Transcript for Episode 18: What’s Gay About the Dick Van Dyke Show?
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Dick Van Dyke Show episode “Ballad of the Betty Lou.” 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.
Rob: Jerry knows a lot about boats. I want a boat and he wants a boat.
Jerry: A partnership like that could be just great.
Rob: Yeah. All we have to do is avoid all the pitfalls.
Millie: I agree with Laura. You guys are going to wind up mad at each other and we're going to have to meet on the sly.
Laura: Yeah. It's got to happen, Rob. You don't know the first thing about a boat.
Rob: That is just the point. That's why this partnership's going to work. Look, the only area of conflict is when there's a difference of opinion, right? I don't know the first thing about boats, so I don't have any opinion at all. Jerry knows everything about boats. See? He can be the commodore, and I can be the first mate.
Jerry: No, no Rob. I'll be the captain and you'll be the seaman.
[audience laughs]
["The Dick Van Dyke Theme Song" plays]
Drew: You are listening to Gayest Episode Ever, a podcast that looks at the LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very gay episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: And this episode is a new kind of episode for Gayest Episode Ever. We are five episodes into our first season.
Glen: It's second season, actually.
Drew: Second season. Thank you. Thank you. I don't really understand how numbers work. But I know how workload works, and going into this one, I wanted to put in breaks for myself where I had to do less post-production because I do all the post-production on this show.
Glen: I do nothing.
Drew: You talk. You talk, and that's enough. No, it's just a lot of work to put these out on a weekly basis. So this is going to be a lighter week, and we're doing a shorter episode where we talk about something that we probably wouldn't ever tackle in a regular episode. In case the intro did not tip you off, this week we happen to be talking about The Dick Van Dyke Show—kind of in general, but with a concentration on the episode "The Ballad of Betty Lou," which first aired on November 27, 1963, which makes it the oldest episode of anything we've talked about so far.
Glen: Does it get a trophy?
Drew: I think Dick Van Dyke gets a trophy for still being alive.
Glen: Oh, my god. He is? I was really ready to talk about him in the past tense.
Drew: He was in the Mary Poppins movie. He made a cameo. He's 93 and still alive and [exhales] in 2010 was rescued by porpoises when he fell asleep on his surfboard and floated off the coast.
Glen: That's a beautiful story.
Drew: Actual news story.
Glen: I want Lisa Frank to paint that.
Drew: That should be—
Glen: Is Lisa Frank still alive?
Drew: I believe so. I'm going to stick with yes. I'm not going to Google it. Glen, what is your experience with The Dick Van Dyke Show?
Glen: Absolutely zero.
Drew: I think that you're in pretty good company. I think this was not something that was in syndication as often as stuff from the later '60s to the '80s were for us. It ran for five seasons—158 episodes in five seasons—from October 3, 1961, to June 1, 1966. I never saw it until after I moved to Los Angeles. When I didn't have any friends here and didn't have anything to do, I burned through all 158 episodes.
Glen: How was that?
Drew: It made me feel better about things—that and Sym-Bionic Titan were the two things that mattered to me at that point in my life.
Glen: Imagine that crossover.
Drew: [laughs] I think it holds up very well. I think there's a timelessness to the writing and also the acting. And if you've never seen this show—I think it's on Hulu and Netflix—I say, just pick any episode because there's not really an overarching storyline.
Glen: Does anyone die?
Drew: I don't think so. No, I don't think so.
Glen: Any notable cast changes?
Drew: Yeah. Morey Amsterdam's character gets a wife named Pickles, who I think they recast twice, and then they just make her an unseen character because neither of them worked properly. But yeah, it's a great show that's about Dick Van Dyke playing Rob Petrie, who is a family man who is married to Mary Tyler Moore, who is his wife Laura. Half the show is their domestic life, and the other half of the show is him in the writers' room for The Alan Brady Show—which is sort of The Tonight Show before The Tonight Show was a thing. There he works with Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam, and they're good too. Carl Reiner plays Alan Brady, and the whole thing is very appealing. It has a wonderful vibe that I think every subsequent sitcom has been trying to get and has failed to get.
