen:  I mean, that's very common in sitcom marriages is that husbands and wives have sex once a week and it's scheduled. 

Drew:  Do you think Archie and Edith have sex once a week? 

Glen:  I don't want to think. 

Drew:  Right. And then Archie and Edith come downstairs, and this is—if you've never seen Archie Bunker before, you would instantly know what kind of character he is because he bitches about fucking everything. He's really exhausting. The things he complains about in the opening minutes of the show include the concept of charity—

[audience laughs]

Edith:  I just don't think it's right, Archie. Every time the church has a charity drive, I got to say my husband don't have any old clothes. 

Archie:  So? 

Edith:  So I've been telling them that for 15 years.

[audience laughs]

Archie:  That's the trouble with this country today. There's too many handouts. Every guy and his brother's on welfare, which is the same as picking my pocket. Well, if they're going to pick my pocket, they ain't going to do it in my suit. 

Glen:  "Too many handouts." He calls—like, a charity clothing drive is welfare to him. 

Drew:  Right. That's just—conservative people like church charity drives. That's a very normal thing. He doesn't like that. He also doesn't fucking like cashews. 

Archie:  Now, hold it, hold it. Come here a minute. Come here. What is this here ? "S.S. Pierce Fancy Cashews." What, are we getting too classy for peanuts? Edith! 

Edith:  I got no problem with peanuts.

[audience laughs]

Gloria:  Will you please stop it—those are for company, and besides, they only cost a few cents more.

Archie:  "Cost a few cents more." Edith, did you bring these things into the house? 

Edith:  Probably.

Archie:  What do you mean "probably"? 

Edith:  I mean, probably I did.

Archie:  Well, "probably" you did could also mean "probably" you didn't. That's the way it is with a word like "probably." Right? 

Edith:  Probably.

[audience laughs]

Drew:  Cashews are too fancy for him. 

Glen:  What's wrong with peanuts? You can have both, Archie. You can have both. 

Drew:  Right. Cashews are better than peanuts, I hate to tell Archie Bunker. But he doesn't like that. And then these two things back-to-back remind me that Archie is an exhausting person, and I feel legitimately bad for everyone that has to interact with this person. It might be that he reminds me of members of my own family—extended family, in case Mom and Dad are listening—but I do have relatives who are crabby and just hate everything and want to spread their hate everywhere. 

Glen:  Yeah. But he also—it's a joking thing to him, whether or not these are sincere beliefs, and we're allowed to believe that they are. I would also believe that he says these outrageous things, like, "Charity is a fucking handout," just because he knows it riles his family. He just wants to get a reaction out of them, and I know conservatives like that. Their agenda isn't any actual political believe; it's just riling liberals. 

Drew:  I don't even think his wife is all that liberal, really. She's just put-upon and frustrated and beaten down by this awful man. 

Glen:  Yeah. She's not really portrayed as anyone with an agenda. 

Drew:  They kind of fix Edith later. Edith has some major dimension in other episodes, but in this one she seems like she might have a mental illness. 

Glen:  Yeah. She talks about loving, basically, Polaroids or snapshots or whatever photographs are shown because she can just imagine the second after the picture is taken. They continue with their lives. "Oh. The clock says 4:00 now, but in a minute it'll say 4:01." 

Drew:  Yeah. Maybe Edith isn't given a whole lot to do in this episode aside from this one weird little tic that doesn't really figure into anything else that I can think of. 

Glen:  I mean, if we really want to stretch the metaphor, we can get to it later. I have some thoughts. 

Drew:  All right. So the third thing Archie objects to is who's coming for lunch. And by the way, this is a very fancy lunch. I don't think I've ever been invited over for as fancy a lunch. Smoked salmon. 

Glen:  Smoked salmon. And why lunch instead of dinner? 

Drew:  I don't know. 

Glen:  I guess to give them more to do in the day. 

Drew:  Because this all takes place within a few hours at the most, like many All in the Family episodes do. He objects to the fact that it's Roger. Roger is someone he has met before. He's a friend of Gloria and Mike's, and he is someone that Archie perceives to be gay and unmanly. 

Glen:  Actually, I can go back and talk about the picture thing now. So maybe the picture metaphor is that Edith has the ability to progress with her politics and views because she can imagine life moving beyond that snapshot whereas Archie is frozen in that moment. 

Drew:  He is. He doesn't do a lot of growing over the course of the—he kind of does, but he doesn't really in this episode. 

Glen:  No. All right. That's my thought. 

Drew:  So Archie has a rant about Roger and gays, and it's—

Glen:  Roger the Fairy. 

Drew:  Roger the Fairy. I made a list, by the way. He calls Roger fairy, pansy, sweetie-pie, queer, fag, sissy, Tinkerbell, and la-ti-da, which is maybe the weirdest of all of them. 

Glen:  It's weird to make that a noun. 

Drew:  Yeah. "He's sort of a la-ti-da." That's not one I've ever had used about me, that I know of. 

