Transcript for Episode 19: Roy Biggins Has a Big Gay Son

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Wings episode “There’s Always Room for Cello.” 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.

Helen:  Are you sure about this gay thing? I mean, you're a young guy. Have you actually done anything about it yet? 

RJ:  Well, not really. I mean, I haven't found anybody to be gay with. 

[audience laughs] 

RJ:  I think you need someone. 

Helen:  It helps. Well then how do you know you are?

RJ:  Well, I've had these feelings a long time, and I've gone to the library and read a lot—and Donahue did a whole week on it. 

[audience laughs] 

RJ:  You know, you're the first person I've told. But now that I've told you, I feel good. Matter of fact, I feel real good. I feel free. I feel like telling everyone. 

Fay:  Just came in to say goodnight.

RJ:  Fay, I'm gay.

[audience laughs] 

Fay:  Oh, of course you are dear. You're young and healthy. Your whole life's ahead of you. Who wouldn't be gay? 

[audience laughs] 

["Piano Sonata No. 20 in A Major, D. 959" by Schubert plays] [plane engine sounds] 

Drew:  Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the show that looks at the LGBT-themed episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin.

Drew:  And in case that beautiful piano melody didn't tip you off, today we are talking about Wings — specifically the episode "There's Always Room for Cello," but which we are calling—did we come up with a name for it?

Glen:  No. Sure didn't. 

Drew:  But which we are calling "The Cast of Wings Helps a Young Man Come Out." I might switch that out later. Of our new season, this is our first guest who's joined, Jonathan Bradly Welch. Hi Jonathan.

Jonathan:  Hey, how are you?

Drew:  I'm good. We're happy to have you here.

Jonathan:  I'm so happy to be here. Thank you, guys.

Drew:  It is not apparent to listeners, but he's easily the best dressed guest we've ever had on the show.

Jonathan:  I thought that was apparent in my voice. 

Drew:  It might be actually.

Glen:  I just wear a burlap sack [laughter].

Drew:  That's also apparent in your voice.

Jonathan:  We've got a burlap sack. We have a bedsheet over here, and I'm wearing a three-piece suit.

Drew:  Yep. It's very sharp. 

Jonathan:  Thank you.

Drew:  Jonathan, you are an actor, writer, and cohost of a different gay-themed TV podcast called A Special Presentation.

Jonathan:  That's correct. I am. Yeah, David Crabb and I have been hosting this for almost two years. We're coming up on our second year this summer.

Drew:  How is your show different from this show?

Jonathan:  So we get together with our comedy friends, and they come on the show. We just ask them, "What is the show that's no longer airing anymore that you geek out about? What is the show that you feel passionately about?" And if somebody brings it up—and it could be a year off the air or it could be 30 years off the air, and you can still have that feeling about it. We want to talk to you about that. 

Glen:  How many people have wanted to talk about Eureeka's Castle?

Jonathan:  No one!

Glen:  Oh.

Jonathan:  Do you want to come on and talk about it, Glen?

Glen:  No.

Jonathan:  Okay. Fair. I wouldn't either actually.

Drew:  Is there a show that you've just said flatly, "No. We're not going to talk about that"? 

Jonathan:  [laughs] David actually put a veto on Jackass because I think he felt like this current time, this current political climate, we didn't need to embolden toxic masculinity any further. 

Drew:  That's fair.

Jonathan:  Yeah. So he said no to that. I haven't had any that I've had to say no to, but we've had a lot of duplicates.

Glen:  Brisco County, Jr.

Jonathan:  Yes. That's right.

Drew:  That's a good one.

Jonathan:  Yes. She's the Sheriff. I'm waiting for somebody to approach me with that one.

Drew:  I did an episode about Animaniacs.

Jonathan:  You did, and I was really thankful for that because I grew up on Animaniacs.

Drew:  And we get to experience it again very shortly, which is weird.

Jonathan:  I can't wait.

Drew:  Also, I have to say, your podcast makes use of the best TV sound effect in existence.

Glen:  Fart noise.

Drew:  No, the special presentation drums on CBS. 

[CBS "Special Presentation" music plays]

Drew:  It's very dramatic.

Jonathan:  It's something that is over 30 years old, so I think we can use the clip—I hope. We have been for two years. Come at us CBS.

Drew:  Don't say that.

Glen:  Yeah. You just jinxed yourself.

Jonathan:  Okay. Edit that out! 

Glen:  The lawyer ghosts are coming. 

Drew:  Jonathan, since you're the guest, we're going to go with you first. What was your experience with Wings? 

Jonathan:  I grew up in Massachusetts. 

Drew:  Okay. There we go.

Jonathan:  Yeah. There it is. We experienced the craze of Massachusetts NBC primetime programing, so Cheers obviously was a huge thing and started before I was even born and went until I was about 10, I think—10 or 11—and Wings piggybacked off that. Frasier Crane was on an episode of Wings.

Glen:  With Lilith.

Jonathan:  With Lilith? I didn't remember that, and I love any excuse to pull Lilith into the situation. So any of those shows—Frasier, obviously, after Cheers, Wings—they all kind of made sense because I grew up in New England. So to me, Wings was the bougie step-cousin of Cheers.

Drew:  I guess it is bougie. Is that just because Nantucket's fancy?

Jonathan:  It's just because Nantucket's fancy. Everything's smaller.

Glen:  See, I thought it was the trash cousin of Cheers. For listeners who weren't lucky enough to watch Wings growing up, it is about a small Nantucket airport. That's about it.

Jonathan:  That's it.

Drew:  It's Cheers in an airport.

Jonathan:  And we watched—you guys assigned an episode in Season Two, when I think it really didn't quite—it hadn't had its wings yet. 

Drew:  Eh, no.

Glen:  Edit that out [laughter].

Jonathan:  Please, God. But no. Really, I think the show changed when Tony Shalhoub joined the show.

Drew:  Season Three, right?

Jonathan:  Yes. So in the first two seasons you have kind of a really milquetoast sitcom about these two brothers who couldn't be any more opposite if they tried.  

Drew:  One of whom is kind of a creep and an asshole, at least in this episode. 

Glen:  Yeah. Brian's a monster.

Drew:  Yeah. He's really bad. 

Jonathan:  Oh, absolutely. 

Glen:  All my notes are, "Brian's a monster. Is he actually drunk right now?"

Drew:  He did seem drunk. That's weird.

Jonathan:  Brian's always into snacks too. Do you notice that?

Drew:  Oh. He is snacking a lot.

Jonathan:  He's a very snacky person, and I think that that just speaks to his sloppy nature. 

Glen:  Is that 420 humor? 

Drew:  Maybe. I mean if he was high, he would be nicer, though. He's kind of not that nice, either. 

Jonathan:  I think if Wings were written today, Brian would be high—a lot.

Glen:  I think he'd be gay.

Jonathan:  You think he'd be gay? That's an interesting take.

Glen:  No.

Jonathan:  No? 

Glen:  One of them would be gay.

Drew:  Joe would be gay.

Jonathan:  Joe's very—

Drew:  I wish.

Jonathan:  Yeah. Oh, my god. Tim Daly—please. 

Glen:  That's my Wings experience. He is one of the TV characters who triggered my homosexual urges and body dysmorphia. That episode where their home is invaded—like there's a burglar outside—and he spends most of the episode in an open robe.

Drew:  I don't remember that.

Jonathan:  I don't remember that either, what season?

Glen:  I don't know.

Jonathan:  Well, I'm going to go back and I'm going to figure out which episode that was and go watch it. 

Drew:  He has a son who is, I think, a little younger than us, who's also attractive. He's more attractive than his son.

Jonathan:  Makes sense.

Drew:  Yeah.

Jonathan:  He's the brother of Tyne.

Drew:  Isn't that weird? I don't think people realize that Tyne Daly and Tim Daly are brother and sister.

Jonathan:  I always thought that they were like dramatically far apart in age. They're not. 

Drew:  Ten years.

Jonathan:  I thought it was more than that, though.

Drew:  Yeah. He is one of those people that hasn't—he's like a Rob Lowe who hasn't aged a whole lot. But, yeah. 

Jonathan:  And should probably have a better career than Rob—I mean, he has a good career. 

Drew:  He's still acting. He's on something now. I think he's on Madam Secretary now. 

Jonathan:  Madam Secretary, yeah. He plays Téa Leoni's husband, correct? Or ex-husband—however that.

Drew:  I've never seen it.

Jonathan:  I've seen it.

Glen:  I mean, he played Superman. What more of a career do you need? 

Jonathan:  Yeah, you're doing fine.

Drew:  He was a good Superman.

Glen:  He's a great Superman. 

Jonathan:  And Tyne can help you out if you ever fall on hard times. She's still riding high off that Cagney & Lacey money.

Drew:  I don't think Cagney & Lacey is a show we're going to cover on this podcast, sadly.

Glen:  Why not? In that season where we're just going to do—

Drew:  Crime procedurals that are really inappropriate by today's standards? That might be fun too.

Jonathan:  Is there ever an episode where [with Boston accent] Harvey was kind of a—maybe had a questionable sexual episode? Harvey.

Drew:  I don't remember Harvey.

Jonathan:  Harvey was Tyne Daly's husband on the show. He was a husky guy with a mustache, and it really did things to me when I was younger, so if Tim Daly did something to you—

Glen:  I feel like Tim Daly did things to a lot of people. That sounds wrong. I'm sure he behaved admirably.

Jonathan:  Inadvertently. He did it without realizing he was doing it. It was a little Joe Biden-esque, only without physical touch.

Drew:  I was going to ask which Hackett brother you guys thought was most attractive, but apparently, you've already answered that. I was going to say that I think Thomas Haden Church is very attractive, but in this, he's dumb and emotionless. He's like a weird robot on this show, and watching it I was like, "I don't know why I found him attractive back then."

Glen:  I think they want his character to play as autistic. 

Drew:  It's kind of—I mean, Woody from Cheers without emotions.

Jonathan:  Pretty much. It's definitely embodying a mechanic, somebody that you think would be a flight mechanic, somebody who's just—the head's in the engine and he's fixing shit. I can say shit on this podcast, right?

Drew:  You can say all the things.

Jonathan:  Ah, yes. But yeah, he's such a baby on that show. It's hard to believe it was 30 years ago, but he looks like he was 12.

