Transcript for Episode 34: Dinosaurs Uses Vegetarianism as a Metaphor for Homosexuality
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Dinosaurs episode “I Never Ate for My Father” 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.
Glen: Hey, Drew. Do you know that I wrote a movie?
Drew: I'd heard that. Glen: Hey, Drew. Do you know that I wrote a movie?
Drew: I'd heard that.
Glen: Well, now you can watch Being Frank in the comfort of your own home. Or someone else's home—with their permission, of course. It's a comedy-ish film about a teenager who discovers his dad's second family and gets pulled into the lie to help protect the secret. If you check out the show notes this episode, you'll see a link for it where you can buy a real-life DVD.
Drew: Like in olden times!
Glen: Or you can buy or rent a digital version on iTunes, Amazon, and maybe Pornhub—I'm not sure.
Drew: Buying a movie digitally is like buying the ghost of a DVD!
Glen: Watch it so you can yell at me online.
Drew: Glen, when am I going to get to be friends with Samantha Mathis?
Glen: When you erase your entire presence from the web. You're kind of scary.
Drew: I just think Princess Daisy is the best princess.
Glen: The best.
Robbie: See? Some carnivore I turned out to be.
Dave: Well, maybe the YMCA—just isn't right for you.
Robbie: Yeah, tell it to my dad. He'll never let me live this down.
Dave: Well, not everybody's cut out to be a carnivore, Rob. Did you ever think that maybe you're a—a—herbivore?
Robbie: No way!
Dave: It's possible!
Robbie: No, not for me, it isn't. My dad's a carnivore, my mom's a carnivore, my sister—boy, is she a carnivore. I've got to be a carnivore.
Dave: Well, it's not necessarily hereditary. A lot of dinosaurs eat vegetables from time to time—
Robbie: Yeah.
Dave: [laughs slyly]—including me.
Robbie: [gasps!]
[Dinosaurs theme by Bruce Boughton plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: If that intro did not tip you off, today we are talking about Dinosaurs.
Glen: What?
Drew: It's a show about dinosaurs.
Glen: Huh?
Drew: It's a very descriptive title when you think about it.
Glen: Yeah. A little on the nose.
Drew: I mean, what would you have called it?
Glen: "Dinosaurs!"—exclamation point.
Drew: It does seem like there should be an exclamation point there.
Glen: It does.
Drew: We are talking specifically about an episode called "I Never Ate for My Father," but I'm not sure what to call this one. My guesses were "Dinosaurs Uses Vegetarianism as a Metaphor for Homosexuality" or "As Close as a TGIF Sitcom Ever Got to a Gay Episode."
Glen: Is that true?
Drew: Think of another one that did something that was as queer-ish as this.
Glen: I don't know. Just call it "Robbie Eats a Carrot" or something like that.
Drew: He doesn't eat a carrot, but he does eat a—
Glen: I know. I know. But that's the most phallic of—well, no.
Drew: No.
Glen: "Robbie Eats Eggplant." There we go.
Drew: He actually does eat a cucumber in this episode.
Glen: Oh. Well, "Robbie Eats a Cucumber."
Drew: But see—
Glen: But it's all sliced up.
Drew: I know. So we'll talk about that. That's a very weird detail.
Glen: So, Drew—why are we talking about this episode?
Drew: Because it's a really gay episode of TV that's not explicitly gay but is. It's like a Bewitched where no one's saying anything that's actually outwardly gay, but they're intentionally coding it to get a metaphor across that would have gone straight over the heads of most children—and I don't remember thinking twice about this episode. I don't know what I thought it was about when I first saw it—but I'm sure adults got it. I'm not sure my parents got it.
Glen: Well, maybe they got away with it because it's actually about three things. It's about homosexuality, it's about drug use, and it's about rebelling against your parents.
Drew: It is, and I think maybe they had to blur the metaphor a little bit so it wasn't just one thing so people wouldn't completely freak out. That might be why they bring in drug use and they bring in communism, but the biggest of the three is the homosexuality.
Glen: Yeah. So, Drew—what is your experience with Dinosaurs?
Drew: This first started airing in 1991, so I was nine. And did you know that nine-year-old boys tend to really love dinosaurs?
Glen: I'm familiar.
Drew: I really was—pre-Jurassic Park, right? Jurassic Park had not come out at this point. So I just on my own got into the phase where I was learning all the different dinosaurs and could pronounce them all and still sometimes remember specific details about them. My favorite was the hadrosaur.
Glen: Oh. Brontosauruses aren't real.
Drew: Monica DeVertebrae is not real?
Glen: No. And she also wasn't in this episode, and she's really the only Dinosaurs character I like.
Drew: And she's the only herbivore.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: She's the four-legged herbivore.
Glen: For listeners who are not familiar with Dinosaurs, it is a Simpsons rip-off where instead of a cartoon family it is a family of dinosaurs with varying levels of technology and contemporary culture.
Drew: They live in the year 60-million-and-three, B.C.—and yeah, it's equal parts Simpsons rip-off and—
Glen: Flintstones.
Drew: Yes. Flintstones. That's what I meant to say. Flintstones and Simpsons together. So you might as well steal from the two most successful animated shows of all time.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: This had been a pet project since 1988 for Jim Henson, and he was trying to find a way to make it work, and then the success of The Simpsons starting in 1989 is what suddenly made there be a place for this on any broadcast network at all. And he died the May before this debuted. It was like his baby project, and I think his death also might have—like, saying it was a passion project, it might have made people more interested in seeing it come into fruition. I can't believe this ever aired on TV. It's such a weird thing.
Glen: It's very weird looking. It's very dark—and I don't mean that tonally. I mean it's a dark show—because there's not a lot of electricity, I guess. But it just looks weird. It looks kind of off-putting.
Drew: Yeah. Well, it's like the whole thing when you're looking at any sort of CGI anything where it looks like a face but it's not quite right—and these are really good masks. They have a lot of character, and they look as realistic as a puppet can look, but they fall a little bit short, so it's that uncanny valley thing.
Glen: I would say the actors inside the suits do too good a job with the mannerisms of humanity. There's a lot of over-gesticulation—out of necessity to have it read in these giant suits. But the way Robbie stands—Robbie being the teenage son—is a little bit horny for me. He just does that cool teenager swagger really well for a very heavy felt-and-plastic suit.
Drew: Okay. So I'm just going to ask this question right now. Robbie is supposed to be Tiger Beat attractive, but he's a dinosaur. And why can I look at his character and be like, "Oh. He's supposed to be attractive." What about him makes us think that?
Glen: The cool hair. The big eyes. For some reason, these dinosaurs have lips, which is weird. I also have questions about how—the daughter's a triceratops of some sort?
