Transcript for Episode 37: Caroline's Assistant Is a — Wait, He's Straight?
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Caroline in the City episode “Caroline and the Gay Art Show.” 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.
Richard: I don't understand it. I mean, I just don't understand it. I mean, if the gallery is just for gay artists, why would Arabian choose me?
Del: Oh, it makes me sick, you know? People are so quick to judge. I mean, just because you dress well, you don't like sports, you go to the opera—are you sure you have to drop out of the show?
[audience laughs]
Richard: Yes, I have to drop out of the show. I'm straight.
Caroline: Richard, you've been dying to be in an art show all your life. Maybe your being straight can be just our little secret.
[audience laughs]
Annie: That is a great idea.
Richard: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What are you suggesting? That I lie and pass myself off as gay?
Annie: Quick. Quick. Liza Minnelli's birthday.
Richard: Don't you have a fleet of sailors to greet?
Annie: Very bitchy. That's good.
Richard: [sighs]
[audience laughs]
["Caroline in the City Theme" composed by Jonathan Wolff plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LGBT-focused 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 intro did not tip you off, today we are talking about Caroline in the City.
Glen: Finally.
Drew: Specifically the episode "Caroline and the Gay Art Show," which originally aired October 5, 1995. And right off the bat, I feel like some people listening to us might question our classification of Caroline in the City as a classic sitcom.
Glen: Why would they question it? It's in an era of classic sitcoms. It was sandwiched between classic sitcoms.
Drew: I think a lot of people might think that Caroline in the City was not of as high a caliber as probably everything else we've talked about.
Glen: So suddenly, like, what—The Single Guy isn't a classic sitcom? Jesse is not a classic sitcom?
Drew: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Glen: Philistines.
Drew: Even if you don't really feel like Caroline in the City has any cultural value, I think we're going to prove you wrong because we came up with some cool things to talk about, and there's kind of a lot going on with this show and in this episode in particular.
Glen: Oh, my goodness. Yes.
Drew: It is the third episode of this show, and I think we might have theories on why it aired when it did in the course of the show. Before we get into that, just a little bit of basic history in case you've never heard of it, which is possible.
Glen: Crawl out of your rock.
Drew: There's not that much info on Caroline in the City online.
Glen: You've not been checking my live blog.
Drew: But I found a blog called Caroline in the City, and I was like, "Oh, someone made a whole blog about Caroline in the City?" No. It's some millennial who is just writing about her life in the city, and I don't know that she knows there's a show called that. She may not know that, and that made me kind of sad.
Glen: Does she have a Twitter presence?
Drew: Um—
Glen: Let's just destroy her.
Drew: No. I stopped looking at it.
Glen: Let's ratio her.
Drew: I didn't want—what does that mean?
Glen: Oh—like, on Twitter, when someone posts something stupid, and instead of likes and retweets you just comment them to hell. It's the ratio of likes to comments.
Drew: Oh! I have never heard of that expression before. Do you—do that to people?
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay.
Glen: I don't want—I don't like the attention.
Drew: Caroline in the City ran for four seasons and 97 episodes on NBC from September 21, 1995, to April 26, 1999. It concerned the life of Caroline Duffy played by Lea Thompson—a cartoonist whose comic strip is syndicated nationally. I'm going to hold off on all the other characters because we're going to get to that in a second. But Glen, what are your memories of the show?
Glen: I remember liking it—or at least I remember watching it. I remember being like, "Oh, it's just Cathy." They couldn't just make a Cathy show for some reason, so it's Caroline in the City, although the art style is very much sort of like Cathy if wrung through a bland Far Side generator. There's something about her—I don't know. There's something about the art that is not quite as crisp as Cathy. Also, as I have talked about before and we'll get to when we get to the other characters, I definitely had urges when seeing her boyfriend Del onscreen, who was the guest actor in the very first episode of Gayest Episode Ever when he played Frasier's boss.
Drew: Eric Lutes, which sounds like Eric Glutes, which is appropriate because he does have a nice butt—didn't realize that until just now when I said his name out loud. Yeah. He's very attractive, even when he's being a dick.
Glen: Which is often. I think that's his character trait—just a shitty, boring, straight guy.
Drew: Right. At this point in the series, he and Caroline are not dating. Didn't they used to date?
Glen: I thought they were still dating at this point.
Drew: Okay. I was confused about that. I am not going to watch the entire first season of the show to figure that out, but it was kind of ambiguous. Just seeing that Lea Thompson—so clearly, most people would know her from the Back to the Future movies. If you were going to pick what her other known movie is, what would you guess was her second most popular?
Glen: Wasn't she in a sexy rom-com with a SNL actress who's crazy now?
Drew: Victoria Jackson?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Maybe. I don't know about that one.
Glen: Wait let me just look it up.
Drew: It's called Casual Sex? with a question mark.
Glen: Yes. Andrew Dice Clay was also in it.
Drew: I like that there was absolutely no second guessing who you were talking about when you described, "SNL woman who's crazy now." I would have also accepted Evil Lucy from Twin Peaks—Victoria Jackson. Same person. I have not seen this movie. I was thinking Some Kind of Wonderful which is Pretty in Pink but gender swapped.
Glen: Right.
Drew: Or Howard the Duck—I guess.
Glen: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely Howard the Duck. What was I thinking?
Drew: A lot of people still have not seen that or SpaceCamp [laughs]. Did you watch SpaceCamp when you were a kid?
Glen: No.
Drew: I could be misremembering the plot of this movie, but I think they go to space camp, and then there's some kind of confusion or accident, and they end up going to space. Not a childhood favorite, but something I did see. Also it's interesting we're talking about Lea Thompson right now because it's kind of an interesting time for her family—fuck, what's her name?
Glen: Lea Thompson, Jr.
Drew: Zoey—Deutch? I don't know how to pronounce her last name because I don't work in the entertainment industry anymore and have never heard it spoken out loud. But she's currently on that Ryan Murphy show, The Politician—she plays the girl who has cancer. And then she's also the big addition to the new Zombieland movie—she's the blonde one. And she doesn't really look that much like her mom, but every once in a while you'll see flashes of Lea Thompson in her face, which is comforting at least. So go Thompson-Deutch family. So this premiered in the highly coveted 9:30 Thursday time slot, and this particular episode that we're talking about today aired right after the first airing of the Seinfeld episode, "The Maestro."
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Yep. We've talked about Friends rip-offs before and also how Friends is a rip-off of Living Single, but this is the age of Single Guy; Boston Common; Suddenly Susan; Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place; Union Square; Too Something; Partners; Townies; and Sliders.
Glen: Sliders? You're throwing Sliders in there?
Drew: I was going to see if you were going to—I was just seeing if you were listening.
Glen: I mean, I love Sliders.
Drew: They didn't ever do a gay episode, did they? They never went to a gay dimension or anything right?
Glen: They went to that gender-swap convention where Hillary Clinton was president.
Drew: Really?
Glen: Yeah. Women were in power, and I think everyone was wearing a lie collar, but maybe I was conflating two dimensions.
Drew: Oh. I don't remember that episode.
Glen: There might be a gay episode. Let's find it. I also had feelings about Sliders.
Drew: Oh, yeah. Jerry O'Connell had impossible hair where it's just like—I don't understand how his hair does that. All those Friends wannabees that I just mentioned, I always did feel like this one was the best of them. Is this accurate? And why do I feel that?
Glen: I mean, I feel—I don't know if I would say it was the best of them. I mean, Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place was amazing. But in terms of younger people who seemed to have a level of success in New York and are just around being pretty, I feel like they established a friend group that had clear roles in the way that Friends did—
Drew: This is true.
Glen: —that I think some of the knockoffs didn't exactly get right, and the Caroline in the City gang seemed to have a nice mix with the main four. And I had forgotten about—
Drew: Charlie?
Glen: Charlie.
