Transcript for Episode 36: Suzanne Sugarbaker Accidentally Dates a Lesbian

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Designing Women episode “Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend.” 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.

Suzanne:  Who ever heard of a lesbian debutante? 

[audience laughs]

Julia:  Suzanne, when she said "coming out," she didn't mean at a cotillion. She meant from the closet. 

Mary Jo:  Suzanne, she is gay. 

Suzanne:  Oh. Well, excuse me. I do not happen to be up on homosexual history or my latest lesbian lingo. Oh, I can't believe this.

["Georgia on My Mind" performed by Ray Charles plays]

Drew:  Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we look at the LGBT-themed 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. 

Drew:  [whispers] That's right you are. And if that intro did not tip you off, today we are talking about Designing Women!

Glen:  Again.

Drew:  Again! And I won't cry this time because this is not a sad episode.  

Glen:  Did I make fun of you for crying last time?

Drew:  No. I felt self-conscious about crying last time. It was— 

Glen:  Great. I don't want to be mean to you.

Drew:  You can be—I didn't complain about you being mean to me. 

Glen:  So Designing Women.

Drew:  You can be mean to me in the way the Julia's mean to Suzanne. I'm okay with that. That's like a loving, principled meanness. I think people understand that.

Glen:  Yeah. I'll tell people about the night the lights went out in Atwater Village. 

Drew:  It's because we have a shitty power grid [laughs].

Glen:  Yeah. It's very bad.

Drew:  We're talking about the episode "Suzanne Goes Looking for a Friend," which originally aired April 9, 1990, but for the purposes of this podcast I'm calling "Suzanne Sugarbaker Accidentally Dates a Lesbian." Yeah? Is it good?

Glen:  Sure. 

Drew:  Yeah. I was remembering editing the Designing Women episode for the first season. That episode was such a downer, but the way we structured the show is there's a little intro and then the theme song and then we say, "Hello," and it was really hard to do because the original version had the character the Tony Goldwyn character saying, "I have AIDS," and it was like, "Wah, wah, wah, wah"—not the right mood. It took a long time to find the intro that didn't sound offensive. 

Glen:  Did we succeed?  

Drew:  Go back and listen to that episode. I think it's episode seven.

Glen:  No, thanks.

Drew:  Designing Women, if you don't know, was a series that ran for seven seasons on CBS from September 29, 1986, to May 24, 1993. The first five seasons starred Dixie Carter, Delta Burke, Annie Potts, and Jean Smart. Neither Jean Smart nor Delta Burke returned for the sixth season but good news! This episode is fourth season, so it's basically the show in its prime. I looked it up. I wanted to find out exactly what happened. Delta Burke badmouthed the show to Barbara Walters.

Delta:  Well, Harry would yell and scream quite a bit at all of us, and it's rather frightening, and he did put us all in a room and yell and scream and say how ungrateful we were and throw things at us. And when I tried to leave he barred the door, and when I tried to phone for help he ripped the phone out of my hand, and he didn't let me go until he was ready to let me go. And l locked myself in my room because I was afraid he would come—and he did. That's not what I'm hired for. I'm not hired to be terrorized or manipulated. And he did that to all of us, so whatever Dixie and Hal said—they say very different things away from Linda and Harry than what came out in the papers. 

Barbara:  Dixie had supported you?

Delta:  Dixie was in that room, too.

Barbara:  And now, even though you were friends, she hasn't supported you. She's supported the producers.

Delta:  Mm-hmm. What hurt the most was Dixie and Hal. I feel a great betrayal and a great sadness. 

Drew:  And they stopped being friends—after Dixie Carter was one of her bridesmaids at her wedding.  

Glen:  Oh. Oh no.  

Drew:  However—

Glen:  However? 

Drew:  However, they made nice because two years after the end of Designing Women Linda Bloodworth-Thomason introduced a new show called Women of the House starring Delta Burke, reprising her Suzanne Sugarbaker role and playing the recently widowed wife of a member of the House of Representatives who takes over her husband's term. That does happen in real life though, right?  

Glen:  Yes.

Drew:  Isn't it weird that we do that? 

Glen:  Yes. Did Suzanne Sugarbaker leave the show to marry a congressman?  

Drew:  I don't actually know how they wrote her off the show. I'm sure it's some bullshit reason. 

Glen:  Yeah. Neither of us were CBS babies.

Drew:  No. Designing Women is on Hulu by the way. I found this after I struggled through Daily Motion. It was on Hulu the entire time. We had to put up with that garbage for a while. 

Glen:  Oh, great. Love those Daily Motion ads. They're very long and not targeted at me at all.

Drew:  Very loud, also.

Glen:  Oh yes.  

Drew:  I'm sure the husband was never even mentioned on Designing Women proper, but it did not do well. It's nice that they managed to make amends with each other but Women of the House only lasted a few episodes. It aired eight episodes, then they burned off another one in August, and the last few only ever aired on Lifetime way after the fact, but it could have been a really good show because the supporting cast is Patricia Heaton, Teri Garr, Valerie Mahaffey who's the mother-in-law on Dead to Me—

Glen:  [gasps!]

Drew:  —and Julie Hagerty from Airplane! 

Glen:  I love all these people.

Drew:  I know. The show should have been aces and somehow it just didn't come together. And then Dixie Carter's follow-up show to Designing Women was Family Law, and Delta Burke did a guest appearance on that. They also made up. 

Glen:  That's nice. 

Drew:  Yes. I'm happy about that. Yeah. I don't know—if this person is listening, I'm really sorry that I can't identify you, but someone just a few weeks ago was telling me that Delta Burke used to live in a big, fancy house above the Lyric Theater on Hyperion and was the nicest person, like just a lovely person who would bring pastries over to other people's houses.

Glen:  Ooh!

Drew:  I know. I would love to be her neighbor. But she no longer lives up there. I don't know where she lives now, but I like to share stories when celebrities turn out to be very nice and polite and helpful. 

Glen:  We get it. You don't like Ellen. Let's move on.

Drew:  I don't [laughs]. Has she ever brought me a pastry? No. No, she has not. I guess recap—you were not a CBS person, but you did eventually see enough of Designing Women to get a good handle for it. Right?

Glen:  Yeah. I still have to remind myself of Annie Potts' character name because I just want to call her Annie Potts.

Drew:  Yeah. I know. Mary Jo Shively.

Glen:  It's actually a very lyrical, lovely name.

Drew:  All the names are. I like that Charlene is actually "Char-lene." Have you noticed? Maybe that's just Dixie Carter's weird speech impediment, but she's addressed more than once in this episode as "Char-lene," which is maybe how they pronounce it in Atlanta. I don't know. Same for me. I watched it in reruns somewhat. There's probably a lot of great episodes I still haven't seen. I had not seen this episode until we watched it just today.

Glen:  A reminder—the episode we already covered, was that a Season 2 episode? 

Drew:  Season 1 or Season 2. I think Season 2 because Anthony was there, right? 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  I don't think he was there in the first season. I could be wrong—but it was early enough. Do you know Dave Quantic?

