Transcript for Episode 44: Homer Moves to the Gayborhood

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Simpsons episodes “Three Gays of the Condo.” 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.

Grady:  He's gay [channel changes]. He's gay [channel changes]. Gay [channel changes]. Gay [channel changes]. Bye [channel changes]! Gay [channel changes]. Gay for pay [channel changes]. Gay. 

Homer:  Tennessee Williams? But how did he survive in the world of theater? 

Grady:  Homer, puh-leeze. Practically everyone who's acted in, produced, or even seen a play is gay. 

["The Simpsons" opening theme plays].

Drew:  Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be the very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie. 

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin—in for Glen Lakin. 

Drew:  And in case that opening bit did not tip you off, today we are talking about The Simpsons!

Glen:  If you didn't know that, throw your phone into the ocean. 

Drew:  Well, we haven't talked about it in a long time. I looked. It's almost been two years since we talked about The Simpsons on the show. 

Glen:  It's the content the people have been clamoring for. 

Drew:  It is the content I have been clamoring for because I spent the holidays in Los Angeles with my TV watching most of the FXX marathon of every Simpsons ever, and it made me want to talk about The Simpsons and also made me realize that because the show has been on for so long it's maybe an interesting lens to look at evolving social mores. 

Glen:  Yes. It's a nice little time capsule, I guess. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. I think it is. I'm going to make the argument that this episode is a little weird. 

Glen:  Oh! I'm going to make the argument that I hated this episode. 

Drew:  It does some things, I think, okay—and then other things I really am confused by, and then other things I'm going to give you information that you're going to be surprised by, I'm sure. The episode we are watching today is "The Three Gays of the Condo," which originally aired April 13, 2003, but I think we're just going to call this "Homer Moves to the Gayborhood." 

Glen:  Yeah. That sounds right. 

Drew:  Do you have any memory of seeing this episode before? 

Glen:  No. It was 2003, so I was a senior in college, or maybe—wait. What month was it? 

Drew:  April. 

Glen:  So senior in college, so probably not really sitting down to watch The Simpsons. So this was the first I had seen this episode, I believe—and boy, did I have reactions. 

Drew:  Is it weird to see a 17-year-old episode that's very gay frontloaded and be like, "This never came across my desk before"? 

Glen:  But it's not gay frontloaded, which is my problem. It's just sort of sandwiched in there. We'll get into it. It was also weird to watch it because I watched it on Disney+ and it looked terrible. Could be my TV, but the cropping and zooming makes the black-line art sort-of-not solid, and there was a lot of ghosting of images. Like, the ghost of the outlines would remain on the screen, and so I thought there was a problem with my TV—which there probably is. I got over it, but I understand what people are saying about how The Simpsons looks like garbage on Disney+. 

Drew:  So I guess it's a sign of the times—this is the first time we're talking about The Simpsons since it's become a Disney property. I got Disney+ specifically to watch this, and then I realized I actually own the DVD for the 14th season of The Simpsons, so I watched it there. The DVDs are so lovely. The menus, at this point, are perfect and beautiful and funny and well done. And also, I listened to the audio commentary, which is not available on Disney+, which is a bummer because it was available on the FXX Simpsons Universe or whatever-the-fuck it was called. I don't think they're going to bother to put it on there. I don't think they care enough. 

Glen:  Thanks, Mickey. 

Drew:  Yeah. Thanks a lot, fucking Mickey. That basically means I paid for Disney+ for no reason. 

Glen:  I mean, there's other content on Disney+—one might say a lot of content. 

Drew:  Is there stuff I actually want to watch, though? You know me. 

Glen:  I don't know. Probably not. 

Drew:  Yeah. They have Big Business. 

Glen:  Really? 

Drew:  Big Business is on there now. Tony said it wasn't, but I think he was mistaken. It's there. Yeah. Mr. Boogedy? 

Glen:  'K. 

Drew:  Mr. Boogedy. I just like saying "Mr. Boogedy." 

Glen:  I mean, you said you wanted to watch Watcher in the Woods. 

Drew:  It's not on there! 

Glen:  Oh!

Drew:  It's not on there. Watcher in the Woods—fortunately, I know a wealth of people who own that DVD because I picked well. But yeah, that is not something Disney bothered with, so fuck that. By the mid-2000s, what was your relationship with The Simpsons in general? 

Glen:  Lapsed. I think the last time I was a serious Simpsons viewer was "Behind the Laughter"—was that what that episode was called? 

Drew:  Yeah. It's actually a pretty funny episode— 

Glen:  I love it. 

Drew:  —even if it kind of breaks the show because it's kind of hard to go back to moving—after breaking that wall, they build it back up again, I guess. I don't know if the metaphor is there. But that's a really good episode. 

Glen:  Yeah. It has my favorite GIF, which is not really a GIF I could ever find, which is a shrill, female lawyer standing up saying, "That is assault." 

Drew:  Yeah. It's a really good GIF. Were you familiar with the character Julio? 

Glen:  Vaguely. So this is not his first appearance? 

Drew:  It is his first appearance, and him and Grady—so the two gay characters introduced in this episode are Julio and Grady. Both of them recur. Grady's come back a few times; Julio is a regular because he's voiced by Hank Azaria. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's very—he's doing his character from Birdcage, basically. 

Drew:  Exactly, yes—dressed like a character that Tony might play in a guest sketch or something. 

Glen:  Well maybe you should have had Tony in here to talk about this episode then. 

Drew:  Don't be jealous of Tony. He's in Miami right now. 

Glen:  Mee-ami. 

Drew:  Mee-ami. There was an episode—you know how they do Treehouse of Horror episodes that aren't Treehouse of Horror? They did a history one where it was different tales of history, and Julio played the King of England, I think—or maybe the King of Spain. I think it was actually the King of England. He's recurring enough that he gets to play characters when they do little skits. He's a big part of The Simpsons universe and probably—definitely the gayest recurring character. 

Glen:  Other than Smithers. 

Drew:  But Smithers is half-restrained half the time. We can talk. Smithers makes a weird appearance in this episode. 

Glen:  I guess now is a good time to talk about where it falls in The Simpsons' timeline. Is this before—oh! You have a finger up!

Drew:  I have that! Okay. So I have timelines where this falls in the canon of gay TV and then also The Simpsons in general. In terms of Simpsons canon, if you need to get situated, between "Homer's Phobia" and this episode: 

• Skinner and Mrs. Krabappel became a couple, then got engaged, and she later left him at the altar; 

• Principal Skinner has been revealed to be an imposter named Armin Tanzarian; 

• Kirk and Luann Van Houten get divorced, though they later remarry; 

• Frank Grimes reminds the world that Homer is a bad person and then dies as a result; 

• Apu marries Manjula and then has octuplets, and then Apu cheats on Manjula and she never really forgives him; 

• Poochie debuts and then dies en route to his home planet; 

• Homer and Ned marry trashy Vegas wives; 

• Maude died; 

• Barney goes sober—he'd later give that up; 

• Lisa becomes a Buddhist; 

• The Simpsons go to Brazil!;

• Homer is raped by a panda in what would be—

Glen:  Ling-ling!

Drew:  —some people think it was the worst episode ever. I would say the worst episode ever is actually "Saddlesore Galactica," which also aired in the interim, which is the one where they get a horse again. And then Homer finds out that horse jockeys are actually murderous elves—

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  I remember watching that on first broadcast being like, "This is fucking terrible. What the fuck is happening to my show?"

Glen:  I've watched all the episodes you described, so I guess I have the knowledge I need to tackle this. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. I think that's mostly everything that happens. 

Glen:  So Smithers is still in the closet? 

Drew:  Basically. Yeah. 

Glen:  Okay. 

Drew:  Smithers doesn't really fully come out of the closet until not the next day episode but the one after that because there's one where he and Moe—Moe's turns into a gay bar, and he and Moe run it together, and at that point everyone seems to know that Smithers is gay, and no one cares. 

Glen:  In case any viewer needs this reminder: This is 2003, so gay marriage is not yet legal. 

Drew:  Right. However, gay TV is a vastly different landscape than what it was back in the time of "Homer's Phobia." So "Homer's Phobia" beat Ellen's big coming out by about two and a half months, and at the time this episode aired Will & Grace is in its fifth season. Spin City has just ended, and Spin City is probably the next-biggest show that features a gay, prominent major character with Carter. 

Glen:  And we haven't talked about Spin City yet. 

Drew:  We haven't! It's really tough—thinking about how Carter (Michael Boatman's character) is a character over the entire span of that series, I don't know what the best episode would be for him. But I'm sure there's one out there. Ellen DeGeneres's follow-up sitcom The Ellen Show has come and gone after just one season. By the way, did you ever hear about that show at all? 

Glen:  News to me. 