Drew: She's, I think, a pro—
Glen: The weird not-triceratops triceratops. But that's not what the family is. I don't understand how these dinosaurs are made genetically.
Drew: It's very confusing. Earl is a megalosaur. Fran is an allosaur. I don't remember what Robbie is. But yeah, they don't make any sense.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: They also live concurrently with cavemen, but the cavemen rarely are ever featured on the show.
Glen: Yeah. Scientifically, it's suspect.
Drew: And even if you can get past this, this is a show about dinosaurs played by people in dinosaur suits. But then it is basically a special episodes show where they do a bunch of topics like this one, and it's not actually that funny. Watching this episode, I never felt close to laughing. So I'm wondering, what the fuck did adults watching it back in the day—is it just that the kids wanted to watch it, so they had to be hostage to Baby Fucking Sinclair?
Glen: I think so. There are good lines in it, though. It's well-written. But you're right, it's not like ha ha¸ and it doesn't have the aid of a laugh track whereas these family sitcoms would just sort of trick us into laughing. I say this all the time—whenever I have an opportunity—but the series finale was about climate change. They died because of climate change. They deforested, they did a bunch of shit, they just kept digging a hole for themselves, and the last shot is them staring out a window as snow falls and the Ice Age is coming, so it was dark. That episode ruined me.
Drew: I remember seeing it eventually. I may not have seen it when it actually aired. DI don't you know that's not the last episode to air, actually?
Glen: Didn't they do the archaeologist finding stuff after that?
Drew: No. So the final episode aired on ABC, and then it went into syndication, and there was seven or eight more episodes that had never been seen before that aired very shortly after the finale killed them all off, which is a very confusing production—I don't know why you would do that, but they did that. Four seasons, 65 episodes between April 26, 1991, and October 19, 1994. Yeah. If someone's listening to this, they might think that we're overreading queerness into this narrative, this show did this all the time. The best examples I could come up with include—there's the one where Monica gets harassed at work from a character named Sexual Harris. Very on the nose. There's one where Charlene is sensitive about her tail having not grown in and she doesn't feel like she can be sexy like the girls who have big tails.
Glen: I remember that one.
Drew: I think I got that one at the time. I think I understood that one. I did not understand the one where Robbie starts spontaneously doing the mating dance and he can't stop himself from doing it. It's about—
Glen: Masturbation?
Drew: I think puberty and erections because everyone's like, "Oh, man. It's so embarrassing that you can't control this thing right now." And then one that is actually good and might actually be worth re-watching—the two-part series "Nuts to War." Do you remember that?
Glen: No.
Drew: So "Nuts to War" is a two-part series, and it's couched in World War II style war narrative—
Glen: Yes. I do remember this.
Drew: It is about the two-leggers running out of pistachios, but the four-leggers have more pistachios than they know what to do with, so the two-leggers make up a war so they can invade the four-leggers to steal all their pistachios. It is a direct lampooning of the Iraq War—the first Iraq War—and I cannot believe that a show about dinosaurs made fun of the United States' decision to invade a country on a mainstream network. I kept trying to find if there was any sort of backlash or—
Glen: Acknowledgement?
Drew: Yeah, but every time I tried to look for Dinosaurs controversies, I actually ended up on pages about dinosaur scientists not agreeing—but yeah. I'm trying to think of any other show in that era that would have even hinted at the idea that the first Iraq War was bad—a sitcom.
Glen: What was that cartoon about Washington D.C.—rats and mice?
Drew: Capitol Critters.
Glen: Yeah. They may have done it.
Drew: They might have. I didn't ever watch that show. I guess no one really did because it didn't last very long.
Glen: No.
Drew: But yeah. This is kind of the most successful of that crop of shows after The Simpsons proved that you could do weird, animated stuff. This show got green lit and lasted four seasons, but also, Capitol Critters, Fish Police—Fish Police?
Glen: I don't remember Fish Police.
Drew: Family Dog, and the Jackie Bison Show. Do you remember that one? It was really weird. There's more that we're probably not even remembering, but there was not a successful one in the wake of The Simpsons, really, until King of the Hill after this.
Glen: Right. And then Family Guy.
Drew: Yeah. Not that long after, really.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: This particular episode aired on ABC in a block that included The Wonder Years and Doogie Howser, because what the fuck else would you ever pair this show with? Jaleel White would eventually criticize the Muppetization of the TGIF lineup because he felt that it was making that block of shows seem like it was actually for children instead of whole families, which is a very interesting criticism coming from the guy who ruined Family Matters. In addition to being a result of The Simpsons, this also aired at a really weird time for American TV, and it might just be weird because people our age, more or less—this would be the point where you first started being able to take in culture and understand what's going on, on TV. But between the summer before this premiered and this airing, the weird TV stuff that was going on included Simpsons Mania being at its height, the second season of Twin Peaks, the end of Dallas, the launch of Nicktoons—which means Doug, Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy—and then the following shows also debuted in this very narrow piece of time: Aeon Flux, Darkwing Duck, Herman's Head, James Bond Jr., Maury Povich, Montel Williams, Jerry Springer, Home Improvement, Step by Step, The Torkelsons, the PBS version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and that's it.
Glen: I watched, like, 95 percent of those.
Drew: I think a lot of people like us watched almost all of those. It was also when we saw other weird stuff, like Hi Honey, I'm Home!. Do you remember that?
Glen: Nope!
[Theme from Hi Honey, I'm Home! by Rupert Holmes plays]
Drew: Julie Benz is the only actor of note from it.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: It was about a TV family from a sitcom that was fictional that retired to the suburbs, and so they were living next to a modern family—it was kind of like The Brady Bunch where they're still—
Glen: In reverse?
Drew: Yeah. They're acting like it's the '50s and everyone else is like, "What's wrong with them?" There's this one son who watched this obscure sitcom and was like, "I know them. They're from a TV show," and they let him in on the—all those sitcoms, when they get canceled, they go retire to somewhere out in the United States. And then every episode, they have an actor from one of those old sitcoms—like Barbara Billingsley plays June Cleaver in one episode. Rose Marie plays what's-her-face from Dick Van Dyke one episode.
Glen: This is an amazing idea.
Drew: It was a great idea. ABC did it in conjunction with TV Land, I think. It might have been the first original piece of programming TV Land ever did. It was very weird. The stunt casting was great. I don't actually remember if it was funny—probably worth digging up an episode on YouTube to see how it actually plays out.
Glen: Huh.
Drew: Grandma Munster was in an episode.
