Transcript for Episode 5: Mary and Rhoda Meet a Homo

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode “My Brother’s Keeper.” 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.

Phyllis:  Mary, what am I going to do? 

Mary:  I think you're going to do what you usually do. You're going to get yourself all worked up and you're going to let it all out and you're going to embarrass everybody concerned. 

Phyllis:  I don't do that. 

Mary:  Yes you do, do that, Phyllis.

Phyllis:  No. Mother did that. 

Mary:  Phyllis, I don't know your mother. 

Phyllis:  So you think I do that? 

Mary:  Yes, I do, Phyllis. 

Phyllis: [scoffs] You don't know me at all. But it's amazing how well you know my mother. 

[audience laughs uproariously]

[Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song "Love is All Around" plays]

Drew:  You are listening to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast that looks at episodes of classic sitcoms that deal with LGBT issues, 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. 

Drew:  And in case that intro didn't tip you off, today we are talking about the Mary Tyler Moore Show, specifically the episode "My Brother's Keeper," a.k.a. "Mary and Rhoda Meet a Homo," which aired January 13th, 1973, about halfway through the show's third season. And before we get into the episode, I want to introduce our special guest Sam Pancake. Hi, Sam. 

Sam:  Hello. Thank you for having me Glen and Drew. 

Drew:  Thank you for coming here. Sam Pancake, you are an acting person and you happen to have been on a ton of TV shows, including a lot of TV shows we're probably eventually going to talk about on this show. Where do people—when people randomly recognize you on the street, where do they recognize you from usually? 

Sam:  Oh, wow. Well, thanks to Friends being on Netflix now—and even before that because it's always been in syndication—I only did two episodes of Friends and I just played a waiter, but people clock me on it. And then for some reason, I was in about three episodes of Arrested Development as this one character.

Drew:  Barry Spangler.

Sam:  Barry Zuckerkorn was my boss. 

Glen:  [gasps]

Drew:  Alan Spangler. 

Sam:  Yes. That was me, I think. Yes. Yeah. 

Drew:  I got it wrong. 

Sam:  I know that Henry was Barry Zuckerkorn, the lawyer, and I played his assistant. But for some reason—it happened to me again two weeks ago. Straight white guys who are baristas at Starbucks and coffee places always know me from Arrested Development and know the lines of the character. 

Drew:  I can see that. 

Sam:  And then there's other—so much random shit. I'm just happy when people don't say, "How do I know you? Where do I know you from?" People don't do that as much anymore because most people know about IMDb. 

Drew:  Right. Right, right, right. Well, you've been on a great many TV shows, and I made a curated list of the TV shows that I thought merited a quick mention of your vast TV filmography. 

Sam:  [laughs] Oh, wow. 

Drew:  First of all, your first TV appearance was Wings. 

Glen:  [gasps]

Sam:  Yeah. Yeah. 

Drew:  So Glen and I both actually unabashedly love Wings. 

Sam:  Really? 

Glen:  Yep.

Drew:  I actually think it's a really solid sitcom, and I think it gets treated like it's less than it is. I think it's actually pretty solidly written and acted. 

Glen:  But apparently, when I was talking about Wings for the Cheers episode, I wasn't as glowing for that. I just don't think Cheers is—Wings is in the Cheers universe, not the Frasierverse. That is my only—

Sam:  Wait. Is Wings a spinoff of Cheers? 

Glen:  Yes. Kind of. 

Drew:  It wasn't a spinoff of Cheers, but since it took place in Nantucket, they used that proximity to Boston to have at least one crossover. Was it the only crossover? 

Glen:  Frasier and Lilith? 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  I think so. 

Drew:  So there's a Frasier and Lilith episode of Wings. 

Sam:  Wow. 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Sam:  I remember when I did it, it was my first line on a sitcom on TV. I'd done a lot of commercials but no actual sitcoms. And it hadn't started yet, and it was in April of 19—I remember I shot it, I think, in—I don't remember. I just remember it was the Laverne & Shirley stage, that someone pointed out to me. Stage 19 at Paramount. 

Drew:  Oh. That's crazy. 

Glen:  Was it haunted? 

Sam:  There was an earthquake that happened that week, and we all ran outside the stage—Crystal Bernard and Tim and Steve Weber, who I'm still friendly with. Yeah. So we didn't know what the show was, and then later I didn't watch it. But it's on Netflix too, apparently, because people will send me screenshots—a lot, recently, of me with all this innocence and long, curly, brown hair just bopping along with a garment bag, I guess. 

Drew:  And what year was that? Do you remember? 

Sam:  We shot it in March or April of '90, I'm pretty sure. But then it was on in the fall, I guess. I don't know. But that's my memory. 

Drew:  There are Wings fans out there. There are people who appreciate why Wings was important. 

Sam:  Oh, absolutely. 

Glen:  What do you call those people? 

Sam:  They've written me. Wingmen? 

Glen:  [gasps] That's a good one. 

Sam:  Wing-people? Wing-persons?

Drew:  Wingnuts. Obviously, wingnuts. Yeah. 

Sam:  Wings-nuts. 

Glen:  I don't know. As a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan, that has a different meaning for me. 

Drew:  It can be two things. Why shouldn't it? So then in addition to Wings, there's also: Angel; Curb Your Enthusiasm; The West Wing; Charmed; NYPD Blue—

Sam:  [laughs] Oh, my god. Yes. 

Drew:  Will & Grace; Arrested Development, as you said; Kitchen Confidential; Fat Actress—

Sam:  Oh, right [laughter]. 

Drew:  He's making noise after I say anything—Pushing Daisies; Parenthood—

Sam:  I thought for a second—I'm pretending it's a test, like, "True or false?" "True." 

Glen:  You should have slipped some in there. 

Drew:  I should have slipped a fake one in here, but—Cougar Town; Gilmore Girls; most recently The Mick; and most importantly Lovespring International, which is a show that should be on some streaming service somewhere because I think people would think it's hilarious because it's a really great cast and it was really funny. And you did Katherine's podcast, correct?

Sam:  Yes. Katherine Spiers. Yes. Smart Mouth. 

Drew:  Smart Mouth host Katherine Spiers and I both love Lovespring International, and—

Glen:  Hmm. I've never heard of this. 

Drew:  It was on Lifetime. Explain—you were on it. 

Sam:  Okay, so—yeah. Yeah. Lifetime in 2006 was trying to rebrand itself, and they decided to do original sitcoms really late at night for some reason, and we had shot—the creator, Guy Shalem; and Jack Plotnick, who was also on it; and Wendi McLendon-Covey, currently on The Goldbergs—shot a 20-minute pilot in '04 about this dating service—and also Jennifer Elise Cox who was in it—and they shopped it around. And eventually Eric McCormack of Will & Grace fame—his production entity at the time picked it up, and then they sold it to Lifetime, and it was going to be an improvised sitcom about a dating service. And this all took place when I was on Kitchen Confidential. And I just remember that year was like—I wasn't [an] official series regular on Kitchen Confidential because I was recurring, because that's how they fuck you on the money. But I was in every episode. And then when I was doing that, this all went down. And so after that got canceled, I went right into Lovespring two months later, which was great, and I was on a—it was a great couple of years. So they put it on—on Lifetime, they took out just one of their eight billion Golden Girls reruns a week on Lifetime on a Monday night and put us on, and they still got letters. And it was groundbreaking. We improvised the entire thing. There were script outlines. Jane Lynch—in the pilot we shot, it was someone different, but Jane Lynch came in as the head and she was amazing. And we had really, really interesting guest stars like Alanis Morissette and Mike Hitchcock—who was in all the Christopher Guest movies—and Camryn Manheim, and Shawn Hayes. Shawn did it because of Eric, and Shawn and I are friends. And Eric McCormack was a guest star. And there were a lot more—now I can't think of who they are. But it was only on for 13 episodes, but it has quite a cult following. But it's not streaming. And then someone else wrote the other day, "They should revive this," and I'm like, "I'm game. If Wendi and Jane have time, I'm game." 

Glen:  So you heard it here first: letter-writing campaign to revive Lovespring.  

Drew:  Katherine and I are going to get on that. By the way, Jennifer Elise Cox is Jan Brady from The Brady Bunch Movies—

Glen:  [gasps]

Drew:  —who's another major figure in our lives, and we think she's hilarious. 

Sam:  Yeah. She's the best. Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. It was a good show. So we are talking about Mary Tyler Moore this episode. 

Glen:  We are. 

Sam:  Yes. 

Drew:  Which Sam did not ever appear on—unless I'm mistaken. No.

Sam:  I was not a child actor. No. 

Drew:  What was your experience with Mary Tyler Moore? 

Sam:  Well as I told you earlier, sadly, I grew up in rural West Virginia. That's not the sad part, even though that could be sad. We only got ABC. The antenna only picked up ABC, so I grew up on a steady, delicious, creamy diet of great things—Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, The Odd Couple, through Laverne & Shirley, Happy Days, Joanie Loves Chachi, through Love Boat Fantasy Island. That was my childhood. 

Drew: That's still pretty good.

Sam:  But we got no CBS, so I was sorely deprived of your Carol Burnetts and your Mary Tyler Moores and your Rhodas, which I knew at the time, and it crushed me. It killed me. But I didn't know Mary Tyler Moore until I met—of course, I knew who she was, and I'd seen it occasionally, and I worshipped Cloris Leachman because I knew her from all these crazy TV movies she was on and Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety, and she just always fascinated me. We know there are these certain women, gay guys are just like, "What?" And I love Valerie Harper. I liked when I got to see Rhoda at other people's houses or my grandparents'. I loved it. So I didn't really know Mary that well until reruns on Nick at Nite, and it's funny that we're doing this episode because I watched it for the first time last fall on Hulu, so it was fresh in my mind.  

Drew:  Do you think they might not have aired this one on Nick at Night? Not been part of the same package? 

Glen:  Conspiracy theory. 

Drew:  Well, that does happen sometimes where certain things just don't end up going into syndication properly, but—

Sam:  Yeah. That's true. 

Drew:  Glen, what is your relationship with this classic TV show that everyone knows and loves? 

Glen:  I actually have no relationship with it. With all my TV watching, for some reason this never crossed my path. 

Drew:  Until now when I made you—

Glen:  Well, until now. I was aware of it, and I love Valerie Harper from Valerie's Family/The Hogan Family.

Sam:  Oh, yeah. Yes. God, it was so freaking good. 

Glen:  Jason Bateman—until they murdered her. 

Sam:  It was so crazy. 

Glen:  It's fine. But I love and appreciate it. And watching it now for the first time, I was stunned by the— quote/unquote—fag-hagness of all of the ladies on it. 

Drew:  Yeah. It is that, and we get to talk about all the ladies and the way they appeal to gay men in various ways. But yeah. I got to say, I also—this was not in syndication where I grew up, so I didn't ever watch these until they were available on iTunes. I actually bought the seasons of these and was like, "I'M going to watch this important TV show." There are only three seasons that are available online, so the first three seasons of the show—

Sam:  That's so crazy. What is that? 

