Transcript for Episode 38: Endora Turns Darren Into a Homo
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Bewitched episode “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall.” 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.
Samantha: Darrin, I did it for your own good. I couldn't let you meet a conservative client dressed like a—like a—
Darrin: Go ahead. Say it. Like an attractive, desirable youth.
[audience laughs]
Samantha: That's hardly what I was going to say.
[audience laughs]
["Bewitched" by Warren Barker plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to the Halloween episode of 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 today we have a special guest, Chase McCown.
Chase: Hello, everybody.
Drew: Chase, you are an actor.
Chase: Yes.
Drew: Improvisor.
Chase: Guilty as charged.
Drew: Comedy person.
Chase: Correct.
Drew: Writer.
Chase: Yes.
Drew: Movie poster model.
Chase: Ah—once, yes.
Drew: It only takes one time.
Glen: Care Bears II: The Next Generation.
Chase: Uh, The Human Centipede—the very first. I am the screaming person at the helm of that poster.
Drew: Did you actually have to scream, or did you just mime the screaming?
Chase: I mimed screaming.
Drew: Okay. That's a good—
Chase: It was a quiet set.
Glen: How long was that photo shoot?
Chase: Truly an hour.
Drew: Lasts forever.
Chase: Yeah. Yeah.
Drew: So when you hear the name Chase McCown think Human Centipede—
Chase: Please.
Drew: —but also Bewitched. We brought you in because you are somewhat of a Bewitched superfan. Is that accurate?
Chase: Yes, thanks to TBS back in the day at 3:05. They were always five minutes after the hour and half hour.
Glen: Why?
Chase: I don't remember. I remember The Brady Bunch was on at 3:35 p.m., vividly, because I would set my VCR for both of them.
Drew: Yeah. I thought that was weird too, but I guess it made sure that you could finish one thing and then go to TBS, and you wouldn't miss any part of that Brady Bunch episode—which you probably had seen before. TBS back-in-the-day reruns was the first time you saw Bewitched?
Chase: It was.
Drew: What about it made you latch on to it?
Chase: There was a lot. I think first and foremost, for many fans it's just the concept of magic, and as an adult—yes, you can see the wires and see the edits, but I think on a superficial level it's the magic. And then kind of like with The Brady Bunch, you also see that there's this underlying message of acceptance. So when you're a young gay kid, even though you're not fully aware that that's why you're drawn to it, that was prevalent throughout the series—this like, "Hey. If you're different, you belong in this universe." And gay or not, I've always thought Elizabeth Montgomery was quite beautiful and a fun actress, a great actress.
Glen: As I have mentioned on this show before, I think, I dreamed about her the night before she died.
Chase: Whoa. In 1995?
Glen: Mm-Hmm.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: It's probably your fault, do you think?
Glen: Oh, definitely. She was wearing all black in the dream.
Chase: Oh. That is crazy.
Glen: Mm-hmm. I'm magical.
Drew: Thinking about the show as being an accepting place—we're going to talk about all the gay stuff, but I just realized now that everyone who visits that household is a broken weirdo, and they all have a lot of things wrong with them.
Glen: Just like your house [laughter].
Drew: Yeah. Glen?
Glen: Uh-huh?
Drew: When did you first encounter Bewitched?
Glen: Not until I was adult-ish, maybe teenager. I was a I Dream of Jeannie kid growing up, which is just like Bewitched—but instead of a strong, powerful woman, it's like, "What if we made her subservient?"
Drew: She does have a better bedroom set.
Glen: Yeah. That show is all sorts of problematic, but I still loved it. But I did enjoy Bewitched as a teenager, obviously. Paul Lynde, which we'll probably talk about.
Drew: I don't see why. I don't see why we'd bring him up. That's weird.
Glen: But I'm definitely not a superfan.
Drew: It was on briefly in syndication when I was a little kid and I liked what I saw, but I was very surprised to encounter it later and find out it was for adults. I thought it was a children's show because it's really fun for kids to watch, and there just wasn't really anything—I guess there was Small Wonder, but there wasn't that much like that on normal TV in the '80s.
Glen: Were you jealous of Tabitha?
Drew: Yes. She had powers too.
Glen: Yeah.
Chase: Yep.
Drew: I suspected that she was cuter than me too, and I was right. That was a very cute little kid.
Chase: That's subjective.
Drew: I've seen maybe a third of the episodes of this show—I looked at the list. There's 254 episodes over eight seasons, which means that they did not give those people a break back in the day.
Chase: No.
Glen: Hmm-mm.
Drew: But I was also very surprised to find out how gay it was, and I think the thing that tipped me off was there's actually a joke about it on The Critic.
Woman: This commercial appeals to gay Generation Xers.
Man: Okay. Who was cuter—Uncle Jed or Jethro?
Man 2: Jethro was a bimbo.
Men: Uncle Jed.
Man: Okay. Okay. On Bewitched, Darrin Number 1 or Darrin Number 2?
Man2: I liked Uncle Arthur.
Man: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Drew: It is two gay guys playing pool and talking about which Darrin was cuter and—
Glen: Neither.
Chase: Thank you. You beat me to it.
Drew: Well, you can argue with the writers of The Critic because that was the joke, and that was the first clue that I was like, "Oh. There's a gay aspect to this show." And then as I keep learning more about it I'm like, "Oh. This is just a really fucking gay show—like, it is very much so in the DNA, even if they never did an explicitly gay episode. This one's not quite there, but it's still pretty fucking gay.
Chase: It's close.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: I would say 86%.
Chase: Eighty-six percent gay?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. Bewitched, if you don't know, ran for eight seasons on ABC, from September 17, 1964 to March 25, 1972. It starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, a beautiful newlywed married to Darrin—who is played by Dick York in the episode we're watching, but would shortly after be replaced by Dick Sargent. I don't know—it's one of those things. I always think that I Dream of Jeannie actually came first—totally didn't.
Chase: Nope.
Drew: It was a year after, and it was completely derivative of this one—and this is probably the most successful of this era of magic sitcoms, compared to, like, Mister Ed.
Chase: My Favorite Martian. I think Bewitched set the standard for those. Not set the standard—but yeah, it started the trend for sure.
Drew: But I don't think anything that came after it ever topped it.
Chase: No.
Drew: I guess—would The Munsters be considered magic?
Chase: That was only two seasons.
Drew: Was it really?
Chase: Yep. That and The Addams Family. Both were two seasons and then done.
Drew: That's so weird.
Glen: What about Out of This World?
Drew: That's the '80s, so it was different. Oh, yeah. I guess that's another magic sitcom that they had in the '80s, I guess, and Harry and the Hendersons. Weird—they did come back in the '80s.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Hmm. Okay. Well, I think my favorite is My Mother The Car.
Chase: Oh, boy.
Drew: Which I cannot believe was an actual TV show that was literally about a mom reincarnated as a car. Her soul's trapped—
Chase: Yes, and a very catchy theme song too.
["My Mother the Car" performed by Paul Hampton plays]
Drew: This show—this good one—was created by Sol Saks. He was apparently inspired by both Bell, Book, and Candle (where Jimmy Stewart romances Kim Novak who's a witch) and a movie called I Married a Witch (where Fredric March plays a man who romances Veronica Lake, a witch). He wrote the first episode and then kind of was out of it. So all the royalties of the show that are still in syndication now he got for writing one episode.
Chase: Wow.
Glen: Yeah. Isn't that great?
Drew: It was the number two most watched show the first season it was on, second only to Bonanza. And it was on for eight seasons, but through the fifth season it was number eleven—so it held on pretty long.
Glen: There was a Japanese show called I Married a Witch that I thought was an adaptation of Bewitched.
Drew: Is it not?
Glen: Didn't you just talk about a show that's called I Married a Witch? Or are you talking about the Japanese one?
Drew: So the movie is a—
Glen: Oh.
Drew: It's an old movie with Veronica Lake called I Married a Witch, but there is a Japanese show called that. And, according to what I read, it is a remake of Bewitched.
Glen: Okay. I've seen episodes of it. It is wild. Like, they fight Satan—or some sort of powerful demon force.
Chase: Aren't we all on a daily basis?
Drew: I would watch that show. I'd also be down for a reboot of Bewitched where Darrin and Samantha fight Satan—no. I guess that's the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Never mind, they're already doing it.
Glen: How do you feel about the movie Bewitched?
Drew: I mean, does anyone have anything positive to say about the movie adaptation?
Chase: Nope.
Glen: It's over.
Chase: The theater was air conditioned.
Drew: Yep [sighs]. That was a really disappointing—not even knowing the source material that well when I saw it in the theater, that was—that was just a travesty.
