Transcript for Episode 13: Rebecca Howe Suffers From Gay Blindness
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Cheers episode “Rebecca’s Lover… Not.” 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.
Cliff: Well gee, Woody. If you're so brave, why don't you go back there and tell her?
Woody: All right. I will. Because you know what? That's what friends do. They look out for each other. If one friend knows something that another friend needs to know, then he lets him know—even if it's difficult. That's what friendship is all about. What am I supposed to tell her?
[audience laughs]
Norm: Tell her that her friend Mark is gay.
Woody: [laughs scoffingly] Oh, I could never tell her that.
[audience laughs uproariously]
["Where Everybody Knows Your Name" by Gary Portnoy plays]
Drew: You are listening to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast about episodes of classic TV shows that deal with LGBT themes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: And welcome to season two of the show.
Glen: I don't remember how to do this.
Drew: No, you do. You just talk into the mic about TV. So do what you normally would do, but there's a mic in front of you.
Glen: Instead of the mirror?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: Or darkness.
Glen: Always darkness.
Drew: Yeah. This is the long-awaited—by some people—second episode of our show—
Glen: Second season.
Drew: Second season of our show. Yes. And we kind of took a longer hiatus than I would have planned. But we're back, and we have 15 episodes planned for this new year of 2019, so please look forward to those. In case the intro theme did not tip you off, today we are talking about Cheers, specifically the episode "Rebecca's Lover… Not," or what I'm calling "Rebecca Howe Suffers from Gay Blindness."
Glen: Oh, that's good.
Drew: Yeah. It's a better name.
Glen: This is the episode where Rebecca has a crush on her high school boyfriend and ignores the fact that he's gay.
Drew: And also, the boyfriend's played by Harvey Fierstein. So most people will be like, "Oh. It's the one with Harvey Fierstein." That's how you'd—
Glen: Yeah. Well, let's just say. This is the one with Harvey Fierstein. He plays Rebecca's ex-flame. And when she reconnects with him, though it is obvious to everyone else that he is a gay man, she falls back in love with him.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Poor Rebecca. It originally aired April 23rd, 1992, and 22 million people tuned in. It aired between an episode of Different World where Jada Pinkett's character suspects a friend is being physically abused and a Wings—
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: —where Steven Weber has to become a security guard at a bank, which I have no recollection of.
Glen: No, that checks out.
Drew: Why would he become a security guard at a bank? He's a pilot.
Glen: Money. Maybe he and Joe were on the outs. I feel like that was a plot point for a while.
Drew: The TV Guide episode description is very vague and brief. Can you guess what show had the number one episode of TV this week?
Glen: Oh, god. Is it going to be Cosby Show?
Drew: You mean the Phylicia Rashad Show?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. You forgot we did that. Close.
Glen: Was it Cheers?
Drew: No.
Glen: Oh. It was Seinfeld.
Drew: No. I say "close" because it was actually that show—the John Goodman show, the one where he's living in Lanford, Illinois, in a blue-collar family?
Glen: Mm. I was worried we were going to have to dance around that.
Drew: Yeah. It is specifically the one where he helps deliver Crystal's baby—who is his half-brother.
Glen: Yeah. That was weird. Has Crystal been in The Conners?
Drew: Yes, I believe so. But it was very brief. All of the tertiary-friend characters mostly have shown up, but they didn't ever give them anything interesting to do, really.
Glen: Oh. Okay. George Clooney?
Drew: [laughs] No. He didn't come back. No. This episode was directed by James Burrows—who directed a few episodes of TV here and there—and it was written by Tracy Newman and Jonathan Stark. Do either of those names mean anything to you, Glen?
Glen: Tracy Newman means something to me, but why? Why, Drew?
Drew: Tracy Ullman? Maybe you're thinking of Tracy Ullman?
Glen: No. I feel like Tracy Newman means something to me, too.
Drew: They actually have come up before on another show, but not the first season of Gayest Episode Ever. This writing team also wrote "The Puppy Episode" of Ellen.
Glen: Aw.
Drew: They wrote a lot of things, and there may be some vague parallels between this and "The Puppy Episode," which we can talk about later. But Jonathan Stark should mean something to you because in addition to being a TV writer—
Glen: He's a superhero.
Drew: He's in Fright Night.
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: He plays the gay carpenter husband who's not a vampire.
Glen: Oh, right.
Drew: Yeah. That man is heterosexual, married to a woman that is not Tracy Newman, and was in Fright Night and then wrote these two episodes of gay TV. Weird, right?
Glen: End of list?
Drew: He wrote other things. These were the two gay ones I could find. Glen, since Cheers is one of your favorite shows, how would you describe the difference between Season Ten of the show—which we're talking about now—and Season One of the show—which is how we concluded our first season?
Glen: Well, Season One of Cheers was very different than the other seasons. I don't know. Each episode felt like a short play. It was a little bit more thoughtful whereas Season Ten they definitely fell into their groove or rhythm.
Drew: A very sitcomy groove.
Glen: Yeah. They didn't work as hard, I don't think. I mean, I loved it all the way through, and I enjoyed this episode. But it's definitely more of a sitcom and less of—I don't know. Season One Cheers is just a very special baby.
Drew: Yeah. There's nothing else quite like it. It doesn't feel sitcomy. This feels very sitcomy—for a reason. It's a sitcom.
Glen: Yeah. And also, by now, most of the jokes are just playing off of what we know about the characters—like the running gag by this point was what a disaster/tragedy magnet Rebecca is.
Drew: Yes. That is another major difference between Season One and Season Ten—Diane and Rebecca. Before you get into it, I just want to say they're both messes. They're both trying to better themselves. It doesn't work out for them. They are otherwise not very similar characters, right?
