Transcript for Episode 26: What's Gay About Mr. Belvedere?
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss Mr. Belvedere. 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.
Mr. Belvedere: Is this the Owens' residence?
Uh-huh.
Mr. Belvedere: And I take it you're one of them?
Uh-huh.
Mr. Belvedere: Is there someone here who speaks English?
[audience laughs]
Mrs. Owens: Can I help you?
Mr. Belvedere: Good afternoon. I'm Mr. Belvedere. Are you Mrs. Owens?
Mrs. Owens: Uh-huh.
[audience laughs]
Mr. Belvedere: And the family consists of you, one husband, and three children?
Mrs. Owen: Yes.
Mr. Belvedere: Nothing in the oven?
Mrs. Owens: What?
[audience laughs]
Mr. Belvedere: Well that should suit me just fine.
Mrs. Owens: What?
Mr. Belvedere: Congratulations, Mrs. Owens I'm your new housekeeper.
[audience laughs]
["According to Our New Arrival," by Leon Redbone plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast that looks at the LGBT-themed episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: Hi Glen.
Glen: Ah!
Drew: I think you mean—
Glen: Glare Monkin?
Drew: No!—big-shot-Hollywood-screenwriter Glen Lakin.
Glen: No.
Drew: We'll get to that one in a little bit. If that intro did not tip you off, today we're actually talking about Mr. Belvedere—oh. No reaction?
Glen: Oh. I was singing the theme in my head.
Drew: I have been, like, all fucking day.
Glen: [singing] Streaks on the china never mattered before. Who cares?
Drew: Keep going, Glen!
Glen: No. I can't sing.
Drew: Okay. This is going to be one of those shorter episodes like we did with the Dick Van Dyke episode where we're just going to talk about a show that doesn't really ever do a specific gay episode but there's something gay there—and there's actually a lot gay here to talk about, which might be surprising if you've never thought about Mr. Belvedere in this context, but we're going to jump right into it.
Glen: But would that be surprising? I feel like just in the abstract, Mr. Belvedere feels pretty gay.
Drew: I am sure there's a lot of straight people who it never occurred to them that there was a queer tinge to this show, much less some other more explicit gay stuff or just weird gay connections you wouldn't expect. And then in the back half, we're going to do a little bit of housekeeping. But first, Mr. Belvedere. Glen what is your relationship with Mr. Belvedere—the show, not the person?
Glen: What if it's both? The show was one of those daytime, syndicated sitcoms that was on after school. I don't know if I ever watched it as it was originally broadcast—always sort of weekday intervals. It was a comfort show. I enjoyed it. I found all of the kids very annoying. But in hindsight, Kevin was kind of cute, and I felt bad for the mom always.
Drew: Yeah. She seems very put-upon and very nice, and she just seems like she deserves a better family.
Glen: I don't know why she needs a housekeeper.
Drew: She has a job, right? She's a—I don't remember what she does. That was not part of my research for this episode. Mr. Belvedere, in case you don't know, is something probably most of us experienced in weekday syndicated form. I know I watched the final episode in Prime Time. And also, they'd [run/burn] that final episode off in July, so they didn't love the show at the end. But it ran for six seasons, which is kind of crazy to think about, especially because it never broke into the Top 30 any of those seasons.
Glen: What?
Drew: So it never was enough of a hit to be up there, but this is mid '80s, so the number of people watching a not-very-popular show were still enough to get advertisers. So they made it for six seasons. On ABC? ABC.
Glen: That sounds right.
Drew: It ran from March 15, 1985, to July 8, 1990. It starred Christopher Hewett as Lynn Aloysius Belvedere, a British butler hired to restore order to the Owens Family of Pittsburgh, Detroit—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [laughter].
Glen: Let's just name cities—Minneapolis!
Drew: Yeah. Christopher Hewett—I think the two other things people would ever know him for is, number one, Roger DeBris in The Producers.
Max: Roger?
Roger: Ah Messieurs Bialystock and Bloom I presume. Forgive the pun.
Max: [forced laughter]
Leo: What pun?
Max: Shut up. He thinks he's witty.
Roger: Didn't I meet you on a summer cruise?
Leo: Mmm. I've never been on a summer cruise.
Roger: Oh. Quel dommage.
Drew: It's just weird seeing him, like "Oh!" I didn't remember that he was in that movie.
Glen: You have a type now.
Drew: Eddie Izzard types? Like make-upy British—
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. That's it. And then also—[laughs]. He also played King Koopa in the Mario Ice Capades special that aired on ABC.
Glen: Oh, my god.
Drew: Have you ever seen it?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: I'll put a link to it on the show notes. But I would review this TV special as misguided and confusing.
