Transcript for Episode 17: Marcy D'Arcy Has a Lesbian Cousin
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Married… With Children episode “Les Be Friends.” 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.
Al: Why can't you be more like Mandy, Peg? She likes foosball, baseball. She likes to cook. She's just like a wife, but—fun.
[audience laughs]
Peggy: So marry her.
[audience laughs]
Al: [laughs] How about it, Mandy? Me and you in Vegas, a honeymoon at Football Fantasy Camp?
Mandy: That sounds fun, Al, but I'm involved.
Al: Yeah? Who's the lucky guy?
Mandy: Barbara.
[audience laughs]
Al: Barbara? [laughs] Well, that sounds like he might be a little light in the loafers, huh?
Mandy: Well actually, she's a little heavy in the construction boots.
Al: She?
Mandy: Yes, Al. I'm gay.
[audience laughs]
["Love and Marriage" by Frank Sinatra plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast that looks at the LGBT-themed episodes of classic sitcoms. I'm Glen Lakin.
Glen: That's not right!
Drew: [laughs] What?
Glen: Wait. Is this us?
Drew: Yeah. Yeah, we switched.
Glen: Oh, no.
Drew: [stammers] I haven't seen it yet. I'm seeing it tonight, so don't spoil it for me.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: Go ahead.
Glen: Oh. Does that mean I'm Drew Mackie?
Drew: Sure.
Glen: Is that your name?
Drew: Mm-hmm. Did I fuck up that intro?
Glen: A little bit. It sounded weird.
Drew: [laughs] Ugh.
Glen: It's fine.
Drew: It's fine. If that intro didn't tip you off, today we are talking about Married… with Children.
Glen: Finally.
Drew: Finally! Finally some justice for Marcy D'Arcy.
Glen: There's never justice for Marcy D'Arcy, other than she lives well.
Drew: Yeah. She does get to lord that over the Bundys, so that much is going for her. We are talking about the episode "Lez Be Friends"—
Glen: Mm-mm.
Drew: [laughs] L-E-Z—which originally aired April 28th, 1997. It was directed by Gary Cohen, who's not Gary Cohn. I should probably appreciate us pointing that out right now. And it was written by Pamela Eels, previously Pamela Eels O'Connell, who has written for a ton of shows but also Family Matters, which means she got one songwriting credit for "The Urkel Dance."
["Urkel Dance" plays]
Glen: Yes! She is my queen!
Drew: [laughs] So if you look her up [on] IMDb, it's writing, writing, writing—songwriter, "Urkel Dance."
Glen: I know two dances. One of them is the Urkel Dance. The other one is from Final Fantasy X-2, the opening dance that Drew knows. Yeah.
Drew: Do you want to do the Urkel Dance for a video that we can put on the website?
Glen: Mm, probably not.
Drew: Okay. Well. I can't actually find the Nielsen ratings for this episode. The show was either the 63rd or 97th most-watched show in the 1996 to 1997 season, which is low.
Glen: Yeah. But this is Season 11, Episode 22. They are out the door.
Drew: Three more episodes, and then the show's gone forever. And also, looking at the history of it, it was never a big-ratings getter.
Glen: What?
Drew: It never cracked into the Top 20 the entire run of the show.
Glen: That can't be.
Drew: I looked. An episode might have cracked into the Top 20, but for the year in Nielsen's, it never cracked into the Top 20. So it was there and was basically dependable for the first decade it was on but just wasn't ever a smash hit.
Glen: You're blowing my mind.
Drew: The highest it ever got was in '91 – '92 when it was the 29th highest rated show. Still a huge deal in spite of that. It was 259 episodes in total, 11 seasons. It was the longest lasting live-action TV series ever to air on Fox and also one of the first series the network ever produced and also premiered on its first night of programming alongside 21 Jump Street, Tracy Ullman Show, and Duet, which was a Matthew Lawrence sitcom that also starred Arleen Sorkin—and that spun off into Open House, that realty show we were talking about.
Glen: Yeah. We talked about this, because I deeply remember Open House.
Drew: Starring Alison LaPlaca.
Glen: And also Ellen DeGeneres.
Drew: Yes!
Glen: I do not remember Duet.
Drew: I don't either, but Arleen Sorkin, who may be our patron saint.
Glen: Your patron saint.
Drew: Fine. Be that way. Married… with Children is important because it helped define Fox's identity as a network because people quickly thought of it as being either edgy or subversive or crass or juvenile, depending on how square they were, and Married… with Children could be all of those things—but also was funny. In spite of the fact that it was a defining show of the network, it was canceled rather unceremoniously. They were not told it was their last episode. They filmed their 11th season finale and found out after the fact it would be their last episode. So it's just like a placard that shows up at the end being like, "Thanks for watching!" So everyone's feelings were hurt, and that in combination with the fact that Ed O'Neill is chained to that monster called Modern Family, now, is why I don't think we've gotten any sort of reunion. But I really would like to see them get back together. Yeah. That'd be nice.
Glen: Most of them are still working and very talented actors.
Drew: You know, I actually didn't look up what David Faustino is doing, but he's not doing nothing. He's still around. He's just working less than the rest of them.
Glen: He's not embarrassing when he's on camera.
Drew: No. He's great. He looks fine. He looks like Bud.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: The show starred Ed O'Neill, Katey Sagal, David Faustino, Christina Applegate, Amanda Bearse—who we'll be talking a lot about in this episode—and two actors playing her husbands—which we will also talk about later in this episode. Apparently it's actually Amanda "Burse," because—
Glen: No.
Drew: —I watched this 1994 segment of a public media series called Out Across America—it's like public TV, gay pop culture. And they interview her in one episode, and it's all about how she was going into becoming a director, which she has done with most of her post-Married… with Children career, and they call her Amanda "Burse," and I was like, "Oh. That kind of sucks that everyone's just like, 'Bearse.'"
Glen: Well, maybe she's just too polite to correct them because it's a gay publication.
Drew: I think it actually is "Burse." It's like how we recently found out that Lori Loughlin is actually Lori "Locklin," and we're not going to call you that. We've been calling you "Loughlin" for 30 years now. And also, we're not going to call you. You're going to jail [laughter].
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Well?
Glen: She might call us with that one phone call.
Drew: Please! Come on the show! We'd love to talk to you about—
Glen: She'd have to dial in.
Drew: Yeah. Do we have any callers yet, Producer? No. Woof [laughs]. Amanda Bearse had previously starred in Fright Night, which I will give a shoutout to our sister show—which I also host with Tony Rodriguez—You Have to Watch this Movie. One of the episodes we did was about Fright Night. The guest was Jeffrey McCrann.
Glen: It's a very good episode.
Drew: Very gay. Great drill down on how fantastically gay that movie is, and it's also a great movie. And it's weird that it came out only a few years before this series premiered, and she's a nubile high school student in that, and by the time this show launches she's firmly Marcy.
Glen: I listened to it while taking a bath.
Drew: Oh. Well, I'm sure Jeffrey and Tony would appreciate that. Yeah. And Amanda "Burse" Bearse—Bearse. I'm just going to say "Bearse."