Drew:  No idea. Someone really fucked up because the back four seasons are the ones that have Betty White playing Sue Ann Nivens who's a manipulative, terrible monster, and I think the world needs to know that Betty White has this other dimension to her. But they're not in syndication. I think they're on Hulu. You can watch them illegally. 

Sam:  They're not on Hulu. 

Glen:  They're on YouTube. 

Drew:  They're on YouTube. Sorry. The first three seasons are the ones that have Cloris Leachman and Valerie Harper. They both departed for their own spinoffs, and it's kind of weird that someone might just see these three seasons and think, "They never even left the show. What a fun little contained thing," but not know that they had their own thing on the side. 

Sam:  And also, the ending of that series was so legendary and heartbreaking, and everyone knew it at the time—the famous scene where they all scooch out the door together. 

Glen:  In my defense, I didn't watch Mary Tyler Moore growing up, but I have seen every episode of Munsters Today. 

Drew:  That's not a defense at all. 

Sam:  Monsters Today? 

Glen:  Munsters Today.  

Sam:  Oh, Munsters Today? How long did that—the syndicated one? 

Glen:  Yeah. It's like, three seasons. Three or four seasons. 

Drew:  Longer than you would think, but that was a thing where they were trying to—they were working to update The Munsters and make them cool again, and—

Sam:  Who were the Lily and Herman on that one? Was it Ed Hermann? 

Glen:  No [laughs]. No, no, no. 

Drew:  I think it was—

Sam:  Oh, is this the Canadian-ish one? 

Drew:  No, it was—[snaps fingers]. Lee Meriwether was Lily Munster.

Glen:  Lee Meriwether!

Sam:  I've worked with her. 

Drew:  And Jason Marsden is Eddie. 

Glen:  But Lee Meriwether's a person. 

Sam:  Oh, yeah. I've worked with her. She was Catwoman. She's lovely and gorgeous.

Drew:  Lee Meriwether is, yeah. Yeah. She's one of the three Catwomen, and we can fight about which one's the best on a different show. 

Glen:  Lee Meriwether. 

Drew:  Okay. There you go. 

Sam:  Maybe this is the time for me to super hardcore namedrop that I have fulfilled one of my small fantasies by—I've either worked with or crossed paths with so far: Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman, Georgia Engel, Betty White, and Gavin MacLeod. 

Drew:  That's a really good lineup. Why don't you rattle through those in order? 

Sam:  Betty White I've met a couple times at work—I mean through work; we haven't worked together—but most auspiciously backstage at the Emmys in 2010. Check my upcoming autobiography for the details. Secondly, Cloris Leachman I met at a book singing in Palm Springs. You need to read her autobiography, especially her explaining and describing some of her crazy behavior on the Mary Tyler Moore set, especially being late and how she didn't really understand that being late was bad. She grabbed my chin so hard for the photo-op that we did at this little thing that it really hurt. And then one time I went for an audition at Raising Hope, and she came out in the lobby and went to each one of us that were sitting in the waiting area, all the actors, and made us read our lines to her. And she was like—she gave me a nice compliment and some of the other people. I didn't end up booking it. 

Glen:  She's like, "I love your chin." 

Sam:  [laughs] Right. "I want to grab it again." Gavin MacLeod I was in a movie called Cook Off! with, which is online now, which Wendi McLendon-Covey is also in. And Guy Shalem from Lovespring directed it, and it's been re-edited and re-released, and it's a whole long story. But I spent a week or two with Gavin, and he's absolutely lovely. So kind. Very kind. And Ed Asner I did a benefit with, and he was really nice, and he's alarmingly strong for a man in his '80s. 

Drew:  That sounds right. Yeah. 

Sam:  He's very strong—physically, I mean, as well as a person. And then—who am I leaving out? 

Drew:  Georgia Engel. 

Sam:  Georgia Engel. I did this independent pilot that my friend wrote and produced, and she played my friend's mom, and I played her best friend, and she was a delight [laughs]. She's Georgette. 

Drew:  That would make sense. She essentially has played a variation on Georgette in most of her other sitcom roles. Glenn was like, "Where do I know her from?" I was like, "Oh, she was on Coach." She played a character named Shirley Burleigh. She was Luther Van Dyke's girlfriend on that show, and she was like—she's not just—

Sam:  Jerry Van Dyke? 

Drew:  Jerry Van Dyke. Did I say—

Sam:  Luther Van Dyke. 

Drew:  Who's Luther Van Dyke? 

Glen:  Well, his character's name is Luther. 

Sam:  Oh. And I've never seen it. 

Glen:  [gasps]

Sam:  I'm way older than you people. I was getting high and going to clubs when you were watching Coach in the '90s. 

Drew:  Okay. You're much—

Glen:  So, like, last night. 

Sam:  Oh, what? What? 

Drew:  That was a much better use of your time. 

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  But yeah. She's interesting. 

Sam:  And she's on Everybody Loves Raymond too, right? Wasn't she one of the parents on that? 

Glen:  Yes! That is also where I know her from. 

Drew:  Oh. I didn't watch that show. 

Glen:  I'm actually an Everybody Loves Raymond apologist. 

Drew:  Are you a Patricia Heaton apologist? 

Glen:  No. Terri Schiavo sort of— [laughter].

Drew:  We can talk about Terri Schiavo again in two episodes anyways. 

Glen:  No. We need to not. This is not the Terri Schiavo podcast. 

Sam:  [laughs] Why is Terri Schiavo coming up? 

Drew:  She wanted Terri Schiavo to not be unplugged—Patricia Heaton did, because she's a crazy Catholic or something where she—

Glen:  Yeah. She waved a mylar balloon in front of her and said, "Look. There's life." 

Sam:  That's so weird, because in one version of that pilot I'm talking about with Georgia Engel Patty Heaton played the mom on, and eventually she didn't when we—because I did a table read with her. That's why I get to call her "Patty." 

Glen:  She didn't want to pull the plug on you, either. 

Sam:  No, she didn't. She was very nice. 

Drew:  The episode we're talking about today is called "My Brother's Keeper," and it originally aired January 13th, 1973. 

Sam:  '73? Oh, wow. Wow. I always thought '76. 

Drew:  At the time, Mary Tyler Moore Show was the seventh highest rated series on TV. 

Glen:  That's a crime. 

Drew:  Tied with Gunsmoke. 

Sam:  Seventh? Wow. 

Drew:  Seventh. So here's the weird thing. There was a show that aired on the same night as Mary Tyler Moore that actually was better rated, and it was called Bridget Loves Bernie. 

Sam:  Bridget Loves Bernie, yeah. 

Drew:  So you know about this? 

Sam:  Oh, yeah. Meredith Baxter-Birney and David Birney.

Glen:  [gasps]

Drew:  Have you ever heard of this show? 

Glen:  No, but is it streaming? 

Sam:  I doubt it. 

Drew:  I don't believe so. 

Sam:  That's interesting that that got a higher—it must have been new or something. 

Glen:  I had no idea she had a life before Family Ties. 

Drew:  So this is how she met—

Sam:  Okay. I need to tell you about another really great TV movie from the '70s called The Cat Creature about an ancient Egyptian cat curse.

Glen:  Oh, my god. This is reuniting all my loves—ancient Egyptian culture, cat people, and Meredith Baxter-Birney. 

Sam:  Okay. You have such a treat waiting for you on YouTube tonight, Glen Lakin. I'm not even kidding. That's another one. I'm going to make a list of really good bad-TV movies from the '70s for you. 

Glen:  You should have a children to watch. 

Drew:  You should have a podcast where you make people watch bad TV movies on YouTube and then just talk about them, and I would listen to that podcast. 

Sam:  [gasps] Okay. 

Drew:  Yeah. Please do that. 

Sam:  Oh, my god. I have so many. Cat Creature. Write it down. 

Drew:  So Bridget Loves Bernie is where she got her last name Birney, although it's confusing because it's Birney—B-E-R-N [sic]—

Sam:  B-I-R-N-E-Y.

Drew:  But the show is Bridget Loves B-E-R-N-I-E. 

Sam:  It's very confusing. 

Drew:  And so Bernie was a Jewish guy who was played by someone whose last name was Birney—B-I-R-N-E-Y—and Meredith played a Catholic girl, and people loved it. It got really good ratings. It got better ratings than Mary Tyler Moore. But people complained so much about—

Sam:  The mixed marriage? 

Drew:  —the way Jewish people were depicted that it became too much of a headache for the network and they canceled it. And if what I looked up was true, it is the highest-rated show to ever be canceled after one season. 

Sam:  Wow. 

Drew:  Better ratings than Mary Tyler Moore and they canned it because it was too much of a fucking headache. Someone got arrested at one point for death threats or something. 

Sam:  Wow. I had no idea. 

Drew:  However, as a result of it, Meredith Baxter married the actor who played her husband—

Sam:  David Birney.

Drew:  And that's how she got her last name. Although that marriage did not last, if I understand correctly. 

Glen:  I wonder why. Why? 

Sam:  She was on the show Family. Do you know the show Family with Sada Thompson and James Broderick, who's Matthew Broderick's father, and Quinn Cummings? 

Drew:  I don't know any—

Sam:  And Kristy McNichol. Oh my god, y'all. 

Drew:  Kristy McNichol I know. 

Sam:  Look up Family. It won Emmys. 

Drew:  Is that why Kristy McNichol's gay too?

Sam:  She was the sister of Meredith Baxter-Birney [laughs]. 

Drew:  Yeah. Is that why? 

Sam:  I don't know. 

Glen:  They must have kissed. 

Drew:  Yeah. Oh, probably. 

Sam:  No. They were sisters. 

Glen:  They must have kissed. 

Sam:  Oh my god you guys, stop it. Look up Family. It was a stalwart in my family's TV watching. It ran for five or six years, and Sada Thompson was the mom, and James Broderick was the dad. It was set in Pasadena. And Kristy McNichol—I forget. Gary Frank was his name—this kind of lithe, blonde man, and then Meredith Baxter-Birney. It was like the trials and—[laughs]. It's so funny. TV was so extremely white, and of course we didn't question it—except for The Jeffersons and Good Times and That's My Mama. But overwhelmingly, the problems of the upper middle-class whites—those one-hour family dramas, so many of them in the '70s and early '80s. 

Drew:  And that's—that's still. That's still most of TV. 

Sam:  Still a lot. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

Drew:  But even though Bridget Loves Bernie was not something I knew about before I did the research for this episode, the lineup that this aired on for Saturday nights on CBS was All in the Family, Bridget Loves Bernie, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett. I'm like, that is three solid fucking hours of TV. I would stay home on a Saturday to watch that. 

Sam:  Oh. Mary Tyler Moore was after, on the same network, as Bridget Loves Bernie? It was also CBS, is what you're saying? 

Drew:  It was the 9:00 p.m. show. 

