Gayest Episode Ever

Mary Hartman Meets a Gay Couple

This week, in a first-ever solo episode, Drew talks you through not just one episode of the cult series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman instead the whole of the show’s art for its two gay characters, Ed and Howard. What’s remarkable about this nuanced portrayal of a same-sex couple is that by virtue of airing before the AIDS crisis, the showrunners didn’t need to make these two characters angel gays. They’re as neurotic and complex as any of the straight characters on the show, which means...

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: The Ballad of Ed and Howard

Hi, all. This week’s regular episode will be weird in a few ways. For one, it’s going to have me (Drew) hosting solo. For another, it’s about a cult favorite show that the vast majority of our audience has never seen. And for a third, it’s not about one single episode but a single story sustained across 40 or so episodes.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is one Norman Lear’s more important shows, but as a result of the fact that it was only syndicated and never tied...

The Great North Pushes Aunt Dirt Out of the Bunker — and Out of the Closet

“Bear of Beeftown Adventure”(April 7, 2024)

About a hundred episodes later, this podcast is pleased to report that The Great North got even gayer with the season four addition of Aunt Dirt, voiced by Jane Lynch. She’s been living in a bunker for sixty years and in this episode she learns about what it means to be a lesbian in the 2020s.

Listen to our previous episode about ...

Mr. Belvedere Meets a Kid With AIDS

“Wesley’s Friend” (January 31, 1986)

Yes, it’s this episode. If you’ve seen any bit of it, it’s probably the one line delivered by the focus character, and while we will admit it’s a major groaner, it’s not representative of this whole episode. No, this is a Mr. Belvedere “very special episode” that has its heart in the right place and which mostly lands well all these years later.

This is our second Mr. Belvedere outing, and yes, the first one re...

Cartoons That Made Us Gay: Samurai Pizza Cats

“Gender Bender Butterflies!” (January 23, 1993)

We realize there’s a chance you may not have heard of this series, a redub of an anime that said hell to localization and just made something bonkers and weird. We are going to suggest that this might be a show you should have heard of, because on top of the fact that it’s actually pretty funny, it features as its big bad a Paul Lynde-sounding rat named the Big Cheese, who has a penchant for drag and dramatics. If tha...

No regular episode this week

Hi all. I will level with you: I need to skip the regular episode this week. Not only have I got taxes, but I've also moved my base of operations to the kitchen table, where I have been besieged by my dog and also increasingly emboldened squirrels. My desk fell apart and the new desk is late in arriving and podcast editing is just not in the cards.

That said, Glen and I will be recording a CTMUG about Samurai Pizza Cats later this week, and will be back with a regular episode next week....

Titus Is the Real Star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

“Kimmy Goes to Her Happy Place!” (April 15, 2016)

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a funny show. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a flawed show. These two things can both be true simultaneously, and you can not like the plotline given to Jane Krakowski’s character, where it turns out she’s actually Lakota posing as white, and still enjoy other elements of the show. Case in point: Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess) is exactly the kind of messy, selfish, desperate gay character people want...

What’s With All the Orphans in 80s Sitcoms?

If you grew up watching TV in the 80s, you may have noticed that there was a preponderance of… if not shows about orphans specifically then similar shows where the care of children was entrusted to people who weren’t their parents and maybe didn’t know how to raise kids. We’re talking Diff’rent Strokes, Rags to Riches, Punky Brewster, Webster and Gimme a Break, but also The Facts of Life, Charles in Charge, My Two Dads, Full House, My Sister Sam, Silver Spoons, The Hogan Family and ...

My Two Dads Can’t Escape the Gayness of Its Title

“The Family in Question” (May 9, 1988)

It might seem like a joke today, that a show called My Two Dads is about two very hetero bachelors. And it should seem hokey, but don’t let that stop you from appreciating My Two Dads for being a smarter, funnier version of Full House. They debuted the same week, and unlike Full House, My Two Dads actually acknowledges that gay people exist. In this episode, the judge who awarded them custody of their daughter is persecuted in the press as be...

Tablecakes Productions (2018-2024)

Hi all. Because I feel like people might skip through the mid-episode “ad” but also because I wanted to create a space to field questions, I’m writing this post to announce that as of Jan. 1, Gayest Episode Ever is no longer a TableCakes Podcast. Katherine and I came to see that we had different business aims, and so we dissolved the LLC. Moving forward, GEE will exist as an even more independent podcast, but for financial reasons it will be housed under Beyond Sunset, a separate compan...