Glen: Call her Amanda.
Drew: Okay. Mandy.
Glen: [gasps softly]
Drew: I know. She came out in 1993 when she was 35 years old—
Glen: Wait. What?!
Drew: She came out in 1993.
Glen: She's gay?
Drew: Yep. Mm-hmm. She's a lesbian American. She was probably the first celebrity I knew of who was gay because I knew about Married… with Children from the time I was a little kid, and that was something I learned literally on the playground and kind of didn't know what a lesbian was. But it was like, "Oh. She's gay." But that was before almost anyone else I can think of.
Glen: Yeah. I think same for me. I know my dad always made fun of it.
Drew: Of her lesbianism?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Oh. Your dad is more of an Al Bundy, then.
Glen: Oh, yes.
Drew: I think it's cool that she did that because even though she probably wasn't going to lose her job over that, it wasn't going to make her public life any easier. And in the Out Across America segment, she talks about getting threatening voicemails—I guess answering machine messages is what we called them back then. But she got some hate mail for coming out.
Amanda: I've gotten some really nasty mail, and that doesn't feel very good, and that's actually—it's like when you don't remember the good things people say, those bad things really stick with you. And the hate and the fear is so venomous that no matter how lovely someone might compose a positive letter, it's really hard to counteract that hate, and that does feel pretty badly. But in terms of how I feel emotionally? I think—pretty much at peace about it. I think it was the right thing to do. It was just the necessary thing to do, and that feels good.
Glen: Yeah. There's a certain breed of Hollywood actress, long-running TV show that realizes her power and starts speaking truth, be it her own truth or world truth—like Ellen Pompeo. And I just love it when that switch is flipped and they just go into every interview saying what they want to say.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yeah, like, "You're not going to fucking get rid of me now."
Glen: Financial security is a wild thing.
Drew: Oh, for sure. That's why rich people are crazy—and mean, and rude. And not nice to waiters. Amanda "Burse"—slash Bearse—has gone on to direct a ton of TV shows. She actually directed 31 episodes of Married… with Children but also directed Veronica's Closet; The Jamie Foxx Show; Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place; Jesse—the one with Christina Applegate; Dharma and Greg; Sabrina the Teenage Witch; Reba; George Lopez; 21 episodes of MADtv; 15 episodes of The Big Gay Sketch Show; and finally, Skirtchasers, which is a TV movie written by a friend of the show Stan Zimmerman.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: Yeah. She also directed two episodes of the other Jesse—the Disney Jesse—which you know about because you love Disney tween shows.
Glen: Oh, I sure do.
Drew: And the reason why is that show was created by Pamela Eels, who wrote this episode.
Glen: Oh, my god.
Drew: Which means they were friends, probably.
Glen: I'd like to think so.
Drew: Yeah. Whenever I found out people worked with each other after the fact, I'm like, "Well, they don't fucking hate each other, I guess."
Glen: Well also, this episode—and I don't think I'm getting ahead of ourselves—but I think this is probably a gift of Fox and the show to Amanda, and I think she probably worked very closely with the writer given the content.
Drew: Right. You read my mind because I was just going to ask you, do you think that this is some sort of wish-fulfillment episode for Amanda "Burse"—Bearse?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Like, "I just want to play a gay character on TV for five secs." They're like, "Sure."
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Glen, you have a special association with this show. I think it's the first Chicago-based TV show that we've done.
Glen: Oh. Yeah.
Drew: Right?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: What percent of it is remotely accurate to an experience of Chicago?
Glen: I'd say the most Chicago accurate part was the episode—I believe it was Labor Day weekend where they decide last minute to go somewhere, and they spend the entire day on a freeway. That's very Chicago. I guess it's also very L.A.
Drew: True. Yeah. It's weird how L.A. writers probably just project whatever experience they have with Los Angeles onto whatever city they're writing about.
Glen: Yeah. I think also, something about Al and Peggy's high school life always had a very distinct Chicago-neighborhood feel—because they were around the same age as my mom, and my mom would talk about her high school. And although she went to an all-girls school, it always had similar vibes. What I never understood was how Peggy was from some backwater small town and still went to a Chicago public high school.
Drew: I never thought about that. That is really weird. I'm not going to say the canon on this show is tightly written, necessarily.
Glen: Right. Family Matters was a much more Chicago show—although they just got rid of that house.
Drew: I know. It's a huge bummer. Also, we don't get to talk about Family Matters, unless we do a [laughs] fan fiction episode where—
Glen: I would love to. I will write a spec episode where Stefan comes out—quote/unquote—wrong.
Drew: [laughs] We really should just do a dream episode where I give you the opportunity to dream up scenarios that should have existed but haven't so far.
Glen: Done.
Drew: Yes. This is also the first show we talked about where someone on the cast was openly gay while the show was actually on TV. Like Roseanne—[clears throat] I mean The John Goodman Show and Frasier both have people who came out after the fact.
Glen: I mean, it's called The Conners now. You could just call it The Conners.
Drew: Well, the original show was called The John Goodman Show, then it became The Conners for no reason, because nothing changed about that show because there was never a mother on it. What was your experience with the show? Did you watch it as a child?
Glen: Religiously.
Drew: Really?
Glen: From the first episode, yeah. I don't know. For some reason, the launching of Fox was a big deal in my house. Maybe just to me. I don't know.
Drew: Because you were edgy?
Glen: I'm edgy and crass and all those things. Yeah. We have a toilet in the living room that my dad just flushed. No. Married… with Children was probably, for a while, a top-three show in my family. We made sure to watch Cosby Show, Simpsons—
Drew: You mean The Phylicia Rashad Show?
Glen: [laughs]—and Married… with Children. Obviously, Cheers, too.
Drew: Right.
Glen: But that was gone.
Drew: Fairly quickly.
Glen: And then Frasier became sort of mine.
Drew: So your parents didn't think it was too crass for kids to watch?
Glen: This may shock you. I had [laughs] very little restriction on what I could watch growing up.
Drew: I did—I guess I kind of think everyone is like me to some extent. But I did, and I was discouraged from watching this, although I'd be allowed to watch it sometimes. And then also, when we were very young, I'd be in bed at 9:00, and I would hear them listening to the theme song of this show and then laughing. All parents are hypocrites, so I really can't ding them for that, but they were allowed to watch it and I was not. But whatever.
Glen: Yeah. I watched everything. The one thing I wasn't allowed to watch was Heavy Metal, and that my brother turned off because robot was about to have sex with that woman.
Drew: I think you may need to actually explain what Heavy Metal is to our audience because I'm not sure—I'm going to say 50 percent will know what that is.
Glen: Oh, really? It's that—quote/unquote—edgy, or whatever, animated movie that's a bunch of sci-fi animated shorts that are risqué or violent or sexy.
Drew: And it's not anime. It's French or something, right?
Glen: Yeah. It's not Japanese animation.
Drew: Although it kind of looks like Aeon Flux, a little bit.
Glen: Yeah. The thing about it is, your memory of the animation quality is going to be way better than the actual animation quality.