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  So I follow him on twitter and he posted a thing I thought was very interesting called "Female-Driven Sitcom Characters' Casting Breakdowns." He broke them down into Body, Mind, Heart, and Everywoman: The Body is Suzanne, Blanche, or Samantha; the Mind is Mary Jo, Sophia, Miranda; the Heart is Charlene, Rose, Charlotte; and Everywoman is Julia, Dorothy, and then Carrie.

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  And I would even add from Living Single the Body is Regine, the Mind is Max, the Heart is Synclaire, and the Every-woman is Khadijah. 

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  Is that a standard thing? I'm trying to think of a boy version of that and I'm like—there probably is one, but maybe there's just more four-women sitcoms out in the world because those are four important ones right there. 

Glen:  I can't think of any boy examples. 

Drew:  That's a very hard thing to pull out of nowhere. I tried to think about one and just couldn't come up with one.

Glen:  What are some all-male cast sitcoms? It's crazy that most casts are dominated by men but it's hard to think of a show that's all men whereas we can think of shows that are all women or that have a predominantly female cast. There aren't enough of them, obviously, but—

Drew:  Yeah. The fact that we can't think of—Sanford and Son is sort of that in that the main characters are Sanford, his son, and their friends who are men, but there's an aunt and a girlfriend who are kind of elevated.

Glen:  Yeah. I think it's more that we—you and I—as children would have had no interest in those shows.

Drew:  Yeah. Probably came in, left, and it never even registered with us, and that's why we have no awareness of it right now. Since we last discussed the show there's been noise about a reboot or sequel series from Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, and that's really interesting. I have no idea how it would work considering that two of the principle cast members are now deceased, and I feel like Jean Smart is doing—

Glen:  Other things.

Drew:  —really cool stuff. She's getting a lot of roles we never would have expected she would have gotten from this period in her life, although she's terrific as Charlene. 

Glen:  The greatest role for her is on Frasier, I say.

Drew:  That is a really good role, but she was really good in the first season of—what's the X-Men show that's not an X-Men show?

Glen:  Legion.

Drew:  Legion. Thank you. And Fargo, the second season of Fargo—which again, if you've never seen it, you don't have to watch Season 1 or Season 3 to enjoy it. It's one of the best things in the world. She plays a fantastic character and a true villain.

Glen:  Welcome to our Jean Smartcast.

Drew:  Oh, my god. I kind of know someone that knows her so it's possible that we could ask her to be on the show and then be rejected [laughs]. 

Glen:  Oh, that sounds fun. I need more rejection in my life.

Drew:  [laughs] But it's from Jean Smart. I'm sure she'd be nice about it—I don't know if that's true. I couldn't find Nielsen ratings for this episode but at the very least Designing Women was the tenth most watched TV show this current season. It is tied with Golden Girls. 

Glen:  Oh, that's nice. 

Drew:  Yeah. This episode was directed by David Trainer, who directed a lot of the Season 4 episodes and then also directed every episode of That '70s Show except for the pilot. 

Glen:  That's odd.

Drew:  There's probably other shows that have that, but I don't know of a single other instance of one person exclusively directing the entire run of a sitcom, especially one that was on as long as that show was on. It was kind of a long time.

Glen:  To me it's odd to not direct the pilot where the tone of the show is established.

Drew:  The pilot was directed by Terry Hughes who was a super producer. He was one of the producers of Golden Girls and also was a producer for That '70s Show, so I think that's why. He probably just tossed the reigns off. It was written by Dee LaDuke—D-E-E-LaDuke which is an awesome name. She is the creator of Hey Dude and would later go on to write for and executive produce Girlfriends, which makes sense. It was cowritten by Mark Alton Brown who also wrote for Girlfriends but also contributed additional dialogue to the Tom of Finland biopic that came out a few years ago, so I assume that he is a homosexual—just a guess.

Glen:  "Additional dialogue" is a great credit.

Drew:  Is that something people get credited for ordinarily?

Glen:  Uh—I guess.

Drew:  That's actually the extent of everything I have to say about this episode of Designing Women, Glen. 

Glen:  Oh. Podcast over!

Drew:  Oh. No, no. Preface though. 

Glen:  Oh. Okay. I got it.

Drew:  We have to talk about the episode. I know you have better things to do. 

Glen:  I sure don't.  

Drew:  Okay. So this episode starts out with Charlene talking about stereotypical gendered toys. What do you make of this?

Glen:  [laughs] As an actual topic it's very hotly debated right now about how much society determines gender. In terms of what it means for this episode, it's clearly but, I guess, kind of clumsily trying to tie into the fact that they're going to have a lesbian character. 

Drew:  Preconceived notions about—I guess the big surprise in here is that the woman who turns out to be a lesbian is a former beauty pageant contestant (like Suzanne), and for a lot of people she wouldn't look like a traditional lesbian. She's very, very feminine and pretty, which I guess is one of the reasons that Suzanne does not expect that her friend is a lesbian. So I guess I can sort of—I don't know. It is interesting how Mary Jo says that she tried to even it out by giving the opposite-gendered toy to her children.

Mary Jo:  You know, it's tough keeping sexism out of the toy box, what with all of the commercials on TV and the stuff their friends have. I tried to balance it. Every time Claudia got a doll I'd get her a little Matchbox car and every time Quint got a ball I'd get him some kind of little artsy-craftsy thing.

Charlene:  And what happened?

Mary Jo:  They swapped. 

[audience laughs]

Anthony:  [laughs] Hey, you can't fight chromosomes. Little boys like little-boy things. Little girls like little-girl things. 

Julia:  Anthony, that's not always true.

Anthony:  Well now, most of my toys were passed on to me by girl cousins. Without even thinking about it I turned them into boy toys. You know, Barbie makes one fine ballistic missile when you launch her with a slingshot.

[audience laughs]

Drew:  I don't know. 

Glen:  I think that—were you going to finish that sentence with, "You were a little boy who played with little girl toys"?

Drew:  No. I was going to say that you follow—because of LEGO and other stuff, you probably keep a closer eye on the toy industry than I do and I just wonder where it's at right now, as far as that.

Glen:  Mattel is introducing a non-binary doll, which is pretty cool. The doll comes with hair and clothes to be able to change genders with however you see your doll.

Drew:  That's utilitarian also, in addition to being progressive. It's just like, "Well, this can be whatever role you need to fill in your little imagined play game."

Glen:  Yeah. I think it's less utilitarian and more encouraging broader views of gender, which is nice. Obviously, some toy lines very much stick with "boy toys" and "girl toys." 

Drew:  Yeah. It's surprising how much pink versus black you see on a toy aisle now and how segregated stuff can be.

Glen:  Yeah. They still segregate the aisles, but you will clearly see little girls at Target walking down the action figure line. I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe, despite having limited female superheroes, did sort of open a door for little girls to get into action figures. It's interesting that you definitely see more of the crossover being badass girls liking "boy toys." I don't know if they've really figured out a way to get boys who are not just little burgeoning-gay boys into the girl toy aisle.

Drew:  "The Pondering Well" from SNL.

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  I always wondered why the Easy Bake Oven was not more of a crossover hit because regardless of what you feel about baking you can actually make your own sweets that you can eat, and that seems like it would win out over gendered perceptions—but apparently not.

Glen:  The Snoopy Sno-cone Maker was pretty nongendered.

Drew:  [scandalized] What?

Glen:  Yeah. There's a Snoopy snow cone maker. I never bought it. I always coveted it though.