Glen: They're sort of like equal-opposite ends of the same coin. I just feel like Diane strives so hard, and it's not that she's wrong in the things that she does, it's just there's a lot of misplaced ego.
Drew: Mm-hmm. She has a big ego.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Rebecca basically doesn't. She knows she's a trash fire and feels bad about it, but she tries to project something otherwise.
Glen: And the thing is, looking back, I thought that Rebecca as a successful businesswoman in foil to Sam lasted longer than it did and she didn't become a joke character until a season or two in—but that's not the case.
Drew: It's several episodes.
Glen: It was the first episode. Aside from her coming in, in that stunning leather suit, she immediately is in love with her boss and sort of stumbles and flails, and it's very clear that she's at Cheers because she failed at everything else.
Drew: True.
Glen: But by now, Cheers is a—not a snake eating its own tail, but there's definitely some cannibalizing there. I can't get over the fact that Lilith—there is a B-plot in this episode about Kelly wanting to be friends with Woody's friends before they get married, and there's this joke about how Lilith was there and how she sort of pities Kelly's position because we've seen Lilith go through the exact same thing seasons before.
Drew: Right, and it worked out very poorly for them.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: They're divorced at this point? Or they're just married unhappily?
Glen: I think they're divorced at this point—or maybe married unhappily because there was also a joke where Frasier finds out something was Lilith's idea and goes from thinking it's a good idea to being a trash-fire idea.
Frasier: Sam, am I to understand that you took it upon yourself to form the victim support group? I think that's an excellent idea.
Sam: Well actually, it was Lilith's idea.
Frasier: It'll never work, I hope you know.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Yeah. He's a jerk. He's a jerk in this one. I want to say that it occurred to me while watching this that Rebecca Howe's last name is appropriate because she's just utterly without agency or understanding of how to do anything, like, "How? How? Please, someone—just, how?"
Glen: Yeah. There's a joke in this episode. It was the biggest laugh for me, when Norm—
Norm: If she was only a horse with a broken leg or something, we could shoot her.
[audience laughs]
Glen: And it's horrible, but we all have our disaster-magnet friends. I am that disaster magnet for my friends, I think—I suspect.
Drew: I don't think you're quite a Rebecca Howe. You don't cry in public as often.
Glen: No. I cry in private.
Drew: Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Save it for the podcast next time.
Glen: I just did. Oh, am I crying?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: You don't like it when I make wet noises.
Drew: No. No, I try to minimize your wet, moist mouth noises. Okay. Let's get into this episode. Do you have anything to say about the cold open?
Glen: Yes. As always, I like to stretch for a theme. So in the cold open, Carla comes in. She hears that Woody is shopping for a wedding ring, and I guess at this point he and Kelly are trying to do the wedding on their own budget—because Kelly comes from money, but Woody is struggling to find a wedding ring within his price range. And so Carla comes in with a bullshit story about this ring that's been in her family, blah, blah, blah—
Carla: I'm not going to be able to afford to get you kids the kind of present you really deserve. So on the way over here I stopped by my bank, and I took this out of my safety deposit box.
Woody: Oh, Carla. That's a beaut.
Carla: Yeah. I know. It's solid silver. It's been in my family for years. My great-uncle gave it to my great-aunt Sophia. And then I was going to give it to my youngest girl, but she inherited the Tortelli knuckles.
[audience laughs]
Glen: He's like, "Oh. Well, Kelly doesn't really like silver," so she's like, "Oh. I have a gold one, too," and then now a trench coat full of jewelry and watches. And so—I don't know. The stretch I'm going for is—something, something, taking advantage off of someone's romantic desperation.
Drew: Oh, that kind of works. Yeah. She's definitely taking advantage of relationship tropes, I guess.
Glen: Something, something—I don't know. There's not a lot in the cold open.
Drew: So the first scene is centered on Kelly, and Kelly's in the bar interacting with Woody's friends, like you said. I want to say a few things about Kelly, and it's not how I sat next to her in a restaurant. That's the minimum thing.
Glen: What restaurant?
Drew: I don't remember which restaurant now.
Glen: Oh, shit.
Drew: That was a while ago. She was very nice. Are you familiar with the Prince song "Raspberry Beret"?
Glen: As a gay man, sure.
Drew: Yeah. She's the girl with the raspberry beret in that music video—which is not Prince sexing her up, necessarily, but he's performing on a stage and she's wearing the raspberry beret and just kind of sitting there. But they do have shots of her. It's totally a slightly younger version of Kelly. I love Kelly. She's not opening credits cast member, but this is as close as the show ever gets to having four major female characters at once. I like Kelly because she's an idiot, but she has agency and confidence. It's probably because she's loaded.
Glen: And pretty.
Drew: And very, very pretty. Pretty in an almost-Kelly-Bundy way, or a Julie Benz way. I don't know. I'm trying to think of who else to liken her to. She's like Kelly Bundy without the meanness in terms of dumbness. Yeah. One other thing. Do you remember an episode where Woody meets Kelly's mom?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Her name was Roxanne. She's played by an actress named Melendy Britt who is the voice of She-Ra.
Kelly: Sam Malone, I'd like you to meet my mom.
Sam: Oh. I'd love to meet her sometime myself. Who is this, your sister?
Kelly: Sam, this is my mom.
Roxanne: That was a tired old line, Mr. Malone.
Sam: You're right. I'm sorry.
Roxanne: No, it still works [laughs].
[audience laughs]
Sam: Well, you know the classics—timeless.
Glen: I mean, what a voice.
Drew: She has a really good voice, yeah. She's also in that movie Being There. Have you ever seen that movie?
Glen: Yes!