Glen: For lucky listeners who didn't see it, it is about a TV producer—played by Will Farrell—who wants to reboot Bewitched and does so by accidentally casting an actual witch in the role.
Chase: Nicole Kidman.
Drew: See, the premise is actually not terrible—
Glen: I disagree. The premise is extremely terrible.
Drew: I actually think in a different dimension this movie could have been good, but literally every other decision they made about this was not good—except for casting Kristin Chenoweth. I think this is the first thing I ever saw Kristin Chenoweth in. She plays the neighbor. They have a Gladys character and then they have another actual Gladys played by Amy Sedaris. It's—
Chase: Hmm. I have not seen it since it came out.
Drew: I mean, don't.
Chase: No. I do not intend to.
Drew: But also, they have Kristin Chenoweth and Amy Sedaris in the same movie and don't give them any scenes together which is a terrible idea. Anyway, the good Bewitched—I have a big section called, "Why is it gay?" But first, when did you guys realize it was a gay show basically? Chase?
Glen: Today!
Drew: [laughter] Thank you, Glen.
Chase: I think there are a lot of different in points to calling it a gay show, one of them being its own campy aesthetic, part of it just being some of the people who are on it like Paul Lynde, Dick Sargent. So I think that for me, when Robert Reed died in the early '90s, it kind of opened up this discussion in the pre-internet days about other well-known, gay actors who had had to hide it, and that might have been around the time that I really discovered Bewitched to begin with. And so I think that when I started to watch it (granted, in the Midwest—and granted very much in the closet as a teenager), I think it always struck me as kind of a gay show for several reasons.
Drew: Like an appealing, strong, female lead.
Chase: Yeah, a strong female lead. Everyone is welcome here; the weirdos are the heroes. Don't let traditional, mortal society tell you who you can be and how you have to act.
Glen: Conservatism as the villain.
Chase: Yeah. Oh, yeah—especially in this episode.
Drew: It is the villain, but it's also to a certain degree something Samantha is buying into because Endora is super-liberal and she's taking more of a step towards the center, but like, we're supposed to encourage her for doing this. We're not supposed to side with Endora, I guess. Right?
Chase: I don't know. I always—and I think that's an unintentionally interesting takeaway from Bewitched is that you can side with whomever you want. I, of course, out of the gate was like, "Magic, magic, magic," but I think a lot of people at the time in the country were still pretty conservative, and so to them it probably did say, "Look what happens if we allow this liberal mindset into our country. Witches and warlocks will wreak havoc with their spells."
Glen: I think, probably from the get-go, conceptually they were high-fiving each other when they were just like, "What if the mother-in-law was actually a witch?" and they were just like, "Oh, my god—that's great." And so they probably wanted Endora as the villain, not really realizing that she was fun.
Drew: I guess it never really occurred to me until now that people wouldn't have liked Endora, but I guess a lot of people watching it when it was first on would have been like, "Oh. She has gaudy makeup and she's overdone and overbearing. We don't like her."
Chase: And oftentimes, just as magic at the beginning of the episode would set in motion the conflict that drove it, many times magic—without Darrin knowing, usually—was also what fixed the problem at the end of the episode. So it was a narrative that they kind of showed both sides of.
Drew: Oh. That's good. I like that. Alright. So I'm going to go through now my "Big List of Gay." First of all, Elizabeth Montgomery, huge advocate for gay rights and also HIV awareness. Straight herself, but she co-grand marshalled the LA Gay Pride Parade in 1992 with Dick Sargent—Darrin #2—who had come out in 1991, just a year previous. Shortly after they both died, which is very, very sad.
Glen: Again, not my fault.
Drew: "You can't blame me for Dick Sargent, either." Fine. Then Agnes Moorehead. I always thought Agnes Moorhead was openly a lesbian. Apparently, that is not exactly true. She probably was a lesbian. I don't think she ever said anything on the record about it, but there is a quote from Paul Lynde saying, "Well, the whole world knew Agnes was a lesbian. I mean, classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes" [laughter].
Chase: Yeah.
Glen: Class act, that Paul Lynde.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Chase: You know, she was a film star before anything else. She was in Citizen Kane.
Drew: Which is so weird to think about but also explains, like, she's so good. That dialogue would wither and die coming from a lesser actress. She does a really good job with it.
Chase: Oh, yeah. And she was in the ranks with Tallulah Bankhead and a lot of other—Marlene Dietrich—other known lesbians back in her film career portion.
Glen: My film education is slipping from my mind as I age, but I feel like there was a Hitchcock movie that was written for her to star in, but the studio gave pushback and it eventually went to a man.
Chase: Oh. I thought—and I can't remember it as well off the top of my head. But I thought Agnes Moorehead was in a Hitchcock movie—at least one.
Glen: She was, and I can't remember which one.
Chase: But maybe not the one that you're— maybe she didn't get the part.
Glen: Drew—computer. I don't have internet.
Drew: I turned my wifi off because it's making that weird noise again. Okay. So it is interesting that Endora deeply resents Samantha's decision to marry a mortal and abandon all that makes a witch's life special in favor of something that's conventional and suburban. She is gay culture. In fact, there is a meme I saw on Tumblr—and it's weird to cite a meme exactly, but that's what I'm doing right now—where it is like a screen-cap conversation between Endora and Samantha. Maybe you'll know what episode this is because I'd like to actually cut it in. Samantha is defending her decision to live the life she's living, and she delivers this monologue, basically, that's actually quite beautifully written, and if I gave it to you out of context you'd be like, "Oh. This is fantastic writing." I don't think people would suspect that it was actually from Bewitched.
Samantha: I think we're very lucky. All young married people dream of owning their own home.
Endora: Well, it's fine for them Samantha, but not for us. We are quicksilver, a fleeting shadow, a distant sound. Our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass. We live in music and a flash of color. We live on the wind and the sparkle of a star, and you want to trade it all for a quarter of an acre of crab grass.
Drew: That's really good.
Chase: Yeah. That is, like, second or third episode. It's when they're buying their house right after they're married, so that's early on in the series.
Drew: That writing's really fucking good.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: And again, I can't imagine hearing that speech and not being like, "Well, she's right. Samantha is really giving up a lot." But I guess Samantha also really loves what's her face—what's his face.
Glen: Darrin.
Drew: Also, I found a book called Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability by Patricia White where she actually points out that in the opening credits you see the cartoon [versions of] Samantha and Darrin. She is a cat, and then she turns into Samantha and he's holding her in her arms, and then there's a giant cloud of black smoke that literally overshadows this scene of conventional heterosexual love and in the text it reads, "And Agnes Moorehead as Endora."
Chase: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Very interesting. I never thought about that. Also, her default costume is purple and green.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: And for some reason in comic books that is code for villain: Joker, Lex Luthor, The Riddler, Green Goblin, original-costume Catwoman, Mysterio, Brainiac, The Lizard, Mesmero, Circe, and Morgana Le Fay are all people who have purple and green for their default colors. I don't know if that's something people were ever conscious of being a thing, but I guess they're trying to suggest villain? I don't know. I can't imagine why. It's just she has that one costume that shows up again and again.
Chase: From what I gather, because it was on a network—granted that was the only option at the time at the beginning at the very early part of the mid '60s. I think that what they represented was sometimes to placate a more traditional audience even though what they were showing and telling more subtly was a more open-minded, progressive narrative. So if they costumed Endora that way, having recently re-watched a handful of episodes, there's never a narrative stance like, "Take Darrin's side. Take Endora's side." So I think that some of that was left either just to the functioning of a situation comedy where you've got to have an antagonist and conflict, but I think part of that was also left to the audience to make their own decisions about who's bad, who's good, who's right, who's wrong.
Drew: I feel like that is the writers giving more credit to the audience than I think the audience is usually capable of getting.
Chase: Sure.
Drew: But nice that they did that at least.
Chase: And what's interesting is that I think time more than anything has established Endora as a non-villain. If anything, especially now in the 2019 era where you don't tell a woman what she can or can't do, especially if you're a man, I think that Darrin has kind of become an unintentional—not a villain, but far more of a foil now than Endora would be considered if that show were to be presented and pitched and served as a pilot in 2019.
Drew: Right. He's holding her back from doing—literally preventing her from casting magic.
Chase: From being who she is fundamentally.
Glen: Fuck men.
Chase: Fuck Darrin. But both of them.
Drew: But does that include Paul Lynde?
Glen: Someone should.
Chase: No. Paul Lynde, to me, is the gayest part of the show. And what's interesting is out of 254 episodes, he's in about 10.