Glen: What's your favorite writers' room sitcom?
Drew: 30 Rock.
Glen: Oh, that's a good one.
Drew: It has to be, right? What's yours?
Glen: I have to look it up actually. What's that blonde woman on Last Man Standing? Sorry. I should—
Drew: Nancy Allen?
Glen: Yeah. Nancy Allen.
Drew: No. Nancy Travis.
Glen: Thank you.
Drew: Nancy Allen is the mean girl from Carrie, who I met and was very nice to me.
Glen: My favorite writers' room sitcom is Almost Perfect with Nancy Travis. It was in the '90s. No one watched it. It got canceled.
Drew: It was two seasons, so that's something. I forget that Nancy—not Nancy Allen; Nancy Travis—did anything between So I Married an Axe Murderer and that Tim Allen show that she's on now, but she's been around.
Glen: Yeah. She's perfect. I hear she's very nice.
Drew: Yeah. I like her. I like that.
Glen: The only thing I have to say about Dick Van Dyke Show—and I don't know if it's trivia—but the age difference between them.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Between Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
Drew: She's a baby.
Glen: She's like, 18. I think she was 17 when she was cast, and she had to lie about her age to get an audition.
Drew: I mean, more points for lying I guess, because they're very good on screen, and it made her a star, and she looks great. She looked good on Mary Tyler Moore, and that was quite a bit after this.
Glen: Here's my theory of attractiveness, both on TV and also in real life: People who look mature [when they're] very young age well.
Drew: Because it's less of a downward slide because they already look that way, or because they know how to carry it because they got it early?
Glen: I don't know. I just think those types of genes age better.
Drew: Yeah. Most people probably aren't supposed to look good their entire lives. It's like: You're going to look good older; you're going to look good younger, and you just get to ride that wave a little longer.
Glen: That being said, Dick Van Dyke—in this episode and in the show—carries himself like an old man.
Drew: Maybe that's because Mary Poppins is our primary line into his career—I don't know. But he does—he seems older than she is, even knowing that she's playing up her age quite a bit. For what it's worth, on the show, I think they do a good job of showing that marriage as a partnership where they work through stuff together. They're partners in family planning, child planning. And I think Rob is a little bit loonier than Laura is, but either one of them could be the Homer in a given situation that pulls them into a zany situation, and I like that they at least split the duties on that.
Glen: Yeah, she has no problem pushing back against him in a way that Lucille Ball couldn't necessarily push back against Ricky. Let's find a gay episode of I Love Lucy.
Drew: This is actually something we're doing at the end part of this episode. We're putting out a call for submissions for episodes that you think we can do. But there's got to be that guy—that guy that's [like], "Yeees"? That guy. Or is that on The Lucy Show?
Glen: I think that's Lucy Show.
Drew: I kind of conflate them into one thing.
Glen: I don't know.
Drew: We'll figure it out. In this episode, we're talking about—
Glen: Wait, we could talk about the Rock Hudson episode. Isn't there an episode with Rock Hudson on I Love Lucy?
Drew: I don't know that because I have—
Glen: I'll look it up.
Drew: I have holes in my I Love Lucy knowledge. But also, I notice this thing where if you make up—I think most people have not seen every episode of it, so if you just make something up, like, "Oh, the one where she injures a lumberjack at the lumberjack competition and he loses his hand." You're like, "Yeah. That sounds like an episode they did. Yeah."
Glen: Well, I Love Lucy was The Simpsons before The Simpsons was a thing. They just did every storyline.
Drew: Yeah. It was like a cartoon in a lot of ways. So the episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show we're talking about centers on Rob and Laura and their neighbors—their best friends, the Helpers—Jerry and Millie. Jerry is played by Jerry Paris who went on to mostly do directing. He directed two Police Academy movies.
Glen: Which ones, which ones, which ones?
Drew: Two and three I think, so early on.
Glen: Four is the best.
