Transcript for Episode 15: Joey Lawrence Has a Gay Secret Admirer

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Blossom episode “Double Date.” 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.

Joey:  I cannot believe Anthony guy I've known my whole life is gay—and not just any guy, but the best switch hitter on the team. He's got to be kidding!

[audience laughs]

Shelly:  No, it sounds like he's coming out of the closet. 

Joey:  Yeah, totally. He's still got hangers on him and everything. 

[audience laughs]

Shelly:  You know it takes a lot of courage to be open about a thing like that. 

Joey:  Well, we'll see how much courage he has because if he comes on to me again I'm going to put his lights out. 

Shelly:  Joey, if a girl hits on you that you're not interested in, what do you do? 

Joey:  I don't know. That's never happened. 

[audience laughs]

["My Opinionation" by Dr. John plays]

Drew:  Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about episodes of classic TV shows that deal with LGBT themes. I'm Drew Mackie. 

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin. 

Drew:  And in case that intro didn't tip you off, today we are talking about Blossom, specifically the episode "Double Date," which aired January 31st, 1994. But for the purposes of this show, we are calling [it] "Joey Lawrence has a Gay Admirer." 

Glen:  Yeah. Even though that's a very small, small part of this episode. 

Drew:  But the fact that it is a small part is one of the reasons I want to talk about it. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  This episode was directed by Joe Bergen who has one other directing credit on IMDb, and it's another episode of Blossom. He's mostly been an editor and an editor for Blossom. And it was written by Glen Merzer who wrote episodes of Boy Meets World, and a TV series adaptation of Weird Science that I did not know existed until I looked him up. It did not air locally for me. 

Glen:  Yeah. I love a lot of those random syndications of light sci-fi movies, like the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids TV show is amazing. 

Drew:  That actually is really good. Do you know that the little boy on that is an out gay actor, done a bunch of horror stuff, and is also a singer? Thomas Dekker. 

Glen:  Do I want to sleep with him? 

Drew:  He's pretty cute. Yeah. This episode aired just days after SNL had that infamous Martin Lawrence monologue. Are you aware of this? 

Glen:  [makes noises of indifference]

Drew:  [laughs] So Martin Lawrence kind of went off script and gave a monologue about vaginal hygiene, and NBC had to apologize. It's not in syndication. I have actually never seen it because NBC did a really good job of scrubbing it from the archives. 

Glen:  Was he going for some sort of sponsorship deal? 

Drew:  I don't think so. I don't think so. This is the period in his career that inspires Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock. So NBC was dealing with that. I don't think they really were focused on Blossom. They were sort of, "Whatever. Put it on the air." The most recent Simpsons that aired at this point was And Maggie Makes Three, which is the one that ends with the "do it for her" placard. 

Glen:  Aw. Let's watch that instead. 

Drew:  What's that? 

Glen:  Let's watch that instead. 

Drew:  It's not gay. I have a lot to talk about here. Also, this episode was the lead in for the first episode in what I suppose we're going to have to call The Phylicia Rashad Mysteries. That aired directly after this. So not thematically appropriate, really, considering it was the lead in, but whatever. Yeah. Madeline Kahn was on that show. It's crazy. 

Glen:  Yes. I know. I know I should watch it because it has two of my favorite female actresses. I don't know why I said "female actresses." Two of my favorite female actors. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Those are all fine. Yeah. There's a lot to talk about here. There's a lot of sexual politics going on, and I thought the gay plot was the B-plot. You think it's actually the C-plot? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  Yeah. And considering that Blossom was a show that had a reputation for very special episodes, I think it's very remarkable how little consideration this gay plot is given in this episode. 

Glen:  It is an afterthought. This episode has everything.

Drew:  There's a lot going on. Yeah. What is your relationship with Blossom? 

Glen:  I don't have much of a relationship with Blossom. I watched it here and there. I think, as I've told you before and maybe on podcast, the description that Blossom gives to naked men has stuck with me forever. 

Drew:  Once again, what is it? 

Glen:  And that description is "partially decorated Christmas tree." I don't know what that awoke inside of me, but it makes sense. I've adopted it. I've lived by it. 

Drew:  Yeah. I think I know what she's referring to. 

Glen:  Yeah. Me too—if you think about it. But don't think about it too much. Other than that, I didn't—you would think I would have clung on to some sort of quirky girl who looked like she got lost in a thrift shop. But no. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. That's what most of the girls in the '90s looked like, really. But, yeah. I liked this show a lot. My family hated it. My mom really hated it. I don't know why. I think she probably thought Blossom was mouthy—and had some big ideas on that one. I really enjoyed it. And in re-watching this episode, I think it's crazy that it has no pop culture legacy, really, today—aside from the fact that Mayim Bialik is still on TV. These episodes are not available anywhere. We had to watch them on Dailymotion where the quality is garbage. And this is specifically the point in the show—when they come in from an ad break, it starts with a watercolor painting version and dissolves, but because the quality is so bad it just looks like a buffering issue [laughs]. 

Glen:  The watercolor freeze frame makes it look like they all died, like it's just like in memoriam. And it's like—poor Blossom. 

Drew:  I don't care for it. This show ran for 114 episodes, from 1991. It was a mid-season replacement in 1991 and ran until May 22nd, 1995. 

Glen:  What a time to be alive. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. I kind of think of her as being sort of an introduction to other strong female characters like Buffy and Felicity, where you have a girl with a certain fashion sense who's out there making decisions and living her best teenage life and learning lessons and stuff. 

Glen:  Yeah, but before this, we had Out of this World and Phenom, which were also strong women. 

Drew:  Have we ever talked about Phenom on this show? 

Glen:  I hope so. 

Drew:  There's even less pop culture documentation online for Phenom, a show about a tennis prodigy—but not really at all. And she was in—do you remember that horror movie called The Rise of Leslie Vernon? It's a pseudo-documentary about a serial killer—

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  —about horror movie tropes. And the main character is a female filmmaker who's making a documentary about this up-and-coming serial killer, and then she becomes the final girl—girl from Phenom. Angela Goethals, I think her name is. She's really good. Blossom is from Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas who are also producers of Soap, Golden Girls, and Empty Nest. They share an end credit font. It's Clarendon. But all the stuff you see over the end credits is in that exact same font for all of them. I'm going to try to not jump down too many holes, but—

Glen:  I'll just drink this drink. 

Drew:  Yeah. Drink your whiskey. This has a really weird history to it. It was initially conceived of as Richie, a show that centered around a Holden-Caulfield-like character who had an older sister who was a little worldly, and NBC was like, "This kind of works. Can we make it about the girl instead?" So Richie was banished to non-existence, and the show became about Blossom. And I always thought this show was created specifically for Mayim Bialik. It was not. It just was really well suited for her. This was a mid-season replacement, but NBC aired the pilot the summer before it premiered on NBC, and the reason they did that months and months before we actually got a second episode—the reason they did that is that Fox had a competing sitcom called Molloy, which starred Mayim Bialik as a plucky, precocious, girl who is trying to get through life and has a crazy family. And it was supposed to air on a certain date in June—it was the summer replacement series—and NBC spiked it, basically, and were like, "We're going to do our show. It got really good ratings." And they decided to offer Mayim Bialik a season-long pickup to do Blossom instead of Molloy, and Fox was like, "Well, she didn't choose us, so we can't go forward with it." Molloy starred Jennifer Aniston in her first TV role as Molloy's older sister. The girl's name is actually Molloy. I don't know why. She's like a Mallory Keaton type older sister, and it's really weird seeing baby versions of them interacting on screen. You can see the entire pilot on YouTube right now. 