Glen:  He left for that Ned and Stacey money.

Jonathan:  Oh!

Drew:  Yeah. Ned and Stacey—which I think in The Simpsons episode we talk about how it wasn't because of an inappropriate gay plotline that the show got canceled, but it was right after, and it also involved Mr. Belvedere. 

Jonathan:  I don't really remember Ned and—I remember that Ned and Stacey was a thing. Who played Stacey?

Drew:  Debra Messing. 

Jonathan:  Oh!

Drew:  That was the first thing she did, really.

Jonathan:  Oh, wow. Okay. 

Glen:  It's basically the same role.

Drew:  Except she's crasser and more appealing. More interesting. I don't know. I don't think Ned and Stacey is a terrible show. It was actually very funny. It was very mean.  

Jonathan:  I feel that Debra Messing plays Debra Messing in almost everything, including—what was that show that she was on a few years ago with Anjelica Huston? I'm blanking.

Glen:  Smash.

Jonathan:  Smash. Of course!

Glen:  How could you forget Smash? My god. I almost threw a chair at you.

Jonathan:  No, I remember Smash, but it was one of those moments where you just can't think of what that show was. She played a—it was a departure for her.

Glen:  Except she wore scarves [laughter].

Drew:  She's also a departure when she was in that movie about moth-men with Richard Gere where she played a creepy dead wife. Yeah. Weird casting. 

Jonathan:  Debra.

Drew:  So my experience with Wings is that I liked it, and I watched it a lot in reruns. But I noticed, even as it was on, other shows used it like a punchline. Fresh Prince, its network mate, had a joke about "I'm going to do something like, 'White people watch Wings.'" And white people, they do, but—maybe it's because I'm white, but I don't think it's a terrible show. It's much better than a lot of the other lesser must-see TV shows that were on in the '90s.

Glen:  Right. But it's in a universe of much better shows. Being the cousin to Cheers and Frasier, how could you compete? 

Drew:  By the way it's not just Frasier and Lilith. There's also an episode with Cliff and Norm that they are going fishing in Nantucket, but they never make it out of the airport. And then, there's an episode with Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe.

Jonathan:  I think that Rebecca Howe needs more mileage. I think that she may be my favorite character in Cheers—in the Cheers encyclopedia of characters.

Drew:  We're Diane people, but we acknowledge that Rebecca is very special.

Jonathan:  I also like how you were like, "We're Diane people here. This is not a safe space for you."

Glen:  I mean, look at the art on the wall. 

Jonathan:  Yes. It's very—oh, yeah. No. This is really very feathered.

Drew:  It's more 1978 than 1985.

Jonathan:  Yeah. And Kirstie comes in with a severe belt and a lot of eye shadow, and that's more my style.

Drew:  Yes. I can see that.

Jonathan:  Yeah. Absolutely. Big hair.

Drew:  I also should say that Cheers was the TV-acting debut of an actor known as Sam Pancake. 

Jonathan:  Oh! I've heard of him.

Drew:  Yep. Mm-hmm. This show ran for eight seasons on NBC from April 19th, 1990, to May 21st, 1997. One hundred and seventy-two episodes, which explains why it was in syndication forever. The episode we are talking about, "There's Always Room for Cello," aired December 14th, 1990. It was written by the co-creators Peter Casey and David Lee, who also co-created Frasier, and it is directed by the late Noam Pitlik, who directed everything from Taxi to Mr. Belvedere to the original One Day at a Time. This episode in its original airing went right before an hour-long show called Midnight Caller. Do you guys have any awareness of the show?

Glen:  None.

Jonathan:  No.

Drew:  Okay. So it ran for three seasons on NBC. It starred Gary Cole as the host of a radio talk show, and they did an episode called "After It Happened," where a bisexual man who deliberately infects people with HIV was played by Richard Cox—who also plays the killer in Cruising by the way—and Gary Cole encounters Kay Lenz, his ex-girlfriend, and she's like, "Oh. I'm pregnant and HIV positive because this man deliberately infected me." So they're trying to find him, and it ends with another woman who was infected by him—it originally ended with her gunning him down.

Jonathan:  Oh, god. That's a lot.

Drew:  This would be 1988. ACT UP protested, and they were like, "Okay. We're going to kill him off screen." They protested more, and they were like, "Okay. We won't kill him off at all?" And it still got protests. They stormed KRON in San Francisco, the NBC affiliate, and tried to prevent them from airing the episode. They did not. It aired with a disclaimer and Kay Lenz weirdly won an Emmy for her performance in this very controversial episode. Kay Lenz, by the way, voiced Gunther on Adventure Time eventually. Weird right? Following that, they chose to do a follow-up with her character dying, and that was done in cooperation with groups of people who were dealing with the effects of AIDS, and they liked it. That was a very productive thing. But it was a whole fucking mess that—

Glen:  I thought you were going to say they did it in conjunction with Wings. I was like, "Oh, that's how it ties back. That's very awkward. 

Drew:  No. 

Jonathan:  It's just that it aired after. I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think it ties back into Wings, too, in this particular episode. But guys, we didn't handle HIV very appropriately. We didn't handle homosexuality very appropriately in the '80s on TV.

Glen:  Speak for yourself.

Jonathan:  Oh. I mean, I've handled mine perfectly.

Drew:  We've only done one HIV episode so far, and that's Designing Women. Listen to that one. It's very moving, but also probably very manipulative. 

Jonathan:  Very good. 

Glen:  Oh, yes. We talked about angel gays.

Drew:  Yeah, like how back then, in order to be sympathetic like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, they have to be handsome and nice and flawless—which this episode actually departs from in certain ways. But we'll get to the gay part very shortly.

Glen:  Oh. I have a title for the episode.

Drew:  What is it?

Glen:  "Roy Has a Large Gay Son."

Drew:  That's good. I'll say "Roy from Wings" because I'm not sure people know who Roy is.

Glen:  Roy Biggins. There. 

Jonathan:  "Roy Biggins' Big Gay Son."

Drew:  So "Roy Biggins' Big Gay Son" opens with Joe and Fay, who is played by Rebecca Schull. What is Fay's—how would you describe her?

Jonathan:  I think she carries Wings. 

Glen:  Really?

Drew:  Does she?

Jonathan:  Yes. I think she does.

Glen:  I'm questioning that.

Jonathan:  Really? 

Glen:  I'm throwing a flag on the field. 

Jonathan:  I'm going back to a favorite episode of mine that is not this episode, but the story behind Fay is that she's a three-time widow; eccentric in attitude, but not in appearance.   

Drew:  No. She's very conventional and sweet.

Jonathan:  Very, very. So she's like a sweet, grandmotherly type. All three of her husbands named George have died. And in the episode that I love, Brian goes to stay with her because the house burns down or something and they're doing construction to rebuild, and so he has to go stay with Fay. He's watching an Unsolved Mysteries-esque show with Maury Povich on it, and they're talking about this woman who has killed a bunch of young men who have stayed with her with food. So Fay loves to cook, and she's cooking for Brian, and they show an aged photograph of this woman and it's Fay. And so he's now convinced that Fay is a murderer, and he goes through the entire episode thinking Fay's a murderer, and at the end she's like, "I want to have one last dinner with you, Brian, before you move out." So he has Joe and Helen come over, and she has a frozen—it basically ends with a frozen leg of lamb in the freezer that she has. She's carrying it over her head while Brian's trying to fix the faucet from underneath the sink, and he sees her standing over him with this leg of lamb in a baseball-bat position. He freaks out, hits his head, passes out. Joe runs in hearing the screams and Fay turns around and clocks him in the face with the leg of lamb. So Helen then runs in, sees Joe on the floor, Brian on the floor, and Fay just holding this big piece of meat and she screams. 

Drew:  What happens?

Jonathan:  Everybody just has a good laugh about it, and then they catch the actual woman who's played by Rebecca Schull.

Drew:  That is really weird that you bring that up because I did a little bit of research on Fay. I don't understand what her purpose on the show is. Ken Levine wrote for the show. He also wrote "The Boys in the Bar," that Cheers episode we did first season. He says that she was the hardest character he's ever had to write for in his entire career because she's nice and because she's the opposite of Roy. Roy is evil, and you can do a lot with that. Fay is super nice to everyone, mostly, and it's hard to make her funny, but he says, "I had the solution for Fay, but the producers never bought it. I said, 'Have her be as sweet as you want, just make her an axe murderer.' I lobbied for this for years, always to no avail. It would be midnight; we would be struggling for a Fay line, and I would pitch something. No one would laugh, and I'd say, 'Okay. Now picture her doing it with an axe in her hands,' and everyone would laugh." The producers never bit, but he always felt like they were on the fence about it. So maybe he left the show before this episode came out, because that sounds like the realization of his dream Fay episode.

Jonathan:  It was a later episode too. I think it was Season Six or Seven. Can you just imagine, though, if that were just a through-line that ran on the back burner—just an undercurrent of Fay being a murderer?

Glen:  I always read Fay as repressed anger because there's this one episode where either Helen owes her money or Fay owes Helen money, and there was just this anger from Fay about Helen being a cheapskate or something and—I don't know.

Drew:  She did lose her temper sometimes, right? Just a little bit.

Glen:  Yeah, but it was always very chilling.

Drew:  Right. 

Jonathan:  Very chilling, and she would always be very backhanded. So yes, she was really sweet, but if you watch the show, at least in every episode she's giving some kind of backhanded comment, and it's usually to Roy. He's the target of her ire.

Drew:  Because everyone can be mean to Roy, and it doesn't count against them because he's an asshole. The cold open for this—the joke is that Fay has bad handwriting?

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan:  Mm-hmm. 

Glen:  Are you looking to me for a stretched metaphor? I have one.

Drew:  Oh, please. Please.

Glen:  I don't know, because she confuses—the joke is that people confuse her fives and her eights.

Roy:  This phone number you wrote down for me, I can't tell if that's a five or an eight.

Fay:  You know, I've always had this problem. People are always telling me that my fives look like eights. They say, "Fay, your fives look like eights!" And they do. 

[audience laughs]

Roy:  Well is this a five or an eight?

Fay:  Um—a seven. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  So maybe you can stretch into a metaphor about confused sexuality if you wanted to.