Drew:  The Ellen Show aired on CBS for a season. Supporting cast Jim Gaffigan, Emily Rutherfurd from Gossip Girl, Martin Mull, Kerri Kenney from Reno 911, and Cloris Leachman—and it still couldn't last a season. 

Glen:  I have many thoughts about that cast. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Also come and gone is Normal Ohio, starring John Goodman playing a gay; and then Some of My Best Friends, which stars Patrick Bateman as a gay. Both lasted a season. Also, there was a show called Oh, Grow Up. Do you remember it? It was an ABC sitcom that aired after The Drew Carey Show. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  So I actually like that show, and I liked the really buttoned-up, fastidious, fussy—not Frasiery. He was just kind of a square—the gay guy is. Three college roommates living together, and one of them has recently come out, and he's just an awkward nerd, sort of. 

Glen:  Let's just have a bonus podcast talking about every episode of that series. 

Drew:  I think there's only 13. It'd be very easy to do. Put that on the list of bonus podcasts we're going to do. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. It made me very horny. 

Drew:  Because he was really attractive? 

Glen:  All of them. Not all of them—but there were enough of them that were attractive. 

Drew:  Actually, I can't remember the actor's name, but the character's name was Ford, which is weird because Carter and Ford were the two gay guys on ABC at the time. That show, created by Alan Ball, is the TV project he immediately did before Six Feet Under, and it premiered on ABC the same week that American Beauty opened in theaters. One of them stood the test of time more than the other. But I guess American Beauty really did not stand with—

Glen:  No, no. It doesn't. 

Drew:  No. No, it really doesn't. I take that back. 

Glen:  That's also interesting because Alan Ball views American Beauty as a response to his sitcom writing. 

Drew:  I did not know that. I guess that makes sense. He did a lot of sitcom writing that I think people would be surprised by if they don't know about that. 

Glen:  He resented it to a large extent, I believe. 

Drew:  Huh. Notable in regards to a segment that appears in this episode, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy debuted on Bravo three months after this episode aired. 

Glen:  So what you're saying is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy stole their idea from The Simpsons? 

Drew:  Yeah. Totally. I think—there's an interview with a writer that I'll mention in a little bit, but there was definitely something in the air that The Simpsons was trying to capture. 

Glen:  That gay men are there to make straight men better? 

Drew:  I'm going to say that it's not enough that you're showing straight people reacting to the existence of homosexuality. You have to go deeper than that, and you have to show them interacting on a more meaningful level. Whether or not this episode achieves that—

Glen:  It does not!

Drew:  Well, it had been several years since The Simpsons did a gay episode, and maybe they thought that "Homer's Phobia," which won an Emmy—rightly so—was so successful that they were like, "We have to find the exact right ingredients to revisit this topic." They apparently thought they did with this script. This won the Emmy for Animated Sitcom that year. 

Glen:  I will throw this microphone through the window. 

Drew:  I know. I was very surprised by that. 

Glen:  I. Am. Enraged. 

Drew:  It beat out "Jurassic Bark," which is the Futurama with Fry's dog. 

Glen:  Oh, my god. 

Drew:  I know. 

Glen:  Oh, my god. The most devastating moment on TV!

Drew:  And something that people very clearly remember now, and this is not an episode of TV people talk about a lot. But it's a gay-half-hour of TV that won an Emmy on a very popular show, and that's one of the reasons I thought it'd be interesting to talk about. What the fuck was happening in Hollywood that this was—you dislike it more than I do, but I was very surprised that this won an Emmy. 

Glen:  I think—maybe one of the reasons I dislike it so much is the pieces of something meaningful are there, and you can decide whether I have my rant now or later. 

Drew:  I think you can do it now. 

Glen:  [sighs] No. We should talk about the actual plot of this episode, and as we go along I will at some point break into what I think this episode was maybe not trying to do but could have done much more successfully. 

Drew:  I think that's a good idea, to do it the latter way, because I am willing to be a lot of people listening have also not seen this episode because a lot of people our age who started watching The Simpsons would have not been watching by 2003 and maybe just never saw this in syndication. 

Glen:  Yeah. The long and short is that Homer and Marge have another fight about their marriage, and Homer moves out and moves in with two gay dudes and then—through alcohol and not any sort of personal growth—goes back to Marge. 

Drew:  Not inaccurate. I would shape the narrative a little bit differently, but we'll talk about that. Follow-up to something we talked about in the Friends episode, this aired just 11 days before Bianca Montgomery kissed Lena Kundera on the ABC soap opera All My Children. That is the first same-sex kiss on daytime TV ever—so weirdly, daytime TV lagged on that. Also, just because people will tell us we don't know if we don't say it, the title is a riff on the political thriller Three Days of the Condor, starring Robert Redford. We know. It's a very tangential reference, but people—

Glen:  Yeah. No real connection. 

Drew:  No. This episode was directed by Mark Kirkland, who had directed to date 84 episodes of the show—more than any other director. He is also the character designer for The Flintstone Kids. 

Glen:  Oh, my god!

Drew:  That's the Muppet Babies version of The Flintstones to which a young Drew Mackie once said, "No! I will not watch this. This is terrible." 

Glen:  To which a young Glen Lakin said, "Yes! I will watch this!" 

Drew:  Do you remember "Yabba dabba, buckle up!" 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. That weirdly aired on Saturday mornings way after Flintstone Kids was banished to obscurity. They really wanted us to buckle the safety belt in our stone-age rolling cars? It was a very awkward thing. Yeah. "Yabba dabba, buckle up." Sticks in my head even today. It was written by Matt Warburton, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in cognitive neuroscience and then went on to write for The Simpsons. There's an interview with Matt with Dennis Miller. I'm not sure exactly what it's for, but it's something Emmy related. Dennis Miller might have been hosting the Emmys that year, and so he might have been interviewing people who were up for stuff. So he interviews this guy who is not an incredibly well-known writer at the time about how this episode came to be. It was posted at nohomers.net, which is not nohomos.net but sounds very close to that. Based on the interview, I'm almost positive that Warburton is not gay. Could have guessed?

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. And it's interesting because at some point this episode was considered to be a way for the series to bring back Karl-with-a-K, who is not Carl-with-a-C (who is the regular Carl) but the Season 2 character who is Homer's assistant when he gets his hair back and he's voiced by Harvey Fierstein. He's basically a gay character, but they don't actually say he's gay, even though he does kiss Homer on the lips but not romantically. Before I get into that, there's a weird bit of gayness that happens in the video for "Do the Bartman." It's really interesting. Karl appears in that video. There's a segment towards the end where you see Reverend Lovejoy and Helen Lovejoy, and they're tangoing. Then he turns into Jacque, the bowling instructor, and she turns into Princess Kashmir, the stripper. Then Princess Kashmir turns into Ms. Mellon, who's the gifted-school teacher from the episode where Bart becomes a genius, and then she turns into Karl—so Jacque is dancing with Karl, and he makes a surprised expression before they dance off screen. So I guess that's another bit of gay something. 

Glen:  I have no awareness of this video. 

Drew:  "Do the Bartman"? 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Oh! 

Glen:  I know the song. I just have memory holed. 

Drew:  Well, we will definitely post it with all the social media stuff for this. It is a bizarre thing to withhold, and most of it is very Michael Jacksony, and that kind of taints the whole thing now. Anyway. The episode originated with an idea from Carolyn Omine, who is actually the person who wrote the episode that I went to the table reading for a few years ago. She's been with the show for a long time. She had the idea of "What if there's an episode where Homer and Marge have a fight over a letter Marge wrote but never sent, and it's kind of Marge's fault?" That's how this episode started out. Then that idea was given to Warburton, the writer, and he decided that gay culture was becoming more mainstream and maybe he could incorporate this idea into that original idea. So this is a quote from him: "I didn't know much about gay culture, but I've got a lot of friends who live in West Hollywood so whenever I went to visit them I paid attention. So we wrote this thing, and I thought it was funny—" You're shaking your head. Glen is shaking his head as I read this. "—and we envisioned for this character that Harvey Fierstein would be good to be this gay character that makes-over Homer, and we sent it to him," meaning Harvey Fierstein. He was doing Hairspray, and he came back and said, "This is the most cliched, horrible, old-timey version of gay people that's ever been written and said no." 

Glen:  Now I'm nodding. 

Drew:  Okay. He says, "I drank a cold glass of water and took another look at it, rewrote some of the stuff, and we made this great new character for Scott Thompson (from Kids in the Hall) who voices Grady. They ended up making-over Homer and ended up getting a crush on Homer and kissing him, and it was really fun. It did all right." 

Glen:  Okay. At this point I'm not going to get into my rant, but I will say my problem with this episode isn't necessarily how they portray gay people in terms of culture or fashion or lifestyle; it's that it never at any point scratches  the surface of that, gets beyond that, or gives these characters any sort of motivation or nuance or anything. And yeah, the episode does sort of end with Grady kissing Homer, and it comes out of nowhere. They have not motivated or justified Homer being this alluring creature. 

