Transcript for Episode 23: Blanche’s Brother Wants to Get Gay Married
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Golden Girls episode “Sister of the Bride.” 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.
Blanche: I don't really mind Clayton being homosexual. I just don't like him dating men.
[audience laughs]
Dorothy: You really haven't grasped the concept of this gay thing yet, have you?
Blanche: There must be homosexuals who date women.
Sophia: Yeah. They're called lesbians.
[audience laughs]
["Thank You for Being a Friend" plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LBGT episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very gay episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Tony: Hey, guys. I'm Tony Rodriguez.
Glen: What?! How'd you get in here?
Tony: I haven't left. I've been here since two episodes ago.
Drew: That's two weeks. That's a two-week interim.
Glen: Well canonically, you've been here for a year. I believe we established that last episode.
Tony: Oh. That's right. Well, in between these past few weeks, I've been drinking Rosé Nylund—copyright Tony Rodriguez, 2019—so my memory's a little foggy.
Drew: Which is appropriate that you were drinking that because we're talking about Golden Girls again.
Tony: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah! [singing] And then there's Maude!
Drew: No. No. That's—no. That's not the right—no.
Tony: [singing] Look at her, a couple of silver spoons [laughs]. Okay.
Drew: If that intro did not tip you off, we are once again talking about The Golden Girls, specifically the episode "Sister of the Bride," which first aired January 12, 1991, but which we're calling "Blanche's Homo Brother is Getting Married."
Glen: Is that what we're calling it? [laughs]
Drew: Do you have a better idea?
Glen: No.
Tony: No [laughs].
Drew: Great. This is the second of the two Clayton episodes. We are doing the Clayton Saga, which is not really a saga because it's only two installments.
Glen: Clayton Trilogy.
Drew: There's not—no.
Tony: There's two episodes. This is a trilogy—this episode. The Golden Girls episodes.
Drew: The Tony Rodriguez Golden Girls Trilogy.
Glen: So you're saying you never want to come back on again?
Tony: Oh. No—
Glen: We're saying we never want you back on again.
Tony: Oh, wow. Okay [sighs].
Drew: And we're back. This episode is special because as we mentioned in the previous Golden Girls episode, a lot of times the gay characters don't actually come back. In this episode, Clayton does come back, and they kind of flesh him out a lot more. And I actually like this episode for him better than I like the first one because he's kind of given more of a personal life than he is in the first one. Tony is rolling his eyes.
Tony: [sighs]
Glen: No. I'd agree with that. He comes with a little more baggage this time—like, in a good way.
Tony: Oh, wow. Mm-hmm. Oh, like in the form of a person?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I have a question for you guys. What is your favorite male Golden Girls character? Tony, do you have one?
Tony: Clayton's hunky fiancé in this episode.
Glen: Spoiler alert.
Tony: Mm-hmm. He handsome.
Drew: He has a great mustache. I'll give him that much. Glen?
Glen: Dorothy.
Drew: Glen?
Glen: Oh, Jesus. I don't like men on Golden Girls.
Drew: Stan! Stan's awesome. Stan's a great comedic actor.
Glen: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Drew: Miles is a monster.
Glen: Miles is a monster.
Tony: I agree.
Drew: Do you guys know that Miles shows up on The Golden Palace?
Glen: No.
Tony: Wow.
Drew: He is, I think, the only incidental character who carries over to the oft-forgotten sequel series, which we probably won't talk about because I don't think they did a gay episode.
Tony: Oh, wow. Do you know that the actor who played Miles played a different character on a one-off episode before he became—
Drew: Mm-hmm. It's really confusing to see that episode and be like, "Miles—no? Oh. Okay."
Glen: We talked about "The Phylicia Rashad Show," how that happened—Denise's eventual husband plays boyfriend in the pilot episode.
Drew: What episode did that come up in?
Glen: It didn't—oh. It came up in our daily conversation.
Drew: Oh, okay. Yeah. We talk about "The Phylicia Rashad Show" on a daily basis.
Tony: I love "The Phylicia Rashad Variety Hour."
Drew: Mm-hmm. "The Phylicia Rashad Mysteries."
Tony: Oh, yeah.
Glen: Phylicia Rashad in "Phylicia Rashad"?
Tony: Yeah. Phylicia Rashad, the fourth hour of the Today show. All of those shows.
Drew: That would have been better.
Tony: Ooh! [laughs]
Glen: Spicy.
Drew: No. That's not even spicy. She's great. I would love to hear her narrate topical—anyway. This—okay. I guess in the last episode we didn't explain Golden Girls, but if we need to explain Golden Girls to you, why are you listening to this podcast? I feel like you kind of are able to know about it.
Tony: Oops! I thought this was The Daily.
Glen: What?
Drew: The Daily.
Glen: Oh. Okay [laughter]. The Tim Daly.
Drew: No.
Tony: Oh—he handsome.
Glen: Drew's going to hit us [laughter].
Drew: It was a mistake to give you guys wine. This episode was written by Jamie Wooten and Marc Cherry. What was directed by Matthew Diamond. Matthew Diamond has directed every fucking sitcom in the world from Family Ties, My Two Dads, My Sister Sam, Designing Women all the way up to the 2015 staging of The Wiz Live! on NBC.
Tony: What?!
Drew: Which was one of the better-reviewed ones, which is great. But if you go on Wikipedia it says that he's best known for directing The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure. Oogieloves. Are you guys familiar with The Oogieloves?
Tony: No, sir.
Glen: Say that again.
Drew: Oogieloves. It was a failed children's movie that came out in 2012. It cost $20 million to make, and it made $1.1 million. It was a considerable non-success.
Tony: Drew?
Drew: Yeah.
Tony: That is going to be my selection for Season 2 of You Have to Watch this Movie.
Drew: The Oogieloves?
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Glen: And that's why there will be no Season 2.
Drew: We'll just remain on hiatus for a little bit until you rethink that one because it's giant puppets, and it's really unpleasant looking.
Tony: [gasps] Okay.
Drew: Why doesn't that dissuade you? But Jamie Wooten and Marc Cherry are the important ones to talk about in this episode. Marc Cherry, of course, is the guy who created Desperate Housewives, and Jamie Wooten was his writing partner. And the interesting thing about them is that they were hired being huge fans of Golden Girls, which means they had a lot of respect for the continuity that the series had laid down so far, and they invoked a lot of that and built on it in a way that I feel like a lot of writers in this time period didn't really do. Like we talked about in the last episode, they [were] still in reset mode, but in this episode they actually treat Clayton's first appearance as canon and decide to bring him back. I interviewed Jamie Wooten when I wrote that piece for Frontiers magazine—the gay magazine that no longer exists, which is too bad because it was older than I am. I talked to a bunch of the writers of The Golden Girls about their experience working on the show, and Jamie told me this: "Marc and I watched a lot of television, and Golden Girls was our favorite show. We pitched an idea about Blanche's dead husband having fathered an illegitimate child. It went well, and they asked us to join the staff. It was surreal. We couldn't believe we got into our favorite show," which yeah, that's a fucking weird thing. So because I'm a giant Simpsons fan, I would compare this to—Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley were the people who show-ran The Simpsons for Seasons 7 and 8. And similarly, there's a bunch of stuff they did that built on Season 3 of that show, which was the first really, really good season. And the reason they did that—because they were fans of the show who got hired to craft the show, which is something that doesn't happen very often because most shows don't last long enough for someone who's a huge fan to be able to get to the point where they can actually be a writer for the show. I feel like that is something that Marc and Jamie very much do. Like, there's that episode called "Journey to the Center of Attention," which takes place at The Rusty Anchor, which is the bar that Blanche always goes to.
Glen: Is that the singing bar?
Drew: Yes, but we never see it until that episode. And the episode we see it, Dorothy goes to the bar and she becomes more popular than Blanche. But that is them being like, "Hey. This is something that's a part of the show that we've never explored before. Wouldn't it be interesting to do that?" And they did, and it was a really good idea. But that's the first reason that Clayton gets to come back. The other reason is that they're both gay, and at the time they were working on the show, they were the only gay writers. Stan Zimmerman and his writing partner were also gay, but I don't think they overlapped at all. Stan Zimmerman, who I did a one-on-one interview—it's in the feed. Check it out. And they didn't have any other gay male character to latch on to except for—I guess Coco from the pilot, who is, like, dead in the ocean probably, now.
