Transcript for Episode 35: Ellen Comes Out*
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Ellen episode “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” 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.
Ellen: Yeah. Hi. Hi. I'm—I'm Ellen, and I haven't had a heterosexual thought in eight days.
[audience laughs and applauds]
Lois: I told her this wasn't something to joke about, you know.
Moderator: And you are?
Lois: Oh, heartbroken. Confused. Sad.
Ellen: I think she meant your name.
[audience laughs]
["So Called Friend" performed by Texas plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we look at the LGBT-themed episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be the very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: And in case that intro didn't tip you off, today we are talking about Ellen. The show—
Glen: Finally.
Drew: Finally. The show—but not The Ellen Show that's on now where she dances a lot. The other Ellen that was on in the '90s.
Glen: Yeah. I didn't remember that in the later seasons she just had different musicians performing her theme song. It was sort of like a harbinger of things to come—of her love of music.
Drew: Oh. I actually didn't really think about that. You're right. Yeah. She's doing a lot of musical experimentation and bringing famous people out to do their thing. I know that complicated the opening with the theme song, to try to find who actually did the theme song, and it's this Scottish band called Texas that did the closing theme to Picture Perfect. I know you know Picture Perfect.
Glen: Of course I do.
Drew: Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Glen: No.
Drew: "You can say what you want, but it won't change my mind."
["Say What You Want" performed by Texas plays]
Drew: That song. That's them. That's who singth—that's who things—ugh. I forgot how to talk, so I guess the podcast is over.
Glen: Speaking of forgetting how to talk—Season 3.
Drew: Hi. Yeah. This is the third season. We're starting a third season that is going to get in a good number of episodes before end of the year and then have some more on the other side.
Glen: The year's ending?
Drew: Yeah. Pretty quickly actually.
Glen: Oh, goodbye 2017.
Drew: Um. Mm-hmm. Yep. Please don't send us back to 2018 again. I don't want to go through that again. It was very stressful. Yeah. Since we started this show people have been wanting to hear us talk about Ellen, and kind of like with Will & Grace I'm like, "I don't really know what to do," because they wanted us to do "The Puppy Episode," which is the one where she comes out. So we're doing "Ellen Comes Out…to Her Parents."
Glen: [gasps!] What a twist.
Drew: I know. It's the episode that airs exactly after "The Puppy Episode," which at least I felt was one of the most analyzed and talked about TV episodes ever, and I did not really think I had that much to add to that conversation.
Glen: No.
Drew: [laughs] You agree?
Glen: She comes out.
Drew: Yeah. She comes out, and there's famous people there.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Important, but this was a better one I thought, just because the whole idea of coming out is something that you don't just do once, you have to do constantly and—
Glen: Unless you're famous and you just do it all in one swath.
Drew: You get a magazine cover like Time magazine where you're like, "Yep."
Glen: "I'm a gay."
Drew: "I'm a gay."
Glen: Drew, you said the coming-out episode of Ellen was important. Why?
Drew: Because—the real coming-out episode or the one we're talking about?
Glen: The real coming-out episode.
Drew: Because it was the first time we had an openly gay person playing an openly gay character on a major network TV series.
Glen: Jon Lovett, I think, on Lovett or Leave It this week or last week or whenever this comes out actually made a good point about Ellen coming out in that it was an important moment of TV for people who couldn't talk about why it was important to them. For a lot of gay kids and gay teenagers who were really excited about it, they couldn't go to school and say, "Oh, my god. Ellen came out. That's so important to me," because we were all still in the closet, and so it's something that we get to talk about later in life—and it was important to people who were already out, obviously. Did you cry when Ellen got her Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama? I wept.
Drew: I did not. I have a different relationship with Ellen DeGeneres than you do.
Glen: I mean, you can have a different relationship and still value her importance, you monster.
Drew: Well, I mean, I'm going to get into my feelings toward Ellen, which don't affect her work. I think her work is important, but she is a person I have—I don't have the attitudes that a lot of gay people have towards her, certainly, and also not a lot of Midwestern moms who watch her show every day. She's the dancing lady. She dances. Anyway, I guess—yeah. What is your experience with Ellen the show, and also the big coming-out episode?
Glen: I liked and watched Ellen the show. I liked her as an actress. I liked the show in all of its forms, and I think it was early in the stream of '90s sitcoms that kept reinventing themselves between seasons. I feel like Ellen reinvented itself before The Single Guy reinvented itself and—
Drew: Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place kept doing it? Yeah.
Glen: Yeah. I don't know what it was about the '90s where everyone's like, "This show really is about nothing so let's just try other things that it may be about to try and find an audience."
Drew: I think they were all trying to figure out how to be Friends.
Glen: Right.
Drew: Which is why at one point the show had a six-member cast—three men, three women.
Glen: Yeah. Ellen was never my favorite show. I actually did enjoy the earlier seasons maybe more, and the coming out happened in the fourth season, but I feel like—at the time, it felt like she was well into the run of the show. Like, I assumed it was a Season 5 or 6 thing. That could be because people comment that "Oh, she only came out to save her show or whatever."
Drew: Yeah. I guess I've heard that argument before. Based on what I looked into, that's not true.
Glen: No, it is not.
Drew: And also, it did not save the show. But the show was not doing badly in the third season.
Glen: No.
Drew: The coming-out episode was the biggest rated, but that was like a TV event, and this one actually got pretty good ratings too—the one we're talking about.
Glen: Good. I think what was interesting or weird to me when the coming-out episode happened was that—I don't know. It felt like—this is what a lot of coming-out stories in the '90s felt like to me is people just confirming rumors. Like, everyone knew Ellen was gay, but did everyone know Ellen was gay? Did people in—I don't know—the middle of America know? And so it was just interesting when it went from being the butt of the joke like, "Oh, Ellen's a lesbian," to being a stated fact. And it's something was intended to be empowering for her. And so—I mean, the same thing with that episode of Married… with Children we did where Marcy has a gay cousin. Because for so long the joke was Amanda Bearse is a lesbian, and to have her have an episode where it was her saying, "Yes. Basically, I am. Here's me playing a lesbian," and this is actually a throughline in the episode we're going to talk about—about how joking about something and poking fun at something can be a form of understanding and empowerment.
Drew: Totally.
Glen: And so I think in that way—I know a lot of people got tired of the lesbian jokes in the show after she came out, but that is sort of—it may seem stale now, but it was important at the time to be able to tell stale jokes about being gay.
Drew: And just talk about it a lot because—I actually got tired of the coded lesbian jokes leading up to her coming out. The whole running joke of Season 4 is that the titles aren't ready—like, the opening credits aren't ready—and there's one where it's one of the other cast members that's facing the camera, and they're like, "Ellen, the show's starting. Are you going to come out or not?" And she's like, "I'm not ready yet," and you're just like, "Eh. Okay. We know what you're doing." So maybe the most oblivious people living under a rock didn't know Ellen was gay at that point, but those got old. And I feel like some of the criticism that she talked about the lesbian stuff too much is kind of unfair, but we can talk to that when we get to what happened after this season.
Glen: Did you know that Ellen was originally cast in Speed in the role that Sandra Bullock eventually played?
Drew: You are lying.
Glen: That is a true fact, unless I am misremembering it. But it would have been a very different movie, which is why she was replaced.
Drew: Maybe if Sandra Bullock had been in Mr. Wrong it would have been a hit.
Glen: Oh, maybe.