Drew:  No. 

Glen:  And it's weird and dumb, and I—I don't know if it's offensive. It's just—

Drew:  It's kind of predatory. We don't really celebrate gay guys acting like this anymore. Like, at no point does it seem like Homer might be gay, really, and so Grady kissing him is kind of stepping over the line. We can talk about that when we get to it, but yeah—that is a weird turn. 

Glen:  It's a weird turn. And the gay content of this episode is just so disconnected from what the episode actually is, which is Marge and Homer fighting, and they do take a long time to get into it. Famously, Simpsons have—not bloated, but chunky Act 1s that have nothing to do with the actual plot. 

Drew:  Like almost a misdirect Act 1. 

Glen:  Yeah. And usually there is a connection to it, and they tie in perfectly to my "Reach-Around Corner." And I do have a reach-around for this. The episode opens with the family building a puzzle together, and it goes on for a while. They finish, it's gigantic, and they're happy with it until—was it Flanders who points out that a piece is missing? 

Drew:  You're stepping over the fact that that is a joke that makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it. It's one of the meanest jokes the show has ever done. 

Flanders:  Ooh, that's quite a thingamajigsaw, but it looks like you're missing a piece. 

Homer:  Looks like you're missing a wife!

Flanders:  [laughs] I walked right into that one. 

Drew:  [laughs emphatically]

Glen:  It's very cruel. 

Drew:  It's very cruel—one of two very cruel jokes in this episode, and that is very mean. It makes light of the fact that Maude died, and that's sad. But fuck, that made me laugh. I knew it was coming—yeah. I was thinking about that a few days ago and couldn't remember which episode it was in. That's funny. 

Glen:  So my reach-around for this is that the Simpsons are happy with their achievement until Flanders points out a piece is missing, and then they become obsessed with the missing piece or what's not there when the picture as a whole is fine and brought them fulfillment. And so this leads into the story of Marge and Homer's marriage unraveling because of something that Homer didn't even know was missing, and that is this letter that Marge had written to Homer when they were dating and Moe's Tavern had just opened and he got very drunk—because that's what Homer does—and acted like an ass, and she saw him as an ass and wrote a letter being like, "I don't see myself with you." 

Homer:  Hey, there's writing on the back of this. "Dear Homer, I can't believe you're making this the—worst night of my life?!" Whaa?

[flashback music plays]

Marge:  [writing letter] "You leave me sitting here all alone while you play videogames with your neanderthal friends!"

Homer:  [slurring] Marge, come here. Marge, I need both hands for this game. Can you feed me nachos while I play? 

Marge:  You don't you just stop playing? 

Homer:  Tell that to the brave crew of the SS Triangle! [jibbers] Evil rocks! Take that! 

Marge:  Homer, I really don't want to feed you. 

Homer:  C'mon! You're always saying we should do things as a couple." 

Glen:  Again, when you don't focus on the whole and just focus on the piece, you obsess over it and ruin what is good. 

Drew:  That's not a bad read. 

Glen:  It's not a bad read, and had they not spent so much time on the puzzle—had they just gotten into Homer finding this letter that Marge had written—

Drew:  There could have been any reason for him—like, in searching for the missing puzzle piece, he opens Marge's memory box thinking it might be in there, which it probably wouldn't, and then finds random stuff including this photo from the opening of Moe's Tavern. 

Glen:  Here's Part 1 of my rant—especially in response to the writer's interview saying that they wanted a fight that was Marge's fault. I don't see how this is Marge's fault. It doesn't actually speak to—

Drew:  He doesn't say—the original idea that it was Marge's fault, I don't think he ever said that Marge is at fault here. It might have drifted from that idea, but they kept the part where it's an unsent letter. 

Glen:  I think there is something to married people withholding information from each other that is interesting, and what I think The Simpsons has that is always fun to work with is that this is a couple that's been together for a long time—they've been dating since they were teenagers. They've played into the "what ifs" of Marge's relationship with Marty before, but I don't—there have been episodes where Homer toys with the idea of cheating. 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Several. 

Glen:  But I don't know that we ever get into him as a youth wanting to stray. Like, he loved Marge, and that was sort of that. I think an interesting way to approach this episode wouldn't have been this hidden resentment that Marge has for Homer. I feel like the show has mined that territory plenty. But what if the thing that Marge had hidden from Homer was this night out they had, and it wasn't a letter from Marge that she was hiding? It could have still been on the back of the photo, but it could have been a cocktail napkin with the phone number of a girl that had been flirting with Homer that night that he doesn't remember because he gets blacked-out drunk. So what if this episode was about a married couple that has been together forever but has never really thought about what they were missing in their lives because of that commitment to each other, and so now Homer sees this evidence that there could have been this other path for him that Marge robbed him of by hiding this napkin—and what if that is why he moves out? And then when he moves in with the two gays in their condo—and we'll get into it—it's Homer seeing another side of life that is adult men who are single, who go out and have a bachelor lifestyle, which is in contrast to the life he glimpses from Kirk when he sleeps on Kirk's couch for a night (which is just married men screaming their women's names in their sleep and there's a tasteless suicide joke). 

Drew:  There is! That's not one of the mean jokes that I like. Suicide has a weird throughline on this show that I'm not crazy about. But yeah. 

Glen:  And so I just think it would have been more interesting to use the gay culture and the gay lifestyle that he glimpses as representative of the other side of this very heteronormative, wife-and-kids lifestyle that Homer has experienced, and then Homer looking past the surface of just going out and drinking all the time and seeing that these two gay men—especially Grady, who ends up kissing him—like, what if Grady then through Homer sees a married man and a married lifestyle? This is before gay marriage. I know that all sort of changed a lot of discussion in our community, but it would have just been a very nice setting to deal with some of that. 

Drew:  I think to a certain degree the episode does accomplish Homer realizing that there's more in life aside from just drinking. We can talk about that when we finally get to Gay Town, but there's a scene and a half, basically, before we get there. A few things I want to say about the lead-in: I like that Lenny and Carl come in and check in on Homer because he's not been at work in a week. 

Lenny:  Hey, kids! Uh, we're worried about your dad. He ain't been to work for a week. 

Carl:  Yeah. What's he doing now? Hey, is he a rodeo clown? 

Lenny:  Is he Poochie again? 

Lisa:  He's working on a jigsaw puzzle. 

Carl:  Oh. I guess he's done with all the fun stuff. 

Drew:  So when Homer finds this photo from the first night that Moe's bar was open that Marge has written a letter on the back of—this is a weird writing paradox that every writer on The Simpsons has to find a way to work around. This episode aired in 2003, and it happened right before Marge became pregnant, so it happened about 10 years ago. So it should be 1992—around then. 

Glen:  But this is explicitly in 1989. 

Drew:  Except Homer and Marge are in their '70s versions, and they look like the versions of themselves that are back in high school, and the game that Homer is playing drunkenly to Marge's irritation is—Asteroids? 

Glen:  Yeah. Yeah, the timing doesn't work. 

Drew:  It's a really awkward thing where you're like, "I don't know how to do flashbacks because the timing doesn't make sense anymore." You have to abandon your previous continuity, and it is probably one of those reasons that a few seasons from now they did that '90s episode where Homer and Marge flash back to the early days of them being married, and it's grunge-rock and Melrose Place, and you just have to do that, I guess. It's a really weird thing, like, "Do we abandon what we have, or do we update it so that it makes sense? Do we cling to something just because it's historically part of the show?" I like Homer putting the situation together where he reads this letter—

Marge:  [writing letter] "Tonight I learned the two of us can't work. I don't want a life of watching you get drunk then holding back your long, beautiful hair while you vomit. I have my own dreams, and I can't live them with you." 

Homer:  Why did she stay with me if she hated me so much? Hey. Two days later she had a doctor's appointment. Nausea, cravings, knocked-up feeling—she was pregnant with Bart!  

Drew:  So then Marge enters with the puzzle piece, and she gets asked, "Why did you stay with me?" 

Homer:  Did I ruin your life? 

Marge:  Oh, is this about that billboard my sisters put up? 

Homer:  No. The voters will decide that in November. I was talking about this!

Marge:  Huh? Oh, my god. I forgot all about this. Where did you find it? 

Homer:  More like where didn't I find it! It was practically everywhere. 

Marge:  Homer, I'm sorry you saw that, but I was very upset that night. 

Homer:  Quit changing the subject. How do you feel about me right now? 

Marge:  Well, I love you, of course. But a lot of things you do still drive me crazy. 

Homer:  So you mean our whole marriage you've just been resenting me behind my back?!

Marge:  A little bit, yeah. 