Glen:  Mr. Roper was way more nuanced with just a twinkling of his fingers to talk about Jack Tripper. 

Drew:  Right. There's nothing nuanced about this, and it was—I've seen this episode before, but I forgot that he says "fag" a lot within a short amount of time, and it's kind of jarring to hear now. It's kind of weird to think about it being on TV, and also, you're like, "Oh, yeah. You can't fucking air this episode on Nick at Nite because you would have to bleep out all the "fags" at the very least. 

[audience laughs]

Archie:  But that don't answer the question. Who's the big cheese you're having here for lunch? 

Gloria:  Roger.

Archie:  Roger the fairy?

[audience laughs]

Mike:  All right, all right. Let's not do it today, huh?

Archie:  Did you hear that, Edith? Do you know who they're bringing around here for lunch? Roger. Sweetie-Pie Roger! 

Mike:  All right, Archie. Would you cut it out, huh? 

Edith:  He's their friend, Archie.

Archie:  Listen, Edith. We run a decent home here, and we don't need any strange little birdies flying in and out of it.

[audience laughs]

Gloria:  Daddy, you stop that. Roger's not a strange little birdie.

Archie:  His pal Roger is as queer as a four-dollar bill, and he knows it.

[audience laughs]

Gloria:  That's not only cruel, Daddy, that's an outright lie.

Mike:  You know something, Archie, just because a guy is sensitive and he's an intellectual and he wears glasses, you make him out a queer.

Archie:  I never said a guy who wears glasses is a queer. A guy who wears glasses is a four-eyes. A guy who is a fag is a queer.

[audience laughs]

Glen:  He literally says, "A guy who's a fag is a queer." He sounds like bullies in the first grade, just spelling it out for you. 

Drew:  Right. Right. Yeah. 

Glen:  And he says it as a defense, like, "I wouldn't call someone with glasses a fag. No." 

Drew:  Right. Yeah, like, "I'm not unreasonable here. That's just a four-eyes." I like the joke that Edith gets. She gets a good line about—he refers to Edith. He's like, "Edith, Roger's a pansy, right?" and she's like—

Edith:  Oh, dear. I don't know.

Gloria:  Mom—

Archie:  Well, go ahead, Edith. Now, answer the girl. Now, you've seen Roger sashaying around here with his la-di-da talk. He's a pansy.

Edith:  I don't know.

Archie:  What do you mean, you don't know? 

Edith:  I'm not an expert on flowers.

[audience laughs]

Drew:  The interesting thing is that despite everything Archie says and despite how Roger might present himself, Gloria and Mike say he's actually straight. He's not gay. He's just sensitive. 

Glen:  But that was—at the time and for many years after that was the progressive, supportive stance, to defend someone as straight until they come out. Like they say, "Oh, he's not gay. He's straight. But it wouldn't be a problem if he were gay. He's just not. He's straight." I've come across plenty of people in my life who would have defended me and said, "No, no. He's straight. He's just sensitive," and they thought that was a good thing. And for a while that was the encouraging stance, to defend someone's heterosexuality until you know for sure. 

Drew:  Right. In their defense, you are very sensitive. 

Glen:  I'm very, very sensitive. The reason I don't want season finales to all end with people dying is because I already cry at every series finale. 

Drew:  Right. So Mike does not want to give up on this and point out to Archie, "You know, in England, there are laws that say two consenting adults can do whatever they want in the privacy of their home, and that's fine." 

Glen:  "England is a fag country." 

Drew:  So obviously, Archie's— we're just going to play the clip, but it's like, "England is a fag country." He calls it a "fagdom." Hard to listen to. 

Archie:  We threw England out of here a long time ago. We don't want no more part of England. And for your information, England is a fag country.

Edith:  What? 

Archie:  Certainly. Ain't they still picking handkerchiefs out of their sleeve, huh? Ain't they still standing around, leaning on them skinny umbrellas like this here? I know this. Their whole society is based on a kind of a fagdom.

Drew:  But also, I was like, "Wait. This aired in 1971." When were sodomy laws declared unconstitutional? Do you know, Glen? 

Glen:  Was it Alabama or Mississippi that was the last holdout? 

Drew:  There was a Supreme Court ruling that eliminated—that basically said these final states couldn't do it anymore, that state anti-sodomy laws were prohibited. 

Glen:  I know it is shockingly recent. 

Drew:  2003. It is Lawrence v. Texas, and that is finally what made sodomy laws unconstitutional. California, I will give you credit. You got it done a lot more quickly. It happened in 1976. Do you know what the first state to repeal sodomy laws was? 

Glen:  Oklahoma! That's just me being very—

Drew:  No. It's your state—Illinois.

Glen:  Yay!

Drew:  Illinois, first in the country, in 1962. 

Glen:  I mean, we're pretty great. Not right now. We're having some trouble. 