Drew:  I think—yeah. Helen goes into that situation thinking it's one thing and Roy thinks it's one thing and they're wrong about it. It becomes something no one really anticipated. Maybe that works.

Glen:  Okay.

Jonathan:  Well, and then this comes back to the idea of her being a murderer because you can't read her handwriting. She's screwing things up. That's an employee that you'd fire, but they can't fire her—not because she's a sweet old lady, but because she'll kill you. 

Drew:  Right. It's interesting that you say how they had that as a through-line in the background of the entire show, but you've heard about the whole—you watched The Office when it was on? 

Jonathan:  A little bit. Yeah.

Drew:  So there is a theory that Toby on that show is the Scranton Strangler. There's a serial killer in the last few seasons that's strangling people, and he ends up serving on the jury for the guy they catch as him, but he's weirdly conflicted about it. And the idea is that he is the actual murderer and he's on the jury that puts this other guy away and he knows that he did something wrong. So, yeah. Look it up, Toby is a secret serial killer.

Glen:  Jesus.

Jonathan:  Well, now I'm into The Office. Here we go.

Drew:  Yeah. It's very subtle, though. 

Glen:  So, the theme song. We all want to talk about that.

Jonathan:  Oh, dear god. 

Drew:  I actually didn't write down what it's called. It's by Schubert. It's a piece of legitimate classical music.

Jonathan:  It's beautiful.

Drew:  Yeah. It's gorgeous.

Jonathan:  It's still playing. The show's been off the air for 20 years. 

Drew:  Right.

Jonathan:  Yes. It's a very long theme song.

Drew:  Yeah. It really cuts into the amount of scenes that are in this 22-minute piece of TV. It's very leisurely. The plane is moving over Nantucket, and it's very screensavery, and it goes on and on and on—

Jonathan:  It goes on for a really long time. You mentioned it's a 22-minute episode that feels, I think, more like an 11-minute episode because when it finished, I thought, "Well where's the other half? What's going on here?"

Drew:  There's no B-plot in this episode, is there?

Jonathan:  Nope.

Drew:  Unless Brian being a creep is the B-plot?

Jonathan:  It might be. I think it might be the just like, "Let's get Roy. Let's make Roy uncomfortable." That's kind of the whole thing.

Glen:  Oh, yeah. He does open with—he's trying to play a prank on that woman. Let's talk about that prank.

Drew:  Tell us about the prank, Glen.

Glen:  He thinks it's super funny that he has switched the signs on the men's restroom and the ladies' restroom as they go and watch a woman go to the restroom—which that airport would be—

Drew:  They're not watching her go to the restroom. They're watching her enter the restroom.

Jonathan:  Yeah. She's walking into the corridor with the bathrooms.

Drew:  Right. 

Brian:  Whoop, whoop, whoop. Battle stations, everyone. We've got a live one on the stairs. 

Rudy:  What's going on?

Brian:  What that unsuspecting woman doesn't know is that the signs on the men's and ladies' rooms have been switched. 

Rudy:  Why?

Brian:  Because if you can't laugh at yourself, laugh at somebody else. 

[audience laughs] 

Brian:  Now, let's watch. 

Jonathan:  So they look upstairs. They look at the balcony—because that's where the bathrooms are. It's not an ADA compliant airport.

Drew:  No. 

Glen:  I had the same thought, like, how would someone in a wheelchair go to the bathroom in this airport?

Drew:  [laughs] They'd go outside, I guess. That's really too bad.

Jonathan:  That's it. Well, you're not flying on these tiny planes. That's not happening for you, so I guess you're not going to go to the bathroom here.

Drew:  So Joe foils the joke because he's like, "Oh, someone switched the bathroom signs," and the joke is that Joe is lame.

Glen:  And the quip Brian has in response is one of the lamest sitcom jokes I've heard in a while.

Brian:  Hey. Somebody switched the signs up here. If I hadn't stopped that lady, she would have gone right in the men's room.

Helen:  What are we going to do with him?

Joe:  [sighs] I don't know. As a child, they took him to have his tonsils removed, but in a tragic mix-up gave him a humor-ectomy. 

[audience laughs]

Jonathan:  Oh. That made me very palpably uncomfortable, to watch it.

Glen:  Yeah. It was a real bad joke, and that's why I was like—that was the first sign I had of Brian being drunk because he's scruffy; his clothes are all wrinkled; and he's moving really oddly. Maybe he's not drunk. I think he's definitely on something though.

Jonathan:  I think the semi-long hair—he's always wearing a jacket to cover up whatever stains are on his shirt.

Glen:  I do think there was a storyline where Brian drinks too much and he had to sober up.

Drew:  I would hope so. I don't remember that. I don't remember him being such an asshole.

Jonathan:  He was kind of—

Drew:  A boor. He's a boor.

Jonathan:  He's a loser, in a way. 

Drew:  Yeah. He's like the cool kid at the back of the bus. He's not unattractive, but he's gross.

Jonathan:  Steven Weber is a very attractive man who plays Brian. And he's played other people, including JFK. 

Drew:  He played JFK?

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan:  He either played JFK or RFK. Do you remember which? It was one of the Kennedys. Good enough for me. And he did a great job by '90s standards.

Drew:  He was in Jeffrey.

Jonathan:  He was, and he's in something now where he plays—a principal? Oh, yes. He's in—

Drew:  13 Reasons Why?

Jonathan:  13 Reasons Why. He was also a principal.

Jonathan:  He was also on a Sci-Fi show we watched called Channel Zero, where he was introduced as if he would be a fairly significant character and kind of pleasant.

Glen:  Nope.

Jonathan:  Yeah, sometimes things don't land. 

Drew:  No.

Jonathan:  Yeah. Like, I worry that you're going to edit me out, like, "That one didn't—we're going to Judy Winslow Jonathan." 

Glen:  That sounds like a lot of work. 

Drew:  That doesn't—

Jonathan:  It's a lot.

Drew:  That would be such a burn on someone, to just completely edit them out of the episode or insert someone else into it.

Jonathan:  Oh, god.

Glen:  Or just, like, Thurman barking every time they spoke. 

Jonathan:  Ha!

Drew:  Yeah, we're not going to do that. 

Glen:  No. 

Jonathan:  Great.

Drew:  Not only because that would be a lot of work, but also that would be a dick move. We're not going to do that.

Jonathan:  Thank you, guys.

Glen:  Shortly after the prank, we get to the meat of the episode and that is that—well actually, no. Roy comes in and brags about his son.

Drew:  One quick thing before that. Helen has gambling debts? Is that a through-line with her, or is that just a one-episode thing that she has gambling debts?

Jonathan:  I think that's happened a time or two.

Glen:  She's bad with her finances. I know that much.

Jonathan:  She has a lot of vices because Helen used to be very overweight. So the whole thing was Helen Chapel is her name, and there was some joke when she was a little girl—and I forget what it is, but it was something like, "Oh, where are you getting married?" "At the Helen Chapel. She's big enough to hold the whole party," or something like that. So she was a big girl. 

Glen:  You seem surprised by this, Drew. Did you forget that?

Drew:  I'm remembering it now, that she was jealous of her sister Casey, because Casey was the pretty one—Casey, who joins in Season Five, played by Amy Yasbeck, whom I love.

Jonathan:  Ooh. She's great.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. It's been a while since I've seen these episodes. I forgot that plotline.

Glen:  But that was one of her two characteristics is she used to be fat, and she runs a lunch counter.

Drew:  And she plays the cello.

Glen:  And she plays the cello, and she's been in love with Joe forever.

Drew:  Played by Crystal Bernard, who got her start as, like, a Christian evangelist Partridge Family that her dad started.

Glen:  That sounds right.

Drew:  If she is still a very conservative Christian, she is not putting any of those attitudes out anywhere, which great. Also, star of Slumber Party Massacre II.

Jonathan:  I was looking her up to see what she's doing today, and I couldn't find really anything. I think she retired from acting over 10 years ago.

Drew:  She does some songwriting. No indication of any marriage or relationship or anything. There's just not a whole lot about her.

Jonathan:  The last photo I found of her in the Google Image search was, she looked pretty much the same but just with short hair now, and she had a hit with Peter Cetera—a duet in the late '80s or early '90s—and I was listening to it last night. I went into a whole thing.

Drew:  We can cut it in.

["Forever Tonight" by Crystal Bernard and Peter Cetera plays]

Drew:  Now, enter Roy Biggins—who is a meaner Newman, like Newman with fewer redeeming qualities, kind of.

Glen:  And more always sweaty.

Drew:  Yeah. He seems like a minor bad guy in a Coen Brothers' movie or something. He's just feisty and hotheaded and hates everybody.

Glen:  Yeah. He looks like someone who would commit to a petty crime and then really fuck it up—like have a heart attack in the middle of slipping the bank cashier the amount of money they want.

Jonathan:  Does his hair daily—I'm pretty sure with shoe polish—and wears a cardigan, not in an endearing Ronald Reagan way but just to cover that balloon of a body that he has—which is fine. Listen. I like them big, so he's doing fine, and he has the last name to go along with his physique. 

Glen:  We get it. You have a crush on Roy Biggins.

Jonathan:  I did actually have a tiny crush on Roy Biggins, but he's such a repulsive individual that it goes away real fast. But no, he's braggadocious and—

Drew:  For no reason. 

Jonathan:  For absolutely no reason. He talks about his son.

[audience laughs]

Roy:  There's an article about my boy, RJ. He's going to be starting defensive tackle for Siasconset High this fall.

Joe:  Oh, really? I played some ball in high school, too.

Roy:  Played semi-pro myself. Had guys like you for lunch.

Joe:  Must have had quite a few of them. 

[audience laughs]

Roy:  Anyway, RJ played his first spring scrimmage yesterday. Made seven unassisted tackles and knocked out the starting halfback. That kid didn't come to for five minutes [laughs].

[phone rings]

Joe:  There's a Kodak moment. [audience laughs]

Roy:  Seventeen years old, got a 19-inch neck.

Brian:  Does it actually look like a neck or does his head go directly into his shoulders? 

[audience laughs]

Roy:  I had that kid pumping iron by the time he was eight years old. His mother used to hate it, but what the hell—she's dead now. 