Sam:  I thought you meant it was against Mary Tyler Moore and it beat Mary Tyler Moore. It was the same night, but it still beat it in terms of the ratings. Got it. 

Drew:  Yeah. So this episode was directed by Jay Sandrich, who is a prolific TV director who did a ton of Mary Tyler Moore and also Get Smart, The Odd Couple, Soap, and then over 100 episodes of the sitcom that was on where Phylicia Rashad played a mom. I can't remember the name. 

Glen:  [exclaims] 

Sam:  Don't know it. 

Glen:  Beep!

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  It was written by this awesome pair, Jenna McMahon and Dick Clair, who later go on to create both Facts of Life and Mama's Family. 

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  Dick Clair, by the way, was a gay and kind of a babe. 

Sam:  I didn't know that. 

Glen:  Okay. Let's see the picture. 

Sam:  I've seen those names so many times. I did not know. 

Glen:  Well, you'll show me later. 

Drew:  He sadly passed away from AIDS-related causes in 1988. 

Sam:  Oh, yes. Not bad, Mr. Clair. 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Sam:  I'm going to dig into that further. He could get it. He could get it. 

Drew:  And Jenna McMahon, she did a lot of cool stuff. They wrote for Carol Burnett together as well. So this episode opens up with Mary at work, and Murray comes in and sits down next to her. And I feel like I want to start off this episode with a talk about Murray Slaughter. Murray Slaughter is Mary's coworker, played by Gavin MacLeod, which is a great stage name. But I will say right now, when I picture what a Gavin MacLeod looks like in my head, he does not look like Murray Slaughter. He looks like a very different man—looks like a soap opera villain who's still handsome or something. But that's what he is. He's kind of gay, right? His character. Murray Slaughter's character has a gayness to it. Right? 

Sam:  Well, in hindsight yes. It never struck me at the time, and I was—as a kid—always on high alert for the faintest whiff of gay so I could be like—of course it interested me, like, "Who's that? What's going on?" I knew when I was, like, four or five years old. Or I would be like, "I have to remember not to like that or say something about it or comment so I'm not busted," or someone says, "That person's like you." 

Glen:  But he's one of those sloppy gays where he's not out and he's not trying to land a lady in any real way. 

Sam:  Well, he's married to Marie, which is always funny to me that their names are Murray and Marie. 

Drew:  Murray and Marie—and they're coworkers—marry. 

Sam:  Oh, that's true. Yeah. Mary and Murray and Marie. 

Drew:  Yeah. And they sit right next to each other. 

Sam:  Let's think a little harder on the names there, Jay Sandrich—I mean Dick and Jenna. 

Drew:  They're like, bitchy work friends, though, and it's hard for me to describe why I perceived this character to be gay because in practice he kind of reminds me of Pete Hornberger from 30 Rock, but a gay version of him—even though he's not actually gay on the show. And there's a lot of episodes that deal with his wife, and he almost has an affair in one episode. He has a whole marital thing going on. He has kids. And I cannot not see Mary's coworker as being a gay, a queenie gay character. And the only thing I could think of is that in practice he kind of functions like a male version of Rhoda since they both have a New York accent and they're both quippy and frumpy and—

Sam:  And concerned about their weight—even though Rhoda/Valerie Harper couldn't be more slim or more beautiful—but Gavin was heavier then. And then by the time he was Captain Stubing on The Love Boat, which was a big part of my childhood later years, that was the Gavin MacLeod that I knew. And he was sold on that show as a sex symbol, because he was a commanding captain and he always had lady friends and lovers, and it was odd. The women competed to be at the Captain's Table with him. 

Glen:  The episode is paused right now on his screen credit, and it's a picture of him eating a pork rind and drinking, and I am not seeing sex symbol. I'm not seeing gay icon. I didn't pick up on the homosexual vibe, but he was also in this episode for all of two seconds. 

Drew:  Right. I've seen more of it. Yeah. It's odd, and it's also maybe compounded by the fact that I was like, "Wait. Is this guy gay or something?" and looked up that he is an evangelical Christian who divorced his wife and then remarried his wife and has—

Sam:  Patti, with an I.

Drew:  Patti with an I—and spent most of his life post-Love Boat, really. He still does do acting stuff and he does Hollywood stuff, but a lot of his energies are focused on evangelical Christianity now, and it's like—hmm. So the show is centered on Mary, and everyone is shown in mostly how they interact with Mary, and a lot of the men have—Ed Asner's character, Lou Grant, is her gruff-talking boss. But even then, I think there's a quippy, grumpy, old gay vibe to him, and I know he has a wife—at least until he gets divorced at one point. But the relationship he has with Mary is not quite what I think of as typical straight male/straight female relationship. 

Sam:  Later in the series they go on a date after he divorces, and they kiss, and they start laughing, and it's the best—it's a really good episode and a really good depiction. Because I've kind of been in that thing with a friend, or the circumstances change and you're both like, "Wait. Maybe we should—it's kind of been a while," and then you kind of try it—and then you start to make out, and then you start laughing. That's legitimately happened to me, and you're like, "This is just friends." And it's a really cute episode. But I don't think Lou reads remotely gay. Maybe it's that you're dreaming there about your fucking bear daddy. 

Drew:  That might—

Glen:  Is it just because it's a completely sexless relationship? You're just like, "Oh, that reads as gay." 

Drew:  Maybe that's it, because except for that episode where they go on the date, there is not sexual tension between her and Lou [or] her and Murray or her and Ted—because Ted is a vain idiot—when again, maybe living amongst gay men I know a lot of vain idiots. 

Sam:  Why'd you look at me? Why'd you look at me? 

Glen:  I thought you were going to say, "Living with you, I am amongst a gay idiot."

Drew:  You guys both thought I was talking about you. You're both very vain people. 

Sam:  Exactly. I'm an egomaniac. 

Drew:  Anyway. So maybe I'm overreaching on that one, but the episode picks up very quickly because Phyllis shows up. Phyllis visits Mary at work, and Phyllis is my favorite character on the show. 

[audience laughs]

Lou:  I want you to come because—

[knocking]

Mary:  Uh-huh. 

Phyllis:  Hi, hi. 

Mary:  Phyllis, hi. 

Phyllis:  Lou, I'd love to talk to you, too, but I'm here to see Mary. 

Lou:  Oh. 

[audience laughs]

Lou:  Well, if I'm in the way, I could wait out on the window ledge. 

[audience laughs]

Mary:  Mr. Grant, excuse us. 

Phyllis:  Window ledge? He's such a cutie. 

Lou:  [mumbles]

Mary:  Phyllis, is something the matter? 

Phyllis:  Well actually, I'm on my way to the airport. But let's talk of other things. Mary, that is a nice dress for work. What are you going to change into when you get home from work tonight? 

Mary:  Oh, I don't know, Phyl. I might just live recklessly and stay right in this one [laughs]. What is this? 

Phyllis:  Oh, no. No, that won't do at all. Mary, please change it. But you will be in about 7:00?

Mary:  Yeah. I think I will. Phyllis, look. This is an office. I can't just stand around and chat. I got a lot of work to do here. I've got to get out my party invitations. Here's yours. 

Phyllis:  Well, thank you. Oh. Lars will be at some big dermatologist bash, but could I bring somebody else? 

Mary:  Yeah, sure. Who? 

Phyllis:  Oh, Mary. Ha! How you ferret things out. 

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  Well, I'll confess. I have a surprise, and I've been looking forward all week to your meeting the surprise. Okay. I'll say this much. The surprise is a person. My plan was to bring this person by your place tonight, just casually. 

Mary:  Oh, that's right. Your brother is getting into town today. 

Phyllis:  Who spoiled my surprise? 

Mary:  Well Phyl, you told me four times. 

Phyllis:  I spoiled my surprise. 

[audience laughs]

Mary:  I guess. 

Phyllis:  Oh, Mary. You'll adore him. He's just like me. 

[audience laughs]

Sam:  Phyllis is one of my favorite characters of all time. 

Drew:  She's amazing. 

Sam:  Of all time. And even though I only knew her a little bit in the '70s from a little of the show I saw, I still worshipped her, and I remember just being so sad that we didn't get Phyllis on ABC where I lived. But I always—I think a lot of my gay sense of humor and sometimes my bitchy ethos has been based on Phyllis and women like her. And just the way Cloris Leachman plays her so perfectly and so delicately—the body language, her movements—she's a bit more arched than the rest of them, so it sort of is like, does Phyllis know what she's up to? But she doesn't know what she's up to because she's truly just—you know what I'm saying? It's not Cloris Leachman commenting on the character. She's fully playing the character, yet she's just a teensy bit more stylized than everyone else. 

Glen:  Yeah. She struck me as someone who's—she's still in the show, but she's also in her own show. 

Sam:  Exactly. Yes. 

Glen:  It's over the top, but it's also more subtle—like there's more going on with her body movements with where she's looking, and so the character doesn't come off as cookie-cutter. 

Sam:  Not at all. 

Drew:  Right. I like that she's so petty and passive-aggressive and manipulative and needy but refusing to admit to any of her faults, and yet they also made her very stylish. And in another showrunner's hands, that character would have been an unattractive older woman. 

Sam:  Like a real shrew, yeah. But Phyllis is glamorous with her hair pulled back and her long tendrils down her shoulders and her chic outfits. Yeah. 

Drew:  All of her outfits in this episode are amazing. At one point, she comes into the room dressed in just brown. She's just wearing this simple brown gown. 

Glen:  Yeah. It looks like she walked through a curtain and it got stuck on her when she comes in the room. 

Sam:  It almost looks like she walked through the chocolate fountain that Willy Wonka has dribbled over her and this gorgeous polyester brown pantsuit came about. 

Drew:  That's—

Sam:  Also, when she comes back in after she thinks that Rhoda has gone out with her brother Ben, and she's wearing basically a very chic funeral shroud—black, slightly ruffled, very plain, long sleeves—plain and yet ruffled. That doesn't really happen. But if you see the outfit, you know what I mean. It is plain, and yet it is ruffled. It is very Phyllis. 

Drew:  We can post a screen—we'll stop talking about outfits that we can't show you.

Sam:  No, we will not. That's why I'm here. 

Drew:  So she looks like—Glen, do you know the character from Batman Silver St. Cloud? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  She looks and dresses like Silver St. Cloud. Silver St. Cloud is this prematurely gray beauty that Bruce Wayne dates in the '70s? In the '70s, right? 

Glen:  I think late '70s. 

Sam:  What a great name. I don't know this. I'm not a big superhero person. But that sounds like an amazing woman character. 

Drew:  All of Bruce Wayne's girlfriends have soap opera villain names, like Silver St. Cloud, Sasha Bordeaux—

Sam:  Vickie Vale. I know that one. 

Drew:  Yeah. He has some good ones in there. 

Sam:  What was the Nicole Kidman character's name in that version of that? 

Drew:  Dr. Chase Meridian.