Drew: Probably not. Probably not one—probably not a hit. So my relationship with Ellen is weird. I admit that who she is and what she's done is important, but historically, my family does not like Ellen—for non-homophobic reasons, I should add. My mom would not watch the show because she found Ellen to be very annoying, which she is—Ellen Morgan, the character—because she has a nervous energy that kind of makes me uncomfortable to watch her. Less so in this episode because she's a lot calmer, and that might have been—
Glen: Well she has an agenda in this episode.
Drew: Right, and she doesn't have quite as much reason to be so fidgety—I guess she kind of does, but I didn't get that horrible nervous energy here. My grandma really didn't like Ellen, and I was like, "Oh no. Why?" And it was just because, like, "She's always dancing. It's annoying." I was like, "That's fair, Grandma. That's a good reason to dislike Ellen." I particularly don't like Ellen because—
Glen: Did you grow up in the Flashdance town?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: Not Flash—did you grow up in the Footloose town?
Drew: No. I grew up in the Flashdance town. You were right the first time.
Glen: You will edit out the—[laughter].
Drew: No. I grew up—Jennifer Beals was my babysitter. I don't like Ellen because she did something that was combative and nasty to a newspaper I worked for, and when she—I don't really—I mean, I didn't talk to the people who work at the paper about this, so I'll just say in broad strokes that it was unnecessary and mean. And it confirmed a lot of rumors I had heard before I even moved to Los Angeles, that Ellen was maybe not as nice as her onscreen personality indicated. I actually kind of think that's okay. Johnny Carson was a huge jerk off camera, so I guess the female version of Johnny Carson should also be allowed to be a huge jerk off camera. If we let him do it, we should let her do it too. She doesn't have to be nice just because her onscreen persona is Mrs. Nice Lady. But she's combative and—what's the word when you like to sue people? What is it?
Glen: Litigious.
Drew: Litigious. Litigious is the word. Thank you. Conversely, I will also say that one time I was standing outside a food truck and Jane Lynch who is also a tall, blonde, successful, lesbian comedian/funny lady was there, and she was literally just narrating the menu to herself and being like, "Waffle fries. Do I want those?" and engaged—she was basically crowdsourcing her meal options with anyone who was standing right by there. And I'm like—I like her better.
Glen: Ellen, if you would like to hire me and treat me like shit, I am open to it.
Drew: She can throw coffee in your eyes or something?
Glen: That's fine.
Drew: I made that up. I never heard that she did that. I do wonder—so we work in the industry, and I think most people in Los Angeles would be aware of some perceptions certain people have of this particular person, and I wonder if people living in Nebraska are even aware that there's this other dimension to her personality. I don't know.
Glen: And should it matter?
Drew: It shouldn't matter. I mean, I'm talking about it, so clearly I think it does matter. I feel like it's weird to hold—I feel like there's more of an expectation that a woman should—a female celebrity should be nicer than a male celebrity because women in general are expected to be nicer. So in one way, if she doesn't give a fuck, she doesn't have to give a fuck—just go be a rich lady. But I do suspect that maybe—remember a few months ago when Kevin Hart went on her show to talk about how he thought it was unfair that people accused him of being homophobic?
Glen: Yeah. That wasn't a good look.
Drew: No. Yeah. That look for her was wealthy lady and person who was maybe also scared of being accused of saying the wrong thing and getting in trouble, and she was speaking as a comedian who wants to make sure she doesn't fall out of favor. So that was a weird look. But we're going to focus on the good parts of Ellen, which was the show. When the show was on I had no objection to her, and she did do some really important stuff. As you mentioned, Ellen reinvented herself several times over the run of the show. Five seasons and 109 episodes on ABC from March 29, 1994, and then lending about a year after "The Puppy Episode" on July 22, 1998, which means that they burned off those episodes in the summer. The first stage is gender-flip Seinfeld because it was a product of the whole "Every Comedian Gets a Sitcom" era. So basically, she's the Jerry, and she has two female friends, and then Arye Gross is the Elaine, essentially. And it was called These Friends of Mine, which even Ellen herself said in an interview that that title sucked. They switched it to Ellen—that's a terrible title. But then after they dropped the "friends" from the title, they actually became friends. So it's Ellen, Arye Gross, and then Joely Fisher plays Paige who's the spunky friend. She's great by the way. I like her.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Do most people know she's Carrie Fisher's half-sister?
Glen: I would think so.
Drew: And then Jeremy Piven playing Spence.
Glen: What season did he come in, two or three?
Drew: I think the third season. I believe the third season. I could be wrong. It's kind of weird that him and Arye Gross overlap for a second because there's not that much to differentiate them other than Arye Gross is kid of a quasi-love interest for Ellen, and Spence is her cousin and therefore they can't be love interests for each other because that would be a weird season. But it's also weird to see Jeremy Piven on screen and be like, "I'm not actively offended by you. You're not scaring me like you did on Entourage."
Glen: There was an episode where he's in the bathtub, and it gave me feelings.
Drew: Oh. I was wondering what his body looked like. Because you can't—
Glen: Good.
Drew: In this episode you can't tell because all of his shirts are gigantic. It was like that fake vintage, button-down thing, and everything's just hanging off him. You don't get a really good idea for what his body looks like. And then the cast is rounded out by Clea Louis who plays Audrey—who I love because she has a weird Carol Kane energy.
Glen: Carol Kane by way of Phoebe.
Drew: Yeah. That's perfect. Carol Kane actually plays her mom—I think in the season that we're talking about right now. And she is perky, but I feel her perkiness is masking a deep inner sadness.
Glen: I feel like she was introduced to the show as a love interest for Arye.
Drew: She might have been in the—she actually appears in the first season, which means she outlasted everyone else on the show—and she's dour and depressing. Then they bring her back, and she has divorced her husband and has turned into a new person, and she's pink and perky, but I think she has a deep inner sadness still. I think she's funny. I enjoy her. And then last one is Joe, the barista, played by David Anthony Higgins who's just a rude guy who serves no purpose, but they just make him part of the group for no reason, basically.
Glen: The only line I remember from any episode of Ellen is him calling someone "Baldy Beardo."
Drew: Did that stick with you?
Glen: Yes, and now I am Baldy Beardo.
Drew: How do you feel about being Baldy Beardo?
Glen: It's—it's fine.
Drew: It's an active look now. It's a whole thing.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Arye Gross got kicked off the show halfway through third season, and then Ellen comes out and it becomes the lesbian show where most of the plotlines are about Ellen's romantic life or gay culture or something, and people on both sides objected to it. People who didn't like that she came out thought it spoiled the show, and people like Chaz Bono—who appears in this episode—later would say that he though the skewed too lesbiany which is kind of a shitty thing to say because I feel like if she'd gone the other way people would have just criticized her for coming out and not doing enough with it. I don't really see how they could have—maybe there's a perfect line they could have treaded, but most people were not going to be happy with it.
Glen: There's no perfect line.
Drew: No. She does get in a relationship with Lisa Darr who I like, and at least they gave her a long-term love interest that seemed like she worked with her, so good for that.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Do you remember the hour-long special that was Ellen: A Hollywood Tribute?
Glen: No.
Drew: So it airs almost towards the end of the last season of the show, and it's a fake mockumentary about the history of Ellen. The conceit is that it has existed for decades. It goes back to the black and white era.
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: And it's actually kind of well done. They get a lot of celebrities to talk about their experiences with the decade-spanning phenomenon that is Ellen, and they talk about the coming-out episode and they talk about the scene where she's with Laura Dern in the airport and she says—the exact line is, "I'm 35 years old, and I'm afraid to say the word. I'm gay." And then they cut back to her and she's like, "Yeah, that was a really important thing to do on TV because it had never happened before that we had a woman who was the lead on a major network sitcom who revealed her actual age." And then off camera you hear someone ask, "Well what about the gay thing?" and she's like, "Oh the gay thing? That's just—the network made it a big deal. They are gay crazy there." And I think they already knew they were getting canceled at that point, and that is actually fairly cutting commentary coming from someone who had a brand as being a nice, funny, nervous lady. That's pretty fucking good.