Drew: Just look at stills. You'll be a lot better looking at stills.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So first of all, the theme song. This is not my discovery. Maybe it was your discovery. Maybe. But the string section starts out with [hums "Love and Marriage"], and you see that giant fountain start shooting water into the air and they start singing "Love and Marriage"?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: That's like a cum joke.
Glen: Oh. I didn't—
Drew: Spurting forth precious fluid, and they talk about love and marriage and how that brings around children. Right?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Someone pointed this out somewhere, and I guess it wasn't you. I can't take credit for it. If you're the person who pointed this out, please tell me.
Glen: I'm blanking on the name of the fountain, and everyone's going to yell at me.
Drew: It's a real fountain?
Glen: Yeah, it's a real fountain. It's a really famous—
Drew: Are you really from Chicago?
Glen: Yeah. I'm a very—Buckingham Fountain.
Drew: Did you just make that up?
Glen: No.
Drew: That sounds—Buckingham—
Glen: Pause. I'm looking. It's—
Drew: [hums "Love and Marriage" while Glen pauses] Actually, while you're looking it up, I will point out that I started saying—
Glen: Yes, it's Buckingham Fountain.
Drew: All right [laughs]. I started out saying "If you recognize this theme song, you might know that we're talking about Married… with Children. If you buy certain DVD editions of this show, they don't have that theme song. They have this horrible version that sounds like a wrong version of the theme song where it's about to go into lyrics, but there's no lyrics, and the melody is different. And it is very offensive to my ears.
[horrible and offensive instrumental version of "Love and Marriage" plays]
Glen: Have you ever watched the Russian version of Married… with Children?
Drew: No.
Glen: It's a completely new production. It's very wild because they all live in the same apartment building—because Russia. It's worth watching. I wrote about it for—I want to say Genre.
Drew: Genre magazine?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Oh! Oh, that's right. Genre magazine. Where do you watch it?
Glen: Internet. I mean, probably not anymore, given—but wait. No. We're in the clear now. Mueller said it's okay. Everything Russian is fine now.
Drew: Yep! Yep. Great, great [sighs].
Glen: So, this episode.
Drew: No. One more thing about the theme song. The theme song comes from a 1955 NBC musical production of Our Town that starred Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman, Shelley Fabares, and weirdly Frank Sinatra as the stage manager, which I cannot imagine would be good because he seems like a very weird fit for that. But he sings—the theme song from Married… with Children comes from that production, and that's where that comes from. So the episode starts with a suicide joke.
Glen: Yep. I actually want to hold off on talking about the B-plot until we're done—unless we can get it out of the way now. It's up to you.
Drew: We can just mention that it's—I have really good memories of Married… with Children, but the opening joke is that Lucky the Dog is not doing so hot, and he has his head in the oven, and it's a doggy suicide—yeah. Whatever. It's like a really dark Marmaduke. He gets more to do later, but if you want we can go through all the—through all the Marcy stuff.
Glen: Yeah. Let's save all that.
Drew: Teeny bit. So basically, coming from the theme song, and we see Marcy and Jefferson entering the Bundy household—Jefferson played by Ted McGinley.
Glen: Wait. You didn't want to ask if I have a stretched metaphor for something in the cold open?
Drew: Oh. I thought we weren't talking about it, but okay.
Glen: We're not talking about the dog stuff and the B-plot. But there's a running joke where Bud keeps getting his fingers smashed.
Bud: Now, easy. Easy, now. Watch it, Dad.
Al: I'm going. I'm—we're going to have so much fun with this damn thing, Bud.
Bud: [screams in agonized pain]
Al: Watch it! You'll nick the side of the box!
[audience laughs]
Drew: Yeah. Why is that?
Glen: I don't know. But don't you think it's odd that there's a bunch of finger jokes and it's a lesbian episode?
Drew: Yeah. That is weird. Hmm.
Glen: That's all. That's not great.
Drew: It's not as if there are—that's not a runner on any other episode that I can think of.
Glen: No.
Drew: It's not like it's a characteristic thing of Bud to get his fingers smashed. So, we're in the Bundy household, and Marcy and her husband Jefferson enter with junk food in their arms. People tend to forget that Jefferson wasn't there from the beginning, necessarily—because I feel like the later episodes are put on in syndication more often, and it's weird that you see a Steve episode. But Marcy D'Arcy wasn't Marcy D'Arcy when the show started. She was Marcy Rhoades. Steve left her, then she married Jefferson and became Marcy D'Arcy—like her Pokémon super evolution into what she was always supposed to be.
Glen: Right, although I do miss—she's slightly more empowered in the Jefferson seasons. I miss some of the neuroses and ladder climbing in the earlier seasons.
Drew: I feel like she's always lording over Steve that—she's his boss, right, at the bank?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: And how he flees her and leaves her forever and was replaced by Ted McGinley, who is kind of a running joke in that he's the person who habitually joins series midway through—like, he joined Happy Days when—Richie Cunningham? What's the name? The director?
Glen: My boss?
Drew: Yes. What the fuck am I—what's his name? Bryce Dallas Howard's dad is—
Glen: [laughs] Ron Howard.
Drew: Ron Howard! Left Happy Days, and Ted McGinley was the replacement. He was the Cunningham cousin that was supposed to be the new star of the show—which I don't think really worked. But also, I don't think—it's not as if he sank the show. They also did it on The Love Boat, and this has kind of become a characteristic thing for him.
Glen: Also in Revenge of the Nerds.
Drew: I think that's where I first knew him from. I looked up to see if he'd ever done a nude scene back in the day.
Glen: No.
Drew: No, he—[laughs].
Glen: I mean, I'm guessing.
Drew: No, he didn't. It just seemed like he might have, maybe, in the '80s. But he did this 1989 Theresa Russell called Physical Evidence where you see a lot of his body, so that's something. Yeah. So Marcy explains that she wants the Bundys to remain inside all weekend.
Marcy: Well, enjoy. And there's plenty more where that came from. All you have to do is stay inside the entire weekend. Okay?
Al: Why?
[audience laughs]
Marcy: Well, my cousin Mandy is coming for a visit and—how can I put this nicely? I don't want her to be repulsed by you.
Jefferson: Not that you're repulsive.
Al: [belches]
Drew: And they are identical cousins, which is not a thing.
Marcy: But you know, it's been years since I've seen Mandy and we were once very close. In fact, we're identical.
Al: So, she's as obnoxious as you?
[audience laughs]
Bud: [scoffs] Identical cousins. There's no such thing.
Peggy: Well, sure there is! Samantha and Serena. Patty and Kathy.
Marcy: Exactly. [Singing "The Patty Duke Show Theme" ] We walk alike, we talk alike, sometimes we even—something alike.
[audience laughs]
Drew: I feel like identical cousins only really make sense in a sitcom—even though Twin Peaks also did it with Laura Palmer and her identical cousin Maddy. Samantha and Serena on Bewitched were identical cousins. And then A Different World did an identical cousin episode where Jasmine guy also played Whitley's identical cousin Liza, which means A Different World had time to do an identical cousin episode and never did a gay episode. They have identical cousins at Hillman college but not gay people [sighs]. There's also a Full House where the other Olsen twin plays the Greek cousin—
Glen: In a black wig.