Sam:  Oh, really? That's fantastic. That's like from Soapdish or something. 

Drew:  That movie is about him trying to find the balance in his life between being Bruce and being Batman, so he's literally trying to—

Glen:  Chase the meridian. 

Drew:  —chase the meridian.

Sam:  Oh. Wow. Is that Val Kilmer? 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Sam:  Okay. It's not Clooney? 

Drew:  No. I prefer to think about it as “That's the Nicole Kidman Batman movie.”

Sam:  Fair enough. 

Drew:  So Phyllis—Phyllis who is lovely and beautiful, and if you've only ever seen her in Young Frankenstein or Facts of Life, please look her up on this show because—

Sam:  Or Raising Hope, for the kids. 

Drew:  Raising Hope—you'll be shocked at how absolutely glamorous she looks like. She looks like a fucking doll. She is waltzing into Mary's office and being—

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  And Mary, wait until you hear him play. He's a musical genius. 

Mary:  Yeah. You mentioned that. 

Phyllis:  An absolute genius. He's a composer. 

Murray: Oh? What's he written? 

Phyllis:  Commercials. 

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  Television commercials where they use large symphony orchestras. There's no question, you know, that if Bach were alive today, he would be doing television. 

Murray:  That's what they say about Ted. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  Because she wants them to either fuck or get married—probably get married. 

Sam:  Get married.

Glen:  Get married—although there was a lovely joke from Mary where she points out that she has not saved herself. 

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  It's just that from the moment you moved into our building, I was thinking to myself, "Ben would love Mary." And then, of course, you're both unmarried. Seems as if you've been saved for each other. 

Mary:  Well, Phyl, I'm not all that saved. 

Drew:  Which is a weirdly—for 1973, is that weird?

Sam:  Well when that show started—I remember this. I think it started in '70 or '71, and it was the first time a woman who was a single woman, who was not a virgin—it was implied that men slept over, that she was having sex with men, she was single—and that was a big, huge deal because That Girl was certainly a virgin. And I don't remember—and Julia, the Diahann Carroll show—her husband had died. She was a widow. But the fact that she was a single woman—she doesn't marry the guy. That's how it starts, I think. She leaves—

Drew:  It's a broken engagement. 

Sam:  Broken engagement. Not a divorce or a widow or death situation, and that was a big deal back then. So yeah, I think that's what she's referring to. 

Glen:  She's going to take it after all. 

Sam:  That's right. Just like you, Glen. Just like you. 

Drew:  Yeah. My initial thought was "That can't be what I think it means," but that is definitely what it actually means. I always want to write off older stuff as being like, "Oh, they wouldn't have made that joke." They totally fucking did make that joke. It is weird that one of Phyllis's selling points on her brother is "He's just like me," and I was like, "Do you want to have sex with Mary? Do you want to be with Mary?" Because her life is obviously very unfulfilling because Lars sucks. Her husband—

Glen:  He doesn't exist. 

Drew:  He may not exist for all we know. 

Sam:  We never see him. 

Drew:  Yeah. He's an orthodontist or a dentist or something—

Glen:  [with Sam] Dermatologist. 

Drew:  Dermatologist. Thank you. 

Sam:  He went to a big dermatologist bash. That's why he's not there. 

Drew:  That sounds like the worst bash, but yeah. And Mary is reluctant. 

Sam:  Well also, it's Phyllis's vanity, because she's saying, "He's so amazing. He's an incredibly wonderful person. He's just like me." Yeah. That's her vanity.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. And I think that's the end of the first scene, and when it cuts to the next scene it's already Phyl bringing Ben over to meet Mary at her apartment. 

Glen:  And he is not cute. 

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  I thought he was okay. The level of attractiveness for men on this show is nowhere near what it is for women. 

Glen:  It's Ed Asner. 

Drew:  Right? I think it's actually—Ted Baxter is the best-looking guy on the show. 

Sam:  Until Gordy—the sportscaster guy, Gordy. 

Drew:  No, he's the weatherman. 

Sam:  Weather guy. He's very hot. 

Drew:  Yeah. But then he left to do Good Times, right? 

Sam:  Yeah. Oh, that's right, because it's—is it John Amos? 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Sam:  Who I'm in love with and always was and still am. 

Drew:  Genuinely attractive. But the white men on the show just kind of look like mashed potatoes. 

Sam:  Yeah. I wonder if that was—it just occurred to me now—if that was ever a conscious choice to put her young, beautiful, attractive, single woman in the workforce in a place with people you wouldn't expect her in TV Land in the 1970s to date, so you could just have a lot of—because otherwise, there'd be an instant office romance and a Moonlighting situation of will-they-won't they or Cheers or whatever. But to have all these men be unattractive to her, maybe that was a part of the show because she's no end of guys she's dating and everything. 

Drew:  It gives her a reason to reach out to other characters and find new men that she might actually want to have sex with. 

Glen:  But that's not an excuse for Ben being ugly. 

Drew:  I didn't think he was ugly. 

Sam:  Way to bring it back to where we were. 

Drew:  I thought he was decent looking. 

Sam:  It's interesting. He's an interesting choice because I remember—one of my hobbies has always been actors and actors on TV in the '60s and '70s. I just like knowing people's backgrounds, and I worked in casting in the '90s as my day job just because I happen to be good at remembering actors and stuff. But he was someone I had no idea who he was. I don't know what else he's done. It's like on Golden Girls or other shows, you see these people you've seen a million times on everything—which I have just realized I have become one of those people [laughs], which is fine by me. If I can't be a star, I'll be just like Kathleen Freeman or someone. If you don't know who that is, Google her. But he is not someone I was familiar with at all, and what an interesting choice.

Glen:  Yeah. That's what I was going to say. After meeting Phyllis, I expected fucking Alucard from the Castlevania games to walk in—like silver-haired, embroidered collar, something—just to float in on mist. 

Sam:  Or at least angular, because—

Drew:  Because Phyllis looks Nordic, and he looks like—he's a schlubby guy. He looks like—what?

Glen:  He looks like he just lost his job at the bank, and he's been drinking at a bar since 2:00 p.m., and the sunlight hits him, and his eyes just bulge. 

Sam:  Glen's a tough customer. 

Drew:  You guys are going to feel bad about everything you just said because he is dead. 

Sam:  Oh, no. 

Drew:  Robert Moore. He's mostly a director. He did a lot of acting, but he's better known as a director. He directed the original stage version of The Boys in the Band. 

Sam:  Oh, my god! That's who that is?

Drew:  Robert Moore. 

Sam:  I was just reading about him in relation to the new production. Oh, my god. We're such assholes. 

Drew:  Okay. We'll keep going. 

Sam:  You're really the asshole. I just said he didn't look like Phyllis. 

Glen:  You didn't stop me. 

Drew:  I wasn't going to interrupt you. He was also the director of Murder by Death. 

Sam:  Oh, my god. That's one of my favorite [movies/works 00:37:39] from the '70s. You're blowing my mind. How did I not know this? 

Drew:  Have you seen it? 

Glen:  No. 

Sam:  Oh, my god. 

Drew:  Oh, it's really good. It's basically Clue before Clue was a thing, but it's funnier than Clue. 

Glen:  I thought Last of Sheila was Clue before Clue was a thing. 

Drew:  This is even more so. Truman Capote's an actor, Nancy Walker—who plays Rhoda's mom—is an actor in it. Eileen Brennan.

Sam:  It's all based on the famous—not to jump in, but I'm jumping in. Murder by Death is one of my favorite movies in the '70s. It's weird that Cloris wasn't in it because it's like the Eileen Brennans—

Drew:  She would have been Eileen Brennan if she was anything. 

Sam:  Yeah. But it's a spoof. It's written by Neil Simon, who normally I don't like his work. But it makes no goddam sense. But it's all these—like, a version of Nick and Norah Charles—The Thin Man people—with Maggie Smith and David Niven. Maggie Smith—I still quote that movie to this day. 

Drew:  The line about—what is it? The dead people? 

Sam:  No. It's like, "Why would anyone want a dead, naked body?" And David Niven whispers in her ear or something, like, "To fuck it," or whatever, and she goes, "Oh, that's tacky. That's really tacky." 

Drew:  [laughs] It's so good. It's so good. So my boyfriend Dan, this was one of his favorite movies when he was a little kid. I was like, "Yes. That makes perfect sense that this would be the movie you would have latched onto."

Sam:  Wow. I think I like your boyfriend. Have I met him? Maybe I should because it was one of my favorites, too, if not my favorite. But also, it's got this, upsettingly—and Asian people are out there going "What about the terrible thing with Peter Sellers playing Sidney Wang," the Charlie Chan character, which is pretty upsetting in terms of bad Asian stereotypes. But the whole movie is such a crazy spoof anyway. 

Drew:  It's bizarre. It's bonkers and—

Sam:  And Peter Falk plays the Humphrey Bogart/Sam Spade character, Eileen Brennan's his mole, and Elsa Lanchester—Bride of Frankenstein—plays the Miss Marple character—Agatha Christie—and they all come together to a house to solve a murder. 

Drew:  It's really good. Robert Moore has a single other notable acting credit, and that is a 1970 comedy-drama called Tell Me That You Love Me, [with Sam] Junie Moon. So you've seen this? 

Sam:  Yes. 

Drew:  I have never seen—I remember reading about it in a big compendium of movie things. I'm like, "Oh. That's a gay movie. Okay." 

Sam:  Is it? Maybe I don't know it. It was a play. 

Drew:  Can I just read you the description of it from Wikipedia, this movie I have not seen? 

Glen:  I mean, we can't stop you. 

Drew:  Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could strike me in the face, but you're not going to. 

Sam:  Glen, don't. 

Drew:  "The film stars Liza Minnelli as the title character Junie Moon, a girl whose face is scarred in a vicious battery acid attack by her boyfriend—Ben Piazza [laughter]. Later in an institution, she meets a man with epilepsy (Ken Howard), and a gay paraplegic who uses a wheelchair—Robert Moore. Disabled, but not down, they live together in an older, rented house and bond, determined to prove themselves and to help each other."

Sam:  I have not seen that [laughter]. Glen is literally almost on the floor laughing. 

Drew:  Because it's such an awful—that sounds horrible. 

Sam:  Can we please watch that? 

Drew:  It's apparently good. It has really good reviews. Liza Minnelli was praised for her performance in it. 

Sam:  I'm always curious how—I wonder how they cast that. Clearly, he was a gay man who didn't mind playing a gay man, because that was a time where if you played a gay person your career was ruined, like Chris Sarandon when he played a trans person in—

Drew:  Dog Day? 

Sam:  Dog Day Afternoon. 

Drew:  Well, Robert Moore directed a ton of episodes of Rhoda after this. He also died of AIDS-related—

Glen:  Is that why I'm supposed to feel bad that I didn't find him attractive? 

Sam:  You're a monster.

Drew:  Yeah, because he did a lot of cool stuff, and then he died of AIDS. So yeah, you should feel terrible about yourself. 