Drew: I forgot about him too, until he showed up. I was like, "Who the fuck—oh, Charlie. Rollerblades Guy." But he's not ever quite on the level with the rest of them.
Glen: No.
Drew: Right. Yeah. That was a surprise. Yeah. Three episodes in, the four lead characters—we have a pretty good sense of who everyone is, maybe the least of them being Caroline because she's got to be the glue that holds everyone together, kind of an every-woman and I don't—maybe Lea Thompson never quite nailed that. I don't know. I think she's still figuring out who she's supposed to be, but Annie, Richard, and Del are basically exactly as I remember them.
Glen: They sort of land on their character concept early and it carries throughout the show—mostly successfully, I think. I would say that Annie and Richard are more interesting characters than Del and Caroline.
Drew: Yeah. Maybe a straight guy would not see it that way, but who cares.
Glen: Yeah. So the other characters.
Drew: Hold on. I have a little bit more to get to.
Glen: I'll kill everyone.
Drew: It ran for four seasons, which is longer than Single Guy ran. And also, you're right—Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place was successful. It ran for four seasons which is longer than I remembered it being around for. So they're maybe the dual winners of the wannabe-Friends race. Right from the start, the show got a lot of flak for being a hammock show, meaning that it was strung between Seinfeld and ER, and the only reason it was successful was because of those numbers. That is where it started. It was quickly moved to other nights—it was only on Thursday for its first night—and it still kind of did okay, so you can't completely write off all of its success to being between two shows. But I found an Entertainment Weekly article about it, and it pointed out that not only did it do fairly successfully, but it kind of held its own against Spin City, which was in the same time slot. Spin City, on average, 11.7 million people were watching every week, and Caroline was 10.67—which is also interesting that the two Back to the Future castmates were opposed to each other. It's probably on accident.
Glen: Which did you watch?
Drew: Caroline in the City.
Glen: Me too.
Drew: Spin City never did it for me. I don't know why—even though they did have kind of a pioneering gay character in—Carter? Is that his name?
Glen: Are we going to have to—are we going to have to cover that show then?
Drew: We'd have to pick one exactly. But I think he's played very well by Michael Boatman. In the third season, they made it like a lady-powerhouse night with Suddenly Susan, Caroline in the City, Fired Up, and The Naked Truth with Téa Leoni, which is—
Glen: I'm familiar.
Drew: —not a Friends wannabe, exactly—
Glen: No.
Drew: —kind of doing its own thing.
Glen: Would you call Fired Up a Friends wannabe?
Drew: It's just the two of them—sort of. It's almost like it's a Caroline in—
Glen: Well, and the brother and the—
Drew: The guy who owns the bar?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Guy?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Yeah. I don't really remember that. I read an Entertainment Weekly. Ken Tucker reviewed this block of programing and was not favorable to Sharon Lawrence's performance in Fired Up. He really, really did not like it or—what is it? Fuck. What's her name—the other one?
Glen: The Scientology one?
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: I forget.
Drew: The girl from that one weird season of Saved by the Bell where they work at—
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So anyway, Ken Tucker is describing this block of programming, and I actually thought it was bitchy but kind of well worded. He says, "My hunch is that when it came to load up the 'Ladies of Monday Night' schedule, there were some at NBC who probably realized that the logical post-Susan, pre-Caroline candidate would be Jenny, Jenny McCarthy's searing exploration of capri pants" [laughter]. It's such a petty, low dig at a show that is not very good and also was kind of a Friends clone/wannabe. And then he kind of says favorable things about Caroline. He says, "The two remaining women of Monday night are faring slightly better in terms of quality. On Caroline, Lea Thompson is giving a performance that's a model of modest team playing. If she and frequent episode director James Burrows had better-defined supporting characters and funnier lines, Thompson would be courting comparisons to Mary Tyler Moore." It's interesting that he's faulting everyone but Caroline in the City, because I don't see Del, Annie, and Richard as being negatives necessarily.
Glen: Right.
Drew: The show was created by Fred Barron who created that show Dave's World on CBS, which starred Night Court guy and is a very similar premise. That one is about a newspaper columnist who has a life outside of what he's writing and incorporates stuff from his life into his writing, and this is basically the cartoon version of that. It was literally pitched as, "Hey. What if we do it like Cathy?" That was the first comparison they ever made. He made that with Marco Pennette, who was a writer on Dave's World and who later went on to become an executive producer of Ugly Betty, but who also created Crumbs, that Fred Savage sitcom with Jane Curtain where—it was an autobiographical show about dealing with your family when you're gay (sort of). He interestingly got outed at the People's Choice Awards when one of the shows he [worked on] was nominated for something and he brought his family—like, his nuclear family—and some executive came up and started talking about his boyfriend in front of them, so he had to tell his family "Oh, by the way—I also am gay." Yeah.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Yeah. I kind of want to watch that movie—but yeah. And then thirdly, Dotty Dartland Zicklin, who also created Dharma & Greg and produced Cybill and Grace Under Fire, was the third person who gets a co-creator credit on this. I found this really interesting article in the LA Times called "The Birth of a Sitcom." They picked a show that had made it to the new season and just went back and traced it from inception, and this is the show they just happened to pick. Aside from—yeah. They were definitely thinking of Cathy when they made up this idea. Initially, Del was supposed to be a philanderer and kind of a jerk, and she was in a love triangle between the Del, the Richard, and her—which kind of did persist sort of. There's even traces of that in this because of the tension between Del and Richard, I'm guessing. There was also supposed to be a character named Mark who actually got cast, and the person that got cast was Thomas F. Wilson who played Biff in Back to the Future.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: He was Annie's brother, and he was supposed to be imparting a male perspective—more of Del I guess—and he got completely written out of the show after they cast him, which is a bummer. As you mentioned earlier, this was hot on the heels of Eric Lutes making an appearance on Frasier playing a gay character. That got him some articles written about whether it was risky for an actor to play a gay character when you're kind of an unknown, and it's basically because of that role that he probably got cast on this show. This is the next year, so it happened very shortly after that.
Glen: Spoiler alert—he gets to play gay in this episode as well.
Drew: Very briefly. The gayest thing he does is throw wine in someone's face. And then Amy Pietz plays Annie, and I like her. I don't like that they slut-shame her like they do with Roz. That's very much how the dynamic works here. But there's something about her performance that I really like. And also, I think I've mentioned before, she's on that one amazing episode of Ally McBeal where she plays the woman who's performing at that bar they all go to, but all she does is cover TV show theme songs. It's a lovely episode
Glen: She is very much Marisa Tomei energy.
Drew: Yes. Her and Laura San Giacomo are in a very similar—I think they would have fun brunches together. Okay. Now we get to talk about Richard. I read an interview where they said, "Yeah. We had it down to a dozen people," and the person they picked was Malcolm Gets.
Glen: For people who don't know, Richard is Caroline's colorist who is hired in the pilot and they have sort of a friendship, but also a contentious relationship, because Richard thinks of himself as a real artist whereas Caroline is sort of a consumer artist.
Drew: Which she is.
Glen: Yeah. And he holds that against her.
Drew: And it's interesting thinking about Malcolm Gets being the only Broadway star on this who's kind of slumming it to be on a sitcom. If you look at his filmography it's basically—he was on a Law & Order before this, then this, and then Grey Gardens, and everything else is basically theater. Why—so it's hard to talk about without being a jerk. So, why do you think they cast Malcolm Gets?
Glen: I mean, he plays that character very well.
Drew: He does.
Glen: So I'd like to think that's why they did it.
Drew: Why do you think they persisted in crafting a romantic relationship between him and Caroline even when some people might have thought that it was being forced? Like, that chemistry wasn't actually there.
Glen: Yeah. The chemistry definitely wasn't there. Because that's sitcom formula. Like, shows run enough seasons and you run out of storylines, and the best way to inject ongoing drama into a sitcom is to have two recurring characters fall for each other.