Drew:  I don't mind that. I don't mind that it mentions that Marge is like, "I resent you for stuff, but I still love you." That is a more mature way to look at marriage that this show doesn't really do that often, and I like that they gave Marge a chance to be Frank about frustrations because she normally swallows her entire life for the sake of her family. 

Glen:  I mean, sure. I just think that The Simpsons movie did that so well with Marge. 

Drew:  That's Julie Kavner's best acting ever. 

Glen:  Yeah. I hate that they keep coming back to that well—it's a show that's been on for 30-some years, so they're going to need to have some wells to go back to, but I don't know. 

Drew:  So the opening chunk ends with Homer saying, "I'm going to sleep with someone who can appreciate me," which is Bart. He's sharing Bart's bed, and he's sobbing. 

Bart:  Oh. Time to repress another memory. 

Homer:  [sobs hysterically]

Bart:  I am at Disneyland—Disneyland!

Drew:  And he is. 

Glen:  Oh, I get it—because he's owned by Disney now.  

Drew:  He's owned by Disney. There are a lot of Disney references over the course of The Simpsons that just feel weird now. Anyway. I think we should take an ad break. 

Glen:  Oh. Okay. 

["The Simpsons Main Title Theme" plays]

Drew:  Hey, Glen. Happy New Year! Did you make a resolution for 2020? 

Glen:  If I tell you, it won't come true. 

Drew:  Do you think our listeners will appreciate me suggesting a resolution for them? 

Glen:  No!

Drew:  Well, I'm going to anyway. I think a great way to make sure your 2020 is a productive year is to get one thing done right now, today, and that's to write us a rate-and-review on iTunes. 

Glen:  Do you think they need an explanation why such a thing is important? 

Drew:  No. As I say, they've already heard this on every podcast ever, and also, we've asked before. So unless this is somehow the first episode of any podcast you've ever listened to, you already know why. But here's the thing—we know who's listening. We can see the number of listens per episode, and people—the math does not check out [dramatic music begins playing quietly]. A lot of you have been listening to Gayest Episode Ever week to week but not writing us a review. If you did, you'd be helping more people find the show [dramatic music intensifies]. And what's more, you'd be helping us because we care, and because we think you care too, and in the end, that's the only thing that really makes this life worth living—people caring about people [dramatic music crescendos]. So show that you care, show that you can make a difference, and share yourself with the world and make it a better place by giving us a rate-and-review. 

Glen:  Do you hear that music? 

Drew:  [dramatic music stops dramatically] No. I actually haven't edited it in yet. 

Glen:  Maybe it would be helpful if you gave them an example of the kind of review you'd want. 

Drew:  I'm one ahead of you, Glen. I'm going to share the review given by Joseph Barcia [sp?], who recently gave our show five stars and said the following: "The topics Drew and Glen geek out about are very similar to my pet topics, so I'm really pleased this podcast exists. It's like these gentlemen are on a similar page as friends who happen to have great voices—" Did you hear that, Glen? "Great voices just in the car with me while I commute, and their podcast makes the drive better. Thanks for the great content, thoughtful commentary, and good topic selection." 

Glen:  Joseph sounds very attractive. 

Drew:  He sure does. 

Glen:  And while we're on the subject of attractive people, how's the Patreon doing? 

Drew:  They are all reeling from the hypereroticized silver Mike Brady that you drew for their most recent Glen Lakin Original Artwork. 

Glen:  It was late because I found drawing it while next to my family over the holidays to be very uncomfortable. 

Drew:  And either in spite of or because of your naughty gay doodle, we have four new friends who are supporting Gayest Episode Ever by giving $3 or more a month. And while you can give us as little as a signal dollar a month, those giving at the $3-or-more level get an on-air thank you and a compliment from the Box of Compliments. Glen, if you're ready. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Caroline Land. 

Glen:  Will one day share the truth about what happened to Judy Winslow. Dark. 

Drew:  But she knows some things, so that gives her some power. Jeffrey K. Howard. 

Glen:  As kind and as thoughtful as my best friend Drew Mackie, who is also the pinnacle of manhood. Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  That is secretly a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reference. 

Glen:  Oh, yeah! 

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Mirabai Knight—who, by the way, is someone who supports all of the podcasts I've ever done and all of the social stuff that I've ever done and is a great person who is very enthusiastic about all of our creative endeavors. 

Glen:  As graceful on the dance floor as Aunt Viv—the real Aunt Viv. I think we all know who you're talking about. 

Drew:  That's a more blatant Fresh Prince reference. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  And finally, Jerry Schruffler [sp?] who actually has been contributing for a while, but we somehow skipped him when it came to thank-yous, so we're getting him now. Jerry, sorry for skipping you, and thank you for pointing out that you never got your compliment. 

Glen:  Sorry, Jerry. But you're as exciting as a night out with Knight Rider. 

Drew:  To all of you, thank you for donating. 

Glen:  Donations help us get this podcast out on time and also get us ever closer to the secret, bonus, Patreon-only podcast. 

Drew:  If you'd like to support us and get your name read in a future episode, go to patreon.com/gayestepisodeever, or click the link in the show notes. 

Glen:  You can give as little as $1 a month. Every little bit helps equip my army with socks full of dimes. 

Drew:  Who are you going to hit with those socks, Glen? 

Glen:  Wouldn't you like to know? 

["The Simpsons Main Opening Theme" plays]

Glen:  [whispers] He's sleeping. 

Drew:  You're sleeping? 

Glen:  Thurman is. Oh. Now he's awake because I said his name. 

Thurman:  Whaa?  

Drew:  Okay. So Act 2 opens in the kitchen. We're almost going to get Homer to Gay Town. I like the way this scene is written. I think the dialogue is actually really good. 

Marge:  Looks like you had a little problem with those scrambled eggs. 

Homer:  That was a muffin. 

Marge:  I'll fix you something!

Homer:  Oh, I get it! Your stupid husband is too drunk to do it right!

Marge:  Well, there are a lot of beer cans around here. 

[beer cans rattle]

Homer:  Oh! So you don't like it when I drink! What other secrets have you been hoarding to use against me? 

Marge:  Homer, let it go! It's not always going to be perfect. We've been married for 10 years. 

Homer:  Oh, I didn't realize you've been counting the years. Is it that horrible living with me? 

Marge:  Well, this morning isn't a barrel of laughs. 

Homer:  It is to me! Marge, I can't live like this. I'm tired of walking around on eggshells. 

Marge:  Maybe if you didn't throw them on the floor!

Drew:  I don't know. I like this. You did not like this scene. 

Glen:  It was fine. 

Drew:  Okay. So Homer ends up with Kirk Van Houten. There's the shitty—

Glen:  Suicide joke. 

Drew:  Yeah—"Three days without a suicide," and then a gunshot, and then it clicks back to zero. There's a lot of suicide jokes. This season ends, actually, with an episode all about Moe being suicidal—which he is throughout the show, but the episode is kind of about that entire thing, and it's not as funny as they think it is. 

Glen:  Looking back on it—or it would be interesting to look back and see how much of our generation's humor is derived from The Simpsons because they were cavalier about so many serious things that many of us are cavalier about very serious things, and we tell ourselves, "Oh, it's a defense mechanism." And for a while that worked, and now I think many people—hopefully many people are reevaluating their sense of humor and editing out some of those instincts because tasteless jokes are not victimless jokes. Not to be a downer, but The Simpsons is a cultural touchstone, and I think a lot of our personalities are rooted in the way they portrayed certain things in society. 

Drew:  I think you're right. I think in the way that smart people have to be like, "Oh. Maybe that's not an okay joke after all," you can walk away from it and be like, "I used to think that was funny. I don't really think it's funny anymore," and that's fair. I think the show is also in the process of doing that. It doesn't always keep up step with us, meaning you and me and our peers, but it's also trying to walk away from things that it doesn't think are okay anymore. I don't know if they still do suicide jokes like the one in this episode—and the whole thing with Apu. They're trying to put distance between themselves and things that don't seem okay anymore. Homer finds a newspaper advertising—he's about to go home. He actually mistakes the Flanders's home for his home, mistakes Ned's silhouette for his wife's silhouette. 

Glen:  I'm sure that could be a gay thing. 

Drew:  Probably. He sees the newspaper advertising a room and goes to the Springfield Gayborhood that I am fairly certain we have never seen before. It looks lovely. It looks like the best part of the city by far. I don't know why any gay people would want to live in Springfield because it seems like they could do better. 

Glen:  Some gay people don't have a choice. 

Drew:  I guess Smithers does not have a choice. We see Smithers roller skating out of the Sconewall Bakery. 

Glen:  I get it. 

Drew:  And he's literally dressed gayer than we've ever seen him. He's wearing rainbow pipe short shorts [punctuation?] and magenta rollerblades. 

Homer:  Sure are a lot of gay bookstores for a straight neighborhood. 

