Transcript for Episode 21: Blanche's Brother Is a Homo
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Golden Girls episode “Scared Straight.” 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.
Rose: [laughs] Clayton! Clayton, you're not playing fair. That's a man [laughs]. That's a man, and you're a man [laughs]. You're both men [laughs uncomfortably]!
["Thank You for Being a Friend" by Cynthia Fee plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we look at the LGBT-themed 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: Hi, Glen.
Glen: Oh. Hello.
Drew: [laughs] And today we are talking about an episode of The Golden Girls, if that intro did not tip you off. The name of the episode is "Scared Straight," but we're calling it "Blanche's Brother is a Homo." And here to discuss this very special episode is—
Glen: Is Blanche's brother!
Tony: [in the voice of a doofy Southerner] Hello, everyone.
Drew: He's not a giraffe. That sounds like a giraffe. Here to discuss the episode is our first return guest ever, Tony Rodriguez.
Tony: [gasps!] Hello! Nice to meet you guys.
Glen: The fun fact is that he never left.
Tony: That's true.
Drew: He's just been hiding here the entire time.
Tony: Guys, I have something for you.
Glen: Is it dirty laundry because you've been living under the desk for a year?
Tony: [laughs] No. It's something that doesn't smell.
Singing Tony: [to the melody of "Thank You for Being a Friend"] Thank you for having me back—I can't get through it!
Drew: I think that might be enough.
Singing Tony: [continuing in tune with the intro's melody] Gayest Episode Ever's a podcast/Your name is Drew/And your name is Glen Lakin/doo-doo-doo-do—and then I can stop there.
Glen: I never tell them my last name, Tony. You just outed me to the entire podcast audience.
Tony: What?
Singing Tony: [continuing the song] No relation to Christine Lakin/That's a different person/Diff-er-ent family-y-y-y. You've had your last name on here. Get out of here.
Glen: Yeah. You heard me just say it into the mic two seconds ago.
Tony: I wasn't listening.
Drew: Can we get Christine Lakin on this podcast?
Glen: Oh, my god.
Drew: You guys both have connections to her.
Glen: I still have her Warner Bros. parking pass.
Tony: I still have her old manager [laughter].
Drew: Yup!
Glen: So. We're talking about Golden Girls.
Drew: Tony, we're bringing you back not only because you're our, I guess, Miami beat reporter who gives us information about what the Miami culture is like, but also because last year when we did "Dorothy's Friend is a Lesbian," I initially was going to do the episode we're doing now and made you watch it—and then changed my mind at the last minute. So I'm making up for it. I'm sorry. It wasn't for nothing because now we're recording that episode.
Tony: I didn't re-watch it for this. Is that okay? I did! I did. So I watched that twice, and the superior episode that we talked about last year once. Yeah, that's right. I said "superior" because this one is quite not. It's inferior.
Glen: What?
Tony: It's an inferior episode to the one where Dorothy's friend is a lesbian.
Glen: I say hard disagree.
Tony: Really?
Drew: I do think "Dorothy's Friend is a Lesbian" is a pinnacle of what sitcom storytelling should be because there's a lot of heart, and it's also very funny. But there are some real moments in there, and everyone acts really well. This doesn't quite reach those heights, but I think it's a pretty decent episode, and I don't mind the way the subject of familial homosexuality is treated.
Tony: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. And Blanche being kind of a self-centered idiot. She is. She really is.
Glen: I think I like it better because their roles feel more lived in.
Drew: Yeah, because they understand who these characters are more—even if they may have forgotten some of the lessons they learned in that first episode. By the way, we're doing both Clayton episodes. I don't know if we can call it the "Clayton Hollingsworth Saga" because there's just the two of them, but Tony is going to be with us for this episode. And then in two weeks from now, we're going to be doing the second Clayton episode because he comes back two seasons later.
Tony: Mm-hmm. What are you airing in between?
Drew: That's a surprise.
Tony: Oh.
Drew: We're not going to say.
Tony: Are you going to tell me off air?
Glen: No.
Drew: No. We're worried that you're going to say it on mic, and then people are going to know.
Tony: I think I could not say it.
Glen: I absolutely do not have confidence in your ability to keep a secret.
Tony: When we're done recording will you tell me?
Drew: Sure.
Tony: Thank you!
Drew: Tony, you are the co-host of the other podcast I do with—
Glen: You do it with Tony.
Drew: You are the co-host of another podcast I do—You Have to Watch This Movie, which ended earlier this year. What have you been up to? Up to anything?