Drew: Which one is four? Is that Citizens on Patrol?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Is that the one with Sharon Stone?
Glen: Sure.
Drew: She's in one of them before she was anything. Millie is played by Anne Morgan Guilbert, who played Fran Fine's grandma on The Nanny, so basically she got to bookend her career with two long-running sitcoms. Good for her. And we're really just talking about the opening scene because there's something in here that I've always wondered how accurately I could say is a semen joke. I think there might be a semen joke hiding in this episode of Dick Van Dyke.
Glen: And by hiding you mean they say it.
Drew: They say it, but I feel like—I say "hiding" because I'm trying to counter in advance when people are like, "No, it's not. You're stupid." I am stupid, but I think this one might have a chance.
Glen: Set it up, and I'll call you stupid.
Drew: So the setup is that Rob and Jerry have got it into their heads that they should go halvsies on a boat, and Laura and Millie are not having it. They're like, "This is a terrible idea. This is going to end badly," and they're not really listening to their wives—they're just getting more and more excited about it. And then there's a running joke throughout the scene where Rob, who is the more inexperienced of the two, keeps misusing nautical terms and Jerry keeps correcting him. And I guess that's a running joke. It's not particularly funny.
Glen: I mean, I laughed a lot.
Drew: You did?
Glen: No.
Drew: No? Okay. Which leads up to the scene—
Rob: Jerry knows everything about boats. See? He could be the commodore and I can be the first mate.
Jerry: No, no Rob. I'll be the captain and you'll be the seaman.
[audience laughs]
Rob: First class?
Jerry: Third.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And there is a laugh.
Glen: And the women exchanged looks.
Drew: They do. And a lot of times, the older the sitcom is, the more likely we're going to encounter the situation where there'll be a laugh and I won't understand why. I'm like "Why is that funny?" And maybe it's just canned laughter they inserted after the fact to punch up the comedy aspect, or maybe it's something that hasn't aged well that I don't understand the punch line anymore. How do you analyze this joke?
Glen: I can't say one way or the other whether it's a gay joke or a semen joke, but I have no idea what other joke it could be if that makes sense. Like, it neither exonerates nor proves guilt—or whatever topical political language that is.
Drew: Yeah. I should also say that I realize that a semen joke is not explicitly a gay thing, but whether Dick Van Dyke made a semen joke in an old episode is the exact kind of thing I think we should be talking about on this podcast. But nothing necessarily gay about semen.
Glen: It was also in the context of two men buying a boat together and being alone on the sea all day together.
Drew: As we know, homosexuals turned the navy into a floating joke, as Homer Simpson pointed out.
Glen: Your dog is dreaming.
Drew: Oh good. He's probably dreaming of something more interesting than sitting here listening to us make a podcast. So I think the more innocent solution for this is saying that the wives are annoyed with their husbands—and the fact that Rob has gotten the terminology wrong again and Jerry has corrected him again, they're being like, "Oh, this isn't going to go well." But I don't think that's necessarily the case. There's this thing that happened with Katherine once—not semen related. But Katherine Spiers—my business partner, host of Smart Mouth—was looking at vintage [AG-label, sp?] art. You've seen stuff. It's like early part of the 20th century, nice, hand-painted labels that they would have on a box of apples or whatever, and it would have the brand. It would be like "Big Boy Apples" and have a picture of a fat kid. A lot of them were very suggestive where people would be holding produce in a—
Glen: "Put these seeds in your mouth."
Drew: I mean, kind of. Or a woman would be holding lettuce heads or peaches or melons or something, or it would just be the peach itself, but someone obviously painted this with special enthusiasm.
Glen: Butts.
Drew: Right. And my first reaction was like, "Oh. They probably didn't think about that. That's probably just us inserting the dirty joke after the fact," and Katherine was like, "No. They had dirty jokes back then. They had all the same parts, and the stuff that's to us now was funny to them then," and it's weird to kind of infantilize our grandparents' generation and think that they didn't find sex interesting or funny. I'm like, "Okay, well—" I think that's a good argument, and everyone on set would have known what semen was, and they probably would have been aware that that joke had a different meaning. They couldn't have not known, but a censor approved it.