Smithers:  [exclaims]

Homer:  Hmm? Hey! Mr. Smithers! 

Smithers:  Hah. Hello, Simpson. 

Homer:  What's the deal with this place? It's so manly, yet scented. 

Smithers:  Yes. I seem to have gotten lost on my way to the—the big auto, uh—racing festival. So I have never even been here before. 

Man:  Hey, Waylon! 

Man:  Who's the bear? [growls]

Man:  Ooh, is that the Mr. Burns you're always talking about? 

Smithers:  No! He's nobody! Shut up, Stuart!

Homer:  Nice to meet you, Stuart!

Glen:  He seems very happy. 

Drew:  I like Smithers being like, "Shut up, Stuart!" and Homer being like, "Nice to meet you, Stuart!" The second guy who talks is—have you ever heard of a band called the The Kinsey Sicks? It's a gay a cappella band, and he's a singer in that, and he apparently went to high school with someone who works for the show and ended up getting to voice Trolley Guy #2 just for that on this episode, which is kind of nice. 

Glen:  I find it quaint that these handsome white gays don't know the name of the man who tried to block out the sun of their town. 

Drew:  They don't read the news, clearly. One of them is not white. One of them they gave dark skin. That's another thing where in drawing background characters I think someone got the idea of, like, "We're going to mix this up a little bit so it's not just one type of guy, and it's certainly not just good-looking white men." So at least they did that—[laughs]. "Nice to meet you, Stuart!" So then he arrives at the condo. It looks like Palm Springs inside. Fair? 

Glen:  In what way? 

Drew:  It just reminded me of, literally, a rental house that I got in Palm Springs once. 

Glen:  Okay. I wouldn't describe it as such because there's not that many windows, but—

Drew:  That's true. There's not that many windows. 

Glen:  It just feels like a gay, walk-up apartment. 

Drew:  Nice-ish. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's nice-ish. Of course it's nice. 

Drew:  We meet Grady and Julio. As I said, both of them become recurring characters on the show. So Grady is voiced by Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall. Did you know that, listening to him? 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  I am surprised that they gave this role to Scott Thompson because Scott Thompson is a great comedic actor who can do some very extreme characters, and he's playing Grady. Grady is written and drawn and acted to be very every-guy and very—not reserved, but he's not—

Glen:  He's the Will. 

Drew:  Yes. He's the Will of this household. I just wonder, why wouldn't you give Scott Thompson more to do? Because he doesn't get that many good jokes, really. The comic relief is Julio, who is Hank Azaria, and they say in the DVD commentary that yes, the voice and the character design were inspired by Agador from The Birdcage. That was something that consciously did. 

Glen:  I love it in Birdcage. I hate it here. 

Drew:  In the world of thinking that Apu is inappropriate, how do you feel about Hank Azaria playing A) a gay stereotype, and B) a Latino stereotype? 

Glen:  I love it in Birdcage. I hate it here. 

Drew:  There had to be an out Latinx actor who could have done the role. Yeah—Wilson Cruz. Wilson Cruz could have done that role, and they didn't give it to him. It is weird that they wrote a character and were like, "Yeah. We're not going to cast this one. We're going to cast the every-guy to a famous comedian and then have Hank play the extreme character. 

Glen:  I love it in Birdcage. I hate it here. 

Drew:  My notes say, "How offensive is it on the Apu-o-Meter?" Right off the bat, Grady tries to explain that they have an active social life, which has never been a euphemism I've ever heard for homosexuality before. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one who didn't hear that round-about way. 

Glen:  Because you don't have an active social life. 

Drew:  But it leads into the second mean but effective joke. 

Grady:  Homer, before you move in, you should know that Julio and I have an—active social life? 

Homer:  Me, too. I'm a member of this club where if I eat one more sub sandwich I get a free sub sandwich. You probably saw the ad where this guy used to be fat, but now he's just ugly. 

[laughter]

Glen:  Follow-up joke—now he's a pedophile! 

Drew:  Someone being a pedophile—it's still mean to call them ugly. If it were about a fake character, it would work better. I'm sorry I laughed at a joke calling Jared Fogle ugly, but it did make me laugh.

Glen:  He's ugly inside. 

Drew:  [laughs] He's going to be in jail for a long time. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Exactly how long, I don't know. I think he went to jail for his—I think he's in jail for at least another nine years. 

Glen:  Oh, yes. 

Drew:  Yeah—[laughs]. Jared was the Subway spokesman from 2000 to 2015. Fifteen years of Jared making us buy those fucking sandwiches. 

Glen:  Oh, he made you? 

Drew:  Well, he tried to make—I don't like Subway sandwiches. They smell terrible. 

Glen:  That's what my dad says, too. I don't really have a sense of smell, so that part is missing for me. 

Drew:  So for me, if I am in a mall or any sort of open-air environment that has a Subway, I can walk into the mall and be like, "There's a Subway somewhere in here," because they have what I think it's a piped-in bread smell, and it smells like the fakest—it's like a car deodorant thing that smells like what someone thought bread smelled like, and it's gross. 

Glen:  If we're about to walk by a Subway, my dad will make us cross the street. 

Drew:  I support him in this. Your dad and I agree on this. 

Glen:  You probably agree on other things. 

Drew:  Probably, I just can't think of anything. 

Julio:  Homer, what Grady is saying is that—god. How can I put this? We might have a [00:41:26], say, where all the guests are male. 

Homer:  Are you trying to tell me that you guys are those guys that like guys? 

Grady:  That's right, Homer. We're gay. 

Homer:  You are? Hmm. Which will win out—my old-fashioned prejudices or the fact that I've already mixed my laundry with yours? I'll have to sleep on it. 

[Homer leaves, closes door, yawns, and immediately starts snoring]

Julio:  He's sleeping in the pantry—[gasps!] My spices! 

Drew:  Based on what we learn about them in this episode, do you think Grady and Julio are a couple, or not? 

Glen:  It's hard to say, which is one of my gripes with the episode. I feel like this used to be a more common thing where they sort of thin the line between friends and romantic partners? 

Drew:  You think that doesn't happen still? 

Glen:  I feel like it's different now, for one thing because a lot of gay relationships have evolved to being open relationships, and so now there's—I don't know—not acceptance, but it's kind of common knowledge (at least in our circles) whereas 2003 I feel like there was some sort of judgment to it. They could have just been a couple. If they are friends, this shows that they are friends; if they're a couple, this shows that they're a couple. 

Drew:  Allegedly, they are a couple in this episode. They are on and off over the course of the series. We see them date other people. But it is odd that: 1) it was never something that anyone thought was necessary to make clear, and 2) that kind of makes it weird because we're not sure if Grady is cheating on Julio by kissing Homer or not, which is another weird aspect to Grady's character that I'm not crazy about. 

Glen:  I think it's probably in the next scene where Grady is making breakfast. 

Homer:  Mmm!

Julio:  Ugh. Where did you buy this, from the guy on the exit ramp? This is disgusting. 

Homer:  Calm down, Picky Ricardo. He made us a great breakfast, and you're just riding his butt—and not in a good way. 

Grady:  Thank you, Homer. It's a pleasure cooking for you. 

Glen:  Never an attitude he would have for Marge. 

Drew:  Right. 

Glen:  And this is sort of something I can point to in the episode where they're almost touching on something right. Grady appreciates that feedback from Homer, and I think this is where Grady could have looked at Homer and seen a domestic partner that mirrors something he would have thought he was maybe giving up by pursuing his gay lifestyle. And if this episode was about Homer experiencing Grady's lifestyle and Grady experiencing Homer's lifestyle and they learned something from each other, that's what I wanted from this. 

Drew:  A more reciprocal relationship? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  That would have been a lot better. 

Glen:  That's not what happens [laughs].

Drew:  That is not what happens [laughs]. Homer is so happy to live there because he thinks it can allow him to walk around naked—no. Grady says that. Grady says, "We can walk around naked," and then Homer is already naked. Why do they think they can walk around naked if they have a male roommate? We don't do that. 

Glen:  No. I don't know. 

Drew:  Okay. Oh, fuck. I can't remember exactly what the line is, but it is very cute when Homer calls Lisa so she can read him a bedtime story, and it's Nancy Drew. 

[phone rings]

Lisa:  Hello? Hold on. Nancy Drew let out a low whistle. "This isn't an old windmill at all! It's a new windmill!" No, Dad. I'm sure she won't be killed. 

[laughter]

Drew:  Little things like that make me like even awkward Simpsons episodes. Okay. So then there's a fucking—

Glen:  Awkward Emmy-winning Simpsons episodes. 

Drew:  I know. Better than "Jurassic Bark." There's a montage with Homer getting made over set to "West End Girls," which I think a lot of people listening to this podcast will only know as the song from Donnie Darko that Sparkle Motion dances to. They make him wear a girdle to restrain his belly because he can't fit in anything, and then they take him to get a haircut—

Glen:  My only laugh of the episode is when Homer throws the espresso in the face of the stylist. 