Drew: She's much, much younger, and she plays live action in that as well. Kelly dresses like Little House on the Prairie, and I don't know if that level of prim and proper was common in 1991—it looks weird, now.
Glen: I think this is what we assumed rich people dressed like—like clothes that you would need to iron every time you put them on.
Drew: Oh, for sure. Yeah. That's going to wrinkle a lot. Yeah.
Glen: It reminds me of when Charlotte is married and her husband—
Drew: Kyle MacLachlan?
Glen: Yeah. And his family—his mother, Bunny, is very prim and proper, wears a giant bow in her hair. So I think rich women just always dressed like little dolls.
Drew: That makes sense. Yeah. It makes sense for Kelly to dress like that. Otherwise, Kelly doesn't seem to have a whole lot to do in this episode. The episode opens with her, so I was thinking maybe she's in there because a theme of the episode is that dumb people are happy and smart people are unhappy because Rebecca and Mark are both fairly smart, but they're single, and they bemoan being single—and Frasier and Lilith are not doing okay. But in their dumbness, Woody and Kelly literally don't have a care in the world.
Glen: I guess. But also—but her whole agenda is to learn more.
Kelly: Hi, Woody.
Woody: Oh, hey Kelly. What are you doing here?
Kelly: I wanted to spend the afternoon with Mr. Peterson and Mr. Clavin.
Woody: Well, you've been spending a lot of time with them lately. What's up?
Kelly: I thought it'd be a good idea for me to get to know your friends.
Woody: Why?
Kelly: Because when we get married and you turn to me and say, "Kelly, I'm going to spend the night on the town," and I burst into tears and ask you to spend just one night at home and you say, "I'm going to be with my friends," well, I want to know who those friends are.
Lilith: Boy. Could I sing a couple bars of that.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Yeah. She's not willfully dumb. She's trying to become smarter, but she's—
Glen: Yeah. She's the dumb one, but she's the one who's actually—for her relationship, she is seeking out knowledge of Woody. She wants to know what his life is like whereas Rebecca's thrust in this episode is to be willfully ignorant of her potential partner.
Drew: Yes. Well, she's about to enter in a beautiful green blazer I would say is a successful look. She bats about 500 in terms of "That holds up today" versus "Oh, that doesn't look so good."
Glen: There is a black dress later on that I would not say—unless you were going to the opera. I just don't know where that nightgown would be appropriate.
Drew: Is it the last thing she wears—
Glen: No.
Drew: —or the thing she wears on the date? Yeah. I didn't like that dress at all. It looks like an expertly pinned Hefty bag. Yeah. I did not understand what that was. Maybe they ran out of wardrobe budget. There's a lot of people in this episode. I don't know. Rebecca is over the moon about Mark Newberger coming back to Boston. They haven't seen each other in 18 years since they graduated high school, which means that Rebecca Howe is 36 years old in this episode. That means we're both older than Rebecca Howe [laughs].
Glen: Now I'll cry. What's interesting is that at no point in this episode do they say why Mark is coming back to Boston.
Drew: Unimportant.
Glen: I'm guessing it's because of the breakup. He mentions a breakup.
Drew: He does. It could be that. It's unimportant. He just has to be there to confuse Rebecca, and that's it.
Glen: He sounds poor because he later mentions having to find a roommate because the city's too expensive.
Drew: I have a question about that line. But, yeah. Rebecca's just telling everyone in the bar—no one cares. She doesn't have any friends outside of the bar, maybe.
Rebecca: Do you realize it's been 18 years since we've seen each other? Me too. I can't wait. Okay. Bye-bye. You'll never guess who that was.
Carla: Your dental hygienist?
[audience laughs]
Glen: That's—yeah. That story point was very interesting to me because there's a whole conversation with Carla about how she's excited to have a friend, which is strange because she doesn't go into uniting with Mark with the idea of "Oh, this could be my next husband," which after she meets him again, she does immediately jump to that. So I think I'll have something to say about it at the end of the episode, maybe. Maybe. I don't know.
Drew: How would you explain the difference between how Carla treats Rebecca and how Carla treated Diane? It's very similar, right?
Glen: No. I think there's an element of pity with Rebecca. She doesn't respect Rebecca in the least whereas I think she saw Diane as somewhat [of] a foil to her and worthy of her efforts to annoy her—whereas her whole schtick in this scene with Rebecca is like, "Oh. No one's listening to you. I'm not listening. No one hears what you're saying. You're not even here." She's not even worth the effort of a comeback.
Drew: Right. They're not sparring?
Glen: No.
Drew: No. Okay. All right. I'm good with that. Her monologue about all the feelings she had about Mark Newberger is what I imagine a lot of girls say about guys who ended up being gay but probably not what any of the girls I dated in high school say about me ever.
Rebecca: Oh, Mark Newberger. We met doing The Bad Seed in our sophomore production. He was my first boyfriend. I really loved him [laughs]. Maybe he was the only guy I've ever really loved. I don't know why I gave him up. Oh, I guess I wanted to go off to college and be free—that whole deal. I don't know. What an idiot. Why would I ever give him up?
Glen: I mean, I don't know what the girls from my high school say about me, even though I do talk to them still. But I actually do remember watching this episode and thinking, "This is it. This is what's going to happen to my female friends. They will—I don't know—not know, and then resent me." I don't know. I have a lot of feelings about this episode in regards to what did I do to my female friends from high school. I didn't date in high school. I had a lot of female friends, and so I'm assuming—I don't know. I was just maybe willfully ignorant, and they all knew what was going on and I did not. But I certainly led some people on.
Drew: Yeah. I did, too. And I know one of them specifically was very surprised, and I felt bad about that. The rest of them, I don't really—I don't really care about as much. But yeah, if you're one of Glen's high school female friends and you're listening, tweet at us. Tell us how you feel about it.