Drew: Are you serious?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Oh, gosh. I had no idea he was such a—I thought he was a much bigger part of the show.
Chase: That's what's interesting. And even Endora herself is in a third of the entire episodes of the show.
Drew: Huh. Well, I guess they stick out.
Chase: They do, and Elizabeth Montgomery knew in real life that both Paul Lynde and Dick Sargent were gay—she and her husband William Asher, who was the EP?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Chase: They did not care. It did not bear on them. There was no, "You need to keep a button on this. You need to sign a non-disclosure agreement." But Paul Lynde—I mean, you can hardly read his character Uncle Arthur as anything but gay, even though it's never mentioned.
Buck: We've got a special going this week. We're pushing the frozen, chocolate covered bananas.
Uncle Arthur: How revolting.
[audience laughs]
Buck: You don't eat them. You just make them. Here's how it works. You take the banana like this. You dip it in the chocolate.
Serena: Oh. That should be easy. I'm a dipper from way back.
Buck: Excellent.
Uncle Arthur: Yeah. She used to be known as the "Big Dipper."
[characters laugh]
Buck: Alright. Alright. Let's not have any levity on this job. No matter how weak.
Uncle Arthur: Oh. I got a critic.
Buck: Anyway, as I was saying, you take the banana like this. You dip it in the chocolate like this. You hand it to wise guy; he rolls it in the nuts and sticks it in the tray. You got that?
Uncle Arthur: Of course we've got it. How unskilled do you think we are?
Drew: Does that mean you think people watching back in the day would have known that this is a gay man? Or is he just a funny uncle?
Chase: I think a lot of the perception could even be tethered to how this particular episode we're going to discuss was intended to land on audiences. From what I gather, even just from people who were alive when Bewitched was originally on, queer is queer—its stereotypes and affectations have not changed over the years. And so I think that had they wanted Paul Lynde to be playing someone who was more traditionally heterosexual they probably would have either cast someone else or as a director been like, "Hey. Let's tone down that flame a little bit." Yeah.
Glen: Do you think uncle characters are often allowed to be played by gay actors or be more gay seeming? Because if you think about—I mean there are studies that, evolutionarily speaking, gay men played an uncle or protector role to families, blah, blah blah. But also, if you think about adult men that are allowed to be in the lives of families but still remain single and not have families of their own, it's very easy to just tack an uncle character in. There's no reason why Paul Lynde's character had to be Uncle Arthur—
Drew: He could have just been like—
Glen: Another witch—
Chase: Right.
Glen: —but had he just been another witch who was an adult man without a family who was Paul Lynde, then it may have been too much. But if you say, "Oh. He's Uncle Arthur—" I don't know. There’s something more harmless about it.
Chase: I think they had a choice too, because your uncles back then were either bachelors like on Family Affair—the guy who ends up inheriting his deceased brother's kids is a very heterosexual uncle who lives in a penthouse and is a ladies' man and then all of a sudden is thrust into fatherhood. That's an uncle who's single because he has a taste for partying and for women. I think that you had one of two tropes, and I think the other one is, like, the gay uncle, who is very clearly kind of an outsider.
Drew: Right. Yeah. Like Uncle Jesse. Obviously, no one for a second would even suspect him of being gay even though he lives in San Francisco with two other single men.
Chase: And that hair.
Drew: Yeah. Paul Lynde—never openly gay. Never came out. Never said anything on the record about it. It's crazy. It's also weird that he would make that remark about Agnes Moorehead when he himself just didn't ever see the need to announce himself to the world. Paul Lynde.
Glen: Hollywood Squares everyone.
Chase: Thank you, Uncle Arthur.
Drew: But he's so gay on—he's even gayer, I think, on Hollywood Squares and he's making more dirty jokes.
Peter Marshall: How many men on a hockey team?
Paul Lynde: About half.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And it's just weird to think about this man who was in a bunch of people's living rooms introducing America to gay snark, basically, even if they didn't know what that was. But if they encountered it later in life, they'd be like, "Oh. That's like a weird sort of gay humor that he was doing."
Chase: And I do think—maybe more so musically, and maybe even more so in the '80s, there was this acceptance of people who may have read queer—not so much as "queer," but just as "They're an artist." Like, it did surprise some people when George Michael came out or that one of the guys in Wham is gay. In that decade, at least, you had Boy George and Bowie. So I think through those two decades, it was also easy for people to shift from "It's a queer thing," to just "That's being a flamboyant artist/performer."
Drew: Right, and also weirdly having heterosexual versions of that with Prince and stuff where you're like, "Gay—no, apparently not. Okay. Well, cool." There's also Maurice Evans, who plays Samantha's father Maurice. He was apparently a closeted gay. Nothing on the record about it. Also, weird that his name is "Morris" Evans when his character's name is spelled the same but pronounced "Maurice." George Tobias, who plays Abner Kravitz, was also apparently a closeted gay man. And then Diane Murphy, who is one of the two twins who played Tabitha—Erin Murphy took over, and Diane Murphy stopped acting right after that—but she is married to a woman in Santa Barbara, and I think she does social work because when I worked for the paper there I came across "Diane Murphy," and I was like, "Oh, that's weird she has—oh, that's actually her. Okay. Well, Tabatha grew up."
Chase: And she was out back when I discovered Bewitched in the early '90s, so she was out before it was as accepted as it is now.
Drew: Huh. Go her.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: I usually give Nielsen ratings. They were not available for this episode. It was directed by Richard Michaels, who would actually begin a relationship with Elizabeth Montgomery towards the end of the show while she was still technically married to William Asher, the producer.
Glen: No.
Drew: They were separated—legally separated. They were—
Chase: Well—
Drew: They weren't—okay. So it's a very complicated thing, and weird enough William Asher appears in this episode as an irate motorist, which is an extra weird complication to it. This is written by Lila Garrett and Bernie Kahn. Lila had written a bunch of stuff and is randomly Eric Robert's mother-in-law. Bernie and Lila also wrote The Barefoot Executive.
Chase: Mm-hmm.
Glen: I know The Barefoot Contessa.
Drew: Different. They're related, but different branches of the family. So that's all the preface I have for this. Scene 1: Darrin primping in a mirror.
Glen: Did you say that this was the fifth season? Was this fifth season?
Chase: Fifth, yeah, and fairly early on.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: And this is Dick York's last season?
Chase: Yes. This is when his pain pill addiction had really started to manifest, and he and Elizabeth Montgomery had never gotten along well to begin with.
Drew: Oh.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: That's a bummer.
Chase: Well, she did not get along with him or Agnes Moorehead.
Glen: What?
Chase: Oh, yeah. That doesn't surprise me. I mean, Elizabeth Montgomery grew up in Hollywood. Her father was Hollywood royalty. She was used to getting her way. Her husband is the executive producer.
Drew: And her and Agnes are both very strong personalities. It's like two bears in the same cage.
Glen: I think bears are in the same cage often at the zoo.
Drew: Are they? Well, two alpha bears.
Glen: Alright.
Chase: Yeah.
Glen: Two alpha bears at Faultline [laughter].
Drew: Two alpha tigresses, if that's a more elegant analogy. I didn't know that. Huh. I guess she liked Dick Sargent at least?
Chase: Dick York had romantic feelings for Elizabeth Montgomery and—
Drew: Apparently everybody did [laughs].
Chase: Yeah. And both Elizabeth Montgomery and William Asher had very loose definitions of monogamy. He was no saint either. Pick any young actress who had five or less lines in an episode and she probably got that part not just through auditioning.
Glen: [gasps!!!] You can't say that anymore.
Chase: So for Elizabeth Montgomery to have gotten hers towards the end of the series—eh. Forgivable. But Dick York apparently had unrequited feelings for her and then had his own struggles with his pain and pain pills, and so this was the season where things really went off the rails for him. He was in a more recurring position.
Drew: Well he's given a very central role in this episode and makes some interesting acting choices.
Chase: Yes.
Drew: It's interesting that we start out with him looking in a mirror and also there's a weird—like, there's the mirror, and then there's a framed photo of himself looking back at him, which is probably just an accident of set decoration but works very metaphorically for what I think is going on in this episode. He's worried about his looks. He has a double chin and a paunch and crow's feet—and really, that's actually kind of rare to see a straight, married character fretting about his looks like that. That's not something—you just really don't see on TV very often.
Glen: Because usually they just let themselves go.
Drew: Yeah. Who cares? "I'm married already. It doesn't matter."