Tony: Oh, my god.
Glen: Wow. Did he kill himself? Or was he murdered, Drew?
Drew: That's the mystery they should have explored, who killed Coco? That would have been a great season-long mystery.
Glen: I'll write that.
Drew: Please do that. So they wanted to explore what it would be like to be a gay male character in this universe, and they were allowed to do this. I asked him about what it was like to write this episode, and Jamie Wooten said this: "Because the show was a big fat hit, they left us alone. We wrote the episode where Blanche's gay brother wanted to get married, and not once did anyone say a word to us. There were no questions. It was only after the episode aired that we got hate mail, but no one ever said, 'Don't do this.' We had total support, but I was naïve. For example, I was listed in the phone book, and after the episode aired they found me, and I had these blisteringly horrible phone messages—I learned a lesson there. But we wanted to make a statement, and we were allowed to do that," which is really cool, actually, when you think about that this aired in 1991, and this episode is a very pro-gay marriage episode. I'm not sure I can think of another episode of TV around this time that would have been making specifically an argument in favor of gay marriage. Most other shows were still stuck at gay acceptance or gay tolerance and not like, "Oh. A same-sex couple could be married, and it could be a powerful statement."
Glen: Yeah. Back during the Prop-8 fight in 2008, this episode—and one scene in particular that we'll talk about later—got shared a lot on Facebook for good reason.
Tony: I'm guessing it's a scene in the kitchen?
Glen: It's the fart scene.
Tony: The fart scene? The farting in the kitchen?
Glen: Mm-hmm. This was also the first episode—because they respected continuity—where we saw one of their bathrooms as they were taking a shit.
Tony: Oh, yeah.
Drew: [sighs] [laughter] In doing research for this episode, I found an interview with Marc Cherry—who I did not interview for that Golden Girls piece—where he said that it was because of this episode and the reaction to it that he decided there should be a gay couple living on Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives because "I wanted viewers—" This is a quote. "I wanted viewers to see gays as just people on the block. They get along with everyone. They can be your neighbors. It'll be just fine. That experience on Golden Girls taught me how important that is."
Tony: Hmm.
Drew: So I like that. It aired on January 12, 1991. It pulled in 29.8 million viewers, which is astounding to think about in comparison to what shows get now, which is like—
Glen: 0.8, if they're lucky.
Drew: If they're lucky. It aired opposite an episode of Twin Peaks. This was during the decline of Twin Peaks when it got 10 million viewers, and that was considered like, "Oh, this show's toast. It can't last because they're only getting 10 million viewers per episode." And also, it aired just a few months after the Wings episode that we did just a few weeks ago, and then a month before the L.A. Law episode where Amanda Donohoe's character kisses another woman, which was one of the big, hyped, controversial lesbian-kiss episodes.
Glen: Does anyone walk into an open elevator shaft in that episode? Because if not, I have not seen it.
Drew: No. That is not that episode, although that is a fantastic piece of TV history. Do you guys have any memories of watching this episode?
Tony: Along with a lot of memories from the early '90s, I've suppressed them.
Glen: I can't—none of us can remember.
Tony: Can you remember, Drew?
Drew: I do have some memory of seeing this episode, and it might have been the first time I had a concept of there being a same-sex marriage because watching it again for this episode, I remember the brain process of—this episode's about Clayton wanting to get married to the guy he's seeing, and he talks about "It'll just be a small ceremony. Nothing big." He downplays, like it's not a real—he kind of tacitly says that it's not a real wedding, and I remember being like, "Wait. Can that happen? Is that a thing? Is that a thing that can happen?" If you want to read my article—and I suggest you do read my article because it is full of cool behind-the-scenes Golden Girls stories that you may not have read anywhere else. You can't read it at Frontiers anymore because Frontiers doesn't exist, but I reposted it on my old blog Back of the Cereal Box. If you go to backofthecerealbox.com/goldengirls, you can read the entire article in its entirety. Please do that.
Glen: Please! Please, do it!
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: Also, if we are not over time towards the end of this, I want to share something I didn't share in the first Tony Golden Girls—
Tony: The first Tony Episode. That's how we're referring to these.
Drew: —in the first Tony Episode where it's the best story about Bea Arthur I've ever heard.
Tony: What's that?
Drew: I want to share it later!
Glen: He's going to share it if there's time, Tony.
Tony: I want to know now!
Glen: You don't get your ice cream.
Tony: Hey, when we first started dating, that article that you just mentioned that had just appeared in Frontiers magazine—
Glen: And it made me not want to date you.
Tony: [sighs] No, on the contrary. When I was showing up to your house and you had the most recent issue out—and my friend Stephen Guarino was on the cover of it.
Drew: Oh, yeah. That was weird. I remember that. I think that's how I—yes. That's when I found out you were friends with Stephen.
Tony: Yeah. I was like—[exclaims]. I've never interviewed any of the writers, but I have swum in Marc Cherry's pool. He's very nice.
Glen: And lived to tell the tale.
Tony: Mm-hmm. He's very nice.
Drew: How did you get to swim in his pool?
Tony: I was someone's plus-one. I think it was a—yeah. Very nice pool.
Drew: Well, thank you for that. Marc Cherry, I look forward to interviewing you about your Golden Girls experience at a later date.
Glen: And swimming in your pool.
Drew: Oh, yeah. For sure. So this episode opens with Sophia haggling over the phone with a florist about discounts for centerpieces for an event that she's helping organize, and she's leveraging sex with Dorothy for discount flowers.
Sophia: Hey, Frank! Sophia Petrillo here. Listen, I decided the price you quoted me on those centerpieces is too high, so I thought maybe we could make a deal. Now, my daughter is single. What do you mean, "Is she easy"? You're talking about my flesh and blood. Forty percent off? Oh, you bet she's easy.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Now Drew, as someone who has more than once said you wanted an avocado or some sort of mustardy-yellow phone, were you living for this phone-sweater combination that Sophia is pulling off?
Drew: It was not quite the dingy yellow that I want. It was a little too bright and Eastery for me. I think I still prefer the periwinkle house phone from the Maude episode we did. But I do think that brightly colored house phones are a thing that we're lacking, and it's weird that phones are only a certain number of colors anymore.
Glen: I bet there's a coffee table book of phone colors.
Drew: We should make that happen.
Tony: I mean, surely this is the gayest episode ever—of this podcast [laughs].
Glen: Get out!
Drew: I'm not even talking about princess phones. I'm just literally talking about standard kitchen ones with the long cord. I just think it's cool that there used to be more colors than they were. When I was a kid, they were all taupe.
Glen: How are you going to kill an intruder with a cordless phone? You aren't, Tony.
Tony: All right. I used to work in a restaurant in a theater district, and there was a manager who insisted on using the phone and walking around.
Drew: With a cord? That's a terrible idea!
Tony: [laughs] It was awful! It's awful. Lennon forbids me from doing an impression because I do it too well. It just brings back too many painful memories.
Glen: Speaking of painful memories, Blanche shares that Clayton is coming for a visit.
Blanche: Girls, I just got a letter from my brother Clayton. He says he's coming for a visit next week and he has a big surprise.
Dorothy: Oh, that's wonderful!
Blanche: I bet I know what the surprise is, too. Clayton's met himself a girl. He wants me to meet her!
Dorothy: Honey, your brother is gay.
[audience laughs]
Blanche: Dorothy, I think that gay thing was just a phase he was going through. You know, like when Clay was in high school all he ever wanted to do was go see gladiator movies. It's the same kind of thing.
[audience laughs]
Dorothy: Almost exactly.
Drew: I think she must have a learning disability at this point.
Tony: Yeah.
Glen: Oh, I don't know. I think that's kind of—not common—maybe common for the time with people being like, "Oh. Well, that was a phase."
Drew: The B-plot is all about Rose thinking she's going to win the Volunteer of the Year Award, and it brings out a dark and intense side of Rose we don't get to see very often.
Dorothy: Rose! Honey, congratulations! I hear you've been nominated again for the Volunteer of the Year Award.
Rose: Yep! Seven years I've been nominated for the Volunteer Vanguard Award, and seven years I've had to watch Agnes Bradshaw snatch it away from me. Well, she's not going to do that this year. This year, I'm finally going to beat her. I'm going to win.
Dorothy: Why? Because you worked harder than Agnes?
Rose: Because she's dead.