Glen: Sometimes censors are dumb. You've seen Freakazoid!
Drew: I have.
Glen: For those who don't know Freakizoid!, there is a running gag about the network censor.
Drew: Yeah. I think the difference is that back then, they would have known what the smutty joke was and walked up to that line but kept a respectful distance from it, and we're more used to crossing over the line with a show like Married… with Children. And that hesitation to go for the full joke, [we] might think that they didn't actually understand, but I don't think that's true.
Glen: But also, what is the joke here? What are they trying to say that Dick Van Dyke is—the useless cum boy?
Drew: [laughs] I mean—I don't know.
Glen: Like, "I'm the captain, and I'm going to cum on your face."
Drew: I don't—[violently cough-laughs]. Oh, you made me—I'm going to cut that out—but you just made me violently cough-laugh.
Glen: Why are you going to cut that out, Drew?
Drew: Because it's not going to sound pretty.
Glen: Oh. I thought you meant the Captain Cum Face.
Drew: No. Captain Cum Face can stay. The joke isn't about their relationship as much as it is that hearing the word "seaman" be the correct thing to use is sort of funny? I don't know. Someone in the audience must have been laughing because they said the word semen [sighs]. I don't know.
Glen: You know I'm a fan of reaching for things.
Drew: You are. So I think as far as we can debate it, I think we've covered every possible angle for why it may or may not be intentionally, subversively a cum joke in a Dick Van Dyke episode.
Glen: I mean, I don't think we—we covered two angles. I think there's probably lots of angles. We could have researched terminology. Oh, god. You researched terminology in the era.
Drew: I mean, people, "semen" is the technical word for it. Everyone would have known what semen was. Any educated person would know what semen is. So there's that, and so you can't really call it a slang thing because that's not the slang word for it. However, this episode was written by Martin Ragaway, who wrote a lot of comedy and actually wrote the Diff'rent Strokes where Arnold beats Muhammad Ali.
Glen: I thought you were going to say where Arnold is—
Drew: Nope, nope, nope, nope. Mm-mm. No. He wrote funny episodes. He also wrote for the Dean Martin Roast—many of them. It was a series of TV specials all throughout the late '70s where it would be like Angie Dickenson, Betty White—everyone got a turn.
Glen: [laughs suggestively]
Drew: Yeah. So they were an hour long, so it was hard to skim around [to find out] how dirty were these jokes—because roasts as we think of them now, they're pretty envelope-pushing and I have to imagine it was at the Friars' Club. It would be weird if they weren't doing that back in the day, even though they did air on TV. So I wanted to see how much they pushed it back in the day, and the two contenders—I found one just for general sexiness and one that's like, "Oh, god. I can't believe they actually said that." General sexiness was Orson Welles reading a poem to Betty White, which is just something that I didn't know ever happened in life.
[audience laughs]
Orson Welles: Of all the lovely ladies on TV who grace our screen by night, the lass with class who steams my glass is lovely Betty White. Her flowing gowns, her tailored suits, the way she fills her halters—why, hers are better front-page scoops than even Barbara Walters'.
[audience laughs]
Drew: That's a very—it's nicely put, but it's very obviously—
Glen: Boobs.
Drew: Boobs. It's a boobs joke. He's making a joke about Betty White's boobs. So, okay. It wouldn't be weird to have sexy jokes in this environment. Martin Ragaway would have known how to write a joke like this if he wanted to because he worked on, I think I mentioned, several different episodes. Then there was the one that takes the cake. It was the roast of Lucille Ball, and a comedian or actor named Foster Brooks—who actually I don't know—has a throwaway line.
Foster Brooks: How about you, Luce? That's what the football team used to call her.
[audience laughs]
Drew: I was like, "Oh!" That's something that even today I don't think would fly in the 8:00 time slot on ABC or something. That's maybe directly a vaginal joke.