Chase: Yeah. It struck me too, and what was also interesting—and this was true of a lot of '60s sitcoms— where a character has a trait that is only used for one episode. Like, there is never an episode again where Darrin is worried about his appearance, kind of like in one episode of The Brady Bunch, Jan is all of a sudden this horrible practical joker ruining the house—never mentioned again.
Drew: Yes. Yeah.
Chase: And I think that this is very clearly a device just used for this plot. Darrin was not on the whole worried about his appearance, like most '60s sitcom husbands.
Drew: That makes sense. It's weird how audiences were just like, "Yeah. Okay." Like, something appears for once, and that doesn't seem weird to anyone back then. Samantha enters. I am reminded that Samantha/Elizabeth Montgomery is—I always knew she's beautiful, but looking at her on screen I was like, "Oh. She's interesting beautiful." She has very strong features, and I don't—there's really not anyone else I can think of in the history of Hollywood who looks quite like her. She's just a very imposing, strong, female presence.
Chase: Yeah. She's got especially—in my opinion, at the beginning of the show, it's black and white, she's a little too buttoned up, and by the end of the show she's leaned a little too much into the hippie fashion. This, in my opinion, is like the Elizabeth Montgomery sweet spot. There is a dress she wears in the middle of this episode that's one of the most beautiful dresses.
Drew: Is it at the end?
Chase: It's the pink one that she's wearing with the flowers.
Glen: Yeah, but that also matched curtains in the background.
Chase: It did.
Drew: And it was weird because she's criticizing her husband's clothes when she's wearing that, and I was like, "You're wearing your curtains right now. Look!" But, yeah.
Glen: Yeah, but that's also her second or third outfit that day.
Drew: Right.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: Away from her curtains, that outfit is really cute. I didn't actually look up who did the costumes on this show, but they did a really good job—especially dressing her.
Chase: It was magic.
Drew: [laughs] "Costumes by Magic."
Glen: I'm going to say that for everything in this episode—"It was magical" [laughter].
Drew: She comes in. She's like
Samantha: [clears throat]
Darrin: How long have you been standing there, honey?
Samantha: I came in around the crow's feet. Did I miss anything?
Darrin: Just checking to see how the old boy is holding up under the ears.
Samantha: And how is the old boy holding up?
Darrin: Just great—except for a receding hairline, a double chin, and trace of a pot.
Samantha: Oh, sweetheart [kisses]. On you, it looks good.
Darrin: Sam, the key today is youth. Eighty percent of the accounts that McMann & Tate handle are designed to appeal to people under 30.
Samantha: Well, you appeal to people under 30. Tabitha adores you.
Drew: It doesn't help him at all because he's still obsessing over his weird faults that he's seeing.
Glen: He's fretting because he works in advertising, and he thinks advertising is a young man's game and that he is now aging out of a position of authority.
Chase: Yeah, claiming that no youth trust anyone over 30, and I kept waiting in vain for them to tell us how old Darrin and Samantha are at this point. I always love hearing that from those older sitcoms.
Drew: They have to be in their—I would imagine they're both in their forties, right?
Chase: Wouldn't you?
Drew: Yeah.
Chase: And yet—
Glen: Yeah. If he's younger than me, I will jump out this window.
Chase: Oh, that. The older I get, it's so frustrating. How dare television do that, cast anyone younger or—oh. Excuse me. Yeah. Younger than me.
Drew: I think it's interesting that he can't hear the compliments that Samantha's giving him. She's like, "I like the way you look. You look absolutely fine." Speaking of three gay men, have you ever perceived—
Glen: That's presumptuous, Drew.
Drew: I just outed you.
Chase: I am. I'm coming out today.
Drew: Have you ever seen signs of age on a man and thought like, "Nah," like, "That's unattractive"? I feel like most guys I know actually would think that was a plus and not a negative.
Chase: I think that men are lucky in that regard. If a man (within reason) takes care of himself as he gets older—I don't need the eight pack and all that stuff, but just a modicum of self-care—I think he's definitely more attractive. Like, if you give me Brad Pitt in his 20s—and granted Brad Pitt's a bad example. He's not what I would call "my type." But as an example, Brad Pitt in his 40s and 50s to me is more attractive than Brad Pitt the boyish Thelma & Louise costar.
Drew: I agree.
Glen: I don't know. Thelma & Louise Brad Pitt is pretty hard to beat.
Drew: He taught America what abs were. It's true.
Glen: Um, as someone whose beard went white in his early 30s, I would say that people still comment about the effects on age on male looks—but yeah. We're lucky.
Drew: But we still go extra hard on ourselves. Like, the stuff that we see on other people as like, "Oh. That's absolutely fine," I think that we are jerks to ourselves about it.
Chase: And I also have to wonder—at the time—because it just doesn't seem from any pop culture history that in the '60s cosmetic products and beauty products were ever targeting men aside from shaving. Now, you've got this whole line of skincare just for men, and so I wonder if it was out of place back then to even have a man commenting on his appearance, because in the mid-60s the beauty industry was targeted almost exclusively towards women.
Drew: Yeah. Shaving and coloring up your gray hair, because I actually saw an old commercial for that when I was looking around online.
Glen: I mean, we're hard on ourselves because gay men are dating our competition. Like, what we're attracted to and the people we are trying to date we can also apply to ourselves and be like, "Oh. I like that on him. Why don't I have that?"
Chase: We also live in a pretty mercilessly judgmental city and industry.
Drew: Yeah. Terrible city. Why do we live here?
Chase: Love it.
Drew: He says, "The problem is that you love me. That's why you can't see my faults."
Darrin: Honey, you just don't understand. Your problem is that you love me.
Samantha: That's not my problem. That's my pleasure.
Darrin: Well.
[magical chimes]
Endora: Isn't that sweet? Making up after a fight?
Drew: They obviously still really dig each other, and it's like watching Schitt's Creek and seeing how the parents on that show obviously really dig each other and love each other. It reminds me of how nice it is to see a functional relationship. Despite all the magic shit happening around them, these two people actually like each other. It's very sweet. Enter Endora. She says some mean things.
Endora: I see Durwood is his usual charming self.
Samantha: It's nothing. Just a little concerned about creeping middle age. Perfectly natural.
Endora: Perfectly vain is what it is.
Samantha: Vain!? Huh! Darrin hasn't a vain bone in his body.
Endora: Well, I admit he has nothing to be vain about, but that doesn't stop him. Mortals are the vainest creatures in the world.
Drew: She delivers all her lines as if she is a grand actress—which she is—and it makes me wonder, why did she never play a villain on Batman? She seems like she would have been perfect for a female villain role, and she never did it.
Chase: Probably because a) I bet contractually she wasn't allowed to, and b) the only role that I can think of her playing went to Tallulah Bankhead—the Black Widow.
Drew: Yes. Yes. That would make sense. Yeah. She could not have—
Glen: I could see her being Queen of the Cossacks.
Chase: Ah, Anne Baxter. Little Eve Herrington.
Drew: Who played Marsha, Queen of Diamonds?
Chase: Carolyn Jones—Morticia.
Drew: Hmm. Oh, yeah. She did a good job with that. I don't think—no one else could have done that.
Chase: And I also gather that Agnes Moorehead didn't really want to do television at all.
Drew: She's a movie star, or theater.
Chase: Aside from like, one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents prior to this, I think that this was her only real foray into television.
Drew: I should have looked up to see if she ever gave a retrospective review on it where she said, "Oh, it was garbage," or something.
Chase: She died very shortly after the series ended.
Drew: Oh, did she really? I thought she lived longer than that. Bummer.
Chase: Hmm-mm.
Drew: Oh. Bummer.
Glen: Wait. I thought her Wikipedia said 1990. That can't be.
Chase: Oh.
Drew: So Samantha makes the mistake of explaining the situation to her mother—that Darrin's fretting about his looks—and Endora's like, "Oh. He's vain. Whatever." I feel like Samantha at this point should know that she should not explain problems to her mother because she knows what her mother is going to do, which she just immediately does—which is to cast a spell. In order to prove to Samantha that Darrin is vain, she casts a spell on Darrin that makes him vain, which is actually a very terrible plan.
Glen: You're right. She died in 1974.
Chase: In Minnesota of all places.
Drew: Oh. That sucks.
Glen: She was born 1900.
Drew: Really? I could not have guessed her age watching this show because she's wearing such thick—she could have been actually quite a bit younger than she really was. Cue the credits. I did check, by the way. For some reason I thought they didn't redraw the Darrin cartoon when Dick Sargent took over.
Glen: They did.
Chase: They did.
Drew: They really did.
Glen: I was impressed by how much the cartoon looked like Dick York.
Chase: Yes—and Dick Sargent.