[audience laughs]

Jonathan:  His wife—we find out later—not dead.

Drew:  I don't remember that either.

Glen:  I don't remember her not being dead, but that joke of his got the biggest laugh of the episode.

Drew:  By the way, a very good actor. He understands this character better than other people understand their characters at this point on the show, and he tosses off that line perfectly. 

Jonathan:  I really love a good "Well, she's dead now," or "He's dead now." I use that in my day-to-day life. Somebody's not actually dead; I'll be like, "Well, he's dead now."

Glen:  I look forward to being referred to in that way. 

Jonathan:  Great. I will tonight. I'll do that for you. But, yeah. He mentions that, and in later episodes you find out that his wife Sylvia—she actually left him in a very embarrassing way. So that kind of goes into Roy's meanness a little bit.

Drew:  Do you remember who plays her, out of curiosity? 

Jonathan:  Yeah. Concetta Tomei.

Drew:  Who's Concetta Tomei?

Jonathan:  She was on that NBC series Providence in the late '90s – early 2000s where she plays—

Drew:  The one with Melina Kanakaredes?

Jonathan:  Yes. She plays her mother, but she's dead. She's a ghost.

Drew:  Oh. Okay. I did not realize that show had ghosts.

Jonathan:  Yes. She is a ghost.

Drew:  Missed that. Okay. I'm surprised.

Jonathan:  Yep. Not translucent or anything. Anyway, continue.

Glen:  Well, Roy's other gem in this bragging about his son is that he believes that aggressiveness is taught—

Roy:  The thing is these kids are not naturally aggressive. You've got to teach it to them. Well, I taught RJ. I taught him anybody tries to get past you, anybody tries to move in on your territory, move in on your business—a business you started from nothing, poured your heart and soul into for 10 years—then you've got every right to crush them like a squirrel in a compactor.

[audience laughs]  

Helen:  More coffee Roy?

Roy:  No, thanks. That second cup makes me a little edgy.  

Glen:  —and that he made his son be an asshole like he is, like that's a great thing.

Drew:  It didn't work though. He's very wrong about his son in multiple ways. He doesn't have an accurate view of his son, but yeah. The fact that he tried to do that does make him a monster. RJ is coming to visit.

Glen:  And I think RJ stands for Roy Jr.

Jonathan:  It does.

Drew:  You're right.

Glen:  Was that actually said in the show?

Drew:  No. That would just make sense. You're right.

Jonathan:  Yeah. I think he calls him Junior at a point, though, doesn't he?

Glen:  Don't take away my victory. This is all I have.

Jonathan:  It's all yours [laughs]. 

Drew:  So we get another moment of Brian being a monster because Helen says that she got a call last night. If I were Steven Weber, I would probably be like, "Why are you writing me like this? This is not a great look for my character."

Glen:  But it was the early '90s, so it probably was a great look for his character. He got to be the bad boy. Unrelated, but I just want to make sure I don't forget: A weird thing about this early season is that they maybe don't have enough characters yet, which is why they bring in Tony Shalhoub and Casey, because whenever they're pulling pranks, they're pulling in random extras like they're named characters. 

Drew:  But as if we were supposed to know who they were. Cheers also does that. There's named-but-unimportant barflies. But it does not work on this show. Maybe it's because it's so well-lit they were just like, "I can't tell who that is."

Drew:  Also, because people who are in the airport—I guess if it's a small airport, there might be commuters that they know. It didn't work. 

Jonathan:  Yeah, but you took a ferry. You know? That was how you got back and forth from Nantucket to the mainland.

Drew:  I have one more stray comment that I forgot to mention when we were talking about Helen. 

Glen:  She's a ghost. 

Drew:  When they were trying to cast that character, the list of actors who they considered for the role but did not hire includes Lisa Darr, Julianne Moore, Gina Gershon, Marcia Cross, Marcia Gay Harden, Rita Wilson, Megan Mullally, and Peri Gilpin.

Jonathan:  What?!

Glen:  Oh, my god. 

Drew:  They really wanted Peri Gilpin for the role, and NBC was just like, "That's not who we want." She was going to be a very different character. And they gave it to Crystal Bernard and rewrote the character to suit her. Here's a really interesting thing though—there was a woman who was a producer on the first season of Wings. She died of breast cancer after producing for one season—very young—and that woman's name was Roz Doyle.

Glen:  Aww. 

Jonathan:  I noticed that! I actually noticed that in the credits and thought that must be how they got the character name for Roz Doyle.

Drew:  It's a very pretty tribute.

Jonathan:  That was actually a really lovely tribute because the character of Roz Doyle is—she's a ball-buster. She's wonderful.

Drew:  Oh, we love Roz.

Jonathan:  Oh, she's fantastic. But it's interesting because I think they were trying to do a lot of things with Peri Gilpin.

Drew:  Oh! They were always trying to put her in stuff and it never worked out for her.

Jonathan:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Yeah. She should be more of a voice actress. She has such a good voice.

Drew:  We have to take a break. I remembered taking an ad break. We're taking an ad break now.

Glen:  Okay, bye. 

[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]

Drew:  And we're back. Hi.

Glen:  That was a long time.

Drew:  [laughs] It was. I'm very rested.

Jonathan:  I had to get up, go home—

Drew:  It's the next day.

Jonathan:  —watch the episode again. Here we are.

Glen:  So Helen receives a phone call. Roy's son RJ wants to take cello lessons.

Drew:  That was the phone call! Sorry. My notes were screwy. Sorry. That was what was going on there.

Glen:  So she's like, "Oh. I guess he wants to keep this a secret." Turns out, doesn't need to keep it a secret. Roy knows, and as Roy shared with the male characters and some random guy named Rudy [laughter] that his son is a genius because his son wanted cello lessons because he has the hots for Helen. Oh! I think the phrasing was, "Dad, I'm horny for Helen."

Roy:  When RJ told me he wanted to take cello lessons I thought I was going to puke, but then he gave me a reason so sweet that it touched this father's heart.

Joe:  And that reason was?

Roy:  "Dad, I'm horny for Helen." 

[characters and audience laugh]

Roy:  Here she comes. Here she comes. Watch this. Helen, I'm curious about your teaching methods. Do you lecture the students, or do you prefer the hands-on technique?

Helen:  Oh, definitely the hands-on. I like the personal contact [male characters laugh obnoxiously]. Am I missing something?

Roy:  Oh no, no, no.

Brian:  No, no, no, no, no. Lowell just made a silly face. Cut it out, Lowell. 

Roy:  Say, I think RJ's going to get a lot out of this. He's been awful shy about performing.

[male characters continue snickering]

Helen:  Don't you worry, Roy. When I get through with him, he'll be taking out that instrument and entertaining the whole family.

[snickering escalates to guffawing] 

[audience laughs and applauds]

Glen:  The way the men celebrate it, it's gross.

Drew:  Lowell does not celebrate it because he's Lowell, and he has no emotional reaction to this, and Joe is very quietly laughing. Everyone else thinks it's hilarious though, by which I mean Brian and a bunch of characters who aren't people we actually know.

Jonathan:  And Roy, of course, who does a dry humping motion into the air, pretending that it's Helen or her cello—I don't know. 

Glen:  They are, like, the same size.

Drew:  Yeah. Cello sounds sad.

Jonathan:  [laughs] It does sound sad, but I'm sure there are some people—anyway.

Drew:  Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. All of the finer-stringed instruments. Yes, my notes literally say, "They all have a good laugh at how RJ will be dicking Helen." [laughter] Next scene! Roy is telling Helen how close he and RJ are. And then enter RJ who, we are told, looks more like his mother every day. He's played by Abraham Benrubi.

Glen:  [gasps] Parker Lewis Can't Lose?

Drew:  That's my primary—

Jonathan:  Yes. Yep. That's right. 

Drew:  I think people a year younger than us would be like, "What show?" They probably know him from ER where he was on literally from the pilot to the last episode—the entire run of ER. He played a desk clerk. He's in 137 episodes of that show. He played Lawrence Kubiac on Parker Lewis Can't Lose, who was like a laconic Neanderthal who beat up people.

Glen:  And made a potato flashlight. 

Drew:  He did. 

Jonathan:  Oh. I don't remember that. I looked at what he's up to now, and he's been in a couple of films and things like that, but he looks like a silver daddy these days.

Drew:  Mm-hmm. He's probably as good-looking as I've ever seen him right now.

Jonathan:  He looks fantastic. Yeah. 

Glen:  Is he supposed to be in high school in this episode or college? I couldn't tell from—

Drew:  He's 17—I think.

Glen:  Yeah. I just made a yikes face myself.

Jonathan:  Yikes.

Drew:  I should have looked up how old he actually is. He was probably in his early 20s, though.

Jonathan:  He's 50 now. I looked him up. So, yeah. He was, I think, about 22 or 23.

Drew:  He's just a big, fucking guy. He's a tall, large man and always has been. Abraham Rubin Hercules Benrubi is his full name—his full given name. 

Jonathan:  How appropriate.

Glen:  He looks like a teddy bear.

Jonathan:  Yeah. Yeah, he does. He's very ruddy faced in this episode, wearing a football shirt with a little puffy, brown hair and he looks very, very innocent. They kind of play up on that. So he's definitely the opposite of his father. Yes. He's a big, burly man. 

Glen:  He smiles like someone who's never read the news.

Drew:  I don't think he has. I mean, the news in the'90s wasn't that bad—but we were talking about how RJ looks. Earlier, we were talking about angel gays and how there was a period where gay men had to be thin, Prince Charming handsome, polite, and all these things. This kid is not a lot of those things. He's not standard good looking. He's a big lunk, and he's played as dumb half the time. He's maybe 25 to 35 percent dumb, right?

Helen:  I want you to know that all of my beginning students are really young, so these books are geared towards them. Please don't think I'm insulting your intelligence. Okay. Now, the mama hen is the whole note, and all the little baby chicks are the eighth notes. 

RJ:  Look. A rabbit. Heh. [audience laughs] 

Helen:  Good. I'm not going too fast for you. 

[audience laughs]

Glen:  Oh, he has to be dumb for this character to work because he makes a lot of choices that are naïve to consequences. That only can only be explained by someone being very dumb. 