Glen:  Okay. I'll be right back. 

Molloy:  You're not just my dad, you're my Prince Charming. And me, I'm Cinderella. And tonight at 6:00, I'll be the belle of the ball. No one will ruin this evening. 

Courtney:  Mother!

Molloy:  With the possible exception of my wicked stepsister. 

[audience laughs]

Molloy:  Morning, Courtney. 

Courtney:  Mother, we have to talk right now. 

[audience laughs]

Lynn:  Baby, it's business. 

Courtney:  I don't care! If you don't get off the phone right now, I'm going to throw myself off the deck!

[audience laughs]

Drew:  The other thing—so if you don't know much about Blossom, you might think hats. Hats is a big thing. There's actually only one person who wears a hat in this episode, and it's Shelly, not Blossom or Six. No one wears a hat. Very disappointing. Other than that, there's the opening credits, which has that theme song that gets stuck in your head forever, which is "My Opinionation" sung by Dr. John. 

["My Opinionation" by Dr. John plays]

Drew:  You know that song "Right Place, Wrong Time"? "I was in the right place, must have been wrong—" That's something you'll hear on classic rock stations. Legitimate person they got to do that song. The first season, that is not the theme song. 

Glen:  [gasp-croaks] What!

Drew:  In syndication, they air "My Opinionation." 

["My Opinionation" by Dr. John plays]

Drew:  But in the original theme song, she was dancing to "My Prerogative" by Bobby Brown. You can see that she's not in sync with the music that's playing, and they had to redo the opening because it looks weird. But I had this weird memory that was not the original theme song—I was correct. 

Glen:  How's that feel, to be right? 

Drew:  It's nice to be right about one thing for once. The weird thing is the theme song to Molloy was "Accentuate the Positive," sung by Dr. John. So when NBC stole Blossom, they also stole Dr. John and had him do the new theme song that became the theme song we all know. 

["My Opinionation" by Dr. John plays]

Glen:  Poor Fox. Poor Jennifer Aniston. 

Drew:  Poor Rupert Murdoch. What's he going to do? 

Glen:  Ruin all of our lives. 

Drew:  I guess the other thing to know is that for a long time, this was a time-slot mate with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and there was one episode where Hilary goes on a date with Anthony—Blossom's older brother. I think they ride around on an ambulance together. The weird thing is, there's also an episode where Blossom and Six meet the Fresh Prince—the rapper. So I guess the exist in a universe where "Will Smith, college student" exists alongside the Fresh Prince as a separate character that they don't interact with, and  they don't bring up that they look the same. 

Glen:  Huh. 

Drew:  Yeah. Weird, right? 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yes. Were you aware of this show having a reputation as a very-special-episode show? 

Glen:  Yes. Maybe that's why I didn't watch it. 

Drew:  Sometimes they do a very good job with them. Sometimes it's very heavy handed. I was trying to look up how many special episodes did they do, so I was googling around, and I found this article on People magazine's website that listed all of them. I'm like, "Oh, this is a well-organized article." I wrote it. 

Glen:  Oh.

Drew:  Yeah. I forgot. I have no memory of writing that, but my byline is on it. That seems like something I would have written. 

Glen:  Oh! You wrote it? 

Drew:  I wrote it. It was my article. 

Glen:  I thought you said, "I read it." 

Drew:  No. Wrote it. It's mine. 

Glen:  Oh. 

Drew:  Among the more notable ones, Blossom worries that Six might have an eating disorder. That's not what she's coming back from rehab for. She also had a [together] drinking problem. 

Glen:  I have some thoughts on that. 

Drew:  Blossom gets threatened by a kid who brings a gun to school who later dies cleaning his gun. I'm not clear if we're supposed to think that he killed himself or he actually accidentally shot himself. Joey gets sexually harassed by his boss—who's Tiffany Amber Thiessen. There's one that I re-watched in doing research. It is rough. James Marsden is the guest star, and he sexually assaults Blossom, and you see the scene play out fairly—it's rough. I don't actually remember seeing it when I was a kid, but it would have been very, very hard to watch in an 8:30 time slot if you were a young kid. The episode is about her talking to her family about it and eventually deciding that she should go to the police. It's not mentioned again. 

Glen:  Huh. You'd think that'd be a season-long thing. 

Drew:  Right. 

Glen:  Well, this episode felt like a very special episode paintball machine where they just loaded it up and just pointed randomly. It's like Splatoon, but for special issues. 

Drew:  [laughs] Yeah. It does feel like that. This was, I think, fourth season, and I think they were at a point where they had this reputation and they kept having to maybe outdo themselves. And it is interesting that in all the things that are going on in it that homosexuality is not really treated like that big of a deal, and that's either a writing problem—because this episode could have given it more weight if they wanted to—or just indicative of at this point in time someone coming out was not as big a deal as it would have been in the '80s or the '70s—like in the scope of all the shows we've been talking about on this show. I don't know. 

Glen:  It just also wasn't a very—we'll get into it. 

Drew:  It's handled very strangely. The opening scene is Joey Lawrence sitting on the couch, and it's a very weird joke. 

Glen:  The joke is he has no brain. Anthony gets his new ear-looking-in tool. 

Drew:  What is it called? 

Glen:  Otoscope. That's right. So Anthony gets his new otoscope, which is a tool to look into a patient's ear. He looks into Joey's ear, and Blossom is on the other side of Joey holding up two fingers, and he guesses how many fingers she has. 

Blossom:  What are you guys doing? 

Anthony:  Testing out my new otoscope. 

Blossom:  Okay. How many fingers am I holding up? 

Anthony:  Two. 

[audience laughs]

Blossom:  Works fine. 

Glen:  So the joke is that Joey has no brain. 

Drew:  But they would have had to team up to do this. Do you think Anthony and Blossom planned this out as a setup to make Joey feel stupid? Because that's not a normal conversation that would have really happened. 

Glen:  But maybe the joke is that Joey has no brain. There's just space in there. 

Drew:  It literally just has space. Okay. It's dumb. Do you have a—

Glen:  Yes, I do have a reach. Something, something, holes—some sort of bisexuality metaphor, maybe. 

Drew:  Oh! Okay. Mine is that Anthony's like, "Oh, can I look into your ear?" and he's like, "No. Why would I want that?" He's scared of being penetrated. 

Glen:  Mm. 

Drew:  And then this becomes a homophobia episode. That's the only thing I got with it. 

Glen:  Oh. That's much better than mine. 

Drew:  Joey Lawrence. How attractive is he on a scale of one to ten at this point in time to you? 

Glen:  Oh. At this point in time to the point-in-time me? 

Drew:  As he appears in this episode. How attractive do you think he is? 

Glen:  But are you asking present-day me or teenage Glen? 

Drew:  Oh. I guess either. 

Glen:  Well, teenage Glen was very into him and very jealous that he could walk around without sleeves, and I could not do that—and I still don't like doing that. 

Drew:  You don't. You don't like tank tops. 

Glen:  And so very—he was very attractive. Looking back, I was like, "He's cute, but he's not—" He's whatever now. 

Drew:  His hair is too much for me at this point in time. I actually interviewed him on a red carpet. He has a shaved head now. I found him to be strikingly handsome now, but that might just be my bias against men with hair. 