Drew: And it's really high-quality animation, too. It looks great.
Glen: Drew, let's take a commercial break.
Drew: [laughs] What a great idea, Glen. I love it.
Glen: Glad we said it in the episode [laughter].
Drew: We're not sticking this in awkwardly halfway through because we forgot to say that, but here it is anyway.
["Bewitched" by Warren Barker plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]
[Promotional for ABC's primetime shows plays]
["Bewitched" by Warren Barker plays]
Glen: Drew, are we back?
Drew: We're back. Hi.
Glen: Hi, Chase. You're still here, obviously, because we didn't record this after you left.
Drew: Chase is nodding very politely. Chase, it's really great—you can just jump in whenever you want. You don't have to wait for us to stop talking. Thanks, Chase. Scene 2.
Chase: [laughs]
Drew: We're on the Columbia Pictures backlot, which is Sunset Gower Studios now, I think, if I did some research. I think—
Chase: I do not know this for a fact. I thought they shot in Culver.
Drew: Maybe they did.
Chase: The one that had the plantation front that still exists—like where they shot Batman. But who knows? We may never know.
It's lost to history. The science isn't there yet. So a coffee-mug-sized version of Endora materializes on the passenger seat of the car wearing different clothes than she was earlier, which is kind of weird.
Chase: The purple and green you had mentioned.
Drew: And then when we see her at the end, she's back in the original costume. So I just—whatever.
Glen: That's her travel costume.
Drew: When she's casting travel spells?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: She makes and incantation, and then makes Darrin basically fall in love with himself so he can't take his eyes off of his own reflection in his side view mirror, and he's sort of flirting with himself—which does raise the question of how gay is it to be in love with yourself. Apparently, very.
Chase: Mm-hmm.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Like, expressing actual affection for yourself in that way. The man does honk. He's a Michael-Chiklis-looking, bald guy. That is William Asher, Elizabeth Montgomery's husband until 1973. [He] would go on to marry the woman who played Murray's wife on Mary Tyler Moore, who herself was the original choice to play Carol Brady.
Chase: Oh. Joyce?
Drew: Joyce Bulifant.
Chase: Bulifant, yes.
Drew: That's who he married after Samantha—after Elizabeth Montgomery, who I'll continue to call Samantha because it's really hard for me to separate those two. He also directed a movie I might make you watch one day called Night Warning or Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker [laughter]. It's not allegedly supposed to be great, but that title alone—yeah.
Glen: The driver calls him "gorgeous."
Drew: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Chase: Yes, sarcastically, because Darrin is holding up this green light because he's looking at his reflection.
Glen: And then his own car won't start, and he gets honked at. The scene went on longer than it should have [laughter].
Chase: They really needed to use that backlot and get all their mileage out of it.
Drew: Yeah. Like, Endora didn't curse his car. There's no reason his car suddenly failed for no reason, right? Okay. Cut to Darrin's office, where his boss Larry Tate—played by David White, who despite that mustache is not gay, and his office looks like Mad Men. And I haven't watched Bewitched since I watched Mad Men, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I guess that's what a New York advertising office looks like." He is talking with Mr. Hascomb about his lucrative pill business, which includes licorice-flavored liver pills, and he's nervous because they're branching out with a product that's called Tanning Potion. I'm not sure what that is, but it's his wife's idea and he's nervous about it. He only likes pills. and he gives everyone pills. That's his deepest character trait really.
Chase: There is also a character trait associated with him if you were to keep a word count of how often he uses one particular word.
Drew: What is it?
Chase: "Conservative."
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Mr. Hascomb: No flashy campaign for me. I'm a conservative man. I run a conservative business in spite of my wife, and that's the way it's going to stay.
Glen: He's very conservative.
Chase: You hear it about 20 times in this episode from him, his wife—from everybody.
Glen: Yeah. "I'm worried your firm's not conservative enough. I'm worried Darrin's not conservative enough."
Chase: Yeah. "I need to run a very conservative campaign." And you have to wonder, for a show that was inherently progressive, how much of that is kind of poking fun at conservatives or how much of that is just of the time. Maybe it didn't have the meaning it does now.
Drew: I guess. But for someone who says that that word is heavily associated with him, there's nothing to like about this guy. That guy fucking sucks. I don't know why anyone would relate to this guy.
Chase: Yeah. To me he is the villain.
Drew: Yeah. He sucks.
Chase: Even when his—well, we'll dive deeper into his character in later scenes.
Glen: When his wife shows up?
Chase: Yes. Exactly.
Drew: I love his wife. Enter Darrin wearing a turtleneck and love beads and he says the word "haberdasher," so he's clearly become a homosexual because that's not something—[laughter].
Glen: I mean, the actor definitely was given the direction to—
Drew: Switch it up?
Glen: Yeah.
Chase: Yes.
Mr. Tate: If there's one man who respects the old, the established, the tried and true—it's Darrin.
Darrin: I'm sorry I'm late, but I passed this haberdasher's and I just couldn't resist it.
[audience laughs]
Mr. Tate: Darrin, this is Mr. Hascomb of Hascomb Drug Company.
Darrin: You know? I just thought of something.
Mr. Tate: Already? Oh! This guy's got a mind like a steal trap. Let's hear it Darrin.
Darrin: There's no mirror in this room.
[audience laughs]
Mr. Hascomb: Young man, what are you wearing?
Darrin: Love beads. They go all the way back to ancient Egypt. The high priests used to wear them.
Mr. Tate: High priests? You can't get more conservative than that. Cigarette anyone?
Mr. Hascomb: Stephens, I hope you understand we want a mature, conservative campaign for our suntan lotion.
Darrin: But the mature, conservative consumer doesn't hang around the beaches. The young people do.
Mr. Tate: Uh, Mr. Hascomb which one of those pills was for tension?
Mr. Hascomb: The red ones.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Is the official director-to-actor terminology "switch it up"?
Chase: Every set I've been on when I've been told to act gayer—which is never—that's been the word used.
Drew: Okay. So I was going to ask you guys, what about his manner—what is he doing that reads as gay? This is a hard thing for me to break down. You act. Tell us.
Chase: It's definitely effeminate, and especially compared to Darrin who is of that Mad Men advertising, kind of pent up—not macho. It's hard to call Dick York macho—but very much reserved. And so we see him a little bit more effeminate, a little bit more expressive. His gestures are flamboyant. His narcissism is, of course, as intentioned by Endora, just rampant. Every reflection he can find from his wife's dress to a wooden surface—anything he can do to see himself. So even though—like now, yes, we have the stereotype that gays are vain because they are, but back then that stereotype may or may not have even existed. And so who knows if it was intentionally directed towards a gay context, but it reads gay in his behavior physically, for sure.
Glen: I think "expressive" is a good way of describing it, and normal Darrin is "withholding."
Drew: He's smiling a lot. There's a lot more going on with his face.
Chase: It's truly the happiest you see Dick York in his five seasons. Even in the pilot when he's getting married, he still looks miserable.
Drew: [laughs] Oh. I feel bad for Dick York now, I guess—no.
Chase: Who knows.
Drew: His voice is also maybe a little bit higher, and I think it actually gets a little bit further higher as the gayness gets switched up.
Chase: Yes.
Drew: So he scares off the pill man, and Tate says his beads are for the birds.
Mr. Tate: Hascomb drops a $500,000 account right in our laps—no sweat, simple campaign. You almost blow it, and all you can do is stand there and smile!
Darrin: I'll have you know these beads are very much in fashion.
Mr. Tate: Those beads are for the birds.
Darrin: Exactly! The birds have the right idea. Take the peacock for example—the males have all the brightly colored feathers while the females are blah.
Drew: Which is probably the gayest thing he does all episode. And then Mr. Tate calls him "Cock Robin," which I know that's a thing. I don't really know what that is, but that's just a funny thing.
Glen: Because it has cock in it?
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Like, I feel like that should be a gay bar or something,
Glen: I'm sure it is.
Chase: I mean, come on. The man was—the character was portrayed by two different men named Dick.
Drew: That is weird. And there's something about "Yorking" and sergeant—no, no, no [inaudible 00:47:51] into that. All right. So the next scene is Darrin showing up with boxes that indicate that he's been shopping. He is delighted.
Samantha: Well! Hi, sweetheart. What are you doing home so early? Did Larry give you the afternoon off?
Darrin: No. I have a cocktail date at 5:00 with a very important client. I came home to change. Wait 'til you see the clothes I bought. I look magnificent in them.
[audience laughs]
Samantha: Shouldn't I be the one to tell you that?