Drew:  So yeah. He cuts two hairs off, and then he's like, "That'll be $100," and he's like, "Okay. I see," and then flings the espresso. The guy shrieks and runs away [laughter]. I'm like, "Is that a homophobic joke? No. It's just Homer being an asshole joke. He would have done that to anyone." 

Glen:  Oh. It's jerk-ass Homer. 

Drew:  Jerk-ass Homer [laughs]. That did make me laugh out loud as well. I measure my enjoyment of episodes by laughing out loud, and I think I'm more of a fan of "joke machine" TV writing sometimes than you are. I can bypass a sloppy story if it makes me laugh. Newly made-over Homer comes in, in a mock turtleneck and brings—this is an example, I think, of how Homer has grown as a person, and he's taking on the non-boozy aspects of Grady and Julio's lifestyle to better himself where he has Bart and Lisa for the weekend, and he brings them in from antiquing, and also they were taking pictures of interesting-looking doors and gates. Do gay people do that? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  [laughs]

Glen:  That's fine, but the central conflict in the episode isn't about Homer not being a good father; it is about him being mad that Marge withheld something from him. It's just nothing about the gay chunk of this story plays towards that for me. 

Drew:  I'm thinking. You may be right. Maybe I'm reevaluating my opinion as we talk. 

Glen:  I am openly more hostile towards The Simpsons than I am some of the other missteps we've covered in this podcast because it's The Simpsons and they don't fucking care what I say. 

Drew:  Right. And also, you know how good it can be when things fall into place correctly, and they can sometimes do a really good job with a sensitive subject—they don't do such a great job with this one. So Marge is still mad. 

Homer:  Well, I better go. But before I do, Marge, there's something I want to ask you. 

[romantic music swells]

Marge:  Yes, Homey? 

Homer:  How much do you tip a leg waxer? I need to know by tomorrow. 

Marge:  Just go, and take your stupid Lhasa Apso with you!

Drew:  Gay men do not wax their legs, do they? 

Glen:  They used to. 

Drew:  Really? 

Glen:  Early 2000s was very anti-body-hair. 

Drew:  Even on legs? 

Glen:  I don't know. 

Drew:  I mean, I know back hair and chest hair and all that, but—

Glen:  Yeah. I feel like I knew gays that waxed or shaved their legs. 

Drew:  I know so many guys now that are like, "Oh. I used to do that, and it was awful," and I'm like, "That does sound awful, and I'm glad you don't do that anymore." So Marge kicks him out and says, "Take your Lhasa Apso with you." 

[laughter]

Drew:  At this point in the DVD commentary—it's a bunch of writers and Yeardley—

Glen:  High-fiving each other? 

Drew:  Sort of, yeah. I think they're happy it won an Emmy. I think it's one of the producers—or it's Yeardley—I can't remember. No, it's not Yeardley because she's surprised by this. They're recalling that Julie Kavner's take on Homer and Marge's marriage is that one of the reasons that Marge puts up with Homer as much as she does—and this is just what Julie Kavner says—is that in her mind, Marge finds Homer exceptionally attractive and that they have a great sex life. And Yeardley's like, "She said that? Oh. I'm surprised she said that." I think she said, "That's like showing someone your underwear or something." So cut to One Night Stan's, an at-least-two-story, gay dance club that exists in Springfield that we've never seen before. 

Glen:  That's not the [Steel Works – capitalized or no?]. 

Drew:  That is not the Steel Works. I guess Grady and Julio wouldn't go to the Steel Works, necessarily, but it's weird that they don't drawn on any of that element of gay Springfield. Also, it's weird that John was never a contender to show up in this episode. Like, if Homer were to run into John while he was despondent, John might have been like, "You can stay with me. I know you." They already have an idea for what John's house looks like, and they could have pretty much done this story more or less the same way. Maybe they just knew they wouldn't get John Waters back, but you don't even see John as a background character. Later episodes you see John hanging out with Grady and Julio, so it's established that these characters all know each other, but John Waters has never reprised the character. He's only been a background character. Homer is telling them what's going on, and Grady is like, "Oh, no! Is this the end for you two?" And—[sighs].I do like the jokes Homer says. 

Grady:  So it's over between you two? 

Homer:  Maybe it is. I used to look at Marge and get the same tingle you guys get when you see Rip Taylor. 

Drew:  [laughs] RIP, Rip. And then Homer dances and takes off his shirt, and for the life of me—it's a very particular sort of dancing, and I think this might be a take-off on something, but I cannot place what it is. Everyone's into Homer feeling the music and taking off his shirt except for two lesbians. 

Lesbian:  I didn't think it was possible, but watching him makes me more lesbian. 

Drew:  In terms of representation, I'm glad that there are lesbians at this club. The one who speaks is very butch, and she's speaking to a very femme lesbian, and I'm like, "Yes. There's more than one type of gay person that exists. You at least covered your bases on that." 

Glen:  Also, Hans Moleman goes home with a very handsome man in some sort of—is it a Communist uniform? 

Drew:  Some sort of fake military uniform. He thought it was his Army reunion [laughs]. 

Glen:  He seems into it, though. 

Drew:  He's happy to have someone take care of him. Cut to commercial, and then come back to Grady's living room, and they're watching TV, and he's like, "He's gay. He's gay. He's gay. He's bi." He ad-libbed the words "gay for pay." Apparently, the writers had never heard that before. Scott Thompson taught them "gay for pay." This wraps up very quickly because Julio directs them outside to Marge Say-Anything-ing Homer with—

Glen:  The actual Weird Al. 

Drew:  Yes. So it was like, "I got Weird Al to sing a love song to you." So Homer and Grady and Julio are watching from the balcony. 

Marge:  Homey, I tried to tell you how I feel, but I can't find the right words. Maybe he can. 

Homer:  Weird Al Yankovic!

Weird Al:  Homer, Marge wrote me about what happened, and as soon as her check cleared I was on the first reasonably-priced flight here. Now, here's a song I wrote for you.

[To the tune of "Jack and Diane" by John Mellencamp]
Little ditty 'bout Homer & Marge
Her heart was as big as his stomach was large
Oh yeah, they say, "Love goes on—
long after the grilled cheese sandwich is gone"

Drew:  Weird Al comes out of nowhere.

Glen:  Yes!

Drew:  It's such a weird—you're like, "Oh, they're kind of doing some interesting things, and some things they're kind of stumbling over," and then it takes a hard left. I don't mind Weird Al Yankovic, but I cannot think of a less gay celebrity. He might be the least gay celebrity I can possibly think of. He's very Christian. Did you know that? 

Glen:  I did not know that. 

Drew:  Quite Christian. I think he's cool with gay people, apparently, but doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't swear. Maybe they got Weird Al, and they were like, "We have to shoehorn Weird Al into this episode somehow." Maybe there was a different Act 3 that they had to abandon because they were like, "Well, Weird Al wants to do this episode. That's a good thing for us. You have to rewrite this episode so that Weird Al is a character," because he's not there very long. That was a very strange thing. There's no explanation for it in the DVD commentary where they explain how this landed out of nowhere. Weird Al is actually on the commentary, so he's there the entire time. 

Glen:  And he's like, "Why am I in this episode?" 

Drew:  They don't really talk about the episode that much, I'll be honest. 

Glen:  That's the thing. It's like, this gesture by Marge—their marital problem wasn't that she didn't show Homer that she loved him or that she didn't show him grand gestures. It's because of something in their past. I guess it goes back to my problem that there is an amorphous marital issue, and they're on the surface saying that Homer moving in with these gay people I somehow resolving it, but they're also laying the blame for it sort of at Marge's feet for most of the episode. So I don't know how Homer moving in with these two gay men is supposed to—

Drew:  [Which is] Marge's apparent problem because she's not changing, really. All she does is pay Weird Al to sing a parody song. Then she asks Homer to go on a date, and he's like, "Okay." 

Glen:  Right. 

Drew:  Right. Homer is getting ready for the date, and Julio brings in margaritas because Homer is nervous. Then they all get tanked on margaritas, and Homer is late for Medieval Times. 

Homer:  I've learned a lot living here. It doesn't matter what someone's sexual preferences are—unless they're a celebrity, in which case it's dish, dish, dish!

Julio:  Homer, weren't you supposed to meet your wife half an hour ago? 

Homer:  D'oh! You guys don't have a gay time machine, do you? 

Julio:  Yes. It's called Grady's shoe closet! [laughs]

Grady:  Hey, Julio—ouch. 