Drew:  Wait. Why did Snoopy make snow cones? 

Glen:  I don't know. He's also a war pilot. Why—he can do whatever he wants.

Drew:  He's also Joe Cool.

Glen:  Yeah. He's fine.

Drew:  Yeah. Okay. Well, I didn't have that. I feel like I missed out. Okay. So that happens, and then enter Suzanne who has acquired tickets to a benefit event. She doesn't know what charity it's benefiting because she is not the kind of person who would know, but the way she just strides in at "social" and is oblivious to any deeper motivation behind the social thing, made me realize, "Oh, she's kind of a Karen Walker." Even her delivery sometimes is kind of like that.

Suzanne:  I got extra tickets to that charity benefit at Theater of the Stars. Now, all we have to do is figure out a fair way to decide who gets to go with me. 

Charlene:  What charity is it for? 

Suzanne:  Well, how would I know? I didn't buy them they were given to me.

[audience laughs]

Mary Jo:  Giving away tickets for a charity event—now that's a novel way to raise money.

Suzanne:  Don't you know how these things work? They give away tickets to local celebrities like me. Then once everybody hears I'm attending, everybody wants to go. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  Then she sort of tries to rope all of the women into going to this event with her because she has two tickets—free tickets because she's a local celebrity, in her own eyes.

Drew:  She did get the free tickets.

Glen:  She did get the free tickets. What was interesting to me is that if this were not an episode about her accidentally dating a lesbian it would be an episode about her trying to find a date for this event. At no point is anyone just like, "Why aren't you looking for a date? Why aren't you looking to bring a man to this event?" It's very much like, "I need a female friend to go with me to this event."

Drew:  Oh, that's interesting. I didn't even think about that. That is weird. She obviously likes men and—yeah. 

Glen:  Right. In any other episode it would have been a B- or C-plot about her trying to find a date for this event.

Drew:  They could have that shored up pretty nicely by making it expressly an event for women. Like a benefit for something where it was going to be a fashion show or something and a man would not be interested in going.  

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  They did not do that. No. Also, I think it could be an interesting episode talking about the problem of trying to be an adult who wants to make a new friend, which is very, very difficult.

Glen:  Unless you're gay. I feel like people don't talk enough about how easy it is to make friends when you're gay.

Drew:  Suzanne goes through all the criteria of who can be her friend, and it is a very specific set of things including she has to be pretty but can't be too pretty.

Charlene:  Suzanne, why don't you call up some other girlfriends? 

Suzanne:  Because Charlene, if you must know, I don't have any other girlfriends. You three are it. 

Charlene:  Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. 

Suzanne:  You didn't hurt my feelings. I got used to it a long time ago. Somebody like me can't have girlfriends. Let's face it other women are just jealous of my looks. 

[audience laughs] 

Suzanne:  Anyway, all this friendship stuff is is an excuse women use to borrow accessories. 

[audience laughs]

Julia:  Suzanne, I am sure somewhere in that big black address book of yours is the name of one woman who'd get through the evening with you without knocking you down and snatching your earrings.

[audience laughs]

Suzanne:  Well, let's see. Well, she'd have to be nearly as pretty as me so she wouldn't feel insecure. That narrows it down. I mean, I don't want to walk around with a complete dog, but then on the other hand, I don't want someone who's going to divert any male attention from me either. Now, let's see. Oh, here's one. Betty Carson, Miss Congeniality two years running. She's a little slow, but I like that in a woman.

[audience laughs]

Glen:  This was a really good episode for her. Both in terms of the writing and acting. I just thought her character very well skated a lot of lines—not dialogue lines, but just being between awful but not too awful, oblivious but not too oblivious, opinionated but not too opinionated.

Drew:  She doesn't seem like a cartoon at any point. There's episodes where she literally comes off like Miss Piggy, and they don't ever take her to that level. It was very nice. Also, she would like a woman who's a little dumber than her because I think she's insecure about being maybe not as smart as the other girls in the office.

Glen:  Also, in any sitcom when a storyline and the way a character is written reminds us of their very unique character backstory—like when she brings up that she was a beauty pageant winner and things like that.

Drew:  I like how often that does come into her character. It's not a weird thing that's written into the series bible then basically forgotten as the show goes on. It stays a big part of her character. I feel like she decides on who the winner is right then, but when we come back from commercial it feels like they've forgotten. But she picks Eugenia Weeks because Eugenia was nice because, number one, she sprayed glue on her butt.

Suzanne:  Eugenia Weeks. I trusted her to spray my backside before the swimsuit competition. 

[audience laughs]

Mary Jo:  She did what?

Suzanne:  You know, sprayed my rear end with glue so my suit wouldn't ride up.

[audience laughs]

Mary Jo:  Well, if that isn't up close and personal, I don't know what is.

[audience laughs]

Drew:  Which I guess is a thing?

Glen:  Yeah. There's a lot of weird things that beauty pageant contestants have to do.

Drew:  I only know the Vaseline on your teeth from that one Simpsons.

Glen:  Have you ever watched those videos on the internet where they show you what happens to food during food commercials—like mixing glue into things and nailing down the pizza and things like that? Beauty pageants have their human equivalent to that.

Charlene:  Isn't she that TV weather girl who replaced that guy who used to go, "Hello, Georgia!"

Anthony:  Yeah. Hey, I watched her last night. She says it was going to storm today and look at it—sunny and beautiful.

Julia:  She is wrong a lot. 

Suzanne:  Oh, please What does Eugenia know about the weather? I mean, in the talent competition she tap danced in toe shoes, you know? I mean, she was going to twirl these fire batons, too, while she did it—but then that didn't happen.

Mary Jo:  Decided to go with the monologue from Hedda Gabler did she? 

[audience laughs]

Suzanne:  If you must know, Mary Jo, she gave her fire batons to me. Mine had mysteriously disappeared moments before I was supposed to go on. Just as Will Shriner was reading off my name, Eugenia kind of ran up to me and put her fire batons in my hands. She said I needed them more than she did. I went on to win. She didn't even make finalist. That girl sacrificed herself for me.  

Drew:  And I don't think it is necessarily the one from which the "Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia" monologue comes from. I think fire batons were just a big part of Suzanne's life for a few years at least. But she thought that was sweet, and she thinks that she doesn't only have to pay back mean people; she can also pay back nice people [laughs].

Glen:  I like that line. I'm going to try and adopt it in my own life.

Julia:  My gosh, what a beautiful story. 

[audience laughs]

Charlene:  Well, I think that's sweet. 

Suzanne:  Yeah. Well, I like to pay people back. Mostly I like to pay them back for the mean things they do to me, but there's no reason you can't pay them back for the nice ones, too. Eugenia Weeks may have lost that contest but 15 years later she's going to get a prize. She's going to get to be my friend—for at least one night. 

[audience laughs]

Mary Jo:  Kind of makes you wonder what second prize is, doesn't it?

Drew:  [laughs]

Glen:  "Eugenia" is an interesting name, is it not? I don't know that I've ever met anyone named Eugenia. 

Drew:  "Eugenie" is a British name, but "Eugenia," no. Maybe it's a Southern thing. Do you know that it literally means "well-born"?  

Glen:  Oh. How nice for her.