Gilligan’s Island Does a Body Swap Episode 

“The Friendly Physician” (April 7, 1966)

Sure, Gilligan’s Island may have skewed family-friendly, but its love of genre parody meant that it did a body swap episode in which all of its female characters end up in male bodies. Horny! That’s enough to get our attention, even without the mad scientist bad guy with perversely vampiric sexual energy.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Acknowledges That a Child Seems Gay

“Larry vs. Michael J. Fox” (September 11, 2011)

For better or worse, Larry David is a truth-teller, and the fictional version of him can help but to poke at social taboos. In this Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, Larry suspects that Michael J. Fox may be using Parkinson’s to get away with bad behavior while also insisting that his latest love interest’s seven-year-old child is gay. It’s a lot, but here’s the thing: Larry is often not wrong.

Read 2025-01-29 06:35:50 +0000 UTC View Post

Sailor Moon Meets the (Trans?) Sailor Starlights

“A Night Alone Together: Usagi in Danger” (August 17, 1996)

In our fourth look at Sailor Moon, we’re discussing the final season, which features the Sailor Stars. Canonically, they’re female superheroes who magically become boys in order to remain in disguise, and as a result some Sailor Moon fans consider them to be trans-coded or metaphorically transgender. It’s not really for us to say one way or another, but there’s enough discussion about how to discuss these characters...

The Grand Unified Theory of Why Frasier Seems Gay

“The Matchmaker” (October 4, 1994)

Whelp, it’s our 250th episode (sort of), and we’re celebrating by going back and reexamining our first-ever episode and, really, the reason this podcast exists in the first place: “The Matchmaker” from Frasier’s second season, which the show used to tell viewers definitively that no, despite all appearances otherwise, Frasier Crane is not gay. We’re joined again by 2024-12-18 22:49:51 +0000 UTC View Post

It’s All Relative Was ABC’s Attempt at a Will & Grace

“Pilot” (October 1, 2003)

Even NBC tried to replicate the success of America’s first popular gay sitcom, and this week we’re joined once again by Steven Capsuto to discuss an attempt to bring same-sex parents to prime time. It’s All Relative only lasted a season, but that’s actually longer than most LGBTQ-inclusive sitcoms that followed in Will & Grace’s wake, and for ...

Bob’s Burgers Gives Marshmallow a New Voice

“Hope ’n’ Mic Night” (November 10, 2024)

Long-running animated sitcoms face a unique challenge in having to account for an episode that aired more than a decade previously, and this recent Bob’s Burgers proves that this can be accomplished thoughtfully and deliberately. “Hope ’n’ Mic Night” repeatedly references the season one episode “Sheesh! Cab, Bob?” which introduced Marshmallow to the show but also did a few things that cast trans characters in a less than fla...

No episode this week

Whelp, it was going to be a tight squeeze anyway, because of Thanksgiving, but here's the deal: We had a cool thing planned for this week, and some of you might have been able to guess that something like this was coming. But as a result of shifting schedules, I was not able to get our special guest and Glen at the same time, and for this particular episode, we really need both.

As a result, I don't have time to research out a new episode. This cool celebratory thing will be coming toge...

It’s a Will & Grace Thanksgiving!

“Homo for the Holidays” (November 25, 1999)

What? An episode of Will & Grace that Drew actually likes? Kind of! This season two episode has Jack coming out to his mother over Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s basically the gayest Thanksgiving episode of any sitcom ever. And it’s a good piece of TV with some thoughtful dialogue, even if a lot of the jokes are very representative of that Will & Grace style, which you either like or you don’t. Also: Is Jack McFarland responsi...

King of the Hill Accidentally Explores the Muscle Gainer Subculture

“Bill, Bulk and the Body Buddies” (May 20, 2007)

Can one illustration of a buff Bill Dauterive change your entire life in an instant? Well, for some people, yeah. This King of the Hill outing manages to stuff in a whole lot of imagery that will be familiar to a certain gay subculture. It’s inadvertent — and specifically this episode also features explicitly gay characters as a counterpoint to the rude, crude muscle bros, but there’s plenty to talk about nonetheless in Bill’s...

That Girl Meets the Cross-Dressing Cops

"A Muggy Day in Central Park" (November 14, 1968)

A contemporary of Bewitched, That Girl aimed for a more sophisticated audience than most sitcoms of its era. Not only does it look more cinematic, in a way that sitcoms generally wouldn't until the 2000s, but it's also more clearly a feminist show, where Marlo Thomas plays a woman braving big city life on its own. This episode does that tired thing where gay men, cross-dressers, trans woman and drag queens are conflated down to a single ...

No new episode this week!

Hi, all. We decided to shuffle the schedule. Instead of taking next week off from posting new episodes, we're just skipping this week. It's all in an effort to give my brain something to occupy itself on Election Day, honestly. But next week, Nov. 6, you'll be getting your regular early GEE Patreon. Surprise: It's about THAT GIRL!