Tony: Yeah. Funny you should ask. Speaking of podcasts—
Glen: Why are you crying?
Tony: I'm launching another one, Drew.
Drew: Oh! Am I on it?
Tony: No. You're not on it. Neither of you are on it, guys.
Drew: Oh. Why not? Why?
Tony: It's a Latinx podcast at Earwolf—it's a company—and we're launching—
Drew: I've heard of it.
Glen: Bigger than TableCakes, or—
Tony: Mm-hmm. It'd be like—I don't know—NBC versus MTV3.
Glen: Which are we?
Tony: MTV3—except that's Latinx, so reverse it. But anyway, yeah. I have a Latinx podcast based on a variety show that I co-host at UCB here in Los Angeles, and we're launching July 16th. It's called SAP—Spanish Aquí Presents.
Drew: That sounds awesome.
Tony: Yeah. We're going to have—
Drew: So we're not on it because we're white—is that correct?
Tony: No, actually. Our guests are going to be mainly Latinx, but not necessarily. Anyone who has—
Glen: So we are guests.
Tony: No. I said no. You're not guests.
Drew: All right. Well. I guess congratulations, but that kind of feels like a slap in the face.
Glen: I'm fine with it.
Tony: Glen likes—is that an S&M thing? You like it rough?
Glen: Oh, I'm not fine with the slap in the face. I'm fine with not talking to people.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: This is true. This is why we haven't had that many guests this season. It's also just a scheduling thing.
Tony: How many guests have you had this season?
Drew: One. You're the second guest we've had [laughs].
Tony: Who was the first?
Drew: Wait. Did you not listen to the episode with Jonathan Bradley Welch guested to talk about Wings? Did you not listen to that episode, Tony? Tony?
Tony: I was busy pitching at Earwolf that week, and I—
Glen: Oh, how is that?
Drew: It's still up. You can still—it's not like it goes—it's up all the time.
Glen: Let's talk about Golden Girls and not Tony.
Tony: [laughs] Okay.
Drew: [sighs] This episode "Scared Straight" originally aired on December 10th, 1998, two months after the founding of National Coming Out Day. "Scared Straight" was part of an all-new block of sitcoms that included 227, Amen, and the Empty Nest where Carol dates Henry's longtime friend and is uncomfortable about it. And by the way, in doing research for this episode, I found out that there's a gay episode of Empty Nest.
Glen: Doing it.
Drew: It's a David-Leisure-centric episode, but still, I think it will be good. It was the fifth most-watched episode of TV the week it aired. The list is dominated by NBC, which starts out with Night Court, then The Cosby Show—The Phylicia Rashad Show, then Cheers, then A Different World, and then Golden Girls. The first non-NBC show is the sixth-place show, which is The John Goodman Show.
Glen: [repeats "Wait, wait, wait" incredulously] Night Court beat Cheers?
Drew: Night Court was the most-watched episode of TV that week. I didn't check up what episode it is. But Night Court did better than people remember. It just doesn't seem to have as much—it wasn't syndicated as widely and doesn't have as much place in nostalgia, I guess. There are episodes of Night Court we could do—and should do.
Glen: Okay.
Tony: I used to have a crush on John Larroquette when I was a kid. I loved that show. Loved it.
Glen: What happened?
Drew: He's a very appealing roguish character on—
Tony: And Harry Anderson. Both of them. Is that his name?
Glen: Yes. Wow.
Tony: Did he pass away?
Glen: I think so. Yes.
Drew: Oh, that's weird to think about. Markie Post is still left, though.
Glen: She's coming to my wedding!
Drew: You're getting married?
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay. Just eight days after this aired, CBS aired A Very Brady Christmas, which is a huge deal—
Tony: [gasps!]
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: It was a surprise hit, and it led to The Bradys, which was the hour-long Brady-centric drama that lasted six episodes and was mockingly called "Brady-Something." Jan becomes an alcoholic—or maybe Marcia becomes an alcoholic. Marcia becomes an alcoholic.
Glen: But how ahead of the times was The Brady Bunch?
Drew: It was really ahead of their—it's not great. You can watch them online. It's very strange. But it's a really interesting idea that just was done at the wrong time and wasn't properly executed.