Glen: [laughs] Oh, yes. Please do that.
Drew: Publicly. Okay. So Rebecca is setting herself up for disaster, and then Sam comes in, and he has this whole plotline about his sports car being stolen. What do you make of that? Because I didn't have a whole lot.
Glen: What I made of it was that he's the star of the show and they have to give him a storyline.
Drew: The closest I got is that he and Rebecca are kind of on opposite trajectories in that at the end of the show you find out the car wasn't actually stolen. So he thinks something's gone, but it's not. And then Rebecca thinks something has come back to her, but it also kind of hasn't. But that's it.
Glen: They're both holding on to the past.
Drew: Yes. They can't move on. That's true. I'm good with that. Enter Harvey Fierstein. If you don't know who Harvey Fierstein is—
Glen: What are you doing listening to this podcast?
Drew: Yeah. You're probably really not gay. He starred in Torch Song Trilogy and the movie version. He is in what is arguably the first gay episode of The Simpsons. He plays Homer's assistant Karl. Karl is coded as gay, and just the fact that he's voiced by Harvey Fierstein basically makes him gay. A year after this episode, Harvey Fierstein appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire, which was how most people found out who he was. I will say, I kind of think of Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad when I picture him in my head. But he's actually decent looking as a younger man.
Glen: What I think makes him attractive and what makes this episode work and not just be offensive is the fact that he's just so comfortable with who he is—both his character and as an actor, he brings a comfort and an energy that you know the show's not laughing at him for being a gay man. And even if it were, he wouldn't give a fuck. And so—I don't know. At no point did I worry that we were having fun at his expense.
Drew: Yeah. We never really are. No one's making fun of him. And I also am happy that he got cast in this role because this is not a gay man we've really seen in any sitcom we've watched yet. They've all been thinner and more conventionally attractive. They don't have beards. And this sort of gay man would be common now if you walked into a bar, but you wouldn't have seen it back in TV that often back in the day.
Glen: And also, just comparing it to [the] Season One Cheers episode that we talked about where the whole point was there were gays among us, but we couldn't tell who they were. This is the opposite. This is an unapologetically gay man. He doesn't come in and say, "Hello. I'm a homosexual." He has normal conversations and you learn through context clues, like, "Oh. You're gay." And when he's talking to Sam, Sam is like, "Oh. Oh, your ex is a man. You're gay."
Sam: Somebody stole my car.
Mark: Oh. I've been there.
Sam: Yeah? Really?
Mark: Yeah. My ex-lover. First he stole my heart, then he stole my car.
Sam: He?
[audience laughs]
Sam: Aren't you supposed to be Rebecca's old flame?
Mark: Well, I'm not that old.
[audience laughs]
Drew: When he references his ex as a "he," Sam says, "He?" That gets a laugh, which I'm like—there's just weird lines in here that I'm not sure why that's supposed to get a laugh, because there's nothing necessarily funny about that.
Glen: No—I mean, that's funny.
Drew: Is it?
Glen: I mean, it's not—it's funny by sitcom standards in 1992 because this is Rebecca's ex, and oh! He's a gay man! Ha ha ha. It's a laugh because it's not what you would expect.
Drew: Oh. Okay. I'm fine with that. And then he calls his ex a lying little tramp, and this guy in the green shirt who's hiding in the background says, "Me-ow," So I guess there's at least another gay guy already in the bar because that is not something a straight guy would say.
Mark: Thank God he didn't steal the waterbed—[laughs scoffingly]. The lying little tramp.
Green Shirt Guy: Me-ow.
Mark: Like you were there.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Yeah. No, that's clearly a gay man behind him. I love that I just—
Drew: "Like you were even there"? I think—is that what he says?
Glen: Yeah [laughter]. No, I thought it was funny—again, because I did not notice that man in the background until he said that. But when he left, I was like, "Oh. That is another gay."
Drew: The second time I watched this episode, I noticed that people who are not speaking in a given shot but who are at the bar just sit there motionless, staring off into nothing. Kelsey Grammer does it at one part, and it's very strange to watch. It's like they go into a hypnotic trance or something.
Glen: They're probably very bored.
Drew: I'm sure the direction was like, "Don't move. You'll ruin the edits. Just sit motionless," so you just sit there. People in the way back, they get to talk. But not the guy in the green shirt. He's frozen in time.
Glen: I'm surprised you didn't look him up.
Drew: I didn't look him up. Fuck. Well—no. Okay.
Glen: It doesn't matter. I mean, it matters to him and his mother probably, but we don't need to find this man.
Drew: So Sam talks to Lilith about being distraught about his car, and she encourages him to seek out a support group—which he does. And the only interesting thing I can say about this is that the guy he ends up talking to—the guy who is like, "Oh. Your car got stolen, too?" and they bond over their shared pain—is another brunette who's fairly decently attractive. And all the men in the group are basically Sams. Even the woman is like a lady Sam.
Glen: Yeah. In my notes I said, "Oh. He's hot. Oh, he's a Sam." One is even named Sam.
Drew: Which is a nice touch. I don't think I can make that gay, necessarily. No.
Glen: You could make it gay, if you wanted.
Drew: Like my fan fiction about Sam's Car Support Group?
Glen: Well, no. Just the whole joke that gay men are just attracted to versions of themselves.
Drew: Yeah, and they seek out the same. Yeah.
Glen: That's not how I write it, but if we want to make it gay.
Drew: Have I skipped anything? The introduction of Harvey Fierstein? Oh. When he finally runs into Rebecca, he doesn't know who she is. He doesn't recognize her.
