Back in the day, a major sitcom doing a gay episode was a big deal. A proper gay episode would get headlines, but it would get the attention of two young guys who were still figuring things out — sexuality-wise and culture-wise. Gayest Episode Ever has screenwriter Glen Lakin and stay-at-home journalist Drew Mackie going through the great and not-so-great gay episodes of sitcoms past.
https://www.gayestepisodeever.com/
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 15 days 6 hours 1 minute
episode 28: Drawn Together Forces Xandir Out of the Closet
“Gay Bash” (November 10, 2004) For better or worse, Drawn Together represents a very real trend in mid-2000s humor. It specifically sought out to tell the most offensive jokes it could get on air, but that’s what makes it surprising that the...
episode 27: Daria Should Have Kissed Jane Instead of Tom
“Dye! Dye! My Darling!” (August 2, 2000) Spend a little time in a Daria fan community and you’ll find folks who ship the title character with her best friend, Jane. The show actually never does a gay episode and only gets the slightest bit queer...
episode 26: Lucy Meets a Drag Queen
“Lucy and Jim Bailey” (November 6, 1972) Basically, Lucille Ball did a solid for one gay performer, but in doing this, she also helped make gays a little less scary for America. Jim Bailey was a female impersonator who who had already made...
episode 25: A Queer History of SNL, Part Four: The Lost Years
People use the term “the lost years” differently when speaking of Saturday Night Live, but this podcast is using it specifically from the time Lorne Michaels left the show after season five up until season eleven. Aside from Eddie Murphy’s...
episode 24: Sex and the City Meets an Effeminate Heterosexual
“Evolution” (August 19, 1999) If you came of age in the late 90s or early 2000s, you live in a world informed by Sex and the City — whether you realize it or not. It’s probably one of the most influential TV shows to air during our lifetimes,...
episode 23: Newhart Meets a Gay
"Homes and Jojo" (May 1, 1989) Newhart is a show about white people who live in the snow, and while 70s-era Bob Newhart sitcom is the one pop culture remembers better, this is the longer-lived, more-Emmy-nominated of the two. What the 80s-era Bob...
episode 22: Jerri Blank is a Pansexual Sex Predator
“Blank Relay” (August 13, 2000) Honestly, we could have picked just about any episode of Strangers With Candy to focus on for this podcast about queer themes, but we ended up deciding on the one where we see Jerri Blank at her most girl hungry....
episode 21: Gimme a Break Transformed Into a Lesbian Perfect Strangers
“Joey’s First Crush” (January 28, 1987) Few other shows changed as much as Gimme a Break, which began as a fish-out-of-water sitcom that had Nell Carter playing mom to three white girls in California but ended up with Nell and her best friend,...
episode 20: The Simpsons Does a Riff on Lesbian Cult Classic
“Lisa the Drama Queen” (January 25, 2009) So here’s an interesting one. In its twentieth season, The Simpson did an episode inspired by Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 Peter Jackson movie that has Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey playing...
episode 19: How Does a Conservative Sitcom Do a Gay Episode?
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (November 29, 2011) Yes, Tim Allen’s follow-up to Home Improvement got branded as the most conservative sitcom on network TV, but is that fair? We’re honestly not sure, because the ninth episode of...