Glen:  I don't. 

Drew:  Okay. Well. 

Sam:  Glen has no heart, ladies and gentleman. Just a great rack on top of it, of where his heart should be. 

Glen:  It's a podcast.

Drew:  We can't see that on a podcast. You have to take Sam's word for it. Do you guys feel like Robert Moore plays his character as—on a scale of one to ten, how gay does he play Ben? 

Sam:  Should I go first? I think he plays it about—ten being flaming, like Charles Nelson Reilly screaming rainbows, and one being—I don't know. 

Drew:  Ed Asner. 

Sam:  Ed Asner. He's only about a four. But you have to sell the joke. He can't come in flaming. He can't come in as Rip Taylor or—

Glen:  Well, it depends on the scene because in scenes with his sister Phyllis, he does play at a two. 

Phyllis:  Well, I don't know how to put it except Mary Richards, my dear friend and neighbor and all-around with-it person. This is my brother Ben. Ben, this is Mary. 

[audience laughs]

Ben:  Nice to meet you, Mary. 

Mary:  Very nice to meet you too, Ben. 

Phyllis:  I knew it. I just had a feeling. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  But the first scene we see him without her, he comes in and he's like, four to five. He's a little bit more fun, he's a little more loose. 

Sam:  When he's just talking to Mary as a friend, yeah. 

Drew:  Subsequent to that, the next scene is Ben coming back and being like, "Hey. I'm really sorry if I seemed rude, but I just don't really appreciate my sister trying to—

Ben:  Well, you know. Phyllis has this way of manipulating people, and I got the feeling she was backing you into a corner on the whole thing. 

Mary:  I think she's very anxious to have us go out [laughs]. 

Ben:  No, I think she's very anxious to have us get married. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  She wants to turn up the music, turn down the lights, turn down the bed, I think, is his description of what he thinks that she's trying to do. 

Sam:  It's also the scene in which we see Mary organizing a very icebergy salad. 

Drew:  It's brown. 

Sam:  Well, it's in a brown bowl. I remember that very specific Pyrex brown bowl from the '70s, and so it makes the almost white lettuce look brown. And then she says to him, "Do you want some dinner?" And while we were watching, we were remarking on how gorgeously thin—almost to a fault—that Mary is. 

Drew:  She's very skinny. 

Sam:  And so that's her dinner. It's just chunks of iceberg lettuce. We know why she's so thin. And then they eat it. 

Glen:  Yeah. Not to get ahead of the scene, but then when Rhoda comes in and she offers salad to Rhoda, too, it's like—if I'm making dinner for myself and two people come in, I do not have extra dinner for two people. 

Sam:  She said she always makes too much. She says it in the episode, Glen. Always makes too much—"I always make too much."  

Glen:  Okay. You're right. 

Sam:  I want to make a random observation. Watching that show, it just—there's so much polyester. And it reminds me of the '70s and all the women around me and all the women in the world in the '70s—and the men to a degree. But so much polyester. Everything was polyester, and they're all wearing so much polyester. And just the feel of it and getting hugged by it and laying on your grandmother's lap in it, it gives me a lot of sense memories, and they're mostly bad because of the polyester, not the people. 

Drew:  [laughs]

Sam:  But it's the most—I knew it was wash-and-wear and drip-dry and all that stuff, and it was the miracle fabric back then, but it was so off-putting and just like [makes sound of disgust] and chafing—the chafing, people. I look at it and I just think of chafed skin. 

Glen:  But it looks great. 

Drew:  It does look great. 

Sam:  Uh, okay. 

Glen:  Crisp lines. 

Sam:  Crisp lines, really holds a pleat. 

Drew:  So I guess we just opted for more breathable fabrics as we progressed out of the '70s?

Sam:  And also, they were likely [to] melt on you if you were in a fire.  

Drew:  And everyone was smoking back then, so you think that would have happened a lot, right? 

Sam:  I think it did. 

Drew:  [laughs]

Sam:  I remember it would melt. If someone dropped an ash on theirs, it would just make this little melt circle. I had some of them. I like to set things on fire. Continue. 

Drew:  So, yeah. Ben comes in to apologize for being rude, and then Rhoda also—actually, no. Before Rhoda comes in, they have this very interesting conversation about what kind of questions people ask of you to get information about you. 

Glen:  "Are you gay?" 

Drew:  Which is not on the table. But yeah, talking about how everyone wants to find out if you're married or not. 

[audience laughs]

Ben:  Did you and Phyllis meet each other in college? 

Mary:  No, no. it was after. 

Ben:  Oh. I thought you could have been a freshman when she was a senior. 

Mary:  Hey. Are you trying to find out how old I am? 

Ben:  [laughs] I guess so. I'm sorry. I hate it when people do that to me. I mean, why don't they come right out and ask? 

Mary:  Exactly. You want to know something, just ask it. 

Ben:  Okay. How old are you? 

Mary:  I don't want to tell you. 

[audience laughs]

Mary:  I'm 32. 

Ben:  Thanks. 

Drew:  It's like, "You're only 32 years old." 

Sam:  Who did? Mary? 

Drew:  Mary's 32. 

Sam:  Oh, is she? Okay. All right. Wow. 

Drew:  This seems like so young because Mary Tyler Moore has always looked like a grownup to me. 

Sam:  She looks like she seems like she's 40, yeah. 

Glen:  Because she was 18 when she was married to Vick Dan—Dick Van Dyke. 

Sam:  Vick Dan Vyke. Yeah [laughter]. 

Drew:  And then they talk about how people should just come out and ask. And then, of course, Rhoda immediately waltzes in—

Ben:  Have you also noticed that if people want to know if you're married, they never ask straight out?

Mary:  Oh, no [laughs].

Rhoda:  Hiya, Kid. Hi! I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a date. 

Mary:  No, come on in. It's all right. It's not a date. 

[audience laughs]

Mary:  Rhoda Morgenstern, I'd like you to meet Ben Sutherland. Rhoda lives in the apartment upstairs. 

Ben:  Hi. 

Rhoda:  Hiya, Ben. Why don't you sit down? He married? 

[audience laughs]

Mary:  [laughs]

Rhoda:  What? 

Sam:  But also, when Ben says to Rhoda, "Do you like music?" and she goes, "Not really," [laughter] and they just kind of pick it up later because he's going to take her to the symphony. But it's like, who doesn't like some kind of music? It's so random. 

Drew:  Rhoda. 

Sam:  It doesn't serve the storyline. And she plays—she just does it so well, and she's not trying to be funny, and it sounds like she's just being a person in the room, and it's—oh, god. It's so good. She's really good. I love watching Rhoda—

Rhoda:  Why not show the man how direct a person I can be?

Mary:  Did I tell you that Ben is Phyllis's brother? 

Rhoda:  You're kidding. 

Mary:  Yeah. 

Rhoda:  Phyllis's Ben? 

Ben:  It's funny—Phyllis never mentioned you to me. 

Rhoda:  Yeah. Funny. 

[audience laughs]

Rhoda:  So what do you do, Ben? 

Ben:  I'm a musician. I play the piano and compose a little. Are you interested in music? 

Rhoda:  Not really. 

Drew:  The weird thing about this episode is that it turns out Ben is gay, and it's not something you find out until the last moment of the episode, and they use it like a surprise laugh, I guess. But knowing that and watching this scene, Ben obviously picks Rhoda as the person he relates to more over Mary. Is it because Rhoda makes a better fag hag than Mary does? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  Either of them could be fun to hang out with at a bar, right? 

Sam:  Sure. 

Drew:  But he picks Rhoda. Rhoda is the one he thinks is more fun. 

Sam:  Well, isn't he living in New York and she's from the Bronx, and he talks about New York, and she's like the cool Jewish chicks who he's friends with in New York in the Village or whatever, and they just spark more. And it's also that—I'm sorry to say this—kind of stereotypical fag hag things, like she's trying harder to make him like her—that girls do, some certain women do or have historically done around gay men and straight men just because the patriarchy and all that shit or whatever reasons. So they do have more of a spark, and she's funnier than Mary. 

Drew:  Oh, she's definitely funnier. 

Sam:  We're seeing Rhoda as the sassy smart mouth. Also, it's going to fuck up Phyllis more if he likes Rhoda, which I'm sure he enjoys. 

Glen:  I would actually think he chose her because it would fuck Phyllis less because if he hangs out with Mary Phyllis gets all these ideas in her head. 

Drew:  Oh. 

Sam:  Oh, I thought you meant fuck Phyllis—I meant fuck Phyllis in a "Fuck her. I'm sick of my sister." 

Drew:  Right. Different motivations for fucking Phyllis. But yeah, the thing is that he's heard all about Mary. But when he meets Rhoda, he's like, "Phyllis never mentioned you," and she's like, "Hmm. That's weird." Phyllis hates Rhoda. Phyllis finds Rhoda to be absolutely objectionable, and we get to that in the next scene when Ben and Rhoda run off to the concert together. And the scene opens with Mary in her bathrobe, and it's basically a monologue—and Cloris Leachman delivers it impeccably—explaining the events of the concert when she heard people coming in late and thought they were boors, I think, is the word. 

Sam:  "Boors, I call them." 

Drew:  And she sees it's baby—

Mary:  Hi. How was the concert?

[audience laughs]

Mary:  Phyllis? 

Phyllis:  Perhaps it would be best to tell it as it happened—chronologically, from my point of view. I am still in shock. Lars and I were sitting, enjoying one of Mozart's more light-hearted moments—flutes, the coming of spring, something—I don't know. There was this commotion in the aisle. Late arrivals. "Boors," I thought. I turned to give them a good glare. It was Ben. I was so pleased. "He and Mary," I thought, "have come to join us." 

Mary:  Oh. Well, no—

Phyllis:  Then I saw it was not Mary. 

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  It was—it was—

Mary:  Rhoda. 

Phyllis:  Rhoda. 

[audience laughs]

Mary:  Right. 

Phyllis:  Well, then they sat next to us. I struggled to maintain my poise, though my senses were reeling. I tried to enjoy the concert, even though she was snapping her fingers to Mozart. 

[audience laughs uproariously]

Drew:  Phyllis is physically revulsed by the idea that her brother has chosen to spend time with Rhoda—especially over Mary, but Rhoda at all. She finds her to be without a single good quality. 

Sam:  Any merit. 

Drew:  Why do you think—

Drew:  Phyllis is an anti-Semite? 

Sam:  That, but then why would she rent to Rhoda so long in her home? That's Phyllis's home. Rhoda has lived in Phyllis's home for years. Why would she take her in? Why does she stay? I know it makes a good sitcom, but to a degree you're like, "Why would Rhoda stay with this woman who hates her?" It's funny, but it's just—I guess the rent's really good up in that multi-colored birdcage, that hatbox that Rhoda lives in upstairs, which does not line up with the exterior of the building, but whatever. 

Drew:  I don't know. I struggle to think of another reason other than raging antisemitism.