Drew:  Like eugenics. 

Glen:  Oh, dear.  

Drew:  Yeah. Cut to commercial, then they come back. They're like, "I wonder who Suzanne picked," and it's like—you were all there. It's very clear to me that she picked Eugenia, but whatever. And then she enters with Eugenia, who is very beautiful. Also, everyone in this scene is wearing jewel tones and that's something they—it's very pretty to look at. 

Glen:  Yeah. Her outfit was glorious. She looked like some sort of dignitary visiting our country for some reason. Like, "Oh. My husband the ambassador is off at an important lunch while I'm here socializing with you common born." 

Drew:  She is played by Karen Kopins who is the female lead from Once Bitten.

Glen:  [double gasps!]

Drew:  I know. I know.

Glen:  Oh, my god! I haven't posted my yearly posting of the dance from Once Bitten yet for Halloween.

Drew:  Well, get on it.  

Glen:  Oh, my god. I only have a few weeks left to do that.

Drew:  Maybe the Gayest Episode Ever Twitter will retweet you—maybe. I can't promise it though. She also is in Troop Beverly Hills playing Lisa, but I can't remember which character that actually was. 

Glen:  Was her name Kate in Once Bitten? I want to say it's Kate.

Drew:  I didn't write that part down.

Glen:  That's fine.

Drew:  She's third billed, right after Lauren Hutton and Jim Carey. She played Veronica Lodge in a TV movie called Riverdale and Back Again, which aired in 1990, which was all the Riverdale kids coming—I think it was a backdoor pilot for Thirtysomething a la Riverdale because they're all grown up—and Betty is played by Lauren Holly. 

Glen:  I'll have to watch that show.

Drew:  You can see the entire thing online right now. It's actually not bad. I may have watched part of it, but I didn't really know who Riverdale was when I was a kid so it was not as meaningful to me.

Glen:  Well, Riverdale was a town not a person, first of all.

Drew:  [clears throat] Thank you, Glen. People enjoy being corrected. But yeah, wouldn't she make a good Veronica? She looks like an adult Veronica.

Glen:  Yeah. Also, everyone should go watch Once Bitten. 

Drew:  Is that movie—so I know it has a vampire in it. It's been a while since I've seen it. There's like, a gay thing that happens in there, right?

Glen:  Oh, yeah. It's pretty homophobic. It's not great. We can ignore that.

Drew:  No, we revel in that and pick it apart. 

Glen:  Yeah. There's a scene where—ugh. There's a scene where they're trying to see if their friend's crotch has two vampire bites and rather than asking him they try and look at him in the shower and they just grab him and all the other boys scream, "Homo alert!" or something along those lines and go running out.

Drew:  Oh, wow. Wait, why would the vampire fangs be on his penis?

Glen:  Because that's where female vampires drain the blood from—like the crotch area. 

Drew:  Is that really a plot point in that movie? I don't remember that [laughs].

Glen:  Yeah. She has to bite him three times in the crotch.

Drew:  On the—

Glen:  Not on the penis, [Drew laughs] but like, the inner thigh. 

Drew:  Huh. Okay. What a strange film.

Glen:  Throughout the scene, Eugenia drops hints to the other women that she is not heterosexual.

Eugenia:  I sure didn't want to go to that big dinner all alone and my lover and I broke up a few weeks ago... Probably didn't help much that I'm on TV. You know, I couldn't even go into the Pink Giraffe for brunch without everybody hitting on me?

Julia:  The Pink Giraffe?

Eugenia:  Uh-huh... I haven't been feeling like going out much lately. Seems like the only places I go any more are to work and of course my Sisters in Sappho meeting... Everybody else from the pageant circuit won't have anything to do with me since I came out. 

Suzanne:  Well, that's the silliest thing I ever heard. 

[audience laughs] 

Suzanne:  I'm glad you came out. I don't know why you didn't do it in your teens, but better late than never. 

[audience laughs]

Eugenia:  Bless your heart. 

Glen:  The other women are at first very surprised that Suzanne was so accepting of her friend the lesbian—and Suzanne had no idea.

Drew:  Yeah. They have to spell it out to her that she's not a debutante. She's not a debutante that debuted very late in her life. Also, do we still have debutantes? Is that still a thing that happens?

Glen:  I don't know. In an episode of Gilmore Girls it was, but that was a long time ago.

Drew:  I think the closest we have here in California, at least with the people we know, are quinceañeras, which are kind of like cotillions, I guess. But I actually looked it up. I wanted to find out what exactly is a debutant ball because I've never actually been to one. I did not realize it's literally trotting out your marriageable girls in front of all the men and being like, "Look at this one. Look at this one. Come on boys."

Glen:  Yeah. It's like dressage—for women.

Drew:  Kind of, yeah. Didn't really ever think about it that way. Yeah. 

Glen:  I think the laugh-out-loud moment of this scene for me was after Julia explains who Sappho was, Suzanne explains that she thought it was someone's maid.

Drew:  She thought it was a detergent [laughs]. She's like—

Mary Jo:  What did you think she meant when she mentioned Sappho?!

Suzanne:  I didn't know! I thought it was a detergent!

[audience laughs]

Julia:  Well, it's not. Sappho is a woman. 

Suzanne:  Okay. Alright. Well, who is she? Is she somebody's maid?

Julia:  No, Suzanne. Sappho was a famous Greek poet and also a famous Greek lesbian.

Drew:  At what point do you think the residents of the Isle of Lesbos (which was the isle on which Sappho lived) realized that their reputation preceded them? Like, someone was like, "Oh yeah, Lesbos. Yeah. You're this," and they'd be like, "Wait. What? Uh, that's not true. We're known for our agriculture and cheesemaking," or whatever. There has to be a time where—I imagine there were little children who grew up on there and people were like, "When you say you're a 'Lesbian,' you're going to have to distinguish from one and the other." It's just an odd thing to live with. 

Glen:  I feel like you are halfway through writing your historical time travel comedy, Drew.

Drew:  That's like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, but with Sappho?

Glen:  Mm-hmm.

Drew:  That would be cool. Also, I looked up Lesbos on Wikipedia. It is kind of a long time in going down the page before they mention Sappho or women who are into women. It's like, "Come on." I understand, but come on guys—whatever. I think she fairly says like, "Okay. If you guys are so progressive and liberal and accepting of all of this then you wouldn't mind joining me at the bar, too." 

Suzanne:  Fine. I'm glad you all are so enlightened and liberal and what have you. And since y'all feel that way, you can just go with me. See you there. Five o'clock. Oh, and by the way—the name of the place that we're meeting at tonight is Uncle Gertrude's.

Drew:  I actually think that's pretty fair.

Glen:  Maybe. I think we need to point out that she has her own gay panic moment. We always call out men in these episodes for having gay panic. She very much has the same sort of reaction of being taken aback, offended, threatened, and I think if it was a male character doing that we would find it pretty distasteful.

Drew:  It's weird that I just elided completely over that.

Glen:  Yeah. Yeah, Drew. Check your—I don't know. 

Drew:  Privilege?

Glen:  I guess. It's not really checking your privilege—but whatever. 

Suzanne:  I trusted her to spray glue on my butt. 

[audience laughs] 

Suzanne:  She probably liked it. Oh, my lord. What do you think she meant by the little hug at the door? 