Drew: Yep. And Uncle Jesse also plays Cousin Stavros. And a Mama's Family where Vickie Lawrence plays Mama's Wealthy cousin Lydia. There's also—I don't know why it's such a common thing. I guess just for laziness and not wanting to cast someone else necessarily, or maybe it's for acting fun. But I Dream of Jeannie ripped off the Bewitched thing with Jeannie, and Jeannie II—because her name was also Jeannie, because that's not their name. That's just what they are. They just call them what they are, which is kind of fucked up. Myrtle Urkel on Family Matters—is Steve's cousin?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Not identical, necessarily. No one's going to confuse them. Brady Bunch—there's one where Alice goes on vacation and her sister Emma fills in. She's basically Velda Plendor, which is a weird Troop Beverly Hills connection that spans decades, and they hate her. Then Alice comes back and saves the day. And also, there's the one where Florence and Robert play Carol and Mike's parents, which doesn't make any sense, but they end up dating at the end, I think. It's gross. Perfect Strangers—Bronson Pinchot plays Balki but also Balki's mother. On Martin, Martin plays his own mother. On Addams Family, Carolyn Jones plays Morticia and her sister Ophelia. On Friends, as you point out, kind of Phoebe and Ursula, even though Ursula actually came around first, and it's a retroactive thing, like, "We're just going to figure this out. Make the continuity work between that and Mad About You." And finally, there is a Mad About You where Helen Hunt plays her own mother in an episode where they're watching an old episode of The Allan Sherman Show. The Allan Sherman Show is the show that Dick Van Dyke's character writes for on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Allan Sherman is played by Carl Reiner, so it's a show within a show, but the show also exists in the Mad About You universe, and Jamie Buckman's mother was an actress back in the day and appeared on the show—which means that Mad About You takes place in the same universe as The Dick Van Dyke Show, and also Friends, I guess, by extension.
Glen: Did you decide that my Small Wonder example didn't count?
Drew: That's the last one. V.I.C.I on Small Wonder—I don't know what their relation is. They're both two different robots. One's evil. Why did he make an evil robot?
Glen: He didn't set out to make an evil robot; he set out to make one with more emotions. And if The Dark Phoenix Saga taught us anything, it's human emotions that make us evil—but also are our salvation.
Drew: Fine. That makes sense. Okay. So what would you say their relation is?
Glen: Well, they're from the same creator.
Drew: So they're sisters?
Glen: I don't know. I guess.
Drew: Does Vicki have real gender? She's a she, right?
Glen: She's gendered as a she. I don't know what's going on—down—there.
Drew: I don't—no. Nope. Not going to think about that. Okay! Back at the Bundy household, Al is playing foosball. Bud hurt his finger bringing in a foosball table that they purchased. Foosball is kind of a running thing in this. Al comes up with a fake story for where the term "foosball comes from."
Bud: Relax, Dad. It's just foosball.
Al: Just foosball, Son? This is the greatest invention ever made. Edward Foos was a boy with a dream—a dream to invent a game that everyone can enjoy no matter how out of shape or drunk you are.
[audience laughs]
Drew: It's wrong. Foos is just German for foot—literally just "football." That's what it is.
Glen: I'm very bad at foosball.
Drew: So my family has a cabin—when I say "cabin," I mean dilapidated shack in the mountains—and there's an old foosball table. And for some reason, the ball would get flicked up and hit me in the face more than once. So I think I'm also bad at foosball.
Glen: It sounds like you're very bad at foosball.
Drew: Getting hit with the actual foos-ball.
Glen: Getting hit with balls—in the face.
Drew: Yeah. My whole life. So, ding-dong!
Glen: Who's there?
Drew: It's Cousin Mandy who is Amanda Bearse in a Janet-from-Three's-Company wig and a leather jacket, basically.
Glen: It looks better than the wig that they have Marcy wearing this episode.
Drew: Is she wearing a wig?
Glen: I don't know.
Drew: I can't tell. So I love Marcy D'Arcy's hair. I'm obsessed with lesbian hair from the late '80s and early '90s. You see a spectrum of it over the course of the show, and really everything she's doing now is pretty incredible. But I'm really bad at spotting wigs. I know that Mandy's hair is a wig because it's longer.
Glen: Yeah. I want to say that her hair this episode is a wig—only so that they can match it perfectly to her stunt double.
Drew: That's because you're a creator, and I'm just a viewer. I don't think about stuff like that. And also, you went to film school. So after Al slams the door in her face because he presumes it's just Marcy in a wig—
Mandy: Hi, I'm—
Al: Nice wig, Marce. Hey, Peg! Look here! The Fifth Beatle!
[audience laughs] [door slams] [doorbell rings]
Mandy: I'm not Marcy. I'm Mandy, Marcy's cousin.
Peggy: Wow. You and Marcy really do look alike.
Mandy: You think so? Yeah. I know I'm no super model, but I never really thought I looked like a chicken.
[audience laughs]
Al: [laughs] I like her.
Glen: Immediately bonds her to Al. I will remind you that I have a drawing of Marcy as a chicken.
Drew: Can we put that online?
Glen: Yeah. Sure.
Drew: Okay. Great. So the reason she shows up is that Marcy and Jefferson are going to pick her up, but her flight arrived early. Do flights arrive early? Is that a thing?
Glen: Maybe she hopped on an earlier flight.
Drew: All right. I just have never experienced [a] flight where I arrived earlier hours earlier out of surprise.
Glen: Hours, no. But sometimes they arrive early. You know that planes can go much faster than they usually go, right?
Drew: No!
Glen: They don't, because it burns a lot more jet fuel, and it's very expensive.
Drew: Oh. I guess if it's an emergency or something, they go faster?
Glen: Like, to catch up. That's how you always catch up in the air when you take off late.
Drew: I didn't know you could do that. I think all of my flights that I have taken off late just arrived late. Plane travel is terrible.
Glen: Imagine the world without it. Oh, wait. You live in this state. It makes no difference to you.
Drew: No. It would be great. I don't even drive anywhere. So Mandy seems relaxed, and I don't know Amanda Bearse personally, but I feel like in addition to playing a lesbian character she maybe was like, "What if I played a character who's not a pain in the ass all the time?" and she just kind of gets to relax and drop her voice down a little bit and be a little bit more comfortable than Marcy has ever been on the entire show.
[audience laughs]
Mandy: Hey, foosball. You any good?
Al: Is your cousin flat-chested?
[audience laughs] [a game of foosball ensues]
Mandy: Oh! Oh, score [laughs]! I'm ahead.
Al: Lucky shot! That was a lucky shot!
[audience laughs]
Peggy: Now can I play?
Al: Not now, Peg.
Mandy: Score [laughs]! I win!
[audience laughs]
Glen: I mean, the bar is very low for Season 11, but Mandy is immediately the most likeable person on this show.
Drew: Oh, yeah. Yeah. She's very grounded and normal and cool.
Glen: Not like—I love this show, but some of the reactions that Ed O'Neill is asked to give in this episode and in the later seasons are grotesque.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: The way he contorts his face.