Glen: Mm-hmm. He picks out the beautiful woman.
Drew: Right.
Mark: My god! Rebecca, you're beautiful. Who'd have ever thought that you would have developed into this gorgeous creature?
Rebecca: No, Mark. Over here!
Mark: Rebecca! You haven't changed a bit!
[audience laughs]
Drew: Who is also wearing a green blazer, but a different green blazer.
Glen: She looks great in this episode.
Drew: She does.
Glen: So I think that's why these trash-fire jokes about Rebecca are okay, because—I don't know. On a surface level, she looks like she has it all together.
Drew: Mm-hmm. If only Kirstie Alley had it together in real life.
Glen: Doesn't she? I think she's done well for herself.
Drew: She used to be the spokesperson for Pier 1 Imports. That's something. She did a bunch of commercials for Pier 1 Imports.
Glen: She's been in things since this. Fine. I'm going write a Look Who's Talking revival.
Drew: There you go. Did you ever watch Fat Actress?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: That was actually really funny. Blossom was the neighbor on that. I really liked that. Anyway.
Glen: The only other detail I liked about their reintroduction was that so much of the conversation focused on them being theater kids. And again, it was another dig at Rebecca because Harvey Fierstein was the star and she was some role that they forgot.
Rebecca: [gasps] Look at this! Look, look, look! Here's our production of South Pacific. Oh, Mark. You were the most powerful Emile de Becque.
Mark: Oh, and you were a great—one of the nurses that washed Nellie Forbush's hands.
Glen: And there's also a joke about going through the yearbook where they can't find Rebecca in it at all.
Drew: Her elbow is one photo.
Rebecca: Captain of the debate team—oh, Mark. Oh, look. Water polo champion. Head of the Prom Committee. Most likely to succeed.
Woody: Are you in there, Ms. Howe?
Rebecca: Well, sure I am. Here.
[audience laughs]
Rebecca: I know I am. Oh, yes. Yes, there's my elbow on Protest Day.
Woody: Oh. What were you protesting?
Rebecca: Oh, I don't know—the war, cafeteria food, the bomb. It's just a real neat way to meet kids.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Which is a very un-Diane thing to say. Diane would have had something she cared a lot about and would have remembered it. I like when they're talking about being in South Pacific together how he's always like, "You always had the greatest—" and she starts to sing, and it's really bad. And what does he say? "Posture"?
Mark: No, you would have been a much better Nellie than Carol Shipley because you always had a much better—
Rebecca: [sings offkey] I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair!
Mark: —personality!
[audience laughs]
Drew: He's mean. He's catty and he's sarcastic, and I like that he is also not one of the angel gays we would get back in the day where he has no personality. He has a personality, and he makes jokes. And we haven't seen a whole lot of characters like this, actually. Not from this era.
Glen: No. He's like a male Lilith.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Lilith is a little deadpan, but she's catty—down below.
Drew: Oh, god. So then he has to go because, like you said, he has to look for roommates, and he says, "This could be exhausting," which gets a laugh.
Mark: Oh, Doll. I have got to run. Kiss, kiss.
Rebecca: Oh, Mark. So soon?
Mark: Yeah. Well, I found this great apartment, but the rent is sky high, so I'm interviewing roommates. This could be exhausting.
Drew: And I was like, "Does this mean he's fucking them all?" Why is that supposed to be funny? Is it just Harvey Fierstein's delivery of the line is kind of funny?
Glen: Yeah. The generous interpretation is that he's a slightly overweight man and maybe lazy, but I think maybe the joke is he's going go fuck all his potential roommates.
Drew: Right. Okay. Good. I wasn't imagining that. Did you notice that he kind of tells Rebecca she's fat?
[audience laughs]
Mark: Oh, my god! Look at that hair! If you had any more I could get you listed as an endangered species!
Rebecca: [laughs]
Mark: Well, come on. Turn around. Turn around. Let me see. Let me see. Ooh, I like it! More to love.
Rebecca: Me! What about you?
Mark: Hey! I'm bulking up for the Olympics.
Rebecca: [laughs]
Drew: He says she has a little extra. She's not particularly fat in this episode at all.
Glen: No. She's absolutely not. She is a normal weight. But if you're going to compare her to Diane—
Drew: Right.
Glen: No. She is not overweight.
Drew: All right. So we're basically at the end of the scene where he leaves, and it is very obvious to Carla and Lilith that Rebecca's friend from high school is a gay man, and Rebecca's like, "How could I have been so blind? He's the one I'm going to marry."
Glen: Mm-hmm. "He's the perfect man for me."
Drew: Which he kind of is. But do you—you think this is not Rebecca is stupid. You think she's just being willfully blind?
Glen: Yeah. I don't think she's stupid. I think she's lonely.
Drew: It is interesting that everyone else is comfortable with gay people and knows what they are now. Like you say, it's very—it's 10 years since Season One. That's probably how much things change. They don't have to explain gay people to the people in Cheers or the people watching, really. All I have for the next scene is that it's Kirstie Alley wearing the Hefty bag.
Glen: Oh. Actually, it opens with—
Drew: Oh. Actually, Glen—
Glen: Actually, shut up.
Drew: Actually, shut up. We have to take a commercial break.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: Yeah. Bye.
Glen: [sings] Bah-da-bah-bah-bah! Isn't that what Tony does?
Drew: That's what Tony does.
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes Drew and Tony's podcast You Have to Watch this Movie]
Drew: And we're back. Did you want more of a break?
Glen: No, no. I'm just wondering what it is I'm going to buy if I listen to this episode, which I won't.
Drew: Probably you're going to buy the opportunity to give money to TableCakes.
Glen: Ooh! I give them my time.