[The Bradys intro theme plays]
Drew: But in a different time, that could have actually worked very well. This episode was written by Christopher Lloyd—not the Back to the Future Christopher Lloyd, but the one who's married to Arleen Sorkin—who also wrote 10 other episodes of this show, including "Strange Bedfellows," which is the one where Blanche gets involved in a sex scandal with a politician who turns out to be a trans man, which I totally forgot about, but that is another episode we can do with the proper guest. And it was directed by Terry Hughes, who directed the episode where Dorothy's friend is a lesbian and who won an Emmy for that but also directed 107 other episodes of The Golden Girls, also did Square Pegs, the pilot to Blossom, the pilot to Golden Palace, Nurses, The Mommies, All-American Girl, Brotherly Love, 3rd Rock from the Sun, What About Joan, Whoopi, and Friends. He's done very well for himself. There's an IMDb trivia note for this episode that says it's the only episode where the front door has a peephole. You saw this.
Tony: Mm-hmm. I did. Yeah.
Drew: That seems like a very stupid thing to be a trivia point, but I can't prove it wrong.
Glen: I mean, we could prove it wrong by watching every episode of Golden Girls.
Drew: I mean, over the course of the show, we can.
Tony: My roommate loves The Golden Girls, and sometimes we just have it on, and I saw that note a year ago when I was preparing for this moment, and I have never seen an episode. I don't know if that's—
Drew: You've never seen an episode where they use a peephole?
Tony: Other than this one, right. Correct.
Drew: Right. Yeah. I guess they could stick a fake peephole—peek hole—it should be called a peek hole—peek hole on the door.
Singing Tony: [to the tune of Barbara Streisand's "People"] Peepholes/People who need peepholes.
Glen: It should be called a penis hole.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: No. I don't think that's what it's for, Glen. I think you're using it wrong. That's not what it's for.
Tony: This episode had no Emmy nominations, correct?
Drew: It didn't, that I know of.
Tony: I rest my case, Glen.
Glen: Because the Emmys are always right.
Tony: Always.
Drew: Over the course of The Golden Girls, we meet three of Blanche's five siblings. There's Charmaine, the one who writes a sordid romance novel that Blanche assumes is about her but it turns out is about Charmaine—because Blanche is an egocentric monster. There's Virginia, the one who wants Blanche's kidney, which Blanche doesn't want to give her because she's an egocentric monster. And then there's the two Clayton episodes. And then there's Tad, who is an institutionalized brother that only shows up on Golden Palace and is never mentioned on the proper series. The interesting thing about Clayton is that he shows up twice, which is rare. Most of the gay characters that we talk about on this show show up once—I think I just mentioned this in the previous episode—teach straight people a lesson, and then crumble into dust and never have to exist again because they fulfilled their purpose.
Glen: Like me.
Drew: You haven't crumbled into dust.
Glen: Then I haven't fulfilled my purpose.
Tony: You need to meet Markie Post, and then invite her to your—also meet the person you're going to marry.
Drew: I would be down to meet Markie Post. She seems nice.
Tony: I would love that.
Drew: The guy from Wings shows up twice, and I think that might be the only other example we have.
Glen: By "guy from wings" you mean Roy's son?
Drew: Roy's son. Yes. It is also kind of weird that there is no awareness of Jean, Dorothy's lesbian friend in this episode, which you'd think would be discussed. But it's kind of interesting because when they do the second Clayton episode, the show has a much more solid idea of continuity than it does now. Here, it's kind of a reset button where people tend to forget everything. But Jean, unfortunately, does not get mentioned.
Glen: I'm sure she's doing fine.
Drew: She's dead.
Glen: I wrote fan fiction for her where she does fine.
Drew: Oh, good.
Tony: Aww. I love her.
Drew: The episode opens with Dorothy arranging flowers around the living room while Sophia sighs despondently.
Sophia: [sighs despondently] Hey! You're not even going to ask what's wrong?
Dorothy: What's wrong, Ma?
Sophia: I've got three days to live.
Dorothy: Fine, Ma. I'll scratch the Ben-Gay off the grocery list.
[audience laughs]
Tony: This is the very beginning of the episode. I want to say, my mother's very much like Rose Nylund, but her dynamic with her mother was very much Dorothy and Sophia. And for a couple years, my grandmother lived with my mother in Miami [laughs], and the dynamic would very much be like what Sophia does in the beginning of this episode where she's like—
Glen: Passive aggression.
Drew: So she's basically sighing very dramatically and hoping that someone will ask her what's going on, which Dorothy does not want to do until she finally does. She says that she's going to die, and Dorothy's response is that she's going to scratch Bengay off the grocery list.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: I did look it up because I always wanted to know: Bengay is called "Bengay" because the guy who invented it in 1898, he was Dr. Bengué—spelled the French way, and that is an anglicization of it. But until 1995, it was Ben-hyphen-Gay. They changed it from Ben-Gay to Bengay because they wanted to minimize the—
Glen: Giggle factor.