Weirdest Episode Ever: Stevil Returns to Terrorize Family Matters

“Stevil II” (October 31, 1997)

There’s a joke to be made about a “scary” episode of a sitcom that was shambling zombie-stye around on CBS when it should have died a natural death on ABC. Nonetheless, here is the long-awaited(?) follow-up to Family Matters’ infamous Stevil episode, in which a murderous ventriloquist puppet murders the Winslow family. The sequel, however, amounts to less ambitious antics, the quality of the Carl dummy named Carlsbad notwithstanding. We watched...

Boy Meets World Does a Scream Parody

“And Then There Was Shaun” (February 27, 1998)

Somehow, Boy Meets World got ABC to say yes to a parody of Scream within the confines of the TGIF lineup. That’s wild enough, but it’s even more surprising what this “it was all a dream” episode lifts directly from the 1996 slasher. Joining us to discuss this unlikely intersection of franchises are the hosts of the Guide to the Unknown podcast, 2024-10-23 05:54:24 +0000 UTC View Post

Bewitched Unleashes the Gay Scourge That Is Uncle Arthur

“The Joker Is a Card” (October 14, 1965)

Nearly two hundred episodes later, we’re finally returning to Bewitched to give Uncle Arthur a proper introduction. And while he’s a big part of Bewitched’s gay fandom, Paul Lynde brings a lot of baggage to the role that taught Americans to laugh at eccentric gay weirdos everywhere.

This episode featured a lot of references to previous episodes, so here are all of those, for your listening pleasure:

• 2024-10-17 22:00:36 +0000 UTC View Post

Karl Is The Simpsons' First Gay Friend

“Simpson and Delilah” (October 18, 1990)

Not only the earliest gay-themed Simpsons episode we’ve ever done, this one is also the first gay-themed episode The Simpsons ever did. And while its character, the enigmatic Karl, doesn’t get to be explicitly gay, we argue about whether having a gay-coded character might have been the show’s way to — in its second season and at the height of Simpsons mania — signal to grown-ups that no, despite the t-shirts, this was not a show for...

A Different World Meets a Potential Lesbian

Heads up: This is the regular Patreon episode that would have normally gone up on Wednesday, but we recorded later. You'll get another regular episode again next week!

“Wild Child” (February 4, 1988)

Officially, A Different World never did a gay episode and there were no queer students at Hillman. Nestled in the middle of the Bonet/Tomei season, however, is an interesting episode about a girl named Cougar, who happens to lend herself to an easy gay reading. We are very stoked ...

Weirdest Episode Ever: Perfect Strangers Does a Bizarre Adult Baby Fantasy

“Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” (February 8, 1992)

This may well be the worst thing we’ve ever watched for podcast-recording purposes. Whom do we have to both blame and thank for this bizarre episode of TV? Nina Matsumoto, Canadian sensation and acclaimed space coyote, who brought this episode to our attention, thus making adult baby play a permanent part of her online persona. Nina, we salute you, even if this episo...

The Beetlejuice Cartoon Is Weird, Gross and Very Queer

“Pranks for the Memories” (September 18, 1991) and “Beetlebones” (September 27, 1991)

Sure, we’ve all thought more about Beetlejuice in the last few weeks than we have in the last few decades, but we come to you today not to discuss the sequel film but the animated spinoff. Henry Giardina returns to explain why this more kid-friendly version of the Tim Burton ghoul lends itself to trans and queer readings.

Listen to Henry’s movie podcast, 2024-09-25 00:10:57 +0000 UTC View Post

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Stops Being Funny to Be Gay Instead

“Mac Finds His Pride” (November 7, 2018)

Twelve seasons in, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia stopped giving Mac the Smithers treatment and let him be gay, but it’s the season thirteen finale we’re talking about because it highlights Mac’s sexuality without making jokes, at least for the third act. The episode received wide praise, but did it also jeopardize the show’s comedic tone in order to make a statement?

Thanks to Dr. Alfred Smith, David Russell and Ally J. Sh...

Cartoons That Made Us Gay: Dexter’s Laboratory

“Dial M for Monkey: Barbequor” (May 18, 1996) and “Sun, Surf and Science” (April 1, 1998)

More often than not, our Cartoons That Made Us Gay episode have us reading against the grain to find LGBTQ representation on a show that wasn’t intended to have anything. That’s not always the case, however, an the first ever Cartoon Network cartoon, Dexter’s Laboratory, features two different segments in which the gayness is right there. In the first, a parody of the Silver Surfer, t...