Drew: I guess that makes sense. The shitty part about the situation is that even at the time this was on, there were some people who were aware that the chemistry wasn't there because Richard seems kind of gay. And Malcolm Gets did in fact come out after he stopped being on Must See TV. So I feel like we have to fault somebody, and I don't know whether to fault the people running the show for being like, "Let's write something that better suits this actor's strengths"—because if you don't fault them because they wanted to craft a very traditional sitcom arc, then you have to fault Malcolm Gets. But that sucks because I feel like you fall into that weird hole where you get very close to that whole Newsweek controversy about whether openly gay actors can play convincingly heterosexual characters.
Glen: I don't think you can fault Malcolm. He was playing the role as it was written for him and as he was directed. And very clear in the first season—like, it's also hard to escape. But if you're playing a young, attractive, pretentious artist in New York, you are sort of walking a line.
Drew: You're close to that line.
Glen: It's easier to picture that character as gay, and then the actor happened to be gay. I have to think this was a studio "no" from on high. I can't see the showrunners looking at what they had—the actors they had, the stories they had—and saying, "This is the best thing for our show." It has to be a panicked executive being like, "I don't know. Our numbers are down. Everything's just sort of falling flat. Won't there be more drama if Caroline and Richard fell for each other?" And I very much remember being absolutely shocked [during] the episode where Richard realizes he's in love with Caroline--and not just because he was shirtless in that episode as well, but uh—I was just like, "What? Absolutely not!"
Drew: You're probably right. It's too bad that they did that because another great path for interesting drama would be Caroline having feelings for Richard and Richard coming out and that being something that complicates her life that viewers had never seen on TV before—and maybe people would have hated it. But—
Glen: Yeah. They could have been pioneering, but they were a couple years too early for that.
Drew: I did not really notice how wrong the chemistry—it's hard for me to talk about noticing gay things when I was still a teenager because I was pretty stupid about a lot of stuff and just kind of oblivious—maybe willfully. But I didn't really think about how awkward the pairing was until I was watching an episode of Baby Blues, which is itself an animated sitcom based on a comic strip, and they have an episode where it flashes back to when the mom was not a mom yet and she walks into the office and someone's like—
Woman: Wanda, did you see Caroline in the City last night?
Wanda: Oh, the sexual tension between her and that gay guy.
Woman: Ooh.
[women laugh]
Drew: And I was like, "Oh, yeah. He is very gay seeming. I don't know why that didn't occur to me before." It apparently occurred to MAD TV, because while the show was still on they did kind of a mean-spirited sketch about—
Glen: Very mean spirited.
Drew: So the premise of the sketch is that they're on the set of Caroline in the City filming the episode where Richard and Caroline finally kiss, and it's like a "Behind the Scenes with Downtown Julie Brown" for some reason, and Pat Kilbane is Malcolm Gets, and Nicole Sullivan is Lea Thompson—and Pat Kilbane plays Malcolm Gets as hilariously, stereotypically gay.
Glen: Yeah. Very '90s gay.
Pat Kilbane: So this is where the script says I—well—kiss her
[audience laughs]
Pat Kilbane: You know, I was just telling mother over my world-famous sponge cake that I wish those silly writers would get us together already. I mean, realistically, how long could a virile guy like me keep his hands off a hot dish like Lea?
Drew: Then he doesn't really do anything else with it. That's, like, the one joke he gets. And then with Nicole Sullivan, the joke is that she has no comedic timing, she keeps getting skinnier—her skirts keep getting shorter, and I'm like, "Oh, this is really mean."
Glen: And she can't tell the difference between her character and herself.
Drew: Yes. And I was like, "That's a weird way to go about making fun of the show," but I feel like if they didn't do that, it would have seemed extra mean to come down on Malcolm Gets—because that's really punching down. So they had to take down Lea Thompson as hard as they could too. It's very strange.
Glen: I can't imagine what it was like for the actor. He doesn't bear the brunt of the failure of the show, but he is often the punchline of the jokes.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: About the show.
Drew: That's why—so I don't think it's his fault, but I say when you're looking at how this turned out the way it did, I could see other people being like, "Well, if he didn't sell the chemistry, that's his fault," and I'm like—[scoffs]. I mean, on some level I guess that's true, but he was dealt a bum hand.
Glen: Yeah. Also, the show just didn't have—the cartoon angle wasn't strong enough of a concept to differentiate it from a slew of other shows. Even Suddenly Susan had more of an identity than Caroline in the City, I'd say, because it was a workplace thing. But because Caroline worked from, home it wasn't necessarily a workplace comedy. It wasn't a family comedy. Like you said, it's kind of like Friends—but not really, because it is sort of tied to this comic strip.
Drew: All these things we said about it, and it's still the most successful Friends wannabe that existed during this era and—
Glen: Do you think that's because it was at least attempting a more female point of view than Friends—even though Friends had equal amounts of men and women?
Drew: Yeah. I mean, it is more of a women's show. That's why it ended up on the night with Suddenly Susan, Fired Up, and—what's the Téa Leoni show?
Glen: Naked Truth?
Drew: Naked Truth. I think that was something NBC was actually trying to attract. A lot of woman really did like Friends, and they were like, "What if we did a more female-weighted Friends? Maybe people would like that more?" That's what I was trying to look for, but other than that article, there's not that much conversation online about the production and genesis of the show, other than like, "Hey, let's do Friends with a cartoon or something," which may have been it. Three episodes into the show we get this episode about Richard not being gay where he has to say more than once that he's straight. Why do you think they did that? [laughs]
Glen: As I have mentioned many times on this show, usually the placement of these episodes where the main character or secondary character has to be explicitly not gay is because the show creators are very aware of the fact that the character is coming of as gay, and so they have to do some sort of statement—making it clear: "I am heterosexual."
Drew: Like in the first episode we did, the Frasier episode that's very early in the show, and "Dorothy's Friend is a Lesbian" occurs fairly early in the run of Golden Girls just so you don't get the wrong idea about why these ladies are living together.
Glen: Yeah. You can look at this and think, "Oh. Clearly this young, attractive artist in New York is gay." They're like, "Nope. Nope. We are aware of the perception, and we are saying no, that is not the case."
Drew: "Don't worry, people who hate gay people. You can still like this show."
Glen: And also—both laughing at and with the gay issue.
Drew: Yeah. The way they handle it is very interesting, especially because in this episode there is no gay panic, really—at least not the kind that we see in every other fucking show we've ever talked about. Being perceived as gay does not bother Richard in the least except for this one technicality.
Glen: Right. Yeah, the premise of the episode being that Richard has to pretend to be gay to get into an art gallery.
Drew: Right. The episode did well, pulling in 30 million people.
Glen: Jesus.
Drew: It's less than the 37 million that watched Seinfeld and ER on either side of it, but more than The Single Guy. They were 30 million, and Friends was 32 million, so that's pretty good actually. It was directed by some guy named James Burrows who I think needs the money or something because he's just working on every fucking show ever—like, I guess they feel bad for him? I don't know. He should probably take a break. It was written by Ian Praiser, who actually died rather young in 2006 but whose writing and consulting credits include ALF, Taxi, Bosom Buddies, and The Tracey Ullman Show.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: Mm-hmm. Do we need to explain how the opening interstitials are actually animated cartoons?
Glen: I think you just did.
Drew: Okay. So there's that. They're in an art museum. It's whatever. I guess they saved some money on establishing shots.
Glen: Like a B-roll? Yeah.
Drew: They don't have to do those because they're all drawn.
Glen: But they had to pay artists, Drew.
Drew: Oh, right. Oh, right. Art isn't free. I forgot about that. It's probably more expensive actually, to animate. Yes. We open on Caroline and Annie having lunch. Her hair is awful, and Annie advises her to switch stylists.
Annie: I mean, I know you only remember the good cuts, but think back. That poodle perm last summer? The dye job in '94?
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Allen's been doing my hair for three years.