Drew: Yeah. They don't really ever make him do any of that on Modern Family, which is probably for the best. He's very cartoony.
Glen: Yeah. It's like they asked him to become more like Homer.
Drew: Oh! Probably. Oh, that must have occurred to him at some point. I'd be like, "Fuck. I have to keep with this fucking cartoon character. Yeah. I'm sure the probably fucking did. Also, her name is Mandy. It's only two letters off from Marcy. And also, Amanda/Mandy—I see what you did there. Mandy has boobs, and one of the other running jokes on the show is that Marcy is flat-chested, but she's not—because we've seen Fright Night. You don't see her boobs, but you see a lot of cleavage when she gets turned into a vampire—spoiler. And I guess she's flattening her chest for the character or something, or maybe—I don't know. I don't check out actresses chests in a sitcom, really. But I feel like she's not actually flat-chested. That's weird, right?
Glen: She's also not a chicken; they just call her a chicken.
Drew: No, she is a chicken, actually. It was on IMDb. I read it.
Glen: Mandy and Al play foosball, and Mandy beats Al. But instead of being emasculated, he likes her.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Oh, fuck. Did we take an ad break?
["Love and Marriage" plays]
[Drew and Glen promote A Love Bizarre]
["Love and Marriage" plays]
Drew: Okay. We're back. Hi.
Glen: Hi. That was a crazy ad break.
Drew: [laughs]
Glen: Then Marcy and Jefferson show up being like, "Where's Mandy? Oh, here's Mandy."
Marcy: —find my cousin in—[gasps!] [squeals] Mandy!
Mandy: Marcy!
Glen: And Marcy immediately starts showing off Jefferson. The audience doesn't know this yet, but it's not really clicking for Mandy.
Marcy: This is my Jefferson. Don't you wish you had one just like him?
Al: You mean there's another one of him, too?
[audience laughs]
Mandy: Wow. You're even better-looking than Marcy said.
Jefferson: Oh. So are you.
Jefferson: Honey, why did you say you were the pretty one?
[audience laughs]
Drew: Yeah. They don't have a great marriage.
Glen: No. It's a marriage of convenience—and sex. As it is pointed out later in the episode, Marcy is into weird sex stuff.
Drew: Right. What else, other than sex, is Marcy—is that all she's getting out of this? I guess she gets to show off a hot guy.
Glen: Yeah. I don't know why. It's unusual. For thousands of years, wealthy men have had hotter mates who do nothing, and it's not a big deal.
Drew: How wealthy is Marcy, though, if she lives next to the Bundys? If she really managed a bank, wouldn't she move somewhere nicer?
Glen: I mean, her house now is probably worth a lot.
Drew: Okay. But she has to be considerably more wealthy than the Bundys are—
Glen: Yes.
Drew: —on a shoe salesman's salary. And also, Peg does nothing. And in fact, in this episode, does so literal it's like, "Oh, fuck. You don't do anything." She's playing Solitaire, I think, during the scene—
Glen: In another scene.
Drew: So this happens, and in the next scene, there's a thing with the dog. And then we see Peg is literally just sitting at the kitchen table doing nothing, and then Marcy comes in and talks to her after that.
Glen: I had to rewind because I was like, "Oh, wait. Is this another season where she's pregnant?" No. She's just—
Drew: Doing nothing. Doesn't fucking do anything.
Glen: She's just sitting at the table, playing cards, which is such a grandma thing to do.
Drew: So Marcy comes in, and she's delivering Peg bonbons.
Marcy: Guess what. I am making Jefferson his favorite supper tonight.
Peggy: Why?
Marcy: Because if a wife doesn't do it, then some other woman might come along and steal him away. Even someone you least expect, you know—like a cousin. You know, a cousin that all the boys like best because she's such fun. Boys like Jimmy Miller who'd show Mandy his baseball cards and played keep-away with Little Marcy's undershirt!
[audience laughs]
Glen: So when the boys and Mandy come back with a gift for Marcy, which is a t-shirt, they play keep-away with it.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Mandy: Hey, Marce. Got you a t-shirt.
Jefferson: Keep-away!
Al: Keep-away from Marcy!
[audience and characters laugh uproariously] [Marcy squeals]
Marcy: You guys are so immature! Give it back, or I'm telling!
[audience and characters laugh]
Glen: I will say, of all the buffoonery that they fell into in the later seasons, I think the antics I enjoyed most were when they so easily turned into children.
Drew: [laughs] Yep. And I think—we haven't said this yet. I think Amanda Bearse is actually a very gifted comedic actor, and her childish pouting and histrionics are perfectly done.
Glen: Yeah. She can go from empowering, working woman to a nutcase crybaby—
Drew: I would say wet hen.
Glen: —with surprising ease, and it doesn't throw you out of the scene.
Drew: Mm-hmm. She maybe has more dimensions to her than some other characters on the show do. Some of them are a little bit more simple than that.
Glen: Well, I think it's because she, at some point, became Al's antagonist on the show and had to have as much weight to her character as he did to counterbalance it.
Drew: Yeah. What would be the opposite of everything that Al Bundy is—and then they just made her that.
Glen: Right. Marcy decides to bribe Al with a pot-roast dinner if he keeps Mandy there for the night so that she can win Jefferson back, which seems like a quick turn—but I'm on board.
Drew: So the meal she was going to make for Jefferson, she's now going to make for Al at a later date if [he] distracts Mandy for the night. Is that correct? Is that what's going on?
Glen: Yeah. But then it gets kind of confused, because then Mandy decides to make it for them that night—who's making this dinner?
Drew: Also, what are Marcy and Jefferson eating—except each other?
Glen: That. You answered it.
Drew: Yeah. Mandy's cool. She's going to make dinner, and Al's like, "Oh. You're like a wife, but fun," in front of Peg.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Peg's like, "Why don't you marry her?" Al's like, "Yeah. Why don't we get married?" and she's like, "Well, I'm gay."
Glen: Well, first she says, "I already have someone," and he says, in typical sitcom format, "Who's the lucky guy?" and she answers, "Barbara"—sigh, emphasis me. And then we cut to commercial off of Al's gargoyle reaction.
Drew: "Wha-ha-ha-?" Yeah.
Glen: It's like his face got slapped by a high-powered fan, the way the skin flapped around into these weird angles to show his surprise and disgust.
Drew: Also, I feel like maybe this being the age of Jim Carrey being a thing also probably put a lot of weird demands on how he was supposed to act. Yeah, they would have been on at the same time. I'm sure that would be a thing that he would have had to know about. I have an interesting real-life implication here. Amanda Bearse got married while she was on the show to her partner at the time—I think she has since remarried to someone else. [Unsure 00:40:14]. But she invited everyone in the cast except for Al and Bud.
Glen: And Bud?