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: Yeah. Every TV celebrity they could get their hands on who wasn't already dead—Eva Gabor plays what's-her-face in Green Acres in one episode. It's weird. So Twin Peaks, this, and Dinosaurs are all happening on one network, and people were like, "What the fuck is—" But also, Home Improvement and Step by Step.
Glen: Right.
Drew: This episode was written by Rob Ulin who wrote a few episodes of Dinosaurs and then moved on to Roseanne where he ended up producing. He also wrote and produced for Veronica's Closet, Malcolm in the Middle, and The Middle. It was directed by Tom Trbovich, who is a director who had done sitcoms before Dinosaurs, and then post-Dinosaurs it's all puppet TV shows, including Aliens in the Family, which is that horrifying other TGIF sitcom. Do you remember that—with the alien baby?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Oh, my god. He's uglier than Baby Sinclair—kind of looks like if Baby Sinclair had a baby with Roger from American Dad.
Glen: Oof.
Drew: But it's 3D, and it's just very unpleasant to look at, and it was the same people who made Dinosaurs trying to recapture that magic, and it did not last because people did not like that show.
Glen: I mean, it worked for Out of this World.
Drew: Because they didn't have freaking monsters on Out of this World, right?
Glen: Right. Do we ever see what her dad looks like?
Drew: I don't know. I always forget if that show ended with any sort of finality or—remember Uncle Beano?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Like, three people who are listening are like, "I know who Uncle Beano is. I feel validated by this." Everybody else has probably stopped listening because we're talking about Dinosaurs. I think that's all the background I have. I think we just jump into the first—
Thurman: [growls]
Drew: Ooh. I think we can just jump into the first scene.
Glen: Let's.
Drew: Which is the Sinclair Family kitchen. Fran, the allosaur mother, is cooking dinner. Fran is voiced by Jessica Walter, who is Lucille Bluth—
Glen: No!
Drew: Yes!
Baby Sinclair: More!
Fran: You finished your bottle, Dear. You're full now.
Baby Sinclair: Not full. Empty! Fill me up!
Fran: Honey, that was dinner.
Drew: She's not even doing a voice. That's just her regular speaking voice. She's being nice, so it doesn't sound like Lucille Bluth. But it's also weird because she's the voice of So-Cal Edison, which does power for everywhere that's not Los Angeles, basically, and it's weird to hear Lucille or Fran Sinclair being like, "Southern California Edison." So, yeah. Jessica Walter is the mom, and she is cooking while Baby Sinclair is being rude, stupid, and awful—and I hate him so much.
Glen: Yeah, per usual.
Drew: I don't remember hating him when I was a kid because I guess kids have a higher tolerance for annoying things, but he's so aggressively unpleasant that I can't imagine that anyone would have wanted to watch this show, much less buy merchandise bearing his likeness.
Baby Sinclair: Tired. Sleepy. Night-night!
Fran: No night-night.
Baby Sinclair: Night-night!
Fran: No night-night.
Baby Sinclair: Bottle!
Fran: Not until night-night.
Glen: I really wanted the Baby Sinclair toy.
Drew: Why?!
Glen: I just found his roundness appealing.
Drew: I mean, he is a rotund little baby, but he's stupid and demanding, and he's telling Fran that he wants food and then he wants to sleep, and—ugh. He's a horrifying Muppet voiced by Kevin Clash, who was the voice of Elmo. He's not the voice of Elmo anymore.
Glen: Oh. Let's just tiptoe past that one.
Drew: But he's barely doing—Baby Sinclair sounds much like Elmo, and Elmo is also annoying as fuck, and every time the baby was on screen I didn't like it. I will say this much. You know that I'm a big fan of Nicole Byer.
Glen: That's true.
Drew: I listen to all her podcasts, and I listen to them at 1.5 or 1.75 speed because I'm a busy person—I have stuff to do. She could do Baby Sinclair's voice very well. Like, her sped up sounds not unlike Baby Sinclair, and should they ever reboot this thing I think she should get that role.
Glen: I would like to write for this show.
Drew: Like a darker, smarter take on Dinosaurs?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: That makes me hate Baby Sinclair less?
Glen: So then Charlene comes in, also hungry.
Drew: Voiced by Sally Struthers.
Charlene: Ma, could we please have dinner? I'm wasting away. My thighs are hardly touching!
Fran: Don't exaggerate, Dear. I heard you coming.
Drew: The immediate joke as she comes in is that she is fat, which is impossible to tell because she's a dinosaur, and—
Glen: Oh, I can tell.
Drew: Oh. I don't—she didn't read as fat to me.
Glen: It's partially the wardrobe and the personality. The late '80s and early '90s just had a very definitive coding of "I'm supposed to be the fat, unattractive child," even though most of these sitcom actors are very attractive and not at all fat.
Drew: She kind of reminds me of Heather from Mr. Belvedere, but Heather from Mr. Belvedere is neither unattractive nor fat on that show.
Glen: But they styled her to be frumpy.
Drew: They did—especially at the beginning. It's awkward that that is the role that Sally Struthers was given because Sally Struthers has had a public struggle with weight for a long time, and I think that kind of sucks. But it's a paycheck, so I don't think she cares that much.
Glen: I mean, it's not okay, but I think the added layer of this character being a bitch as opposed to just the fat child who's shat upon maybe makes it more empowering. Like, she's very proud of the fact that she's a good eater.
Drew: Yeah. She doesn't really seem to have less self-confidence—except in that one tail episode. In this episode, she is not rattled by anything. So, okay. I'm fine with that. Charlene also drops the information that Robbie has been spending a lot of time at the YMCA.
Charlene: I don't see why the whole family has to wait for Robbie to get home from the stupid YMCA. Whoa!
Earl: Hey, hey, hey! We don't talk that way about the Young Males Carnivore Association in this house, little girl.
Charlene: Oh—
Earl: I remember the day when I was initiated down at the Y. Made quite a meat-eater of me!
Drew: On this very night, Robbie is killing his first live prey.
Glen: Earl specifically says that the YMCA "made quite a meat-eater" out of him.
Drew: Yeah. I didn't—that's a good catch.
Glen: There's a lot of little gems.
Drew: Yeah. And I really don't think most of them are accidental. We'll believe that they did this on purpose. Earl, by the way, is voiced by an actor named Stuart Pankin, who has been in a character in literally everything his entire career. He plays Michael Douglas's friend—he's the other male actor in—what's the one with Glenn Close? Fuck. I can't remember the name—where she's crazy? Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, and she's—
Glen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Drew: [laughs]
Glen: Fatal Attraction.
Drew: Thank you. I couldn't think of that one.
Glen: Earl is one of my least favorite sitcom characters of all time.
Drew: He's stupider than Homer, and he's not funny like Peter Griffin. He's just an obstacle.