Annie: Apparently he's lost the passion, and now he's just going through the motions.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Is there a reach-around there? I don't know.
Drew: Other than the fact that male hairstylists are always gay, allegedly—
Glen: Well, that's more of a trope than a reach-around.
Drew: Richard comes in and tries to duck away before Caroline and Annie see him. They do, and they make him sit down with them. He is disappointed because he wanted to read Sartre's Nausea by himself over lunch. And it's at this point I realize he's like a darker, artsier Niles Crane in some ways.
Glen: Yeah, but also poor.
Drew: Yes. So he's striving for something he really can never really attain.
Glen: Would you call him a Diane?
Drew: In some ways, yeah—because he is trying always to better himself, and it usually ends up blowing up in his face.
Glen: And he's always name dropping.
Drew: And surrounded by people who don't care about his fancy-people stuff.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. He's a male Diane. Speaking of Frasier—
Glen: The real treat of the episode.
Drew: Dan Butler. Dan Butler who is Bulldog on Frasier walks in and makes a very expositiony show of saying that he owns an art gallery.
Kenneth: Paul, I'm going to have to cut this short. I was just on the phone with my gallery. This lunatic ran in, chained himself to my assistant, and claimed he was a living sculpture [laughs].
Drew: When he's Bulldog I'm scared of him, but I think he's a very good-looking bald man on TV, which ended up being very important for me later in life.
Glen: Aw.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: And he also gets to play gay in this episode.
Drew: Mm-hmm. And he's a delight to watch on screen.
Glen: He actually has fantastic comedic timing.
Drew: He does. So they're like, "Oh, my gosh. Did you hear? That guy owns a gallery. We're going to—you should ask him to hang up your work." And he does not want to do it. He's too shy. He's too embarrassed. And Caroline does a big, weird showy thing of having an argument where she gets to scream to the audience the fact that Richard is a painter who has good stuff.
Caroline: Richard, go over and talk to him. Introduce yourself. Maybe he'll give you a show.
Richard: Oh, come on, Caroline, it doesn't work that way.
Caroline: It doesn't have to work that way—but it could.
Richard: Look. I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm one of those artists who won't be discovered until after he's dead. Now I know it sounds morbid but—well, it gives me something to look forward to.
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Go over there.
Richard: No.
Caroline: Go.
Richard: No.
Caroline: Go.
Richard: No. Stop it!
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Okay. Okay, fine. Have it your way. Richard, don't argue with me. You're an incredible artist and it's the world's loss that you've never had your own show!
[audience laughs]
Glen: She throws his book.
Drew: Does she really?
Glen: Yeah. I believe so.
Drew: We'll say she does. Who's going to fact check this?
Glen: Yeah. Come at us, Twitter.
Drew: You have to have a CBS All Access pass to watch Caroline in the City reruns—which is weird. I don't know how they ended up with it, but it's there in case you feel the urge. And then Annie does another little production to get this man's attention. His name is Kenneth Arabian.
Glen: Yeah. I was going to ask you about his last name.
Drew: I don't know why his name is Kenneth Arabian.
Glen: Do you think it's he took that name? Like, he made it up? I know it's made up because he's a fictional character.
Drew: But he's a very fancy art gallery owner so he gave himself what he thought was an exotic-sounding name? I don't know. He's not an Arab person, and it's odd that that's his name. Could not find an explanation for that. Annie pretends to be choking.
Caroline: It's just so sad. I know he'd love nothing more than to be able to have one of his paintings in an art gallery, but between you and me, I think he's got this fear-of-failure thing.
Annie: The man's 30 and he colors in cartoons for a living. What makes you think that?
[audience laughs]
Caroline: I just wish there was something I could do to help him.
Annie: Why don't the two of us just walk over and talk to this guy?
Caroline: I don't know. I don't want to seem pushy.
Annie: Leave it to me. [gags]
Caroline: Annie. Annie. Not that choking thing again.
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Annie!
Annie: [gasps and gags]
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Check please!
Remo: Annie! Oh, my god. Annie, are you alright? Annie!
[audience laughs]
Annie: [coughing]
Remo: Are you alright? She's okay. Ha-ha.
[patrons applause]
Remo: She's okay. Nobody ever dies at Remo's.
[audience laughs]
Remo: Okay, there was the one guy.
[audience laughs]
Glen: There's the reach-around for this episode.
Drew: Explain [laughter].
Glen: Pretending to be in a state that you are otherwise not to get the attention of someone.
Drew: Oh. That makes sense. That's actually not a bad reach-around.
Glen: Yeah. It works. Kenneth saves her and then quickly points out that he knows she was faking because she had not ordered food yet—which is a good point, Kenneth Arabian.
Glen: Mm-hmm. The scheme seems to work, and they get to mention Richard, their artist friend, and Kenneth Arabian asks them pointedly—
Kenneth: So you've been to my art gallery?
Annie: Oh! Please. Dozens of times. Right Caroline?
Caroline: Yeah. Dozens. And this is just so weird, Kenneth, because right before Annie's little brush with death—
[Annie coughs]
[audience laughs]
Caroline: —we were talking about our artist friend, Richard.
Kenneth: And you'd like me to take a look at his work?
Caroline: Yeah.
Annie: How did you know?
Kenneth: It's tricky to choke when you haven't been served any food.
[audience laughs]
Annie: Ah.
Kenneth: So you're sure your friend is right for my gallery?
Caroline: Yes. He is definitely Kenneth Arabian material.
Annie: Definitely.
Glen: And that's sort of our first hint that the gallery is not what it seems.
Drew: Something is dark and wrong about this man. And then he says—he basically gives another hint right after that where he's like—
Kenneth: Can I ask you something? Is he always so tortured?
Annie: Yeah.
Caroline: Yeah.
Kenneth: I like tortured.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Smiles kind of knowingly. Then we go to commercial. I guess we should also go to commercial.
Glen: That's not where the commercial is.
Drew: Yeah, it is.
Glen: Oh. Well there's another commercial later.
Drew: We can go to commercial whenever we want.
Glen: Yeah.
["Caroline in the City Theme" composed by Jonathan Wolff plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]
[An old promo for Must See TV plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes their Patreon]
["Caroline in the City Theme" composed by Jonathan Wolff plays]
Drew: So the next scene is at the—
Glen: And we're back.
Drew: Oh, sorry. Yeah. And we're back—hi. The next scene, we're at the Kenneth Arabian Gallery, and I'm going to say a compliment and a criticism. Number one, it looks pretty good for being a set. They did a good job—
Glen: A couple paintings are not hung evenly.
Drew: Oh, really? I didn't notice that.
Glen: They don't line up with each other.
Drew: The other thing is that we very quicky find out that this only displays art by gay artists and there is not a single penis to be seen and basically, in any other space like that, you will see male nudity on display. I understand why they can't, but—
Glen: We didn't see all the art.
Drew: That' true. All the boners where in the other room. And Richard brings some of—what is it? A portfolio?
Glen: I don't know. Do artists still put their work on slides to show people?
Drew: I don't know. Are you an artist? Tell us.
Glen: I've never been a real artist.
Drew: I was asking Twitter.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Okay. I was surprised that Kenneth agreed to have Richard show his art at a group show but didn't specify which piece, and then we find out later that Richard gets to choose.
Drew: Oh. That's true.
Glen: I was very—
Drew: How would you plan that layout wise? Okay. That's bad, and that's dumb. He also at no point says, "And you're sure you're gay, right?" But I guess he didn't think he had to because he met this person and just assumed. They go very lightly on saying that Richard acts like he's gay. That actually doesn't specifically come up except for one mention by Del and that's it.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: No one else is like, "Well, clearly you act like a gay person. That's why we think you're gay."
Glen: Is Kriegel a real artist?
Drew: I tried to find out who that was, and I could not find it.
Glen: Yeah. Richard's art keeps getting compared to an artist named Kriegel. I had no idea who that was.