Glen: It's a good joke.
Drew: Yeah. But we are not there. This episode is one week after "The Puppy Episode," two weeks after the "Yep, I'm Gay" cover of Time magazine. Ellen and Ann Heche are still a couple, and they're—we're about to learn so many fascinating things about Ann Heche.
Glen: Wait was Ellen 35 when she came out or was her character 35?
Drew: I don't know. I feel like she was probably older than—I can look it up if you want.
Glen: I just want to know if I should feel bad about my age and my status—like when I discovered yesterday that Kelsey Grammer was 29 when he started playing the role of Frasier Crane and I had a minor stroke.
Drew: She was born in 1958 so that means that she was older than 35 when that episode recorded, but not that much. And I mean, you're ahead of Ellen Morgan the character because she was 35 and just realizing, "Oh. I'm fucking gay. All right."
Glen: Yeah, but she owned a bookstore.
Drew: She didn't own the bookstore. She quickly had—
Glen: Well, she had just sold it.
Drew: Yeah. This episode, titled "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah"—which seems like a very dated reference that they could have taken another pass on, but whatever—was watched by 18 million viewers, which is more than watched every other episode of that season except for "The Puppy Episode." "The Puppy Episode" was 36 million viewers, which is huge.
Glen: I know I sent you the ratings for this year's fall premiers, and the highest rated show Grey's Anatomy got 1.8. Like, everything's crazy. No one watches anything anymore.
Drew: Because we're not forced to.
Glen: Right. Too much choice.
Drew: Yeah. Now I'm happy about it. This was written by Jan Nash. It is her first ever writing credit, though she'd go on to executive produce both Rizzoli & Isles and currently Black Lightning. Based on what I found online it's possible she was married to a woman, so if that is the case, go Jan. It was directed by Gil Junger who directed a ton of episodes in the fourth and fifth seasons of the show, including "The Puppy Episode" for which he was nominated for an Emmy, and he also directed 10 Things I Hate About You.
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: I know. I think he's a relative of Paul Junger-Witt who was married to Susan Harris and they were co-executive producers of Golden Girls, but it's possible they are both named Junger and were sitcom veterans—I don't know. That's all the background I have for this. Is there any—anything else you need to unpack before we get into this?
Glen: No.
Drew: So I'll remind people that in "The Puppy Episode" Ellen comes out at the airport, and then she tells her friends, and that's basically the end of the episode. So this takes place like the day after where she is newly gay and enjoying herself, and the opening scene is the bookstore where the gang is hanging out—not like Central Perk at all because it's a different place. They just all like coffee, I guess.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. I think it's funny that she owned a bookstore because people in Los Angeles don't read.
Glen: But they buy a lot of books. I have a lot of books.
Drew: You're the exception. You're the only one. You're keeping the book industry alive.
Glen: Oh. Well. We actually open on Joe eating, taking a bit of a biscuit and spitting it back into the biscuit container.
Drew: Because he's awful.
Glen: Yeah. I don't have a reach around for that. It's just gross.
Drew: I mean, biscotti is really gross. I get it. But you should know not to eat it. Ellen is explaining to the gang her plan for coming out to her parents.
Ellen: We walk in, we sit down. Ashan, the flamboyant waiter who's been waiting on us for years, will come over, take our drink orders. My dad's going to order a Tsingtao, and my mom's going to order a white wine spritzer. And then I'm going to look them right in the eye, and I'm going to say, "Mom, Dad— Ashan is gay." And then—and that will get the dialogue going.
[audience laughs]
Drew: People are not supportive of this plan necessarily, and Paige is interestingly not supportive of it because she compares it to trying on shoes.
Paige: Ellen, don't you think that it's maybe too soon? You know when you go shopping for shoes—you go in the store, you try them on, you kind of walk around in them for a little while and make sure they really—fit.
Ellen: Uh-huh. Well, I bought the shoes. They fit fine. I've thrown out the box. I've got it all planned out.
[audience laughs]
Drew: The interesting thing about that plot is that—I think they resolve this in the last episode of the season. It takes her a while to be okay with it. She's the last one to feel like she's okay with Ellen being a lesbian, which is sort of surprising because there's nothing about her that's conservative at all, but it is not an unrealistic thing to have happen when sometimes a very well-meaning, close friend has a hard time with someone coming out.
Glen: Yeah. There's not really a B-plot to this episode, but it would be Paige. She gets a moment in a scene later where she's just sick of everyone paying attention to Ellen.
Drew: Which almost seems like metacommentary, but they couldn't have known that because they hadn't gotten that far down the line yet. But it is very on point for that.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Joely Fisher is a homophobe. That is established. Is there anything else in the opening scene?
Glen: I mean—Joely Fisher is not a homophobe [laughs].
Drew: She is [laughs]. She really is.
Glen: That is not established.
Drew: It's a documentary. That's why it's called Ellen.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. All I have written about this scene otherwise is "Jeremy Piven—his shirts are so big."
Glen: It's the '90s.
Drew: I'm glad we got past that. They're basically dressing him like Chandler.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. Okay. So Joan Jett and the Black Hearts play the opening theme song, and then we're in the Chinese restaurant right away. I love this scene so much. I think this is a great scene of TV. This makes me very happy.
Glen: Oh it is. It's perfect. It has misunderstanding. It has plans going awry.
Drew: It has actual drama, and then the dramas segue into jokes perfectly the way a sitcom should do. And I have to say—the scene is just Ellen sitting at the table with her parents who are also Season 1 holdovers, and I think they are very good in their roles, and they are perfectly cast as Ellen's parents. They actually look like they could be her mother and father, and separately they have Ellen's mannerisms—like, a lot of the nervousness is in the mom and a lot of the dopiness is in the dad, and it just makes perfect sense. They are played by Steven Gilborn is the dad, and the mom is Alice Hirson. They are sitcom veterans who have been in almost everything. The dad actually passed away. The mom is still with us.
Glen: Oh—hmm—but yay. Yeah, this scene's great. It was one of the first times I was tempted to just be [like "Cut it," in the 00:22:47] entire scene. And it's interesting because every dramatic beat is what you'd expect, and all the jokes that they make from those dramatic beats are pretty much what you'd expect, but it's done so flawlessly that it doesn't come off as cliché.
Drew: No.
Glen: By today's standards yeah, sure—maybe, you could say. But also, the nervous energy in the scene and in the performances are very uniquely Ellen, so it never feels perfunctory. It feels very organic to the show.
Drew: Right. Yes. Everyone's reactions seem completely understandable. I understand their motivations. And yeah—it's very Ellen in that I don't think this scene could exist on any other show, like, you have to have this actress be the lead of it. Yeah. I didn't think it was clichéd at all, and having mixed feelings about Ellen as an entity, going back and watching this I was like, "I hope it doesn't suck," and I was surprised how much I actually—I liked the entire episode. But this scene in particular—fuck, it's so good.
Glen: Yeah. And it doesn't drag, but it also doesn't feel rushed. They leave room for the jokes. They leave room for the emotional reactions. And where it needs to slow down for the most earnest beats, it does so. Most of my notes from this episode were just writing down lines from this scene that were good.