Julia:  She probably meant thank you for being a kind and supportive friend and for accepting her for who and what she is.

Suzanne:  Oh, my gosh. Drinks tonight. She asked me to meet her in a bar! Oh! Well, forget that. No, no, no. I couldn't set foot into one of those places. 

Mary Jo:  Oh, Suzanne. Loosen up. It's the '90s.

Suzanne:  Yeah, well—it's not the gay '90s. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  "Uncle Gertrude's" made me laugh out loud. 

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  Sappho being a maid or detergent and then Uncle Gertrude both made me laugh out loud, both because of how she delivers those lines.

Glen:  So gay panic, then commercial.

Drew:  Yeah. We're going to stop with that, so don't have a gay panic yourself—because we'll be back shortly.

Glen:  With more gay panic.

Drew:  With more gay panic, yes.

Glen:  Should we just have called this podcast Gay Panic? 

Drew:  [laughs] That'd be a great name for a podcast.

["Georgia on My Mind" plays]

[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre and their Patreon]

["Georgia on My Mind" plays]

Drew:  We're back. Hi.

Glen:  Welcome back to Gay Panic.

Drew:  And welcome to Uncle Gertrude's! Spoiler—it's not actually a lesbian bar, but they think it's a lesbian bar. My first reaction upon seeing the establishing shot and then the interior of the place is it is gorgeous. It is beautiful.

Glen:  Well, in like a plantation manor.

Drew:  Yeah. That's—

Glen:  Which right away it's like, I don't really see lesbians opening a gay bar in a plantation manor?

Drew:  I have never been to Atlanta, but I imagine not all the buildings look like that. 

Glen:  They don't. 

Drew:  Okay. Inside, it's basically a fern bar. A real-life fern bar with ferns and the Tiffany lamps hanging everywhere and I was like, "I would totally go here." The most un-lesbian thing about it is that it is very brightly lit, but I think that' just how TV gay bars have to work. 

Glen:  Also, it's like a sit-down restaurant type of bar—like, there's no actual bar, there's a waiter who will bring you your drinks. It wasn't until I came to L.A. that I sat down at a place that was like that, or at least a gay bar that was like that. 

Drew:  When they talk about the Pink Giraffe earlier in this episode, they mention that it is a restaurant and bar and Charlene says that she didn't know it was a gay bar until she went to brunch there. 

Glen:  They have great eggs benedict. 

Drew:  [laughs] But food served in gay bars is something that is completely alien to me, but then I found out on this podcast that they serve food at Precinct, which seems like, "Oh." I've never seen anyone eat there.

Glen:  I don't think I'd recommend it. 

Drew:  [whispers] They might be a sponsor so shut up. Say you love the food.

Glen:  I love the food at Precinct, which I have never been to.

Drew:  Yeah. Maybe it's something people eat in the middle of the day, but it's weird. I guess, aside from Hamburger Mary's, I don't really know of any gay restaurants. 

Glen:  I know of some gay bars in Chicago that serve brunch on the weekends.

Drew:  There's that place The Kitchen (next to AKBAR) that sometimes is just full of bears but—

Glen:  Tweet at us with your favorite gay bar food stories. 

Drew:  Yeah. Did you eat something at a gay bar that wasn't a dick but was actual real food and tasted good? Please, tell us that story. That seems like a rare occurrence.

Glen:  One time I was at this bar in Chicago in the dead of winter—yeah, I'm going to keep bringing up Chicago—and sometimes they just randomly would just order pizza and walk around handing pizza to people.  

Drew:  Oh. That's amazing.

Glen:  It was delicious.

Drew:  What a wonderful bar idea. Like free?

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  That's a really good idea. Oh, I love that bar. I want to go to that bar. I wonder why our fucking bars don't do that.

Glen:  Because they don't need to. Because we'll go anyway. 

Drew:  Yeah. Well, we didn't go to Bar Mattachine, and it closed. That's what happens, guys. Comparing this as a potential lesbian bar to the gay bar from the episode of "The John Goodman Show," this is so much nicer. It's just a well-decorated space. 

Glen:  Yeah. As Mary Jo describes what she had pictured—

Suzanne:  Oh, my lord. What if I was just to keel over with a heart attack right now? Couldn't you see the headlines? "Former Miss Georgia US Dies in Lesbian Bar."

[audience laughs]

Julia:  Please, Suzanne, just be quiet and relax. Take deep breaths.

Suzanne:  Are you crazy? Do you want somebody to think I'm all hot and bothered over here? 

[audience laughs]

Mary Jo:  You know, this is a nice place—bright and airy, not at all what I expected a lesbian bar to look like. I know this is terrible, but I had sort of pictured this kind of dark, little cave tucked away under a staircase where you need a secret knock to get in. You know, women in gangster suits dancing the tango and pictures of tennis stars all over the walls. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  She actually very accurately describes the lesbian bar scene in the movie Black Dahlia. Did you ever see that movie?

Glen:  No.

Drew:  With Josh Hartnett? Oh, god. Have a few drinks and watch that movie some night, people it. Is shockingly terrible. I think they thought they were making L.A. Confidential 2, and they so far missed the mark. It is absolutely bizarre. But they have this amazing sequence in a lesbian bar where K.D. Lang is singing on stage and there's all-lesbian lineup of chorus girls, and it's kind of awesome. I don't think it existed in 1940s Los Angeles at all—but yeah, the movie sucks. And then the tennis players. So yeah it's like a Martina Navratilova/Billie Jean King joke, but it could be a lot of people because there are a lot of famous lesbian tennis players. At least a dozen that I looked up. There's been one successful male tennis player, Bill Tilden, and he died in the '50s, and that's it. It's weird because it's such an individual sport. I was like, "Why the hell would tennis be conducive to lesbians being able to come out and still be successful, but not gay men?" It's not like you're participating on a team and you would be facing weird team pressure, right? 

Glen:  I don't know. I don't know sports. 

Drew:  Bill Tilden, by the way, was the number one tennis player in the world for a little bit. Then he was arrested in 1946 on Sunset Boulevard for—

Glen:  For gay things? 

Drew:  —soliciting an underage male—

Glen:  Oh.

Drew:  —with whom he was having sex in a moving vehicle. His career never recovered, and he wasn't able to really coach anywhere anymore. It was really sad. That's what happened to the one openly gay male tennis player ever. Okay. So everyone seems uncomfortable, even Mary Jo and Julia.

Glen:  Julia doesn't seem that uncomfortable. I think of all of them she seems the most comfortable. She also doesn't say anything really.

Drew:  No, and she's the one who tells Eugenia that "We are all uncomfortable." She says that line. But Mary Jo seems very uncomfortable, just by wanting to be a very progressive person. It's a nice example of something that I thought was rare but maybe is more common than I thought where an allegedly progressive person has their own prejudices get revealed. She's uncomfortable.

Glen:  Like that episode of Maude.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Or that episode of "The John Goodman Show."

Glen:  Yep. 

Drew:  These two men come and sit down at a table behind them and they're like, "Oh there's men here."

Julia:  [whispers] If this is a lesbian bar, how come these two men just walked in?

Charlene:  Oh, Julia, get hip! They're crossdressers. 