Glen: That's accurate.
King Koopa: [singing] I'm a rude hearted dude. Mean as I can be. Ha-ha. Oh yes, don't mess around with me. I'm conniving and I'm crude. Tricky as a fox. Ha-ha. Oh yes. I'll beat you to your socks. Success!
Princess Toadstool: Oh! What to do? What to do? The Koopa virus is on the loose and you know how painful that can be. Oh. Oh! I think this is a job for—the plumbers! Better give a call to the Super Mario Brothers. Oh.
Drew: Poor, poor Christopher Hewitt. He deserved better than that. It also starred Bob Uecker, real life sportscaster playing a sportscaster dad. Ilene Graff is the mom. You know her from Ladybugs, the teenage cross-dressing comedy with Rodney Dangerfield.
Glen: And Jonathan Brandis.
Drew: Yeah. A very attractive Jonathan Brandis made to look like a girl.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Very confusing movie.
Drew: Yeah. That would be an interesting—if we ever do weird movies to go back and review, that would be definitely in the sweet spot of our pop culture.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. But Ilene Graff's break from being on Mr. Belvedere is having to be a love interest for Rodney Dangerfield? It's like, "[scoffs] Lady, I'm sorry."
Glen: Rodney Dangerfield got some great love interests. What's her name from Back to School? She's severe and blonde and amazing.
Drew: Oh, that's right. Okay. I was thinking of Summer School and you threw me for a second. Oh Back to School. I'm going to use the Oingo Boingo end-credits song from that movie for our outro track because I couldn't figure out what to play. You just picked it for me. Then, as the three Owens children: Rob Stone, Brice Beckham, and Tracy Wells. Glen have you ever seen the sequel to Mirror Mirror?
Glen: No.
Drew: There's a sequel to Mirror Mirror called Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance, and it stars Tracy Wells, who played Heather. She's the main character in a horror movie. It also stars Veronica Cartwright and Roddy McDowall and is the film debut of Mark Ruffalo.
Glen: What!
Drew: I know. So I kind of feel like I might actually watch this movie—while drunk, because I imagine it's not very good. But also, yeah—Tracy Wells, scream queen. Who knew? If I'm going to ask you what you think is gay about Mr. Belvedere, what would you say?
Glen: The concept of a refined, sexless man helping a straight family not be monsters.
Drew: I would agree with you, but it kind of hits that weird spot where there's a lot of fussy, particular mannerisms that you would associate with a gay man that kind of turn invisible when that character becomes British because there's a lot of queerness that we just write off like, "Oh. That's their own weird culture over there, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gay"—
Mr. Belvedere: You know, George, I don't think that football is quite Wesley's cup of tea.
George: Oh yeah? Well, maybe we should introduce him to one of your English sports like croquet or minding other people's business.
[audience laughs]
Mr. Belvedere: I'm sorry. I was only thinking of the boy.
George: Hey! Wes is going to be fine. I just got to work with him a little, toss the ball around, maybe run a few plays. Maybe even set up a tackling dummy. Speaking of which, you busy later?
[audience laughs]
Drew: —which I think is probably how a lot of people got to not have to think about how—what a little fussbudget Mr. Belvedere is.
Glen: Yeah. Do you think Rupert Everett broke people's brains? He's British and gay?!
Drew: In that way, it kind of makes me wonder what a British person would think of Mr. Belvedere, like, they're already British. [Would they be like], "Oh this gay man is helping these slovenly Americans on this mediocre sitcom"?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Aside from that basic premise, and that fact that he's very queeny—
Mr. Belvedere: Miss.
Heather: Yes please. Everything looks so delicious. Don't spill.
Mr. Belvedere: Young lady, I wouldn't think of spoiling such a lovely party dress.
Heather: Don't patronize me Hazel.
[audience laughs and "oohs"]
Mr. Belvedere: Is this flammable?
[audience laughs and "woos"]
Drew: He's sassy, and he throws shade before we knew what that was, especially towards Mr. Owens.
Glen: Yeah. His foil is a straight sportscaster and then, of course, a little bratty boy.
Drew: Mm-hmm. He's also kind of like a Mother Hen character for everyone. And much in the way that straight people often unload their problems on their gay associates in real life, he solves all their problems and rarely gets to care of much for himself. He gets his own episode sometimes.
Glen: Yeah. He had to have a heart attack.
Drew: Oh, that's right. I forgot about that one. That was probably very scary for me at six years old, watching on a Wednesday afternoon. Aside from that, there's also Christopher Hewett himself. What are your feelings about talking about the sexuality of a deceased person?
Glen: Oh—you mean whether it's okay to out them when they're dead when they weren't out in life?