Drew: —gayness. It is weird that there was a product that existed for that long called Ben-Gay and it took until 1995 to be like, "Oh. We want it to sound less like homosexuality." But that's why.
Glen: Do you want my reach for this opening metaphor?
Drew: Please. I have a lot of questions about Sophia's plot in this episode.
Glen: I only just came up with it now while you two were talking—I was zoning out. But she is passively crying for attention, kind of like how Clayton's failed marriage and failed dating life is crying out for Blanche to ask him what's wrong.
Tony: Hmm.
Drew: That's true, and she doesn't ever tolerate that possibility until he forces her to realize it. Okay. I'm okay with that.
Tony: Very good, Glen.
Drew: I think I want to call this "Reach-Around Corner with Glen" because you're reaching around for a metaphoric tie-in.
Tony: Do you need a theme song for it?
Drew: You should write it and come out next week with "Reach-Around Corner." We can edit it in.
Singing Tony: [improvising tune] Hey, peek-a-boo/It's me, Glen Lakin/Oops, I said my last name/Peek around!
Drew: Reach around.
Glen: It's "Reach-Around Corner."
Tony: Rewrites cost extra. First draft was free.
Glen: No [laughs]. No, not in this town.
Tony: [laughs] What? I'll do anything for free! [exclaims like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel]
Drew: Okay. So Sophia explains that she is going to die.
Sophia: I had a dream last night—a death dream. Your father spoke to me.
Dorothy: Spoke to you? How?
Sophia: Do I look like Rich Little? Just listen. I'm sitting in the living room, and the clock strikes nine. Then the bell rings. It's your father in his fedora. He always wore a fedora on Saturday. He walks towards me, reaches out his hand, and says, "Sophia, you can come now. There's room for you now."
Dorothy: That's it?
Sophia: You want him to show up with Barbara Eaton and the College All-American Football Team? It's a dream, not a Bob Hope special.
Drew: Do you guys have any theories for why the fuck this is the B-plot in this episode?
Glen: Oh. That was my original reach-around—some sort of cum joke.
Tony: Oh, brother.
Drew: Oh. "You can come now." Mm. The only interesting thing I can think about it is the fact that the time she's thinking about is Saturday at 9:00, and that's when Golden Girls aired. But there's literally nothing else for me there.
Glen: No. I don't need to talk about this plot.
Drew: Well, we can sum it up at the end just because it's equally weird when they explain what it is. Tony, do you have any thoughts about Sophia's weird dream?
Tony: No. Does it just keep her busy?
Drew: [laughter] Wow.
Glen: It's a B- or C-plot. It's—yeah.
Drew: I don't think there is a B-plot.
Glen: Actually, no. Yeah. It's a runner that's given a lot more weight than it should. They keep milking it for jokes.
Drew: This does happen sometimes where there will be a good plot where Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose are all involved and they kind of have to either tack Sophia on or give her something weird to do because she doesn't function the same way as those other three characters—and yeah, it doesn't need to be there. If this episode was just the A-plot—
Glen: Well, you would still need it for pacing. You can't just cut away to some of those scenes.
Drew: Right.
Tony: It does give a little bit of a dynamic between Dorothy and Sophia that of course Dorothy loves her mother and doesn't want her—there's a little bit—it's not super satisfying, but there's something there.
Glen: But then Blanche has a gay brother who's coming to visit.
Drew: Yes.
Tony: Ugh!
Drew: And Blanche is all dressed up, and she's very excited about her brother Clayton coming to visit, and Rose has a good joke about "We should put out the welcome mat."
Rose: What time does Clayton get here?
Blanche: Oh, any minute now.
Rose: Oh. We better put out the welcome mat [laughs].
Blanche: We don't have a welcome mat.
Rose: What about the one Dorothy says is at the foot of your bed?
[audience laughs uproariously]
Drew: Ha, ha, ha. I think Rose knows what she's doing. I think she's making a cutting joke about Blanche's sex life, and she's pretending to pass it off as—
Glen: I also didn't believe that they didn't have a welcome mat. It gets very rainy in Florida.
Tony: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Drew: Oh! Is that what welcome mats are for? I'm from California, so—
Tony: Yeah. Scuff your shoes.
Drew: I thought they were just for decoration to say "Welcome," and that's it—which is why mine says nothing.
Tony: Wow.
Drew: Yeah.
Tony: You think Rose was making a dig? Although she would make digs in later seasons.