Glen:  The entire family is strikingly handsome. 

Drew:  Yeah. The younger—not the youngest brother, but the middle brother.

Glen:  Middle one. Yeah. 

Drew:  I think he turned out to be the best looking of them. In case you don't know, Anthony is Blossom's oldest brother. He is a recovering addict who works as an EMT. He's played by Michael Stoyanov, who actually left the show to write for Conan, which apparently he later regretted. I have no insight about that. He was cast because Blossom—Mayim Bialik saw him on an episode of Empty Nest and was like, "That guy looks like he could be my relative." So when it came to casting this role, she was like, "I know a guy. He was on an episode of Empty Nest," and he got the role because of her, which is awesome. 

Glen:  They do look alike. 

Drew:  They do! Much more so than Joey. 

Glen:  Joey looks like the dad. 

Drew:  A little bit. And I guess kind of like the mom, who is basically a non-character.

Glen:  Yeah. The premise of the show is that Blossom's mom leaves the family to pursue her own life and career away from the restraints of children and a husband.  

Drew:  As a jazz singer in Paris. Yeah. That's what she does. 

Glen:  And that is the hook of the show. It's a family comedy where the mom didn't die. She just left.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. And Blossom is trying to navigate life without a mom, which is why she has a fantasy sequence where Phylicia Rashad teaches her about menstruation, which is—yeah. This show also has a lot of dream sequences. They could be very fantastic. In fact, the episode that aired after this is "Beach Blanket Blossom," which is a beach party sendup that was just a two-part episode, and for an hour these characters are going to be existing as the '60s as alternate personas. And it did that kind of a lot. They just could be weird, which I actually kind of like. 

Glen:  Wish they would have done that with this episode. 

Drew:  Michael Stoyanov is in The Dark Knight, by the way. 

Glen: Blink.

Drew:  He plays one of Joker's goons who I think gets executed in the opening bank heist scene. But weird, right? 

Glen:  Oh. Good for him. 

Drew:  Yeah. So the episode basically opens—once we get past the opening credits—with Joey coming in and being like, "I received an anonymous love letter from some person." 

Joey:  [reading] "Joey, I'm sure you don't share my feelings, but I want you to know how attractive I find you." Actually, I do share feelings about that. 

[audience laughs]

Joey:  Anyway. "I had to tell you about this, but it's hard to do it in person. I hope you'll understand. Sincerely, Leslie." 

Nick:  Who's Leslie? 

Joey:  Well, it's either Leslie Doppler, this gorgeous blonde with legs up to her neck—or it's Leslie Lewok, this dumpy brunette with a huge mole in her neck. 

Glen:  And his reaction to whether this is flattering or gross depends on whether Leslie is hot or not. 

Drew:  If it's Leslie with legs or Leslie with a giant mole. 

Nick:  Well, how are you going to find out which one it is? 

Joey:  Dad, I'm just going to write back and say, "Leslie, I find your letter romantic and flattering, and please write back—unless you're the mole Leslie, in which case quit hounding me you sick psycho!" 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  He says he's going to write back, but I don't understand how he's going to write back because—is it from a P.O. Box? 

Glen:  It sounds like something left in his locker, but he's in community college at this point. 

Drew:  I believe so. Yes. 

Glen:  Do they have lockers in community college? 

Drew:  I don't know. If you know, text us. Are you a community college with a locker? We want to talk to you. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Yeah. Seems like a giant plot hole that he's somehow able to respond to an anonymous letter without knowing which Leslie he could possibly be writing to. 

Glen:  Kind of like the Dungeons & Dragons spell, sending. 

Drew:  Explain. 

Glen:  Basically, you can cast a spell, send a message to someone that you are familiar with, and they can respond—even though they may or may not really recognize who, unless you're like, "This is Glen the Wizard sending this message to you." But they get to respond. 

Drew:  Oh. Okay. I like that. Like sending an anonymous threat letter, also? 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Yeah. But this is how the episode really starts. Then we're in Blossom's room, and Jenna von Oÿ is fresh back from rehab and ready to date. 

Six:  Well, I mean, it's incredibly complex and deep. It's not something you can just sum up like that, you know? 

Blossom:  Wow. Yeah, I guess not. 

Six:  But basically, it comes down to this. 

Blossom:  Yeah? 

Six:  I was unbelievably messed up. 

[audience laughs]

Blossom:  There you go. 

Six:  And the more messed up I got, the worse decisions I made, which got me even more messed up until eventually I didn't even feel like I was in my own body anymore. 

Blossom:  Whose were you in? 

Six:  Ted Kennedy's. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  I have a lot of question marks next to "Six went to rehab?—??????"

Drew:  She did, and I think it came and went fairly quickly. 

Glen:  She's also into very older men. 

Drew:  that is kind of normal, but she's also into Joey, who's not that much older. There are some problems there. Six LeMeure is one of my favorite characters, though. She's played by Jenna von Oÿ , and she has—I don't really know who else I could compare her to. She's just a very good best friend, girl-next-door character. I like her a lot. I wish she were on TV, still. 

Glen:  We also forgot to mention that the episode actually started with Anthony being worried that he has to hang out with his father-in-law because his fiancée is out of town. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. I scrolled down too far. 

Glen:  That's okay. That's pretty unimportant. 

Drew:  Yeah. We're not going to give it that much attention. But he accidentally got married to Shelly. They woke up in a hotel room, and they'd gotten drunk and married the night before, and they just decided to stay married, and—

Glen:  He fell off the wagon? 

Drew:  I believe so. I don't remember. They wake up and they're like, "Oh, my god. A strange person!" And then they weirdly do not get divorced or annulled or whatever. Shelly's an artist, and she's very understanding, and she's as close to a female voice of reason as Blossom gets in this show, but they often don't really give her a lot to do aside from give birth in the back of a Nash Metropolitan. 

Glen:  Well, she gets a doozy of a scene in this episode later. 

Drew:  She does [laughs]. It's really weird. 

Glen:  And I say that the scene is not important, but this storyline is given way more weight than the gay admirer storyline. 

Drew:  It is. It's jam-packed. It's just a whole lot to fucking put in one episode. I don't know why they would overstuff it this much. I will point out—so Nick, played by Ted Wass of Soap fame, is Blossom's father. And he refers to Carol being out of town. Carol, at this point, is a recurring character. It's his British girlfriend who he eventually marries, and [she] becomes one of the central characters on the show. She's played by Finola Hughes, who is a soap-opera star, and also the first person to ever play Emma Frost—the White Queen—on screen in Generation X—

Glen:  Oh! Mm-hmm. Of course I watched Generation X. 

Drew:  Fox TV movie—failed pilot? 

Glen:  It was a failed pilot. 

Drew:  Yeah. Jubilee gets a starring role, basically, which is kind of awesome. 

Glen:  I would say Husk is more the main character. She's supposed to be Husk-esque. 

Drew:  Oh. Okay. I guess that makes sense. I remember Jubilee being in it. 

Glen:  And also a not-cyclops who could also see through people's clothes. 

Drew:  I don't remember that at all. Emma Frost is not British, right? 

Glen:  No. She's just rich. 

Drew:  I think they play her with a British accent because you're hiring this British [person], you might as well do it. But also, I don't think she was blonde for that. 

Glen:  She was. 