Drew:  So, yeah. England is a fag country. I wrote in my notes that I've hung out around drunk gay men in a gay bar and not heard "fag" spoken as frequently as it happens in this cluster of these two conversations back to back. It's very weird. And then Roger comes over, and Roger is dressed like—he looks like either a combination of Freddie and Shaggy—

Glen:  I was going to say the same thing. I was going to say Freddie and Shaggy fucked and then went through Daphne's closet. 

Drew:  Yeah. That's perfect. He's played by Anthony Geary. Do you know this actor? 

Glen:  No. But I was going to look him up because I think I'm into him. 

Drew:  He's still an actor. He's been very busy. He is best known for playing Luke on General Hospital. Luke-and-Laura was the soap opera wedding to—it was like the Dynasty wedding of soap opera weddings. It was a huge deal. It aired in primetime. It had huge viewership. He met Laura when he raped her. His character started out as a hitman and then was a rapist. He raped her, and then he fell in love with her, and everyone was on board with this storyline. I only know this because my mom watched General Hospital. That was her favorite soap opera. And I can't make it make sense in my head how that was ever a thing people were like, "No. Well, he did rape her, but then they fell in love and we're all 100 percent on board with this." 

Glen:  Well, let me tell you a little story about Carol Danvers in the Marvel Universe who was raped and then kidnapped to another dimension by her rapist, and all of her Avenger friends were A-Okay with it. 

Drew:  For how long was she gone? 

Glen:  A pretty long time. 

Drew:  Okay. So this is when she was just still Ms. Marvel before she was Captain Marvel? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  Right. 

Glen:  But this was before a lot of things happen to her. She's had a pretty checkered past. 

Drew:  What year? 

Glen:  I don't remember—'80s?

Drew:  I mean, Jessica Jones is a similarly tragic story of—

Glen:  Yeah, but everyone understands that as being tragic whereas during this incident, just because she was sort of brainwashed into marrying her rapist everyone was like, "Okay." 

Drew:  Weird. 

Glen:  They thought it was a love story. 

Drew:  Weird. Okay. So now, we learn that that's not okay, although I think he still portrays the character of Luke on General Hospital. He's been on it for decades at this point. An interesting thing about Roger is that Roger is very irritating—like, it takes him a long time to get around to saying something. And I don't know if it's the way the actor's playing this character or if the way he was written, but he is kind of annoying. It's annoying listening to his stories—ugh. I don't know. I felt like we were being prompted to identify with Archie, with Archie being like, "Oh, my god. This guy's going on and on. This is a really boring story." 

[audience laughs]

Roger:  Gloria, hey! Mike, hi.

Mike:  How are you doing? Nice to see you.

Roger:  Nice to see you. 

Mike:  How was the trip? 

Roger:  Fabulous! Mike, it was the most super trip. In fact, it was an absolutely stunning, exhausting, incredible experience! 

Archie:  When is he going to land? 

Gloria:  Pardon me, Roger. You know my mother.

Roger:  Oh, yes. Mrs. Bunker. 

Edith:  Oh, how do you do, Roger? 

Roger:  So nice to see you again. Really a pleasure.

[audience laughs]

Gloria:  And my father, Mr. Bunker.

Roger:  Mr. Bunker.

Archie:  Yeah, how are you? And one hand's enough.

[audience laughs]

Glen:  I mean, he's any sort of Midwesterner who's gone to London and comes back cosmopolitan. He is a gay man who has tried his best to carve out a life for himself, whatever that life may be, and since he can't be outwardly gay—he basically is outwardly gay without—he doesn't talk about sex with men. He talks about going to London, and he talks about trends and how these are his favorite nuts, and so—I don't know. It's why gay men traditionally got along really well with older women, because they can talk about frivolous things. 

Drew:  I guess that makes sense. He could be an out gay man. They live in Queens. He's not that far from the New York City gay life. It's not as if they live in Detroit or Lanford, Illinois, or something. 

Glen:  It kind of sounds like he is an out gay man, just not at this lunch. 

Drew:  You mean, maybe he just never told Mike and Gloria? 

Glen:  Yeah. And why would he? It's actually not their business. That seems to be the culture of the time. 

Drew:  Right. Maybe the entire family is just a bunch of—they're all dingbats, and he's like, "I don't really want to have this conversation with you." 

Glen:  I think it's interesting that from Archie's perspective it plays out like a court procedure, like every time that Roger speaks Archie treats it like evidence, like Exhibit A, like, "Oh, he's talking about this gay thing. He's clearly gay." And so—

Archie:  What kind of sports action they got over there this time of the year? I mean, they must have things like skiing there and bobsledding and—bobsledding. There's a manly sport. Did you do any bobsledding over there? 

Roger:  Well no, sir. There isn't too much of that in London, I'm afraid. That's where I spent most of my time.

Archie:  Oh, London, huh? 

Roger:  Yes. 

Archie:  Yeah. London, England, huh? 

Roger:  Yes.

Archie:  Your witness.

[audience laughs]

Glen:  I don't know. It definitely reminds me of a time before everyone was just out and proud when you would pick up on the slightest thing. And from my perspective, that is going into a social situation and keeping a check on what I would view as dropping evidence. 