Drew: That's true. Yeah. I don't know what's going in that ad spot, but something!
Glen: I also pee quietly while you're recording sometimes and just have to wait and remember to flush it.
Drew: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. Your way of contributing to my podcast career. I like that.
Glen: Yeah. So the next scene opens with the running gag of Cliff's fake photos, which was brought up earlier when he was sad that Sam's car was stolen because he has a picture with his head on Sam's body in front of the car, and he has more photos. And my stretch here is something, something—Rebecca's not actually looking for a relationship. She's looking for that picture-perfect moment she had, I guess, in high school. Or she's picturing her life with this man rather than picturing what their life would be like together.
Drew: Right. It's not a realistic version of the person who actually exists. Like, that's not Cliff.
Glen: Yeah. She is just superimposing her face onto a life that is there—someone's life that's not hers.
Drew: I'm actually pretty good with that. And also, is that the deep plot in this episode? Are there four different plots going on?
Glen: I wouldn't even call it a plot.
Drew: There's no other reason for Cliff to have that to do in this episode, otherwise.
Glen: Yeah. I think at this point their contracts are just like, "Oh, you have to give us this moment in this episode."
Drew: That sounds exhausting.
Glen: Yeah. I mean, it's been around 10 seasons.
Drew: Frasier and Lilith don't have that much to do in this episode. They're literally just hanging out.
Glen: Lilith has more to do than Frasier. Frasier also has a beard right now.
Drew: He looks okay with that beard. This is a good time for Kelsey Grammer. So Rebecca's getting ready for the date, and Cliff and Norm have this conversation about—someone has to tell her. Woody volunteers to tell her, and then Woody's an idiot so he's like, "What am I telling her?" They're like, "That her friend is gay." He's like, "Oh. I'm not going to tell her. I don't want to tell her that." Is that that bad?
Glen: Eh.
Drew: You're crushing her spirit, but I feel like they'd be used to that by now.
Glen: Yeah. I think she just doesn't have any real friends.
Drew: She doesn't—at least not in the bar.
Glen: This is at the point of the show where they don't even—she kind of has a job, but I think Sam owns the bar again and he's just letting her work there. But she's not the manager, she's not a waitress—she's just there.
Drew: Yeah. Carla makes a joke about that, like, "What is it you do now?" and she's like, "Shut up, shut up, shut up." In the bathroom, Carla is really fucking cruel. Lilith is trying to tell her, and Carla butts in.
Lilith: Rebecca, I believe you're laboring under a misconception.
Carla: Oh no, Lilith. Rebecca, you see, what Lilith is trying to say is that the powder isn't going to keep the lipstick off the boy. But if he really cares, he's not going to mind [laughter].
Rebecca: Yeah.
Carla: So just go on out and have a great time.
Rebecca: Oh, thank you guys! Bye!!
[audience laughs]
Lilith: Why didn't you let me tell her?
Carla: Because it would be wrong. It's not our place to interfere with their personal lives. That's why they're called "personal lives." It's not our place to play God.
Lilith: Well actually, I pulled down 60 big ones last year playing God, but I see your point, and I owe you an apology. I actually thought you didn't want to tell her so that she would be humiliated, at which point you would make fun of her.
Carla: [laughs] See how wrong you were?
[scene changes]
Carla: How was your date last night, Rebecca? Get lucky? [laughs maniacally]
Glen: She'd make more nowadays.
Drew: Yes. She leaves, and then Carla is gleefully awaiting the opportunity to make fun of her the morning after this sure-to-be-disastrous date.
Glen: Yeah. She's Puck.
Drew: She is Puck. And then basically, other than that, we go to the date—except you see a scene of Sam's little self-help group. It's maybe a little clumsy how this guy's like, "Oh, what if our cars weren't stolen at all? What if the police find them?" And they're like, "Oh, that would never happen." And then it happens, and then he just turns off the light on them and leaves them. That's it.
Glen: Yeah. But again, they're all very attractive.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Glen: Especially Sam Two.
Drew: Is that the first guy?
Glen: No.
Drew: Oh, the guy with glasses?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. He reminded me of someone that you know.
Glen: [gasps!] That I should date?
Drew: Probably.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: I didn't look up any of those people. I don't know who they are. That's the end of Sam's plot, and the next thing we're in Rebecca's apartment and they're coming back from a dinner of ossobuco. Do you know what "ossobuco" means?
Glen: What, Drew?
Drew: "Bone with a hole."
Glen: [stifles laughter]
Drew: It's literally the bone is cut, and you see the marrow, and the marrow gets cooked also, and you scoop out the marrow and eat it. That's what it is. But "bone with a hole" is a very suggestive meal. It's not that gross, though, so when she asks Mark "What's ossobuco?" he's like, "Oh, you don't even want to know." It's actually not that bad. Maybe he just didn't want to say "bone with a hole" in front of her?
Glen: Maybe. Rebecca goes to make herself comfortable, and that means change into a nightie, and of course Mark goes around her apartment fluffing pillows and fixing it up because that's what gay people do.
Rebecca: I feel like we're in high school again. Don't you, Marcus Aurelius?
Mark: Yes. I do, Beckus Aurelius.
Rebecca: You remembered my Latin name!
Mark: Well, how can I forget? You're the one who got me through Mr. Vincent's Latin class.
Rebecca: Oh, Mr. Vincent! I forgot all about him. Oh, god. I had such a crush on that man.
Mark: Who didn't?
[audience laughs]
Drew: And then she presents herself, and she looks beautiful. And she wears a lot of green in this episode. She does look good in green. A beautiful green bathrobe over a black negligée, and—
Glen: She asks Mark, "Do you like what you see?" And this moment has stuck with me for years, of him from her eyes being so turned on by what he sees when really he's just really into her nightie.