Drew:  She was? Okay. Well, that's something. Six is back from rehab. We're back in Blossom's room. Six is back from rehab, and Blossom's like, "Hey! Let's get you back on the dating scene." 

Blossom:  You know what you need? You need to go out with a guy who's basically under 50, not your psychiatrist, and not in jail. 

Six:  Blossom, this is real life—not a fairy tale. 

[audience laughs]

Blossom:  No. I think I know a guy who fits all those criteria. 

Six:  Really? Who? 

Blossom:  Gordo McCain. He's a friend of Vinnie's. I just met him once, but he seemed totally premium. 

Six:  Premium. Is this a new slang word that started while I was in rehab? 

Blossom:  No. I just started it right now. 

Six:  Wow. Slang history happening right in front of me. 

[audience laughs]

Blossom:  Yeah. Well, Gordo just started community college. He's 19. 

Six:  Nineteen? I'll be robbing the cradle!

[audience laughs]

Glen:  Which is not—

Drew:  Not how that works. 

Glen:  Which is not how you're—this is like—no. You don't get out of rehab and jump back into dating. 

Drew:  Blossom thinks you do. She suggests a double date with her and Vinnie and some guy named Gordo who we have never heard of before, and who sounds like a monster because his name is Gordo. 

Glen:  Yeah. But spoiler alert—he turns out to be rather hot. 

Drew:  I am actually—maybe it was the low quality on Dailymotion, but I think Scott Wolf is very attractive. He has also not fucking aged a day and remains very attractive. With his little middle-part hair flopped down, I didn't find him as cute as another character that we're going to get to [in the] fairly near future. That's the ad break right there, is them deciding to go on the double date. We come back, and Shelly's dad Carl comes over to watch the game with Anthony, and things do not go well because Nick is so sitcom-dad and so frustrating and this was not an enjoyable thing to watch. 

Glen:  Yeah. It turns out they have a history. Blossom's dad was a hippie in college and was at a protest, and Carl in college was a police officer or a security guard of some sort, and he sort of cracked down on their protest and ended up busting open the dad's head or something. I don't care. They got very heated over it, though. 

Drew:  Yeah. And Anthony tries to keep everyone calm, and it does not work. Shelly's dad is played by an actor named Ivory Ocean, which is not what I would imagine that man—he's a built guy, and then Ivory Ocean is a very pretty-sounding, ballerina name or something. It sounds like what a nine-year-old girl would imagine her name should be. 

Glen:  With her pet unicorn. 

Drew:  Yes. Yes. He's done a lot of stuff. He was in Lost Highway, succeeded in Hollywood despite being named Ivory Ocean. He stomps away. Nick is an asshole about it, and I wanted to get to the next scene which is Blossom and Six getting ready to go on their double date. They are both dressed like Stevie Nicks witches, which again I think was just—it wasn't weird that all the characters on Buffy looked like that. That was just a nationwide trend of looking vaguely Wiccan all the time. 

Glen:  Yeah, like recently divorced women who are getting back at their exes through a night of wine and voodoo. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Exactly. And Six is wearing a sweater that comes down into a cape behind her, and that seems very matronly. But I guess I don't understand what the '90s were like. Blossom wears very short skirts in this episode, and it reminded me of—I don't understand how women—it makes me anxious thinking about how much attention you'd have to put into how you position your legs because one wrong move and you're showing a lot. 

Glen:  She was dressed like Lois Lane from Superman: The Animated Series—blazer, short pleated skirt. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Yeah, like business lady, weirdly. 

Glen:  Speaking of getting down to business—Scott Wolf, playing Gordo, follows Blossom to the kitchen and touches her butt. 

Blossom:  I think you're really going to like Six. 

Gordo:  Oh. She certainly has an inquisitive mind.

Blossom:  [laughs] I know she comes on a little strong at first. You just have to take some time to get to know her. She's really a terrific person. 

Gordo:  Hey. It's no problem. 

Blossom:  So, shall we? 

Gordo:  Absolutely. 

[audience oohs]. 

Blossom:  What was that? 

Gordo:  What was what? 

Blossom:  You just slapped me. 

Gordo:  Oh. That was nothing. I do that to everybody. 

Blossom:  Well, don't do it to me. 

Drew:  I'm glad she spoke up for herself. "Don't do it to me" is a different response than—

Glen:  You shouldn't do that to women? 

Drew:  [laughs] Don't do it to anyone! Don't touch people's butts without asking. That's weird. Also, you're my boyfriend's friend. 

Glen:  And my boyfriend is in the next room. And yes, let's get back to you talking about how you find him attractive. 

Drew:  I think he's ridiculously attractive—now. Because I looked. I went like, "Oh, David Lascher. I want to see what happened to him." He still acts sometimes. He must be a vampire. He's incredibly attractive now. 

Glen:  Looking at him now. 

Drew:  Yeah. Look it up. Pull it up. While you're looking that up, I'll remind you that David Lascher, who plays Vinnie on the show, would go on to play the Paul Rudd role on Clueless, the series. And then he was also on Hey Dude, and I did not remember that. He played Ted on Hey Dude, and he had a recurring role on Beverly Hills 90210. And he eventually played the love interest on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the sitcom, for the last two years. And his most recent acting activity is being on Melissa & Joey, which stars Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence—because he would have known both of them because he was on shows with both of them. So I thought that was nice, at least. 

Glen:  Yes. He's very attractive. 

Drew:  He's really fucking attractive. Married. Has kids. Very attractive straight—

Glen:  I mean, for now. 

Drew:  Yeah. Scott Wolf—this aired January 31st, 1994. The following September, he'd be a star on Party of Five. 

Glen:  And he'd make everyone gay. 

Drew:  Basically, yes. He was supposed to be—

Glen:  Fifteen. Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. Amazingly youthful face. Still looks pretty young. Still looks pretty good. Was also the star of Double Dragon the movie, which I have not seen, and I assume is not worth watching. No. You're shaking your head no. If you look him up on IMDb, he played an uncredited role in many episodes of Saved by the Bell as a waiter. 

Glen:  Like at the Max? 

Drew:  Yeah. But not Max—some other waiter, I guess, who was just there who didn't get a name. 

Glen:  I don't know why you have Scott Wolf on set and your camera is just not zoomed in on him. 

Drew:  Right. The camera would naturally follow him. But apparently, no. 

Glen:  Making me look at Screech when you have Scott Wolf on set. That's a high crime. 

Drew:  It is. He's 50 today. 

Glen:  Today? Like, it's his birthday? 

Drew:  No. We'll get to that in a moment. 

Glen:  Oh!

Drew:  I actually know when his birthday is. 

Glen:  Stalker. 

Drew:  Yeah. Kind of. So Gordo and Six interact, and something Six does is talk fast. It's a bit. I enjoy it. I find it amusing. I don't know why. When Six's mom—played by Gail Edwards of Full House fame—is also there and they have dueling talking fast, I like it even more. I thought it was funny when I was a kid. I still think it's funny. It's probably lame and irritating—and yeah. That's it. She asks him a bunch of weird questions.

[doorbell rings]

Blossom:  Remember, be cool. 

Six:  I am totally cool. It's only another first date. I've had a million of them [squeaks]. 

[audience laughs]

Blossom:  Hi. Come on in. 

Vinnie:  Okay. Gordo, meet Six. Six, Gordo. You guys don't like each other, this was Blossom's idea. 

Gordo:  Hi. 

Six:  Hi. So where are you from? 

Gordo:  Around here. 