Drew: Yeah. Really, we could have just played the whole scene but—we will interrupt it because that's out job. Before Ellen gets there, the mom and dad are thinking that she's just been glowing lately and she probably has some good news, and they think that she's finally found Mr. Right, which I assume has to be a reference to Mr. Wrong because Ellen apparently had a good sense of humor about how it was a catastrophe. And it is weird to think that that came out the February before this scene was taking place. It's weird to think of her career going from "Ellen DeGeneres: New Rom-Com Queen?" to "Well, she's a lesbian now."
Glen: Yeah. I mean, I don't think they were that self-aware. I don't think that joke was poking fun of the movie. I think the mom just very focused on her daughter finding Mr. Right.
Drew: Well it wasn't a laugh beat, but I feel if Ellen had been very sensitive about that being a box office bomb that is something they would have edited out of the scene.
Glen: Fair.
Drew: So it had to at least occur to her. In the first scene before the credits, Ellen says that "I know exactly how this is going to happen." She predicts everything, down to what her parents are going to drink—a Tsingtao and a white wine spritzer—so when she arrives and says "Hi," and the waiter shows up who is not Ashan, she tries to order that, and they're like, "No, no. Actually, that's not what we're going to order"— which is a little joke but a nice way of foreshadowing. It's like, you think you know these people very well, but you actually can't predict exactly how they're going to react.
Ellen: Hey! Sorry I'm late.
Lois: Oh, there she is. Hi, honey.
Ellen: Hey.
The Waiter: Ah. Mr. Morgan, out for an evening with your two daughters?
Harold: [laughs] Oh, Stan. I know it's coming every time and it still makes me laugh.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Where's Ashan?
The Waiter: Out on vacation.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Vacation? Well, he's a waiter. He can't afford to go far. Where'd he go?
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Is he [inaudible 00:25:50]? Well, you know, we'll just order. We'll just order drinks. Dad's going to have the Tsingtao and my mom's going to have a white wine spritzer.
Lois: No.
Harold: Oh, honey. I'm just going to have a glass of water.
Lois: Yeah, and I'll have the iced tea. You know, honey, I'm getting my new driver's license tomorrow and I don't want my eyes to look puffy.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: I'll have a white wine spritzer. Someone should drink.
[audience laughs]
Glen: It's also just a good dramatic thing of putting Ellen off her sure footing. Right away her plans go out the window.
Drew: No one really wants to watch self-confident Ellen. We want to see her put off track. The waiter who is not Ashan is played by James Hong, who probably easily has the best filmography of anyone in this episode. His appearances include Chinatown, Airplane, and Big Trouble in Little China where he plays the bad guy.
Glen: Yeah. Yep. He lived above my friend for a bit.
Drew: In L.A.?
Glen: Or was his neighbor. Yeah.
Drew: Still alive by the way. Still acting at 90. This is according to his official website, but I'm not going to argue with it—he says that he is one of the most prolific actors ever. I'm like, "He probably is. He has almost 400 credits because he's been working his entire life."
Glen: Yeah. And if you've seen Big Trouble in Little China you know that he's not going to die. He's very—he's going to live to be very, very old.
Drew: Because it's a documentary. Yeah.
Glen: But Kim Cattrall was half-Chinese in that movie?
Drew: I think so. That's the whole thing, it's that it's remarkable that she has green eyes, but it's not remarkable if a woman has green eyes and she's Caucasian. Right?
Glen: Right.
Drew: Yeah. Okay. Ellen tries to gauge her parents' opinion of gay people.
Ellen: What do you think about gay people?
Harold: In the military?
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, in the military.
Harold: What branch?
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Doesn't matter. Army, Navy, Air Force—
Harold: No, no, no. Honey, you have to be specific. I mean, we're talking apples and oranges here.
[audience and characters laugh]
Lois: You know, honey, if this dinner was to talk about current events I didn't get a chance to read the paper this morning.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And then they talk about Tootsie. He did not understand Tootsie at all.
Glen: No.
Ellen: So I just want to know, I mean, what do you think of gay people? [laughs nervously]
Harold: Well, I loved Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.
[audience laughs]
Lois: [laughs] No, Harold. He wasn't gay. He just dressed like a woman to get acting work.
Harold: Really? God, where was I?
[audience laughs]
Harold: But I tell you when he took that make up off, I really missed Dorothy. Hey, hey—do you know who looks good in a dress? Nathan Lane.
[audience laughs]
Harold: Gene Hackman—
Drew: Defends Nathan Lane that he looks good in a dress. Gene Hackman, no. And it took me a second. I'm like—
Glen: Birdcage.
Drew: Gene—Gene Hackman was in Birdcage. And then I remembered Calista Flockhart is also in The Birdcage.
Glen: Yep. Playing a 16-year-old, or something like that.
Drew: No. She's engaged. She's young, but she's going to marry the son.
Glen: Oh, right. Right. Oh, 18, I guess.
Drew: Dan Futterman. Are you familiar with him?
Glen: Yes, I am. Of course I am! I was a gay in the '90s. I'm very familiar with Dan Futterman. And yes, I know, he's a prolific, successful screenwriter now.
Drew: I did not know that. This was news to me.
Glen: He has too much.
Drew: He does have too much. He wrote Foxcatcher that creepy Steve Carell movie that no one wanted to see but got nominated for stuff and then Capote, which was really good.
Glen: Good for him. Good for this handsome man.
Drew: And he got to wear ladies' clothes with Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest and Calista Flockhart.
Glen: He didn't—he doesn't dress in drag at the end.
Drew: He doesn't? Is it just Gene Hackman's family that has to dance out of there?
Glen: Calista Flockhart—and yeah. I think, yeah, she dresses up a bit and—
Drew: They're all supposed to look like drag queens?
Glen: Yeah. I think Dan Futterman maybe put on a top hat or something.
Drew: Is Christine Baranski also in that scene, or no?
Glen: I believe she is also in that scene.
Drew: Why does she come back at the end?
Glen: Because there was a mix-up, and when they told her not to come she then called and Dan Futterman's character says, "No, no that was a mistake. Please do come because—"
Drew: To meet my girlfriend's family?
Glen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they thought that—he knew it would piss off Nathan Lane's character. Anyway that movie's perfect. I love that movie.
Drew: This has been Drew and Glen recapping another thing very briefly. Also, I'm sorry if we just spoiled The Birdcage for you [laughs]. You probably should have seen it by now.
Glen: Yeah. This didn't really spoil it.
Drew: There's—
Glen: It all works out in this comedy [laughs].
Drew: There are people—yourself included—who would be like, "I didn't even know the ending. Now I'm sad I know the ending."
Glen: Fine. Yeah. Gene Hackman dresses up in drag great.
Drew: [laughs] Yeah. That's the surprising ending of the movie. She tries to ask her parents what they would do if [??] were gay.
Lois: Ellen didn't get us here to talk about men in drag, did you dear?
[audience and characters laugh]
Ellen: No, but I do want to just find out what you think about gay people. I mean, somebody here's got to be gay.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Just—for the sake of argument, let's just say it's—me.
[Lois and Harold laugh]
Lois: Oh, how silly.
Ellen: Okay. Let's try something else. Let's—
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Let's say [??] is your child. What do you think of that?
Harold: Well I wouldn't have named him [??].
[audience and characters laugh]
Ellen: Yeah. But he's your child so—
Lois: Well—no, 50 years old. I would have had to have him when I was 10.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Right. But still, he's your child and he's gay. What would you think if your child was gay?
Harold: Our child is not gay [laughs].
Lois: [stammers] Yeah.
Ellen: Yes she is.
Glen: It was a very good moment, I thought.
Drew: Because they let it sit there for a second, and they don't turn it into a laugh. They let the parents seem—not appalled necessarily, but very surprised by this information. But then the waiter comes in.