Jonathan:  I kind of feel like perhaps the straight version of himself is dumb. He plays dumb. He is a multifaceted personality, and he does that in order to throw his father off. And really, his father thinks that he's pulling the wool over Helen's eyes and taking these cello lessons because he has a thing for Helen, but in reality, Roy's the idiot—and continues to be throughout the episode.

Drew:  So, I guess, yeah. You're right. He has to be kind of clever in order to—like any closeted gay teen has to be. You have to do a lot of acting and pretending and lying, and you have to be good at manipulating people in order to make sure no one finds out you're gay. But he's also kind of dumb about other stuff.

Jonathan:  And let's think about this character's childhood. He doesn't have a mother who's around. He has an asshole of a father. So he had to navigate that and found a love of sport.

Drew:  Mm-hmm, which he's apparently very good at. But even on a physical level, I like that they cast someone who doesn't look like—they could have had him be a hunkier, more standard-attractive person actor to play him, and they didn't. And this is kind of the first time you would see something like that happening in the '90s—because we went through a really bad phase where all of them looked a very specific way and no other way. 

Glen:  The real Age of the Twink.

Drew:  Yeah. Kind of.

Jonathan:  Do you think, though, that that was part of the punchline? It's something that I resent now because I go back to my childhood, especially being in Massachusetts where being gay was a punchline to so many people: "It's just so peculiar that this person would be gay because we have such a stereotypical idea of what gay people are supposed to be like." So there's Wings trying to get another laugh out of the fact that this kid's gay.

Drew:  Yeah. "Can you believe this kid? He's good at sports, and he's gay! Well, that's crazy!" Okay, so maybe that's not so progressive in that sense. That's true.

Glen:  I think yes, but I think what bummed me a little bit more was his realization that he was gay and how he acted upon it played more as a joke and not at all a realistic coming out experience. We haven't gotten there yet in this episode, but basically, he realizes he is gay. He tells Helen. He'll tell everyone, and he does it without consequence and he does it very openly without hesitation.

Helen:  Your hormones are blitzing your brain out and therefore your drawn to an older woman for her experience and for her wisdom. Who could blame you? 

[audience laughs] 

Helen:  But you should be taking the cello because you love it, not because you have some schoolboy crush on me. 

RJ:  I don't have a crush on you. I just told that to my dad so I could take the lessons.

Helen:  It's okay, RJ. You don't have to be embarrassed about it. I know you're attracted to me.

RJ:  I'm not attracted to you. I swear! I just want to take the lessons.

Helen:  You don't have to lie honey. 

[audience laughs]

RJ:  I'm not lying. 

Helen:  Am I getting chunky again? 

RJ:  No. You look nice.

Helen:  Is it my hair? Oh, I knew I shouldn't have let that lady cut it.

RJ:  No. That's not it.

Helen:  Oh. So it is something. What is it? Is it my personality? It's these clothes. Oh, it's the accent. All of the above. Well what is it? Tell me! For crying out loud, you tell me! 

RJ:  It's not you; it's me. I'm gay. 

[audience laughs and exclaims]

Helen:  Oh, thank god. Whew!

Glen:  And yes, he gets that confidence from being a popular athlete at school and for being big enough to beat up anyone who would give him shit. But [it's] still a small community, and I just don't know how a teenager—and he says, "Oh. I've never even fooled around. I've never been gay with someone." So I just don't know where this odd sense of confidence in his homosexuality is coming from and it treats it very matter of factly.

Drew:  Yeah. I believe we looked it up last time we did a script from these guys. They're not gay, and they probably didn't talk to an actual gay person in making this storyline. But, yeah. So that is awkwardly handled. I get stuck on representation issues, even if a character is not well thought out, but if your—we always talk about how depictions of gay men in media give us body dysmorphia.

Glen:  I mentioned it, like, 10 minutes ago.

Jonathan:  Yeah [laughs]. 

Drew:  It's something we all have to deal with. But if a little kid who knew he was gay and looked more like this kid, he'd be like, "Oh, he can be gay. Maybe I can be gay too." That is sort of helpful, I guess. It would have just been better if they ran over any of this with an actual gay person. 

Jonathan:  And it's also a very unrealistic look at what it was like to come out in 1991. It was '91, right? Or '90? 

Drew:  I believe so. Yeah. 

Jonathan:  Yeah. So we're looking at the very early '90s before Ellen came out, and there just wasn't that kind of representation, like you were mentioning. I do remember in that same universe the Cheers finale where Diane has a gay friend play her husband and that person's actual partner barges into the restaurant and it's a very flamboyant exchange where he runs after him screaming, "But Muffin!" And that what you would see on television. You would see these characters being insufferably gay.

Drew:  Oh! I don't think we brought this up when we talked about any of our Diane stuff. 

Glen:  But we will.

Jonathan:  It's the finale, so it's the only Diane-on-Rebecca experience that we have.

Glen:  Not on Reddit, though. So I think that gets to maybe what rubbed me wrong about this gay character. I'm going to preface this by saying I think that the father-son relationship is handled well later in the show. We're just talking about the gay character itself. I think what it is, is all sexual agenda is removed from him—because he's gay. He realizes he's gay. He's never experimented with someone. He shows no urgent desire to experiment with someone. He is—as he'll mention later—he is going to throw a gay pride parade. It's almost as if a child decided that they were gay at five—which at five, I did pretty much know without knowing—and then went through the motions of being gay without the sexual attraction to men part of it. 

Jonathan:  I think it's interesting that you bring that up because one thing that they really don't touch on is why he decides to take the cello lesson. He wants to just take a cello lesson, and so it's almost playing on that idea of gays as being more cultured and more in tune with the arts than straights at times. So that's why he contacts Helen—because he wants to channel that, maybe, into something. So he wants to take a lesson with the cello and learn how to play, and she's the local person who's able to do that.

Drew:  That's interesting. I didn't really think that. But yeah, that's all what we just assume based on the fact that he's gay, but they never put that in the script. Maybe they just thought everyone watching would know that gay men are cultured and they like artsy shit, so that's why he's learning to play the fucking cello.

Jonathan:  Yeah. And so if you think through that lens, then you can see it coming from a mile away—especially because Helen takes five minutes to go on about how it's natural to "have a crush on an older woman like myself" and someone who's older and attractive and everything, and he's like, "Well, I don't have a crush on you." And she goes into this dilemma with her own self-image, probably because she was a heavy girl who's now very pretty, and so she thinks everybody has a crush on her and it's impossible and she's losing her looks, and he finally blurts it out.

Glen:  Yeah. She has a full-on freak-out, and I think we've talked about this on other episodes where a lot of coming out in these shows is framed from the perspective of how the straight character is affected by it.

Jonathan:  Yes.

Glen:  "Oh. You're not attracted to me? Let me have my crisis, and then we'll address the actual subject in the room."

Drew:  He's not even really given a crisis other than—telling Roy is a crisis for everyone else. It's not a crisis for him, because he doesn't seem to think it's a big deal at all. It's all them having to—yeah. 

Jonathan:  That's what it turns into. It turns into being about Roy—Roy, Sr.—and his reactions to the whole thing. But of course, he blurts it out to Helen. They take a commercial break. They come back. Nothing has changed. 

Glen:  She has him reiterate that he's gay—for people who are just tuning in.

Jonathan:  He's sitting there with the cello, still taking his lesson. He learned the one note.

Glen:  And I have to say, every time we see him playing the cello, he seems perfectly good for someone who just picked up the cello.

Drew:  And she's like, "Well how do you know?" And he says, "I've had these feelings for a long time. I went to the library and read a lot and Donahue did a whole week on it." Which actually, I find is kind of interesting. The only reason that struck a chord with me is that growing up without cable, daytime talk shows were one of the only ways young people could see real, live gay people on TV. That was very valuable. 

Glen:  Ricki Lake.

Drew:  Ricki Lake, yeah. Real pioneer there.

Glen:  My god. Yeah. She did a lot.

Jonathan:  But Donahue was really important, and Donahue was the type of person who would play devil's advocate and bring gay people on—bring trans people or people who at the time were referred to as cross dressers because that was kind of how people would create their outlet—and he would say, "Well, why can't you fix this thing? People are going to ask you that." And he would ask it as a journalist instead of putting his own spin, his own questioning on it. Like, "This is the type of question people would ask. I'm going to go ahead and ask it. Why can't you fix it?" And then people would have to talk about that and say, "This is natural," and it would put that out there for people to consume and understand. So I think he was very pivotal. Oprah was very pivotal in helping people to understand. 

Glen:  Are you saying Helen Chapel was not pivotal? [laughter]

Jonathan:  She took her cues from Jenny Jones.

Drew:  Ugh. Oh. No, I was going to give an aside about Jenny Jones, but she doesn't deserve it [laughter]. Unrealistic as it is, he seems very comfortable with it immediately. When Fay walks in, he just tells her "I'm gay," and she—

Jonathan:  [laughs] I love it.

Drew:  And she's—old-lady version of gay. She's like, "Yeah." So that makes sense.

Jonathan:  She's like, "Of course, you're gay. You have nothing but happiness to look forward to. You're young and everything's wonderful."

Glen:  She's definitely an axe murderer. 

Jonathan:  Oh, yeah [laughter]. 

Drew:  I like that so much better.

Glen:  Yeah. We get, basically, a series of moments where RJ just goes around telling everyone that he's gay.

Everyone walks through. They walk through the hanger. It's where the plane is—and probably not the best acoustical environment for a cello lesson, I would think. Very echoey.

Drew:  Probably not. 

RJ:  That was really easy. You know, Donahue said it could be like this. 

[audience laughs]

Joe:  Hey, RJ. Lesson's over?

RJ:  Hey, Joe. Guess what. I'm gay. 

Joe:  Uh, why not. 

[audience laughs]

Joe:  Helen, five minutes ago this kid had a crush on you. Now he's gay. What on earth did you do to him? 

[audience laughs]

Brian:  Excuse us. Excuse us. Just getting a soda. We don't want to interrupt God knows what.

RJ:  You guys aren't interrupting anything. I was just telling Joe I'm gay.

Glen:  The thing where when you write, you write placeholder jokes or placeholder things and—

Jonathan:  [laughs] They stay!

Drew:  "TK, TK. Write better jokes." Yeah. 