Sam:  She's absolutely an anti-Semite. In this episode, it's just with all her, she's Scandinavian, or Lars is—Lars Lindstrom—she's clearly, and they never say that Rhoda's Jewish. As we talked about earlier here when we were eating dinner, I don't think—in my memory—even in Rhoda they say they're Jewish, even though they're so Jewish. And I think, actually, Valerie Harper is Italian.

Drew:  Oh, really? 

Sam:  Yeah. Even though it was the most Jewish show that they never said anything about being a Jew on. 

Drew:  They still do that 20 years later on Seinfeld. You could make the argument the Costanzas are Jewish stereotype, but they just made them Italian rather than have them be Jewish. 

Sam:  Well, the same with Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty. That's a Jewish mother/daughter made into Italian. Italian was always more palatable, or seemingly so, to the white mainstream America in the '60s and the '70s. Arthur Fonzarelli, played by Henry Winkler, a Jew. 

Drew:  You could take a boat—the Mediterranean is a very small area. It wouldn't take you very long to get from one place to the other, to be honest. Huh. That's a really interesting thing. Glen, do you have any thoughts on Phyllis's antisemitism? 

Glen:  I am anti—[laughs]. 

Drew:  Yeah. I mean, we all are, as much of his—

Glen:  I don't know. I think it could be that. It could also just be Rhoda is everything that Phyllis isn't, and she seems to be happy, and Phyllis does not seem to be happy. And she seems to have everything, but there's a sadness to her. 

Sam: Get this. Valerie Harper has English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and French ancestry. She's not even Italian. She's a Harper. 

Glen:  She's a lie. 

Drew:  I mean, Harper. 

Sam:  That sounds kind of WASPy. Yeah. 

Drew:  It's interesting thinking about over the course of the first three seasons of Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda goes from being a frumpy, sad person to a much brighter, vivacious, and person who dresses as beautiful as she really is and shows off her body a lot more and benefits a lot more from her friendship with Mary. Phyllis doesn't. Phyllis doesn't really learn a whole lot from people. And then her life takes a nosedive when she gets her spinoff. Lars dies and she has to move to San Francisco because she has no means of support, even though I guess she still owns the house. I'm not really sure how that's worked out. But her and her daughter move to San Francisco, and she has to start over from nothing. 

Sam:  Is Phyllis on Hulu? 

Drew:  I don't believe so. No. 

Sam:  I remember watching it somewhere recently. Some of them. Maybe it was—anyway. I don't know. On Phyllis, she lives with her in-laws—those two really old people, and one of them died during the series. 

Drew:  A lot of people died. 

Glen:  [laughs] A lot of people—

Sam:  The bloodbath. Two of them died!

Drew:  Seriously. I believe at least two elderly people died, and then one of the female cast members was murdered in Venice. She was leaving an acting workshop and she was shot to death. 

Sam:  Oh, that's right. I remember seeing that. 

Drew:  Yeah. So Phyllis as a show never recovered from the stigma of death, and it's not the most positive show in the world. We were talking—I will cut it into the episode right now because people need to know. The opening song to Phyllis kind of sounds like [if] Mary Tyler Moore were written in a minor key, and it's one of the most off-putting things you'll ever hear in your life. 

[Phyllis theme music plays]

Sam:  And it has a sassy endnote. That's really funny. 

Drew:  Yeah. Yeah. Cloris Leachman makes a great face. 

Sam:  She does. Google it. 

Drew:  So that's Phyllis. Phyllis is pissed, and there's nothing she can do about it. And the next time—is there anymore in Phyllis's monologue scene that we need to talk about? 

Glen:  No, but she goes into it more in the next scene. 

Sam:  She's absolutely fantastic in it. 

Drew:  She has not recovered at all. 

Sam:  Also what's strange is, that's all the same day, which when you watch it, like, "Is this all the same day?" 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Sam:  It's all the same day. 

Drew:  The next scene, it's some days later. I'm not sure how long Ben is staying in Minneapolis, but Rhoda's making him dinner and Mary's helping him do this because Rhoda only has a hotplate. So she's stirring things—

Sam:  Chicken and mushrooms. 

Drew:  Yeah, chicken and mushrooms. "It doesn't sound like chicken and mushrooms up there" is the actual line, which is—

Sam:  [laughs] It doesn't make any sense. 

Drew:  She sells it, though, because it's Cloris Leachman. She can make that work. 

Sam:  She does. The other thing I wanted to go back to about her outfits is that after the concert when she comes in and Mary's in a bathrobe late at night, she's wearing her ruffled death shroud, her black ruffle. She has a convenient, handy, ruffled, black death shroud to wear up to Mary's to signify her grief about the date. 

Drew:  You don't think that was her concert look? 

Sam:  It's a little too perfect. I think Phyllis absolutely went home, changed out of her—I don't know—mauve/purple/puce concert outfit that a boor would not wear but she would, and she put something just to denote to Mary that she was in mourning. 

Drew:  I agree. She's a big fan of changing outfits. She tries to get Mary to change an outfit, so she's wearing red rather than blue because Ben likes red. She's very pushy that away. She's wearing—we'd call it a leisure-suit look in this with a big collar on it, and she's trying to interfere—

Sam:  Pantsuit. 

Drew:  Pantsuit. She's trying to interfere with this whole meal preparation thing, and Rhoda is living for how uncomfortable it's making Phyllis to know that this brother's spending all this time with her. She calls her "Sis." The line is delivered with the perfect twist of the knife, and she knows that it's hurting Phyllis, and Phyllis is trying to get beyond it. Does Rhoda know he's gay at this point? 

Glen:  I want to get into this when she reveals that he's gay at the end. I want to discuss how long she suspected he was gay. 

Sam:  You want to get there? Because I have something to say about it. 

Glen:  I want to wait until we get to that. 

Drew:  I don't know if there's anything more in this scene. It's just that Phyllis is having issues. 

Glen:  I want you to put in the dialogue where Phyllis discusses whether or not Rhoda is attractive. 

Sam:  Oh, it's so funny. 

Drew:  Right. She's like—

Phyllis:  That woman has cast some sort of spell over baby. 

Mary:  No spell, Phyllis. It's just that in case you haven't noticed, Rhoda is very attractive. 

Phyllis:  Is she? 

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  Is she, Mary? It must be on some level that I can't perceive, like ultraviolet light or that whistle that only dogs can hear. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  "Is she?" 

Sam:  That's right. It's "Rhoda's attractive." "Is she?" 

Drew:  She clearly doesn't get it. 

Glen:  I have said the same exact thing about so many of my kind of friends when people start dating them. 

Drew:  You're like, "Really?"

Glen:  No. Of course not. 

Drew:  No. Okay. 

Sam:  I'm sitting right here. That really hurts. 

Glen:  "Is he?"

Drew:  So Mary's hosting the party. She's dressed like a Chinese priestess or something. 

Sam:  What would you call that color? It's somewhere between gray and lavender. It's hard to describe. 

Glen:  It's like a sad periwinkle. 

Sam:  Is it? Yeah. "Is it? Is she?" [laughs]

Drew:  Aqua whisper. 

Sam:  Aqua whisper's good—with this big moth pendant—medallion. 

Glen:  Not a butterfly. A moth [laughs].

Sam:  Not a butterfly. As Glen and I both noted, it is a moth.  

Drew:  It's a weird outfit. All the men look like garbage in this whole episode. All the women look perfect except this one Mary outfit's just kind of weird. 

Sam:  Well, that's the other thing about that polyester. You have to be whisper slim, like all those women, including Georgette, [all the men 00:59:13]. It's so unforgiving. If you have any chunks or curves, it is just like [makes disgusted sound]. That's another thing. I'm thinking of those silky polyester disco shirts hanging out of fat-man guts over polyester slacks in the '70s. Y'all didn't have to go through it, but I did, and clearly I still have PTSD about it. 

Drew:  You're making me glad I was an '80s child. 

Sam:  You're very lucky. 

Drew:  The party is off to as good a start as Mary could possibly hope for. But then Phyllis, draped in chocolate brown, just wanders in. And she almost looks like she's in a gothic novel and she's just lost in the wilderness, and she's—

Glen:  Ben's hair is tied into a locket around her neck. 

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  Yes. This is the tragedy that she is always worried about. And she tries to talk to Mary, and Mary's like, "Phyl, I have one party every few years. I don't have them that often."

Sam:  She's like, "I haven't had one in a year in a half!"

Drew:  "Please don't ruin it," and she proceeds to ruin the party. She's awful. 

Sam:  Mm-hmm. She is such a classic—tired expression but she is such a classic drama queen, Phyllis. She just wants attention. She wants to wallow. She wants to bring everyone else down. She wants to make it all about her. It's like looking in a mirror for me. 

Glen:  In her defense, her brother comes to visit and he spends the entire time with a girl she hates. 

Sam:  That's true. Yeah. 

Glen:  And then he's gay, and he's not even into her. Like, spend some time with your sister, brother. 

Drew:  Right. But it's Phyllis. Phyllis sucks. [He doesn't 01:00:39] want to spend time with her, right?  

Glen:  I would want to spend time with Phyllis. 

Drew:  Oh! We even talked about her weird mom—

Sam:  But it's different when someone's your sister or brother, as you well know. But it's also she does annoying things, and the brother points it out, and Phyllis says, "I don't do that. Mother does that." 

Drew:  It's super interesting that she doesn't seem to be understanding that—Mary's the one who points out and is just like, "You do this and you do this and you do this," and she's like, "I don't do that, but you seem like you know my mother really well." 

Sam:  Yeah. "My mother does that." 

Drew:  Yeah. So obviously, this gay boy who's had an overbearing mother wants nothing to do with this duplication of his terrible mother. 

Sam:  Of course. 

Drew:  That's why he's going after Rhoda. 

Sam:  The opposite of Phyllis. 

Drew:  Yeah. And I like the scene where Phyllis is clutching the bannister at the bar and just looking, wanting for attention, and Georgette—who we haven't really talked about. She's played by Georgia Engel. She's the soft-spoken woman who was on Coach and was on Everyone Loves Raymond. She and Phyllis have never met before, apparently, even though this is late season three, because Phyllis asked her, "Who are you?" And she's like, "Oh, I'm here with Ted." She's not just a ditz. She reminds me of a space alien who thinks that she's nailing her impression of a human but doesn't even understand what she's not doing right. She's just absolutely bizarre. 

Sam:  Again, have worked with, and have lots to say and will not say it on this mic. But she's a wonderful person. She is Georgette. Anyway. Continue.

Drew:  The story of her career is that Mary Tyler Moore in real life went to a production of House of Blue Leaves in L.A. She was playing—I imagine she was playing Bunny, and she was like her. And it was like, "Hey, you should be on my show. You're amazing," which is an awesome—she's always been on TV ever since. 

Sam:  Fun fact about her that I know that she told me is she still, at least up until I worked with her—I think it was 2014—she still has the same apartment that she had in the '70s. She still has it. In New York. In Manhattan.