Parents: What?
Ellen: I'm gay.
Harold: Oh, here's your order.
Lois: Oh, hi there! Well, look at this! There we go. Oh, it's wonderful.
The Waiter: Are you ready to order?
Lois: Well, yes. Of course we are.
Harold: Oh! Well, you just try and stop us. I think for starters we will have that Tsingtao and the white wine spritzer.
Lois: And we'll have the moo shu pork and—oh, some steamed vegetables and—oh! And two orders of pot stickers. Okay?
Harold: Oh, I love those pot stickers! Ellie—Ellie, is that going to be enough vegetables for you?
Ellen: That's fine.
Harold: Yeah. And rice. Lots and lots of rice.
The Waiter: Ha ha, Mr. Morgan,you love that rice.
[audience laughs]
Harold: Oh, my god.
The Waiter: You forgot the wonton soup tonight.
Harold: I did forget, Lois, Ellie. Yes. Okay, we'll have soup. Soups all around.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Well. Let's see. Where were we? I was late. [??] is on vacation. Tootsie. Uh, Gene Hackman—oh! That's right. I'm gay.
[audience laughs]
Drew: It's very well-acted by everyone, especially the dad, but it is also—it's not even that much of a reach around, but it's like how parents always want to put a good face out for the world even if inside they're falling apart and dying.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Like that Mary Tyler Moore movie.
Glen: "Falling Apart and Dying"?
Drew: Ordinary People.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Like that. That's everyone's parents.
Glen: Yeah. "Well, don't make a scene."
Drew: [laughs] I mean, exactly.
Glen: They go into the usual steps of coming out in the '90s, like, "Is it anything we did?"
Lois: Honey, this is nonsense. I mean—you know, you just sold the bookstore, and you're moving into a new house, and it's just a very stressful time for you.
Ellen: No. It's not about stress.
Lois: Honey, you know, just because you haven't found the right man doesn't mean you're gay. I mean you're just very choosy and there's nothing wrong with being choosy.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: I'm not attracted to any men.
Lois: No, that's too choosy.
[audience laughs]
Harold: Well, how long have you known?
Ellen: I don't know.
Harold: Well, you weren't gay yesterday.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Actually, yes I was.
[audience laughs]
Lois: Oh, my god. It's the separation. Is—it's the separation isn't it?
Ellen: No, it was not the separation.
Lois: Then did I push you too hard to wear dresses?
Ellen: Yes! Yes, but that's not why I'm gay.
[audience laughs]
Harold: Was I too macho? It's the damn Coast Guard in me.
[audience laughs]
Lois: I don't understand. You've always liked boys.
Ellen: I still do like boys. I just don't like them the way other women like them.
Lois: Well honey, then if you still like men, don't give up so easily. Just—you know, you should talk to someone.
Ellen: I have talked to someone.
Harold: Well, maybe you should talk to somebody else.
Glen: One of the funnier lines to me was when Ellen says—
Lois: Well [laughs nervously]. This just—you know, it isn't what we expected at dinner tonight [laughs].
Ellen: I know it's not. I know. But please, understand that for the first time I am really, really happy.
Harold: Oh. So now you're saying you had a lousy childhood.
[audience laughs]
Harold: Your brother Stevie had exactly the same childhood, and he turned out perfectly normal.
Ellen: I am normal Dad.
Harold: I'm sorry, Ellie. I don't know what I'm saying.
Ellen: You know, you always wanted me to be open and honest with you.
Lois: Oh. Oh no, honey. That's what you wanted.
[audience laughs and applauds]
Lois: We were always very happy keeping our feelings bottled up.
[audience laughs]
Drew: So I always thought the mom, being kind of a wimp—like, she's nice and quiet. But she has an edge to her, and that is also something I think a lot of people's moms would think and not say.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: I think that's how my parents basically are. But I'm glad they gave her that line. It's a really funny line. She delivers it perfectly. Yeah. And come on, Gen-Xers, stop talking about your fucking feelings.
Glen: Exactly. And not to be all current eventsy, but there is a school of thought that not sharing your feelings is a form of strength whereas later generations will say, "No. Being open and honest is strong and talking things out is good. Blah, blah, blah."
Drew: Mm-hmm. I agree. She said, "I thought you already knew."
Ellen: And I guess somehow, I thought that maybe you already knew.
Harold: Already knew? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's right Ellie we have known all along, and then we're just pretending here to feel shocked and upset and disappointed—
Drew: They have not been watching the show. They haven't seen all the coded clues. They say, "Are you seeing anyone?" She's like, "No," and then they're like, "Can you even be gay by yourself?" which is weirdly something that does get asked a lot. I can't actually wrap my head around how a straight person would—would think that.
Glen: Which then of course gets into the school of thought like, well, no kids should have sexual orientation or gender before puberty.
Drew: I mean, it would be easier for the kids that end up not going with the flow, I guess.
Glen: As a child I got around that by playing the dog whenever kids wanted to play house.
Drew: Oh, that was smart of you. Also, the dog would have a lot more fun to do.
Glen: Yeah. I was like the goose in the Goose Game. I just got to cause chaos.
Drew: We're so of the moment—Goose Game. Also, "Goose Game" sounds like a double entendre for something, but I guess it's not. Do people still know of that verb still?
Glen: Goosing?
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: I don't think so. I think only creepy, old, straight men do that.
Drew: Do we have that verb because a goose will run up to you and poke you in the butt?
Glen: Yeah. Probably.
Drew: Okay. Sorry about that. So the dad explodes, and he's like—
Harold: Well what does that mean? I mean, can you be gay by yourself?
[audience laughs]
Ellen: Yes.
Harold: Okay. Then I'm gay. I'm sorry, Ellen does that shock you? I thought you knew all along.
Lois: Don't worry dear. He's not really gay.
[audience laughs]
Drew: End of scene. It's really good!
Glen: Commercial break. Should we also take a commercial break?
Drew: That's a great idea, Glen.
[Ellen's intro theme music plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]
[An old promo spot for Wednesday Night Primetime on ABC plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes their Patreon]
[Ellen's intro music plays]
Drew: Glen, are we back?
Glen: I have no idea. You're the one recording this.
Drew: You can just say we're back.
Glen: We're back.
Drew: Yay. So it's the next day and everyone's at the bookstore wondering how Ellen's conversation with her parents went, which reminded me that it's 1997. No one has phones. There is no text messaging. That close group of friends would know everything in 2019. You would immediately tell everyone and also post on Facebook about it and—yeah.
Glen: I also feel like in today's TV culture, we wouldn't need to have that sort of line of exposition coming back from commercial break where everyone is letting you know what just happened or if you're just tuning in.
Drew: Yeah. Very 1997.
Glen: I've already mentioned my favorite part of this scene which is—
Drew: Paige?
Glen: Paige saying it's unfair that Ellen's getting all the attention for being gay.
Spence: Coming out to your parents is a life-changing experience. It's probably the biggest thing that ever happened—
Paige: Excuse me. Hi. I'm sorry, but ever since Ellen decided she was gay that is all we ever talk about. I have things going on in my life too, all right?
Spence: Of course you do. Of course you do, honey. We know that. Go ahead. What's going on?
Paige: Really?
Spence: Yeah.
Paige: Okay. Well—all right. I was in this huge meeting yesterday and who walks in but William Hurt and I'm sitting there and I'm in this fabulous suit, and he turns right to me and he says that he wants to—
Audrey: Ellen! Ellen, how'd it go last night?
Spence: Yeah. What happened?