Glen:  And then it's like, "Oh, shit. This is due," or "This is fine." You read it later and it's like, "This'll be fine." 

Jonathan:  Yeah. Exactly. "This will do. At least we're not—insert the name of any other Thursday-night sitcom on NBC.

Drew:  We can say Caroline in the City or The Single Guy. That's fine.

Jonathan:  Please say that.

Glen:  I will throw a fit if you start badmouthing Caroline in the City or The Single Guy. 

Jonathan:  Okay. 

Drew:  The Single Guy we'll badmouth. Caroline in the City gets a minor pass because Lea Thompson—that's it. Is there a gay episode of Caroline in the City?

Glen:  I mean, other than the fact that the co-star is? 

Drew:  Every episode?

Glen:   Pretty much, he's a gay actor and pretty much a gay character that they decide to be a romantic interest. Well, I think we've talked about it enough in other episodes. 

Drew:  Okay. And then Lowell is like— 

Lowell:  So you say you're gay, huh? 

[audience laughs] 

Lowell:  Gay? Really? No. 

RJ:  Yes.

Lowell:  No. 

RJ:  What do I have to do to prove it to you?

Lowell:  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

[audience laughs enthusiastically]

Drew:  That's as close to a sexual interaction as this kid gets is saying that line and Lowell being so repulsed by gay anything. That's the implication, right? 

Jonathan:  Mm-hmm. I think, yeah. That's—

Drew:  Like, he's not going to suck your dick, dude.

Jonathan:  It's the most emotion Lowell ever has shown towards anything.

Glen:  Gay panic.

Jonathan:  Yes. That's right [laughs]. 

Glen:  There. Call the episode "Lowell Shows Gay Panic."

Drew:  Gay panic has been the most pervasive theme on this entire show so far—on our entire podcast.

Jonathan:  It's just a big misunderstanding, I think, at the time of what homosexuality meant, and it brings me back to when I was growing up in Massachusetts where this takes place and everybody would say [with Boston accent], "I don't care about gay people. That's fine, just don't do it in my front yard." And it's like, "What are people doing in your front yard? What are straight people doing in your front yard, and is that permissible?"

Drew:  Is that really what they sound like?

Jonathan:  Yeah. Oh, yeah. 

Glen:  That is what they sound like. And if anything—growing up, it was the straight kids having sex in their front lawns.

Jonathan:  Absolutely.

Drew:  Who was having sex on a lawn? That's a terrible idea.

Glen:  I can't say their names on a podcast. 

Drew:  Oh. Right. 

Jonathan:  People were having sex in whatever location they could pull off—under the bleachers, in a shed.

Drew:  Those are protected. The lawn—okay. That's just weird, and also, there's slugs and—I don't know. That's gross.

Jonathan:  I actually had an aunt who said don't [with Boston accent], "I don't care what anybody does just don't do it in my front yard," and it's like, "Nobody's having sex in your front yard. Or is this something—"

Glen:  "Or in your bedroom, Grandma."

[laughter]

Drew:  So does anything more happen in this scene?

Glen:  Yes. RJ wants to tell Roy because he's told everyone, and then Helen's like, "No. You can't do that because of reasons about me." Basically, that Roy would be such a monster about it that it would affect everyone else's atmosphere.

Jonathan:  The day-to-day environment of this very tiny airport would change because his only son is gay and he would be incredibly—not disappointed, but disgruntled.

Glen:  Yeah. It's super fucked up that Helen talks RJ out of telling his father.

Drew:  And then Brian wants to tell Roy himself, and they have to talk him down for similar reasons.

[audience laughs] 

Helen:  I'm going to give RJ his lesson.

Brian:  I'm begging you. You've got to let me tell Roy about his kid.

Helen:  Absolutely not. 

Brian:  But you don't understand. I got all this information building up inside of me. I'm going to hurt something internally.

Helen:  Well if you tell him, I'll hurt something externally. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  But again, Brian seems only interested in other people's suffering in this episode. Ugh. It's so weird.

Glen:  He's very Puckish in this episode. He's just hopping around being like, "I'm going to create hijinks and misery."

Jonathan:  It's not a very deep piece of character development for him. It's just something that I think he does from time to time. It's not like he's continually a shit stirrer. He just is in this episode.

Drew:  Because the characterization is not consistent from episode to episode, I guess. So, the next scene. We get [another little] peek into Fay's life where she asked to be let off early because she's going to her modern dance class, and it seems like they're going to make a randy old-lady joke, but they don't even do that with her. She just—yeah. Whatever.

Jonathan:  I also feel like Rebecca Schull was, like, 52 when this was on [laughs]. She wasn't that old.

Drew:  She's still going. She was just in something. She is alive and kicking and has been acting all this time. 

Jonathan:  Yeah. She was on, I think, a CBS show not too long ago. I forget the name, but she's still at it.

Drew:  Yeah. Good for her. RJ is apparently organizing the Nantucket Pride Parade.

Brian:  Well, he's going to find out soon enough.

Helen:  Okay. What do you mean by that?

Brian:  Word is out all around town.

Helen:  Oh, you're exaggerating.

Brian:  Helen, RJ is organizing a Nantucket Gay Pride Parade. If I don't tell Roy, he's going to learn it from a float. 

[audience laughs] 

Drew:  Which I think is a great way to learn news by the way. 

Glen:  Nope. 

Drew:  A parade float—

Jonathan:  You don't think so?

Glen:  No. I think it's terrible. 

Jonathan:  I'm not a big fan of parades, personally, because you're just sitting there watching everything go by.

Glen:  A lot of litter. 

Jonathan:  Oh, yeah. 

Glen:  But, yeah. Helen, in all of one scene, has gone from, "You can't tell your father," to "You have to tell your father."

Helen:  Look, I know we told you that it would be bad for you to tell your father, but do you know what would be worse? Him finding out from someone else, and that is a distinct possibility because you have been a busy little fella haven't you? 

RJ:  I'm gay and I'm proud. 

[audience laughs].

Helen:  Save it for the parade.

RJ:  Oh, you know about that? I'm the grand marshal.

Helen:  Congratulations. Listen Roy, you better get in here. Your son has something pretty important to tell you, and it can't wait. 

Glen:  But anyway, yeah. It's nice that she has coordinated this coming out for him. 

Jonathan:  Mm-hmm. What an about face, Helen Chapel. 

Glen:  But RJ tells Roy.

Drew:  Roy says, "Give it to me straight."

Glen:  Get it?

Helen:  Listen, Roy. just remember, no matter what you're about to hear, your son loves you. 

Roy:  RJ. I don't know what's going on here, but I've got to tell you I'm a little scared. The way she's talking sounds like you've got some bad news. Don't worry son, your old man can take it. Just give it to me straight. Don't hold back.

RJ:  Dad, I'm gay

[Roy moans and collapses dramatically]

RJ:  Dad? Dad!

Drew:  And Roy faints, which I'm sure someone's parents—someone we know had a parent who fainted when they came out to them.

Glen:  Probably from an unrelated digestion issue.

Jonathan:  Yeah. Definitely. I was going to say, when I came out my mother went, "Oh! Oh, that's okay." [laughter] 

Glen:  Just as long as it's not on my lawn.

Jonathan:  "Just not on my front lawn." But she was like, "That's okay. Do you want coffee?"

Drew:  [laughs] See, that Boston accent sounds—

Glen:  Did you get coffee?

Jonathan:  Yeah. Yeah. It was nighttime, but I had to drive.

Glen:  Oh. That's exciting, though. 

Drew:  That's a special occasion. 

Jonathan:  It's good. It's good.

Glen:  Sometimes when I'm home on a Saturday night writing I make myself night coffee, and the evening feels that much more exciting.

Jonathan:  It's really wonderful, the smell of it and everything. It feels like home. It was definitely a Maxwell House moment. 

Glen:  Oh. Remember that hot college son from the Maxwell House commercials?

Jonathan:  The Christmas one?

Glen:  Is that Peter?

Jonathan:  Folgers?

Glen:  Oh fuck.

Jonathan:  Folgers. It's Folgers—because Peter comes home, and the little girl comes down the stairs—"It's Peter!"

Drew:  Oh! I know who you're talking about. Which is the one where they had the couple—it was an ongoing story of them borrowing coffee from each other and the guy was Giles from Buffy? You know what I'm talking about? Was that Maxwell House?

Glen:  I think that might have been Maxwell House.

Jonathan:  I was thinking about the Country Crock commercial, now, where it was the—

Drew:  It's just hands talking about the butter.

Jonathan:  It's just hands on a tub of butter, and it's the guy who voiced the dad from Rugrats. 

Drew:  Is it? 

Jonathan:  Yeah. It's Stu Pickles. 

Glen:  We should do a special episode where we talk about commercials that made us gay.

Drew:  Actually, that's not a bad idea. There are plenty to pick from.

Glen:  Yeah. The milk commercials. 

Drew:  Oh, because the muscle growth, the transformation growth? 

Jonathan:  Oh god yes.

Drew:  Okay. So Roy doesn't believe that his son is gay. And I will say again, David Shramm is a really good actor. He's not really playing it as a comedy for a few moments, and he's just playing as legitimately distraught. There is a laugh. There's a point where Roy says, "You're not gay," and there's audience laughter. I was like, "What? Why? That's not funny.

RJ:  [slapping Roy] Dad? 

Roy:  What did you say? 

RJ:  I said I'm—

Roy:  No! Stop right there. 

[audience laughs] 

Roy:  You, you go on home. I'm going back to the office. This whole thing never happened.

RJ:  Dad, it's true.

Roy:  Look. I don't know what kind of artsy-fartsy ideas Helen's putting in your head, but you are not!

RJ:  Let me explain.

Roy:  I don't want any explanations. You are not—[whisper-coughs] gay!

RJ:  Am too. 

Roy:  Are not.

RJ:  Am too, damnit.

Drew:  Actually studying these old sitcoms, sometimes there are moments where I'm just like, "I can't imagine why people are laughing right now."

Glen:  And they may not have been laughing. They may have just added it in.

Drew:  Why did they add it in? 

Glen:  Because it's a sitcom, and even if the actor took a moment for themselves to perform their craft and have a real moment of connection with another actor on stage, they could have watched it and said, "Mm, we need this to be funny."  