Glen: It is a vaginal joke. I'm sure it would still fly today.
Drew: Would it?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. I thought it was maybe a little more daring than I would have expected from something that aired, I think, in 1974? I don't know.
Glen: But I think in that case, they can argue, "Oh, no. That was just her nickname because it's short for Lucy."
Drew: I guess there's always an out, but there's always an out in this one where you say, "No. It's a sailor joke. The fact that it's a synonym—homonym; it's homonym—is just coincidental. We're not making that joke."
Glen: I guess my thing with this argument of is it or is it not a semen joke is, is it even a joke? I don't know. There's not really—there's not a punch line.
Drew: No.
Glen: And it's not like he was saying something along the lines of—and this is the bad version—like, "Well you sure do know a lot about seamen." That's a joke. Not a good joke, but it's a joke, whereas, "I'm the captain, you're the seaman"—
Drew: [laughs mockingly] Yeah. I'm otherwise baffled. If you have a theory about this, please tell us. You can tweet us @GayestEpisode or get to us on the Facebook page. We'd love to know. I have been wondering about this for years. I actually had a blog post about this. If you Google, "Dick Van Dyke semen" my blog is the first thing that comes up.
Glen: I feel like you're using me and this entire podcast just to answer this one question.
Drew: I am, and I'm not. That's not why I started this podcast, but when I realized I needed a subject for a smaller interstitial episode, this is what I picked. The number two hit for "Dick Van Dyke semen," by the way, is my old employer [censored], and—
Glen: It's a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Drew: No. I can't figure out why that even comes up, but I swear I didn't do it. I swear.
Glen: And now an ad.
Drew: No. Two quick things. In the entire run of Dick Van Dyke, the only other two gay aspects that are worth mentioning is that there's this one episode called "Baby Fat" from the fourth season where Richard Erdman, who most of us probably know now as Leonard from Community, plays a fussy costume designer named Buck.
Glen: And fussy means gay.
Drew: And fussy means gay. Yes.
Buck: Who's Vito Schnoder?
[audience laughs]
Rob/Vito: I think that's me, only I think that's "Schneider." Who are you?
Buck: Buck Brown, and what's wrong with apricot bows?
[audience laughs]
Buck: How many Broadway shows have you designed? I've done 16.
Rob/Vito: Well, I never—[stammers].
Buck: Can you double stich?
[audience laughs]
Buck: Can you make hoops? I'm the only one who ever made Peter Pan fly without showing an inch of undergarment. And who are you to come here and pick on my bows? I've never even heard of you. I work hard Vito. Very, very hard. Hate that fabric.
[audience laughs]
Buck: My designs have won awards, and I will not have a buttonhole butcher coming here and telling my director what I am to design.
Rob/Vito: Listen. It was all a great big mistake, Mr. Brown, and I'm very sorry.
Buck: Well, I should think so! I'm sorry, I flared.
[audience laughs]
Drew: It's weird to see that stock "sissy" stereotype where their existence is the joke. The fact that they have these flamboyant tendencies is the joke, and they're not given anything else to do other than be funny in that way. It is really weird to see young Leonard from Community playing a role that's very different from his role in Community. And then there's this actor Richard Deacon, who plays the producer on The Alan Brady Show. He's this very tall, bald guy with glasses, who's the literal straight man—the figurative straight man—and he gets made fun of for being bald. He's the one that's always like, "No, don't do this," like, "You wacky writers are misbehaving."
[audience laughs]
[someone plays the piano]
Buddy: And speaking of trimmers—
[audience laughs]
Buddy: You're the only guy I know who can walk into a barber shop and say give me a shave and a shave.
[audience laughs]
Rob: Mel, how did you like the sketch? Did Alan like it?
Mel: I haven't shown it to Alan yet, but I want to tell you that opening monologue is one of the funniest I've ever read.
Sally: Ooh, you really think so?
Rob: Hey, it looks like we're in good shape this week, huh?
Mel: Well, there is one little thing.