[audience laughs] 

Charlene:  One of them is probably Uncle Gertrude. 

Drew:  [laughs] And then a waitress comes in and is like, "You're all new. I haven't seen you guys here before," and puts her hand on Charlene's shoulder.

Glen:  To which she says—

Waitress:  Welcome to Uncle Gertrude's. This must be your first time. I've never seen any of you in here before. And what can I get for you, sugar? 

Charlene:  I'm a mother. 

[audience laughs]

Waitress:  I beg your pardon?

Charlene:  I'm a nursing mother, I can't drink. I'll have a club soda. 

Glen:  It was a good recovery. 

Drew:  Yeah, she pulls it right back. And then a woman approaches Mary Jo.

Mary Jo:  Oh, lord there's a woman over there staring at me. 

Suzanne:  Brace yourself, Mary Jo, she's coming over. 

Mary Jo:  Oh, my lord. Julia, pretend to be my girlfriend.

Julia:  I most certainly will not! 

Juanita:  Excuse me. Don't I know you? 

Mary Jo:  No. I've never been here.

Juanita:  No. I don't mean from here. I think it's from the PTA. Aren't you little Quinten's mother? 

Mary Jo:  Uh-huh.

Juanita:  Well, hi. I'm Juanita Todd, Tiffany's mother.

Mary Jo:  Hi. Good to see you.

Juanita:  Well, I just thought I'd come over and say hi.

Mary Jo:  Well, I'm glad you did. 

[audience laughs] 

Mary Jo:  See you at the meetings. Can you believe it? I had no idea. I am so naïve. Why, for all I know—why, the whole PTA could be full of them!

Glen:  No one really comes off looking great in this scene, except for Eugenia. 

Drew:  Charlene actually does. Right before Eugenia shows up she has this nice line where she's like— 

Charlene:  I hope it's not rude, you know, to be in a gay bar and not be gay. 

[audience laughs] 

Charlene:  I mean, I'm starting to know how homosexuals must feel, you know? Not able to be open about who they are?

Glen:  Yeah. Mary Jo also then feels bad that she was worried about how it would come off if she were in a gay bar and she wasn't thinking about were the other parent to be a lesbian the courage it would have taken to come up and say hi to her, even though it turns out she wasn't a lesbian.

Drew:  Right.

Glen:  But yeah, they come around and recognize their own stupidity, but it is Eugenia when she shows up. 

Eugenia:  Why are you all acting so uncomfortable?

Julia:  To be perfectly honest, Eugenia, we are a little bit unnerved this being our first time in a gay bar. 

Eugenia:  A gay bar? Whatever gave you that idea? I wouldn't take you to a gay bar. 

Mary Jo:  You mean this isn't a gay—

[audience laughs] 

Mary Jo:  Oh, now I am embarrassed. 

Eugenia:  No, this place is straight. 

Mary Jo:  Oh. Well, Julia you don't have to pretend to be my girlfriend anymore [laughs]. 

Drew:  That's a very realistic thing, that she would not do that. And stupid me—not having seen this episode before, I was surprised by the reveal. I actually didn't see it coming. I thought it really was a very oddly lit lesbian bar.

Glen:  Oh, no. I didn't think it was going to be a lesbian bar. 

Drew:  Well, you're smarter than me.

Glen:  Okay. 

Drew:  So then act break, and we come back and Suzanne is still having a gay panic. 

Glen:  I thought it was weird that they cut out of that scene without any sort of—I don't know. I thought there would have been some sort of fallout to them being all uncomfortable and Eugenia being like, "Why did you assume I was bringing you to a lesbian bar and why are you uncomfortable when you had previously seemed very comfortable with me being a lesbian?" But they want to delay that confrontation, so the only way to logically get out of that scene is just to cut out.

Drew:  It is weird imagining what else did they talk about. Did they just sit there staring at each other awkwardly? 

Glen:  Yeah. I have no idea what the rest of drinks would have been like after. Like, if I invited a friend to drinks and they brought their three straight friends and we were meeting at a straight bar that they assume is a gay bar and they looked very uncomfortable, I'd be like, "So we should just really discuss." 

Drew:  "We should unpack this a little bit."

Glen:  Yeah. Like, "What do you think is going on here?" 

Drew:  Okay. So I didn't think about that either. That is a very good point and I assume this would be a case of someone using the structure of a TV show to manipulate motivations, so what would be a normal conversation to have just gets some pushed back. 

Glen:  Oh yeah. That's why I like writing for TV, especially half-hours. It has its own challenges, but it's also very freeing because you also have other storylines you can cut to whereas if you're writing a movie people pretty much want to see how that's going to work itself out. 

Drew:  This is why I'm not good at talking about the structure of TV writing. I don't think about that kind of stuff. So now they're back at the office, and they're watching Eugenia give the weather report and they all agree that she is historically bad at predicting the weather, which I think is interesting. It's kind of like a little funny joke to the side, but I think it's interesting in the context of the previous episode we watched where the gay character had to be perfect so the audience would feel bad that he had to die. Like, he was just a perfect little angle boy with literally no flaws whatsoever, and just a few years later they're okay having another gay character who's bad at something—like she sucks at her job.

Glen:  I think I just chalked it up to the fact that in the '80s and '90s weather people were just such an easy mark. We don't get that anymore because we just look at our fucking phones. 

Drew:  Oh, that's true. Yeah. I don't really watch weather reports anymore and constantly look up—

Glen:  Unless there's hurricanes, and we're going to have a lot of those. 

Drew:  Yeah. Also, points against that joke is that they're maybe just implying that a beautiful woman will not be good at a sort of sciency job.

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  She had to get the job somehow. I don't know.

Glen:  What does that mean Drew?

Drew:  She had to be hired for some reason. Either she kind of understands weather or the calculations behind predicting the weather are not part of her job, which is probably much more likely. It probably comes from the National Weather Service and she just reads it. Is that how being a weather person works?

Glen:  That's also how a lot of anchor jobs in general work. They aren't the ones researching and reporting the news, they are reading the news. It's weird that weather people get a lot of flak for just delivering the information in a digestible, entertaining (sometimes) way, but anchors who are doing the exact same thing are seen as revered heads of our community—or used to be. 

Drew:  And then sometimes the anchors chide the weather person for unpleasant weather.

Glen:  Yeah. They're not fucking controlling the weather.

Drew:  [laughs] Not how it works. Did I tell you I read that thing about how people still watch network news? A lot of people watch—

Glen:  Yeah. It's a problem.

Drew:  I just assumed, just because I haven't watched network news—not cable network news but like,  the Nightly News with Lester Holt is very widely watched still, and I thought my parents were the only person who still watched the NBC Nightly News. Didn't know that. Suzanne has jumped to the idea that "Clearly, she's in love with me."

Julia:  Suzanne, why don't you just go to that dinner tonight? I bet you ninety percent of the people there do not know Eugenia is gay. 

Suzanne:  Oh, Julia I don't even care about that anymore. I have a much better reason for not wanting to go.

Julia:  Yeah. What's that?

Suzanne:  [scoffs] Because Eugenia is in love with me. 

[audience laughs] 

Suzanne:  It's as plain as a pig in a parlor. How could you all not see it?

Drew:  Which is—

Glen:  A very common sitcom gay trope.