Drew: And then she gets cut off by Audrey being like, "Ellen!" and I like her voice so much. It is a very irritating voice, but she knows what she's doing. Paige is completely shut down, and no one asked what her story was. Ellen admits it did not go well and it turns out Audrey's the only one who reads the—
Glen: "Lesbian News"?
Drew: She basically directs Ellen towards PFLAG which I looked up still is a thing. I thought maybe that was something that didn't exist in that form anymore. Parents and friends and family of lesbians and gays is completely still an organization in many countries, but also the United States.
Glen: Good.
Drew: Also, it's weird watching this episode now. When they talk about the Gay and Lesbian Center, I'm like, "I know where—I've been there." That's like an actual real building. I know where she went.
Glen: You should put a link to PFLAG in the show notes.
Drew: I should! And also the Gay and Lesbian Center.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So the next scene—Morgan Family basement where a dejected Mr. Morgan is dealing with bad emotions the same way Reverend Lovejoy deals with bad emotions on The Simpsons, which is a toy train set, which makes sense. That is a very straight, patriarch thing to do I guess.
Glen: They should upgrade to LEGO trains.
Drew: You can write a letter to that. I mean, they would be a lot more fun. Actually, the idea of a LEGO train set actually sounds like a lot of fun to me. Toy train sets seem very limiting. I never really saw the appeal of them. You just put everything where it is, and then it's there, and the train goes in a circle.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Right. What else do you do?
Glen: I think it's a collector thing? You can also paint them. You shop around for them. It's a—it's a collecting thing. It's a hobby. I don't know. A lot of hobbies don't make sense—ships and bottles.
Drew: Doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. It really doesn't make sense. Dad is mopey, and Ellen is checking in on him, and she's like, "What's that?" and he's like, "Well, that's your house, and I guess you don't need these anymore," and takes out the husband and child figurines out of her house and she tries to give them to the old lady who runs—
Glen: The diner or the flower shop or whatever?
Drew: Something like that. And she points out that just because she's gay doesn't mean she can't have a family.
Harold: [tearfully] It's your new house, and this is your family, and I guess we don't need them anymore.
Ellen: Dad, just because I'm gay doesn't mean that I can't have a family. I mean, I don't—I don't need him.
[audience laughs and applauds]
Ellen: You know what? We could put him with Edna over here. She's been a widow seven years, now. She's ready to love again. Don't you think?
[audience laughs]
Drew: I always get tripped up on that one because when gay people come out, the idea of not having a family is something that looms large in the minds of their parents. I don't think it looms as largely when a straight couple just chooses not to have kids. I really don't know what—
Glen: Oh, but it does.
Drew: Does it?
Glen: Yes. Straight couples very much often get asked, "Well when are you having kids? When are you having kids? Why aren't you having kids? It's very selfish not to have kids."
Drew: Why is it selfish not to have kids?
Glen: We can get into the statistical reasons why people should have kids, but we're not going to.
Drew: I actually have some statistics coming up though.
Glen: Oh, good. I do think that—I would say we're five years into a growing understanding that our generation and millennials after us where it is perfectly acceptable we are not having kids mainly because economically it makes zero sense. And also, as climate change and climate disaster becomes a greater understanding, a lot of people being like, "Well, maybe I will not bring a child into this world."
Drew: And also, if people have fewer kids, those disasters will become sort of more navigable if there are just fewer people having to deal with the consequences of us blowing up the planet basically.
Glen: Yeah. Also, especially in places—I mean, climate change is going to be terrible for us, but it will be worse for other places, and they're going to need to go somewhere, and if our population is down we will have—
Drew: More room and more food theoretically to accommodate people that need to go somewhere.
Glen: Welcome to our climate change podcast.
Drew: That is something often gets told like, "Oh, gay couples can still have kids," even though I know maybe of two that have children, and I wanted to look up "How often do gay couples/same-sex couples have children?" According to a 2018 UCLA study there were more than 700,00 cohabitating same-sex couples in the United States in 2016, including 346,000 male same-sex couples and 359,000 female same-sex couples. Of those 114,000 were raising children. So of the 360,000-female same-sex couples 86,000 have kids. Of the 350,000-male same-sex couples only 28,000. Most gay couples actually don't have kids, which I guess makes sense. I was just wondering if maybe I work in this stupid town and I don't know people that have time to have families, but most gay couples do not do that, and of the ones who do, most of them are women. Men almost never do that.
Glen: My view of childrearing or having children is—I don't know. I have a career and hobbies, and I put a lot of passion into that, and I feel like I'd be robbing a child of my full attention and creative impulses.
Drew: And you might resent the kid too.
Glen: Oh, my goodness. Yes.
Drew: I literally have never felt the desire to have children, even when I was a child. I didn't like being around children. I don't understand children, and it has never even ticked towards possible for me.
Glen: Another ex also said that if we had kids he would want a closet in the house that we told him to never go into, and the only point of the closet would be to have sort of a monster mannequin in it so that if the kid ever opened the closet they would learn a terrible, terrible lesson.
Drew: That's a great idea, oh my god. If you're listening, people who have children, please do this.
Glen: All closet space is too precious. Anyone who has dated me knows there will not be a spare closet in the house.
Drew: Yes. We have LEGO boxes in many places.
Glen: Only three places.
Drew: Three rooms. Three different rooms have LEGO boxes.
Glen: Three different buildings have LEGO boxes.
Drew: Uh-huh. Ellen confronts her dad.
Ellen: You know what, Dad? Real life is not Morganville. You know, in real life, when a tree falls down you can't just glue it back, and when your daughter tells you that she's gay you can't just put her on the first train out of town because—you know why Dad? The train doesn't go out of town. The train just goes around and around in circles.
[audience laughs]
Drew: It is a well-written, deeply felt line where she's rebuking her dad about how his expectations are not realistic and what he's doing isn't fair, and then it's segues nicely into the joke again about you can't just put your daughter on a train and send her out of town because the track is circular [laughs]. It just keeps coming back around—which is meaningful, which is very symbolic, but—yeah. It's really good. Made me very happy. Was there anything else in the train scene?
Harold: Ellie, I'm really trying here—I don't know. I mean, I just don't feel comfortable. I don't know any gay people.
Ellen: Yes, you do. You know me.
Glen: Okay. Again, this episode just hits all the necessary beats that you would hope to have in an episode about coming out to your parents.
Drew: And I'm so glad I picked this one because—it's been a while since I've seen the other one. But her big coming out scene is unrealistic in the airport, and that's just—it's made to be a TV moment rather than an actual experience, and the whole lesbian dream sequence is very long. The stuff in this—it's very relatable, and it's weird to go back and watch this as a gay adult and be like, "Oh. I had no idea that the stuff she was going through would be stuff that I would also go through." Very well represented. So the next scene—we're at the meeting. We're at the Gay and Lesbian Center for the meeting for PFLAG but not called PFLAG. Ellen's mom comes in alone and says that her father actually is not going to be coming, and she points to this woman in a yellow dress.
Lois: Is that one of those dipstick lesbians?
[audience laughs]
Ellen: I believe it's called "lipstick lesbian."
[audience laughs]
Ellen: I would be a chapstick lesbian.
Drew: Which I remember to this day. I have not heard the term "lipstick lesbian" in years, and I'm like, "Oh, shit. We maybe got to the point where we realize that lesbians can look like anything and you don't have to classify them into—"
Glen: Beautiful or not beautiful?
Drew: Basically, yeah.
Glen: Good for us, I guess.
Drew: Good for lesbians. We can't take credit for that.
Glen: Can't we?
Drew: [laughs] We probably will.
Glen: I mean, I'm pretty sure some white, gay man somewhere is taking credit for the progress that the lesbian representation on TV has made.