Six:  Me too. I grew up around here. 

Blossom:  See? Already, they have a lot in common. 

[audience laughs]

Six:  What kind of music do you like? 

Gordo:  Metal. 

Six:  Really? How come? 

Gordo:  It's hard to say. 

Six:  Oh. Well, do you like to dance? Because we don't have to go to the movies. I know this really great place—

Gordo:  Slow—slow. 

Six:  You like to slow dance? 

Gordo:  No, I was telling you to slow down. 

Six:  I'm sorry. This is just the way I talk. I tried to slow down once, and I hurt myself. Who's your favorite comedian? 

[audience laughs]

Gordo:  I guess that guy from Full House. 

Six:  So you don't have a great sense of humor. 

Gordo:  No. Not really. 

Six:  Any diseases I should know about? 

Gordo:  No. 

Six:  When's your birthday? 

Gordo:  June 3rd. Why? 

Six:  There are just things you can tell from a birthday. That's all. 

Gordo:  Like what? 

Six:  Like, for example, if you didn't know yours, you'd be an idiot. 

[audience laughs]

Blossom:  I think they're hitting it off. 

Vinnie:  I think she's interviewing him for a job. 

Drew:  She asked, "When's your birthday?" and he says, "June 3rd." 

Glen:  Is that actually his birthday? 

Drew:  No. It's not his birthday. His birthday is June 4th—because it's my birthday. 

Glen:  Oh. 

Drew:  Scott Wolf and I share a birthday with Noah Wyle, Angelina Jolie, and Horatio Sanz, which I think means that the zodiac is bullshit because I don't think we have very much in common. Maybe Noah Wyle and Scott Wolf do, but the rest of us I don't think get to hang out with them. But either they wrote into—it's just odd that the script would have his birthday being one day off from what his actual birthday is. 

Glen:  Does it bother you? 

Drew:  I just want to know if that was written in that way or if he was like, "Oh. That's weird. My birthday's June 4th in real life, but okay." 

Glen:  Sounds like it bothers you. Maybe he was incorrect about when his birthday was. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. No. No, I don't think so. 

Glen:  We did not mention—I guess because—were we going to mention the act break, or are we just going to keep going? 

Drew:  Well, I think we fudged the timeline a little bit. So it actually ends with Blossom in the kitchen. She gets her butt spanked, and she does not like it. And he leaves, and she remains in there. Act break. Come back. Gross watercolors bridging between the two. And Anthony comes in, and she's like, "This is what happened," and he's fairly good about—it's at least a decent response of "That is absolutely not okay." 

Blossom:  I don't think he was coming on to me. It was just accidental. 

Anthony:  [scoffs] No, no, no, no, no. Blossom, in the history of time, no man has ever done that accidentally. Okay, maybe once or twice on a crowded train during a collision. 

[audience laughs]

Anthony:  Now, was the kitchen hurtling along at 80 miles an hour—and then did it come to a sudden halt?  

[audience laughs]

Glen:  There is a very painful Anita Hill joke. 

Drew:  Oh, my god! Yes! That was so fucking weird. 

Blossom:  Maybe I'm just getting carried away here. 

Anthony:  Yeah, like Anita Hill got carried away. 

Blossom:  You believed her, huh? 

Drew:  That is super fucking weird. 

Glen:  It's super weird, it's super forced in there, and yeah, Blossom comes off as kind of weird. Does Blossom not believe her? 

Drew:  Blossom's a precocious feminist who speaks up for all sorts of marginalized groups, and there's no—you can tell this was written by a white man because he didn't assume that Blossom would have been 100 percent in agreement with Anita Hill. She was like, "Oh. Maybe there's two sides to this. Maybe she was making it up for no reason." There's no way Blossom would ever say that. Also, they would have talked about it by now. Because she is so outspoken, it seems implausible that anyone in her family would not already know exactly how she feels about it. 

Glen:  It would have been the sort of thing that comes up every dinner conversation for months, and everyone else would be like, "Blossom, I'm trying to eat my creamed corn. Stop talking about Anita Hill." 

Drew:  In talking about whether or not a man ever touches someone's butt by accident, Anthony says maybe if they're on a speeding train and it's crashing it's an accident, but 99 percent of the time it is not. He's doing it on purpose, and he's being a perv about it. And he says later—

Anthony:  Let's just say that if the Supreme Court ever comes to a sudden halt, watch out, Justice Ruth Ginsburg.

[audience laughs]

Drew:  Who had been a Supreme Court Justice for a few months at this point—less than six months, which is weird to think about. 

Glen:  Yeah. Time is a flat circle. 

Drew:  Also, I've never heard her called "Justice Ruth Ginsburg." 

Glen:  Yeah. Right now, you're stumbling over it. 

Drew:  It sounds wrong. RBG. This rolls off the tongue. Yeah. Again, it's a weird joke. It's a ham-fisted, topical reference. And also, it is kind of interesting about Ruth Bader Ginsburg being the new girl. 

Glen:  The other thing about Tony in this scene—or Anthony—they call him Tony. The other thing about Anthony in this scene is that he tells Blossom that she needs to come clean to her boyfriend about what happened. And then this scene is directly followed by his fiancée coming back, her asking how things went with her father because her father had a great time. Her father mentioned nothing about the incident with Anthony's father, and he just sort of lets it slide. And so he's telling Blossom that it's important to be truthful in your relationship and does not follow his own advice. 

Drew:  That is weird. 

Glen:  So Anthony is a jerk. 

Drew:  Maybe he thinks that sexual harassment is worse than fathers-in-law not getting along. 

Glen:  Or maybe straight white men just love giving out advice that they don't follow. 

Drew:  We do. They do. 

Glen:  Woah my god. Okay. You heard it here first. Drew Mackie is not actually gay. 

Drew:  Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Glen:  So what you're saying is you're only gay for this podcast? 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  Fraud. 

Drew:  I'm gay for this podcast, and then also all the dicks I touch. 

Glen:  Bleep that out. 

Drew:  Why? 

Glen:  I don't know. After this scene, we finally return to Joey's storyline. We meet Leslie, and spoiler alert again—Leslie is also hot. 

Drew:  Is he? 

Glen:  I mean, he's Dailymotion-quality hot. 

Drew:  I couldn't really get a clear look at his face. I tried to look up—

Glen:  I looked him up. He's attractive. 

Drew:  The only other thing he's really done is that he had a recurring role on Touched by an Angel, and that doesn't do it for me. That was not making me more attracted to him. Yeah. He shows up, and it's a weird—he shows up to give Joey another letter. 

Joey:  You want a root beer or anything? 

Leslie:  No. Thanks. Hey, great game yesterday.

Joey:  Hey, thanks. But that was an unbelievable triple that you hit. I mean, right down the line—it was perfect. 

Leslie:  Yeah. Don't usually pull the ball that way. 

Joey:  That was a way to fool them, buddy. 

Leslie:  Look. Joe. Take this, would you? I got to go. 

Joey:  What is this, Les? 

Leslie:  [laughs] Sort of an apology. By the way, I'm going by my full name now. It's Leslie. 

Glen:  Because I guess when you come out you go by—I guess, by the opinion of this show—the gayer version, the more female version of your name. 

Drew:  That is the first read I got of it. I was like, "Why is he doing that?" If we think about it as "Oh, he is being himself now. He's not putting on an altered version of himself. His name is Leslie. He doesn't want to go by a more masculine—he's not putting up a front anymore. He's just being comfortable with who he is." It's weird. It is a plot contrivance that only serves to—

Glen:  Hide the letter's true origin. 