Drew:  That's crazy. Wow. 

Glen:  Rent controlled? 

Sam:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, come on. One of those people. I'm sure it's like $1.98 a month. God bless. Good for her. 

Drew:  So Georgette tries to counsel Phyllis. It doesn't really work because Georgette doesn't understand anything. 

Phyllis:  Who are you? 

[audience laughs]

Georgette: I'm here with Ted. Who are you here with? 

Phyllis:  I am alone, waiting to see if my only brother is going to break my heart and throw away everything he struggled so hard for. 

Georgette:  I hope he doesn't do that, break your heart and throw away everything he struggled for. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  Ben shows up at the party with Rhoda—

Glen:  In red. 

Drew:  In red. 

Sam:  Mm, in this—what was it—a poncho, or this really great swingy jacket situation? 

Drew:  It's a stringy thing. There's a lot going on.

Sam:  Yeah. Is it a knit thing? 

Drew:  It has to be just for show. It's not giving her any warmth, really, because that's such an open weave. 

Sam:  It's almost like a macramé. 

Drew:  Yeah. So a macramé fell on her, and she came into the party anyway. 

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  And Phyllis's line is to make a proclamation to the party that she has to have words with Rhoda. 

[audience laughs]

Rhoda:  Hiya, Mar. Oh, boy. Have we had a crazy day. Oh. 

Phyllis:  Rhoda!

Ben:  [laughs] I got a feeling we're going to have a crazy night, too. 

[audience laughs]

Phyllis:  I have to speak to you immediately. It's vital. The rest of you, go on with your party. It's important to Mary. 

[audience laughs uproariously]

Phyllis:  Rhoda.

Rhoda:  You're going to make me face her alone? 

Ben:  You bet. 

Drew:  She makes Rhoda tell her what's going on, and Rhoda's honest. She's like, "Nothing's happened. Everything's fine," and she's like, "I don't believe you. Tell me what's happening." And so Rhoda lies and says—

Sam:  Well, she pushes her. She gets pushier and pushier, and she's like, "We're just having a good time. I'm being absolutely honest." She's like, "I know you're trying to spare my feelings. You really have to tell me what's going on." She pushes it and pushes it, and finally Rhoda says, "Okay. We're getting married tomorrow. We got engaged 10 minutes ago," and Phyllis buys it. She thinks it's real. 

Drew:  I imagine at this point, Rhoda's trying to spare, if Rhoda knows—and I think she has to know at this point that Ben is gay—she's trying to spare Phyllis's feelings and also trying not to out Ben, too. 

Sam:  Well, protect his privacy. 

Glen:  Yeah. I don't think it's about Phyllis's feelings. I think it's mostly about—

Sam:  But then, when she finally says, "No. He's gay," and Phyllis is like, "What?" she's like, "I thought you knew. She does say something like, "I just thought you knew." 

Glen:  Yeah. She absolutely did not think she knew from everything—from the way they played off each other to the little ribbing she did about calling her "Sis." There's no way that Rhoda thought that Phyllis knew that her brother was gay. That's ridiculous. 

Drew:  Right. It's a weird thing. So basically, Phyllis thinks that her brother's going to marry Rhoda. Phyllis breaks down at the party, starts crying. Phyllis fucking ends that party. Everyone leaves. 

Glen:  By the way, Mary's friends are dicks. Why would that end the party? 

Sam:  Exactly. Yeah. 

Drew:  Mary's friends are dicks. Even Ben is a dick, because his sister's crying and his response is "I'm going to make her the biggest sloe gin fizz she's ever seen," not to talk to her and be like, "Shut the fuck up," or "Leave the party with me." He leaves, too. 

Sam:  He and Mary leave together to make the sloe gin fizz. 

Drew:  Yeah, to leave Rhoda to have this conversation with Phyllis about "Ben's not my type," and Phyllis is appalled at this idea, and she's like, "Why? He's smart. He's—"

Rhoda:  Phyllis, for heaven's sake. I can't believe you took me seriously. 

Phyllis:  What do you mean? 

Rhoda:  Phyllis! Ben and I aren't getting married. He's not my type. 

Phyllis:  What do you mean he's not your type? He's witty. He's attractive. He's successful. He's single. 

Rhoda:  He's gay. 

[audience laughs uproariously and extensively]

Phyllis: He—he—he's what? 

[audience laughs]

Rhoda:  He's gay. I thought sure you knew, Phyl. We're not getting married. 

Phyllis:  Oh, Rhoda! I'm so relieved. 

[audience laughs while music plays]

Drew:  If she was trying to protect his privacy, she still outed him to his sister when he obviously had never had that conversation with her, and she clearly didn't think that she knew, like you said. 

Sam:  Well, she kind of is like, "I just figured you knew." Yes, it's kind of a little bit ambiguous about what's going on. 

Glen:  Had she just been like, "You know." Had it been more like—"If you think about it, you know he's gay," then it would have been one thing, but to—yeah. 

Sam:  They don't explore it any further. It's just the joke of then Phyllis totally doing the reversal and being like, "Oh, I'm so happy!" 

Glen:  "I don't rather have a gay brother than one that married a Jew." [laughter]

Drew:  So literally, her antisemitism is greater than her homophobia, which—

Glen:  Which explains so much about current politics in America. 

Drew:  Yeah, actually. 

Sam:  Hmm. Deep. 

Drew:  This is why this episode—why I wanted to do this episode is not just because I want to talk about Cloris Leachman a lot, because I love doing that, but the entire episode leads up to this surprise conclusion which is "Ben is gay!" and it resolves everything enough for Phyllis that the episode just ends. Thirty seconds after she finds out her brother is gay, you have the end credits, and then there's a stinger—a stinger at the end? What do you call the—an end-credits scene where it's—

Sam:  A tag. That's what they call it. 

Drew:  A tag. Thank you for the lingo—where they don't mention it again, and I don't believe they ever—

Sam:  And she's got the giant sloe gin fizz in her hand, that big, red sloe gin fizz. 

Drew:  So she's coping fine, but I don't think the topic of homosexuality is ever even raised again on the entire series of Mary Tyler Moore. I could be wrong, but I think—

Sam:  They might mention a gay person. I wish I knew it better to report back to you, but I don't know. 

Drew:  This is, as far as I know, the gay episode of Mary Tyler Moore. 

Glen:  Where there's that one episode where one of her coworkers is fired for being gay. 

Drew:  Is there? 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  Shut the fuck up, Glen. 

Sam:  Oh, Glen. 

Drew:  You're a terrible person. He lies. He lies.

Sam:  Trickery. Mischief. 

Drew:  He spreads false information. 

Sam:  He's a rascal. 

Glen:  I'm the devil. 

Sam:  You're fake news. Great. Thanks for ruining America. 

Drew:  So it's weird thinking about the idea of this character's surprise sexuality being so much that the entire plot can revolve around it, and that's payoff enough where people were—because the audience reaction to finding out this news is surprised laughter. They're just like, "What! What an incredible—who would have thought there was a person who was gay. What a weird thing." And that won't ever happen again. This is the only episode we're ever going to do where it's treated like this, where the presence of a gay character is enough to be shocking, I guess. 

Sam:  Right. Yeah. It's interesting. I'm of two minds. The one thing that's really great about it is—and I only saw this for the first time last year on Hulu. I was so impressed by how—because it builds up to it. I know what it's about because I think it's in the log line on Hulu. Thanks, Hulu [laughter]. So I'm like, how are they going to handle this, and how bad am I going to feel retroactively? Is one of my characters Rhoda going to be homophobic, or Mary, or whatever? 

Drew:  Rhoda and Mary beat up a gay man for being gay [laughter].

Sam:  Or totally gay bash someone, write "faggot" on his Gremlin car [laughter]. But the way she just tosses it off like "He has blue eyes," or anything—"He's gay." And I was like, "Oh, thank god," and then you can just feel that Rhoda/Valerie Harper is as cool, and no one cares. And then that Phyllis is like, "Oh, my god. That's so great," in 1973. If I had seen that when I was—in 1973, I was in third grade. There. I'll say it. Please don't do the math. But if I had seen that—but I would had to have been alone because if I had been with my family, I would have been too self-conscious and embarrassed and terrified. We all know what that would have felt like as young gay boys. But if I had been alone and seen it was not a big deal at all, it would have helped me tremendously. But because we didn't get CBS, I didn't see it. But it was just a toss-aside because there were so many other gay things on TV—all the bad stereotypes which we could list, sadly, all day and all night. Like the one episode of Baretta I saw with these big, crazy drag queens and my mother finally said to me, "Do you know what a homosexual is?" [laughs]

Drew:  Ugh.

Sam:  And I kind of didn't, and I said I did just because I didn't want to get into it. We were alone in the room, and my mother—these drag queens are running around, or these trans—who knows what it was supposed to—quote/unquote—be on Baretta. I think it was Baretta, which is a cop show in the '70s with Robert Blake, and my mother's saying to me, "Do you know what homosexuals are?" And I realize now, I think she was trying to—she probably had me figured out because two of her brothers are gay. 

Glen:  She was trying to trap you. 

Sam:  And I sort of kind of did, but I didn't want to get into it with my mother, and I was just like, "Uh-huh," and we just kept on going. There were so many scary moments like that, but this would have been just such a—like, "Oh, look. It's nothing." I would have been—it's so beautifully handled. At the same time, they don't explore it any further. But in a way, that's kind of amazing and fantastic. 

Drew:  Yeah. For the time, yes. 

Sam:  For the time, I mean. 

Drew:  On Wikipedia there is a chronological listing of American TV shows that have LGBT-themed episodes. 

Sam:  Oh, wow. 

Drew:  Fascinating thing to look at. It's where I got most of the ideas for this series. 

Sam:  Well done. It deserves its own podcast. I will be up in there. 

Drew:  Most of the shows that have gay-themed episodes are dramas—mostly like Baretta, medical dramas where an insane person is also gay. Literally, that is the description for an episode. It's rare to find any sitcoms that deal with LGBT themes, and much less well, and then to have them earlier than this—it's really hard to find. I don't think the listing goes really into the '60s. I think it mostly starts in the '70s. 

Glen:  Well, there's the episode of I Love Lucy where her and Ethel kiss. 

Drew:  Fuck you. Shut the fuck up [laughter]. Terrible fucking person. 

Sam:  That's in your fantasies at night. Okay. 

Drew:  There's the All in the Family, the 1971 All in the Family, which we will have talked about by the time this episode airs. But yeah. 