Glen:  Grady and Julio seem to know that he's late but don't mention it until—

Drew:  Half an hour in. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. That's—yeah. It's something that sort of happens because it happens (for no real reason), and it would be—okay. So if you're laying the groundwork for Grady to be in love with Homer at this point, you have Grady come in with the margaritas and distract homer, but that's not really what happens—

Glen:  Or not even—I don't want Grady to sabotage Homer and Marge's relationship. 

Drew:  No. We're supposed to like Grady, apparently.

Glen:  Yeah. I just wanted a moment where Homer tells—like where Grady could say, "Well, you're having so much fun with us. What do you even miss about her anyway? Why are you going to go on this date?" And I needed Homer to tell Grady, "Yeah. We have our problems, but this is why I love my life and my wife and everything we've built together. I guess it's stupid that I'm willing to sacrifice our ten years of marriage over something she said ten years ago—and not even to me!" When really the resolution—I'm going to skip again—is that Homer then sees Dr. Hibbert's recording of them with Marge declaring some sort of love for Homer, which I don't know that that actually solved the problem either. 

Drew:  That is another weird deus ex machina. They're like, "Okay. This is happening, and this solves it—I guess?" Homer arrives drunk to Medieval Times after the announcer has already pointed out that Marge and Homer are having a reconciliation date—which is not something you should ever tell any sort of announcer ever. That's a terrible idea. Marge says—

Homer:  [out of breath] Oh, sorry I'm late. The Velvet Mafia made me a margarita I couldn't refuse! 

Marge:  Goodbye, Homer. I tried to save our marriage, and you just get drunk and spend the whole night with your homosexual boyfriends—Reverend Lovejoy. Mrs. Lovejoy. Principal Skinner. Duffman. 

Drew:  Canonically, Duffman is in a relationship with Grady for a period. 

Glen:  Yeah. I remember that. Duffman's hot. 

Drew:  Duffman—maybe one of the Duff Men or Duff Mans that exist—is at least bisexual. And then Homer is back at the condo, and he's sitting on his bed. Grady is sitting on his bed as well, and Grady's like, "You know, some people just aren't supposed to be together," and Grady says he thinks Homer is cool. 

Grady:  Fact is, certain people just aren't right for each other. You gave it a chance. It didn't work. At least you tried. 

Homer:  But it was Marge, my first and only love. I'm like David Spade without Chris Farley—alone and useless. 

Grady:  Oh, Homer—a guy as cool and special as you will have no trouble. Believe me. 

[romantic music swells as Grady kisses Homer]

Homer:  Wow. Wow! I never realized he felt about me that way. We should really take some time to talk and—[Homer jumps out the window and flees]. I'd just end up hurting you!

Drew:  Which he should think Homer is a pity case because that's why they're helping him get his shit together—because he doesn't. They just haven't done the work to make us believe that Grady would kiss Homer because Homer is not that attractive—not as attractive as Julio!

Glen:  And an ass. 

Drew:  And an ass and straight—and a mess. 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  And that is not something I feel like I know gay men to do. We kiss the wrong people, but we don't kiss Homer Simpson. 

Glen:  And the of course Homer responds to the kiss by jumping out the window. 

Drew:  Slinking out from beneath Grady and worming very quickly out the window. Apparently, they had to delete extra frames of animation because the original animation did not make him go out the window fast enough. 

Glen:  So the kiss—again, they could have made the kiss work if it was built up that what Homer felt cheated by was that Marge robbed him of a kiss from another person, and then his marriage to her didn't feel like as much of a choice to him. And what Grady could be resenting as a gay man in 2003 is that he has this bachelor lifestyle that Homer seems to admire, but Grady could also somewhat resent that it didn't necessarily feel like a choice to him either because the life that Homer has was not really an option for Grady. If you had these two men who at the beginning were jealous of each other's lives who then come to understand each other but then Grady kisses Homer because it's a gesture of genuine affection for this man he has come to understand better, and he's also giving Homer what he wants in that it's a kiss outside the marriage that isn't necessarily cheating so that Homer could then go back to Marge having—I don't think I usually go on my screenwriter rants, but the whole point of storytelling in this format is that you are supposed to give a character what they want but not how they thought they would get it. So Homer wants a love outside of his marriage, or he wants to feel like being with Marge is a choice. So they give him that kiss from Grady—that could have had some meaning to it because I think the point of what this episode is maybe trying to say or what this episode could have said is that even if you have no other options you can still make a choice. Homer chose to be with Marge, even though in his mind he didn't think he had other options. And then what put him in this crisis could have potentially been finding out that he did have other options. I could see well into a relationship walking away from that temporarily to figure your shit out. Homer wants to reevaluate and see Marge as a choice and not just someone—

Drew:  Not a default. 

Glen:  Yeah, not someone that fate put them together, or circumstances put them together. 

Drew:  I like that. That does solve a lot of the problems of this third act quite a bit.

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Homer ends up back at Moe's. 

Homer:  You know, Moe, I was just thinking—my problems with Marge started because I drink too much, and then tonight alcohol only made things worse. Maybe all of my problems are actually caused by—

Moe:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take your medicine, ya' lush, you. 

Homer:  [gulps down the Duff]

Moe:  [whistling while depositing a drunk Homer outside a hospital]

Wiggum:  Hey! What happened here?

Moe:  Uh—he was drinking at O'Harrigan's Bar down the street there. They oughta' close that dump down!

Drew:  Moe force-feeds Homer alcohol to the point that he gets alcohol poisoning, and then wheels him to the hospital and leaves him there. Nice little joke with Moe being awful. And then this is when you find out something that—do you have a reach-around for Dr. Hibbert taping everything at all? 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  I don't either. I want to try to find some way to tie it in thematically with the rest of the story. But the idea is Dr. Hibbert thought one of his nurses was stealing sponges, so he was taping everything that happened in the emergency room, and this included the interaction Homer and Marge had ten years ago—which he's preserved, but whatever. 

Glen:  He's both a general practitioner and an emergency room doctor. 

Drew:  He's everything! 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. Did I mention the Dr. Hibbert backstory? I hardly had a reason to mention—

Glen:  Yes, you did—to me, I guess. I don't know if you've mentioned it. 

Drew:  So Dr. Hibbert was supposed to be a female character. That character was initially supposed to be voiced Julia Sweeney, who played "It's Pat" on Saturday Night Live. Julia Sweeney's actual last name is Hibbert, and Dr. Julius Hibbert is named in honor of Julia Sweeney-Hibbert. And then at some point that did not come to pass, and then they instead patterned him after Bill Cosby—or at least Heathcliff Huxtable, which is a weird thing that we still have a version of Dr. Huxtable that exists today. So he plays the tape, and Marge delivers this speech about why she likes Homer, and that fixes everything. 

[video recording begins]

Dr. Hibbert:  He's stable now. I'll leave you two alone. 

Marge:  Homey, I was so worried about you. I was really mad at you tonight, but you're a good person, and that's what I see most of the time. Whatever problems we have, we have a lifetime to work them out—together. 

[video recording ends]

Homer:  So she didn't hate me. She married me because she loved me!

Marge:  And I still do. 

Homer:  Marge, I never want to be apart from you again. 

Marge:  Well, you'll never have to!

[Homer and Marge smooch]

Homer:  That is the best kiss I've had tonight. 

Homer's Brain:  Or was it? 

Marge:  Homey, what are you thinking? 

Homer:  Manly thoughts. 

[Homer and Marge smooch]

Drew:  We don't see Grady and Julio again. 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  We leave Julio at the Weird Al scene, and then the last time we see Grady is him looking very sad as Homer runs out of the condo, never to return. It's kind of weird to weigh this episode in favor of gay characters and then just give him the shaft. 

Glen:  —or not give him the shaft. 

Drew:  [laughs] Yeah. 

Glen:  Yeah. This episode made me very angry. 

Drew:  The ending—I really didn't like the ending for Grady. I mean, we see him again, but they didn't know this at the time. That's how they were just willing to leave this character for the foreseeable future. 

Glen:  Yeah. Yeah, the gay characters just—again, I don't know why they're here. I don't know how they're actually servicing this story. 

Drew:  The nurse was stealing sponges. That's how it ends. 

Glen:  Well, then Weird Al sings again. 

Drew:  Well, it flashes forward to an aged Dr. Hibbert watching the tape on his own and being like, "All I have left is my tapes now. Oh, she was stealing sponges." End credits. You hear a longer version of "Jack and Diane." That's the end of the episode. 

Glen:  I'm sure to many listeners my rant on how seriously I have taken offense to this episode will be waved away as, "Oh, it's The Simpsons. It's just stupid and funny." But it didn't used to be. 