Drew:  Right. But the admirer didn't need to give a name at all. 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  They could have just been a completely anonymous letter that—yeah [sighs] [laughs]. 

Glen:  I don't understand this. I probably have done things similar to this when I was coming out and struggling with my sexuality. I may have told people I admire from afar—I may have found them online or something to send them a message. But usually it was other gay people. And if I were—I think as a closeted gay man, I would have been more manipulative about it. Maybe not manipulative, but more careful. I would have come out to the straight guy I thought was hot to see what his reaction was. I don't know what Leslie was trying to accomplish by—

Drew:  He was informing Joey that Joey is attractive, which he already knew. 

Glen:  Yeah. That's the only thing that Joey knows is that he's attractive. 

Drew:  It really is. That's weird that that's—he says "whoa," and he thinks he is attractive. That's his character. 

Glen:  So I don't know. Yeah. If it was just a secret admirer thing, why are you signing your name? And if the point of it was to have it be an honest expression of your sexuality and attraction to Joey, you could say, "Hi. This is uncomfortable. I'm one of your teammates. I find you very attractive. This is obviously not an optimal situation, but it was driving me crazy, and this isn't helpful for either of us, but it's helping—" I don't know. Maybe it's cathartic to just tell him in that way. But to say, "I'm Leslie. I find you attractive," and then—

Drew:  "Here's an apology letter. Bye." [laughs]

Glen:  Yeah. "Here's an apology letter, in case you didn't know it was me. If you did know it was me, here's an apology. If you didn't, now you do." It's—I don't know. 

Drew:  It's super fucking weird. Everything about this episode is weird, and this is the most troublingly weird part for me because it's the part I would be most invested in. And I remember seeing it when I was a kid and didn't remember anything about it being awkward—but baffling. 

Glen:  And the thing is, I've done and did plenty of clumsy, weird things as a closeted and newly out gay man to curry favor with or just to make my emotional expressions other people's problems. Like yeah, that is done all the time. Nothing about this seemed genuine to me. 

Drew:  So I would say it's probably indicative of the fact that just as Blossom's not necessarily believing Anita Hill is something only a straight white guy would write, this is also probably something only a straight white guy would write because no one who had ever come out would be like, "Oh. This is how it works." Maybe he is gay. Maybe that's wrong. I could not find out. I suspect—

Glen:  I mean, his name is Glen. 

Drew:  Not all Glens are gay. 

Glen:  [scandalized] What?!

Drew:  No. Yeah. Glenn Close—not gay. 

Glen:  Huh. 

Drew:  Yeah. She just plays men sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing to talk about is when—I don't actually remember which line gets the reaction from the audience, but it is a weird '90s sitcom combination of surprise and "ooh," and then laughter. 

Leslie:  By the way, I'm going by my full name now. It's Leslie. 

[audience oohs and laughs]

Drew:  And I was like, "You people are having a big mix of reactions to this person's homosexuality." None of them are really that appropriate. And the best argument to be made for this episode being like, "Oh. Being gay wasn't such a big deal," clearly the audience does at least partially think it's a big deal because they are shocked. And also, there's nothing funny about that. 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  Joey Lawrence—reading discomfort on his face is not inherently funny, I don't think. 

Glen:  It's the sitcom plot twist of "You thought it was a girl, but it's a guy!" Like a Three's Company-esque turn of circumstances.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Are you excited to talk about Three's Company later this season? 

Glen:  I am. 

Drew:  Yeah. I know. 

Glen:  But yeah, this scene sort of bleeds into the next, where Anthony's fiancée is still in the house. She sees that Joey is troubled, and they have a discussion about what has just transpired. And this is also very painful—for two reasons at least. 

Drew:  Do you think it's possible that the person who wrote this is also not black? 

Glen:  I think that is entirely possible, because what we get, dear listeners, is a scene where Shelly tries to get Joey to understand homosexuality and homophobia by trying to get him to understand race and racism. And she tells an uncomfortable and painful story. 

Shelly:  Joey, when I was 12, I used to hang out with this group of girls. And one day, Jenny Harding's father invited us all to this country club he belonged to with a swimming pool and horses and all kinds of stuff. And I remember sitting on the front porch in the morning, waiting for Mr. Harding to come pick me up—and then hearing the phone ring, then my mother coming out to tell me that he wasn't coming and trying to explain why. See, the other girls were white. I sat on that porch until the sun went down that night. So I know something about what it's like when people shun you for who you are. Joey, I wouldn't wish that feeling on anybody. 

[music plays]

Glen:  She tries to compare. She's like, "The way I felt as a little girl is how people who hate gay people make gay people feel." 

Drew:  That maybe is an argument that could work, because being an other [or] in a minority—sucks sometimes for the same reasons. But I'm just not sure that Shelly's explanation—by which I mean the writer's explanation—necessarily nails that. But Joey seems to get it after that—sort of. 

Glen:  Yeah. But let's not gloss over some of Joey's other reactions to Leslie being a man who's into him—of which there are many. 

Joey:  Well, I don't want to play on the same team as him. 

Shelly:  Well, Joey, he can't help being who he is any more than you can. 

Joey:  [scoffs] I'll tell you who he is. He used to be one of the guys. Now he's just somebody who gives me the creeps. 

Drew:  He would punch Leslie's lights out if he—

Glen:  Yeah. So he immediately goes to a hate crime situation. He also makes a—quote/unquote—hilarious joke. 

Joey:  I don't get it. What is a gay person doing being a regular guy in high school as a great third baseman? Shouldn't he be some place that's specifically for gay people—like the military or the priesthood or something? 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  I mean, it was weird watching that the week that there's all these news stories about what percent of Vatican priests are active homosexuals, which is apparently mostly all of them. 

Glen:  Except for the ones that are assaulting the nuns and making them get abortions. 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  Great world we live in. 

Drew:  And then the one who's in charge lives in a palace made of gold. Isn't that fun? Shelly also is like, "What would you say to—" This is the one good line I really like in this episode. Shelly's like, "What would you say to a girl you're not attracted to who keeps hitting on you?" And his response is, "Six, leave me alone." That's good. 

Glen:  That's a good line. Oh, you weren't going to say, "He used to be one of the guys. Now he just gives me the creeps." 

Drew:  Oh. Yeah. I mean—so obviously a big portion of that is homophobic, but there is also something—I don't know. I don't want to play devil's advocate necessarily—

Glen:  Someone has to. I'm not doing it. 

Drew:  So we are trying to teach boys that if someone doesn't reciprocate interest in you, don't Steve Urkel them—or really, Six does it to Joey the entire run of the series. That's inappropriate—you're making that person uncomfortable. There could be some portion of him getting the creeps that's a natural reaction to "This person has feelings for me that I don't reciprocate, and it makes me uncomfortable." 

Glen:  All he did was send him a letter. 

Drew:  [laughs] Two letters. What he did is very theatrical, and Leslie made a weird production of this. Leslie handled this very strangely. 

Glen:  Well, Leslie worked through it all without Joey. That's what crushes are. You're going through the motions of a romance without another person. And so Leslie worked through it himself without Joey's involvement. And so, sure. Fine. Creepy, if we're being harsh about it, which is different than Six making active passes at Joey for years. 