Glen: And I think that was intentional since this is kind of spoofing on sitcoms, but I don't know if the layer of nuance was there for people to realize it was satire.
Drew: And also, in practice, it just comes off as him being stupid and kind of uninteresting and conservative and combative. He's like Archie Bunker without—without the slurs, I guess? I don't know. Right after that, we cut to the jungle where Robbie is walking with Dave, a character I don't remember from any other episode and who might only exist for this episode, and we learn that he was unable to eat his prey. He barfed all over his shoes.
Glen: My first note for this scene is like, "Oh. Robbie is hot because he has that hot teen swagger." Anyway, their conversation quickly jumps to the gay metaphor when his friend is like, "Maybe you're an herbivore," and Robbie pushes back against this in the—if they were talking about "gay" it'd be like the reactionary, homophobic way of like, "Oh, no way am I that! You've known me for how long? Blah, blah, blah—" But the first half of their conversation definitely plays out like one of those very special episodes of two teen boys, one of them accusing the other one of being gay.
Drew: Dave pretty much comes out as at least bi—if that's the metaphor we're going for right now right away.
Robbie: You? You're one of them? Are you sure? How long have you known?
Dave: Well, I always kind of suspected. Ever since I was 12, you know, whenever I see vegetables, I feel kind of hungry.
Robbie: Geez, Dave! I never would have guessed.
Drew: That's so on the nose.
Glen: Yeah, and choosing 12 specifically as the age. They're very specifically choosing this to be a gay thing because they're making it about puberty and attraction.
Drew: In my imagination of the living room where this is being aired in the original airtime, the paper that is blocking the dad's view of the TV is going down and he's like, "What the fuck is this? What is this? All right. It's something with dinosaurs." Robbie says, "My family is all carnivores. I can't be an herbivore," and Dave is like, "Oh, it's not always genetic. A lot of people realize that they actually prefer eating vegetables." Super weird.
Glen: Yeah. But this is also where they start double dipping with the drug metaphor when his friend invites him to a club where you can experiment with eating vegetables.
Dave: I sneak out of the house on weekends. I go to this veggie place across town.
Robbie: Mm-hmm.
Dave: Why don't you check it out with me sometime?
Robbie: Uh, no thanks. I'm not looking to munch on any greens.
Dave: Oh, you don't have to eat anything. You just hang out and meet some of the herbivore girls.
Drew: Which you'd think would be a gay bar—then he immediately mentions that there's going to be cute herbivore girls there, which I view as the writer being like, "Okay. I can't take this too far. I'm going to hedge off anyone who's going to write a fucking letter about this episode and make it clear that girls are still a thing."
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: But everything leading up to that is very much that. What do you make of the chlorophyll joke?
Robbie: Is it true what they say?
Dave: Oh, yeah—about the chlorophyll?
Robbie: Yeah.
Dave: [laughs] Makes them wild!
Robbie: Yeah.
Glen: They're talking about drugs, so they just chose a scientific-sounding name. It's just—it is a chemical in plants.
Drew: Yeah—um, I know what chlorophyll is. I passed the Bio AP test in high school, I'll have you know.
Glen: Four or a five?
Drew: Four.
Glen: All right then.
Drew: Next scene.
Glen: Baby Sinclair still has a fork in his tail. Neither of the parents remove the fork from their baby's tail is all I'm going to say.
Drew: Yeah. And we didn't say specifically that in the first scene he stabs himself in the tail, which is not a stage direction that you would have heard in any other TGIF sitcom—"The baby stabs himself."
Glen: Yeah, after biting his tail several times, he then stabs himself with a fork.
Drew: He's real dumb, and he screams a lot, and he laughs for no reason, and he's very loud and very annoying—and I hate him.
Baby Sinclair: [screams obnoxiously]
Drew: As soon as Robbie sits down at the table for dinner, Charlene trots in and reveals that via gossip she has learned that Robbie didn't kill his prey.
Glen: Yeah. She's a super bitch for outing him.
Drew: Yeah. She does not care about his welfare, and Robbie immediately goes into—the metaphor this time is like, "Just because I'm expected to kill some small animal that never did anything to me—why should that be?" So now the metaphor is him being like, "Just because everyone expects me to have this one life path, I don't necessarily have to do it. I could do something else."
Glen: Yeah. That is our third metaphor for vegetable eating in this episode. There was some anti-herbivore slang I didn't catch what the baby said.
Drew: "Herbal."
Earl: It's the food chain, Robert. Love it or leave it.
Robbie: Yeah, well, there are some dinosaurs that reject the food chain.
Earl: Yeah. Well, you know what we call them—
Fran: Earl, not at the table!
Baby Sinclair: Herbal! Herbal!
Fran: Where did you learn that language?
Drew: And that is a slur in this, and everyone's like, "How did he learn that?" And then enter Grandma—
Grandma: It's television. They say whatever they want. Television is responsible for the utter degradation of our society. We should write letters.
Fran: Mom?
Grandma: What?
Fran: Get a life.
Drew: —who is my favorite character on the show.
Glen: Because she hates everyone?
Drew: She's hateful and cranky, and she's voiced by Florence Stanley, who played the judge on My Two Dads and has been in a lot of other stuff and has an amazing voice that you'll be hearing because we cut it in. And I think what she says is in reference to some sort of controversy because Fran asks where the baby learned this bad word, and she says TV—that TV is responsible for the degradation of society. I think they are addressing people who wrote letters about something they did that was liberal and offended them, and they want them to shut up.
Glen: Yeah. I mean, Simpsons also did that when Marge gets turned into an annoying squirrel on Itchy & Scratchy.
Drew: "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge."
Glen: Mm-hmm. The '90s were a wild time. A lot of people had opinions before the internet.
Drew: Yeah, but they had to sit down and, like, print something out.
Glen: I know—so you only heard from the most bored, unbusy people.
Drew: Or the craziest!
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: And that's basically all Grandma does in this episode, which is too bad because she's like the Sophia of the show where she just comes in and makes a wisecrack. She doesn't even make fun of Earl in this episode, which is a bummer. The "Hurling Day" episode is the one that introduces her, though. That is an amazing episode of TV. Do you remember that one?
Glen: Hmm—
Drew: Hurling Day is when you throw the elderly off a cliff—
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: Then because Robbie protests and says, "Maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe we should keep our elderly around and they can teach us stuff because they've lived for a long time." Earl can't do it, and even though it's an embarrassment to him as a man, he does not throw his horrible mother-in-law off a cliff into a volcano, and she lives with the family after that.
Glen: Aww.