Rob: What little thing?
Mel: The middle sketch.
All: The middle sketch?!
Rob: Do you mean the 17-minute middle sketch that took five days to write? That little thing?
Sally: Well, what's wrong with it?
Mel: Well, it's just not funny.
Buddy: Aw.
Rob: Oh, come on, Mel. I don't usually say this, but I think that sketch is one of the funniest we've written in months.
Mel: Well, I'm sorry, it just didn't make me laugh.
Buddy: That proves it's funny.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Gay in real life. He also played Lumpy's dad on Leave It to Beaver. And watching the show now, even though he's playing such a button-down character, there's a Smithersy queerness to him that made me think, "Oh. Is he actually gay?" the first time I was watching this episode. It turns out he was. I think it's something most people would pick up on.
Glen: Sounds like my type.
Drew: Yeah. He kind of looks like a taller version of Willie from ALF.
Glen: That's not my type.
Drew: [laughs] That all said, now I think we're ready for an ad break.
Glen: Here.
Drew: Take it.
["The Dick Van Dyke Theme Song" plays]
[Glen and Drew promote A Love Bizarre]
Laura: Well, you seem happy today.
Rob: Well, why shouldn't I be? I have the two things that would make any man happy: a gorgeous wife, and I'm smoking a Kent.
Laura: Which do you like the best?
Rob: Now, there's a tough one.
[audience laughs]
Rob: Let me see. For cooking and for dancing and kissing, you satisfy best. But for filter and taste, Kent satisfies best.
Laura: I'll accept that.
[laughter]
["The Dick Van Dyke Theme Song" plays]
Drew: This is a short episode and we're coming back from the ad with a little bit of housekeeping. The housekeeping is corrections and stuff we probably should have mentioned—clarifications.
Glen: I'm never wrong.
Drew: We were not technically wrong about why Peg Bundy's pregnancy was written out of Married… With Children as a dream, but we found out after the fact that the reason they did that is that she had—her child was stillborn. She was actually pregnant. The pregnancy got written into the script, and then she had a miscarriage—which is very sad. And it was apparently a very, very hard time for her, but she kept working through it, and that was the writers picking the best possible way to handle that very awkward thing for her and just have it never be mentioned on the show again. So it's actually a very nice thing they did for her. Also, I found out that the reason she goes away in later seasons is because she was pregnant and they purposely didn't want to write the pregnancy into the plotline. I believe that is why they invent the idea that she is from Wanker County, because they just needed a place for her to be away to. Right?
Glen: Yeah. Maybe that's why it came up. I feel like it was mentioned before that though, but maybe not.
Drew: I don't think any Wanker relatives showed up until that season, but I could be wrong. We can run another correction in five weeks if this turns out to be wrong. Also, her mom—who is an unseen character—was originally supposed to be played by Divine—
Glen: No.
Drew: —who died. That's why that didn't happen.
Glen: Oh. That's too bad. I would have loved that.
Drew: Yeah. That would have been great casting. We talked about the feud between Amanda Bearse and Ed O'Neill, and I found a little bit more to that. There's a Q&A—that Amanda Bearse gave at a con somewhere last year where someone in the audience asks about the relationship between her and Ed O'Neill. She says that she's going to invoke the Thumper Rule of if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all and then goes on to say he was not happy during the final seasons of the show—that's one of the reasons there's not been any sort of big reunion—and that things got weird because she was directing more and more, and that gave her the ability to say when something was not going correctly. And that's kind of how she leaves it. Then there's also an extended version of the interview from where the why-he-wasn't-invited-to-her-wedding story comes from and—ugh. You're just like, "Old man, stop talking. Old man, stop talking." He basically—paraphrasing here—says that she was really cute and nice when the show started. She was always gay, and she was the woman in the relationship. But as time went on, she was no longer the woman in the relationship, and she got a little snarky and was like "Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. But I think they're talking about the same timeline of her getting more power and getting more authority to say stuff on the show and how differently he was reading it compared to her. And it's a great example of why men are assholes, I guess.