Drew:  Right [laughs]. I like how Shelly lays down this story, and then she's like, "Well, I'm going to go," like, "I did my part, and you figure this out." 

Glen:  Yeah [laughs]. "Here is the most humiliating and vulnerable moment from my childhood. Sit with that. I'm going to get some tea or something." 

Drew:  it's also interesting considering that she's the only person of color in the starring cast, and she's telling this story about being the odd person out in a social situation. And yeah, it's just a very—this episode is so weird, so complicated, and so contrived and so strange. And, yeah. And we haven't even gotten to the thrust of the episode, so to speak. 

Glen:  But the episode is almost over. 

Drew:  But they keep this part—the next scene we're going to talk about feels like it should have happened in the middle of the show, but it happens in the final moments of the show, and that's just a weird structure. I don't know. You're a writer. Is—

Glen:  Are you talking about Six and the whole blow up of—

Drew:  The double date. They come back from the date. 

Glen:  Yeah. We never actually see the double date. 

Drew:  Which I don't want to. They go see—it's such a stupid-sounding movie. Terminators of Endearment. 

Glen:  Yeah. They try to turn a chick movie into a guy movie. 

Drew:  I'm sure if you had a writers room, you could workshop that and find a better joke than that. But that's a joke on a Saturday morning cartoon. That's not something that should exist in the world of Blossom. That's too stupid. But whatever. So the double date returns back to Blossom's house because that's where everything begins and ends, and Vinnie and Gordo share this weird story. 

[audience laughs]

Six:  Hey. When did you guys become friends, anyway? 

Vinnie:  Oh. Lily Doorman. 

Gordo:  We were 12. 

Blossom:  Who is Lily Doorman? 

Gordo:  She was my girlfriend in sixth grade—until this fifth-grade nerd stole her. 

Vinnie:  Yeah. That was me. 

Six:  You stole your best friend's girlfriend? 

Vinnie:  Well, he wasn't my best friend then. 

Blossom:  So what happened? 

Vinnie:  Well, Gordo over here threatened to kill me because he caught me kissing Lily, and then we started laughing about the way she kissed, and then we became best friends. 

Blossom:  She kissed really bad, huh? 

Vinnie:  [laughs] Well, we thought she kissed kind of funny. Now we realize she was just ahead of her time. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  They don't outright say that she was French kissing them. I assume that's what was weird. But the fact that they don't say that explicitly—what was she doing to them [laughs]? They're like, "We don't think it's weird anymore." It's just such a weirdly structured thing. So then Blossom goes to the kitchen again, and Gordo follows her into the kitchen again. And even though she's trying to keep her distance from him, he makes another pass at her while she's in the refrigerator and trying to get something out of it—

Glen:  Yeah. She's not in the refrigerator. 

Drew:  [laughs] She was hiding—from Gordo. Trying to get something out of the refrigerator, and she's like, "Don't do this. This is inappropriate. You're my boyfriend's friend." And he says that he's doing it to get back at Vinnie for stealing this grade-school girlfriend years ago. 

Glen:  Yeah. Straight men are very weird. That's probably the most realistic thing about this episode. 

Drew:  Is it?!

Glen:  [laughs] No. 

Drew:  Okay. I think it sucks because that whole backstory does not need to—we don't need to know why Vinnie and Gordo are friends. They can just be friends, and Gordo can be hitting on Blossom because he's a dirtbag and because he's inappropriate and he doesn't know boundaries. The fact that it's a revenge story gives it a whole alternate motivation that does not need to be there and also subtracts away from the maliciousness of that sort of activity. You don't have to have a motivation to do it if you're a creepy guy. 

Glen:  No. It's oddly specific. 

Drew:  Oddly specific. Yes. So the lesson Blossom should learn is that guys can be creeps for no reason. And that's a shitty lesson to learn, but that's an accurate lesson to learn—not that your boyfriend's secret enemy might slap you on the butt in some sort of Man in the Iron Mask-esque long-term revenge plot [sighs]. 

Glen:  Yeah. And the fact that this is happening alongside the Leslie storyline—and comparing what Gordo is doing to Blossom in some way is parallel to what Leslie is doing to Joey—although maybe not intentional, it's gross. 

Drew:  So looking at the plotlines of this episode, you can draw some parallels between Joey and Leslie and Gordo and Blossom. But then the whole part with Anthony and Shelly and her dad does not fit in at all—and we don't need to have a C-plot in this episode. 

Glen:  Doesn't it though? If you want to force it, it's because Blossom's dad is still angry that Anthony's father-in-law gave him unwanted physical attention in that he beat him up as a cop. 

Drew:  So is this male anger? Is the theme of this episode male anger? Joey's mad because his friend confessed an attraction to him that made him uncomfortable. Gordo's mad because Vinnie stole his girlfriend years ago, and he can't let it go. And Nick is mad that a cop hurt him during a protest—yeah. I don't know. 

Glen:  I mean, it's not an inaccurate lesson to be learned. 

Drew:  [sighs] So Blossom says, "I'm going to tell." 

Gordo:  So, what? You're telling me you're not interested? 

Blossom:  I'm not only telling you, Gordo. I am telling Vinnie. 

Gordo:  No, you're not. 

Blossom:  And why not? 

Gordo:  Because if you tell him, you're going to ruin our friendship—and you're going to ruin Six's evening. And besides, who says they'd believe you? It's your word against mine. 

Drew:  And so she goes out and tells. And at the very least, Vinnie immediately takes her side and tells Gordo to get the fuck out of there. 

Glen:  The whole thing sort of reminded me of the TV movie made on The Simpsons from when Homer grabbed the babysitter's butt and she's like, "I'm going to scream so loud, the whole world will hear!" That was basically Blossom's reaction. 

Drew:  Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm [laughter]. 

Glen:  I don't mean to laugh, but that's just a very good scene from The Simpsons—a much better show. 

Drew:  It was—yeah. It's not subtly written, but—

Glen:  I'm trying—maybe I'm naïve. I mean, I am naïve. But I can't picture Vinnie not believing her. They've been dating for—

Drew:  A while. 

Glen:  —a chunk of time. 

Drew:  And Blossom's not someone prone to—she's not highly strung or easily rattled. She's a calm, cool, rational girl. 

Glen:  Yeah. So I'm trying to imagine my significant other—and that's the greatest stretch that we'll hear on this episode— 

Drew:  We're both single. Hi. 

Glen:  —coming to me and saying, "Oh, by the way, your friend just repeatedly groped and harassed me in the kitchen," and if I—

Drew:  As part of a revenge plot [laughs].

Glen:  Yeah. Well, I might leave out the revenge plot because that's so far-fetched. And picturing me saying to my significant other "Psh. Whatever, crazy. I don't think that happened. Get out of here, crazy." 

Drew:  "Get off the road, crazy." Yeah. 

Glen:  I don't know. I also, as Blossom would have, probably just waited for the night to end to avoid awkward conflict and told my boyfriend after, like, "Oh. By the way, your friend is a creep. We can't hang out with him anymore." I don't need a whole to-do. 

Drew:  But that would have been boring. And also, it wouldn't have given Six the opportunity to come in with a little—is that a button at the end? 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  He leaves, and she's like—

Vinnie:  [sighs] Gordo. We've been friends a long time, right? 

Gordo:  That's right, man. We have. 

Vinnie:  That's why I'm going to give you a five-second head start. 

Gordo:  Whoa. Wait a second, Vinnie. It's her word against mine. 