Drew: Yeah. She's not as—we see a lot more of a mean-spirited Rose in the second Clayton episode, but I think we're seeing flashes of it here. And she clashes with—she makes a dig in about 10 minutes when she's talking to Clayton about Blanche's apparent intolerance.
Tony: I love meaner Rose.
Drew: We're given backstory. Clayton is divorced as of two years ago—
Glen: And this is the first time Blanche is seeing him, so way to go, Blanche.
Drew: Yeah. She's clearly not that invested. She has a lot of herself to pay attention to, Glen.
Tony: And she called him [imitating Blanche] "the most handsomest man that I ever laid eyes on—my brother!"
Glen: That also has to do with Blanche's—obviously, her brother would be the most attractive man because he's the male version of her.
Blanche: [gasps!] Clayton! Baby brother!
Clayton: [laughs] Sister! Oh, my. Look at you, all gussied up, prettier than a spring-blooming peach tree on a dewy April morning.
Blanche: [laughs] Oh. Well, you ought to talk, all fresh-scrubbed and rosy-cheeked like a country parson at a September hoedown [laughs].
Dorothy: Why do I get the feeling they had a maid named Honeybee when they grew up?
Drew: Which I guess is a Gone with the Wind reference?
Tony: I guess.
Drew: Butterfly McQueen?
Tony: I guess. Oh! Yes, it is. A hundred percent, yes.
Drew: Clayton looks like a ship captain. He's dressed like a ship captain.
Glen: Oh! I thought you said "shit captain." I was like, "Is that a gay slur?"
Drew: It is now, Shit Captain.
Tony: Oh, my god. Packing fudge.
Drew: He's played by Monte Markham, who has been in a lot of things. But I don't really know what he's better known for than this. He was on Baywatch for a little bit, and he was in a remake of Piranha where Punky Brewster gets eaten by fish.
Tony: What?! I want to see that episode.
Glen: The character Punky Brewster is eaten by fish. It's a sequel to the cave spider episode.
Tony: [gasps!] Drew, you took me to a screening of that episode.
Drew: That was a poorly organized event.
Tony: [laughs]
Glen: So Gone with the Wind reference—oh. You're talking about the actor. He was in Piranha.
Drew: Monte Markham. He was in a western with James Garner when he was very young. He's very good-looking in that movie.
Glen: [gasps!] I hope he kissed James Garner.
Drew: I don't think he did. I don't think he was gay in real life.
Tony: No. He was married—or straight-married.
Drew: I like that we say "straight-married" to make that the—
Glen: There's married, and then there's straight-married.
Drew: Yes!
Tony: [gasps!] Okay. This is crazy guys. Scrolling on his IMDb, and the first thing I was going to say was he was on an episode of Cold Case with my cousin Danny Pino, but the character he played—his name was Glen Drew [laughs].
Drew: Oh.
Tony: Isn't that wild?!
Drew: That is kind of weird.
Tony: That's crazy.
Drew: Yeah.
Tony: Anyway. That's it.
Drew: He's still alive. He's still acting.
Tony: He's still alive. He's still working, and he's still contributing—
Glen: No.
Drew: He was in Fringe. He was on an episode of Fringe. That was one of his more recent things that I recall.
Tony: And he contributes to his own IMDb page.
Glen: Oh.
Tony: There's a paragraph. IMDb has an asterisk if it's not verified, which means someone submitted it or edited it. Anyway, eat your heart out if you guys want to read a paragraph about someone celebrating themselves—written in all capital letters.
Drew: No. Not really.
Glen: I looked up young pictures of him and got a lot of pictures of him that were not him. It was very uncomfortable.
Tony: Is there a porn star name?
Glen: I don't know. It was just a lot of people who really like their torso posing in the mirror.
Tony: Oh. Huh.
Glen: Was I not supposed to search for him on Pornhub?
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: Clayton says his trip went just fine, and Blanche reads this as him saying that he banged a stewardess.
Clayton: Rose. So nice to see you.
Rose: How was your trip, Clayton?
Clayton: Oh, fine. It just went by in no time.
Blanche: That usually means he met a stewardess he liked.
Clayton: Blanche.
Blanche: [laughs] Lunch, dinner, or drinks?
Clayton: Dinner.
Blanche: Oh! [laughs delightedly]
Dorothy: I'm beginning to see the family resemblance.
[audience laughs]
Drew: When did you have dinner? It's obviously daytime out. I'm not sure when he fucking had dinner, but—
Glen: Maybe there was a layover.
Drew: Between Atlanta and Florida?
Glen: Did they say he lives in Atlanta?