Drew: Oh, fuck. Her name is—okay. So her name is Ethyl Phillips. That's her married name. "Phillips" is the Phillips Oil Company. "Ethyl" is also an additive in—
Glen: Ethanol?
Drew: Yeah. "Sinclair" is, I think, the Sinclair Oil Company—Oil Corporation?—the logo of which is a dinosaur. There's one that's actually right across the street from Buena Vista Studios where ABC and Disney make all their stuff. I would be shocked if that wasn't where that last name came from. Their boss's name is B.P. Richfield—literally, his name is Richfield, and his first name is B.P. Everyone except for Monica, I think, is named in some way after—
Glen: Oil.
Drew: —a petroleum company, which is a cute joke, I guess.
Glen: [laughs] Yeah, well. Not so—
Drew: Joke's on us!
Glen: Yeah. Not really cute in hindsight.
Drew: No. Earl asks Robbie, "Are you now or have you ever been an herbivore?" which is going with the communist metaphor now because that is what the alleged, accused communists were asked. He also mentioned—he calls it "the Green Menace." But then there is this weird thing with Charlene where Robbie storms off to his room because he doesn't want to agree with his parents, and Charlene says that—
Earl: That kid has defied me at every turn, Fran. Little by little, he's eating away at my heart and soul.
Grandma: Well, at least he's interested in something.
Charlene: I'm carnivorous, Daddy. I'll eat anything that moves!
Drew: Which, if you think about it like, "She's the very straight one," it's kind of weird, bragging about her sex life—which is weird. But then Earl tells her, "Charlene, you are now my son."
Charlene: Thanks, Daddy. Can I have money for lipstick?
Earl: Of course, Son.
Charlene: Oh!
Earl: Mm-hmm.
Drew: It's just another weird, weird, complicated scene.
Glen: That's the thing. A lot of the jokes in this episode—and I don't remember if it applies to the show in general. They are jokes, but not ha-ha jokes. That takes a layer of thinking to be like, "Oh. He's being proud of her, and he is showing that pride by calling her 'the son,' and then the reward for her behavior as the 'new son' is letting her buy lipstick."
Drew: Right. That's a really weird, complicated thing. Again, never heard that on Step by Step.
Glen: No.
Drew: So then the next scene is Fran and Earl going up to the son's room to talk to him about what happened, and he's gone.
Glen: Yeah. And this scene is entirely about the metaphors, and it double dips in the homosexuality and the drug use kind of equally.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Searching the room is very much like "Is our son doing drugs?"
Drew: And they find a baggie full of broccoli.
Glen: Which is the hard drug. Had it just been a carrot or lettuce—that's because broccoli doesn't taste good. It does, but in the age of sitcom humor—
Drew: Broccoli is gross. Yeah. So they do that, and that's weird because within the same season they do an episode where Robbie finds a leaf that when he eats it makes him lazy but happy—so they went back to that again and tried to squeeze as much out of it as they could, and the only thing I remember about that episode is that it ends with a PSA where Robbie addressing the camera directly.
Glen: I remember that as well.
Robbie: Hi. I'm Robert Sinclair, but you know me as Robbie Sinclair on the adult-themed, mega-hit, Dinosaurs. Drugs are a major problem in our society. Drugs ruin lives, divide families, and lead to heavy-handed, preachy sitcom episodes like this one. Of course, we managed to keep it delightfully funny and upbeat, but other shows aren't so lucky. There's an epidemic in television today that threatens the very fiber of the comedy we hold so dear. When one show does an anti-drug episode, other shows feel pressured to do one too. Now they're even going after the younger shows. I mean, we've only been on for a year, and here I am, talking to the camera. So, come on. Say no to drugs. Help put a stop to preachy sitcom endings like this one. It's up to you to make a difference.
Drew: That's really clever.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Not laugh-out-loud funny—very clever.
Glen: Yeah. The show is clever if not funny. The second half of this scene is Earl—and what's the mom's name?
Drew: Fran.
Glen: The second half of the scene is Earl and Fran doing the stereotypical blaming each other for their son's homosexuality.
Fran: [gasps hysterically] If only my cooking had been better, he wouldn't have turned to this! [sobs]
Earl: No, no. Franny—come on, Honey. Now, don't blame yourself. I should have taken him hunting when he was a kid.
Drew: But then—okay. So this is really weird to talk about, but Earl says—
Fran: I'm sure Robbie doesn't even know what it is.
Earl: He gets it from your side, Fran.
Fran: What?!
Earl: Your Uncle Elmo—the one they never talk about? He ate off the wrong side of the plate!
Glen: I'm going to use that, by the way.
Drew: That's very good. That obviously means something bad. People figure it out real easily. But did you hear what the uncle's name was?
Glen: Earl.
Drew: No.
Glen: Oh. I mean Elmo. Elmo.
Drew: Elmo! So knowing that Kevin Clash was quietly gay this whole time—and I guess they probably would have known that. I think it's weird that they called the gay uncle "Uncle Elmo."
Glen: Yeah. That—can't be an accident.
Drew: I mean, they work for Jim Henson. They know what the word "Elmo" means. I tried to go to commercial, but now that we made—so let's not talk about Kevin Clash and Elmo stuff anymore. In fact, I think we're ready to take a commercial break, Glen.
Glen: Okay. Do we have a commercial this week?
[Dinosaurs theme by Bruce Broughton plays]
[Drew and Glen promote an event at A Love Bizarre]
[an old promotional spot for Dinosaurs plays]
[Drew and Glen promote Gayest Episode Ever's Patreon]
[Dinosaurs theme by Bruce Broughton plays]
Glen: Commercial over.
Drew: Oh, did you decide the commercial is over?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. I guess we're back. So now we're at a beatnik-hippie gay bar/drug den—
Glen: It's not really a gay bar. I feel like they're now just leaning into the drug for this scene.
Drew: Oh. I think you're wrong.
Glen: Really?
Drew: I have a few reach-arounds for this, which are long reaches, but—
Glen: Go for it.
Drew: Okay. So Dave, the friend, and Robbie are sitting at a table, and he is offering Robbie to eat cucumber, which is a very phallic vegetable. However, he's putting it through this weird machine that spiral cuts it and turns it into not-cucumber shape anymore. And I am going to go out on a limb and say that having Robbie actually eat a cucumber was too much, but turning it into not that shape anymore made it a little bit more palatable to censors or just their desire to not get yelled at for going over the top with it—so they keep pulling it back. Then this girl—this herbivore girl sits down, and she's fawning over Robbie, and he's like, "Well—" He's questioning his carnivorous status, and she makes this really weird comment.
Herbivore Girl: Hi, there.
Robbie: Uh—[laughs awkwardly]. Hi.
Herbivore Girl: I haven't seen you here before.