Drew: Not even really out them, but just speculate on the fact that "Oh, he may have been a gay person. We don't really know"?
Glen: Oh. I mean—I don't know. I talk shit about the dead all the time.
Drew: Which is weird because you're the one who believes in ghosts.
Glen: Yeah, well.
Drew: So he has in fact passed away. Never married. Was an actor his entire life. Confirmed bachelor. I can't find anything that says he was necessarily gay, but probably the gayest thing about him is playing Roger DeBris in The Producers. There's just no information about his sexuality everywhere. All I really know about him is that he was a devout Roman Catholic, which actually kind of maybe says a lot. So we don't know if he was actually gay. Maybe he was. Please don't hunt me, Ghost of Christopher Hewett.
Glen: Gay Ghost of Christopher Hewett.
Drew: Oh, my gosh.
Glen: Oh, my god. I would write and read that book. Please Don't Haunt Me, Gay Ghost of Christopher Hewett [laughter]. It'd be like Wait Till Helen Comes, but for boys.
Drew: Wait Till Helen Comes?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: What is that?
Glen: Oh. It's a not-quite-YA novel—younger targeted than that—and it's about a girl who moves with her stepfamily to a barn or haunted house or something—
Drew: They moved to a barn?
Glen: Like a converted barn or a converted church or something—I don't know. And she befriends the ghost of a girl who drowned or died in a fire or something. No, she drowned. And then the main character has guilt because her mom died in a fire [while] looking for her because she was hiding while the fire was happening.
Drew: Oh. I like that. That sounds really good. I might cut this if we think it's actually a really good idea, but what if the Ghost of Christopher Hewett ends up living with a family with a young man who's coming to terms with his homosexuality.
Glen: Sure. Again, there was—what's the—god. The fuck was the name of that show?
Drew: Jennifer Slept Here?
Glen: Yes! I was thinking of Jennifer Slept Here starring the woman—no. It's not starring the woman from Back to School. But no—yeah. I was thinking of Jennifer Slept Here.
Drew: Jennifer Slept Here is—okay. Tangent. It is one of the weirdest things. I didn't know about it until you told me about it because one of your friends—
Glen: Paul Sopocy.
Drew: —is obsessed with it. It is a sitcom about a family that moves into a new apartment, and there's the ghost of a dead actress who died chasing an ice cream truck or something. She got hit by an ice cream truck, and now her ghost is just there, and she helps solve their problems. And it has a very strange theme song.
["Jennifer Slept Here" by Joey Scarbury plays]
Drew: The whole package I'm like, "This is the weirdest fucking thing I've heard in my life."
Glen: So my confusion came from the actress from Back to School was in a movie version or a movie kind of like that about a dead porn star who helps a virgin lose his virginity.
Drew: Do you know what that's called?
Glen: No. I mean, I could look it up on my phone this second.
Drew: Let me look it up.
Glen: So you have to go to Back to School.
Drew: Back to School—oh. She's also in Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance.
Glen: Oh [laughter].
Drew: Yeah. Also, the last thing he ever did was that episode of Ned and Stacey, which we should probably do one day—which we've mentioned several times. It keeps coming up. But there's a weird homophobic element to that episode which I think is maybe an unfortunate coda on the end of his career, but he didn't know he was going to die.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So the most interesting thing about Mr. Belvedere is that the character did not originate on the sitcom. Mr. Belvedere was originally born in a 1947 book called Belvedere and written by Gwen Davenport which is a very—that's exactly the name of the person who—
Glen: Always drunk.
Drew: Yes. I don't know—oh. I assumed he was a woman. Maybe it's not.
Glen: I assumed it was a woman, too. Why can't women be drunk?
Drew: Oh. I thought you said, "He's always drunk."
Glen: No. I just said, "Always drunk."
Drew: Women can be drunk too. You can be anything you want. You can be drunk. You can be a drug addict. You get to be all the things.
Glen: I mean drunk, refined women are my favorite kind of drunks.
Drew: That's our target demographic, really. It had a very similar concept of a proper British butler going to work for an American family, and I think the pilot has the joke where they hire Lynn Belvedere because they assume based on that name that Lynn is a woman. Right?
Glen: I don't remember.
Drew: I did not bother to re-watch the pilot. That is the gist of the book. He shows up, and they're like, "Oh. Lynn Belvedere, we thought you were going to be a woman." Right off the bat, there's a little bit of gender play going on right there. The movie spawned a 1948 film adaptation titled Sitting Pretty starring Robert Young, Maureen O'Hara, and as the Belvedere character, Clifton Webb.