Drew: I believe he lives where—wait. Is Rose from Atlanta? I assume—
Glen: Her name is Blanche.
Drew: Blanche. I assume Blanche is a Georgia peach, but I—
Glen: I assume Clayton could have also moved to live with his wife elsewhere.
Drew: I guess that's true. Then Rose says, "It's so nice to see a brother and sister get along."
Glen: Yeah. Then Dorothy comments on her close relationship with one of her siblings, Phil, who has been talked about on Golden Girls before because Phil enjoyed dressing up in women's clothes.
Rose: Isn't it nice to see a brother and sister who are such good friends?
Dorothy: It certainly is. Oh, I always wish that I could have been closer to my brother Phil. You know, go places together, share experiences—although I did love borrowing his clothes.
Rose: Did you like wearing boys' clothes growing up?
Dorothy: No. But fortunately, neither did my brother Phil.
[audience laughs]
Drew: Which is kind of interesting because he's a Vera—he's an unseen character. We never actually see him. In Season Six we meet his wife in an episode that's all about his funeral. The wife is played by Brenda Vaccaro. And we're told at one point that his wife is a welder, but that's not really apparent in this episode. But it is interesting thinking about a crossdressing man married to a woman who has a typically masculine profession. And he has kids, and they seem to have been happily married, so I think we're supposed to assume that Phil is a heterosexual crossdresser and his wife seems to be down with it because the episode is all about the wife and Sophia fighting over what to bury Phil in. Sophia wants it to be a suit, and the wife wants it to be a dress, which is kind of interestingly progressive. They always treat his crossdressing like it's a hilarious punchline, and we never see him, and that's something. Sophia still thinks she's dying. Next scene opens with Dorothy coming into the living room, and Sophia's sitting there with the lights off—but we don't have to talk about it because shortly after that Sophia calls them Roy and Dale—it's Blanche and her brother coming back into the scene.
Glen: Blanche is matchmaking for Clayton.
Drew: Yeah. I think she springs it on him. I don't think he is aware that he's going on a date with someone else.
Glen: Yeah. If either of you tried to pull this shit with me, I would throw a fit. Like, if I walk in from dinner or something and it's like, "Oh, by the way, you have tickets to a concert in 15 minutes"—first of all, just the 15 minutes. I want to be somewhere at least a half hour before whatever it is I'm going to. And second of all, to pair me up with someone I don't know—
Drew: Right, because if you're hanging out with us, there's things that you wouldn't do that if you were going on a date you probably would do.
Glen: You mean clean parts of myself?
Drew: [laughs] Yeah. That's actually what I'm referring to.
Tony: Okay. What if I surprised you with a puppy version of Thurman?
Glen: I mean, what magic is that?
Tony: What magic is that?
Drew: Yeah. How did you get this magical dog?
Tony: That doesn't concern you.
Glen: It depends. Do I have to go to a concert with this dog that's in 15 minutes? That's not factoring in traffic on I'm guessing a Saturday night.
Tony: You have to raise and love them for the rest of their life!
Drew: I think they're walking to—I think they're on foot, which is why this plotline resolves the way it does. I believe they're walking to the park, and that's where the concert is—I think. But we're going to talk about the park. The park's interesting, too. The woman that Blanche sets him up on a date with, her name is Lois. And that is interesting because the woman who played Jean was played by an actress named Lois Nettleton, and that was interesting because Lois played a character named Jean, and she had a famous ex-husband named Gene. It's a weird name chain thing.
Glen: I'm going to need you to draw a diagram and post it in show notes.
Tony: Wow.
Drew: It is possible that Lois was named in reference to the actress who played the previous gay character on Golden Girls.
Glen: So you're saying that Blanche unknowingly set her gay brother up with a lesbian?
Drew: I don't know. There's so much short hair on this show. It's really hard to read who's a lesbian and who's not—though I've got to say, I think this is Dorothy's best look for the entire series. It's a much fuller haircut. It's not Blanche's best look. Blanche looks better in Season Six.
Glen: I agree. So, yeah. Blanche pushes Clayton out the door.
Drew: What do you guys make of the scene that happens next?
Tony: At the park?
Drew: No. So they leave, and Dorothy's like, "I'm just so awkward on blind dates. I've never enjoyed them," and then Blanche says something weird.
Tony: [gasps!] Oh, god! This is so much fun. It's so much fun. Yes! You just furrowed your brows at me, like, why would I find this funny. It's so simple and stupid. "Well, all you do is you put—" What?
Drew: You have to describe it, because—
Glen: This is a podcast.