Drew:  But that's how she would—she's a Blanche. 

Glen:  Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah. And she kind of shitily is saying that she is ditching Eugenia for a lunch date and they're like, "Well, she's going to come looking for you. What do we say?" And she says, "Tell them I'm in Japan with Mother."

Glen:  Is their mother in Japan?

Drew:  I thought the mom was dead, but I could be completely wrong about that because, if I remember right, Bernice (who's not in this episode) is the dead mom's friend and she spends all her time with the daughters because she lost her friend and they're nice to her. 

Glen:  Maybe she's buried in Japan. 

Drew:  That would be weird [laughs]. Designing Women fans, if you understand that joke please explain it to me. She leaves and Anthony's like—

Anthony:  Oh, that's too bad. I was kind of hoping that would work out so Suzanne would stop thinking of me as her best girlfriend. 

[audience laughs] 

Anthony:  That's a role that I would happily relinquish.

Glen:  So weird that he's not gay. Every time I watch this show I'm just like, "Anthony's gay." 

Drew:  We might just think he's gay because he played Hollywood Montrose in Mannequin and that's bleeding over—and that is part of it, but there is something about his delivery, and he's not even slightly gay. They paired him off with Sheryl Lee Ralph in the last season. 

Glen:  Yeah. The last season.

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  But he is so often kind of portrayed as not castrated, but declawed? I don't know. He's robbed of some sort of—I don't want to say "masculine urgency," but I don't know. Maybe that's my own preconceptions coming in, too. Like, whenever you have a man playing submissive to four female roles—that's just my fucked-up categorizing of him.

Drew:  I think it's accurate,  but if we're going to talk about that we also have to talk about how it's extremely awkward that he's the only person of color and he is playing, number one, an ex-con even though they work in that actually he was innocent of the thing that he went to jail for. But he's an ex-con who is subservient to these four women and that is a weird dynamic, especially because this is a show that takes place in Atlanta.

Glen:  In the South, yeah. 

Drew:  Other than him and Sheryl Lee Ralph, I don't know if there are other recurring people of color. Everyone else is white. Maybe that's accurate for how it was back then. Maybe white people would have only talked to white people, but it's something that's hard to not notice today. No one making a show now would be like, "We're going to have one black character. He's going to be an ex-con and he's going to be kind of like—"

Glen:  A servant.

Drew:  Basically. So one episode of "The John Goodman Show," back in the day—there's this episode where the power's out. Do you know what I'm talking about? 

Glen:  Yeah. Oh—yeah. 

Drew:  [laughs] Yeah. Rosanne—I said her name. Her story is like, "I know a story I'll tell everyone," and it's like, "Here's a story about these four princesses who lived in a castle and all they did all day was talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And then one day two of the sisters left and they got two new sisters and it wasn't as good and they killed every man who ever came in, except for one who they kept as a pet." And Darlene's like, "Mom, you're talking about Designing Women," and she's like, "Damn. You guessed it." Not inaccurate. People were aware of that dynamic even back then. Oh, "The John Goodman Show." 

Glen:  You could say "The Connors" because it's—

Drew:  But it wasn't The Connors back in the day, but we can say "The Connors" now. So Suzanne has fled to a sauna, and she's sitting in there covered in towels and I don't know how women participate in saunas. I assumed—I know they can't—

Glen:  Well, they don't jerk each other off like men do in saunas if that's where you're going.

Drew:  Not where I was going. I knew that much. They couldn't show this on TV, but I assumed a woman in a sauna would be topless. Is that accurate? I have no idea what women would wear into a public sauna. 

Glen:  Either way they couldn't be that on TV.

Drew:  No, no. I understand that. Obviously, these women are wearing tons of towels in a sauna and I know that's not accurate, but I'm not sure how naked.

Glen:  Delta Burke is wearing a shit ton of towels—like, above and beyond. So I don't know if that is an actor comfort level.

Drew:  Probably that. It's worth mentioning that she had a very public weight struggle and she got made fun of a lot back in the day for having put on any weight, which is something that is fucked up. Also, in this scene especially, her and the actress playing what's-her-face—they are so beautiful.

Glen:  Eugenia.

Drew:  Eugenia—both of them—because they have less makeup on and their hair's pulled back so you can't really see anything other than their face. Delta Burke has a fucking beautiful face. She has a face that I could see on—

Glen:  I thought you were going to say on a milk carton and I was like, "What?"

Drew:  —a Wonder Woman. In a different world she could have been like Linda Carter (a later Linda Carter). And then Eugenia's also fucking gorgeous.

Glen:  Also could have been Wonder Woman. 

Drew:  Yeah. Dixie Carter could have been a Wonder Woman too. I would have watched that show. It would have been a weird Wonder Woman [laughs]. Never mind. So she's hiding in the sauna because she thinks Eugenia won't be there, but then Eugenia is there.

Glen:  She says that the girls told her where she was. She didn't mention the sauna.

Drew:  She didn't tell the girls she was at the sauna. She said, "Tell them—"

Glen:  The health club.

Drew:  Oh. She actually did say that?  

Glen:  Yeah. No, it checks out. She's not stalking her. 

Drew:  No.

Glen:  There's an old woman with them in the locker room hearing their discussion—which if you had no context you would think this was just two lovers having a quarrel in a very public place—well, not a very public place, but a public place.

Drew:  I would be watching. She's watching this entire thing like a tennis match. 

Suzanne:  I know this is hard for you, but try and control yourself. Now I'm sorry, but I'm just going to have to let you down easy now. I like you, Eugenia, I just don't like you that way and, well, I'm never going to be in love with you. So I hope you can accept that and just pick up the shreds of your life and carry on.

[audience laughs]

Eugenia:  Is that what you're worried about, Suzanne? I know you're straight.

Suzanne:  How can you tell? 

Eugenia:  Radar. 

[audience laughs]

Suzanne:  I'm glad it shows. 

Drew:  She was very proud of her heterosexuality. I guess I understand that. She says that gay people are not out to convert the rest of the world, which is probably some messaging that still needed to get out there back in 1990 when this aired. Eugenia just wants to be friends with Suzanne, and Suzanne's in-character reaction is perfect. She's like, "Oh. You don't think I'm pretty." She's suddenly put off that Eugenia's not in love with her—at which point the old woman gets up and leaves.

Woman:  Oh, this is too much. There should be three saunas here—one for men, one for women, and one for people like you! I am never coming back here again. 

Suzanne:  Oh, who cares what you think? You have more problems than lesbians in your sauna.

[audience laughs] 

Drew:  What's interesting about this is that there is studio laughter in response to her saying that. I'm like, "Oh, that wasn't supposed to be a laugh line." We're supposed to think she's a bigot and you should not be agreeing with her, but some people in the audience thought that was funny.

Glen:  Maybe just give them the benefit of the doubt that it was uncomfortable, like, "Look how bigoted this bigot is."

Drew:  Maybe.

Glen:  Because it's so, so above and beyond, which is what Suzanne needed to see to make her realize, like, "Oh, I see. You probably think that just because I'm uncomfortable with you that I am like her, but I'm not like her. I'm just uncomfortable with you," and it's like, that doesn't really work out. You can't say you're not a bigot and then act like you are.