Drew: The fabric?
Glen: Yeah. And just that moment where he roughhouses her to look at the tag is just very—that visual has just always stuck with me, like, "Oh. Okay. This is how unattracted to women gay men are."
Rebecca: Here I am.
Mark: Be still, my heart.
Rebecca: Do you like what you see, Mark?
Mark: It's gorgeous. Get over here. Give us a feel.
Rebecca: Okay.
Mark: Fabulous.
[audience laughs]
Mark: Give it! Is it silk?
Rebecca: What?
Mark: Rayon? I don't believe it. So what do you do? You put it in a delicate cycle, then a spin? We have to talk.
Drew: I didn't remember that part of the scene, re-watching it for this podcast. But when he says, "Get over here. Give us a feel," that's the only time we see him out of humor mode. He's doing, like, Harvey Fierstein's sexy voice.
Mark: Get over here. Give us a feel.
Drew: His voice is actually kind of sexy when he is not telling a joke. I just never heard his voice be sexy before. Oh, by the way—
Glen: Maybe he is listening to this podcast and he's like, "I got to reach out to Drew."
Drew: Please, Harvey Fierstein. I'd love to hang out with you. I looked up why his voice is like that, actually. I think I forgot to—I didn't say already, right?
Glen: No. Tragic car accident?
Drew: This is from Wikipedia: "Fierstein's signature gravelly voice is the result of an overdeveloped vestibular fold in his vocal cords, essentially giving him a—quote—double voice. Prior to puberty, Fierstein was a soprano in a boys choir."
Glen: So he's like a mutant?
Drew: Yeah. Basically. I don't really know what "double voice" means, exactly, but—
Glen: I love it.
Drew: I'm glad that he doesn't have a throat problem—like, nothing happened to make his voice like that. He's not sick or anything, even though I'm sure everyone always thinks he's sick. Rebecca even makes a joke about "Oh, your voice sounds so much better. You stopped smoking." So she tries to play it off. He's like, "You know I'm gay, right?" And she's like—
Glen: "Uh-huh—huh?"
Drew: Poor, poor Rebecca.
Mark: Rebecca, you know I'm gay, don't you?
Rebecca: Of course I do!
[audience laughs]
Rebecca: Why do you think I feel so comfortable wearing this in front of you?
[audience laughs]
Rebecca: I mean, this is my housecoat. I know it's sexy, but I paint in it.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Very embarrassed.
Glen: Yeah. She's like, "I just wear this around the house. I paint in this."
Drew: Rebecca's a very sad person, and that sucks.
Glen: Well, Rebecca's line is "Usually I assume people are straight until I find out they're not," which is—yes. This is the point of the episode that we need to talk about the changing times because we've talked about this on Gayest Episode Ever before.
Drew: We actually talked about this in our first episode, because that's the line that Eric Lutes gives to Frasier when Frasier said, "I assume everyone's gay until I find out they're not," and he's like, "I assume everyone's straight until I find out they're not." Flip those around. You know what I mean. This kind of works like a mirror of that, although Harvey Fierstein's response is—
Rebecca: You're gay?
Mark: Don't tell me you didn't know.
Rebecca: I mean, usually I assume that somebody is straight until I find out they're not.
Mark: That's funny. I usually assume people are gay until I find out they're not. Sometimes we find out together.
[audience laughs]
Glen: I mean, also kind of disturbing—depending on how he goes about it.
Drew: He's a gateway homosexual.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Oh. True. Oh, that's a much more generous interpretation. But, yeah. This gets, again, to the whole issue of gay men and women having to declare ourselves when we walk into a room, like it's incumbent on us. And the thing is, his character Mark—he's not hiding anything. From how he acts, what he says, he holds nothing back, and it's only because Rebecca is blind to it that she doesn't see. He basically did tell her in every way possible that he's gay.
Drew: Right. It never even occurred to her that that was a possibility because why would it be? She probably doesn't know any gay people.
Glen: I don't believe that. It's Boston.
Drew: She doesn't seem to have any friends who don't hang out in Cheers. Maybe she's friends with the guy who owns the green shirt.
Glen: Well, yeah. The green shirt in the corner, clearly. He loves green, she loves green—it's meant to be.
Drew: Oh. Good point. Yeah. He says, "You're the only woman I was ever attracted to." Well, she thinks that she turned him gay, which is another misconception.
Rebecca: I'm the one, aren't I? Yeah. I'm the one that put you off girls.
[audience laughs]
Mark: No, Rebecca.
Rebecca: No, no! Really. Go ahead. You can say it. I've heard it before.
[audience laughs]
Mark: Rebecca, if anything, you confused me. You're the only woman I've ever been attracted to.
Rebecca: [whispers] Thank you.
Drew: That gets a laugh. I guess it gets a laugh because Rebecca is sad. It's not getting a laugh because it's a ridiculous premise. People still kind of thought that in 1991—you turn gay. It's actually sweet that he says, "You're the only woman I was ever really attracted to. You confused me," and it ends with kind of a sweet moment. He's like, "You're cold." He puts a blanket around her and him, and they sit on the couch together.
Glen: And watch movies.
Drew: And they talk about—I think he says, "Everything would be easier if I was just attracted to women." Rebecca says, "Me too." End of episode. End it right there. End credits. We actually find that's enough of a—a button? Is that a button?
Glen: Yeah. And the thing is, it's a really sweet ending at this point because based on Rebecca's earlier conversation with Carla, what her life was lacking was a good friend. That's what she was excited to get. And from everything we see here, Mark is going to be a good friend to her when he moves to Boston and gets settled. I would like to think that they do hang out more.