Drew:  Right, right, right. 

Glen:  Or from the other perspective—when I'm interacting with what I think to be a straight person and cataloging all the things I think would be damning evidence that they are homosexual. 

Drew:  Right. Okay. Yes, I understand what you're saying. And one of the takeaways from this episode is that—I guess—it's wrong to judge a book by its cover because you don't really know what someone is based on the way they present themselves, which is something I feel like only a straight person would say. Like, you shouldn't judge books by their covers, I guess, but that is one of the ways that a gay person figures out they're talking to another gay person: It is studying and being a detective and putting this evidence together. And we're led to believe in this one instance, all evidence to the contrary, Roger is straight. But anyone would be forgiven for thinking this man was gay. 

Glen:  I think that's a reason why a lot of gay people are artists, aside from our sensitivity. Ugh. It is because we are trained to pay attention to detail. We are very detail oriented. We study people. We study human behavior because we have to figure out what makes people tick. And if what makes them tick is dick, all the better. 

Drew:  "How can I get laid without getting beaten up?" That is essentially what makes gay people artists. 

Glen:  Yeah. I'll write that book. 

Drew:  [laughs] Archie eventually tires of being an asshole and retreats to the local bar, and it was at this point I realized, "Oh, yeah. Homer Simpson is very much an Archie Bunker type, just stupider and—depending on the episode—less hateful," although he's very Archie-Bunker-like in the episode that we're going to do later this season. We're going to do the gay episode of The Simpsons, and his reactions are very Archie-Bunker-like, especially when he finds out that he had a gay person in his house. It's very similar. And this, going to the bar to get away from his family and surrounding himself with all these barflies—

Glen:  Masculine men. 

Drew:  —masculine men, talking about—what is it? Union strikes and—

Glen:  I know. I had a panic attack when one of his friends, like, "It's an American right to strike." I was like, "Oh, god. Is this a stand-your-ground episode, to?" But then I realized it was about organized labor and calmed down a little bit. 

Drew:  And then they talk about a Swedish boob movie that they're all very into. And there's these two barflies who are essentially like Archie—they look like they're made out of mashed potatoes. And then there's Steve, who is tall and pretty good looking for an older guy, and he's an ex-football player, and he's a bit more reserved and a bit better dressed than them, but he is apparently enough of a regular that everyone at the bar knows who he is and likes him. 

Glen:  Is it Charlton Heston?

Drew:  It's not. His name is Philip Carey. He also went on to have an extremely successful career in soap operas. He was the Texan patriarch on One Life to Live, and he played that role for, again, like 30-something years. He very recently has passed away but has probably acted in more episodes of TV shows than most actors ever because he was on a soap opera for 30 years. 

Glen:  That makes me feel better because when I at first thought it was Charlton Heston I was like, "Ugh. How am I going to have to feel about this character? Because I hate this man." 

Drew:  Right. Right. Steve is a former pro-footballer, he's a bachelor, and even Archie points out that he's in really good shape. And there's this weird little bit where he's talking about how he stays—

[audience laughs]

Archie:  What I mean is, how do you keep yourself in such great shape? I mean geez, look at your shoulders and all that.

Steve:  I work out every day, jog two miles every morning, and archery.

Archie:  Archery? 

Steve:  Yeah. It's good for the arms and the shoulders.

Archie:  What do you mean, with a bow and arrow?

Steve:  Yeah.

Archie: [snickers] Geez. You know, I never figured you, Steve, for no bow and arrow.

Glen:  Archery is a fag sport. 

Drew:  Sort of? Is that what we're supposed to conclude from that bit? 

Glen:  I think so. Actually, do you remember the trend in L.A. a couple years ago of a bunch of gays just getting into archery? 

Drew:  Was it the result of Hunger Games and—

Glen:  It was. 

Drew:  —was it Brave? 

Glen:  I think mostly Hunger Games. 

Drew:  And Jeremy Renner? 

Glen:  I don't think it was Jeremy Renner. 

Drew:  Archery had a big moment a few years ago where people were just firing—there was that Hansel & Gretel movie where they were fighting witches with bows and arrows. It was a weirdly prolific thing. 

Glen:  I think that was crossbows. It was more steampunky. 

Drew:  It's still—

Glen:  It's not the same thing. In Dungeons & Dragons it takes longer to fire a crossbow, and you don't have to really be trained in it. That's why wizards have crossbows. But it's a problem because it takes longer to fire because you have to take an action to reload—that's a different podcast. 

Drew:  Okay. So they're at the bar, and then Mike and Roger come in to get—beer to go? Is that a thing? 

Glen:  This whole part of the lunch plan weirded me out where there was [a mention 00:33:35] that they would have to go to the tavern to pick something out. I'm like, "What?"

Drew:  A pitcher. They said a pitcher. 

Glen:  Okay. Yeah. I guess that happens. 