Drew: It cuts very quickly to him wearing a Nehru jacket, which is a hip-length coat with that weird non-collar at the top—I don't know why I'm gesturing to you, because you saw it too—popularized by The Beatles and The Monkeys, and when we see him we hear sitar music because we're supposed to know that he's supposed to kind of look like a Rockstar. But Samantha, she's not into it because maybe this is going to turn off this conservative pill man that he's trying to court, and he says that he can't hide who he is.
Samantha: I think if your client is a rock-and-roll singer, you've got it made.
[audience laughs]
Darrin: As a matter of fact, he's an old conservative who never got beyond the minuet.
Samantha: Then why are you dressed like that? You'll lose the account.
Darrin: Sam, man cannot live by accounts alone. I've got to be me—young, dashing, with it!
[audience laughs]
Samantha: This isn't you. This is—Mother!
Drew: "Young, dashing, with it"—doesn't say gay, but it seems like it's almost there.
Chase: And Samantha also, as is always the case on Bewitched, very quickly and accurately surmises that this isn't her normal Darrin. It's like the second he's upstairs after he's tried on the first outfit, she knows immediately that her mother has cast a spell on him.
Glen: Was there ever an episode where Darrin just wanted to be shitty to her and blames it on Endora?
Chase: I wish [laughter].
Drew: That's the reboot.
Chase: That would have been fun to watch—just blame. "If I wreck the car, it's Endora's fault." "I screwed my secretary. Blame Endora!"
Glen: Yeah [laughter].
Drew: Yeah. "Endora made me drink an entire bottle of wine with lunch! What?"
Chase: Yeah [laughter]. I have a technical question about the way magic works. So she very quickly—you're right. I was glad that it was like, "Oh. She knows what's up." This is not—she's smart enough to figure out what the situation is. She can't undo her mom's spell?
Chase: That is where the show is rarely consistent, whereas you have shows now that if they blend the two genres—let's say sci-fi and comedy—they have hard and fast rules. Bewitched, throughout its eight-year run, sometimes Samantha could reverse the spell, sometimes she couldn't. Even in this episode she's still able to change what Darrin is wearing when he has to meet the client.
Drew: But not change his mindset.
Chase: Correct.
Glen: And some spells can be done with the wiggle of a nose, some require a poem.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: She doesn't wiggle her nose at all in this episode, does she?
Chase: Nope. Not once.
Drew: Oh. That's a bummer.
Chase: It is.
Drew: Not that that would translate to a podcast well at all—but yeah.
Glen: No, there's a sound effect to it. Beeper-beeper-beep.
Drew: Yeah. We'll just play that. Beepo-beepo-beep.
Chase: So the rules are never clearly established. They're all quite vague.
Drew: It's whatever the writer wants.
Chase: Even dealing with, in some seasons, time travel or—I think that it was whatever suited the episode at hand.
Drew: They do a one-off for everything else. I guess that makes sense here, too. So we open on Tate and Hascomb having drinks in a weird space where there's tables around a conspicuous body of water that you immediately know someone will fall into that very shortly because there's no reason for that to be in this bar, and it's a very odd—
Glen: I don't know. Water features, I think, in the '60s and '70s were a thing? Indoor water features?
Drew: Were they? Maybe they are, and maybe I just don't know. But when I saw that I was like, "Oh. Someone's going to fall into that water. That's why it's there."
Chase: Yeah. I think we can all agree that clearly shouted "soundstage." That was not on location.
Drew: [laughs] That was not a swinging Los Angeles night spot. And Mr. Hascomb is still being a shit, basically. He does not think—if his wife can't convince him that the 20th century is better than the 19th century, what will this Darrin Stephens person possibly be able to do?
Chase: And again, we hear the word. Again, his favorite word—"conservative."
Glen: His second favorite word is pills.
Chase: True—an odd combination.
Drew: Yeah, and it's weird that their conservative person is basically trying to make everyone take constant pills. He also has a terrible business model of only making pills and not trusting anything that's not pills and also wishing it were still the 19th century.
Glen: Yeah, and also not wanting to expand his market at all.
Drew: Right [laughs].
Chase: Bewitched, in terms of advertising—like, you had Mad Men, which was very faithful to how advertising ran. And then I would say the opposite side of the gamut of shows depicting advertising would be Melrose Place where it's all generic specifics like, "Oh, the files," or "Oh, the clients." And I think Bewitched is definitely more of that category where the client's needs are only tailored to what the episode plot function needed.
Drew: Darrin enters wearing the narrow jacket, and he is getting funny looks from the waitstaff, and he actually changes his pose, so he has some self-awareness because he sees that the waiters are looking at him like, "What the fuck is this?" And he has a very demure posture that he kind of stops doing.
Chase: But then he goes over to a mirror.
Drew: He goes over to a mirror because that's his comfort zone. It does kind of remind me—there are certain items of clothing I will wear in the small sphere of Los Angeles that I go to, and sometimes if I go further out, I'm like, "Oh. I shouldn't have worn this. I feel awkward doing that."
Glen: When I go to Gen Con in the summers, my gaming group has a t-shirt that says, "Obey your dungeon master," and has some S&M bondage art on it that I—after a certain age—became very uncomfortable wearing in certain circles.
Drew: Because you're like the only gay people there?
Glen: I mean, no. It's actually become a very inclusive space. It's very nice and sweet. You see a lot of trans outreach and—
Drew: Oh. That's good.
Glen: —fathers and their nonbinary children. It's very lovely. The gaming community has grown a lot I will say.
Drew: Well, that is good. I hope you can wear your t-shirt in pride again. No? Okay [laughter]. But it reminds me of when I go home to visit my parents, like when you're packing your clothes and you're like, "Oh. I shouldn't bring this home."
Chase: Yeah.
Glen: Oh, yeah. Any time my parents comment on my body, I'm like, "I did something wrong. I packed poorly."
Drew: So this is where Samantha breaks the rules of the magic and chants a neat little spell that makes the love beads and narrow collar go away.
Samantha: Roses and posies and daises and weeds/Come flower power, rip off his beads!
Drew: And Darrin can't even get to the table where his boss is because of the reflecting pool, and he starts to look at himself and tell himself how beautiful he is. And it makes me think of the myth—the Narcissus story that they're kind of doing a little thing on, like, "Oh. That's a really gay story." It's about a man who falls in love with a very attractive man that he can't reach. It's weird to think about, like, "Oh. That's a gay love story—that ends very badly."
Chase: Mm-hmm.
Glen: In this case, he just falls into the pond.
Drew: Splash! It's funny.
Chase: Pratfalls.
Drew: Cuts right to Samantha getting splattered with brown goo, which normally I'd try to make fun of.
Glen: [A shit 00:54:43] joke?
Drew: I don't want to—I don't want to think about that. That's really unpleasant.
Chase: I don't think they defecated on Bewitched.
Drew: No one ever defecates.
Glen: There's no bathroom in the house.
Chase: There's no toilet. There's no bathroom. Yeah.
Drew: She's making a chocolate cake, and it splatters all over, and it's—
Glen: Well, because he startles her.
Chase: One advantage of magic is you never have to defecate.
Drew: I mean, didn't J.K. Rowling say that?
Glen: Yeah. Yes. She says that before plumbing was a thing, the wizards would just shit their pants and then magic it away.
Drew: Thanks, J.K. That's great. I will say that I remember watching an old episode of Password that she was on. It was her and the guy who played the rich guy from Gilligan's Island—what's his name?
Chase: Oh. Thurston Howell—Jim Backus.
Drew: Jim Backus. They are the two panelists, and there's—her word is vibrator. I don't know what that meant back then, but no one's appalled by this and I think she's like, "Jiggler," and he's like, "Vibrator?" instantly and the guy's like, "Yay! You won," and—yeah. Isn't that weird?
Chase: Yeah. I didn't know that.
Drew: Yeah. I'll see if I can find that clip and put it online. But that is the Elizabeth Montgomery sex joke I will make. Is she bad at chores? Is that one of the things?
Chase: No. Early on—what's interesting about the first five episodes is they are playing an actual trajectory as opposed to pilot and then all of a sudden we're in the universe, and in those first few episodes she is learning to have the phone company come and install the phone line, cooking. But shortly, like within the first five or six episodes, she's as good a housewife as Carol Brady or any of the other '60s women.
Drew: For some reason I had it in my head that she was always wanting to use magic because that would be easier, and she's not able to do it, and she's bad at stuff. But yeah, she's just startled. That's why she fucks up the cake.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: Goes into see what Darrin's doing and he's wearing floral pants, a mustard yellow blouse, a safari hat with a leopard band. He's kind of dressed really like Titus from Kimmy Schmidt or like Temple Grandin—which it's weird that it's both of them at the same time—and Darrin says, "What have you got all over you?" and she's like, "What have you got all over you?" She does not approve, and this is as close as it makes to saying "faggot," basically.
