Gayest Episode Ever

"A Tale of Two Lesbians" (June 19, 2009) It's not exactly incorrect that you can summarize The Goode Family as "What if King of the Hill but liberal?" But that description makes it seem like Mike Judge's follow-up to KotH didn't have potential. It did, and just a few episodes in, it was world-building in a way few other series did, by giving viewers not just one lesbian couple but two — and they w...

Content warning: In discussing plotlines on Soap, we do bring up suicide and, very briefly, sexual assault. "Episode 4.1" (November 12, 1980) * Finally! It's one of the biggest cult favorite sitcoms of all time *and* it's also a show famous for having a LGBT character in the main cast. The only reason it's taken us this many years to tackle Soap is that it's so much more serialized than mostly any...

"Jonathan the Gymnast" (November 18, 1986) Technically, Who's the Boss? never did a gay episode, but because Danny Pintauro's sexuality looms large over this sitcom, many episodes seem a little gayer as a result — and this episode especially so. In it, Tony and Angela step into the kitchen to have a frank discussion of why Jonathan is not like other boys, and it really comes off like Who's the Bos...

"Sons and Lovers" (January 16, 1996) This is an honest-to-God follow-up to our previous Wings episode , which was all about the series antagonist, Roy Biggins, finding out his son was gay. Five seasons later, someone at Wings thought to ask "Hey, what if that gay character didn't cease to exist the moment that first episode ended?" This episode marks one of the few times that a one-off gay charact...

"The Man We Love" (June 30, 1996) Last week, we looked at Married… With Children's take on an anti-Friends. This week, we decided to look at the last episode of a show that aired the previous season on Fox. While it was not designed as a response to Friends, it nonetheless managed to solve some of that show's major problems. Namely, it's racially diverse, there's a queer character in the opening c...

"Enemies" (April 14, 1996) You may recall a late-series installment of Married… With Children that shifted focus away from the Bundys and onto an apartment of young sexy people who apparently despised each other. This was "Enemies," a kinda-sorta send-up of Friends that never saw the light of day beyond this one episode. Our theory is that it was a reformatted spinoff that at one point was going t...

"It May Look Like a Walnut" (February 6, 1963)   It's not the first "weird" episode that a sitcom ever did, but it's probably the most famous: the second-season installment of The Dick Van Dyke Show where it departed from the usual formula and became a sci-fi B-movie. It turns out to be a dream, of course, but you actually aren't sure until the final moments, and it's still one of the stranger seq...

"Morticia and the Psychiatrist" (September 25, 1964) This year, we're celebrating Halloween with one of the two most Halloween-tastic TV families of all time — and no worries, because we talk plenty about the other one too. Joining us to discuss the second episode of The Addams Family is Ted Biaselli , director of original series at Netflix, who shares some of his experience developing the new Add...

"Fizbo" (November 25, 2009) People have been asking us to cover this show basically since we started the podcast, and so this week we finally decided to cover it… by looking into an episode no one wanted us to do. In our heads, the most interesting part of the show is Cam and Mitchell, and the most interesting part of Cam and Mitchell is Eric Stonestreet's portrayal of Cam. He's straight, but we s...

"The Boys' Night Out" (February 13, 1983) More than a hundred episodes later (of All in the Family but also of this podcast), we return to the Archie Bunker primary universe to find out if everyone's favorite bigot got over his homophobia. The answer: kind of? But that is probably just the result of season after season of broadcast TV sanding off his rougher edges. Check out our sponsor, Spaces !...

"There Is Nothing Like the Dames" (February 17, 1990) Believe it or not, Mama's Family has a deeply queer history. While the final result of — the syndicated revival that returned to TV after NBC canceled the it — bears little of that, this episode goes over all the ways a recurring sketch on The Carol Burnett Show originally told the story of a queer-coded artist who can't relate to his family ba...

"Cougars" (November 29, 2007) As comedically successful as it might be, 30 Rock is a very straight show. That's why our best pick for a queer episode is one where the sexually interesting narrative is the C plot and it ends with Judah Friedlander's Frank convincing himself he can't like guys because he doesn't fit prescribed definition of gay. This episode is ultimately harmless but indicative of...