British Belvedere: Keep your seats please and kindly refrain from rustling your popcorn bags while I say a few words about a comedy which has recently been produced by the 20th Century Fox studios. It is titled Sitting Pretty. My submerged vanity will not allow me to say that Sitting Pretty is a good picture. It is not a good picture; it is a great picture. The critics insist that my presence in the cast as a baby hating babysitter elevates this cinema epic from mediocrity to sublimity.
Drew: Do you know Clifton Webb much from your old movie trivia days?
Glen: No.
Drew: So he's probably best known for playing Waldo Lydecker in the Otto Preminger movie, Laura, which is a noir whodunit with Gene Tierney that's very Twin Peaks-y. So Clifton Webb plays Waldo Lydecker. On Twin Peaks, the parrot that's the witness to Laura's murder is named Waldo, and the veterinary clinic where they find him is Dr. Lydecker.
Glen: I love that you probably didn't have to research that at all.
Drew: Oh, yeah. I've known this for quite a while. Also, the movie is all about a dead woman who has all these weird relationships with various men in her life, and her name is Laura, which—yeah. It's Twin Peaks.
Glen: Wait. Do you think Mr. Belvedere takes place in the Twin Peaks universe?
Drew: I do now.
Glen: They were both ABC.
Drew: Both ABC. They should have done a crossover. Clifton Webb himself is like a Niles Crane by way of Dr. Smith from Lost in Space—so just maybe a little bit more arch version of that nebbishy, fastidious guy—and he's American. But for those qualities, he was very well-suited to play this fussy Brit character. So that's another weird crossover of British equals gay in some part of the American mindset. He was nominated for an academy award for his role in Sitting Pretty, and he reprised it two more times: Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, which costars Shirley Temple; and then Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell in 1951. There's this really weird promo shot—I think it's for Mr. Belvedere Goes to College. I'll link it in the show notes. But it's him seated on a couch. Marilyn Monroe is on one side and this beautiful brunette is on the other, and it's just a publicity photo they took for the movie to be like, "Look. He's not gay. Look how straight this person is. He's sitting next to these two bombshells." I think it actually might have even been before anyone knew or cared who Marilyn Monroe was. She was just a studio model or something. Clifton Webb, also a confirmed bachelor. And in this case, we actually have testimony from Robert Wagner who starred with him in, I think, two different things where he said, "Clifton Webb was gay, of course, but he never made a pass at me—not that he would have."
Glen: What a—what a statement!
Drew: I mean, there's a lot going on there. And also, I like that our best witness in the matter of this person's sexuality is Robert Wagner who's never—never question his reliability. He always tells the truth. Right?
Glen: Oh, Jesus.
Drew: Well. I mean—
Glen: Yeah. Murder joke.
Drew: [laughs] See, I can have Christopher Walken attest that I was never hit on by Clifton Webb. So that thread ends there, but it was a popular enough franchise that three different times people tried to turn it into a TV series—never made it past the pilot stage—the last of which, though, starred Victor Buono as—
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: I know!—as Mr. Belvedere. Victor Buono, if you don't know, is the larger man who stars in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and himself a gay man. Oh. He was also—do you remember that weird horror movie I made you watch where he played the devil at the end?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. That—
Glen: Wasn't good.
Drew: The Evil. That's the name of it—The Evil. It's not a very good title. [It's] something you watch when you're five [and] you think is terrifying, and then you show your adult roommate, and he thinks it's stupid and so do you.
Glen: I don't think it was stupid. I thought their version of Hell was sort of interesting.
Drew: It was very stagey.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So other than the fact that Brice Beckham who played Wesley was one of the child actors to speak out in that PSA against Kirk Cameron—remember when Kirk Cameron came out against gay people and all these child actors joined together to do a PSA to tell him to shut the fuck up?
Glen: Mm-hmm. That was one of the greatest moments of my life.
Drew: You know who else was in that PSA? Your cousin Christine Lakin.
Glen: Hmm. Not my cousin—but yes.
Drew: Yeah. I re-watched it. They made me very happy. Linked in the show notes. The other really good think I can say about Mr. Belvedere and gay-adjacent causes is that unless I'm mistaken, it was the first at least American sitcom if not sitcom anywhere to feature a character with AIDS, which is kind of nuts. Not really something you would necessarily expect from Mr. Belvedere.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: They had special episodes but—we might actually do this whole episode at one point—but it's basically a Ryan White situation where everyone finds out that one of the students at Wesley's school has AIDS, and everyone shuns him, and Wesley has to step up and do the right thing and tell people that's not okay. So then in 1985, the first—
Glen: It was first season?