Drew:  Right. That would be a great thing to have, I think, if we were allowed to do that. I don't think we can go to the tavern and get a pitcher to go. But Roger goes right over to Archie and Steve—and knows Steve—and they have a friendly conversation, and Archie's put off by this. But they're getting the beer, and the bartender pulls Mike to the side, and he's like—

Kelcy:  This kid you come in with. Is he straight? 

Mike:  Oh, no. Not you, too. Of course he is. Why? 

Kelcy:  Well, the way him and Steve there were so buddy-buddy, I thought maybe he was a little—

[audience laughs]

Mike:  What? 

Kelcy:  Well—now, don't get me wrong. I don't mind Steve. His camera store is just down the street here, and he only comes in for a drink once in a while on his way home. Besides, he don't camp it up, you know? 

[audience laughs] 

Kelcy:  And he don't bring in none of his friends.

Mike:  Kelcy, are you trying to tell me that Steve is—

Kelcy:  I just wouldn't want my place to become no—hangout. 

[audience laughs]

Kelcy:  Know what I mean? Huh?

[audience laughs]

Drew:  And that is the act break of Rob Reiner's shocked face being like, "What? He's a gay?" But I have to imagine he's tickled with glee inside because he gets to use this against Archie and make him feel like an asshole. 

Glen:  Which is why the straight people in this episode are far worse than the gay people—because they weaponize their friends' sexual identities for a war against each other. 

Drew:  Yeah. Also, when the bartender says—this is another thing we still do that's fucked up. When the bartender is talking to Mike about Steve, he's like, "Steve, he's cool. He just comes in every now and then, but we don't want him to camp it up." And it's interesting watching this episode and looking at what's outdated and what's not, like the language seems a little outdated. That's not something you hear on TV—anymore, at least. But the idea that a gay guy who can pass for straight is better than a gay guy who can't, I'm like, "Oh, yeah. We are still 100 percent." Gay people and straight people still fucking do this to each other. It's really fucked up. So this episode is almost 50 years old, and that is not something we've made really much progress on. 

Glen:  No, but I feel slightly better about it because I think it's a larger toxic-masculinity problem than it is a gay versus straight problem. We just don't let men be anything other than men, and this spills over into "Well, a better type of gay is a masculine gay." 

Drew:  Right. Right. All right. 

Glen:  Opens on coffee with Edith. 

Drew:  Yeah. Is there anything in this before Archie comes in [there 00:36:29] again? 

Glen:  No. No. The beginning of the scene is just sort of meh until Archie comes in to watch a fight, which is an old fight, a classic fight—which is so super masculine, to not even watch a boxing match that is on, but just to love it so much and to be so butch that you'd watch an old fight. 

Drew:  Right. And Roger leaves either because he's ready to go or he just doesn't want to be around Archie and everyone's being polite about it. 

Glen:  I mean, the lunch has lasted a really long time. 

Drew:  Probably. Yeah. So he leaves, and Archie's still going on about Roger the Fairy and how he doesn't like him, and Mike says, "You know what? I could tell you something that's really going to shock you, and I'm not going to do it." And then it takes what is kind of a weird turn [laughs]. So Gloria says, "Oh, I can shock you, Daddy," and he's like, "What?" And [she] shows him this weird trick. Do you want to explain it? 

Glen:  So the trick is you put a chair against the wall, and then you take three steps back from the wall, bend over, pick the chair up, and then try and stand upright with the chair, and apparently women can do it, but men can't do it. 

Drew:  So we both tried this. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  We both tried it in real life, and the first time I couldn't do it. 

Glen:  The first and second times, you said, you couldn't do it. 

Drew:  Right, but you—

Glen:  Yeah. It was really easy. So I don't know what that says about me. 

Drew:  And then I tried it a third time because I didn't want to feel like Glen was more capable than me, and then I was able to do it by rocking back from my tippy-toes to my heels. I was able to stand up even though—

Glen:  That's cheating. 

Drew:  Is it? 

Glen:  Yeah. You got to keep your feet planted firmly. 

Drew:  Oh. Was that part of the rules as described by Sally Struthers? 

Glen:  Context clues, and usually any sort of rocking—like if you're doing weights, if you have to rock back and forth to curl the barbell, that's cheating. And also, you're going to hurt yourself. 

Drew:  Okay. Well, I didn't hurt myself picking up the stupid fucking chair. I am apparently unable to do this thing. I'm an Archie Bunker. You're more of a Gloria, turns out. 

Glen:  I would have even accepted Edith. 

Drew:  Okay. You can be Edith. 

Glen:  [whispers] Yes.

Drew:  What do you make of this weird detour? Because you're waiting for Mike to tell him that Steve is gay this whole time, and they spend a few minutes with the chairs. 

Glen:  It's, again, some sort of metaphor for men versus women, and Archie surprisingly getting angry—well, maybe not surprisingly. He's angry that a man can't do something that a woman can do. 

Drew:  He thinks they're playing a joke on him or it's a trick chair. 

Glen:  Yeah. Again, whenever a man's capabilities are in question, he immediately goes to a conspiracy theory, like, "How did you rig this against me?" 