Drew:  And I like what happens immediately after. She's like—

Suzanne:  I guess you've got to put up with a lot of stuff like that, huh?

Eugenia:  Not too much. It only really hurts when it comes from friends. 

Glen:  Then they bond over the fact that they are both women who go after what they want.

Suzanne:  Maybe you can tell me something. I mean, sexually speaking, I don't get it. What the heck is it that you people do? 

Eugenia:  Actually, Suzanne, I think I'm a lot like you.

Suzanne:  What do you mean? 

Eugenia:  Well, I do whatever is necessary to get whatever I want out of the relationship. 

Suzanne:  Wait. You know, that just doesn't sound like the girl who gave me her fire batons. That was so unselfish. 

Eugenia:  Well, hey, I thought they were out of juice. I couldn't believe it when they still lit up. I figured if I could eliminate you, I could win. 

Suzanne:  You know, I think we're going to get along okay. You know, I mean we think an awful lot alike and everything.

Drew:  So Eugenia says to Suzanne—

Glen:  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Drew:  Okay. Suzanne says, "I mean, sexually speaking, what the heck is it that you people do?" which ties into what we said in the previous episode about straight people just not understanding how gay sex might work, and then Eugenia's response is kind of odd. She says, "Well, actually Suzanne I think I'm a lot like you. I do whatever is necessary to get whatever I want out of the relationship." I don't know how to read that, other than she's saying that—it seems like a very loaded sexual comment?

Glen:  Yeah. If you want to give it a generous reading, she's just trying to deflect from something that she does not want to talk about. If someone came up and exclaimed, "Oh, so how does gay sex work?" I'd be like, "Well, let me tell you about asking someone out for dinner," or something really stupid that would get them to not ask about the details of what goes on in the bedroom.

Drew:  I wanted your answer to be like, "Let's just say that someone puts their penis in someone else's bottom." Nope. Nope. Wrong one. 

Glen:  "Let's just say I put the cart before the horse," and they're like, "What?" 

Drew:  [laughs]

Glen:  I would just—you know. Anyway. There's also a sort of uncomfortable line from Suzanne.

Suzanne:  Listen, I can accept you for what you are. I just don't want you to—you know—direct it towards me. 

Eugenia:  I assure you it's the last thing on my mind.

Suzanne:  Well, you don't have to be insulting! 

Glen:  I hate when people put stipulations on their acceptance. It's not how that works.

Drew:  Right. You're still kind of a dick if you're putting that stipulation on there.

Glen:  Yeah, it's like, "Do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home," and then that awful joke at the end. 

Drew:  Yeah. I don't know why the fuck they ended with this joke. It doesn't make any sense. 

Suzanne:  I am not going to any of those "Sisters of Sapphire meetings." That's just strange. You know what? We can put a man on the moon, why can't we put one on you? I say we can do it. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  Basically, after accepting her friend as a lesbian, she's then saying, "Now that we're friends I can help you get a man."

Drew:  I mean, she's dense and she doesn't—like Blanche has trouble understanding the concept of homosexuality. It's just hard to get it into her head, I guess. But yeah, I don't like that line either.

Glen:  There's no explanation. It's a bad joke

Drew:  I like this episode a lot, otherwise. That is the part I dislike the most about this episode. I just can't imagine why anyone was like, "Yeah. That works."

Glen:  We had gone the entire episode without anyone going up to Eugenia and saying, "But are you sure you're gay? You weren't gay when we knew each other," all the common things of a straight person finding out someone is gay being like, "Well maybe it's just temporary." Like everything we talked about in the Ellen episode about how her parents reacted.  

Drew:  Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Glen:  We'd gone all 21 – 22 minutes without hearing someone say, "But maybe you just need to meet the right man."

Drew:  "Maybe you need a dick. That's what you're missing is a dick." Although apparently she gets whatever she wants out of the relationship without a dick. 

Glen:  She's talking about strap-ons. 

Drew:  Probably. Yeah. End of episode.

Glen:  I thought it was fine. I thought it was good. It didn't break any new ground except for the fact that I was happy to see this representation of a lesbian in that in this episode they're doing the sort of common-gay-man jokes and plot points and applying them to a woman.

Drew:  Yeah. I don't think we've seen anything that's like this. This is, in some ways, a very formulaic gay-panic episode, and I don't think we've seen it done with two women like this before. "The John Goodman Show" episode kind of touches on this but it's a different thing.

Glen:  Yeah, and I do think there's something unique to a woman's gay panic that just reads differently than a man's gay panic and so—I don't know. I liked it. It was a good episode. It had some good jokes.

Drew:  It had a lot of Delta Burke. I feel like the last Designing Women we talked about didn't, and it wasn't as much fun, and she probably had the least to do with the four of them and this one I really—I just like watching her do her thing. I think Delta Burke is really cool, and I hope that if they do do a reboot she gets to have some screentime still playing Suzanne Sugarbaker on a third TV series. Glen, if people want to send you questions about strap-ons and their use is women-on-women sex, what Twitter address should they direct them towards?

Glen:  @iwritewrongs. That is "I" and then write with a "W," or they can wait for me to post pictures about that on Instagram @brosquartz—B-R-O-S-Quartz. Sadly, I'm in the midst of Inktober so I will not be partaking in that content until November. 

Drew:  If you really like stretched the concept a little bit, I think you'd probably find a way.

Glen:  Oh, definitely.

Drew:  Yeah. You can find me on Twitter @drewgmackie—M-A-C-K-I-E—and you can follow this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode. You can also find us on Facebook @GayestEpisodeEver—just search for that. Please go to Gayest Episode Ever to listen to all previous episodes of the show. You can also listen to us on all the different podcatching devices that are in the world and, if you can do it, please give us a rate and review on one of those because those are helpful for every reason you've heard on every podcast ever.  Our logo was designed Rob Wilson. Go to robwilsonwork.com to see a lot of the cool stuff he's doing. Really, he's a much better artist. We should not have been able to get him to design our—

Glen:  Yeah. I don't know how it happened. 

Drew:  Personal favor. And this is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network and we do other shows too, including some new ones that are going actually debut pretty soon.  Please go to TableCakes.com to find out about those things. As we said earlier, we also have a Patreon. We like money. Money helps us do things and money will ultimately help us unlock a secret bonus Patreon that we're very excited to give you once we reach enough money. Please go to patreon.com/gayestepisodeever to find out about how you can support that and what you might get as a reward. Glen, I know people like to play the game of watching a TV show and being like, "Which one would you be?" like, "Are you a Blanche or are you a Dorothy?" or whatever. So my question for you is, considering the cast of Designing Women are you more of an Anthony or a Bernice?

Glen:  I'm more of a Bernice.  

Drew:  Interesting. Okay. I thought you'd be offended by the fact that I didn't let you be any of the four good ones. 

Glen:  [with sadness dripping from his voice] That's fine.

Drew:  Oh, Glen. Okay.

Glen:  Real talk—I've been incredibly depressed while recording this episode, so this is fine.

Drew:  If you'd like to Postmates ice cream to Glen please do that. We will gladly accept it.

Glen:  I would.

Drew:  Yeah. Podcast over. 

Glen:  Bye forever.

Drew:  No! No.

["Don't Cry Tonight" performed by Savage]

Katherine:  A TableCakes production.