Drew: I related to Richard being like, "Please look at my work. I can take criticism."
Richard: Feel free to be honest. I'm very open to criticism.
Kenneth: Hmm.
Richard: Oh, yeah? Who the hell are you to judge me?
[audience laughs]
Kenneth: Richard, all I said was, "Hmm." There are good "hmms," you know?
Drew: I think many people have that reaction.
Glen: Oh, yes.
Drew: Rapid succession.
Glen: Here's a tip for people who aren't artists: If your artist friend shows you something, whether it be visual or the written work, do not offer critiques unless they ask you for them.
Drew: I would say the one exception would be like, "You know you did a heinously racist, sexist, misogynist—"
Glen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Protect them from themselves.
Drew: Yeah. But other than that, they don't need to know in great detail your little quibbles.
Glen: They may need to know them, but they'll ask for them. Sometimes a creative person just needs to be in the right headspace to receive criticism, and if they're just looking for a blanket "nice job," they're not going to be prepared when you say, "Well, the entire premise on which this is created is wrong."
Drew: Yeah. Also, people don't often want your criticism specifically. They have certain people that know about the field that they're working in and they might not—
Glen: Sometimes people they pay.
Drew: But yeah, Kenneth Arabian really likes Richard's work and tells him that he can put a painting in his show. I also relate to Richard's reaction of—
Richard: A group show is great. It's great, really. It's terrific. Look. I've got to go. I've got to call up everybody in high school who used to beat the crap out of me.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Which is basically what Facebook is for now, kind of—for me, anyway.
Glen: Well, it's also for Russian propaganda.
Drew: Oh, right. Yeah. facebook.com/gayestepisodeever. Join the discussion. No Russian propaganda, we think.
Glen: Not yet. Russians, come at us.
Drew: No, thanks. Okay. So the next scene is Caroline's apartment, and I forgot that she has a fake TV that has an aquarium in it. As a kid I thought was cool and now, like most of the furniture that would have appeared in a Real World house, I no longer think that is cool [laughs].
Glen: Great apartment though. Great loft.
Drew: Uh-huh. Maybe it makes sense. She is a nationally syndicated strip, so she actually might be making quite a bit of money, especially back then.
Glen: She deserves it more than Carrie Bradshaw who had her local column and quite a cute apartment.
Drew: Is that her only source of income?
Glen: Later she writes a book.
Drew: Hmm. Okay. That's another trend of these shows, like, your apartment is way too nice because people don't want to look at squalor, I guess? But whatever. Del comes over. I am not clear if they're dating or not. It's very ambiguous.
Glen: I think they're dating. He brings pizza, and it feels like a very date-night thing. I do that with friends too, but—
Drew: But then Annie comes over with beers, and I'm like—
Glen: I thought maybe she just lived across the hall or something.
Drew: She does, but why is she bringing a six pack to—you know?
Glen: Oh. Fair.
Drew: So essentially, Del enters and then disappoints Caroline in several ways.
Del: The Chinese place was closed. I got us pizza. Oh—they didn't have Bridges of Madison County. I got us Dumb and Dumber [laughs].
[audience laughs]
Del: I couldn't remember what you wanted to drink. I got us Dr Pepper.
Caroline: Well, zero out of three ain't bad. Well?
Del: What?
Caroline: Well, if you can't notice—
Del: Oh, no. Hey. No, I noticed. You lost weight.
[audience cringes]
Caroline: No.
Del: Gained weight. No.
[audience laughs]
Del: That wouldn't be a good thing. You—you got new earrings? New outfit? One of those inflatable bras?
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Del, I got my hair done.
Del: Get out of here.
Caroline: I did. Didn't you notice the highlights?
Del: It looks exactly the same. Who's going to notice that?
Annie: Oh, my god. Your hair looks amazing.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Not only does he ruin the plans they agreed on for the evening he is completely unable to notice that she has gotten a haircut. I think this is part of an effort to suggest that perhaps Caroline needs someone who is not a typical man because Del being a very typical, bro-y, man-boy type man doesn't seem to be doing it for her, and someone who thinks about the world differently might. So maybe they're sowing those seeds all the way back here? It's very subtle, but they do call back to that at the end of the episode.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: And then Annie enters and immediately notices that Caroline fixed her hair.
Glen: It looks nice.
Drew: I mean, she's Lea Thompson. She's extremely cute and appealing. Even when she had ugly hair, she was still very cute and appealing.
Glen: Her ugly hair actually kind of reminded me of her hair from Howard the Duck.
Drew: Yeah. That's some big hair she had back then. Enter Richard, which also makes me think this is not a date night—but he's just there to have them pick which painting he should use.
Glen: His two paintings he brings in are actually very different from each other and I was wondering what his point of view was with his art.
Drew: Yeah. They seem to come from very different eras of his creative output.
Glen: Right. One is just sort of red-on-red splotches called "Inner Journey" or something like that.
Drew: Something like that.
Glen: Which could also be very gay because it looks like an anal cavity.
Drew: Is that what your anal cavity—[laughs]. I guess you wouldn't—I was going to ask if that's what your anal cavity looks like, but I'm like, "I don't think you would know that."
Glen: No.
Drew: No.
Glen: But I'm talking, like, horribly damaged ones that you see on the internet.
Drew: Or at gay art galleries.
Glen: Mm-hmm. And then the other one is just sort of a different kind of abstract art.
Drew: I actually like that one. It's an abstracted female figure, and whoever painted it knew a thing or two. It's not hideous, and at least they found someone to make that art, or maybe they just bought it somewhere.
Glen: Both of these art pieces are good; they just don't seem like they'd come from the same artist.
Drew: Del further displays how he is uncultured and too traditionally manly because he can only perceive the red one to be ketchup.
Richard: It's between these two and two others I left in the stairwell. Oh, god. I hope they're safe.
Del: Trust me Richard. They're safe.
[audience laughs]
Caroline: What do you call this one?
Richard: "Inner Journey."
Del: [laughs] Must have been a short trip.
[audience laughs]
Del: You know, if you ask me, you should call it "Ketchup."
Richard: "Ketchup"? Ugh. Why am I not surprised by your completely reductionist perception of my work?
Del: Hey, who you calling a reductionist?
Richard: You.
Caroline: Guys, guys. Come on. Richard, stop calling Del a reductionist. Del, stop being a reductionist.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And the female figure—I think he says, "Been awhile Richard?" because it's an abstracted figure and he might not know what a naked lady looks like. That's the only reason Richard might not know what a naked lady looks like. Enter Charlie.
Glen: Who we both forgot about—who's adorable.
Drew: Andy Lauer. He's on the first three seasons of the show. He's not on the fourth. Don't know why. And he's a messenger, I guess, and he's always on roller skates, and he's kind of Keanu Reeves spacey in the way he talks. I did the typical thing—whenever I look up one of these actors, I do the thing where I'm like, "Is this person gay?" I cannot tell, but he did make a movie that had gay themes. So if he's not gay then he's a thoughtful enough person to participate in the production of a gay-themed movie. So good for him. Also, not to be weird, but I ended up on his Facebook page—because you just Google his name and things come up. And one of the comments was from Jane Sibbett—a.k.a. Ross's ex-wife from Friends, a.k.a. Heddy from—and in the Frasier episode, I said that her and Eric Lutes were a couple. I do not think they are a couple.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: He referred to her as his "honey" in an Instagram post, and I think they are just friends.
Glen: Oh. Darn. Well what'd she say on his Facebook page?
Drew: What's that?
Glen: You said she commented on his Facebook page.
Drew: She expressed her condolences that Andy Lauer's father had passed away [laughs].
Glen: Oh.
Drew: So, yeah. That's what I saw. It was just the top comment on that post. So he also sees the red painting and thinks of French fries, I think, because he thinks it looks like ketchup—because he's a bro.
Charlie: I just had this sudden urge for French fries.
[audience laughs]
Del: See?