Drew: We never see him again.
Glen: We never see him again, but in my Cheers fan fiction they go on adventures together. They go on cruises together. They check out restaurants together.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah, good for Rebecca.
Glen: Rebecca could have a very nice life if she appreciated the things and people in her life for what they were. That's a lesson for all of us—that things don't need to be more than they are.
Drew: But then what happens, Glen?
Glen: Well, then some sexual assault happens, Drew. Rebecca apparently is attempting to give Mark a hand job under the blanket.
Mark: Rebecca?
Rebecca: Hmm?
Mark: What are you doing?
Rebecca: Looking for the remote control.
Mark: It's on the coffee table.
Rebecca: You can't blame me for trying.
[audience laughs]
[outro music plays]
Drew: He's like, "What are you doing, Rebecca?"
Glen: "Looking for the remote!"
Drew: [in Harvey Fierstein's voice] It's on the coffee table.
Glen: And that's the laugh that they end on, which—
Drew: No. She says, "You can't blame me for trying."
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: So they could have actually made it like she literally was just looking for the remote and you could think it was an innocent mistake, and then she says, "You can't blame me for trying." So it's very clear. "I was trying to touch your dick even though you're not attracted to women."
Glen: "I have learned nothing from this past scene."
Drew: Right. And I guess—first of all, that's kind of a racier joke than I would have expected from 1991.
Glen: I thought it was '92?
Drew: 1992. Thank you, Glen. Everyone loves being corrected.
Glen: On the air.
Drew: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Glen: I just didn't want you to sound like an idiot, Drew. I'm sorry.
Drew: [clears throat] Thanks. Now I forgot what I was going to say.
Glen: It was a racier joke than you expected.
Drew: It was a racier joke than I would have expected. And also, you can tell this is something that was not written by gay people, because gay people would know that straight women don't generally touch their gay friends' dicks. That's not a thing that happens. Maybe a straight person would imagine that would happen, but I don't think any of my friends have touched my dick.
Glen: Yeah. Women just go for our absolute. You know, because we have abs.
Drew: [laughs] I don't have abs.
Glen: Back in the day.
Drew: Sure.
Glen: Yeah. I wish that joke were not in there, but it is. Oh, my god. I just yelled.
Drew: That was probably the closest we've got to some sort of echo. Yeah. But it is. End of episode. Overall, a sweet episode. Interesting episode. It's nice looking at what a difference a decade makes as far as the same sitcom. I'm glad we ended with Cheers and started the second season with Cheers, which was my idea. And I think it was a great idea. You're glaring at me.
Glen: Was it your idea?
Drew: It was your idea.
Glen: That's what I thought.
Drew: I'm glad that we're ending this season with a Frasier. I'm glad that the majority of shows we're talking about this season are shows we did not talk about at all. And I look forward to doing Season Two. I look forward to people listening to Season Two, also, because otherwise it's just us having conversations alone.
Glen: Either way. I do want to say that this episode could have been bad. I think were it not in well-practiced hands that they could have been a lot more blunt. And had they casted Mark differently, it could have come off as a lot more forced, and the gay thing would have been heavy handed, and that would have come off as a joke. And I do think that the difference—I think we talked about this. I don't know if we talked about it in front of these microphones. But the difference between—oh, we did talk about it—how this is an obviously gay character.
Drew: Mm-hmm
Glen: Okay. Never mind.
Drew: But if they'd cast a guy who was very butch and straight acting, that would be a very different feel. If they asked a guy who is—Harvey Fierstein isn't a light-in-the-loafers gay because he has that voice and because he has a sharp sense of humor and because he's not a light, twittery presence. He's—I don't know. He's got some gravitas to him. So if they had a different sort of gay guy play that character, that would also be a very different feel. I'm glad they cast Harvey Fierstein.
Glen: Yeah. He also brought in—I mean, this is a compliment. He brought a tiredness to him, a weariness that was a perfect pair for Rebecca and also made him feel like a real character. Like, he wasn't coming back to Boston to celebrate being a gay man and his success in life and how far he's come from high school. Being gay wasn't the story note in his life that he needed to come back and tell everyone about. He just had a bad breakup. He is looking for roommates for an apartment. He does not seemingly have his life together. There are many notes to his life, so much so that that wasn't something he felt like bringing up in a phone conversation with Rebecca, whereas I think in another sitcom—like in the Wings version of this, I feel like the Mark character would come back and want to proclaim to everyone that he's gay and happy, and Helen just didn't get the memo and is always out of the room when he's telling people about his happy, gay lifestyle. I don't know why I'm picking on Wings.
Drew: We're doing a Wings episode this season.
Glen: I know.
Drew: I know. Get ready for that. Glen, where can people find you on social media?
Glen: Oh, god. I haven't done this in a while. Hold on. @IWriteWrongs on Twitter—that's "write" with a W. Is that right?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: Okay. And then on Instagram, I am @BrosQuartz.
Drew: And I'm @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E—on Twitter. Gayest Episode Ever is also on Twitter @GayestEpisode. We're on Facebook at Facebook.com/GayestEpisodeEver. Listen to our Season One episodes at GayestEpisodeEver.com. Gayest Episode Ever is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based [stumbles]—fuck.
Glen: TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcasting company.
Drew: Thank you. We have a lot of cool shows, including two others that I host. If you'd like to find out what these shows are, go to TableCakes.com. If you want to support Gayest Episode Ever or any of the TableCakes shows, you can do so at Patreon. Go to Patreon.com/TableCakes. Podcast over?
Glen: Bye forever.
Drew: Podcast over.
Glen: Bye.
Drew: We're done. Yay, Cheers!
["Hello Again" by The Cars plays]