Drew: Neither of them. Per his recollection—he brought this up in an interview, like, "Oh. Amanda didn't invite me to her wedding." This was fairly recent, too. This is him quoting her as he remembers it. Quote: "'This was a very tough call, but I just feel that you would find it amusing—that we would come in, in tuxedos and in a church, and walk down the aisle, and you and David would be snickering and finding it funny.'" So his response was, "'Amanda, what is funny about two women in tuxedos walking down a church aisle?' I started laughing, and she said, 'See?' and I said, 'Well, you know why? Because it's fucking—' this is him again. 'You know why? Because it's fucking funny, and I'm not going to be the only one who doesn't think so.'" And that was it.
Glen: I am going to go out on a limb and say I am team Amanda on this issue.
Drew: Fuck yes. Even if that story is right and that's how she—like, "Clearly, you were right," because he started laughing in her face that two women were getting married. But everyone else was there.
Glen: She acknowledged it was a difficult call.
Drew: Mm-hmm [laughs].
Glen: She didn't do it to hurt his feelings. She did it to protect hers, and also those of her guests—many of whom were going to be other lesbians.
Drew: I think there is a little bit of that, because everyone who worked on the show would probably be aware of this. There's a little bit of that in this interaction, and Al's surprise that gay people existing, I guess. I don't know. Also, a little other FYI: Ed O'Neill was in Cruising. Did you know that?
Glen: Really?
Drew: Yeah. He's one of the cops in Cruising.
Glen: Oh! I did know that.
Drew: So back from commercial, Al is having trouble with the concept of homosexuality.
Glen: They're describing their experience at the—
Drew: The Jiggly Room.
Glen: Which is a strip club. And one of my least favorite jokes in the episode is also in this scene.
Al: Gay?
[audience laughs]
Mandy: I can see that you're shocked, Al. Why do you think I went with you to the Jiggly Room?
Al: I thought you were being a good sport!
Mandy: Why do you think I was blowing kisses to all the strippers?
[audience laughs]
Al: If you were aiming to me and missing? Did any of them kiss back?
[audience laughs]
Al: But not Lola, huh?
Mandy: Of course not. Lola's a guy.
[audience laughs]
Al: What!
Mandy: Calm down, Al.
Al: [cries] That can't be.
Drew: That's how people talked about that kind of gender back in the day. Now we would say Lola's obviously a woman. Lola is not actually a guy, especially if she's working at an all-female strip club. There's very little [masculine 00:42:52], but whatever. Yeah. Poor Lola. Didn't deserve that.
Glen: Yeah. It was very—let's bring up Jim Carrey again—like Jim Carrey's reaction in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
Drew: Yeah. Yeah. What are we—oh. The Soap Dish episode of You Have to Watch this Movie talked about that. If you haven't thought about Ace Ventura in a while, just remember how the ending went, and be like, "That was a really fucked up thing."
Glen: The '90s did a lot right, but a lot wrong, too. Anyway.
Drew: But the next interaction is a little bit better.
Al: How did a thing like this happen to you? What, did you get stood up for the prom? Or you went to prison? I know, it was summer camp, wasn't it? You sprained a muscle skinny dipping, and the beautiful blonde counselor—let's call her Betty—carried you back to her cabin and gave you a massage. And before you knew it, you were a love slave in an all-girl sex cult.
[audience laughs]
Mandy: Yeah. That's what happened. You saw that in a video, didn't you, Al?
Al: Yeah. My favorite.
Mandy: Mine too.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Which is actually a sweet turn on that, because initially it's like that bit in Roseanne where Dan is using lesbian fantasy to get off, and then she flips it around—they flipped it around the other way, and they made it nice.
Glen: Yeah. I love this scene because Mandy comes right out and says—
Mandy: So you don't have a problem with two women being together?
Al: No. As long as there's a guy watching [laughs]—ow.
Glen: Which gets at the great point that it's just fucked up how when straight men are homophobic they still like women in porn being together, but they don't support lesbianism in any setting other than erotic pleasure for them.
Drew: Right. The moment emotions get invested in it, it becomes horrible. Right. Does that mean really conservative women like two guys doing it?
Glen: Are they allowed to like anything?
Drew: No [laughs]. Ask their husbands. I don't know [laughter]. Write us complaint letters, conservative women! So Mandy—why does Mandy leave at this point? She heads out for some reason. She heads out, and then Peg comes back downstairs, and he's like, "Mandy's gay!"
Peggy: So Al, has your little friend finally gone home? Or do you want her to sleep over?
Al: Peg, you don't have to worry about Mandy.
Peggy: Why? Because you only have eyes for me?
Al: [laughs] No. No, Peg. Mandy's gay.
Peggy: She is?
Al: [laughs] Yes, Peg. I'm surprised you couldn't pick it up. I never miss a thing like that—gaydar.
[audience laughs]
Drew: So it's night at the Bundy household, and Mandy is knocking at the door again, suitcase in hand. Apparently she told Marcy that she's gay, and it didn't go well. We're not really told the specifics of how that conversation went, but she is wanting to crash on the couch.
Mandy: Well, so much for honesty.
Al: She kicked you out?
Mandy: Well, not right away. First she started screaming and babbling something about an undershirt. I hate to impose, but can I crash on your couch?
Al: Well, that depends. Won't turn to gay, will it [laughs]?
[audience laughs]
Mandy: No, I don't think so, Al.
Al: [laughs] Just checking. Well, I'd better get on upstairs. Oh. I trust you're enough of a lady not to whistle at my tight little behind as I go up the stairs.
Mandy: Al, I told you—I'm gay.
Al: That may well be, but there are some things no woman can resist.
Drew: Al tries to test her lesbianism-ish by a bunch of dumb questions.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Al: Hey, Mandy. I have a question. Do you just like certain woman, or would you sleep with any woman on earth before you'd sleep with a man?
Mandy: Well, it depends. Give me a "for instance."
Al: Mm-hmm. Hmm. For instance, you're on a desert island. Who would you rather be with, me or Cindy Crawford?
Mandy: Cindy.
Al: Me, or Phyllis Diller?
Mandy: Phyllis.
Al: Me, or Marge Schott?
Mandy: You. But the whole time we'd be doing it, I'd be thinking of Phyllis Diller.
[audience laughs uproariously]
Drew: I had to look. Like, I know who Marge Schott is. She was that racist owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Yeah. Her Wikipedia page is just a churning toilet of garbage. It's real gross.
Glen: She's ugly inside and out.
Drew: [laughs] So we can make fun of her, because she's awful. And she still would pick Marge Schott, but she'd be thinking of Phyllis Diller, so she's a stone-cold lesbian. Can't do anything about that. And then Jefferson comes over, and Jefferson is a creep. But he's been kicked out because Marcy's in a bad mood because she's jealous of Mandy.
Jefferson: Marcy's mad at me just because I called out Mandy's name in bed.
[audience laughs]
Peggy: Excuse me. You know, for a lesbian, you sure spend a lot of time with men.
Drew: Peg comes down and is like, "Al, go over and see what the problem is"—[laughs]. That's the worst solution to this problem. He is the least-capable person of any of the people in this house to solve this problem, but he does. He goes over to Marcy's house and talks to her while she's having a little fit.
Glen: I want to point out that Marcy's bedroom has two different types of pink wallpaper.
Drew: That's a very explanatory thing about Marcy's life. Yeah.