Robbie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was carnivorous until a few days ago. I still might be. I'm deciding.
Herbivore Girl: [moan-sighs suggestively]
Hippie Dinosaur: [in the style of Bob Dylan and not Woodie Guthrie for some reason] This lamb is your lamb/This lamb is my lamb/So have a salad/With Thousand Island—
Robbie: Yeah.
Herbivore Girl: I love the smell of lettuce on a dinosaur's lips.
Drew: I'm like, "What the—" What is that, Glen?
Glen: Fair enough. I think for me it was just the whole hippie culture read too heavily as what boring, straight, white people thought of as pot culture.
Drew: Yeah, but the lips thing is weird. I just feel—I mean, he's eating it, so that's why it's on his lips. But it seems like it might be a dirty joke in disguise?
Glen: Yeah. I mean, I guess you could read her as a kinky girl who loves making out with a guy after he sucks another guy's—cucumber.
Drew: I'm sure that's—someone listening to this podcast somewhere is really into that specific thing.
Glen: I would hope so.
Drew: Well, like, a woman listening to this podcast somewhere.
Glen: Yeah. I mean, women listen to our podcast.
Drew: Oh, I know. I'm aware. I run the Twitter account, in fact.
Glen: I don't.
Drew: We also did not talk about how in the background is a dinosaur who looks remarkably like Wallace Shawn—and I realize I'm comparing Wallace Shawn to things on back-to-back episodes of this show, but he really does look like Wallace Shawn, and he's dressed as Bob Dylan, singing vegetarian rewrites of '60s protest songs, including "This Lamb is your Lamb, This Land is My Lamb." Yeah.
Glen: They get real boring real fast.
Drew: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They go on a lot longer than they should. So this girl is really interested in converting Robbie to the vegetarian lifestyle, and then Earl comes in and tries to drag him out of this.
Glen: He has a real herb-a-phobic energy to him.
Drew: Yeah, and he calls her a pea peddler—or a pea pusher—which is either a drug reference or a sex reference, depending on which way you want to take that.
Glen: I say drug reference.
Drew: Okay. And literally, the girl and Earl are pulling on either side of Robbie, trying to get him to commit to one thing, and he says he rejects labels. He doesn't want to have to be one thing or another.
Glen: He gives a very awkward "I Have a Dream" speech.
Drew: I know. Why? Why would you? That's not—that's not the place for that.
Glen: Nope.
Drew: No. And Earl succeeds in pulling him away, and that's one of the times when you realize the limits of what they can do in those suits because it's a really awkward motion because they can't really fight like that, so they're just having to mime it, and it looks kind of weird.
Glen: I'm also very uncomfortable every time a Muppet eats because, ugh, that's going to do something to that suit.
Drew: It just falls to the side.
Glen: I don't know. I hate when food touches things that aren't food.
Drew: It's probably some intern's job to vacuum out Cookie Monster [laughter]. That's got to be someone's job, I'm sure, to get all the cookie out of Cookie Monster.
Glen: Where's his book?
Drew: He now—Cookie Monster eats vegetables now.
Glen: Oh. Right.
Drew: Because he realized that eating cookies all the time was unhealthy. He still likes cookies, but now he eats healthy things, too. Thanks Michelle Obama!
Glen: Yeah. I learned that lesson too late.
Drew: Oh, you don't eat only cookies. Sometimes you eat macaroni [laughs].
Glen: Yeah. Earl drags Robbie hunting.
Drew: Yeah. They're in the jungle. There's a startling admission from Earl.
Robbie: Look, Dad. I don't want to go hunting. I just don't like killing things, all right?
Earl: Robert, listen to me. You're not a kid anymore. Okay now, look. No one knows this—I didn't even tell your mother this. When I was 14—I experimented with some lettuce. But those were my salad days, and you're too old for that, Rob. We're dinosaurs. We're ferocious. We're merciless.
Robbie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Earl: We got a reputation, Son.
Drew: Again, it's very on the nose.
Glen: That leans gay more than drug use.
Drew: Yeah. It's also kind of surprising that Earl, as that character, would have done that or even admitted that—but okay. And then they're interrupted by a snack who shows up.
Robbie: Dad—I don't want to.
Earl: Eat him!
Robbie: I'm not even hungry.
Earl: Put him in your mouth and chew!
Robbie: You can't make me!
Snack: Hey! What's with the kid?
Earl: Nothing. Nothing's wrong with my kid.
Snack: He's a veg-o, isn't he?
Earl: Hey, hey! Will you just eat him, and let's go home, Robbie?
Robbie: No.
Snack: You know, my son tried the same thing at his age. "Why do I have to eat the other creatures, Dad? What's so important about the food chain?"
Earl: What'd you do?
Snack: I ate him.
Earl: I like it.
Snack: I'm tough, but I'm fair.
Drew: So he killed his son who wouldn't conform to what society wanted.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Very biblical.
Drew: Yeah—or rural.
Glen: I don't think that's what farmers do.
Drew: Like conservative rural parts of the world where you would—
Glen: They eat their own sons?
Drew: No! Like, someone who—if we're taking the metaphor now, like, "I'd rather my son be dead than be gay."
Glen: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Drew: And then they're interrupted by a giant swamp monster who very awkwardly enters the frame and eats Robbie.
Glen: Yeah. Robbie leaves behind a pair of shoes, which I thought was very weird because most other characters don't wear shoes. And also, those shoes were very clean for walking through the swamp.
Drew: Was he wearing shoes before?
Glen: I don't think so. Maybe. I don't know. I feel like that is a detail that would add to the teenage dinosaur who has neat shoes—like, how else will he establish his cool-kid hierarchy?
Drew: Varsity jacket.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So that ends on a commercial break, which would be a very dark thing if you go with the idea that Robbie is now dead. Earl's resistance to his son's alternative lifestyle ended with his son dying. I don't know what the metaphor is here. Is the swamp monster—do you got anything for that?
Glen: Dangerous lifestyle choices—
Drew: I guess. Yeah.
Glen: —because it's not. It's the—quote/unquote—safe choices of the father leading to the son's demise. Maybe it's a suicide metaphor?
Drew: I mean, kind of. That's where this story would go sometimes. That's a huge bummer. But I wish the commercial break didn't come back to Robbie being alive and in the stomach, which is just another set, and the snack and him are still able to continue talking. It would have been better, in my opinion, if it had opened with Earl coming home with just the shoes and believing that he was responsible for the death of his son. Even though Earl is a ridiculous character, there's some gravity to that. He's very upset. He's blubbering.
Earl: [sobs] Fran—Fran.
Fran: Where's Robbie?
Earl: Franny!
Fran: Did you find Robbie?