"Stealing Nikki" (November 26, 2000) Go figure: It's our longest episode yet, and it's about a show you might not even remember! We were fortunate enough to get Talking Simpsons co-host Henry Gilbert back for a second go-around, and we decided to make use of his encyclopedic knowledge of professional wrestling. Lucky for us, there is in fact a sitcom that discusses pro wrestling and queerness in t...

"My Hair Lady" (February 15, 2004) Welcome to season six of Gayest Episode Ever! True, season don't really mean anything on this kind of podcast, but we are back from our summer hiatus and we're super eager to get back into talking sitcom queerness. We're kicking off this season with our fourth look at King of the Hill. It's an interesting one in that it has (presumably) straight writer Wyatt Cena...

Hi. This is the fourth and final installment of our summer rerun series wherein we send out old episodes that we think are good but perhaps didn't get all the attention they should have. This Wings episode is actually our least-listened-to episode, and we're pretty sure that is a result of Drew naming it originally "Roy Biggins Has a Big Gay Son." We're betting that forefronting the fact that it's...

It's another summer rerun! This time, of our 17th episode, which never really pulled in the numbers we thought it should. We swear it doesn't suck! "Lez Be Friends" (April 28, 1997) For many kids watching sitcoms in the 90s, Amanda Bearse would have been one of the first actors they would have known to be openly gay. That's what makes this episode so special. She'd put in her time on Married… With...

This is a summer rerun of an episode that originally aired July 30, 2018. We're posting not only because Harley and Ivy went from subtextual lovers to full on romantic partners on the HBO Max series but also because we've got a new Batman: TAS episode of Cartoons That Made Us Gay, which you can listen to here . Excuse the echo! It was 2018 and we didn't know better! "Harley and Ivy" (January 18, 1...

"Phil's Assertion School (September 23, 1977) Sanford Arms was NBC's attempt to continue the world of Sanford and Son without either Sanford or the Son. It didn't work, and of the eight episodes produced, only four ever aired. That said, it's second ever installment not only introduced a gay character but also it became the first black cast sitcom to ever do a gay episode with an out gay person of...

It's our first-ever summer rerun! And we're doing this one in preparation for a full-length, main feed bonus episode next week, where we're talking about Sanford Arms, the sequel series to Sanford and Sun. Enjoy! "Lamont, Is That You?" (October 19, 1973) Norman Lear for the win! This podcast probably won't go in depth on '90s classics like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters or A Different Wor...

"Roomie for Improvement" (November 4, 1992) Al Borland is not gay. This episode makes a point of saying that he is a heterosexual, despite how many of his (comparatively) immasculine qualities might indicate otherwise. However for some, Richard Karn's sensitive flannel man is an example of a kind of guy some of us would grow up to like and some of us would grow up to be: big, bearded, and free to...

"A Fine Friendship" (February 6, 1995) One hundred episodes later, we return to The Nanny to find out what happens when Fran Fine mistakes a straight guy for a gay guy. This episode essnetially works as an inverse to the first Nanny episode we covered, right down to Fran being horrified by a gay-seeming person being straight rather than delighted by a straight-seeming person being gay.  Watch Matt...

"Halloween" (October 30, 1996) Considering that every other major Must See TV sitcom did at least one gay episode, it's surprising that NewsRadio didn't — especially when you consider the fact that its lead actor, Dave Foley, jumped straight to NBC from Kids in the Hall, which experimented with gender and sexuality a lot more freely. This episode was as close as we could find to a real gay episode...

"Game Night" (December 12, 2017) Right off the top of the bat, we need to admit that yes, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a show about cops. There's no getting around that. We try our best to discuss how to weight its copaganda status against every other aspect of the show, and while we're not going to try to sell anyone on this show, we will say that dismissing it means skipping over one of the better epis...

"A Fish Called Selma" (March 24, 1996) In this episode, The Simpsons send up the glass closets of Hollywood and what some actors are willing to do to pass for "normal." Troy McClure explicitly says he's not gay, but the way the industry treats him for not fitting the leading man mold and what he does to find success anyway parallels what a lot of gay stars have done and what some are still doing....

"Janet(s)" (December 6, 2018)   Spoiler warning: We totally spoil The Good Place, so if you have not seen it and want to go in fresh, go do that!   It seems weird that The Good Place was a show on a broadcast network at all, much less one that ran for four seasons and gave viewers so much to think about. Perhaps one of the more surprising aspects was D'Arcy Carden's Janet, who rose above "Busty Al...