Drew:  Well, now we're talking about it 20-something years later, so look what you did to us Wings. They agree—the solution Roy offers is that if RJ can beat Roy at basketball, he can be gay and if Roy wins, he can't be gay, which seems like a terrible idea because this kid is clearly an athlete and Roy is clearly out of shape.

Glen:  I mean, that's not why it's a terrible idea.

Jonathan:  Right. Because it doesn't work that way.

Drew:  It doesn't work that way, but even from Roy's perspective—I was like, "You're going to lose. He's going to go to college on an athletic scholarship. You're out of—"

Glen:  "You're going to have a heart attack." 

Drew:  Yeah. "You're going to die."

Jonathan:  Which I thought was going to happen. I thought that was going to be the climax of the thing.

Drew:  I would actually have preferred that, and then if the resolution could have happened at the hospital, that would have been—we should have written this episode.

Glen:  Time machine. Of course, if we invent a time machine, we won't need the writers' room paycheck.

Drew:  It's not about the paycheck, it's about creating better sitcoms. That's why we're going back in time. 

Jonathan:   Yeah. That's right.

Drew:  The only reason nothing else.

Jonathan:  Mm-hmm. For the good of the people.

Drew:  So they start playing and time passes. I don't know how much time. Days? They've been playing. They're both very sweaty. Brian and Joe enter, and they ask what's up.

Joe:  Hey guys, what's up?

Roy:  Nothing. it's none of your business.

RJ:  Dad, it's okay. They know.

Roy:  For the love of Mike—RJ, that's just a figure of speech. 

[audience laughs]

Drew:  Actually, made me laugh. I was actually okay with that. 

Glen:  I hate you.

Drew:  Also, "for the love of Mike" should be the name of a gay rom-com—or "for the love of Pete" is actually how I hear it normally.

Glen:  Yes. It's for the love of Pete.

Drew:  For the love of Pete.

Jonathan:  I think I've slept with more Mikes, though, so that makes sense.

Glen:  You can't throw a beer can in a gay bar without hitting a Mike.

Jonathan:  Of course.

Glen:  I don't know why I'm throwing beer cans, not like—I don't know, a vodka soda? What do people throw in a gay bar?

Drew:  Shade! Shade [laughs].

Jonathan:  Oh, yes. I was a Faultline, and somebody got very excited during a drag show and threw a glass, and it hit me in the head. I haven't been back since.

Drew:  Oh! Did you—

Glen:  Sue?

Drew:  —object to this person? Did you say—

Jonathan:  I don't know who it was. It was a crowd. It was a rowdy crowd at a Boulet Brothers show. 

Glen:  Oh!

Jonathan:  Yeah. I could have sued.

Glen:  Who would you have sued?

Jonathan:  Faultline.

Drew:  Yeah. "Take that, Boulet Brothers."

Jonathan:  Yeah. "Yeah, take that, you."

Jonathan:  "I shut down Fault Line. I shut down the Boulet Brothers."

Jonathan:  Who am I going to get next?

Glen:  You would have been run out of L.A. So they play a bunch more basketball. The joke is, like, it's going to be two out of three—no. It's going to be 26 out of 51, which good job doing math Roy Biggins. 

Jonathan:  And Brian and Joe are sitting there in the window. They're crouched behind the door, looking out the window into the hanger where there's a basketball hoop [laughter].

Drew:  It's a multipurpose hanger. 

Jonathan:  Mm-hmm. This is like a cafetorium, but in an airport and where you take cello lessons.

Glen:  The solution to the Roy-RJ storyline is basically Roy just gets him to admit that there's a one in a billion chance that he's incorrect and that RJ's actually straight.

Roy:  But I'm just getting warmed up [pants].

RJ:  [sighs and pants] Dad, we could play all night, and even if by some miracle you were to beat me, it wouldn't change anything.

Roy:  Are you sure you won't ever change your mind? 

RJ:  Yep. 

Roy:  Ever?

RJ:  Ever.

Roy:  But you don't understand, RJ. I got plans for you—college bowl, the pros—

RJ:  Those are my plans too, Dad.

Roy:  But you're my son. You're my only child.

RJ:  And I always will be.

Roy:  Are you sure there's no chance you'll change your mind? Huh? What do you say? Say one in a million?

RJ:  No.

Roy:  Okay, okay, okay. One in a billion? That's next to nothing. It's practically nonexistent. Come on. What do you say? One in a billion? Just so I can sleep at night, huh? [panting]

RJ:  [sighs and pants] Well, okay. Maybe one in a billion.

Roy:  I knew it! You're not sure. Come on! 

[audience laughs] 

Roy:  Let's start over. Best two out of three.

Drew:  They have a moment before that, though, when he's like, "I had dreams for you. I wanted you to play in college and play pros," and he's like, "I still have those dreams," which is actually important. But then he's almost going to accept it, and then RJ admits "Yeah—" whatever the number is—and then he seizes on that like any parent would. 

Glen:  Yeah. You're right. The dreams line is very good and probably like the sweetest part of this episode.

Jonathan:  I do think that it showed a little bit more humanity in Roy, and because of that, saying that thing—and one thing that bothered me, too, is that he kept saying, "Are you sure you're not going to change your mind?" Very adamant over and over again that this is a mindful decision—that sexuality is a mindful decision. Of course, we didn't come around to that for a number of years, to realizing that that's not the right thing to say, but I think that a lot of kids who came out in that time and even after kind of had to make those—just give their parents a little glimpse of "Well, you know what? If it's going to help you sleep at night and it's going to help our relationship, then okay. I'll let you believe that there's a one in a billion chance that I'm going to end up actually fucking Helen over here."

Glen:  I have an earnest gay question. Do we think that we are past the point where a parent feels sadness when a child comes out because they feel like it's taking a great many options off the table for them?

Drew:  I think you would have to talk to a parent. I can't imagine saying yes because I was born in 1982 and I can only really draw on my experience. Ask someone who has a middle schooler—a liberal person—"How would you actually feel if your son or daughter was like, 'I'm something other than cis-gendered straight'?" Even if it's not taking options off the table, they're probably still concerned. Statistics don't lie. People who are not cis-gendered straight people have higher instance of mental illness, a higher instance of substance abuse. There's a lot of shit that happens to these communities that don't happen to cis-gendered straight people, so yeah. I think if they knew their stuff, they probably would still be a little disappointed, because they know their kid's life is going to be a little harder.

Jonathan:  I think my mother had—two out of four children were gay, and it was exciting for her, but she's very young—a very young mother who grew up along with us in a way. And so for her, it's kind of a good thing, and I think it really just depends on where you grow up, who your parents are, and how they view it. I know parents who are around our age in their mid to late 30s and a little bit older who actually are very excited by the idea that their children are not going to be boring—you know, boring straight people. And my mother, again, in coming out she said, "Well you were never going to have kids anyway. I always knew you were never going to have children, because you never wanted to." So she's like, "It's not like that's what I'm hung up on." She said, "So it's fine."

Glen:  And I think that's maybe what my question's more getting at, like the big picture stuff—like, yes, mental health and the struggles that any gay person is going to deal with. But maybe in the context of the fact that like, hey, we have a gay, married man running for president of the United States.

Drew:  Which is crazy.

Glen:  Which is crazy—

Jonathan:  And he's doing phenomenally well. 

Glen:  Yes, as he should. 

Jonathan:  As of right now. Who knows what's going to happen when this podcast comes out. But, yeah. He's doing really well, and he's doing well with people that you would think maybe wouldn't take that so well—but they are.

Glen:  Yeah. And there's actually a whole bunch of articles about how even conservatives were initially embracing him, because they thought he would never get anywhere and now they're super pissed that they threw even a shred of support behind this person. But anyway, I do think that, that's not become a staple of the coming out conversation with parents anymore—where they start crying and say, "Oh, I'm just so worried that you won't have the things I wanted you to have. Like the career you wanted, the family you wanted," and I just wonder if that's changed.

Jonathan:  I think that, we still very much live in a world where kids who are coming out, no matter how young they may come out, fear the adverse reaction from their parents. Not just crying and the worry of "Oh, this is not what I pictured for you," but parents who would say, "This is not the life that I'm going to let you live," and I think that there's a big fear for kids in coming out because we saw these stories in movies and television for years, for the past few decades where kids would come out and it just would not go well. It wasn't like any other day. That's the rarity. So I don't know, and I do think there are a lot of conservatives raising children in this country and I think that that's the school of thought for them.

Glen:  Yeah. I mean, we came out in the Matthew Shepard era, so there was that on the table. I wasn't dismissing middle of America and conservative country. I think I was just looking at it more from the stereotypical sitcom coming out. Is the trope changing?

Drew:  Most of the newer coming out narratives I've seen on shows that are supposed to take place today are very positive. Remember Fresh Off the Boat? 

Glen:  Yes.

Drew:  And the one I can think of that is less than positive—is the other one that we might do as a bonus episode in the future—which is the Blackish episode where it does not go especially well because it is someone basically our age coming out to someone our parents' age. So it doesn't really count, it's not like a new parent thing.

Jonathan:  I think that in television today, most of the gay characters—especially younger gay characters—are already fully baked by the time we meet them on television, so there isn't as much of a coming out process. It's like we're already seeing that this child is a queer child. 

Drew:  Right, like that show, Champions.

Jonathan:  I've never seen it.

Drew:  JJ Totah is the kid from—yeah. Or even on The Conners, they have a gender nonconforming child and they just have to deal with him. He knows who he is already.

Glen:  Andi Mack has a character who comes out. 

Drew:  As what?

Glen:  Gay. 

Jonathan:  Yeah. You have these characters who—and how did the coming out process go? 

Glen:  Well. Yeah. But it was more handled from the friendship perspective. 

Drew:  As far as it would be depicted TV, I think what they would probably be more interested in doing is having a liberal, progressive parent who is very supportive of gay rights have to deal with their own prejudices if there's a small part of them that is angry, or hurt, or scared about having a gay child. That is the only negative reaction plotline I could really imagine seeing on TV right now. I just think that's where media is. I don't know. 

Glen:  Anyway, I'm sorry I delayed us from talking about the button of the show, which is that Brian and Joe who have been watching this tender-slash-not tender father-son moment for however long they've been watching.