Caroline: Charlie, if you like art why don't you come to Richard's show? It's going to be at the Arabian Gallery.
Charlie: Oh, down on Spring Street?
Caroline: Yeah.
Charlie: Huh. I didn't know Richard was gay.
Caroline: Gay?
Annie: Gay?
Del: Gay?
Caroline: What do you mean gay?
Charlie: Well, when two people of the same sex—
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Charlie, why would you think that Richard is gay?
Charlie: Because only gay artists can show at the Arabian Gallery.
Drew: And they all have this weird reaction of like, "What?" as if it had never crossed any of their minds that this man might be a homosexual—I guess?
Glen: Meaning that Kenneth Arabian might be a homosexual—
Drew: Or Richard.
Glen: I don't think—I didn't read their reaction as any of them being like, "Oh, wait. Maybe Richard's gay." I think it was just like. "Whoa." They were surprised like, "Why would you even get that idea Charlie Dumb-Dumb Head?"
Drew: Maybe that's it.
Glen: I was very hopeful that maybe Charlie was gay for a second, because in my mind the only reason someone would know that an art gallery was explicitly gay is if they're gay—which is not really true. He could just live in the neighborhood and know things.
Drew: The explanation he gives is cute, and his exit line is really good, and that was one of the better written lines because it did not go the way I thought it was going to go.
Charlie: My brother's boyfriend, he's an artist, and he had a show there. Oh. You know what? But don't tell my mom. It'd break her heart. She thinks he's dating a doctor!
[audience laughs]
Drew: So they go to commercial again. Maybe they put in more commercial breaks than there probably was in the original airing because this is a streaming service and—
Glen: They can do what they want?
Drew: I guess so. Every time it fades out I think they want to insert a commercial, but there were no commercials in my viewing of it.
Glen: No. Thanks CBS All Access.
Drew: Yeah. That was pretty painless. So we come back in, and now we're going to talk about presumptions of sexuality.
Glen: Oh, my.
Drew: Off screen, Richard has been informed of this news, and we're just getting his reaction which is, "I just don't get it. Just because the gallery only chooses gay artists—why would they choose me?" Thank god there were no laughs. In a lot of other episodes we've watched there are laughs at inappropriate times, and it pisses me off—that did not happen here. And he's not panicking at all. He's confused and worried that this is going to ruin his opportunity. He doesn't care about being thought of as gay—so, good.
Glen: Yeah. Actually, this sort of central conflict in this episode would fit in perfectly in 2019, where straight white men are raging against the privileges given to minorities. Everyone's attitude seems to be, "Oh, no. It kind of sucks that I'm just straight."
Drew: The only person to really weigh in on why anyone might have thought otherwise about Richard is Del, and he says, "People make assumptions. It's because you dress well. You don't like sports. You go to the opera—are you sure you don't have to drop out of the show?" And my response was like, "Are you sure you're not like the third Crane boy? Because that's almost verbatim the way he discusses perceived sexuality with Frasier in the other episode this person appears in." But these things tipped him off that he might be gay.
Glen: Yeah. It's very much the '90s categorizing gay men as just being very stylish and neat and cultured.
Drew: Is Richard stylish?
Glen: He has a style.
Drew: I found Malcolm Gets to be much more attractive as an adult watching this than—I don't think I had a crush on him as a teenager. But yeah, he's a very attractive man.
Glen: Yes. I'd still take Del first, but whatever.
Drew: [laughs] Del first. Richard after.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: I'd marry Richard. I'd fuck Del.
Drew: [laughs] You'd murder Charlie, the rollerblades boy?
Glen: No. I want—no. Charlie's the pet.
Drew: That's not one of the options. It's not—
Glen: Oh. I don't know how this game works.
Drew: Caroline suggests lying, which is fucked up. I guess someone has to suggest that in order to—
Glen: Yeah. But it's super fucked up.
Drew: Because it's kind of her fault.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: It's more Annie's fault, but the solution to this problem is not more lies—stupid. And then—
Glen: Wait. Are you saying that a sitcom character makes the situation worse by not coming clean and just continuing to lie?
Drew: In this one particular example of TV, yes.
Glen: But just this one?
Drew: Yeah. I can't think of a single other. Then Richard gives that speech about "I'm not ashamed to be straight."
Richard: Look Caroline, I'm not ashamed of being straight. In this day and age, I should be able to walk into that gallery with a woman on my arms and not feel like I'm being stared and gawked at like some side show freak.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And it is—I guess it's cute. I don't know.
Glen: I mean, maybe it was cute back then, but it's hard to divorce it from the context of today whereas I just see that shit on Twitter too much.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: The world just had a fucking straight pride parade. I mean, everyone forgets because it was lame. But—
Drew: I mean. I don't know if we can say "the world had." It happened on the world, but it happened in—Boston?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. It's Boston's problem. Go deal with that, Boston. So Richard goes to the gallery, and the way Dan Butler plays this character is exactly as handsy as any gay man of a certain age given a modicum of power would be with any younger gay man.
Glen: That's a very diplomatic way of describing that. Yes.
Drew: It's not threatening, but he's touching Richard a lot and that's what—
Glen: Yeah. There's a level of, "I know you're not going to say anything back to me."
Drew: Yeah. Yeah. That's—that's what it is. And Dan Butler probably has seen that enough times, being a gay man who was once an up-and-coming actor in the theater world—he knows exactly how that works.
Glen: There's also another stereotypical gay in this scene.
Drew: Howard.
Glen: Yeah, an artist who has some complaints.
Richard: Look. About that, Kenneth—look. I have a real problem.
Howard: Kenneth, I love you. You know that. You're the mother I never had. But—
[audience laughs]
Howard: —where do you find these workers? How hard can it be to hang a collage facing north? It has a compass in it.
[audience laughs]
Kenneth: Howard Berman, Richard Karinsky. He's also in the show.
Howard: I can't stop to be social. I'm in crisis.
[audience laughs]
Howard: I am dealing with people who don't understand the polarity of my art. The glasses work for you, by the way.
[audience laughs]
Glen: And I actually love the sort of conversation he has with Kenneth in that there's a level of comfort that shows he knows Kenneth is sort of like his paycheck, for lack of a better term—like a boss in this situation having the final say. But sometimes gay men in working relationships do show a dangerous level of comfort in conversation with authority figures in the form of banter, and because you're saying kind-of-undercutting things cleverly, you think you can get away with it. But you can't always get away with it.
Drew: It's very unprofessional. We should all stop doing that. We won't. Howard, the other gay artist, is played by an actor named Jack Kenny, and he is a gay, and randomly he comes back in a later episode. Dan Butler's character also comes back in a later episode—not the same episode. That's more world-building than I thought Caroline in the City ever did.
Glen: That's nice that they keep populating the world with gays. Gays in New York City in the '90s? Hmm.
Drew: Just the two. Well, I guess we go to the gallery show next, so there's a lot more than two. Howard, the more successful gay artist—in his conversation with Kenneth, it comes up that his painting might sell for 40—40.
Howard: And—and I saw a price list for the show. I thought we'd agreed on 40 when you invited me to join this [52:10 inaudible].
Richard: Excuse me for a second but do you mean $40,000?
Kenneth: Yes. Now, Howard. I told you I wanted every piece in the show to go for between $20,000 and $30,000.
Howard: I realize that—
Richard: I'm sorry! I'm sorry—but is that per painting, or for the whole lot including the fixtures?
[audience laughs]
Howard: Arnon! No!
Richard: Look, look, look, look, look. Let me just—let me get this straight. Now, you expect to sell my painting for $30,000?
Kenneth: Oh, no. Well, Richard, you're new. You'll probably have to settle for around $20,000.
[audience laughs]
Kenneth: Now, what was the problem you wanted to talk to me about?
Richard: I just have no idea what to do for Liza Minnelli's birthday.