Drew:  I forget. How does it get from the chair thing to Mike finally telling him that Steve is gay? 

Glen:  I think because Archie jokes that Roger would probably be able to lift the chair because he's not a man.

Drew:  That's it. Right. 

Glen:  And Mike was like, "Let me tell you who's not a man." 

[audience laughs]

Archie:  It's a dumb gag. Where did you get it? 

Mike:  Roger showed it to us.

Archie:  Oh, Roger showed it to you.

Gloria:  Yeah. He brought it back from England.

Archie:  Boy, I bet he can do it.

[audience laughs]

Mike:  All right now, let's not start any of that again, huh? 

Archie:  You told me that a man can't do it. So if a man can't do it, I would imagine your friend Roger-bell can.

Mike:  "Roger-bell," huh? "Roger-bell"? Well, you want to know who could lift that chair, Archie? I mean, not only could he lift that chair, but he could prance and flit all over this room with it? Your friend Steve.

Drew:  And that's kind of—he has the right intention, but it's like, okay. He's not a fucking—they're not fairies, and also, Steve isn't that type of guy. He's not a light-on-his-feet type gay, really. 

Glen:  Yeah. Someone says, "A real man can't be gay." I'm sure it's Archie. 

Drew:  [laughs] Yeah. I'm sure it's Archie. 

Glen:  No. It was Edith. I think it was Edith. 

Drew:  Archie is incensed and offended that they would smear the good name of his friend Steve, the ex-football star. He can't—like, that can't be true. That's obviously false—so much so that he leaves and goes back to the bar where Steve is watching the same old fight with the barflies. And also, I'm like, "Steve, why do you hang out here?" I know his shop is just up the street or something, but this is not a nice bar. You live in New York. There's got to be a gay bar somewhere you can go to where you would at least get some action, which you're clearly not, here, I don't think. 

Glen:  He clearly does get action. There is a conversation down the line where he references that he does have sex with men. 

Drew:  And Archie pulls Steve aside and asks him to arm wrestle, which Steve easily wins. And then they're talking about—

Glen:  They're talking about what Mike thinks. Archie brings up, "Oh, Mike thinks the craziest thing about you." 

Archie:  Hey, put them glasses over here. I want to go at you once more. Go ahead.

Steve:  You're nuts. All right.

Archie:  Come on. Let me get even. One more time. Come on, get it up there, eh? All right. Go! [laughs]

Steve:  What does Mike think, Arch ? 

Archie: Ah, Mike. Geez. Well for one thing, he thinks that friend of his, Roger, is straight. And for another thing—oh, Steve. You're going to want to bust him wide open when I tell you this. I don't know where he gets these brainstorms, but he thinks that you're a—geez. I can't even say it to you, Steve [scoffs].

Steve: He's right, Arch.

Archie: Huh? 

[audience laughs]

Steve:  He's right.

Archie:  Oh. You mean he's right about his friend Roger there.

Steve:  About everything.

Archie:  Aw, come on.

[audience laughs]

Archie:  I mean, you want to joke about it, all right. But come on. Get off it, huh, guy?

Glen:  I thought on Steve's end it was incredibly well acted—

Drew:  Yeah. He did a good job. 

Glen:  —where he pretty much knows what Archie is talking about without Archie having to say it and is ballsy enough to come out and say, "Mike is right. What Mike thinks about me is right," all while he has Archie's hand in his hand and he can just crush him at any moment. 

Drew:  And also, he's holding his hand, which is in another context an affectionate gesture. But it's kind of like he's holding between these two things, like, "Hey. I can hold a guy's hand, but I can also crush his hand. Look at me." Yeah. The acting is really good. He's sly, but he doesn't overdo it. He's having a little bit of fun, but you get the sense that he is standing his ground, and he's like, "I'm not going to back down from this." Not exactly. You could argue he kind of does at the end, but in this one scene he's like, "Nope. I'm going to confront you with this." 

Glen:  Yeah. And Archie pushes back. He's like, "No. You're not gay. You're a bachelor," and Steve's like, "When have I ever talked about women?" 

Steve:  How long you known me—10, 12 years? 

Archie:  Yeah.

Steve:  In all that time, did I ever mention a woman? 

Archie:  Well, what difference does that make? You're a bachelor.

Steve:  So? 

Archie:  I know. But bachelors, they're always acting kind of private.

Steve:  Exactly.

Archie:  Aw, come on, Steve. 

[audience laughs]

Archie:  I mean, I ain't the brightest guy in the world. You want to put me on, put me on. But don't sit there and tell me that you—I mean, look at you. Look at—come on, will you, you big clown! You get out of here! 

Steve:  Have it your own way, Arch. The truth's in the eye of the beholder anyway. I'll see you later, pal.

[Steve gives Archie a friendly punch]

[audience laughs]

Glen:  And Archie's like, "Oh, I don't know. I just assumed that you were having sex," and Steve is like, "Yes. I just don't talk about it." 