Glen: Yeah. Loss of power.
Drew: They had a fight in the makeup room, and he said, "I have a 'Get rid of Amanda Bearse!" button. You don't have a 'Get Rid of Al Bundy' button to push."
Glen: It's weird that he used her actor name and his character name, but that might not be a direct quote.
Drew: Oh. Yeah. I'm paraphrasing it. I'm sure he said "Ed O'Neill." Yeah. There actually was a reunion. It was in 2003, but it's just the cast talking. That's not—I want to see where these characters are in 2019, please.
Glen: Dead.
Drew: [laughs] All dead. Also, we found out that there's a lost episode of Married… With Children. It was supposed to air in the third season, but it's too risqué, I guess. It never aired on American TV, and I don't think it was part of the syndication package, so the only way Americans can see it now is on Hulu. So if you have Hulu, go watch the third season episode "I'll See You in Court," and you can treat yourself to what is a brand-new episode of Married… With Children which—
Glen: It's all about sex tapes.
Drew: It's all about sex tapes. It's fine.
Glen: I didn't see how it would be any more risqué than their usual talk of Ed and Peg's marital habits versus Steve and Marcy's flourishing sex life.
Drew: Apparently, another one that almost got cut in the same way, was the one where they go to the cabin and all three women have their periods at the same time. I think it has a dumb name like "The Cabin Episode." Originally, it was supposed to be called "Period Piece," and that was one of the things that they relented on to get the show to the air.
Glen: I remember that episode.
Drew: It was a good episode.
Glen: I don't think I got it when I was young.
Drew: When did I learn about menstruation? I don't know. Probably after I saw that episode—probably long after it. King of the Hill. Someone wrote in with a point that we maybe didn't correctly discuss the gender identity of the drag queen, although not in those words, really. I think they actually have a point. One of the things I think I criticized is that the drag queen in the episode seems to be wearing her performance costume when she's just out in the world doing her regular thing, and I guessed this is probably not how most drag queens would live. What I didn't mean to say is that there can't be people who do that. There's people. Gia Gunn is an example of someone who performs in drag on stage and lives as a woman who's very nicely dressed all the time, and that distinction is not as prominent as it would be for performers who are actually cis-gendered men when they're not on stage.
Glen: Well, we're just two lame white dudes, and we're erring on the side of caution asking "Is this the proper portrayal?"
Drew: Right. Well, the person pointed out that if you take it that this person is just a gender-nonconforming person, the portrayal is actually kind of progressive, and I agree—but I'm also willing to bet that the writer got there accidentally, like he did the wrong arithmetic and got the right answer accidentally, sort of. I don't know if that makes sense, but—
Glen: That's why you have to show your work.
Drew: Yes. Yes. But we're not discounting anyone's gender identity. We have some reviews that we're going to read. People, we said we'd read reviews, and we're going to do that right now. I got a review from someone from my hometown, who doesn't live there. He got out as well. His name is [Goddammit Greg sp?], and the—
Glen: Is his real name Greg?
Drew: Maybe. It was titled "Hella Gay Podcast" which is a very NorCal way to—it's a gay way to celebrate your NorCal-ness. He says, "When I connected with this podcast on an app, I knew it was going to give me the good time I was looking for, but didn't know I was ready for it."
Glen: That also sounds like a review of a date or a sex ad.
Drew: [laughs] I mean, yeah. He got a fun new—oh. Well, the next line is "Bulging with pop culture trivia, it has gigantic relevance to any queer person, and I almost wasn't sure I could handle it. The research and context is so satisfying it'll leave you weak in the knees. You'll come crawling back for more." I think it's very deliberate.
Glen: Now I get it.
Drew: Yeah. Mm-hmm. I didn't read this beforehand. I—yeah. I just read it right now. Okay. You have one as well, Greg—Glen [laughs]!
Glen: I am leaving. Wait. You sent it to me in a text, so I have to read it on my phone.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: What's her name? Drewb?