[audience laughs]
Rose: Yep. As a doornail. Dead, dead, dead [sighs]. Coffee?
[audience laughs]
Drew: Do you guys have any idea how it ties into the main plot?
Tony: Any idea how it ties into the main plot?
Drew: Not literally, but any idea thematically or metaphorically why the writers would have chosen this to be the B-plot? Sometimes they relate in a thematic way. I'm not sure this one does.
Tony: Oh.
Glen: It kind of ties into our Maude episode where Maude was a woman who viewed herself as being very progressive and accepting but cared more about the label of that than the meaning behind it. And so Rose's volunteering—in this moment, she cares more about the label of being the best volunteer and getting attention for it, and Blanche's acceptance of homosexuality is very surface and she sort of just wants credit for saying that she accepts her brother for being gay without having to go through the motions of what that acceptance would be.
Drew: That is a better visit to Glen's Reach-Around Corner.
Tony: [singing] Peek-a-boo! Here I am. I'm Glen's Reach-Around!
Glen: Is it a sock puppet?
Tony: [affecting what one would imagine to be a sock puppet voice] Hi! I'm Glen!
Glen: Ugh.
Drew: A sock puppet—
Tony: [continuing as a sock puppet] The metaphor for this episode is—
Glen: Drew, you will cut all of this out.
Drew: No. It's a sock puppet used to touch other guys' dicks.
Tony: [continuing as a sock puppet] Hey, Mister!
Glen: It's Carol Channing! Is my sock puppet Carol Channing?
Tony: Yes!
Glen: Right.
Drew: Rose does not care less about the fact that she's dead.
Blanche: Rose! How can you be so cheery? It's a terrible thing!
Rose: Come on. She was 89 and she died in her sleep.
Blanche: She fell asleep driving the Book Mobile!
[audience laughs]
Rose: It was a tragedy. She was my only real competition. Dead, dead, dead. Muffin?
[audience laughs]
Tony: That was good. That's funny.
Drew: I'm trying to think of another episode where you get to—except for when Rose steals the teddy bear back from Jenny Lewis, I can't think of another instance when she—yeah.
Tony: But even in that instance, she was wronged. She was only taking back what's hers. But this is the most Blanche-esque that Rose has ever been. It's delicious. I love it.
Drew: Do you remember what the teddy bear's name was in that episode?
Tony: No.
Drew: Fernando.
Tony: Oh! Hey, have you guys seen Mama Mia II with Cher? She sings "Fernando"!
Drew: No. Jenny Lewis has a song called "Fernando."
Tony: Oh, my god.
Drew: Yeah. Isn't that weird?
Tony: That is weird.
Drew: I don't know if that's an intentional thing on her part, but someone must have pointed that out to her by now. She probably has other reasons why "Fernando" sticks out prominently in her brain.
Glen: So Clayton's gay and comes to the house still gay, and his surprise is that he has a boyfriend named Doug who has a mustache and is a cop.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: He's played by Michael Ayr, who's done not that much—his last credit being a 1992 episode of a sitcom called Davis Rules. You guys have any awareness? Starred Jonathan Winters and Patricia Clarkson for a little bit. So Blanche thinks that this man is the cabby, and it takes her a little while to realize that no, no, no—it's not a cabby that is just being very nice and bringing the luggage in, it's a boyfriend. And she responds with "Ahso."
Clayton: Blanche?
Blanche: Uh-huh?
Clayton: This is Doug. He's my friend. My very special friend.
Blanche: Well, any friend of Clay's—
[audience laughs]
Blanche: Ahso.
Drew: She responds with "Ahso."
Glen: I wanted to ask about this.
Drew: I looked it up. It's fascinating. I always wondered about this. So "ahso" is something we associate with stereotypical Asian speech in American pop culture.
Glen: Mostly Japanese.
Drew: It gets used for Chinese as well, but it shouldn't because it is strictly a Japanese thing. "Ahso" is an abbreviation of the Japanese phrase "Ah so desu ka," which means "Oh, is that so?" But the reason that crosses over is that it just happens to have the same two first syllables as the English, "Ah, so." And that's why it's such a thing in American pop culture. Wherever I looked it up said that it's often used for mock Chinese, but it is purely Japanese in origin.
Glen: I also dove into a couple message boards about this being like, "Is this racist?" Because a lot of people were asking, like, "Oh. I have a friend who keeps saying this mockingly. I don't know how to get him to stop," and most of the answers to that post were "Stop being friends with this person."
Drew: That's a great answer! Confusingly, if you google "ahso," the first thing you'll get is the line of Asian-inspired meat marinades.
Glen: I feel like this was a thing that happened in the early '90s that went away very quickly.
Drew: Ahso?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: It's older than that. It's been around for a while, but I think it went away after the '90s because people were like, "Yeah. That's not—"
Glen: It just felt so out of step with the normal Golden Girls writing because they didn't usually—they have topical humor now and then, but they didn't usually lean into—
Drew: Yeah. It seems weird coming out of Blanche's mouth. Rose's dumbness sets up a really good joke with—[laughter].
Glen: She still thinks that Doug is the driver.
Dorothy: Rose, Doug is not a cab driver.
Doug: No, ma'am. Actually, I'm a policeman.
Rose: Oh! Well, what's a policeman doing bringing fares from the airport?
[audience laughs]
Rose: I know. I bet you do undercover work.
[audience laughs]
Sophia: And I'll bet he does it damn well.
[audience hoot-laughs and applauds]
Dorothy: [laughs uncomfortably] You'll have to excuse my mother. She survived a slight stroke which left her—if I can be frank—a complete burden.
Tony: Oh, my god.
Glen: I laughed so hard.
Drew: I think that's a Marc Cherry-Jamie Wooten thing. I think they are just willing to go to a meaner place than other writers of the show were wanting to do, and it's all the better for it. There's a lot of great mean lines in it, but that's such a fucking good one [laughter].
Tony: Oh, that's good [laughs].
Drew: Sophia's stroke doesn't get brought up that often, and I think them being such hard-core fans were like, "No. That's an important part of her character. We are going to call that out specifically." I tend to like writers who are obsessive nerds. So it goes from that to they've had dinner. Everyone loves Doug. Sophia says that she's never met a cop who can do a Betty Davis impression before.
Glen: And Blanche wants credit for how great of a job she did covering up how upset she is.
Blanche: I think I did a great job covering up how upset I am.
Dorothy: You mean like how you started sobbing when Clayton asked for more fruit cocktail?
[audience laughs]
Tony: [laughs]
Glen: [laughs] I just think that the humor level in this episode stepped it up a notch, and with the timing—
Drew: Yes. Everyone's firing on all cylinders and the writing is very tight and heightened. It does get a lot goofier than we'd normally see them, but I like it. Then Blanche says what I think is the thesis of the episode where she says, "I don't mind Clayton being homosexual, but I just don't like him dating men," which is how—
Glen: Tony feels about homosexuals.
Tony: Yeah. I mean, I'm okay with me being homosexual, but I guess I'm not okay with me dating. Wow. Hmm.
Drew: Is this a realization for you?
Tony: Yeah [sighs]. I need to—
Glen: Sip some of that Rosé Nylund.
Drew: Don't you say it.
Tony: Copyright Tony Rodriguez, 2019.
Drew: This is a problem in life and in pop culture—but I guess we'll talk about pop culture first—where most of the gay characters we've seen in almost every episode that we've watched so far have been denied any sort of romantic life. It's weird that we see a character who actually gets to exhibit attraction, much less a relationship. Have we seen a gay relationship yet? We've seen—on "John Goodman Show" there's Mariel Hemingway and Nancy. They're a couple. But it's mostly just been a gay person on their own being gay quietly and inoffensively because TV shows didn't want to go into that.
Glen: Can I just say that it wasn't until now that I got what you meant when you said, "The John Goodman Show"?
Drew: How did—I say that all the time!
Glen: Listen. This is the second podcast in the day.
Tony: Can I just say that it wasn't until you just said that you just got it that I just got it? I swear to God [laughter].
Glen: So let me just say that my initial reaction to Clayton having a boyfriend was rage because here is this man who just came out less than two years ago who's already in a solid relationship and getting married—
Drew: To a cop.
Glen: —to a cop, before it was even trendy and legal and accepted. So I guess more jealousy than rage, but the Venn diagram of that's pretty tight.