Brian:  It looks like Roy's going to fight this one 'til he drops, huh?

Joe:  Well, it's a tough thing for both of them.

Brian:  Yeah. Hey [laughs], I wonder how you'd feel if I told you I was gay, huh? 

Joe:  You're kidding. You are, aren't you? 

[audience laughs]

Brian:  Come on.

Joe:  Be serious. Everyone knows. 

Brian:  What?! 

Joe:  Come on, Brian. Look at the way you walk. 

Brian:  Yeah. Very funny. Very funny!

[audience laughs] 

Joe:  Well, I'd stay away from the wharf if I were you. Some of those guys have been out to sea a pretty long time. 

Brian:  Hey. Listen, Joe. If you're trying to prove that you've got a sense of humor, I'm not biting. 

[audience laughs] 

Brian:  What's wrong with the way I walk?

Joe:  Nothing really. It's hardly noticeable. You were right guys. Brian does walk funny. 

Brian:  What?! I mean, what?

[Wings's outro music plays]

Drew:  As we've mentioned before in this show, I don't know how to walk properly. And when I have to think about what walking gay versus walking properly is, I can't move anymore. That was the one relatable thing Brian did in this episode, because he can't walk because he's thinking about it.

Glen:  I describe "walking gay" as if you're a cartoon character being lifted by the smell of a pie. 

Jonathan:  Yeah, because you're always carrying your head up.

Glen:  Yeah. You're up a little, and your butt's a little out.

Jonathan:  When I was thinner and, like—when I was a twink in my twink days, I was carried by the sound of my shoes and I felt that I chose my shoes appropriately. If I had a nice leather-soled shoe that would click upon the sidewalk, it would just make my butt stick out a little bit more, and it would make my chest puff out. 

Glen: You sound like a chicken [laughter].

Jonathan:  Yeah. Absolutely. Like, just going to the slaughter. I saw this parody of a Golden Book and it was The Boy with the Busy Walk, and I was like, "Oh, my god! There it is."

Drew:  Oh, no. Yep. That's it. 

Jonathan:  A busy walk—and I think that's walking gay because you have a busy walk.

Drew:  Which yeah, it makes sense that's how people would think, but maybe you just have stuff to do. You're busy.

Jonathan:  Now, I just lumber around. [I've] given up.

Drew:  We're all slumped over now. That's three decades of being gay [laughter]. So, yeah. It ends with that, and it ends with Roy wanting to challenge his son to play more basketball. RJ comes back five seasons later. Roy is born on February 29th, so he has only one birthday every four years. So he's having a big Roy birthday. It's his 11th birthday, so it's at Chuck E. Cheese or something, and RJ and his partner show up. And Roy is happy to see RJ, but when RJ tries to explain who this man is, Roy can't deal with it and can't process what's happening. So hurt, RJ leaves, and Roy has to confront his issues.

Jonathan:  And tell him that his mother is alive [laughter].  

Drew:  I don't think she's alive. I think that might still be before she comes back. But I like that he came back because a weird thing about almost all of the gay characters we've talked about in this entire fucking podcast is that they show up once to teach straight people a lesson and then to turn to dust and float away because they have no purpose once they've taught people what being gay is. And I really—actually, I don't think a single one of them ever come back. I'm running through all them in my head right now.

Glen:  Which is why we should talk about the sequel episode—in another episode. 

Jonathan:  I actually think it's interesting because I didn't walk Wings religiously, and I certainly didn't watch every episode and there are only a few that stand out now. But I never thought that Roy had a child. You hear about his former wife from time to time. You never hear about anything else, and so I just never thought that he had a child until I came across this episode. 

Drew:  I don't recall him ever mentioning it, other than these two episodes.

Jonathan:  He's not a very multifaceted character. He's very mean

Drew:  He's like a stinky-Wario-dickhead type.

Jonathan:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Do you have any other thoughts about Roy Biggins or gay? Any thoughts about gay?

Glen:  I think it was overall a well-handled episode—

Drew:  For 1991, mm-hmm. 

Glen: —from the perspective of the father-son coming out.

Jonathan:  All of my thoughts are about gay [laughter]. Always. No. I think I had issues with it at times because of the choice thing, because they hammered it home—but also, because as far as a television sitcom episode goes, it just felt very one-note. And that's my biggest critique of it, really. Like, that's it? That's all we have? And I think that's why it was very short and just felt succinct.

Drew:  No B-plot. Again, no real B-plot to speak of.

Jonathan:  No. 

Glen:  Yeah. It was also an episode that didn't give much to its main characters other than Helen.

Drew:  Roy gets a bit. Roy gets—a bit.

Glen:  Yes, Roy is a main character, but he's not like one of the brothers.

Drew:  No.

Jonathan:  Helen's insufferable.

Drew:  Dude, what is that green shirt, by the way? It looks like—

Glen:  She always dressed gross in this show [laughter].

Drew:  It looks like a bowling shirt, but I was literally looking at it like, "What is that?" I don't understand what this garment actually is.

Glen:  She dresses worse than Marcy D'Arcy, and that is saying a lot [laughter]. 

Jonathan:  I mean, listen. She is running a lunch counter versus being a bank teller that's constantly promoted and demoted to the drive up, so she does have to slum it a little bit with her clothing. She's definitely buying things at Zayres, some nice little smart two-pieces.

Drew:  I'm happy that you knew off the top of your head what Marcy D'Arcy's job was.  

Jonathan:  Oh, yeah.

Drew:  Yeah. You knew your stuff.

Glen:  That should have been a test we gave at the beginning of the episode [laughter]. All our guests should have to do this really obscure—it's not even obscure. But just a sitcom quiz. 

Drew:  And then be like, "The reason we don't have a guest on this episode is that this person did not know the answer to these questions, so we told them to leave."

Jonathan:  "We sent them home. They did not know that Peg's favorite flavor of ice cream was tabaki and clams.

Drew:  Is that it, really? 

Jonathan:  Yeah. Tabaki and clams?

Jonathan:  Yeah. They were like, "Mom we got you the tabaki and clams," and they have the generic ice cream tub. And it says it in, like, Mama's Family font, "Tabaki and Clam." 

Drew:  That make sense.

Glen:  What did the Bundys put in their signature sandwich?

Drew:  I don't know.

Jonathan:  Oh, I don't know. 

Glen:  Tang.

Drew:  Oh. 

Jonathan:  Ugh!

Drew:  I remember that Peg leaves all of her glasses up so they collect dust so it's hot chocolate, and then if enough dust collects in it then that's how you make porridge.

Jonathan:  Oh, god! [gags] 

Drew:  This is coming on the heels of our Married… with Children episode, but we just can't stop talking about Married… with Children. Off the top of your head can you think of any episode of Mama's Family that would work as a gay episode? I really want to talk about Mama's Family.

Jonathan:  Ooh, there has to be. There has to be.

Drew:  I've been looking at episode descriptions, and I would love to do something with Mama's Family. I can't think of a—basically, I need to bring people on to talk about how much we wanted to see Bubba naked as children.

Glen:  Really?

Jonathan:  I definitely—I mean, kind of.

Drew:  Twitter agrees with me.

Jonathan:  I kind of would. Yeah. Absolutely. 

Drew:  He really fuckin' hot. Anyway. Allan Kayser still looks good. Jonathan, where can we find—first of all—your podcast.

Jonathan:  Yep. So you can go wherever you listen to podcasts—on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play. It's A Special Presentation [CBS drums play]. We have almost 80 episodes. I'm really proud of it. So I'm very happy we keep churning them out weekly. So please go take a listen, rate and review. We would appreciate that.

Drew:  And then you, yourself—where can people find you on social media? And if they want to see performances, where are you occasionally performing? And what theaters?

Jonathan:  So I am actually doing a show coming up at UCB, at Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles called Sunday Night Sex Talks [on Saturdays/on Saturdays 01:19:55]. That's coming up this month. I have appeared on RISK! which is an ongoing storytelling show in Los Angeles and New York and a podcast. I believe I'm going to be on the podcast soon. So you can take a listen there. That's a fantastic venue. And you can also follow me on social media @JonathanBWelch on Instagram and Twitter.  

Drew:  Mr. Glen?

Glen:  That's me.

Drew:  Where are you?

Glen:  Oh, Jesus. I'm usually just in my room. On Twitter @IWriteWrongs—that's "I" and the "write" with a "W." And on Instagram, @BrosQuartz, B-R-O-S Quartz. Boy, my mumble is really coming out strong today.

Drew:  We're doing good. I am Drew Mackie. I am on Twitter @DrewGMackie. Please follow this podcast anywhere you'd normally find a podcast. Please subscribe to us. Please give us a rate and review. If you know someone who is gay and likes TV, can you please tell them? Just send them the link to an episode you like and be like, "Well you're gay, listen to this TV podcast." That actually is the best way to grow our audience because people will take [a personal] recommendation from someone you know a lot more seriously than they'll take a fucking Facebook ad—and I don't want to pay Facebook money anymore. So please do that if you like our show. Also give us a rate and review. 

Glen:  Where can people find you, Drew?

Drew:  I said that.

Glen:  I don't listen to you.

Drew:  I said on Twitter. You can find this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode, and then we're on Facebook—just search for Gayest Episode or Gayest Episode Ever, I can't remember which one it is. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. If you want to learn about some of the other shows on our network, please go to TableCakes.com. If you want support other shows on this network go to Patreon.com/TableCakes. Unless you guys have any more Roy Biggins information, I think we're done.

Jonathan:  You can follow Roy Biggins at— no [laughter].

Glen:  I'd go to that. No. I just keep thinking of the episode where he had a stress doll that he kept petting because it just seemed like a nice mirror to the Family Matters episode where Carl has stress and goes—

Drew:  "Three, two, one"?

Glen:  "Three, two, one. One two, three. What the heck is bothering me?" Roy has a similar sort of mnemonic device.

Drew:  I think about Carl Winslow's stress mantra—not on a daily basis, but several times a week when I have to deal with stress, because I thought that  would work, and I didn't understand that it's a joke because it really doesn't work. Yeah. Anyway, I have problems. I'm broken. This podcast is done.

Jonathan:  Bye!

Glen:  Bye forever. 

["Gau" by Nobuo Uematsu plays]

Katherine:  A TableCakes production.