Drew: Second season. Really early in the second season. I guess they were just going to go for it, which I give them—I didn't watch the entire thing because I thought we might do it one day. But even if it's a clunker, the fact that they even tried to do it is sort of remarkable. It would have been the first TV show to ever have a character with AIDS ever, but St. Elsewhere had a storyline two days before where Mark Harmon's character finds out he has AIDS, and then two days later Mr. Belvedere. So way to go, Mr. Belvedere. There's this one part that I'll cut in. I can't really say if they're landing this or not, but it's still a sitcom. They still make jokes and the kid, you meet, and the kid comes over
Danny: Hi, Mr. Belvedere.
Mr. Belvedere: Hello, Danny.
Danny: Is Wesley here?
Mr. Belvedere: Yes. Come on in. Everyone, you remember Wesley's friend, Danny.
Mrs. Owens: Oh. Hi Danny.
Danny: Hi Mrs. Owens, Mr. Owens.
George: Hi-ya, champ. How's it going?
Danny: Well I got AIDS, but other than that I'm doing pretty good.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And I can't tell if that's okay or not. It's either really tone deaf and inappropriate or they're like, "Well, we're a sitcom. We're not going to go full maudlin on this thing, and we're going to show that this kid is not being emotionally destroyed by this thing that's happened to him."
Glen: Let's just do the episode.
Drew: Let's just have some people weigh in. I'm still going to cut it in, just because I think it's a laugh point. The other reason we should do it is the B-plot is Kevin taking a home-ecs class, which is a weird thing to do—
Glen: I remember that episode.
Drew: That's the same episode. Isn't it weird that they would link those two plotlines together? Hmm. So on that somewhat-downer note we're going to stop for a very quick commercial break.
Glen: Oh, fun.
Drew: And we'll be back with a story about testicles. Testicles!
["According to our New Arrival" instrumentals play]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]
Drew: And we're back.
Glen: Yay.
Drew: Let's talk testicles, Glen.
Glen: Balls!
Drew: Yeah. I actually cannot say for sure that this is true. The most credible source on it is Gilbert Gottfried, and he shared this on his show where he said that he was working on the same set or the same lot where Mr. Belvedere was being shot and he saw them taking Mr. Belvedere away on a stretcher. And he was like, "Oh. He probably had a heart attack," because a big older guy, it would not be out of the ordinary that he would suffer a heart attack. He had not. According to him and a few other sources—and I'm not saying it's true, but it's a very good story—he sat on his own testicles [laughs]. He sat down and smushed his testicles and was in such pain that he had to go to the hospital and shut down filming on Mr. Belvedere [laughs].
Glen: All that laughter is Drew's.
Drew: [laughs even harder] I just—is that not funny? I think it's funny.
Glen: I feel like this entire episode was manufactured for you to tell that story.
Drew: This entire episode was manufactured so I could talk about Twin Peaks again. That's where you're wrong. And that is, I think, the last—until something at the end, it's the last bit of actual solid Mr. Belvedere-related information I had. But, yes. To summarize: Mr. Belvedere is a gayer show than you would have thought, and—
Glen: Or it's as gay of a show as you would have thought.
Drew: Well, some people are maybe more perceptive than I was. Until I really looked into it, I didn't know—but for good reasons and bad reasons, gay enough. Gay enough to get a little mini-episode. There's some business I want to get to where people point out things we might have missed or slight corrections or clarifications. One of them: Timothy Burleson pointed out on the Dick Van Dyke semen-joke episode that I missed an opportunity to reference The Simpsons line from Smithers
Mr. Burns: What do you think Smithers?
Smithers: I think women and seamen don't mix.
Mr. Burns: We know what you think. Young lady, you're hired.
Drew: Classic sailor semen joke. Speaking of which—
Glen: Oh, god.
Drew: Someone else pointed out on the gay-'80s-cartoon episode, we had a glaring oversite in that we didn't talk about Shipwreck.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I wanted to talk about G.I. Joe, but it felt like a lot to dive into.
Drew: If there's a single episode of G.I. Joe, we could just do that on an off-season episode.
Glen: I mean, I would sort of love to talk about the episode of G.I. Joe where Shipwreck gets the power to create things with his mind and all these cartoon characters start running around attacking people.
Drew: What the fuck are you talking about?
Glen: There's an orphanage that burns down because—I think it was G.I. Joe's fault because they were fighting Cobra and burned an orphanage down, and so they're helping to rebuild it. Shipwreck doesn't want to do a lot of work, so he's just telling stories to these orphan children. And then some technology allows the figments of his imagination to come to life. I'll re-watch it and see if there's a lot of gay stuff in there.
Drew: I'm already here for it. Just in case people are not aware of who Shipwreck is, can you describe what he looks like?
Glen: Sort of like a Finland-y, Village People-esque pirate.