Sam:  It's earlier than I thought, and so that makes it even more special than I thought. Interesting. I've been watching—this is weird. All of Laugh-In is on Amazon now—Amazon Prime—and that was my favorite show as a toddler, before we moved to the house we lived in where we didn't have NBC anymore [laughs]. Check it out. Alan Sues, of course, is on it, who's wildly—I don't know if he was openly gay, but he's a very gay, flamboyant man. And then Henry Gibson, who I guess also was gay. I don't know if was actually gay. I think he was. But there are so many gay references and gay jokes that are not—I'm watching season three now, and it's '69 – '70, and none of it's that bad. There's these jokes of Dick [laughs]—this is so random. But I've been flabbergasted every night of how un-gay-bashing it is and how it's kind of like, "Gays are people and jokes happen sometimes." I'm sure the people who are younger than me would have problems with it. But Dick Martin and Dan Rowan, who were the hosts—these two straight men, and they're dressed like cowboys and one goes, "This town isn't big enough for the both of us," like they're squaring off to have a gun battle. And then the other one goes, "Yes. It is exactly why I bought the cutest little cottage out in the suburbs," and they put their heads together and walk off together. Just little things like that because it's all blackouts and quick bits and everything. Anyway. 

Drew:  That's not terrible. 

Sam:  I watched it all the time as a toddler, and it's so much more gay than anyone gives it credit for. There's a couple of things that are like, "Ugh," like fag jokes, but it's mostly not that bad. 

Drew:  Hmm. I want to jump into older stuff and find out where that gets us. I also want to—if we get tired of sitcoms for a while, I want to find some of the absolute worst episodes of, like, Police Woman [laughter], where it's like find the most homophobic, wrongheaded, inaccurate, bone-headed depictions of any sort of queer content. 

Glen:  It's a gay criminal that punches boobs until they're flat [laughter]. 

Sam:  Is that real? 

Drew:  Probably. 

Sam:  That's on your TV show that you would write, Glen. 

Drew:  Glen, stop writing TV shows. 

Sam:  The one that stands out to me—it was a movie called Freebie and the Bean with James Caan and I think Alan Arkin. It was a buddy-cop movie but a drama with elements of comedy. They played it all the time in the '70s. They re-ran it on the Friday Night Movie. And the killer is a gay—it's one of those things like, "Is he a gay guy? He dresses like a woman. But he's not a drag queen. But is he a transvestite?" I forget what they call him, but he's a murderer. He's awful. And his death is ridiculously violent at the end when they finally catch him, and it's been pointed out before in the literature about how horrible this gay character is punished. And there's a few other things like that too in the '70s that I can remember, like Ode to Billy Joe where he has a gay experience so that's why he jumps off the Tallahatchie Bridge is because he had a gay experience. 

Drew:  Wait. Did the song come first, or did the movie come first? 

Sam:  Song first. 

Drew:  So then they made the movie to flesh out the song. 

Sam:  Yes. 

Glen:  This is a great story in this song. 

Drew:  It is a great story. I don't think he—

Sam:  We were all riveted by that song. It was so mysterious because you never knew what it was, and in the movie you find out one version of it. 

Drew:  He's gay, and that's why he jumps off the bridge? 

Sam:  I need to watch it again—because I remember seeing the movie, and this part that happens where he gets raped, maybe? Or he has a gay thing with this guy in this barn, but it's so dark and hard to follow when I was little that I still didn't get it then, and I only knew that that's what happened reading about it years later. But he does just—he kills himself, I guess. 

Drew:  Glen doesn't—this is not something we've discussed at length, but Glen doesn't know that I have a fascination with Southern narrative songs that have labyrinthine plots like "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia." It has, like, 12 characters, and Vicki Lawrence is a murderer at the end. 

Sam:  I miss those. "Harper Valley PTA"? "Ode to Billy Joe." 

Drew:  Yeah. If you're driving your car and listening, you'll be like, "Okay. What's going to happen next? Oh, a surprise ending. We don't get that in a song anymore." But they're really good. Yeah. 

Sam:  I like that you like that. 

Glen:  Why don't you have a podcast about that, too? 

Drew:  I have three podcasts. I don't—

Sam:  Let's have a podcast about Glen's shitty attitude. 

Glen:  [laughs]

Sam:  Let's do a 12-episode podcast about Glen's shitty attitude on this episode tonight, just me and Drew talking about it. 

Glen:  Honk. 

Sam:  [laughs]

Drew:  So do you guys have any lasting thoughts about Mary Tyler Moore or gay?

Sam:  I have no more thoughts about gay. I have no gay thoughts. 

Glen:  Or gay. I'm going to go back and watch the first three seasons on Hulu. 

Sam:  So good. 

Drew:  Yeah. It's such a rewarding—it makes me feel so happy, and even though it takes place in Minneapolis and it's snowing for half the show, it makes me feel warm inside.

Sam:  I urge whatever powers that be at Hulu or MTM or whoever owns it to put the rest of the seasons on Hulu. And also, only I think the first two seasons of Rhoda are on there. Please put more. Also watch Rhoda, Glen, because it's really satisfying. 

Drew:  Until she gets divorced, and then it becomes—

Sam:  Oh, that's right. I stopped watching. And David Groh—who is so sexy. He's so fucking sexy. And there's the wedding, and it's—yeah. It gets sad because they tried to—because I remember seeing it when I saw it on Hulu and reading about it again. She ultimately—spoiler alert—gets married, and then it doesn't work out. And just watching the episodes where their marriage is falling apart is so hard because they just did it because—I think this could be not true, but I think the ratings went down when she was happily married, and then they wanted to make her single again. And they also wanted to do that '70s thing of "Let's show in a sitcom the slow disintegration of a marriage, which is happening all over America anyway," but it didn't quite—ugh, it's hard. You don't want to see them unhappy. 

Drew:  And then she hung out for a few years until Hogan's Family happened—or Valerie's Family. I'm sorry. Sorry, Valerie. 

Sam:  That was in the '80s, right? 

Drew:  Early '80s, right? 

Sam:  God, it was so good. 

Drew:  Mid-'84?

Sam:  I would say '84 – '85. 

Drew:  Yeah. And then she was only on for two years before they killed her off. 

Sam:  That was tragic. Speaking of tragic. 

Drew:  So I'll point out that, like I said, Rhoda and Phyllis are both gone in a few episodes. So except for the fact that Betty White hasn't joined the cast yet, I think this episode might be the only time you see all those characters in one place because they're all at Mary's party. George is there, everyone but Gordy. Gordy's the only one who's not there that I can think of. And Ed's wife isn't there, and Marie's not there. But for the core cast, they're all in one space, and I don't think it happens again until the series finale. But I don't think they all actually have a scene together. At the very end they all come out, and everyone who is a main character on the show takes a bow together, but that's not a real scene. I think this is the only actual scene where all those characters are [inaudible  01:19:35].

Sam:  Wow. That's amazing. I'm thinking about that, but I guess that's true. You know who else we just lost last month was Nanette Fabray who played Mary's mother. 

Drew:  Oh, really? 

Sam:  Yeah. She was 99—98 or 99. 

Drew:  She was still alive? That's crazy. 

Sam:  Yeah. Nanette Fabray. Yeah. Right? 

Drew:  Huh. 

Sam:  Yeah. Just died last month, I think. 

Drew:  Do you remember her aunt—it was, like, her Aunt Flo? 

Sam:  That's her period, isn't it? 

Glen:  [laughs]

Drew:  Okay. I might cut this out if I am clearly misremembering it, but she has an aunt who I believe is named Aunt Flo, and she is an experienced journalist. 

Sam:  Does she come to town once a month? 

Drew:  She comes to town twice on the seven seasons of the show. 

Glen:  Call your doctor. 

Drew:  [laughs] Fuck you guys. No. She is like Mary's hero because she got into journals because of this aunt who's experienced and a real newspaper reporter, and she has a flirty relationship with Lou because they're both seasoned journalists and they have, like, war trench experience. And then when Lou Grant gets his spinoff and it's an hour-long drama—

Sam:  That was so weird. I remember that. Yeah. 

Drew:  It's a drama about working at a newspaper. She's the only one who ever crossed back over. 

Sam:  Interesting. 

Drew:  They brought her back, but—

Sam:  Who was the actor? Do you know? 

Drew:  Same actress. I don't remember what her name is, but I should look it up. Unless I'm mistaken, she's the only one of that entire universe—four shows in one universe, and she's the only one that ever came back. 

Sam:  Wow. Interesting. 

Drew:  Sam, if people want to find you on social media, where do they look? 

Sam:  On Instagram I'm @TheSamPancake—or "thuh," however you want to say it. 

Drew:  [laughs]

Sam:  All one word—TheSamPancake. And on Twitter I'm @JSamPancake, and then you can follow me on Facebook. So I'm doing a show called Fritzie Zimmer in 'What's Left of Me!' in which I play the world's oldest openly gay standup comedian and tap dancer. He's 88 years young, and he does a whole hour-long cabaret show, and I'm doing it at the Celebration Theatre in Hollywood on April 22nd, 29th, and 30th, and then again in June. But please come to the April shows because if they do well, I'll really get to do it in June. And tickets are at the CelebrationTheatre.com or follow me on Instagram or something and you can get links. And you two fuckers better be there. There. I said it. 

Drew:  I know I've seen a Fritzie Zimmer show. 

Sam:  Oh, you saw it. 

Glen:  I was there. I was there, too. 

Drew:  We saw the first one Tony was in, and then Tony just—Tony, who was our Golden Girls guest. Tony played your nurse just recently, right? 

Sam:  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Tony's in it, too. 

Drew:  Yeah. Okay. Cool. 

Sam:  Tony's in the show. He plays my nurse. 

Drew:  It's a very small world we live in right now. 

Sam:  He curses in Spanish at me. 

Drew:  And then if people want to listen to your podcast it is—

Sam:  It's called The GASP! with Geo Andy and Sam Pancake—or now Roz Drezfalez. My friend uses his drag name. The GASP! With Roz Drezfalez and Sam Pancake, and it's on iTunes and PodBean.com where we talk about our lives and interview famous people. 

Drew:  And you just interviewed—fuck. Kids in the Hall. 

Sam:  Scott Thompson. 

Drew:  Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall, and it was a very, very good conversation. If you want to know more about Kids in the Hall's world, listen to that episode of The GASP!

Sam:  Thank you. 

Drew:  Glen, where can people find you? 

Glen:  If they're so inclined—

Drew:  I don't think they want to after the terrible performance you put out today. 

Sam:  Robert Moore is not going to want to find you. He's mad at you now. 

Glen:  Well, I'm on Instagram, @BrosQuartz—that's B-R-O-S Quartz. It's a Steven Universe reference—and Twitter @IWriteWrongs—"write" with a W.

Drew:  Cool. And you can find me on Twitter @DrewGMackie. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, and all the places you would find a podcast. Please give us a rate and review if you're interested. Please continue listening. We're going to be coming out with 10 episodes this first season. This is going to be episode five, so there's five more coming out every Thursday from here on out. Looking forward to that. I think that's it. Yeah. That's it. 

Glen:  Bye. 

Sam:  Thank you, guys.  

Drew:  Thank you Sam. 

Sam:  Bye. All right, here's the—

["Ode to Billy Joe" by Bobbie Gentry plays]