[audience laughs]
Drew: I wrote, "Richard is a bad person but he's also a poor person, so we can forgive him. Kind of." So the next scene there's kind-of-heavy, new-wave synth playing in the establishing shot, and then we get into the party. And it is full of gay men who are all wearing back, and Caroline who is wearing a Kelly-green dress, and she feels very awkward.
Caroline: I knew I shouldn't have worn color. I feel like Kermit the Frog.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Which, I guess, is a reach-around there, too—Richard should have never tried to lie and pretend that he's gay. Annie finds the one straight guy in the crowd and pretty much exits the scene.
Annie: Check out the guys—gay, gay, way gay, gay, who cares, straight. Ooh.
Caroline: See ya'.
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Leave it to Annie to find the needle in the haystack.
[audience laughs]
Drew: I'm glad the line was not that Annie found the needle in the gay stack because a lesser writer would have done that, and that would have been—
Glen: That joke has appeared in Will & Grace.
Drew: Well Caroline in the City's a better-written show than Will & Grace is the statement I am now making and standing behind. Is that something that's tossed off in Will & Grace, or are they very proud of that line? Is it something—
Glen: I'm sure they're proud of it.
Drew: Ugh.
Glen: Del, of course assumes, that he is going to be prey for all these horny gay men in the room, and that ends up not happening to his disappointment. And then Caroline hugs Richard to wish him good luck, and [inaudible 54:20] a "Don't worry. I already told everyone in the room that you were a lesbian," which gay men have straight female friends. I don't see why her hugging him would have tipped anyone off that he was straight.
Drew: Maybe—yeah. I can't imagine.
Glen: I think it was just to get another laugh out of it, like, "Bwahaha. People think Caroline's a lesbian now."
Drew: Can you imagine? Can you imagine?
Glen: I wouldn't want to. I mean, I'm sure lesbians out there can imagine and have fun doing so.
Drew: Yeah. She's an attractive—
Glen: Does nothing for me.
Drew: She's an attractive lady. Caroline gets spotted by Allen.
Glen: Her hairdresser.
Drew: Whom she has told that she moved to Norway, which is a terrible story—but whatever. And it plays out—
Glen: Like a breakup.
Drew: Yeah. They're doing the tableau of a male-female couple breaking up, and I guess the funny part is that it's a straight lady and a gay dude.
[audience laughs]
Allen: Wait a minute. This isn't my cut.
Caroline: What? Cut?
Allen: You're seeing someone else, aren't you?
Caroline: Allen, it's not what you think.
Allen: Oh, please. I'm not a fool.
Caroline: Look, Allen. I didn't want you to have to find out this way, but it was only once and—and it didn't mean anything.
[audience laughs]
Allen: After three years together? I don't even know you anymore.
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Allen, can't we start again? How about I come in next week?
Allen: For what? A mercy cut? I think not.
[audience laughs]
Caroline: Allen! Allen! It's no excuse, but I was drunk at the time.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Richard comes up. Says he sold his painting. There's a terrible "Get out!" joke.
Richard: Hey, where's Caroline?
Annie: I don't know. Why?
Richard: Those guys over there are about to buy my painting.
Annie: [with screeching excitement] Get out!
Richard: I'm out!
[audience laughs and applauds uproariously]
Annie: I'm going to go find Caroline.
Drew: That's not how gay works. That's not how gay works.
Glen: Maybe it is—for some people. But in this celebration, Kenneth Arabian goes into his sort of—what's the word I'm looking for? Kenneth goes into a sort of mission statement.
Kenneth: Congratulations, Richard. Your nude female will now be reclining on Park Avenue [laughs].
Richard: Thank you, Kenneth. Thank you so much.
Kenneth: Oh. I'm just so grateful I'm in a position where I can give fellow gay artists a forum where they can exhibit their work full of support and free from prejudice.
Richard: Yeah. Well, you know—
Kenneth: Every time I make a sale it justifies my life. And Bob and Bob are so excited—
[audience laughs]
Kenneth: —because not only are they buying something they love, but they're buying it from a gay artist.
Glen: Which then, of course, makes Richard guilty, and he is going to come out. But Del, who is so focused on the fact that Richard is going to get a $20,000 check, effortlessly goes into a gay affectation pretending to be Richard's husband.
Richard: Kenneth, I cannot sell you the painting because I—
Del: Because he gave it to me on our third anniversary.
[audience laughs and applauds and cheers uproariously]
Del: You didn't think I'd remember, did you? But I am perfectly fine with you selling it, honey. I don't need the painting. All I need is him.
Richard: Del! Del, what do you think you're doing?
Del: He's a little uncomfortable with public displays of affection. We have this fight all the time.
Richard: Del, can I have—can I just talk to you a second please?
Del: Oh sure, sweetie. By the way, he raves about you.
Richard: Del!
[audience laughs]
Richard: Del, no way. No. I am not going to sell the painting. It's not honest, and it's not right.
Del: Richard! If I could just argue the other side for a second—$20,000!
[audience laughs]
Richard: Look, Kenneth. I have to tell you the truth—[sighs]. Look, I'm straight.
Kenneth: You're straight?
Del: So this is how I find out!
[wine splashes]
Drew: This means that all three—Annie, Caroline, and Del—all do some weird, performative thing to try to help Richard's career, which I'm sure was just an accident. But that is an interesting, repeated thing throughout this episode. He does a really good job trying to fix the situation.
Glen: He plays gay better than Richard plays straight, in my cruel opinion—in this episode, I mean. This charade ends with Del throwing a glass of wine in Richard's face when Richard comes out and says, "No, no. I'm straight."
Drew: He does a good job. It gets all over Dan Butler too, and Dan Butler kind of acts around it.
Glen: And it doesn't seem to have harmed any of the art, which is what I was worried about, which speaking of Will & Grace, the much-celebrated water bra episode—the entire time Grace's bra is spraying the art, I'm just like, "That's thousands of dollars."
Drew: You must have hated that episode so much.
Glen: I mean, It was funny, but thousands of dollars.
Drew: Don't damage art around Glen. It makes him very uncomfortable, apparently.
Glen: Yeah!
Drew: He 'fesses up.
Glen: Yeah. Kenneth tries to comfort a distraught Richard.
Richard: Look, you have every right to be angry with me.
Kenneth: I'm not angry. I'm disappointed. But Richard, listen. If there's one thing I've learned, you can't do anything about the way you were born. So, you're straight—accept it and be proud.
[audience laughs]
Kenneth: Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a check to tear up.
Richard: I understand.
Kenneth: Bob and Bob.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Which again plays into the whole straights as a minority, but I think Dan Butler's delivery is good. And I do like that even though some of the politics of this episode are weird, again, it's nice when the gay characters are shown to be the better people.
Drew: And they're the comfortable ones. They don't really have to go on a journey.
Glen: Yeah. They're not going on a journey—they're also not making asses of themselves, and I like that he very much doesn't give the money to Richard. In some realms, this episode could have ended being like, "Well, maybe you're not a gay artist, but you clearly have a gay perspective or some sort of voice that's akin to gay men—blah, blah, blah—something we find value in—blah, blah, blah." They could have justified giving him the money, and I like that they did not.
Drew: And then Richard would have quit and never worked for Caroline again because he sold his first piece.
Glen: I don't know how far $20,000 would get him in New York City.
Drew: In 1995? Who knows? I literally have in all caps, "THIS IS A GOOD MESSAGE." I apparently— [laughs].
Glen: Apparently, you were very into it. I had "Lolol, those two gay guys have the same name," because there is a running joke about the two men who are buying his painting both being named "Bob." We never see them, but the joke is funny enough that they just keep calling to them, "Bob and Bob." The audience loves it that the two men have the same name.
Drew: That can happen with an opposite-sex couple very easily—like Terry or Joe or something. I'm sure it happens more often than it does with gay people, in fact. It's not that weird. Have I ever told you about the time I was watching MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell was interviewing the two Michael Steeles?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: And she was kerplunked by this. She was like, "I just—well, I guess I'll call one of you Mike? Who's going to be Mike?" Clearly, she's like, "This has never happened in my entire career."