Drew: With a sailor hat?
Glen: With a sailor hat and a parrot.
[music plays]
Boy: I'm running away from home. My parents are mean.
Boy 2: Where will you go?
Boy: I'm not sure, but I'll show them.
Shipwreck: That's right. You'll show them how mean you can be.
Boys: Shipwreck!
Shipwreck: Isn't it better to try to solve problems instead of running away from them?
Boy: I could try talking to my parents again.
Shipwreck: Yeah. Tell them how you feel. And remember, running away—
Boy: Leads nowhere. Now I know—
Boys: And knowing is half the battle!
Chorus: G.I. Joe!
Drew: Every time I tried to write his name I kept writing "Shore Leave," which I think is actually even a better name than Shipwreck. But that might be a Venture Bros character. That might be the Venture Bros' version of Shipwreck.
Glen: That—that checks out.
Drew: In non-semen related news, someone pointed out somewhere—and if you're this person please tell me because I cannot find the message. Someone pointed out that he didn't quite agree with our take on Three's Company where we said we liked Three's Company because they were making fun of Mr. Roper's homophobia and Jack was camping himself up to make him uncomfortable and kind of poke fun at what a jerk he was being. This person who was a bit older than us and watched it while it was actually on said that he didn't like that, and it made him really uncomfortable to see Jack imitating gay mannerisms because—I assume he was watching with his family because he was young enough. He felt like he was being made fun of, or he felt like Jack was creating the opportunity for straight people to laugh at gay people, which I can also see.
Glen: Yeah. Maybe I didn't make that clear, but that also gave me a panic attack watching it. Like, I had to watch my mannerisms, and I still to this day hate the whole Tinkerbell gesture. I think the point we were just trying to make is that it was being played for laughs, but maybe the show excused it because it was the straight perspective of gay people rather than the show embracing that's what gay people are like since the show didn't actually show gay people.
Drew: Aside from that guy doing the butt dance with the scarf. I should have GIFed that and put it on social media. The world needs to know.
Glen: Still can.
Drew: You saw that I put the clip from Mary Tyler Moore?
Glen: I did.
Drew: Those are some nice shorts he's wearing.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Go to the Facebook page if you want to see the reference of young, sexier John Ritter in very short shorts on the Mary Tyler Moore show. Last thing, people have been asking about the music we play for outro which is just whatever I feel like playing and just a little bit of it. I'm going to go back and put the track titles and a link to buy them on—one of the services. I was going to say iTunes, but that's not going to work in a little bit, so I'll put a link where you could stream or purchase the song in full. The one on the Wings episode which people apparently had problems identifying is a track from Final Fantasy VI, which might have been a joke that Glen and I and one other person actually got. But it is "Gau's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI.
Glen: It's about daddy issues.
Drew: It's about serious daddy issues, and it's a beautiful song, if you don't mind me saying. Let's talk about Patreon.
Okay. Your dog is snoring. I don't want to wake him up.
Drew: No. He's fine. I guess we're maybe not being our usual exciting selves. It's also nice and cool on the cement, I'm sure. We should just do the podcast from down on the floor.
Glen: Metaphorically we are.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Did you know that we are one-fifth of the way to unlocking our bonus podcast?
Glen: I did not, because I don't really check it.
Drew: Right. I don't think—[laughs]. I don't think I gave you the log-in for it. When we set up our goals, the first goal is when we hit 500 a month, we are going to do the bonus podcast for Patreon listeners only. We're at $101 a month already. Which is—
Glen: It's a good number, too.
Drew: What's that?
Glen: It's a good number too, for like—dalmatians.
Drew: That's—mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we are that-many-dalmatians in money a month, which is much better than I thought we were going to be, to be honest. Never having done my own Patreon before, I didn't know how people would respond to it. But seeing that much money in what amounts to—what, a month?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: About a month. Thank you for everyone who gave us money even if it's just a dollar a month. We are very grateful, and it helps us do more than we're currently doing with this show, just because it's actually kind of a lot of work to put this show together. Just between recording—
Glen: For you.
Drew: I mean, research is. Dragging you in here is also a lot of fucking work. Yeah. It's true. I wonder if that's getting picked up. If you would like to give us a little bit of money please go to patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. You can see all of our tiers.
Glen: And tears—with an A.
Drew: Both the kinds of tiers. If you are on the Mrs. Roper Level, which is $10 a month—which some people, are which I think is very nice of them—you get to see exclusive monthly artwork by Glen. Glen, tell us about what you drew for the month of May.
Glen: Oh. I drew a picture of Bea Arthur as Dorothy in one of her many layered, flowing robes.