Drew: But also he's very recently an openly gay person, and he's probably still in a very traditional monogamous mindset, and so I feel like a person in Clayton's shoes probably—I can understand why he might be eager to jump into another confirmed, set-up relationship because he was married for a long time. He probably actually misses that sort of life.
Glen: It's like monogamy is his gateway drug into homosexuality.
Drew: Yeah, and we're going to talk about that. Monogamy comes up later. The other thing—I don't know if I've ever talked about it before, but have I mentioned—do you remember if I mentioned on the show that chapter in Bossy Pants where Tina Fey writes about not having the right attitude towards gay people? Do you know what I'm—have you read Bossy Pants?
Glen: No.
Drew: Have you read Bossy Pants?
Tony: The first couple chapters on a plane, and then I fell asleep.
Drew: I think it's very good. There's a chapter where she writes about having a gay friend and really liking this person but being at a social event with this gay male friend and realizing that he was making eyes at another guy, like something was going to happen between them, and her kind of freaking out about it because she was young. And she liked to have this gay person be her gay person, but the moment he started exhibiting active agency towards another more sexual relationship, she felt a little jealous and a little uncomfortable, and that's something that she had to get over. It's a really good little fable for not being the wrong kind of straight person.
Glen: An ally?
Drew: Yeah. Read Bossy Pants. It's really funny.
Tony: We could expand that to people of color, like people that have—you know.
Drew: Oh. Like, "I like you to be my token friend, but the moment—"
Glen: "—you exhibit the actual traits of being that token—"
Tony: Yeah. I guess. That's—
Glen: I'd rather just get a t-shirt that says, "Let your gay friends fuck."
Tony: You can have that, and I'll have Rosé Nylund.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Let's see who sells more.
Tony: Okay! You're on.
Drew: I actually don't know which one would sell more.
Tony: I'm going to have to google how to start a business [laughter].
Drew: So Rose is excited because she finds out they're comping her ticket, and she thinks that's proof that she's going to win this award. And then Clayton comes into the room and double checks with Blanche about who's going to be sleeping where.
Clayton: Oh, Blanche? Doug and I were wondering what's happening with the sleeping arrangements?
Blanche: Well, I'll be there in just a moment to get you two settled in. Now, if you sleepyheads can wait just a—sleeping arrangements?! What in the hell am I going to do about the sleeping arrangements?
Dorothy: Well Honey, why can't you sleep on the couch and give Clayton and Doug your room?
Blanche: Are you crazy? What will the neighbors think if they see two men in my bedroom?
[audience laughs]
Sophia: They'll think it's Tuesday!
[audience laughs and applauds]
Dorothy: They can sleep in Ma's room, and she'll sleep with me.
Sophia: Oh. Ma doesn't get a say. It doesn't matter what Ma thinks. Ma's a piece of furniture who has no feelings or opinions!
Dorothy: Oh, nonsense, my little hat rack.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Sophia's reaction is weird, that she feels like she's being treated like a piece of furniture, which is funny because she's actually selling her daughter off for sex discounts for this event.
Glen: But also, Blanche owns the house, so maybe—that's something that's rarely talked about.
Drew: She puts her arm around Sophia and says, "My little hat rack," and it's very cute [laughs].
Tony: Yeah, and she kisses the back of her head—very slowly.
Glen: Where a hat would go!
Tony: Yeah. It feels like this was a particularly fun episode for Bea Arthur and Betty White—for Betty White most of all.
Drew: Mm-hmm. They all get to do stuff that they don't normally get to do.
Tony: I feel like in that incident and the earlier incident where she was talking about "Forgive my mother"—it feels like she's having a blast."
Drew: She's gleeful, and Dorothy is a lot more grumpy a lot of the time, and there's a different vibe going on there.
Glen: I think because, really, she doesn't have to do any of the dramatic pull in this episode. The stories don't hang on her, really.
Drew: No. No heavy lifting. She gets to come in and do funny lines, and then she's done. Yeah. So Rose says that you can't actually be accepting of Clayton if you're not accepting of his relationship, and that's when Dorothy says—
Rose: Blanche, I don't understand. You can't very well say you've accepted Clayton unless you're willing to accept the fact that he dates!
Dorothy: Rose is right. And besides, Blanche, in this day and age you should be thrilled that he's in a monogamous relationship.
Tony: Oh, wow.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: We all know what she's talking about, I think.
Drew: I don't really know how to react to that, just because the rules are different now. But what Dorothy says is an attitude a lot of straight people would have back then and probably still do now. I don't know.
Tony: I'm not sure they still have it now. Of course, for the time it's in, if what you said earlier is true—and there's no reason to doubt them—they weren't told anything—the writers?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Tony: It honors who she is in that time.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Yeah. Also, I'm trying to imagine writing a gay storyline in 1991 that didn't mention AIDS in some way. I don't know if they felt like they had to or if it would be—not irresponsible not to, but just—it would be weird to not address it, I guess.
Drew: They kind of had to because this is a season after the episode where Rose takes an HIV test. So they've already introduced the fact that HIV is something that exists in the world and everyone on the show is aware of, so they kind of have to. Yeah. It's not absolutely inaccurate, and also our knee-jerk reflex for this now is to be like, "That's not the most sex-positive answer in the world," but the notion of sex positivity did not really exist back then, especially for gay men.
Tony: My mother worked in the ER in these years, and I remember seeing something I maybe should not have—because she didn't share it with me—about testing for HIV, and apparently she'd been pricked by a needle. But I remember being—at the time, it was terrifying.
Drew: Yeah.
Tony: Anyway, back to comedy!
Glen: Have we said what we were going to say about that point?
Drew: Well, I think the scene is going to end shortly. We can probably—probably need to take an ad break. So Blanche decides, "All right. I'm going to be okay with this."
Blanche: Of course, you're right. I've just got to stop this overreacting. Doug and Clayton are two consenting adults. There's no reason for me to be embarrassed.
Clayton: Blanche, Honey. It's such a beautiful night. Doug and I are going to go out for a little walk. Don't wait up!
Blanche: Okay. Well, enjoy your walk.
[door closes]
Blanche: I'm fine. I'm okay. I can deal with this.
Sophia: Oh, look! They're skipping!
Blanche: Oh, god!
[audience laughs]
Sophia: Joke! Joke. Just a joke. It's a joke.
Glen: I was—oh, my god. I love that joke. I love that moment. Again, I just felt like Dorothy and Sophia were having their own fun on set.
Tony: Mm-hmm [laughs].
Glen: They were unbridled, and now I just want to watch a stage show with them.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Glen: I can't. They're dead. But—
Tony: [murmurs]
Drew: Yeah. Hmm. Well. I guess it's time for a fun commercial break now.
Tony: Oh, my god [laughter].
Glen: Everyone dies!
Tony: [sings the McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" jingle]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes an event at A Love Bizarre and Gayest Episode Ever's Patreon]
Glen: And we're back from commercial.
Drew: And we're back. I'm just noticing, for some reason, throughout this section in my notes—I keep referring—I was typing in a hurry. I keep referring to Blanche's bench—B-E-N-C-H [laughs].
Tony: Wow, Drew.
Drew: Bench. So Dorothy just received the strangest prank call. It's kind of vivid for a 1991 sitcom.
Dorothy: I just had the strangest crank call. Some man wanted to know if I owned a riding crop and a leather bra—and if I could lick my eyebrows.
[audience laughs]
Sophia: What did you say?
Dorothy: I said no.
Sophia: I guess we're paying full price for the cocktail franks.
[audience laughs]
Drew: The plot moves forward, and we find out that Rose has invited Doug—is that his name?
Glen: Yeah. That's his name. You can just call him mustache if you want—Captain Mustache. Officer Mustache.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Rose invited Clayton and Captain Mustache to the—gala? I don't know.
Glen: Banquet.
Drew: Actually, I relate to the "Where is everyone going to sleep?" dilemma because I've experienced that. Tony actually experienced that once, too. Oh, that's weird. I didn't think about that.
Tony: At Drew's parents house.
Glen: I mean, I knew that. I was hoping for some more smoky details.
Drew: No, that's it. No. It's happened any time—yeah.
Tony: What was—they wanted us to sleep in separate rooms?
Drew: Yep!
Glen: [laughs]
Drew: So you got the guest bedroom, and I was in my old bedroom.
Tony: Oh. You relented?
Drew: Yeah. I did relent, and I don't know why—
Glen: Because you hate drama and you'd rather just go with it than express your actual feelings and desires?