Glen: And also, the '90s.
Drew: Yeah. The '90s are super ugly. So Marcy's sad. She says, "She stole all my boyfriends, and she didn't even want them."
Marcy: Hate Mandy. Hate Mandy. Hate Mandy! Hate her!
[audience laughs]
Al: Marcy!
Marcy: What are you doing up here?
Al: Oh, you know me. Can't keep me out of a shrill woman's bedroom.
Marcy: Go home!
Al: I'd like to, but my living room is full of women, men, and your cousin. Why is that, Marcy?
Marcy: Because I hate Mandy, and I never want to speak to her again!
Al: Well, that's understandable. No one should have to speak with family. If I were king, I'd make it a law. But you're the tree-hugging bra burner around here. What do you care if she's gay?
Marcy: I don't hate Mandy because she's gay! I hate Mandy because [yells hysterically] everyone likes her better than me [cries]! All our lives, Mandy was the talented one. Mandy was the popular one—
Al: The pretty one?
Marcy: [cries harder] She stole all my boyfriends, and now I found out she didn't even want them [cries harder] [blows nose]
[audience laughs]
Marcy: [dramatically hyperventilates] Why—does—everyone—like—her—better than me?
Glen: I think this is an interesting perspective because it is, again, a straight person viewing a gay person's struggle through their narrative frame, like, "This is how Mandy's crisis of sexuality affected me."
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's really not even a homophobic reaction.
Glen: No.
Drew: So much of it is a petty, jealous, lack-of-understanding reaction.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: They talk. They hug. They get freaked out by the intimacy, as they probably should.
Glen: Al's solution to the problem is very clever, you know, where he says—
Marcy: I know I'm not [hyperventilates] perfect. But I—do—have some good qualities.
Al: Sure. If you say so.
[audience laughs]
Marcy: Name one?
Al: Oh, geez. I don't know—you've got a high school diploma, and you never let your eyebrows grow together. Perfect height for a lawn jockey.
[audience laughs]
Al: Wait a minute. I got it. I'll bet you're the reasonable one.
Marcy: Me?
Al: yes! You're big enough and wise enough to sit down with Mandy—over here—and talk this thing out.
Marcy: Yeah. Yeah, you're right, Al.
Al: [laughs]
Marcy: [pitifully] I am the reasonable one.
[audience laughs]
Marcy: Al?
Al: Yeah?
Marcy: Are we alone together in my bedroom, hugging in the middle of the night?
Al: Mm-hmm.
[both scream in horror]
[audience laughs]
Drew: And the next scene, Mandy's saying goodbye because Jefferson and Marcy are driving her to the airport, and Al's going to miss her, and Peggy's like—
Glen: Very "Bye, bitch." She throws her suitcase out the door.
Mandy: You know, Peg, I'm really sorry that we didn't get to know one another better.
Peggy: I think I know enough.
[audience laughs]
Mandy: Well, there's one thing you may not know.
Peggy: Oh, really?
Mandy: Yep. I think you're gorgeous.
Peggy: [laughs] Oh, really!
[audience hoots and hollers]
Peggy: Don't be a stranger [laughs]!
Glen: Peg is gorgeous.
Drew: She is. It's weird thinking that she's anything other than a towering knockout at any point in the show. She's still a knockout today.
Glen: Yeah. I'd let Katey Sagal choke me.
Drew: I told you she's on—she's on The Conners, right?
Glen: You did tell me that.
Drew: Yeah. She was a brief love interest for Dan.
Glen: Oh? What happened to his wife?
Drew: I don't know. He never had a wife.
Glen: Oh [laughs].
Drew: Remember when she was on Lost?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. She was Locke's girlfriend, and then she died off screen, and it was devastating. Spoiler. Don't watch Lost. So that's the end of the Marcy-Mandy storyline. How do you want to handle the dog storyline?
Glen: Let's just blow through it. So in the cold open, Lucky's depressed. He's in the oven. And then he is put on pills and is super hyper, and there's a dog puppet being tossed around in the backyard—which is funny.
Drew: It does make me laugh. It's not a clever joke, but it's just a floppy dog puppet.
Glen: And then they take him off the pills, and their solution is to set him up on a doggy date. And I don't know why—Kelly sets it up. It looks lovely. I don't know—when her friend comes over with her dog, it's another blonde knockout.
Bud: So, Frisky and Lucky. Let's hope that also describes their owners.
[audience laughs]
Elaine: I can't believe you went to so much trouble. I love that you love your dog this much.
Bud: Well, we want to do whatever it takes to get our furry little friends together.
[audience laughs]
Glen: I don't know why Kelly decides to leave—like agrees to leave when Bud throws her out the door. Your holding your finger up.
Drew: The friend is named Elaine. She's played by Elaine Hendrix, and she is sort of someone who has a lesbian following. I don't think she's actually a lesbian. I couldn't tell. But she does have a lesbian fanbase because she is hot but—I don't actually know what it is. She's in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. She's Lisa Luder.
Glen: Oh, yeah!
Drew: She's also in Superstar, the Mary Katherine Gallagher movie. She plays the mean girl Evian.
Glen: She has very severe brows.
Drew: Yeah. She's just an interesting beauty. She's been doing stuff for a long time. She's in the Inspector Gadget sequel movie. I don't know if we care about that. We don't? Okay.
Glen: Oh, did the steam coming out of my ears tip you off?
Drew: Mm-hmm. She also plays the mean girlfriend in the Lindsay Lohan Parent Trap that's trying to marry Dennis Quaid. She's in a lot of stuff. I just like her. A lot of gay men also like her. Don't know what it is, but that's her.
Glen: Well, she has a thankless role in this where she's immediately taken by—quote/unquote—Bud's effort to make his dog happy. They're about to make-out on the couch when Lucky barks or whatever and is clearly not into her dog.
Elaine: I can't believe how rude your dog is.
Bud: Me neither. I'll have him put to sleep.
[audience laughs]
Bud: We'll just play with your dog.
Frisky: [growls]
Elaine: I have a better idea. Why don't you play with yourself?
[audience laughs]
Glen: And then the resolution is that Lucky's happy—he comes home from the park with another male dog dressed in leather gear. He's a bulldog. Very on the nose.
Kelly: Hey. Guess what. Lucky's not depressed anymore. He found a little friend in the park.
[audience laughs]
Kelly: His name's Spike. I think they're in love [laughs].
[audience laughs, applauds, and cheers]
Glen: I mean, I saw where this was going the second he was depressed. And I just think—I'll say I enjoyed the Marcy-Mandy storyline. I think some of the jokes were bad in the way that some '90s jokes are bad and tasteless, and there's not much you can do about that. But the underlying treatment of Mandy as a character both from writing, directing, and acting was very well done. And again, probably the most likeable character this show has seen in a little bit of time. And it's a very nice exit for Amanda Bearse—"Burse." And I'm glad she got it, and I'm glad that she has gone on to do other things. [But] to pair that with "Let's give a very real problem in the gay community—" that is depression, drug abuse, and then just seeking solace in park hookups—"and give it to a dog."