Glen: I will not have you [comfort/come for 01:01:47] Andrea Mitchell on our podcast.
Drew: I'm not comforting. It was weird to watch. It just completely derailed her, and the two Michael Steeles were like, "Yeah, just whatever"—the awkward thing being that one of them is white and one of them is black. Maybe that was her first inclination, and she did not want to say, "White Michael."
Glen: I also did not want her to say that.
Drew: Mmm [laughs]. Anyway, this episode ends on another coming-out joke because Caroline comes out of the bathroom.
Caroline: Richard, Annie told me you just sold a painting!
Richard: Oh, it's a long story. Wow. Your hair looks great. What happened?
Caroline: Well, let's just say that I let Allen give me a quickie in the ladies' room.
Richard: Get out!
Caroline: I'm out!
[audience laughs and applauds]
Drew: No over-the-credits thing because this was Must See TV where they aired previews for other stuff on the other half of the screen, so that's it. I stand basically in the same place as I did before Caroline in the City. I understand if you don't think it's a classic show, but watching this was very comforting for me in a way I did not expect, and there were a few good lines, it has an interesting role in this period of TV, and especially I'm glad we got to finally pull apart the whole Malcolm Gets thing because that's like one of the more complicated issues of this era.
Glen: Yeah. I think that issue is more interesting to talk about than this actual episode because it was probably a more common problem than we realized. There are a lot of gay actors. There have probably been many gay actors that we don't know about who've had to have chemistry with their costars.
Drew: Mm-hmm. I mean, we're going to be talking about Gimme a Break! later this season. Yeah. It is weird to think about all of the stuff like this that we don't know about. Malcolm Gets just was like, "Fuck it. I'm coming out. I don't want to do this anymore," and that is the one that tends to scramble people's brains the most.
Glen: I think also this discussion isn't to say that gay men shouldn't be playing straight roles and having romances with the opposite sex. I think it's more that in sitcoms, a lot of times the characters hue so closely to the personality of the actor that it's hard to separate the two.
Drew: I agree. Actually, the Annie character was originally named Libby and they changed it to Annie to be closer to Amy because they fixed the character in honor of Amy Pietz because they liked her so much.
Glen: There you go.
Drew: So I'm saying they're not above tailoring characters around the actor to an extent.
Glen: Yeah, but in this case it was a hurdle that seemed insurmountable. Even me not necessarily knowing that the actor was gay when I was watching this, when that romance came, I was just like, "There's just nothing. There's nothing there."
Drew: Right.
Glen: And what do you do when you have four seasons of a show and you need to go in that familiar territory of a romance between the leads?
Dre: Do you remember what they did in the second season? So Richard leaves and goes to Europe and comes back with his ex-wife, Julia, who is played by Sofia Milos. She doesn't really have anything to do on the show. She's just European and kind of condescending, and she's there for at least the entire fucking season—it's kind of annoying—and the reason that that character gets brought on is they don't know what to do about this chemistry. But that creates conflict between Julia and Caroline because she's in the house a lot, and I guess that's interesting? But that's where they took this after the first season.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Glen, did you know that the last episode of this show, which is a cliffhanger by the way—
Glen: Oh, no!
Drew: Do you remember how it ends?
Glen: No.
Drew: So I don't remember who it is, but Caroline's in a relationship with someone else. I think they're about to get married, and Richard arrives outside the church. If it's not like that, it's very much like that.
Glen: I remember that episode.
Drew: So it just ended. Maybe they thought they were going to resolve that, but we never saw them run away together, which—yeah. That, however, is not the last time Lea Thompson played this character. She did it one more time on American Dad. There's this episode where the family's sitting around and watching TV on a Saturday afternoon, and Stan's like, "Saturday afternoon is when the networks have all the good stuff that they're hiding from you," and they watch the secret, final episode of Caroline in the City where all it is is a shot of Richard, Annie, and Dell stabbed to death with pencils.
Stan: Saturday afternoon TV, where the sneaky networks hide all the good shows: a guy with question marks on his suit yelling tax secrets at me, Rick Steves' Glory Hole in Europe, and of course the secret final episode of Caroline in the City.
Caroline: Now the city is mine.
Stan: [laughs obnoxiously] Still holds up.
Drew: [laughter] I like that. I like that they got her to do it. Seth MacFarlane's shows are weirdly good at getting the actual actors to come back and give one line, which is either inexplicable or a commitment to the joke.
Glen: I don't know. I like that there's a community of actors out there and they support each other.
Drew: This is true. One more. Do you remember People Next Door?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Another show about a comic strip artist that took me awhile to google because that's not a very good title for it. But if you guys don't know it's about Jeffrey Jones—of all people—plays a cartoonist whose imagination brings things to life, so it's a fantasy sitcom sort of. Did you actually watch it? Or no?
Glen: Not closely. I've seen an episode.
Drew: I tried to find an episode online. All I could find was the opening credits. The show also starred Mary Gross, Christina Pickles, Leslie Jordan, and Jackie Swanson who plays Kelly on Cheers, so it's a really good cast—and it is co-created by Wes Craven.
Glen: Oh, my god.
Drew: Isn't that weird? It didn't last very long because it was too fucking weird, and if you know of a place I can watch episodes of this show—I just want to watch one because it sounds like something I dreamed, and trying to find it I was like, "Is this real? Is this something I dreamed?" It's real. Please, tell me where to find it.
Glen: Someone help Drew before he loses his mind!
Drew: These kinds of things really do bother me. Glen, if people have information about People Next Door or other stuff, where can they find you?
Glen: They can find me on Twitter, @iwritewrongs—that is write with a W—and on Instagram @brosquartz. But I would avoid my Instagram for the month of October as it is mostly Lego content.
Drew: But I think it's good.
Glen: I might stop soon.
Drew: But it's not the end of October yet.
Glen: I know. Most Inktober people lose steam in the middle of the month.
Drew: Do they take you away? Do they break all your pens or something if you don't finish the month? What do—
Glen: I guess I'll find out.
Drew: Oh, god. I'm @drewgmackie on Twitter, and you can follow this podcast on Twitter @gayestepisode. Listen to all previous episodes at GayestEpisodeEver.com or, probably, you're likely listening on an app of some sort that is specifically for podcasts. I recently migrated to the Himalaya App, and I'm enjoying it very much. I'm not being paid for this endorsement.
Glen: Yet.
Drew: Yet. I just feel like it fixed a lot of the problems I had with the insanely bad Apple Podcast app.
Glen: It drains 53 percent of my phone while I'm at the gym.
Drew: Please give us a rate and review on iTunes. Even though I just slammed iTunes as being crappy and told you not to use it, it's still the place that directs most traffic to most podcasts, including ours. And if you'd like to give us five stars and give a few words about literally anything, like what you had for dinner last night or what your favorite kind of farm animal is—anything—that will help us get more people. As we mentioned earlier, another helpful thing you can do is give us money. This is not a hold up—we're just asking you to go to patreon.com/gayestepisodeever and support us with as little as a dollar a month. You can put coffee in Glen's cup.
Glen: I love coffee.
Drew: He does love coffee. Our logo is designed by Rob Wilson. See more of his stuff at robwilsonwork.com. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. You can go to tablecakes.com to see the other shows that we have going. That's everything. I said all the—I remembered all the things! This is—I remembered most of the—
Glen: A momentous occasion.
Drew: Yeah. Okay.
Glen: What's the outro song?
Drew: I don't know.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: It's hard to find a [inaudible 01:09:56] disco song that matches every occasion, and I'm running out of the gay ones.
Glen: This one is about art.
Drew: I know. Yeah. We'll do that. Podcast over?
Glen: Bye forever.
Drew: Bye forever.
["Mona Lisa" performed by Mr. Black plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes production.