Drew: Yep! That's a really good summation of my mental processes, Glen. That's actually really dead on. That's exactly what I do.
Glen: Hey, Golden Girls.
Drew: [sighs]
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: But also, the idea of "Well, if you guys are both there, what are people going to say?" And the correct answer is it doesn't fucking matter what people say, Blanche—or other person that I'm addressing in this imaginary situation. But she can't get past—
Tony: Benched.
Drew: What was that?
Glen: Bench.
Drew: She can't get past it because at this point the homosexuality is not so much a problem for—
Glen: You want to say that word again? [laughter]
Drew: What'd I say?
Tony: We don't know.
Glen: You said, like, "Homo-sectionality."
Drew: Homo-sectionality [laughter]. At this point, the homosexuality is not as big of a deal for Blanche as it is what other people are going to react to it and how it's going to affect her because she always thinks about stuff in terms of her, and she's a monster—who I love. But a monster. So she's freaking out, and she's mad that Rose did this thing.
Glen: But Clayton doesn't care what people think.
Dorothy: But Blanche, they're here together.
Blanche: Well Dorothy, that's different. We're talking about going out in public. Oh, what are people going to say?
Clayton: Probably nothing we haven't heard before.
Blanche: Oh, Clay. I was just telling the girls—
Clayton: We heard what you were telling them, Blanche, and I am truly sorry you feel that way.
Blanche: Will you tell me why you want to put yourself and Doug through this? You know how people can be.
Clayton: And if my own sister can't accept our relationship, what chance would I have with anyone else, right?
Blanche: Right—no!
[audience laughs]
Blanche: No. What I mean—
Doug: We get what you mean.
Clayton: Blanche, we don't have to worry about what the world thinks about our relationship. It just doesn't matter because we're there for each other. I'd do anything for Doug, and he'd bend over backwards for me.
[audience laughs uproariously and applauds]
Glen: Which elicits one of my favorite reactions in this episode.
Drew: Describe it, Glen, because it won't work in sound form.
Glen: Sure won't. So since the episode and the entire series has already set up Sophia as saying whatever comes to mind, Dorothy anticipates this [laughter], quickly grabs Sophia from behind, puts her hand on her mouth, pulls her close—and when everyone turns to see this violent gesture, Dorothy holds Sophia close and says—
Dorothy: Sometimes I just love to hug my mommy.
[audience laughs and applauds]
Tony: [laughs]
Glen: And she says it in a baby voice. "Sometimes I just love to hug my mommy."
Drew: It's just a very un-Bea-Arthur-like delivery, and she seems to have a great time doing it, and it's really well done. And also, Sophia's reaction once Dorothy unleashes her is she just is shaken and offended by the fact this has happened. It's really good.
Tony: [laughs] Oh, it's so satisfying.
Glen: Clayton isn't done with his surprises.
Drew: He's like, "It's about time we tell her." She's like, "Tell me what?"
Clayton: I wanted you to meet Doug for a very important reason.
Blanche: Well, why?
Clayton: Blanche, we're getting married.
[audience laughs loudly and inappropriately]
Drew: Which gets a laugh.
Glen: It's the loudest laugh line in the episode.
Drew: People were—they were just like, "Ha ha! Can you imagine? She's being told her brother's marrying a man!" I always try to get in the head of why this would be funny to someone back then, and I'm having a hard time with this one.
Tony: It might just be the anticipation of Blanche's reaction. That might be—
Glen: The other generous reading could be like—if this were an episode of another sitcom and it was a character's brother who is recently out of a marriage who had shown up with a boyfriend or girlfriend that they had never talked about that the character of the sister didn't approve of and said, "Oh, and we're getting married," it would get a laugh line, I think. Like, "Oh, my god. Things are even worse."
Drew: I guess that's fair. Okay.
Tony: That's the generous reading of it.
Glen: Yeah. That is the generous reading.
Drew: I looked it up just to see where same-sex marriage was at this point in American history. The only municipalities that were doing any sort of recognition for same-sex couples were San Francisco and West Hollywood, and that was purely on the level of city and nothing else. And also, four years after this, Bill Clinton would sign the Defense of Marriage Act.
Glen: Oh, boy!
Drew: Remember how he signed that?
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: We kind of forget that he signed that. He did sign that.
Glen: Oh, I don't forget that.
Tony: No. Never forgotten it. No.
Drew: I don't forget it, but I feel like—
Tony: Lock him up!
Glen: I mean—
Tony: No. The other one—the current president.
Glen: I know. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Aside from that laugh line, it actually does get a genuinely fantastic joke as a reaction from Rose when she says—
Rose: Well, that's impossible Clayton! Brothers can't marry sisters!
[audience laughs uproariously]
Rose: Oh, that's right. You're from the South.
[audience laughs]
Dorothy: Blanche and Clayton aren't getting married, you airhead. Clayton and Doug are.
Rose: Oh. Oh! Oh?
[audience laughs]
Drew: Blanche runs away, and the scene ends with Sophia saying, "So Butch, Sundance. Who throws the bouquet?" End of scene. Now we're at the banquet. This episode cracks along really quick. I don't feel like there's—the other one maybe drags slightly more than this one does. We're very few scenes in; we're already at the fucking banquet, which is the climax of the story.
Glen: Before we talk about anything, I want to talk about Rose's jacket and dress at the banquet because I think it'll get lost in the shuffle. But it was beautiful. It was like if you took a garden and then magically turned it to tinfoil and then rolled it out real flat and they made a dress from that. I loved it.
Drew: I watched the episode, and based on your description, I can't picture at all what that would mean. But maybe our viewers will be more imaginative than I am.
Tony: Barbafella will see to that—just the tinfoil part.
Drew: Aside from what Blanche was wearing in the previous Golden Girls episode, I just noticed the trend of all Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche wearing high-waisted shirt or skirt, men's collared shirt tucked into it, and then a blazer with sleeves rolled up that goes down to their knees. I don't know how to describe that look. I don't know what that look is supposed to be. I have never seen that look outside of The Golden Girls before.
Glen: Casual genie.
Drew: Casual genie. Okay. Yeah. I'm okay with that.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: So the dress is Rose's fancy award-accepting dress. You see her practicing her speech, and Dorothy comes in and is like, "Oh, yeah. Blanche isn't here. She's really upset."
Rose: I wish Blanche would have come to see me win my award.
Dorothy: Honey, this thing with Doug and Clayton has been pretty rough on her.
Rose: Just to bring me up to speed, it's the brother marrying a gay cop thing, right?
Dorothy: That's a big part of it.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And then she sees that they're there. She's like, "I think they make a lovely couple. I don't know if 'lovely' is the right word—husky couple?" "Husky" is the adjective she decides on.
Glen: What would you describe them as?
Drew: Handsome.
Glen: Oh, yeah. That's much—
Tony: Both of them? They're a handsome couple? Oh, that's a good word to use. You're right.
Glen: Yeah. Compared to "lovely"? Yeah.
Tony: You're right. You're right.
Drew: They're also not husky! Neither of them I would describe as being particularly husky.
Tony: Like a dog?
Glen: I mean, "butch" would have been better for the joke, I guess.
Tony: Oh. Yeah. They look very Sundancey.
Glen: Oh, my god.
Tony: Oh, Thurman groaned at that, too.
Drew: Yeah.
Tony: [growls]
Drew: So Blanche does show up. She interrupts the toast to Rose. I don't know if this will translate to podcast sound form at all, but it's a funny joke—Rose misunderstanding the podcast because Blanche shows up.
Glen: Rose misunderstanding the toast—not the podcast [laughs].
Drew: Did I say podcast?
Tony: Yes, you did.
Drew: I guess I was thinking about podcasts. I don't know why. It's not like we spent a lot of time podcasting tonight.
Glen: Podcast, podcast, podcast.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: Sophia intros the awards, and she gives a special thanks to Dorothy. She says to stand up and take a bow, and the waiters hoot and catcall and whistle at her. This is a lot going on here. And she's like, "I think the waiters were whistling at me," and Blanche out of nowhere is really fucking mean.
Sophia: I just want to thank all those people who made this evening possible, especially my daughter Dorothy. Dorothy, stand up and take a bow.
[fake audience laughs]
[waiters whistle]
Dorothy: If I'm not mistaken, all the waiters were whistling at me!
Rose: [laughs]
Blanche: Maybe they never saw anyone eat a steak that fast.