Drew: He probably has a podcast about it [laughs]. When she said "dipstick lesbian," it made me think of this guy I knew before I lived in Los Angeles who was almost exclusively friends with lesbians. I would actually describe most of his friends as "dipstick lesbians" [laughs]. Also—good pan in [laughs].
Glen: So in this scene—
Drew: Yeah? Keep going.
Glen: That's all. It's a good scene. All the scenes have been good. I think that her mother plays the right balance of sort of saying hurtful things from the place of being hurt herself but giving the character a comfortable buffer to grow into quickly without it being unrealistic. Her mom makes a lot of progress in this scene and in this episode, but it doesn't necessarily feel rushed.
Drew: No, it doesn't. It feels very natural. We're talking about—nothing's contrived. And I guess, when you're talking about sitcoms, it's nice when something doesn't feel like it's happening just because it needs to happen.
Glen: I would say that some of the stuff is contrived, but it's earned. Again, all these lines are sort of boiler plate, but these are also the things you'd want to hit in this episode.
Drew: Yeah. I guess you kind of have to. I like the interaction when the mom is standing on her own and she watches the mom and daughter are having a fight and the daughter storms out, and the mom's sad.
Daughter: I'm sorry. I just can't change the way I am.
Lois: Oh. It's tough isn't it.
The Mother: I just wish she could respect my feelings.
Lois: Oh, I know how you feel.
The Mother: Why can't my daughter just accept that I'm gay.
[audience laughs]
Lois: There. There.
Drew: That's a really good joke that I forgot was the joke, but yeah. The mom—
Glen: The joke being that the upset mother is the actual gay one.
Drew: Yeah. The meeting is called to order by Chaz Bono—before he transitioned. If somehow that is not the proper way to refer to a trans-person making a public appearance before they transition, please let me know. I wanted to double check myself, but it seemed like the right way to say it. Right? You're not going to go there?
Glen: I'm not going on the record for this.
Drew: Seeing Chaz on the screen—I know he's written at least one book, but he's got to have so many fucking stories. Oh, my god. Can you imagine getting him drunk to the point where he's just going to tell stories about his crazy, fucked-up childhood? Oh, it'd be so fascinating. He probably saw a lot of weird stuff.
Glen: Maybe he should have a podcast on TableCakes.
Drew: Let's go bother him. The other person of note at the meeting is this woman who's a super proud parent.
Moderator: Who would like to get started today?
Super-Proud Parent: Oh, I would. I'd just like to say that I am so proud of my daughter—the lesbian!
[audience laughs]
Super-Proud Parent: You know she and her lover came over for dinner the other night. It started to rain really hard, and they were going to drive home! And my husband and I just said, "No. You're staying here tonight, missies. We'll sleep in the den. You take the master bedroom."
[audience laughs]
Ellen: I just want you to know that scares me as much as it scares you.
Drew: Which is a thing you see in TV and movies sometimes the person who's overdoing how proud they are of their gay child, but I don't—I have never seen that person in real life. I don't think—
Glen: I've also never met this person.
Drew: She is played by Laraine Newman, founding SNL cast member.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Who mostly does voiceover work now and does a really good job of it. Weirdly uncredited, and I don't know why.
Glen: Hmm.
Drew: Yeah. So Ellen keeps making jokes and the mom is uncomfortable about this, and again, I think this is a very natural way for—this is how a comedian would act in this situation, like, "This thing that was stressful has happened, and you're going take the steam out of it by making jokes," and it makes the mom very uncomfortable because she's like, "I don't think this is something you should be making jokes about." I don't get her reaction, but I recognize that reaction as something a parent would have.
Glen: It's not just comedians. I think a lot of gay men and women do make a lot of jokes about our experience to sort of declaw them. Like, if you can laugh at something then it's less scary. It's also a way to show—whether genuine or not—that we are comfortable with our experience. If people see me joking about coming out or being gay, they are less likely to think that I'm terrified about it.
Drew: Or you're very serious about this, like, "My coming out journey is an epic and spiritual work."
Glen: Right. You're giving permission—you're giving people permission to engage with it however they want. And if they want to dismiss it slightly or if they want to joke about it—although be careful what fucking jokes you make—but I don't know. I think it's a common coping mechanism.
Drew: I agree. Probably one of the better ones, to be honest. It doesn't really work with the mom. She gives a very halting speech about how she's confused and hurt and just doesn't know what to make of it.
Moderator: Do you have anything that you'd like to say?
Lois: Well, I'd like to say that my daughter is—a gay—
[audience laughs]
Lois: —and that I'm very proud of her.
Super Proud Parent: And we're proud of you.
Lois: No, wait. No. No, that's what I'd like to say, but I can't. Because I really don't feel that way, you see. I—I really feel that this is all my fault [cries].
Super Proud Parent: Lois, it is not your fault. This is who she is, but you're on a roll. Get it all out.
[audience laughs]
Lois: Well sweetheart, I'm just—I worry about you. I mean, life is going to be so hard for you now.
Moderator: Lois, it's harder to live a lie than it is to live your life openly and honestly. But keep going.
Lois: Okay. I'm just—I'm so confused you know. I mean, like—what do two women do in bed together?
Ellen: Okay. That's enough time.
[audience laughs]
Ellen: That's alright. We don't need to hog the floor. Who else wants to go?
[audience laughs and applauds uproariously and extensively]
Drew: Do heterosexual elderly know actually how gay sex works?
Glen: I don't think so. I think they understand that for gay men it involves butts.
Drew: Right. Do you think they would be surprised, like if someone said, "Well, it doesn't always necessarily," they'd be like, "Wait. What?"
Glen: I think they'd be very surprised.
Drew: I don't want to do this because it'd be terrible, but I'd be interested if someone could—you know those—
Glen: If you have a podcast that's just asking older straight people what they think of gay sex, I would listen to that.
Drew: It would be like those videos where kids are given a piece of technology from before they were born and they just try to make sense of it, but it would just be old people being like, "What do you—walk me through how you think it works."
Glen: Or make them watch gay porn.
Drew: No. I don't want to—it needs to be people that have never actually seen it happen because I—
Glen: But then afterwards show them gay porn.
Drew: I mean, that's sort of like this, but not really. Ellen's mom says she misses the old Ellen and everything Ellen says is spot on.
Lois: You know, I'm looking at you right now, and I really feel like I don't even know you anymore. I miss the old Ellen.
Ellen: Which Ellen is that? The Ellen that used to keep her feelings bottled up? The Ellen that used to lie to herself and everybody else? The Ellen that could have spent the rest of her life alone?
Lois: Yep. That's the one.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Very realistic. That really is how a lot of parents want their children to act. So then there's this asshole dad who's played by an actor named Dayton Callie who has had recurring roles on Fear the Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and Deadwood, and I'm like, "Yep. Checks out. Totally checks out." He just plays a loud jerk really, really well. He stands up and says, "You're right. You don't have to accept this. This is sick." And this clicks her mom mode on, and she immediately goes into saying she loves her daughter and defends her daughter and it's very sweet. And then—
Glen: In the background is Ellen's father who had just walked in, also witnessed the scene, then goes into dad mode.
Loud Jerk: Okay. That's it. I'm out of here. The only reason I came here tonight is because I promised your mother I would. And you! Why should your mother accept this? It's wrong. It's sick. And you're sick.
Lois: Oh. Well, now don't you talk to my daughter that way. She is not sick. And sure, I'm not happy about this. But I love her, and I don't want to lose her.
Harold: You tell him Lois.
[audience applauds and woos]
Harold: She's here. She's queer. Get used to it.