Earl: I found him, Fran.
Fran: Earl, did you teach him about the food chain?
Earl: He knows everything there is to know about the food chain [continues sobbing].
Fran: Good. Then we can have dinner.
Earl: He's eaten, Fran.
Fran: Earl, what is wrong with you?
Earl: Fran—
Fran: What?
Earl: Fran!
Fran: What?!
Earl: Fran!!
Fran: What?!?
Earl: What's missing? [despondent sobbing resumes]
Fran: Earl. Did Robbie get eaten?
Earl: [despondent sobbing intensifies]
Drew: Fran does not seem upset by this at all.
Glen: No. Before even knowing who ate her son, she seemed to be of the belief that "Oh, he's not dead yet."
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: She was kind of sociopathic in this scene.
Drew: Right. The line is funny where she's like, "Did you teach him about the food chain?" and he was like, "He knows everything he'll ever need to know about the food chain now." It's actually pretty good.
Glen: This scene also had a good line from Fran where she said—
Earl: What do you want me to do, Franny? The laws of nature clearly state that bigger eats smaller. I mean, the swamp monster is well within his rights.
Fran: The laws of nature also state that we protect our young—no matter what.
Glen: Which I think is a very nice summary theme of the episode and how she talks Earl into going to try and save Robbie from a giant swamp creature, even though he does not want to.
Drew: Right. Charlene does not give a fuck.
Glen: No.
Charlene: What's going on?
Earl: Oh. Oh, Charlene. Charlene, no. No. There are just some things too horrible for you to know [sobs].
Charlene: Who ate Robbie?
Earl: [exclaims] I don't know! I don't know. What do you think, I asked him for his card?
Fran: Earl, you must have gotten a look at him.
Earl: Oh, he was big, Fran. He was big and mean—and hungry. Oh, that could be almost anybody out there [sobs].
Charlene: I don't believe it. Robbie, my brother—eaten.
Earl: [despondent sobbing intensifies to the max]
Fran: Earl, we have to do something.
Charlene: How about if we turn his room into, like, a memorial walk-in closet?
Drew: Mean girl. They go out. Earl gets swallowed very quickly, and they're both in the stomach, and they have a long conversation. I don't really think there's a whole lot of metaphor going on here. It's pretty direct, right?
Glen: It's pretty direct, but this is where I realized this show is more clever than funny, because this scene is really more about "I don't want to follow in your footsteps, Dad," and Robbie gets Earl to see that he, too, did not want to follow in his father's footsteps. And Robbie says—
Earl: Just tell me what it is that you have against me, and I will happily jump down this guy's intestines.
Robbie: I don't have anything against you, Dad. It's just—it's just I don't agree with anything you've ever said.
Earl: All I ever wanted was for you to live your life exactly like me. Is that too much to ask?
Drew: But it's a well-written argument, and they quickly—yeah. They make a point of saying, "It's not the vegetables, it's the defiance that I don't like." So they come to on as good of terms as you can in a sitcom—because this is all going to reset by the next episode. But it's a mushy, father-son scene, and the swamp monster speaks and tells—
Glen: He can hear his stomach.
Drew: Yeah, because he's that loud. And he says, "Can you guys knock that off? That kind of mushy stuff makes me sick to my stomach." So there's two snacks, and then there's Earl and Robbie, and they both get really lovey-dovey and affectionate with each other, and the snacks even say, "We're hugging, too," and it's weird that this male-male affection is what causes the swamp monster to violently throw up, but everyone survives [laughs].
Glen: They're saved by man-love.
Drew: Yeah. But also by homophobia? The metaphor kind of goes out the window at this point.
Glen: Yeah. The effect for the vomiting is very bad. The weird camera shaking, which is really just the actors kind of moving around, and then they just do this weird digital wave ripple, and then the screen twirls into darkness.
Drew: Yeah. It was not great. I thought the way they shot the stomach actually was good, though, before that part, where the camera is always moving and swaying side to side. Even though it's just a room, it actually feels like you're not in a square environment, and they did this—like, how the fuck do you make a stomach look realistic—
Glen: The production design for this show, as weird and off-putting as it was, was also gorgeously done.
Drew: You know what it reminds me of? It kind of reminds me of the production design for the Super Mario Bros. movie where it's—it's weird and sort of hard to look at. But what it is, the way they do it, is kind of beautiful in its own way? I don't know.
Glen: Like someone had a thought, and that thought was fully realized, which is what the Super Mario Bros. movie was—like, it wasn't the right thought, but they sure did follow through with it.
Drew: The thought was, "I don't really like Super Mario Bros. that much. I'm just going to make a weird movie about dinosaurs—" Oh, yeah. It's about dinosaurs; that's maybe why I'm thinking about—
Glen: Probably.
Drew: Okay. Spoiler—the Super Mario Bros. movie is actually about dinosaurs!
Glen: Mm-hmm. That's actually one of my favorite sci-fi movie conceits, that the meteor that crashed and—quote/unquote—killed the dinosaurs just created a separate reality where dinosaurs evolved instead of mammals. That's what that movie was about.
Drew: Right. Okay. We're very off now. But Dinohattan—is it inside the earth? Is it subterranean?
Glen: No. I thought it was a different dimension.
Drew: I don't remember.
Glen: I don't know. Someone tweet at Drew.
Drew: Ask Samantha Mathis.
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: Star of Being Frank.
Glen: Out on DVD yesterday!
Drew: If you want to buy a copy of Glen's movie, there's a link to it in the show notes for this episode.
Glen: Oh, perfect. It's also about fathers and sons.
Drew: It really is. There's kind of a lot of emotional overlap here.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: So if you like dinosaurs, watch Being Frank [laughter].
Glen: If you like cruel sitcom dads, watch Being Frank.
Drew: I mean, kind of.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: That's weird.
Glen: Oh, so this show is still happening, I guess.
Drew: So there's only one more scene. The father and son come back. They've had a bunch of showers, but they still feel gross because they were vomited up. They sit down to dinner, and it is a generous platter of meat and vegetables together, which is weird because they were previously so horrified by this, and now everyone's just eating vegetables and they don't really fucking care anymore—but good for them; they came around. Earl, actually very nicely, says that he's decided that his children are smart enough to decide for themselves what they want to eat. And then it ends with Baby Sinclair biting his fucking tail again and screaming—end of episode.
Baby Sinclair: [screams obnoxiously after biting his tail]
Drew: I hate Baby Sinclair so much. Do you remember how much I hated Uni in the previous episode?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I hate Baby Sinclair more because he has more of an enduring presence. He had a single.
Glen: [laughs]
Drew: "I'm the baby (Gotta' Love Me)."