Drew: Weirdly you brought up 101 Dalmatians because I was looking at it today, and there's a slight Cruella de Vil look to her clothes. The way she's posed and her clothes, it reminded me of that. It made me think of what—
Glen: She's also wearing leopard print in the drawing.
Drew: She is. Imagine what 101 Dalmatians starring Bea Arthur would have been like?
Glen: That's what I picture every night as I fall asleep.
Drew: So we've been thanking—we've been giving personal thank-yous to everyone who's given—is it three dollars or more?
Glen: Yeah. Probably. Yeah.
Drew: Everyone who's given three dollars or more a month. And in addition to a thank you, we're going to give them a random compliment from the Box of Compliments. The first person up today is Garrett Sander.
Glen: Least likely to be the killer, and I will say that in court.
Drew: Thank you Garrett Sander for your money. Second is Kristin Miglore.
Glen: First of a celebrated legacy.
Drew: She actually just had a baby, so that's even more appropriate.
Glen: Oooh—watch out for that baby.
Drew: Hi baby. Kristin. Stacey—no last name, but I think we know who that is.
Glen: Sends the most thoughtful cards around the holidays. Which holidays? I don't know.
Drew: [laughs] Ryan Watt.
Glen: Observes others' personal space. Probably true.
Drew: That's a really good one actually.
Glen: It's very important.
Drew: I don't think anyone who would give that much money to a podcast like ours would be an in-your-face, grabby person. And last, Nell McCall.
Glen: Regal, but welcoming.
Drew: I like that.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Thank you, Nell. There should be more people named Nell. I feel like that's one of those names that should come back.
Glen: Yeah. I can only think of the famous Nells.
Drew: Nell Carter.
Glen: And also Nell—Jodie Foster.
Drew: Yeah. I can't watch that movie without laughing, so that would be a terrible movie for us to ever review in podcast form. It also has nothing to do with TV.
Glen: Also, I don't want to.
Drew: [laughs] I don't think it's that good. We're going to put a survey up about things you guys want out of this new bonus series. It will be on Patreon, so the Patreon people who are going to be the ones listening to it get to tell us what to do. If it's not up by the time this episode is up it will be up later that day. I just have to—
Glen: Do it!
Drew: —make the Google doc. I know [sighs]. So I had a birthday recently, and one of the things I did for my birthday was tell people that if they give us a rate and review I would donate five dollars to the L.A. LGBT Center in the memory of Bea Arthur—and we got 18, which is pretty good. I noticed that we got a lot of star reviews, and I'm not really comfortable counting those because I'm like, "Oh give us a rate and review," but it looks like a lot of people just gave us a star review and didn't write anything. Star reviews are also great, but you guys didn't follow directions.
Glen: Maybe it was just a coincidence and people were just giving us star reviews.
Drew: Maybe. Maybe that's true. Maybe. Maybe they have good direction-following abilities, and that's just—yeah. But I don't think that's true. I'm just going to round it up to a hundred bucks. That's my way of balancing out—
Glen: You just didn't want to do the math.
Drew: No. I didn't. No. You know who I am. So a very handsome man from New Zealand pointed out that he reviewed our podcast but it went up on New Zealand iTunes where there are far fewer reviews than there would be for ours. I don't really know if I can actually see that, but if you're posting a review and it's going on your territory's iTunes take a screenshot and send it to me, just because I would like to know what you said. And also, I'll add it to the overall total. I'm going to quickly read bits of three of the reviews we got. Daniel W. Carlson, who is a TV critic and a very good writer who I've followed on social media for quite a while said, "It's a funny, smart, sharp, warm, wonderful look at how TV and culture have shaped each other throughout the 20th century and what representation has meant in different eras. I tell everyone about this show." Oh, nice!
Glen: Everyone.
Drew: Everyone. Michael's TV Tray, which is a blog about TV and food that I fairly recently found existed—the person behind that website gave us a review as well, and he said, "It's a hoot to revisit these classic TV shows and gratifying to realize just how much the times have changed when it comes to the acceptance of LGBTQ people." Thank you, Michael's TV Tray. By the way, if you haven't listened to it already, I was just on my business partner's podcast Smart Mouth talking about TV dinners, which seems like it would be very much so up your ally. And also, if you're listening, possibly up yours as well. Just look up Smart Mouth on wherever you get your podcasts or just go to smartmouthpodcast.com. I should be—not on the website yet, but I'll make sure Katherine gets that up real soon.
Glen: I guess you know how you rank in her esteem.