[real audience titters and oooohs]
Glen: Also, Blanche has not been there that long. She has not had time to watch Dorothy eat her steak.
Drew: That is one mean comment that kind of comes out of left field and was like, "You're just being gay and mean. That's why you wrote this, Writers. I know what you're doing. I relate to that." But someone probably should have been like, "This—she doesn't need to say that." Blanche isn't mad at Dorothy—yeah. And the winner is—Agnes Bradshaw.
Tony: No, no, no. The winner is Rose.
Glen: Rose.
Sophia: Okay. On with the award.
Rose: Oh, god. This is it.
Dorothy: Good luck, Honey!
Blanche: Break a leg.
Rose: Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please.
Sophia: The winner of this year's Volunteer Vanguard Award is Rose—
Rose: Yes!
Sophia: —hand me that glass of water, please.
[audience laughs]
Tony: I just—
Glen: Yeah. I actually analyzed that. I paused it and re-watched it and analyzed it being like, "Oh. That works because of Rose's reaction to cut off Sophia to then have Sophia finish her sentence." It wouldn't have just worked with just Sophia being like, "And the winner is Rose. Can you get me a glass of water?" It was just very tight.
Tony: Yeah.
Drew: The winner is, eventually, Agnes Bradshaw—the first posthumous award for Volunteer of the Year ever. Rose is furious, and I don't think we've ever seen her be this angry on the history of the show.
Rose: She's dead! She doesn't need that on her mantel—she's on her mantel!
[audience laughs]
Tony: Did Sue Nevins—is that her character on—
Drew: Sue Ann.
Tony: Sue Ann—did she ever talk like that?
Drew: She is a—
Tony: Like, a conniving—
Drew: Yeah, a force of evil. It is really interesting to remember that that's what Betty White's background was. That's what she was on Mama's Family, and that's what she was on Mary Tyler Moore. She spent more of her career doing that than she spent playing a Rose Nylund type character, but Rose was such a big deal that it permanently reset our idea of what kind of person Betty White was—and also what kind of person Rue McClanahan was because she played the airhead before that or the—
Glen: The soft one.
Drew: Yeah. Like on Mama's Family, she's Aunt Fran, and she's an uptight church lady.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: They flip-flopped, and we're all the better for it.
Tony: We are all the better for it. You guys know the Elaine Stritch story, right? When she auditioned—
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Did we talk about that on here?
Glen: No. We talked about it in real life. I don't know.
Drew: Tony?
Tony: Well, allegedly—
Drew: No. It's true.
Tony: Because you said it [on our 00:49:28] show?
Drew: Because it got fact-checked at People magazine when I wrote that article.
Tony: Oh. So from my foggy memory, you'll verify that allegedly, when they were auditioning all the who's-whos of women who could play these roles that Elaine Stritch went in to read for Dorothy, I guess. And the scene had "Care for another hors d'oeuvre?" or "Care for more hors d'oeuvres?" and one of the people running the audition said, "Could you do it again but funnier?" So Elaine Stritch just said, "Would you care for another fucking hors d'oeuvre?"
Drew: I don't remember that part. That's not the part I remember. That's not the Elaine Stritch story I remember.
Tony: Is that the story you remember, Glen?
Glen: I remember her being drunk, Tony.
Tony: Elaine Stritch was drunk at her audition?
Glen: Yes. ]
Drew: I have not read this article in a while.
Tony: —watching her show on HBO.
Drew: So the thing—I'll have to edit something in if I'm completely off base with this. But they initially offered Dorothy to Bea Arthur. She was their first choice. It was basically written for her, as you can tell. And she had finished Maude not that long ago and was just like, "I don't really want to be in another show. Maybe not." And so they offered it to Elaine Stritch because she's also someone who could do that part, but she blew the audition because she was drunk, because she had a drinking problem back then, and she did not get the role. They ended up going back to Bea Arthur, and she finally said yes. And then there was a mirror of this years later—and again, if I got this wrong, I'm really sorry. I'll try to fix it. But the role of Ursula in The Little Mermaid was offered to Bea Arthur. She was interested in it, and you can see why that would be a good fit for her, but when she found out that she was going to be playing the ugliest thing in the ocean she was like, "Nah. I'm not that interested in it." So then they offered it to Elaine Stritch, who blew the audition. And I believe that's when she was like, "I should drink less. This is not a great look for me," and that's why she got cleaned up enough to do all the cool stuff she did in the last chunk of her life—active up right until the end of her life. And she outlived Bea Arthur.
Tony: Hmm. Wow.
Glen: She says.
Drew: She did!
Tony: [singing] Here's to the ladies who—
Glen: So in that vein, I guess, Sophia tries to grab the trophy out of Rose's hands, says, "Let it go, Loser!" [laughter] And then after the drama with Rose at the podium, we're back at the table. One of Blanche's friends comes over to the table to be introduced to Clayton, and Clayton tries to introduce Doug, and it does not go well.
Susan: So good to see you again, Blanche. And who have we here? Hello. I'm Susan Dodd.
Clayton: Oh. I'm Clayton, Blanche's brother.
Susan: Oh.
Clayton: And this is Doug. He's my—
Blanche: Fire! Fire! Everybody out!
[audience laughs]
Glen: Tony, how does she yell "fire"?
Tony: [imitating Blanche] "Fire!"
Glen: Sure. That's right.
Tony: I mean, please. Put this right next to real audio. I dare people to guess which is which.
[The Golden Girls clip and Tony's impression of Blanche play consecutively]
Drew: Indistinguishable. It's like a living Rue mirror.
Tony: This is my—[imitating Blanche] Fire! There's a fire!
Drew: That's better. Yeah.
Tony: That? Like, a squawking chicken?
Drew: Yeah.
Tony: Okay. Then Dorothy calms her down, right?
Drew: No!
Glen: Everyone just comes around slapping her.
Tony: [laughs] Oh, my god. "Oh, you dumb bench!"
Drew: [laughter] Dumb bench. Clayton says that—
Glen: That's a t-shirt, too.
Tony: [gasps!] Yeah. Earwolf—I'm going to tell Earwolf all of these ideas.
Drew: Clayton says—
Tony: She goes [impersonating Blanche] "Lesbian!"
Drew: No. She doesn't want to do that. She wants to—well, that might work in this situation. Clayton says that if she can't accept Doug then he can't accept her as being family. The next scene is Blanche pondering life at the kitchen table, as the girls in the show often do.
Glen: This is the scene that we're all here for.
Drew: It's really good. Glen, do you want to summarize it for us—or set it up, at least? No?
Glen: No. Tony does.
Tony: No. Thurman? I'll fucking do it.
Drew: No. I'll do it. You missed your fucking chance. Blanche is pondering. Sophia walks in and says, "Blanche, I've been thinking about Clayton and Doug, and I have a question.
Sophia: Blanche, I've been thinking about Clayton and Doug and I have a question.
Blanche: What?
Sophia: Why do men have nipples?
[audience laughs]
Blanche: I have no idea.
Sophia: You think it's because God has a sense of humor and isn't as uptight as the rest of us?
[audience laughs]
Blanche: It's easier for you to say that, Sophia. It's not your brother who's getting married to a man.
Sophia: Hey. It's not like the guys in my family never kissed a man. Of course, that was business. Although there was that one hitman who always had to have a flower in his lapel and would hold the kiss of death a little longer than he had to.
[audience laughs]
Blanche: Oh, look. I can accept the fact that he's gay, but why does he have to slip a ring on this guy's finger so the whole world will know?
Sophia: Why did you marry George?
Blanche: We loved each other. We wanted to make a lifetime commitment and wanted everybody to know.
Sophia: That's what Doug and Clayton want, too. Everyone wants someone to grow old with, and shouldn't everyone have that chance?
Blanche: [sighs] Sophia, I think I see what you're getting at.
Sophia: I don't think you do. Blanche, will you marry me?
[audience laughs]
Drew: So it's kind of a mirror to a conversation Sophia has with Dorothy in "Isn't It Romantic?"—the Dorothy's-friend-is-a-lesbian episode—where Dorothy asks if Sophia how she would have felt if any of her kids turned out to be gay, and she says that it wouldn't have mattered at all. She wouldn't have loved them any differently than she did as she does now. And in this scene, she asks Blanche why she married her husband George—her late husband. She says, "Because I loved him," and [Sophia] says, "That's what Doug and Clayton want, too. Everyone wants someone to grow old with. Shouldn't Doug and Clayton get that chance, too?" And that is really all it takes for—again, because Blanche can only understand stuff through her own experience, that puts it in perspective enough that she can understand that she's being a giant butt about this and that she should go apologize for the way she's treated her brother.