Glen: Are you going to play it?
[jovial music plays]
Baby Sinclair: I'm the baby, gotta' love me/Big purple eyes, I'm very cuddly/'specially when I hit my daddy with a frying pan!
Earl: Fran!
Baby Sinclair: I'm the baby, gotta' love me/First I whack you, then you shove me/Flying across the room, I like it!/Again!
Glen: Did the "Urkel Dance" also get a single?
Drew: I don't believe so because the lady who wrote the "Urkel Dance" came up on a previous episode—I don't remember which one—and I don't believe it did. But it did result in the commercial for Urkel O's. Remember?
Glen: Is that a cereal?
Drew: There was a cereal called Urkel O's.
Glen: Hate it.
Drew: Yeah. I think America agreed with you on that one, Glen.
Steve Urkel: Oh, Laura, my pet—I created something that'll make you love me! [raps terribly] I got a great new cereal/Did I do that?/So hike up your pants for the Urkel O's rap.
Singers: Mmm! We're Urkelized with Urkel O's!
Steve Urkel: Strawberry, banana, fruit flavors, oh my!/Just one little bite and I'll know she'll be mine.
Singers: Mmm! She'll be Urkelized with Urkel O's!
Steve Urkel: Oh, Laura. When I find you, you'll taste true love! The Urkelized part of this complete breakfast [laugh snorts].
Drew: Ugh. This is a weird episode of TV. We did it as a bonus episode because this is when we do stuff that's marginal, but it's really not that marginal. It was clearly on something they were thinking of.
Glen: I think had they just stuck with the gay metaphor it would have been far more successful—although controversial. I think trying to tie in the drugs got them maybe a couple plot points and some jokes, but overall muddied the waters because Earl could have just followed his son to a gay bar and then dragged him hunting. I don't know. Finding the baggie of broccoli was a very cute, fun, drug joke, but they could have found a cucumber or something.
Drew: I mean, something. Also, I will point out, this entire episode takes place in one night, which is a weird thing because literally, they're sitting down for dinner, and then they have the argument. He goes to the bar. He gets pulled out of it. He gets eaten. He gets vomited out, and then they finally—but that must be hours later. It's a weird timeframe.
Glen: I don't know. I like when sitcom families have meals after trials and tribulations. I think the "Phylicia Rashad Show" did that a lot.
Drew: I think I'm more a fan of the Marge-and-Homer-in-bed ending where the episode ends on them reflecting on something and liking each other.
Glen: More of a Brady Bunch thing, but—
Drew: Oh. It is. Anything else about Dinosaurs or this episode that you feel like discussing, Glen?
Glen: Let's see. Checklist—talked about Robbie being hot.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: No. I think I'm good.
Drew: Can you draw really steamy, erotic art of Robbie for the month?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. Great. Can you draw Robbie as ALF?
Glen: No.
Drew: The connection I make with this show and ALF is that both of them are shows that if you were talking to someone who is from another country or grew up homeschooled or something and you described this TV show to them, they might rightly not believe you that—they would think that you're making a stupid joke, and you're like, "No, it was on for several seasons! People in America decided this is something we needed."
Glen: Makes more sense than Jennifer Slept Here, but all right.
Drew: I want to watch that now, though.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Glen, if people want to tweet their Robbie Sinclair fan fiction to you, where should—
Glen: Fan art?
Drew: Fan art—either. You like reading.
Glen: Meh. Yeah. You can tweet at me @IWriteWrongs on Twitter—or it's "IWriteThings"—what is it? What's my fucking Twitter?
Drew: @IWriteWrongs.
Glen: Okay—with a W [laughs]. Or you can find me on Instagram @BrosQuartz—that's B-R-O-S-Quartz. Yes, it's a Steven Universe reference. I hope you all enjoyed the movie.
Drew: It's a real journey we've made between the movie almost coming out last time, and now we've seen it, and we have feelings about it.
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: Someone actually tweeted at us that they want us to review the movie for Gayest Episode Ever.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: Yeah. We don't have the time. We just talk about Dinosaurs—but it'd be nice to talk about Steven Universe one day. Also, all of our social media is in the show notes. If you ever just want to click on it, you can just get it there, too.
Glen: Then why the fuck have I been forced to spell every episode?
Drew: I don't know. Did you never look at the show notes? You didn't know that was there? Literally everywhere the podcast is, you can't not see the show notes.
Glen: I just click on the podcast, listen to a second or [inaudible 00:55:57], and turn it off.
Drew: I'll find some way to make you listen to the show, Glen Lakin, I swear. You can talk to me on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E—and this podcast is on Twitter @GayestEpisode. Gayest Episode Ever is also on Facebook. You can listen to all previous episodes of Gayest Episode Ever at gayestepisodeever.com. We're also literally anywhere you'd normally listen to a podcast, including but not limited to Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts. If you want to give us a rate and review, we'd really appreciate that. We got a nice one from a user named BluesAndBlacks, who gave us five stars, which is great! The title is "A Perfect Tool for Teaching the Children." He said, "I've had this podcast in my queue for a while now and only recently had the cognizant awareness to marathon it recently." He writes "recently" twice. "I'm going to give it another listen around both because it was entertaining but also so I can look at what shows would be good to help my niece and nephew understand the progress LGBTQ+ folks have made over the past 20 years. Thanks for doing this show, and I hope this next season is just as good."
Glen: Guess we should swear less.
Drew: He's not playing it for children. He's mining it for material to teach. He's not—children shouldn't listen to us. We're fine. As we mentioned earlier, we appreciate your support on Patreon. If you want to give us even just $1 a month, you can do so at patreon.com/gayestepisode ever. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a woman-owned, Los Angeles based podcast network. Go to TableCakes.com to see what all else we're doing. The logo for this podcast was designed by Rob Wilson. You can see his work at robwilsonwork.com. He makes art. It's really good. I told you he did the logo for Welcome to Night Vale, right?
Glen: Oh! Wow.
Drew: Yeah. Our logo designer designed the logo for Welcome to Night Vale, which makes us on par with that in one small way.
Glen: Sure—in just that way.
Drew: Glen, I have one final question for you.
Glen: Oh, good.
Drew: Why is Baby Sinclair a different color than the rest of them?
Glen: Oh, there was an episode about that. He was switched at birth.
Drew: Oh!
Glen: There's another Baby Sinclair who looks just like him but is green and very sick and has an annoying voice, and they decide to just keep the one they were given.
Drew: He's more annoying that Baby Sinclair?
Glen: He's annoying in a different way.
Drew: I don't want to think about that reality. Podcast over.
Glen: Bye forever.
["Gigolo" performed by Green Ice plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes production.