Drew: Drewb. Drewb Magaggie.
Glen: Alright. It's from GMT66—funny, if it was 69. "This is the podcast I wait for each week."
Drew: Short and to the point. Can't argue with that.
Glen: I'm trying to think what that would be for me.
Drew: Singing Mountain [laughs]?
Glen: That's right.
Drew: And then we have one from someone I believe you know. The subject line being "Obsessed .Waspy Straight Man."
Glen: He is those things.
Drew: He says, "A delightful journey through the intersection of LGBT and pop-culture history that is equal parts funny and insightful. Drew and Glen have an insanely deep knowledge of everything pop culture, which fills me with jealous rage. Their self-described tragicomic—[laughs]. Their self-described tragicomic childhoods are a gift to us all."
Glen: Actually, I mentioned him on this podcast before as my straight friend who went with us to the gay porn theater and was freaked out in the lobby when it was a video of two dudes blowing each other. He was like, "I didn't know it was going to be this gay," and I was like, "Brother, it gets worse."
Drew: Well, his heterosexuality checks out.
Glen: Barely.
Drew: Thank you, Straight Man. Is there a gay-TV moment you want us to weigh in on that we haven't covered yet? Maybe something that's a little niche, or maybe something that means a lot to you but you think isn't shared by the mainstream? You should tell us about this, and you can tell us on social media at @gayestepisode or on Facebook at Facebook.com/GayestEpisodeEver, but you can also call us.
Glen: No!
Drew: No, you're going to call. I'm going to give you Glen's phone number. Glen give your—no?
Glen: No!
Drew: Okay. We are on the TableCakes Network, and there is TableCakes hotline where you can call and leave a voicemail.
Glen: With TableCakes emergencies.
Drew: I mean, kind of. If you want to get in touch with anyone who has a podcast on this network, it'd be the worst way to do it, but it would eventually get to them. The number is 209-566-2253, or 209-566-CAKE.
Glen: Is there a fax line too?
Drew: No. It's only voicemails. Well, it's a Google Voice number, so apparently—maybe there is a way to send other stuff to it. I don't know. I don't know how that works. We got the right phone number this time. In a different podcast we put out the wrong phone number, and it went to some poor man in Modesto who was very confused. But now, it's the right phone number: 209-566-2253. If you call and just tell us about a TV memory you have, we might actually play it in a future episode. You could hear your voice next to our voices.
Glen: Why would I want that?
Drew: Why does anyone want to listen to us?
Glen: I don't.
Drew: But other people apparently do, and we thank them for that, Glen.
Glen: Thank you.
Drew: Remember, that Gayest Episode Ever-specific Patreon is on its way.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah [sighs]. So please do that. We think you'll be somehow charmed by the idea of having your voice on a podcast, and that is an easy way to do it. Leave us a message, please. So that's about it for housekeeping and bookkeeping. Glen, where can people find you on social media?
Glen: On Twitter, you can find me @IWriteWrongs—that is write with a "W"—and on Instagram @BrosQuartz—B-R-O-S and then "quartz."
Drew: Mm-hmm. I'm Drew Mackie—@DrewGMackie on Twitter. I said before, we're @GayestEpisode on Twitter. This episode is produced and edited by me, Drew Mackie. Our production assistant is Wena Mercader. This is a TableCakes podcast. You can find out more about TableCakes Productions at tablecakes.com. You can support shows like Gayest Episode Ever and everything else on our network by going to Patreon.com/TableCakes. And please, by the way, give us a rate and review. As you know, because you've probably listened to another podcast at some point in your life, rates and reviews on iTunes are very, very helpful to getting other people to listen to the show. So if you have a few spare minutes, please go to iTunes and give us—five stars would be nice—and a review, and not only will we appreciate it, we will also read it in a future episode. That is it for this shorter episode. I hope we got to make you think about boats and semen. And we say goodbye and see you next week when we talk about Wings.
Glen: Bye forever.
Drew: Bye forever.
["Pretty Mess" by Vanity plays]