Drew: Oh! Yeah. That's—I didn't think about that chain of events. That's kind of not awesome.
Glen: So it was just like, "Okay. Well, thanks for addressing that." I mean, it's fine.
Drew: It's not. It's weird. The dog stories are always weird. The whole conception of—remember how Lucky is a reincarnation of Buck?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: The whole conception of that dog being basically a Garfield who has sentience when the writers feel like doing it and otherwise don't have to do it—it's always weird.
Glen: Yeah. I never liked Lucky—like, just the look of him.
Drew: He's a Briard.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Which Thurman might be part, allegedly. Also, do you know that he didn't start talking until the fourth season?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: I did not realize that. That's something they just did as a one-off joke, and then it became a canonical thing, and that's a real weird development for a sitcom universe to take on.
Glen: And then they kill him.
Drew: They killed him because the dog who played him—they wanted him to be retired. He didn't really die. They were just like, "He needs to have some years off," so he basically got retired, and that was how that—but they did kill Buck. Yeah.
Glen: The show also had a season that just didn’t happenk where Peg was pregnant, and then she wasn't. And then there was a season with a Cousin Oliver situation.
Drew: That was Seven.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: And then he just vanished, and then you see him on a milk carton some time later. Wait. What was the Peg pregnancy thing? I don't remember.
Glen: Al dreamed that she was pregnant for an entire season—because she was pregnant in real life. And I think that they were going to—there was a pregnancy plotline in the show. They were going to have another baby. And I remember the episode where the guy in Parker Lewis Can't Lose who played the big bully—
Drew: Kubiac, who we are going to encounter in the very near future on Wings.
Glen: Awesome. He played the baby in a dream sequence—a baby football player that was just tackling Al.
Drew: [laughs] I do not remember that at all.
Glen: And also, there was the two-part episode where they go over to Europe somewhere, and there's a curse. So this show does weird things sometimes.
Drew: And also, Ted McGinley showed up on the show. Before he ever played Jefferson, he played the dream version of Al in the "It's a Bundyful Life" Christmas special, which is weird. You want to see something else that's weird? The last episode of Married… with Children is not the last time we see Marcy D'Arcy—I guess Marcy. She shows up on—remember that show Nikki?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: It was a WB sitcom starring Nikki Cox. There's a dream sequence where she and the boyfriend are pregnant or think they might be pregnant, and she dreams that they are Al and Peg. And then Marcy and Steve come over—played by the original actors. It's just a very odd choice, like, "Really? You went with Steve? All right." And I don't know if they recreated the set for that or [if] the set just still existed for that, but it's the exact set, and they're in their costumes. It's just very weird that of anyone, Marcy D'Arcy had the longest-gevity of those characters so far. Yeah. That was a few years later.
Glen: Oh. I was going to tell you about my dream.
Drew: Oh, yeah.
Glen: I mean, people can tune out—whatever—right now.
Drew: They've already decided if they're in for the long haul. We've had many diversions.
Glen: So, yeah. I dreamt there was an episode of Wheel of Fortune, and one of the prizes was this stained-glass coloring book. But it wasn't like a coloring book—it was panels of actual blank stained-glass that were bracketed together. Very tall. Very unwieldy. And to display them was a bunch of famous sitcom mothers—well, famous sitcom actresses—and Iman, and they were showing off their works, and it was all very good. Aman and Annie Potts had the best stained-glass displays. And then Phylicia Rashad refused to show hers, and I was like, "No. Come on. I'm sure it's great. You're just a perfectionist. Blah, blah, blah." And then she started showing some of hers, and the first one she showed was tan and beige. It was not good. And she kept going, and none of them were finished. Some of them were good, but she was just breaking down and crying, and Aman had to comfort her.
Drew: That's a beautiful scene, Aman comforting Phylicia Rashad is something I need to see in pop culture. And then what happened?
Glen: I don't know. It transitioned to some sort of gay pride dream.
Drew: Do you think you had that dream because the last thing you did last night was watch Hereditary, which is a movie about putting women on pedestals and giving them very specific roles to do?
Glen: No.
Drew: No? You don't that?
Glen: No. I think I just sometimes dream about sitcom mothers.
Drew: Who were the other sitcom moms? Do you remember?
Glen: Murphy Brown was there.
Drew: Is there a gay episode of Murphy Brown?
Glen: We'll look it up. I can't remember the others.
Drew: Okay. All right. Unless there's anything else you want to talk about, I think we're good.
Glen: Where can people find you, Drew?
Drew: You can find me on Twitter, @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. You can find me on Instagram @KidIcarus222. Yes, that is a video game reference. It used to be obscure. Now it's less so. Glen, where can people find you?
Glen: On Instagram, I'm @BrosQuartz—B-R-O-S Quartz, which is even more fitting because I've gotten into geology Twitter. I just look at pictures of rocks. And on Twitter, you can find me @IWriteWrongs—that is "write" with a W-R-I-T-E.
Drew: Mm-hmm. You can follow this podcast @GayestEpisode on Twitter or on Facebook @GayestEpisode—or @GayestEpisodeEver—just look us up on Facebook. Listen to all our previous episodes at GayestEpisodeEver.com
Glen: And please tell your friends because sometimes Facebook blocks us.
Drew: Facebook is, at the time I'm posting this, is telling me that the Peggy Hill drag queen episode is a violation of Facebook's quality content—or it's objectionable for some reason. They won't tell me why. I don't know. If you work for Facebook and you're listening to this, please stop, because I think people should hear that episode because it's good, and there's nothing wrong with it. I couldn't imagine what the problem could be. Other than that, please give us a rate and review. Next episode we do, we'll start reading a review that we like that someone gave us recently as a "thank you" for taking the time to write about us.
Glen: Did anyone do that yet?
Drew: Apparently not. The newest review, according to what I'm looking at now, is Katherine's—so it doesn't count. Also, if you're a gay person and you like TV, or if you're just gay, or if you like TV—
Glen: Or if you're just a person.
Drew: —and you just happened to listen to this by accident and you're very confused about what we're talking about but you kind of like it anyway, maybe recommend this show to someone who is a gay TV nerd. Someone who likes sitcoms, someone's a homosexual who knows his sitcom-mom pantheon very well, I think they would really get a kick out of this. And people personally recommending this show to people that they think will be receptive to it is one of the greatest ways we could have to grow our audience. So if you have anyone in mind, please just send them an email being like, "Hey. This doesn't suck," or "This does suck. Laugh at them."
Glen: Oh, my god.
Drew: A view is a view, right?
Glen: That just triggered all of my deepest fears about how all praise of me is not genuine.
Drew: [pause] No, all the—I mean—no.
Glen: Okay. Bye forever [laughs].
Drew: No, no. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. It is a woman-owned company. Go to TableCakes.com to listen to all the shows we put on. I host two others, other than this one. And if you want to give money to us or TableCakes at large, please do so at Patreon.com/TableCakes. Now, that's it. Glen, now say your thing.
Glen: No. I'm already gone.
Drew: Okay. Well, episode over!
Glen: Yay.
["Saint Joe on the School Bus" by Marcy Playground plays]