Drew: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then finally Judy Dean—I think I know who this is as well—said, "Big fan of the show especially the brilliant hosts who take time to really dig deep in the crevices of each special episode. Even in episodes where they dissect unfamiliar-to-me shows such as Wings, I don't feel lost or scared. How could I go wrong with such able guides? This is the podcast I look forward to the most. Keep up the good work, Drew and Glen and Thurman."
Glen: Oh, yeah. Thurman is working very hard right now.
Drew: Yeah. So thank you very much for your reviews.
Glen: Thank you.
Drew: And thank you for contributing to a charitable donation that you didn't have to even pay for. Yay. Glen you have a bit of business in the form of a movie or something.
Glen: Yeah—or something. Being Frank opens in select theaters this weekend. That would be June 14th in L.A. and New York and then other cities beyond on the 21st and 28th—although what cities I do not know yet. And if you're in L.A. and listening to this podcast the day it comes out—that would be Tuesday the 11th—you still have a chance to catch a sneak preview screening at The Landmark in the Westside Pavilion at 7:15 or 7:45, although I think the 7:15 might be very close to sold out
Drew: Yay. Yay, selling out!
Glen: Yay!
Drew: Yeah. But please go see Glen's movie. You might hear a little more about the movie later this week.
Glen: Yeah. And there's also three or four screenings in New York this weekend.
Drew: Yay.
Glen: Yeah. You can go to the film's website beingfrankfilm.com, and it just has a very handy little thing for finding tickets near you.
Drew: And it stars Jim Gaffigan.
Glen: It stars Jim Gaffigan, directed by Miranda Bailey and written by Glen Lakin.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Go see it, please. That's pretty much it. There's one more thing I want to end with, but I'm going to go through the regular rigmarole now, that you can follow me on Twitter @drewgmackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. Glen where can people follow you?
Glen: Oh. I'm @iwritewrongs on Twitter—that is "write" with "W"—and on Instagram you can find me @brosquartz—B-R-O-S-Quartz.
Drew: You can follow this podcast on Twitter @gayestepisode and the website is gayestepisodeever.com. Subscribe to us literally anywhere you would normally find a podcast. If you look for us somewhere and we're not there, tell me. I will put us there. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles-based podcast network and features some really cool shows. If you want to learn about the others that we do please go to TableCakes.com. The last thing—I found this very amusing. I was very tired and little drunk when I was reading this out loud last night, and it made me laugh. It might sound really stupid right now, but this is how I'm choosing to end the episode. Do you remember the character of Angela on Mr. Belvedere?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: She's Heather's dumb friend—her blonde, airheaded friend. I was at a party once, and I could overhear people talking about Mr. Belvedere, and they were like, "Did you know that was Lisa Kudrow?" And we went, "Oh, my gosh! Yes!" But if you tell people "Do you realize that was where Lisa Kudrow's first TV role was?" people will instantly believe it. They're like, "Oh, my gosh. That totally was her."
Glen: No, it wasn't.
Drew: Just because she's like a tall blond who's dumb, they associate her with Phoebe. It's a really weird—it's not the Mandela effect. It's something even dumber than that. But played by Michele Matheson. Character's name was Angela Shostakovich, and her one thing other than being dumb as rocks was that she couldn't remember Mr. Belvedere's name. I found a collection of all the mistaken names she gave him, which I'm going to read in a row. And if for some reason you just skipped forward to this, you'll be like, "What the fuck are they—what the fuck is this?"
Glen: "Drew had a stroke!"
Drew: Yeah. In order: Mr. Bellbottom, Mr. Bellpepper, Mr. Butterfinger, Mr. Butterworth, Mr. Beetlejuice, Mr. Busplunge, Mr. Busplunger, Mr. Bunnyhopper, Mr. Botulism, Mr. Bumpercar, Mr. Babyboomer, Mr. Bellydancer, Mr. Bellyflop, Mr. Bellefonte, Mr. Brontosaurus, Mr. Bricklayer, Mr. Bilgwater, Mr. Bullwinkle, Mr. Bellybutton, and Mr. Budweiser. I don't know why I find that so appealing. I just like that someone else took the time to collect them, and now I can share it with you. It was on a message board. Yeah.
Glen: That's lovely.
Drew: There are people like me—
Glen: It's like poetry. It's like a haiku, but wrong.
Drew: What if I just submit that to a bunch of literary journals and see if anyone picks it up?
Glen: McSweeney's, watch out.
Drew: Is that still a thing?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Oh! Cute [laughs].
Glen: Wow! That was condescending.
Drew: No! I just hadn't really thought about it in a long time
Glen: They are doing good work Drew.
Drew: I'm garbage people. On that note, this episode is over.
Glen: Bye forever.
Drew: Bye forever [sighs].
["Dead Man's Party," performed by Oingo Boingo]
Katherine: A TableCakes production.