Drew: Right. So they're sitting on the couch together, and—
Tony: So Blanche says [imitating Blanche], "Oh. First you put your arm around—" And Dorothy says [imitating Dorothy], "I know that, and then you're going to just try to get closer to me." "No, Dorothy. Next, do you know that if you blow on the center of a man's ear it just drives him wild?" You don't need to cut in audio because this is spot on.
Drew: No. I'm going to keep it. No, I'm going to play it against the actual clip so people can see how accurate you are.
Blanche: First, I start to yawn a little [yawns coyly]. Then I put my hands up over my head like this—
Dorothy: Oh, Blanche. I know that one. You end up with your arm around me.
Blanche: Yeah, but that's just the first part. Did you know that if you blow right on the tip of a man's ear lobe it can drive him absolutely crazy? I'll show you.
[audience laughter crescendos]
Tony: And then she goes, "This is what lesbians do." [laughter]
Drew: Is that a sexy move? I've never had my ear lobe blown on.
Glen: I'm not doing it now.
Drew: No. I'm wearing headphones, so you can't.
Tony: I never did that the five minutes we dated?
Drew: Yep. No. I have never done that to anyone [laughter]. That's why I did not know that's—
Glen: Now, I do hold up a pinwheel to a man's ear and blow on the pinwheel and let the pinwheel tickle his ear. So that's similar.
Tony: You're single?
Glen: Yeah. Very [laughter].
Tony: So they do it for what seems like an eternity.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: It's real long.
Tony: And then, of course, Sophia walks in and—
Sophia: I'm going to be dead in 24 hours. Couldn't you stay in the closet for one more day?
[audience laughs uproariously]
Drew: In this one, partly for the purposes of a joke, Sophia is not welcoming of homosexuality—or maybe she just doesn't want Dorothy to be gay. I don't know. Then we're in the park. Clayton is alone in the park at night [laughs]—just hanging out in the park—and he bumps into Rose. But I was like, "Wait. What the fuck is he doing in the park?"
Glen: I don't think it's that late. I think the sun maybe is just down so we know it's nighttime. But Rose is just coming off her volunteering whatever.
Tony: Grief counselor, right?
Glen: I don't know. She has a lot of volunteer jobs throughout the show, which is a plotline in the other episode we're going to talk about. And also, it's referenced later in the episode that they go somewhere after this in a scene we don't see.
Drew: Do they go somewhere?
Glen: Yeah, because—
Drew: Okay. I have questions about the logic of this. So you don't he was supposed to be cruising the park?
Glen: I don't think he was cruising the park. I think he just didn't want to go home so he didn't have to explain to Blanche why the date ended early.
Drew: Okay. I guess that makes sense. It was written by a non-homosexual. The other Clayton episode was written by homosexuals, and I think they would put him in the park on purpose because they would know he's cruising for dick. I prefer to think that Clayton escaped his blind date and cruised for dick in the park.
Glen: I mean, that's fine. I can't disprove that.
Drew: No.
Glen: Rose doesn't come up and say, "Oh, wow. Why does your breath smell like cum?" [laughter]
Singing Tony: [improvising tune] Glen Lakin's Reach Around! I've never seen a park in Miami that looks like the park there, there.
Drew: I've never seen a park in real life that looks like that park. It's weirdly lit and full of people just walking around for no reason.
Glen: Yeah. I was going to say, I have never seen a park that has so much foot traffic.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: Also, a park in Miami that's almost entirely white people, too—that's probably statistically unusual, right?
Tony: Mm-hmm. Yeah—I mean, jes.
Glen: Clayton explains that his date didn't go well, and Rose thinks that she's an expert on picking people's type. She says the problem is that the date just wasn't his type. So they sit down. There's a joke about her ass getting stuck in gum. I could reach around if I want, but I don't want to.
Drew: I think we know where your mind is going with that. I think that supports my theory about what Clayton was doing at the park, but okay.
Glen: And so they play a little game where they watch people walk by, and she reads his reaction and can pick out what is wrong with someone—whether this woman's too thin, whether they're—
Drew: Too short.
Glen: Whether they're a Nazi. And then a man walks by, and Clayton reacts to the man, and Rose has a little girlish reaction, basically.
Drew: And this does something that's very similar to what Maude did in the episode that we did the previous week where it's laughing and then slowly catching up to what's going on and feeling uncomfortable, which is also what Blanche does in the episode where Rose dates a little person.