Drew:  No. They used to make effort to explain things a little bit more. Actually, Talking Simpsons not too long ago did the episode where Bart and Lisa and the kids end up washed up on the island—you know? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  And that episode ends with Dr. Hibbert narrating, "And then they were saved by—oh, let's say Moe," and I think they pointed out that that is one of the first episodes where they were like, "We're not even going to bother to solve it. Fuck you, guys. That's the joke—that we're not even going to solve it," which maybe would work as a one-off, but then it became more the rule, like, "Meh, this is just happening now," and calling attention to the fact that the stories aren't lining up or something's going nowhere, and that's kind of a shitty thing to do. They do that less often now. I am a weirdo who continues to watch The Simpsons, and this is emblematic of what's happening on The Simpsons during the very-late '90s to early 2000s. They grew out of that, and they started doing more—the stories don't always hold up, and there are some lousy episodes that air now, but there's more of an idea to make them cohere that they aren't doing here.

Glen:  Yeah. To me this was just a mess of an episode, and to hear that it won an Emmy when that Futurama episode is—[sighs].

Drew:  So much better remembered. 

Glen:  It's a tight, elegant storyline that still sticks with us, and it was about Fry making a choice that he thought was right that was against his personal benefit. He wanted his dog back—spoiler alert—and then was like, "No. He probably had a great life without me. I think it's just better to let sleeping dogs lie," and then that—that horrible, horrible time lapse. 

Drew:  He was so wrong. 

Glen:  And it's just—I haven't watched that episode in a while, but there are probably throw-away jokes and things, but Simpsons has not just throw-away lines and throw-away gags but throw-away scenes, like entire—

Drew:  Simpsons had throw-away scenes going back to what we consider the "Golden Era." They invented the Family Guy style cut-away and then abandoned it because it got so associated with Family Guy That they didn't want to do that anymore. So that's always been part of the show—

Glen:  Yeah, cutaways—but there are actual entire plotlines that have nothing to do with anything, and sometimes it works, like when it's a B-plot it can work. 

Drew:  There is no B-plot in this episode. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  It is just a plot, and it still doesn't quite come together as much as it should. Okay. I like this episode less than I did at the beginning. You've convinced me. But it's an interesting example of what I'm going to call it "Phase B" of LGBT-sitcom plotlines where no one's coming to terms with homophobia, really, and no one's learning about gay people for the first time. So you're putting gay people in there, but you're just kind of shoehorning them in and they're acting as dressing to make something seem more contemporary—but you're not delving into much. So I guess that's what this episode is. 

Glen:  Yeah, like they wanted it to be a gay episode, but nothing about this episode is actually gay aside from their gay characters. But it's not actually using The Simpsons as a world and the Simpsons characters to comment on gay culture at all whereas Homer's phobia was a great episode because it was tied to a commentary about toxic male culture and masculinity. 

Drew:  I wanted to start this second half of the season out with The Simpsons—

Glen:  By me being angry? 

Drew:  —and end it with The Simpsons, and the ending Simpsons is "There's Something About Marrying," where gay marriage becomes legal in Springfield and Homer starts officiating gay marriage as a money-making scheme, and it is problematic. But at the core of it is a storyline about Marge supporting gay marriage until Patty announces that she's marrying a woman, and then she's not cool with it anymore—like, it's a different matter for her. 

Glen:  Spoiler alert!

Drew:  You've seen it before. 

Glen:  I've seen the episode, but we also are going to be talking about it not too long from now. 

Drew:  Like weeks and weeks and weeks. They'll forget by then. Grady and Julio both show up in that episode. Julio marries someone else. Grady—I don't know that he marries anyone in that episode. He later dates Mr. Largo (Lisa's music teacher) who then marries someone else whose name is also Dewey—like, two gay dudes named Dewey marry each other. The second Dewey is a dick who is stealing Mr. Largo's money, which I actually like because—

Glen:  I've seen that episode. 

Drew:  It's really good. It's just like, "Oh. You made a gay character be a complete jerk, and that is good because you didn't have to trick us into liking him at all." Julio dates Smithers and also dates Comic Book Gay, who is Comic Book Guy's gay cousin. And then canonically, there's this really good episode about a presidential primary where you see the Springfield Democratic Party, and it is the minorities you'd think would be represented by—yeah. So Julio is there representing both Latinx and queer people, and he is seated at the table and says something about who he thinks should be the nominee, and then it shifts to this woman who looks exactly like Arianna Huffington who says, "I agree with my ex-husband," which is a great joke. They don't really get to do that much with her, but her name is Adriatica Vel Johnson, and she only exists as a parody of Arianna Huffington. I feel like there are young people who only know her as the Huffington Post lady and don't know that she used to be an arch conservative married to a Republican Congressman who later came out as bi, and that somehow made her liberal. I don't really understand how that change happened. Maybe someone can explain it to me. But it's a great fucking line. This episode looks amazing. You probably couldn't appreciate it—

Glen:  I could not. 

Drew:  —because I watched it on the DVD. It's maybe my favorite era for how it looks because this is the first season where they're coloring everything in with computers but everything else is hand-drawn, and it's a nice halfway medium between the two. It looks pretty good now, but a lot of the angles they use aren't as interesting now. This just looks really good to me. It is weird that John Waters's character did not come back. That annoys me now. I wish they'd thought about that more. Anyway. Listen to Talking Simpsons. We mentioned it the last Simpsons episode we did. It's kind of the reason this show exists the way it does. I listened to that, and I was like, "Oh. A podcast about TV!" 

Glen:  Well, now they're going to steal everything from us. 

Drew:  We're—no. They're aware of my show. Don't forget, I was a guest on Talking Simpsons. 

Glen:  Yeah. I remember. 

Drew:  Yeah. The "Homer's Phobia" episode. Listen to it! I'll link to it in the show notes. I [equated 01:10:13] myself admirably, I hope—I hope. I don't know. 

Glen:  I don't remember. 

Drew:  You didn't listen to it. 

Glen:  I did! 

Drew:  Oh. Okay. They're currently going through Season 1 of the show. They finished Season 10, and they looped back around to Season 1. They're a very good show. They do very good research, and they challenge me to do good research, I hope. Glen—

Glen:  We should call us "Talking Gays."

Drew:  [laughs] How about "Talking White Gays?" How about that? Speaking of white gays, Glen, where can people find you on the internet? 

Glen:  I'm too angry, Drew. Just tell them. 

Drew:  [laughs] I'm not going to make a habit of this, but you can find Glen on Twitter @IWriteWrongs—that's "write" with a W and "wrongs" with a W because that's how you spell "wrongs." You can find me on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. You can follow this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode. Listen to previous episodes at gayestepisodeever.com. If you've been listening to this show for a while and enjoy it, please give us a rate-and-review. Rate-and-reviews help other people find this show, and we appreciate every single one that comes in. Oh, wait. I forgot—at the tail end of 2019, we got two reviews, one from a string of numbers and symbols that I cannot pronounce who said, "I love this podcast so much. Not only is it informative, it really makes you feel there. I haven't seen a lot of the episodes, but I feel like I'm missing nothing with your informative synopses. By the way, Drew, you can keep saying 'Mm-hmm.' I have never been more in love." Oh!

Glen:  Sounds like a new kink. 

Drew:  "Team Drew all the way, especially in my dreams." And then the previous one is five stars from someone whose name is just "Excellence," and they just wrote, "Team Glen!" 

Glen:  Oh, I like that review. 

Drew:  So thank you for both of you, Symbols Person and Excellence for giving us those rate-and-reviews.

Glen:  Excellence, I am single. 

Drew:  [laughs] Yeah. Give us a rate-and-review, and we will read it in a future episode. As we said earlier, give us money on our Patreon—patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. You're helping us justify the time it takes to make this show happen and also working towards the fun and exciting bonus podcast which we're probably going to hit somewhere within 2020. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network, and you can find out about more of the shows we're doing—and there will be some new ones coming in 2020—at TableCakes.com. Oh, by the way—I wanted to say a big thank you to Sarah Neal who is a professional transcriber whose business is therapytranscripts.com. We're not therapy—

Glen:  Mmm—

Drew:  —but she found us on Twitter and volunteered to transcribe our old episodes, so I think the first three episodes have been transcribed if you want to read our podcast like a play or a live performance, I encourage you to do that. I think it'll be very exciting. I want to thank her for that. If you know anyone who can't hear but might like this show, you can send them to the website and they can now read our podcast. Also, everything we've ever said is googleable now. 

Glen:  Oh—oh, no. 

Drew:  We took out all the bad stuff. We'll be fine. But I'll post some of those transcribed episodes in the show notes if you guys want to see them. That said, I think we're done. Glen, I'm happy to [stutters]—

Glen:  [mocks Glen for stuttering]

Drew:  Fuck. Fuck you. I hate you so much. I'm happy to be back in the new year! Don't ruin this!

Glen:  Bye—forever. 

Drew:  Podcast over. 

["Everybody Is Gay" performed by Latin Rose plays]

Katherine:  A TableCakes production. 

[Gracie Films "Shh!" jingle plays]