Vinnie:  Exactly. Five, four—

Blossom:  I'm sorry, Vinnie. 

Vinnie:  Don't worry. He's not worth it. 

Six:  Think he'll call? 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  "Think he'll call? Eh? Think he'll call?" 

Glen:  Six has a lot of problems. I feel bad for Six. 

Drew:  Six does have a lot of problems, but I think she gets them straightened out towards the end. She's a lot better off towards the end. Yeah. 

Glen:  So you think the episode is over, but nope. We get a little treat at the end. 

Drew:  We get an entirely new location that we haven't seen yet. It's just like, "Oh. We're in the high school now." 

Glen:  No, no. Community college. 

Drew:  Community college. Oh, that's right—which feels like a high school. 

Glen:  Yeah, especially because there's a school team, and they're very school spirity. I don't know. It feels like a high school. 

Drew:  So you would think that we were never going to see Leslie again, and that would feel normal by sitcom rules. But we do. 

Billy:  Hey, queer. Is this your spot? Is this where you pick up other boys? 

Leslie:  Leave me alone. 

Billy:  Oh, what's the matter? I'm not cute enough for you? 

Drew:  So apparently, this asshole also knows that Leslie's gay. So did he just come out to everyone at the same time? 

Glen:  He xeroxed a bunch of letters and gave them to everyone on the football team he thought was cute—or baseball team. 

Drew:  Which is how you would have—that's the only way you would do it back then because there's not email, probably. There's not text messaging. There's not social networks. So it is very unrealistic that anyone would come out by telling everyone they know at the same time—just because that's a lot of fucking work. 

Glen:  Yeah. You want to test the waters. 

Drew:  Like, bit by bit. But apparently, everyone knows because this asshole knows—ooh. There's a dog there [laughs]. 

Glen:  Joey comes, saves the day, and then invites Leslie to his country club pool. 

Joey:  Hey, Billy. What's going on here, man? 

Billy:  Just having a little fun here with Boy George. 

Joey:  Well, knock it off, all right? 

Billy:  Who's going to make me? 

Joey:  We are. Is it worth it to you, man? 

Billy:  Nah, Joe. Forget about it. 

Joey:  You okay, Leslie? 

Leslie:  Yeah. Thanks.

Joey:  That guy's an idiot. 

Leslie:  I know. 

Joey:  Hey, listen. If my dad ever joins a country club and you want to come swim in the pool, that's okay with me. All right? 

[audience laughs and applauds]

[outro music plays]

Drew:  I would like to think that Leslie was like, "Oh. He's dumb as shit. I don't like him anymore. He's real fucking dumb." End of episode! End of—[Thurman scuffles in background] Be quiet! End of episode. So, yeah. I wanted to pick this because it's interesting that on a show about very special episodes, this is not given much at all. 

Glen:  Not very well handled. 

Drew:  Was not special enough. I think this is probably the worst handling of homosexuality we've seen so far. Not that it's homophobic—just because it's written from a place of a lack of understanding or insight. This is probably why you should have gay people write for your shows. 

Glen:  It was just—

Drew:  Or talk to a gay person. Run it by them. 

Glen:  Yeah. It was just such an afterthought—but everything felt like an afterthought. 

Drew:  The whole episode can't be an after—at some point, they had to have an idea. 

Glen:  But I don't want to think about it too hard, because then I think, "Oh. Well, they thought about this episode where Blossom gets harassed, and then it was like, 'Oh. Well, a parallel storyline could be Joey gets harassed,'" and their version of Joey getting harassed is a gay man quietly writing him a confession that he finds him attractive.

Drew:  They already had done that episode. Joey works at the video store, and Tiffany Amber Thiessen sexually harasses—she's his boss, and they have to tell him, "Joey, that's sexual harassment. You have to tell her to stop. What she's doing is illegal." So he knows what sexual harassment is, and they've already done this better in a different episode. 

Glen:  Which is why they had to make it gay this time. It was probably in the writers room. Someone, just like you said, "Oh. We've already done that for Joey," and then someone else who was smoking a cigar and putting it out on his assistant's head said, "Oh. We'll just make him gay." 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Whatever. Blossom is not a bad show. The "Beach Blanket Blossom," the two-episode run is actually creative and weird. They do one that's a parody of Madonna Truth or Dare where it's about Mayim Bialik, and it's a documentary about her insane life, and it's black and white. 

Glen:  I watched that one. 

Drew:  It's good! They had some brilliant, weird episodes, and Estelle Getty makes an appearance as Sophia, at one point. I think it's a dream sequence, though. Baffling piece of TV. I wonder if adults at the time also thought it was weird, or if just the standards for sitcoms in 1994 were low enough they were like, "Whatever. This is fine." I was a kid when I watched it. That's my excuse for not realizing it was kind of garbage. 

Glen:  My comparison, I guess, is this feels like me as an eight-year-old going to a bowling alley and rolling the ball between my legs down the lane, hoping it hits any pins by the time it gets there. 

Drew:  [laughs] Glen, you don't have to be eight to do that. You could to it [laughs] in a bowling alley today, if you wanted to. 

Glen:  I could. 

Drew:  I understand the metaphor you're making. They hit, like, a pin. They maybe hit a pin. 

Glen:  Yeah. It just felt more like them just blindly, like, "I'm sure we're going to stumble upon some important message." 

Drew:  The more interesting episode, honestly, of anything in here, should be Shelly trying to explain to the Russos what it's like to be a black person surrounded by white people and how—

Glen:  Hopefully that episode does exist on this show. 

Drew:  I don't believe it does. Literally, I think she exists to give birth in a Nash Metropolitan, and then they name the baby Nash Metropolitan. 

Glen:  [laughs]

Drew:  Yeah [sighs]. Glen, you have any—any more you want to say about this? 

Glen:  I've said a lot. 

Drew:  Okay. Glen, where can people find you on social media? 

Glen:  You can find me on Twitter @IWriteWrongs—that is "write" with a W—and then on Instagram @BrosQuartz—B-R-O-S Quartz, like the rock. Am I getting better at that? 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. All the letters were there, even. I'm on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. You can follow Gayest Episode Ever on Twitter @GayestEpisode. We're also on Facebook. You'll get new episodes there. Please subscribe to our show, and please give us a rate and review if you haven't yet because if you listen to a podcast you know why that's important. Just please do it. We would appreciate it. 

Glen:  Please. I have nothing else. 

Drew:  We'll start reading the reviews we like on future episodes if you write something. So do that. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network that is founded by me and my business partner, Katherine Spiers. She's my boss. We have a bunch of really cook shows. And as of the recording of this episode, there's five other shows on our network—three of them hosted by me. And we're creating a lot of cool new shows that we'll be debuting later this year. Go to TableCakes.com and listen to all of our cool shows, including Singing Mountain, which is a videogame podcast that I do and that Glen—as of this recording—was recently a guest on. If you want to give us money for what we're doing, please give us money. Go to Patreon.com/TableCakes, and you'll be supporting not only the show but all current and future shows. We're doing some cool things with journalism, and we could always use a small tip for our efforts. Please do that. That's it. 

Glen:  Bye forever. 

Drew:  Episode over. Episode over!

Glen:  No. I've already checked out. I'm looking at my phone. 

["My Prerogative" by Bobby Brown plays]

[clips of Joey repeatedly saying "Whoa!" in progressively more distorted fashion play]