Darrin: Never mind my clothes. Sam, you're a mess!
Samantha: I was mixing some cake batter when I was startled by the roar of a bull moose. What's your excuse?
[audience laughs]
Darrin: I'm sorry I startled you. Why don't you just zap it away like you did with my clothes at the restaurant?
Samantha: Thank you. I will. Now—
Darrin: Oh, no you don't. Not again.
Samantha: Darrin, I did it for your own good. I couldn't let you meet a conservative client dressed like a—like a—
Darrin: Go ahead. Say it—like an attractive, desirable youth.
[audience laughs]
Samantha: That's hardly what I was going to say.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And it's really hard to think of another response, unless she was like, "A fool," or something.
Glen: Dandy?
Chase: Yeah. I noted that too.
Drew: Yeah. At the very least, Elizabeth Montgomery must have been thinking that, considering that she acknowledged that gay people exist, which is very progressive for the time. Okay. So because Darrin ruined the drinks, they've been pushed back until tonight at his boss's house, and he's getting ready by gluing sideburns onto the side of his face, and people are laughing so this is—funny? I don't know.
Chase: I think at this point we are almost going from Darrin as a potential gay guy to—by the episode's end, Darrin is just like a hippie. And that, to me, is the antithesis of narcissism because hippies—at least at that point—didn't bathe, didn't care how they looked, didn't keep their hair up. So it's like two different stereotypes that they are trying to play into one, and I don't know if it fully lands.
Glen: But like any cultural movement, it gets appropriated by fashion for commerce.
Drew: And it's also a little bit like—I guess it was what they called "mod" in London, like with Austin Powers, but somehow gaudier than that. It's almost Liberace because he's wearing a 14-karat-gold lamé suit, is how he explains it.
Chase: Because he is called a hippie in that last scene.
Drew: Is he?
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: By an old person?
Chase: By Mr. Conservative.
Drew: Okay. Um, he don't know what the fuck a hippie is. It's an ugly outfit but it does give—
Glen: It's gold lamé! It's not ugly.
Drew: Isn't it though?
Chase: It's a choice.
Drew: It gives reason for Elizabeth Montgomery to put on the best outfit of the episode which is—I don't know how to describe it. I don't have words for fashion.
Glen: Weird sequins dress?
Chase: Metallic, yeah, like beyond sequins—like a stronger material than a traditional sequin and bigger than a sequin. Just a bunch of almost-reflective surfaces that amount to silver.
Drew: Which he can see himself in.
Chase: Yes.
Drew: So he is okay with her upstaging him a little bit.
Samantha: 14-carat! Well, it must have cost a fortune!
Darrin: It did! But I'm worth it.
[audience laughs]
Samantha: Well if you're worth it, I'm worth it too. Why should you be the only one who glitters?
[audience laughs]
[magical chimes]
Darrin: How dare you use witchcraft to dress!
Samantha: If you can dare lamé, I can dare anything.
Darrin: I tell you, Sam, that dress will have to go. It's just too much.
Samantha: Too much dress? Oh. Well, I can fix that.
Darrin: More witchcraft?
Samantha: Yes—but less dress.
Drew: "Why should you be the only one who glitters?" is her actual line, and then she makes it shorter with—
Glen: Magic.
Drew: —magic, and that is also cool.
Glen: Yeah. I mean, she looks fucking fantastic, like she can go to Club 54 and just snort all the cocaine.
Drew: Or dance and have a nice time.
Glen: People would be snorting cocaine off of her dress.
Drew: Yeah, they probably would.
Chase: Yeah. That would be a perfect use for that dress.
Drew: That's a conversation starter. So they're at the Tates's house and Louise Tate—
Glen: In those outfits. She does not magic them to be conservative.
Drew: No. She's going for it. I guess there's just nothing she can do because she can't break Endora's spell, so she's just going to try to lean into it. That's her thinking.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: Mr. Tate's wife is played by this woman named Kasey Rogers, and I'm like, "I know her from somewhere. I know her from somewhere." She's from Strangers on a Train. She's the horrible wife with glasses who gets murdered. She looks a lot better in this [laughs].
Chase: Yes.
Glen: And she doesn't get murdered—spoiler alert.
Drew: Not onscreen.
Glen: Wait. Was she murdered in real life?
Drew: No.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: I don't—well, actually, I didn't check that. So—
Chase: I don't believe she was.
Drew: Mr. Hascomb is very critical of his wife's food intake.
Mrs. Tate: Another hors d'oeuvre Mrs. Hascomb?
Mrs. Hascomb: Oh. Why not?
Mr. Hascomb: Emily, that's your sixth.
Mrs. Hascomb: Who's counting?
Mr. Hascomb: I am. Tate, Stephens is late as usual. I wonder what he fell into this time.
[audience laughs]
Mr. Tate: Oh, I'm sure he's on his way.
Mr. Hascomb: I hope he gets here before my wife eats herself into a stupor.
Drew: It's weird to be introducing that. Like, it's weird to have that, and no one thinks it's weird, and I'm like, "Oh. That's just normal for a husband to say to his wife, that she's eating too much." That fucking sucks. His wife's awesome though. His wife played Mrs. Wilson on the Dennis the Menace live action, and she's cool. I like the way she delivers her lines and everything, but also she's very taken with these flashy mods.
Mrs. Hascomb: Is that you Darrin? Samantha?
Samantha: Oh. Uh, hi Louise.
Darrin: Louise.
Mrs. Hascomb: It is you—isn't it? What magnificent creatures.
[audience laughs]
Glen: One of my favorite things in sitcoms of the '50s and '60s is when random guest-star wives of other guest stars are drafted into these plots or schemes of the main characters. I'm thinking of the episode of I Love Lucy where Ricky times Lucy because she's always late for everything, and then the wife of the boss he's trying to impress or whatever is also sick of her husband timing her, and so she and Ethel and Lucy get revenge—I don't know. I just love when little housewives take the power.
Drew: Which is what we see here, and I like that they wrote her to be an interesting and more likeable character than they had to. She could have been—I guess the plot depends on her being cool. That was just back in the time. Housewives got wrapped into anything. They didn't have anything to do on their own.
Glen: But in this case she has controlling interest of her husband's company—which I thought that was a great line, when she calls it "a gift."
Mr. Hascomb: For the last time, get your things.
Mrs. Hascomb: Not yet, darling. Not until you hand over the entire Hascomb drug account to this darling young man.
[audience laughs]
[Mr. Tate?? 01:03:11]: I think I'm witnessing a miracle.
Mr. Hascomb: You're out of your mind.
Mrs. Hascomb: Possibly. But I'm also the major stockholder in the Hascomb Drug Company. You gave me that gift yourself, you know, darling.
Mr. Hascomb: That wasn't a gift. That was a tax dodge.
[audience laughs]
Mrs. Hascomb: Well, no matter—51 percent is 51 percent, and I say we take the Hascomb image out of mothballs and into today's scene.
Chase: He is a monster through and through.
Drew: So basically, he's still resistant. Sam and Gay Darrin are giving him advice that would have never occurred to him, and it's good advice—and it's advice he should follow if he wants to make money. But because he's never considered these sorts of people to be anyone that can give him any real information—
[Samantha 01:04:05??]: I have such respect for all of your products, but they don't seem to get to the right people.
Mr. Hascomb: A pill. My kingdom for a little red pill.
Mrs. Hascomb: I've always told Whitney he should try to reach the younger set.
Darrin: Particularly with suntan lotion.
Samantha: After all, the younger the customer the smaller the bathing suit.
Darrin: And the smaller the bathing suit, the more skin that needs suntan lotion.
[audience laughs]
Mrs. Hascomb: They're right, you know, Whitney. Oh. You're definitely not with it. I've pointed that out a number of times.
[audience laughs]
Mr. Hascomb: Emily, shut up and eat.
[audience laughs]
Samantha: Uh, Mr. Hascomb, you really should listen to Darrin. He has his finger on the pulse of today.
Drew: The wife is convinced, and they agree to let Darrin take care of the tanning potion account with his hipster, young-person, free-wheeling ways, and everyone cheers and—
Glen: Not just the tanning account. All of their business.
Drew: Oh, is that it?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Oh. I mean, even better. And Sam tells Tate that it was actually her plan all along to show up like this—
Samantha: Honestly, Larry, this is what Darrin had in mind all the time.