Glen: But in defense of Blanche, the way Sophia puts it is perfect, and it's why it was shared so much in 2008 and during all the ensuing battles on gay marriage—because that's all it should take is: Why does anyone get married to anyone—because they love each other and they want to show the world that they love each other.
Drew: Did they include the part at the end where Sophia joke proposes to Blanche?
Glen: Yeah, they did. I believe, actually, in the transcript of the Supreme Court case they include Sophia's proposal to Blanche.
Tony: Wow. Wow!
Drew: I didn't know that. You know so much about legal history, Glen. Thanks.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's actually how we won. It was that one line.
Drew: It was that?
Glen: All the justices cited that. But actually, I like that the follow-up—was it in the last episode or in this episode where I talked about what the Clayton Saga does a little bit better than "My Friend is a Lesbian" is that they follow up the heartfelt stuff with some killer jokes, like, breathlessly.
Tony: This episode.
Drew: Right. The drama is never as high as it is in "Dorothy's Friend is a Lesbian," but the comedy is a little sharper in this one. And at this point, they have a feeling for how the show is and they're like, "We're very rarely the very-special-episode show where you have to cut the dramatic tension with a joke," but this one works very well for that. And then they walk, as Rose is passing through the living room into Clayton's room. You see that Rose has stolen the trophy—Agnes's trophy. She's kept it, and she's going to scratch Agnes's name off of it. Just a very—what's the Lord of the Rings thing?
Tony: Gollum-esque? Gollum. Oh, it's delicious to watch. It's so fun to watch her.
Drew: Yeah. And it seems like she's having a fun time playing this different version of herself.
Tony: [laughs] Yeah.
Drew: And then it's very nice. She goes into Clayton's room.
Blanche: We have to talk.
Clayton: There is nothing for us to talk about.
Blanche: I wasn't speaking to you. I have just one question for you.
Doug: Okay.
Blanche: Do you love him?
Doug: What do you mean?
Blanche: Well you see, he's my baby brother, and I've always felt it was my responsibility to look out for him. So I can't just let him get married to just anybody. So do you love him?
Doug: I do, very much.
Blanche: Well good, because so do I.
Clayton: You mean that, Blanche? Because Doug loves me for what I am, not for what he wants me to be or wishes I were.
Blanche: I guess I deserve that.
Clayton: I guess you do.
Blanche: Well Clay, this is very difficult for me. I still can't say I understand what you're doing, but I do intend to try to respect your decision to do it. I want you to be happy.
Clayton: I am happy, Blanche.
Blanche: I know [sighs].
Clayton: So are you telling me you are ready to have a brand-new brother-in-law?
[audience laughs]
Blanche: I suppose I am! [laughter] Now look here.
Doug: Hmm?
Blanche: Now, he's not perfect. Oh. Has a stubborn streak and a bad temper.
Doug: And he snores.
[audience laughs]
Blanche: That'll just be our little secret.
[audience laughs]
Drew: It is kind of weird to think about that she still can't—she doesn't want to think about that.
Glen: I wish he had chosen something a little—I guess, obviously, you can't. But I try picturing that exchange with something a little edgier than snoring like, "Yep. His cum tastes like Fritos." [laughter]
Tony: Wow.
Drew: Oh. That's not a thing.
Glen: No. But what if it were? I think we drag on Blanche, but she gets great dramatic lines in this episode.
Drew: I do! I love Blanche, and I don't like Blanche any less for her being a monster, as I have repeatedly called her. And it's good writing that can trick you into being okay with someone being a monster. And also, she's on a journey, and she ends up better off at the end of both these episodes, even if she may suffer from a temporary amnesia between episodes.
Glen: Yeah. Her saying that she doesn't completely understand what's Clayton's doing but she intends to try and respect his decision to do it, that's all we're asking of anyone—we being gay people.
Drew: Also, she doesn't have to be okay picturing her brother in bed with another man. You really don't have to. That's fine. You can be uncomfortable with that for the rest of your life as long as you still treat him and his partner like people—and also all gay people. But it's sort of a weird thing to be—like, it is okay for you to be uncomfortable, but that's not an excuse to be a jerk, right?
Glen: We're looking at you, Tony. We want you to answer yes or no.
Tony: I don't want to picture straight friends—I can't do it. Yeah. But I'll treat them with respect, though. What choice do I have?
Drew: Is Thurman chewing [this whole time/his --inaudible-- 01:01:02]?
Glen: No.
Drew: He's licking his foot.
Tony: Oh, licking his—oh.
Glen: You don't have to picture Thurman licking his foot. You just have to respect his discussion to do so.
Tony: It calms me. Such innocence. Sweetness.
"Thurman": I'm bored. Finish your fucking show already.
Glen: We're trying.
Drew: That's when the episode ends. It ends with the two of them making a sandwich around Blanche, and everyone seems happy about that. Tony, you were not as much of a fan of the previous Clayton adventure. How do you feel about this one?
Tony: [sighs] Slightly better. As we said, the comedic moments really work. I almost like Clayton even less in this episode.
Glen: What?!
Drew: But they get—he gets to fuck. He has someone to have sex with now. You have to respect that.
Tony: I do respect it. Doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. But it is very well written, and as you pointed out, Glen, historically important. It's an important episode of television.
Drew: He doesn't actually really get that much to do in this episode, to be honest, because the little he does—I think he probably has fewer lines than he does in the previous episode. And when he is on screen, the focus is split between him and Doug, who gets a few other lines. So there's not so much of a journey for him to go on, but it's not his story. It's Blanche's story in the end. Blanche is the one who goes on a journey and ends up better off.
Glen: So why do you hate Clayton?
Tony: I guess—honestly, it's a Golden Girls thing. There are so many Golden Girls episodes that are perfect, and I wouldn't take anything away from them. And then when a guest star shows up, it's harder to—it's just harder to pull off a great episode because there are so many of them. And this one, by comparison to Jean—again, I feel like that one is a just solid episode start to finish. This one has its clunky moments, and I still don't like his performance. I just—I don't know.
Glen: Every time he speaks it does sound like his mouth is chasing clouds.
Tony: It's another entirely different world. It's almost like a Tennessee Williams play.
Drew: I just stuck on "his mouth is chasing clouds." That is either utter rubbish or very poetic, Glen.
Tony: It's very poetic. His—Doug? Doug's the boyfriend/fiancé—
Drew: Captain Mustache.
Tony: —who maybe speaks four or five lines in the entire episode. He feels grounded. He feels like he's in the same world.
Glen: Well, he has a mustache.
Tony: Maybe I just like mustaches, I guess. That's it. It just grounded me. And then—that's all I have to say about it. I have questions for you, though.
Glen: Oh! Drew or me?
Tony: Glen, did you want to have a wrap-up of your thoughts?
Glen: No, no. Now I'm intrigued by these questions. My thoughts are whatever I said—important for history, great comedy. Done.
Drew: I agree.
Tony: Okay. As we reach the end of the Tony Rodriguez Saga—
Drew: That's what it is.
Tony: —here on GEE [hard "G"]—
Glen: It's GEE [soft "G"].
Tony: What? GEE [hard "G"]. That's my name. "Gee-ER-mo."
Glen: Now I want to do the Frasier ski lodge episode immediately.
Tony: [gasps!]
Glen: Guy ["Gee," hard "G"], the ski instructor.
Drew: We can end Season 3 with another Frasier, or kick it off.
Tony: Other than The Simpsons, is The Golden Girls the show that you're most familiar with out of all the different TV shows?
Glen: Cheers.
Tony: Cheers you're more familiar with than Golden Girls?
Drew: You're probably [more] familiar with Frasier than you are The Golden Girls.
Glen: Oh, yeah. I'm definitely more familiar with Frasier than Cheers.
Tony: Is it easier—it must be easier to pull out the gay-specific reference points for shows that you don't know very well.
Glen: I mean, Drew does most of the research for the shows that we don't watch.
Tony: So, you don't know, Glen. You're just taking it for face value—does it work or not.
Glen: Yeah.
Tony: But what it your favorite show that you've discovered because of this podcast?