Drew:  Right. Right. Yeah. Archie is shocked and confused, and it's such a violation of the way he thinks things should be versus how they actually are that his brain won't allow him to process it. And he's like, "No. That can't be right." 

Glen:  Yeah. I guess it gets back to—the most shocking thing about this episode to me is how long it took to progress from this comedic beat of "Wait. The masculine guy? No. He can't be gay. Oh, no. He can't be gay." And it's taken us how many years to define being gay as men who have sex with men and it really doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how we act? 

Drew:  Right. 

Glen:  Crazy. 

Drew:  We haven't fixed that yet, and Archie never puts it together in his head. He ends up pushing it out of his head, being like, "That can't be right," and I think Steve says, "Okay. Whatever you want to think, Archie, is fine," and he leaves. You never see Steve again over the course of the show, and presumably he went out to have a lot of sex. Good for you, Steve. But Archie doesn't learn the lesson, and Steve doesn't care. It doesn't really affect him whether this person approves of his situation or not. He's going to be fine either way. 

Glen:  Which is a fucked-up thing because gay men and women having that stance for so many years, in the moment it keeps us safe and happy, maybe—happyish. But no. Letting Archie have his beliefs is detrimental to us. Look where we fucking are now just because we were nice about all these bigoted white people having their traditional views and we said, "Oh, well. We'll let them think what they need to think, so long as it doesn't affect us, so long as I can still go out and have sex."

Drew:  Right. 

Glen:  But you know what? Maybe if the Steves of the world were a little bit more annoying and in Archie's face and forcing him to confront the truth—that his friend is gay and that doesn't not make him his friend—as opposed to "I'm going to be able to put this in the back of my brain and still be your friend, and that's what makes me a good character." It's like, "No. It makes you a shitty character."

Drew:  Right. That makes you willfully ignorant. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's no longer admirable that you can turn a blind eye to someone else's lifestyle. 

Drew:  Right. Right. And Archie's kind of a shitty character, and that's how the episode ends, mostly. I will say this much. It's nice that this episode is not a coming-out narrative for Steve. Much like our last episode, Golden Girls, he seems pretty comfortable with who he is. And as we're introduced to him, he knows, and he doesn't care if other people are comfortable with it—maybe to his detriment, like you said, like, to everyone's detriment like you say. But it's nice that he comes fully formed, basically. 

Glen:  Again, it bears repeating. This episode had not just one gay character but two. Although, I guess—

Drew:  He might actually be straight. 

Glen:  Yeah. Roger might be straight. We don't know. 

Drew:  Right. There are people who seem gay but aren't. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  Right. Archie goes back home, and Mike and Gloria have a new friend who's doing the chair game named Jerry, and Jerry's able to do it. Jerry's wearing a—

Glen:  A varsity jacket. 

Drew:  Yeah, a Letterman's jacket. And Archie walks in just in time to see Jerry lift the chair with no problem, and he's like, "What? What's going on here? Who's this guy?" and then he turns around—it's a woman with a short haircut. She actually would be kind of a hot lesbian. 

Glen:  Yeah. She's gorgeous. She is gorgeous. 

Drew:  Yeah. She's—yeah. Yeah. 

Glen:  She's Legend of Billie Jean level, woman with short hair whom I might—

Drew:  Yeah. No, I totally get it. I looked her up. Her name is Linn Patrick—L-I-N-N Patrick. She has one acting credit to her name, and it's this episode. I can't find another thing about her. I can only guess that they went out somewhere and was like, "Hey. You have short hair. Can we use you for one scene? You have to speak one line, which is 'Nice to meet you, Mr. Bunker.'"

Glen:  She was probably a camera operator or on the crew. 

Drew:  Yeah, she might have been. Yeah. Well, then she would have camera credits. She has one IMDb credit at all, and it's this. So I don't know what happened to her, but I'm sure there's a little girl somewhere who saw this letterman jacket-wearing hunk woman and was just like, "Oh, that. That's what I like." 

Glen:  Do you now think that they put in the chair gag just to pay off this joke on the tag of the episode? 

Drew:  That's the only thing I can think of. 

Glen:  Like, "How can we give Archie a gay woman scare?" 

Drew:  Right. Overall, what did you think of the episode? 

Glen:  Like I said before, I was surprised with the treatment of the gay characters—or, in Roger's case, a maybe-not-gay character, but they were both presented as real people and not necessarily jokes. I mean Roger, yeah, he was a little over-the-top, but some gay men and some straight men are over-the-top. 

Drew:  this is true. 

Glen:  And for this being an earlier—maybe first—sitcom to portray gay men, a surprisingly enlightened view of what gay men are. 