[applause and wooing intensifies]
Harold: I read that on a bumper sticker.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Whenever I hear that slogan it makes me think of that Simpsons episode. They're protesting—
Glen: Itchy & Scratchy Land.
Drew: No they're protesting the bears. Remember, the bear breaks into—
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. They say that the government's not doing enough to protect them from bears, so all the adults go to city hall to protest, and they say—
Homer: We're here. We're queer. We don't want any more bears!
Crowd: We're here. We're queer. We don't want any more bears!
Lenny: Hey Homer, that's a pretty catchy chant. Where'd you learn it?
Homer: Oh, I heard it at the mustache parade they have every year.
Drew: It's a weird joke, actually, that as a kid I was very confused by because I knew what queer meant but I was like, "I'm not sure how this makes sense," and I'm like, "Is that—?" It's just a really weird gay joke. Right?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. I don't know. But whenever I hear "We're here. We're—anything," my primary go to is now The Simpsons because my brain is broken.
Glen: Broken.
Drew: Yeah. So they end it. They're a family again, and Mom and Dad are figuring stuff out. End credits. There's also the closing credit joke.
Glen: Go ahead.
Drew: It's really—all it is, is the mom coming over to Ellen after the meeting is finished.
Glen: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Drew: She's like, "Over there. She's a doctor," and she's like, "Not going to happen, Mom,"
Glen: "But she's a doctor!" I wonder if they're—you know hindsight and all. I wonder if there would be mileage to get or if it would be realistic to have one parent—I understand the dad, but I also would have accepted if he was sort of super intrigued by it and more accepting of it than the mom. Could the show have been just as dramatic and meaningful if it was just the mom who was struggling with it?
Drew: Like if the roles were flipped?
Glen: Well, I mean—because in this version, both are not really accepting of it. The mom is a little more open to it, but is there something to having the dad just be kind of okay with it because he doesn't have the same investment in Ellen's romantic life that the mother has had over these many seasons?
Drew: That's true. That would have at least made for at least one really good scene between those two actors if they get to talk about their difference of opinion on this because we don't really see them disagree at any point.
Glen: No and it's a nice moment when the dad comes in at the end, but we don't' actually see—I don't know.
Drew: It just ends because he's here, and we're assuming that everything's been sorted out. But we never see that ever really happen?
Glen: Yeah. I just wonder if—I would have liked to have seen a scene between the two parents where one is accepting and one is not.
Drew: I would have like to have seen more scenes of these two actors because I like them so much, and they have such good—in my mind they are actually a couple, even though I've seen them in other things and I know they're not really married.
Glen: And they never will be.
Drew: Because he has passed away.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. I'm so glad we picked this episode to start of this season because I was hesitant. I was pleasantly surprised. I think this episode holds up very well, and I am happy to point people's attention towards an episode that came out after the coming-out episode. It's not like the show just went off a cliff and nosedived. This is a very strong episode of TV.
Glen: Yeah. It's tight.
Drew: I wish Ellen were streaming somewhere. It's not that I can find.
Glen: That's strange.
Drew: It is strange. At least you'd think that fucking Logo—Logo's weird. You'd think that somewhere that has that audience would be interested in it, but I actually know for a fact this was syndicated some places because in syndication they redid the opening credit so it says Ellen rather than These Friends of Mine, but they—I literally never remember it syndicated anywhere. I guess maybe the value dropped off when the last season proved to be so unsuccessful.
Glen: But you would think that one of America's leading personalities and highest-earning entertainers—that someone would be like, "All these moms who watch her talk show may have a desire to stream her sitcom."
Drew: Yeah, you'd think so, but couldn't find it. Very strange. Glen, do you have any final thoughts on Ellen—the person, the show?
Glen: I mean I'm sure we'll talk about another episode eventually, so I don't have any final thoughts. I like her as a comedian. I like her nervous energy. There I said it.
Drew: I like her—I like the nervous energy more when she's doing standup than on the show because when it's standup she's on stage alone, and it's clear that she's doing a performance. When I see her around people I sympathize with other people—this woman would be very annoying to sit next to. It'd just be like, "Please." Do you remember the one where she's on a jury? There's one where she's on a jury and she's so irritating the entire episode and it made me physically uncomfortable and she's not always that—
Glen: Well, I don't know how you stand being friends with me.
Drew: You're not annoying. Your nervous. You have a weird nervous energy. I'm not saying you don't have a weird nervous energy—even creepy sometimes—but not annoying.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: That's the difference I think. Yeah.
Glen: Drew, do you have final thoughts on Ellen?
Drew: The person?
Glen: No.
Drew: Please, if you maybe have written this off, if you too maybe just don't really think about Ellen all that often because—for me, the most important thing she is in my life now is Portia de Rossi's wife because I don't watch her show. I don't like—the only way I would ever experience Ellen DeGeneres is through Portia de Rossi. Like, if Portia de Rossi went somewhere, I'd be like, "Oh, look. And Ellen's there too. Good for her."
Glen: I think you should watch her accepting the Medal of Freedom from Obama.
Drew: I've seen it.
Glen: I think you should watch it again.
Drew: Okay. I'm happy she got it. I just don't want to necessarily work for her if that makes sense.
Glen: Sure. Well, she's not asking.
Drew: Yeah. She's not asking [laughs]. Glen, if people want to—if Ellen wants to reach out on Twitter—
Glen: Oh, that'd be great.
Drew: —and offer you a job, where should she direct it to?
Glen: @IWriteWrongs—that is with a W, I am told—and then on Instagram @BrosQuartz.
Drew: And I'm on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. I'm also on Instagram @kidicarus222. This podcast is on Twitter @GayestEpisode, and you can listen to all previous episodes at gayestepisodeever.com. You can also listen to this show literally anywhere you'd normally find a podcast, including Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, probably other places. Please give us a rate and review on the podcast platform of your choice because—if you've listened to another podcast, you know why that's helpful. We don't' have to explain it to you. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. You can see more of his awesome artwork at robwilsonwork.com, and this is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network, and you can learn about some of the other shows we have going on at tablecakes.com. As we will never let you forget, we also have a Patreon. You can give us money there. The money will eventually unlock some really cool bonus features, including an entire bonus podcast which we're kind of a lot closer to having to do than when we started this last season. So that's—
Glen: Now we actually know what it is.
Drew: I know. It's going to be really fun. Maybe we'll tell you on Patreon, but you have to give at least the base level of money if you want to know. So patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. Link is in in the show notes. What else? You asked me something before.
Glen: Oh, I said, "Drew, what can we look forward to in season three?"
Drew: Oh, all kinds of stuff.
Glen: Like The Nanny.
Drew: Like The Nanny—episode TBD. I have it down to three different episodes. We're trying to decide. Also among other shows that we are going to be talking about before the end of the year are Bewitched, King of the Hill, Designing Women, Caroline in the City—
Glen: Finally!
Drew: —I am really excited to talk about this one—Gimme a Break! also finally, Night Court, and that show called Friends. And also-also, a show I'm not sure—some of you may not—
Glen: Are you talking about Too Close for Comfort?
Drew: No. Oh, I forgot about that one.
Glen: Okay. Well, we're doing Too Close for Comfort. Is that not on the list?
Drew: That wasn't on the list for—I forgot about that one. We should do that one sooner rather than later.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: And other stuff. It will be a fun way to end the year, and then we'll jump into even more stuff in the new year.
Glen: If we're still here.
Drew: I'm not going anywhere.
Glen: Yeah. Me neither.
Drew: Glen, I think that's podcast over.
Glen: Bye forever.
Drew: Podcast over.
["Cheri Cheri Lady" performed by Modern Talking plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes production.