Drew: The Maude episode we did just a few weeks ago was really good because it holds up very well. It's very funny. It's wild as fuck. And that was a show neither of us really grew up with because it wasn't available in syndication where either of us grew up.
Tony: I've never seen it.
Drew: You should listen to the Maude episode.
Tony: I did. That's the most I've consumed, was your episode.
Glen: Did you watch Maude?
Tony: And that theme song's great.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Indira ran a real big country.
Tony: [laughs]
Glen: I think the biggest—this is not actually an answer to your question. But the biggest surprise for me was watching All in the Family because I did not expect them to have the level of nuance in tackling the gay issue that the episode did.
Drew: Mm-hmm. I'm trying to think if anything else has surprised me. I can't wait to make Glen watch the Taxi episode we're going to do later this season.
Glen: The opening theme to Taxi is very triggering for me. I don't like it.
Drew: Does it make you sad or happy?
Glen: Sad. It's like M*A*S*H. I actually like the M*A*S*H theme with lyrics.
Drew: [laughs] No, you don't. It's horrible lyrics.
Tony: Really?
Glen: No, I do! I love it. I think it's a great song. But without lyrics, just as the theme to M*A*S*H, I don't like it.
Tony: What are the lyrics? [singing to M*A*S*H theme] We're watching M*A*S*H right now—
Glen: It's about killing yourself.
Drew: It's called "Suicide is painless." [singing to M*A*S*H theme] "Suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/And I can take or leave them if I choose—" That may not be exactly right.
Tony: Oh. That's very good.
Drew: When you hear the song without the lyrics, it seems like they're covering up the darkness that's actually there, and that makes it worse.
Tony: The point where they took out the laugh track, which version of the song—
Glen: They didn't—the TV show didn't use the lyrics. That was from the movie—wasn't it?
Drew: I've never actually seen the movie version of M*A*S*H. I don't know if the song was written for the movie and that's where the lyrics came from or the song just existed with lyrics before it became the M*A*S*H theme, but yeah. "Suicide is Painless." Marilyn Manson did a cover of it. It's—not good.
Glen: Tony, what's your favorite episode that you've listened to that you're not on?
Tony: Maude. I was surprised at—it was very nuanced. I was very surprised by—it could play today, right? A liberal who is blind to their own liberalosity.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think that's the one I've encountered much more in my adult life than I have encountered Archie Bunkers.
Tony: Whew. Okay. Answered that question.
Drew: So I said if we have time, and we're actually a little over but I want to share the story anyway. There's this amazing story I learned from Mort Nathan who is the co-executive producer of the show. He made some reference when I was talking to him about this crazy Bea Arthur story. I'm like, "Please tell me the story." He's like, "Oh. Okay." Here it is verbatim:
"TV Guide had done a piece on the show, 'The Golden Girls: Is It Still as Good as It was the First Year?' and they asked random people what they thought of the show, and this one housewife said that she didn't think the show was as good and that Bea Arthur's character wasn't as interesting. They mentioned her by name, like, 'Mrs. Betty Johnson—Sioux Falls, Iowa. So Bea reads this at lunch and then gets on the phone and asks Information for Betty Johnson's number, and she calls her. And she picks up, this TV Guide woman, and Bea says, 'This is Bea Arthur, and I want to talk to you about what you said in TV Guide,' and the woman was horrified. She said she was misquoted"—this is quotes for what the woman was saying: "'I didn't mean it. Is it really you? I love the show. I take it back.'" And Bea goes, "'That's what I thought. Okay. That's better.'"
End quote.
Tony: [gasps in awe] I love her.
Drew: Can you imagine being Mrs. Betty Johnson and an angry Bea Arthur calls you on the phone like, "I saw what you said about me. Did you really mean that?" And you're just going about your day, and—yeah [laughter].
Glen: Imagine this scene but now with Twitter.
Drew: Could you imagine what Bea Arthur would be like on Twitter?
Tony: Oh, wow. Wow. She would be clapping back.
Glen: I can imagine it, and that's what I jerk off to every night.
Tony: Oh, wow.
Drew: [sighs] If you want to read my Golden Girls interview with a bunch of different writers, again, go to backofthecerealbox.com/goldengirls. That is the only spot online where it's preserved. But if you like Golden Girls, it's a good read.
Tony: Did the writers tell you any stories about how the cast got along?
Glen: I don't want to talk about that.
Drew: No. Not really, because they weren't really critical of things. The most interesting part to me was about Estelle Getty's experience on the show because she had been a Broadway actress who came to Los Angeles on her own. She had a husband who, I think, mostly stayed in New York, and she was filming the show for—what's a TV season? Nine months?
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: And Estelle was befriended by gay men in West Hollywood who made a point of taking her out and being the company for her that she didn't have because she was away from her biological family, which was on the East Coast. A lot of stories about Estelle Getty and what a special person she was and how she really endeared herself to the three cast members, based on what people were saying, the most. That was not an explicit mention, but it seemed like everyone loved Estelle. It's really nice.
Tony: Hmm. Aww.
Drew: Read the piece! It's good. Tony?
Tony: Yeah?
Drew: Where can people find you?
Tony: I am on Instagram, @TonyRodrig; Twitter, @TheTonyRodrig. Glen Lakin, people can find you on Twitter @IWriteWrongs—that's "write" with a "W"—and Instagram, @BrosQuartz. That's right. It's a "Steven Schmooniverse" reference.
Glen: Steven Universe. I'll kill you.
Tony: Drew, people can find you on Instagram @KidIcarus222 and on Twitter @DrewGMackie.
Drew: M-A-C-K-I-E.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: That part's important. There's a lot of different ways to spell "Mackie" out there.
Tony: No, I think—
Glen: There's, like, three [laughter].
Drew: Yeah. Yeah, that's enough. Can't forget the Japanese Makis—M-A-K-I. If you want to follow this podcast online, please do so on Twitter @GayestEpisode or on Facebook @GayestEpisodeEver. Listen to all our previous episodes at gayestepisodeever.com. This is a TableCakes podcast. If you want to hear the other cool shows that we have on the TableCakes network, including You Have to Watch This Movie, the show that I host with Tony, go to tablecakes.com. Or, if you want to listen to that particularly, just go to youhavetowatchthismovie.com. We talk to some famous people about movies they like. It's fun.
Tony: Mm-hmm. [imitating Blanche] Lesbian.
Glen: Didn't talk to me.
Drew: Season 2.
Glen: I don't want to do it.
Drew: Okay.
Tony: What would your movie be?
Glen: Oh. We've already talked about this extensively. It always spins off into doing a special Shelley Long cast.
Tony: Oh, right.
Glen: A miniseries of talking about the movies with Shelley Long.
Tony: Mine's going to be "Oogie-Boogie-Oogie-Huggem."
Drew: Oh. It's so—yeah. I don't like it.
Glen: I also talk about My Mom's a Werewolf. I want to talk about that.
Drew: Was that a movie?
Glen: Yeah. Well—yeah.
Drew: Oh. Right, right, right. Okay. Sometimes I forget which are real movies and which are running jokes that I thought were movies. Anyway [laughter]. Please rate and review this podcast—maybe not on this episode alone. But on the whole, the other ones have been really good, and we love a five-star review. And if you write a review, we'll read it on a future episode. So if you want to hear your words coming out of our mouth, this is your chance to make us say anything you want because we have to say it. This is my verbal contract to you.
Glen: I didn't sign that contract.
Tony: [imitating Carol Kane] I did.
Glen: Oh, Carol Channing!
Tony: Carole Kane, dear.
Drew: Carol Kane.
Tony: [continues imitating Carol Kane] I'll read it!
Drew: Kane. Carol Kane. What are you looking at me like that for?
Glen: Carol Channing's also a person.
Drew: That was Carol Kane.
Tony: [continues imitating of Carole Kane] Yes. Carol Channing's here, too [laughter].
Drew: Carol—[sighs]. Okay.
Glen: Cut out all of that.
Tony: [the impression continues] All of the Carols.
Drew: No!
Tony: [impersonating Carol Brady] Carol Brady?
Drew: We'll be back next week—
Glen: Drew will.
Drew: —talking about something that does not feature Bea Arthur. Different thing.
Tony: Boo! Don't listen to it!
Drew: Podcast over!
Glen: Goodbye forever.
["See Fernando" by Jenny Lewis plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes Production.