Drew:  Yeah. Not one thing, which is something that a lot of shows have problems with decades afterwards where it's like, "This is what a gay man is," and it's like, "Well, there's lots of—" Not only are there lots of gay men, there's lots of gay people. So actually, if Jerry is a lesbian, there's actually three different gay people in this episode, which is kind of crazy. You know who did not like this episode? Richard Nixon. There's a portion of the Watergate Tapes, the Nixon Tapes, where he's talking in his office with his advisors. It's the one where he's talking about how homosexuality is a scourge that's brought down empires and how "the last six Roman emperors were all fags." Leading up to it was he was watching this episode and he thought it was distasteful, I think, because he thought it was glorifying homosexuality. Which it's not glorifying homosexuality. It's just kind of normalizing it, and maybe putting context around it. In the end, you're not really made to think that homosexuality itself is good or bad or any—it's just a neutral thing. 

Glen:  I disagree. I think homosexuality is actually portrayed—the only two happy people in this episode are Roger and Steve—and Jerry. Jerry looks pretty happy, too. 

Drew:  Gloria's actually a fairly happy person. Gloria and Mike really love each other, and their marriage—the only thing working against them is the fact that they happen to share a roof with Archie. But they have things they care about. They're open-minded. They like Roger, and they're willing to accept Roger as he's presenting himself to them. So there's at least that. 

Glen:  Yeah. I'll give them that. I mean, they don't need me to give them that, but I'll give it to them. 

Drew:  This is not the only All in the Family to deal with LGBT themes. So there's this one episode that I think is called "Cousin Liz." I could be getting the name wrong. But it's about Archie and Edith going to a funeral for Archie's cousin Liz, and at the funeral they meet her roommate who's not her roommate. 

Glen:  Wink, wink.

Drew:  Like, they were together, and Edith is really understanding about it. And there's this tea set that's worth money or something that Archie was hoping to inherit, and Edith gives it to the partner because it will be a nice way to remember woman she cared about, and that's a very, very good episode. That maybe might be another episode we would do in a later season because I think it's well-handled. There's also this character named Beverly. In the episode, she's referred to as a crossdresser. Archie gives this woman mouth-to-mouth and then finds out later that Beverly is a drag queen. And there's this whole episode "Archie the Hero" that's about him being embarrassed that he resuscitated this person that violates the gender norms that are so important to him. She actually comes back. There's an episode where Beverly gets set up on a date by Archie as a joke. 

Glen:  Ugh. 

Drew:  Yeah. Sorry. I watched this on YouTube at one point. There's a two-parter where Beverly's—Beverly's murdered.

Glen:  Are you crying? 

Drew:  No, it's—the episode's very emotional. Beverly gets murdered, and Edith questions her faith in God. It's a heavy fucking two-parter. It's just a really well-done thing. It's weird that the previous episode is like this jokey premise where Archie sets up his friend on a date and my friend doesn't know it's actually a man, and then she gets killed. And that's a really crazy thing. 

Glen:  And Drew is crying right now. 

Drew:  This is—Norman Lear shows have that weird ability to make you turn on a dime, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, my gosh. This got very, very heavy all of a sudden." But the episode hinges around her murder and then Edith wondering if she can believe in a God for letting that happen. It's super emotional. Yeah. Really fucking great show. Sometimes a really hard-to-watch show. It's a very challenging show. I feel like it's—you've read Lord of the Rings? 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  No? 

Glen:  Well, I've read parts of it. 

Drew:  So I can understand how Lord of the Rings is an important foundation novel that influenced a lot of later stuff that I really enjoy, like videogames and other fantasy stuff that wouldn't have existed the way it existed because of Lord of the Rings. I don't necessarily enjoy experiencing Lord of the Rings. It's kind of a slog to get through. Sometimes All in the Family can do that for different reasons. It's well written and it's well acted, but it's just so hard to listen to Archie sometimes that I have to remind myself that this is an important, foundational sitcom that has influenced a bunch of things that I love a lot more easily. 

Glen:  Whereas Cheers is still a great show to watch. 

Drew:  Cheers is a lot easier to watch. Cheers is coming up in the near future, actually. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  I think that's it, unless there's anything else you would like to say about Archie Bunker, America's favorite bigot. 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  No? Okay. 

Glen:  He's just a gross, Pillsbury Doughman. 

Drew:  Yeah. He really is. Yeah. He looks like mashed potatoes. Yeah. Glen, where can people find you online? 

Glen:  You can find me on Instagram, @BrosQuartz—that's B-R-O-S Quartz—and Twitter. What is my Twitter handle? Oh yeah, @IWriteWrongs—that's "write" with a W.

Drew:  And you can find me online at @DrewGMackie on Twitter and @KidIcarus222 on Instagram. Please join us next Thursday for another new episode. We're going to be doing Mary Tyler Moore with special guest Sam Pancake. It's going to be a great episode. And yeah, you can subscribe to Gayest Episode Ever on any of the places you would find a podcast—iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher. SoundCloud is where we're based. But yeah, please check us out next week for episode five with Sam Pancake. That's it. We're done. 

Glen:  Bye forever. 

Drew:  Bye forever. Podcast over. 

Glen:  Yay. 

Drew:  We came in under an hour, too. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. 

["Archie, Marry Me" by Alvvays plays]

Glen:  And if what makes them tick is dick, all the better.