Mr. Tate: You mean you two dressed this way just to convince Hascomb to go after the young market?
Samantha: Absolutely. Darrin knew he had to do something dramatic.
Mr. Tate: Well, I've certainly got to hand it to him. And all this time, I thought it was just vanity.
Samantha: Darrin? Vain? Why, he hasn't a vain bone in his body.
[audience laughs]
Mrs. Tate: Well, come on, everyone. How about a toast.
Drew: —and show that for fun young people it is, which is awesome. That's quick thinking on her part, and that does solve things, and it makes Darrin seem not crazy. And in addition to being magical, Sam is a quick-thinking person.
Chase: Yes. And Tate is always a monster.
Drew: Is he really?
Chase: Oh, yeah. I mean, not like a villain, but just an asshole.
Drew: He's the boss. He's the horrible boss-man—that stupid mustache. Is there anything else that happens?
Glen: There's another scene after this.
Drew: There is another scene—with Endora, right? What is that scene there for?
Chase: That's technically for her to kind of rectify what she's done.
Endora: Alright, Samantha. I will take the oath. As long as the stars remain in the sky/As long as the water remains in the well/I promise I will never again zap on Durwood another spell. Now, I should like a cup of café au lait.
Samantha: Oh. No. Not so fast. First, I want the witch's honor sign.
Endora: Oh! Really, Samantha, don't you think you're carrying this thing a bit too far? After all, I am your mother.
Samantha: Why do you only remember that when it's convenient to you? The witch's honor sign, please.
Endora: Oh, alright. Witch's honor.
Samantha: That's better.
Chase: Since we've established that Sam can't undo Endora's magic—
Drew: She takes an oath, but she crosses her fingers, so she doesn't really take it. And then Darrin's still dressed like—still dressed like that, but it's his choice now because he has to keep up the appearance that he's young and fun.
Glen: Yeah. So it's not really his choice. It's that the way he dressed did so well for the business that now more accounts are coming in, wanting him to be young and hip.
Chase: Yes, but we can tell by the joyless look on Dick York's face that he's back to being regular Darrin.
Drew: Yeah. What does Samantha see in him? Does she hate her mother that much that she's marrying the most boring mortal she could possibly find?
Chase: Hmm—because in the pilot it is a montage; before the credits even roll they are engaged. It's like, "One day, a woman met a man," and it's like, three shots, and then boom—honeymoon night. So we don't get a lot of their courtship.
Drew: Huh. We don't ever see what she sees in him?
Chase: No. They run into each other in a revolving door.
Glen: Sometimes exciting people like boring people—because they remain exciting.
Chase: Yeah. She could have done better.
Drew: She could have done better. I think this episode is making an interesting statement—perhaps accidentally—about the role gay men can play in the economy, basically. If you take that they're making Darrin act very, very gay, he is in this weird position where he's a very flashy-dressed, effeminate man who is telling women what they should want, and the conservative business owner is like, "I don't like this dynamic. I don't like that this gay man has any sort of influence and that my wife is agreeing with him. However, he can make me money"—I don't know. That probably was not something that was on anyone's mind back then. Or maybe it was—I don't know. Maybe it would be in Los Angeles. But it is interesting that that is a role gay man actually ended up taking more and more as the decades went by.
Glen: I feel like that is also a historical role. I got a—I don't know. I have no facts to back this up, but in my gut I feel it's true.
Chase: I would love to know more about the actual writer's room for this episode and the intention and how much of it was just being ahead of its time unintentionally and how much of it was purposeful.
Drew: And how much we're just overreading because we're—
Glen: We do that.
Drew: That's our job.
Glen: It's not our job. No one's paying us.
Drew: [whispers] We should be working and making a lot of money—we 're super rich. But there was an actor who got outed. He was a fairly successful actor, and I can't think of his name off the top of my head—you might actually know him. And not long into his career, he got outed and was not getting roles anymore, and so he said, "Fuck it," moved to Palm Springs, basically married a guy and became the most successful interior designer in the Los Angeles area.
Chase: Yeah!
Drew: And rich women—famous and non-famous—would go to him and he would just design all the rich interiors of Los Angeles. That was something that was around this era, so that at least existed.
Chase: Didn't he get murdered?
Drew: Probably [laughs]. Probably. Um, I hope not, but that is how a lot of those stories ended.
Chase: Because there was an actor who was on two episodes of Batman—'60s Batman—and the story you're telling is very similar to his where he was outed in '67. I think his story moved him to New York though, but he—
Drew: Oh.
Glen: Where he was also brutally murdered.
Chase: Yeah.
Drew: They usually ended badly back then. It was not a happy life. Chase, thank you for talking Bewitched with us. Is there anything more you want to say about this episode or the show in general?
Chase: I think that even if this episode may have unintentionally missed the mark on its representation of gay characters, overall the show deserves so much credit for its messages of race. During the civil rights movement, Elizabeth Montgomery and Asher took a very firm stand on equality, and there's a great episode in the final season—I think it's called Sisters at Heart—where Tabitha's best friend is black, and she doesn't know why they have two different skin colors, and Tabitha herself being magical creates a spell that gives each of them dots across their faces of the other person's skin color. For a show that was very saccharine and very network and very '60s, it had a lot of very progressive episodes, and so I think the show is memorable for many reasons and that is chief among them.
Drew: I like that. Glen, do you have any thoughts on witches and/or gay?
Glen: I like when witches are gay and when gays are witches.
Drew: Fair.
Chase: Perfect.
Drew: There are too few gay witches on TV. Chase, if people want to tweet their questions about Bewitched and the like, where can they find you?
Chase: Yes. Please tweet at me. I am @MChaseMcCown—M-C-C-O-W-N—the first initial of my first name, my actual name, and my last name. A stupid handle, but it's my handle, nonetheless.
Drew: What's the M stand for?
Chase: Matthew.
Drew: Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Checks out.
Glen: Dial "M" for "Matthew."
Glen: "Dial M—" Thank you. God, that would have been a much better handle, except I don't go by "Matthew." Same handle for finding me on Instagram as well.
Drew: And if people want to see your comedy stylings or any other creative efforts where should they look for you?
Chase: I am at UCB fairly regularly. I will be there doing a scripted show on Tuesday, November 5, called From Crumbs to Caviar, a spoof of the Bette Davis-Joan Crawford feud. I am playing the Bette Davis character. And then I'm also there performing with The Agenda, and LGBTQ Team second Saturday of each month at 7:00, UCB Sunset.
Drew: Cool.
Chase: And then I do standup whenever I feel like it—sometimes at home, sometimes for an audience.
Drew: We appreciate your standup here and also your Bewitched information.
Chase: Thank you. It was a true pleasure.
Drew: Hey Glen.
Glen: Buh?
Drew: If people want to follow you on social media, what's the place they can find you?
Glen: I'm on Twitter @IWriteWrongs—that is "write" with a W—and Instagram @BrosQuartz. This month I've been doing Inktober, kind of.
Drew: So if you want to see all the cool inky things that Glen drew over this past month—because this is running October 30—go to @BrosQuartz on Instagram. Yeah.
Glen: Drew, where can people find you—if they want to?
Drew: No one wants to find me, but I'm on twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E—and you can follow this podcast on Twitter @GayestEpisode. You can also follow this podcast on Facebook if you like Facebook. We really don't, but we're there if you want to get news about the latest episodes. Listen to all previous episodes at gayestepisodeever.com, or go to wherever you'd normally find podcasts on your phone and we'll be there. Please give us a rate and review—those are important for all the reasons you've heard on every podcast ever. And also, we're on Patreon at patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. We really appreciate all your contributions to the show. They help us justify all the time we're sinking into it, and also you're helping unlock cool bonus podcasts—a whole series of episodes are going to go up only on Patreon with every little donation that you give us. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. Please go look at his cool art at robwilsonwork.com. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network and you can find out about the other shows on this network by going to tablecakes.com. Glen, I'm trying to decide what costume I should dress as for Halloween this year, and I can't decide between slutty Caltrans worker and slutty turtle. What do you think?
Glen: I think you should go as a kinky impeachment.
Drew: Kinky impeachment—I like that. Wait. That—that almost works.
Glen: Yeah, because you've got the "peach" in there?
Drew: Yeah. Yeah, okay. And mints.
Glen: Yeah. So you just wear a jock strap with mints attached to the front part.
Drew: I mean, that's something people are just wearing for Halloween in West Hollywood anyway, regardless of the day.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: [sighs] Podcast over, Glen.
Glen: Bye forever.
["Tonight (Crazy Night!)" performed by Dorine Hollier plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes Production