Tony: Last week's episode of your podcast where you had Maude and then you put in a clip of Blanche with this example of saying something inappropriate and just—I listened to that over and over again because it made me laugh so much. Blanche's laugh when no one else is laughing is just heaven to me.
Drew: I think of the three actresses we've seen doing that very specific thing, I think she does the best job.
Tony: [imitating Blanche's uncomfortable laughter]
Drew: "I wish I was dead."
Tony: [gasps!] You—oh, yeah.
Drew: No, that wasn't me. That was me as Blanche.
Tony: No. Yeah, it took me a—
Glen: I do wish I was dead.
Tony: Glen stop. No. We don't wish you were dead, and our—
Glen: Anyway [laughs], Rose puts two and two together.
Tony: [sighs in resignation] If you care about Glen, please tweet at him @IWriteWrongs on Twitter, and message him on Instagram @BrosQuartz.
Glen: Okay. We'll just cut that into the end of the episode [laughter]. So, yeah. Rose puts two and two together that Clayton is attracted to men, and instead of being able to say the word "gay," even though she is some sort of social worker in Miami who would know what gay people are, she's like, "Oh. You're that thing."
Rose: Clayton, you're that thing that everyone said Olga Larsen's nephew was because he wore paisley clogs and gave out puff pastry on Halloween.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Which wouldn't even hold up.
Drew: No. It's a terrible idea. I'm sure that's just supposed to be a quaint St. Olaf-ism, but I don't know—
Glen: I think it's just because the word "puff" is close to "pouf."
Tony: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Drew: That's probably true. So then he's like, "And I have never told Blanche because every time I do I just chicken out."
Clayton: Yeah. I'm gay, Rose.
Rose: But Blanche told us you were married.
Clayton: I was. But after a while, I just couldn't deny the truth to myself. Seems silly, still denying it to my big sister, doesn't it?
Rose: Well, have you tried telling her?
Clayton: Every time I see her [sighs], and I always chicken out.
Drew: And she's like, "Oh, no. You should. We'll go back home, and—"
Glen: I have a question about Rose's comment about going back and telling Blanche while Clayton's dander is up. Does that support your cruising theory?
Clayton: But how do I keep from chickening out?
Rose: By telling her—tonight, while you've still got your dander up—I'm sorry.
[audience cackle-laughs and whoops]
Rose: Did I say something embarrassing?
Clayton: No! No, Rose. You're right. You're absolutely right. I've got to tell her—tonight.
Drew: Have you guys ever heard the expression "while your dander is up."
Tony: Never in my life.
Drew: Apparently, it's a real thing. I had not—I've never heard it out of the context of this episode. I think it might be a boner joke. So dander is obviously—it can be dandruff, or it can also just be dead skin cells and hair, neither of which are that appealing. But separate from that, it can mean passion or anger, and we don't know why that's a thing. But there's also this other word expression—[clicks tongue].
Glen: "While your dick is hard."
Drew: "Get your hackles up." Hackles refers specifically to the hair on a dog's neck that gets erect when they're excited.
Glen: That's what I thought the dander comment was about—dogs getting riled up.
Drew: That's what people assume, that there is a connection there. But we have no idea why this would have come out this way, and—
Tony: Has Rose ever spoke this—let's say poetically—before?
Drew: It might be a folksy expression. It might not be like a—I don't know. I don't know what to do with that one.
Tony: I've never heard her—
Glen: She has pearls of wisdom. I think sometimes Rose's intellect can—
Tony: Is it pearls of those reach-arounds, too? Huh?
Glen: I think sometimes Rose's intellect can fluctuate, depending on the needs of the scene or the joke.
Tony: And Sophia's self-censoring—is that right? She had a stroke, originally, right? She can only—but she's able to lie. She's able to—that also fluctuates, too, right?
Drew: It comes and goes, and it's weird in the other Clayton episode when they call it out specifically because this show has almost entirely forgotten about the fact that Sophia has a hard time filtering Tony: she says. She just says what she's thinking. It's more apparent in the first season. So they're like, "Okay. We'll go tell Blanche," and he's like, "Yeah. I stole her Montgomery Clift poster when she left for college." I am surprised that Montgomery Clift would have a poster, but okay.
Tony: Oh, my god.
Glen: I almost looked it up because I want to see, like, do I want that poster?
Tony: Gorgeous.
Drew: Not gay. Actively bisexual, apparently—by most accounts, enjoyed everybody. So now they're back, and they're surprised that Clayton has returned with Rose. Rose nudges Clayton to tell, and he can't do it. What does he say?
Glen: We're looking at you to act her—well, okay. He says—
Tony: "I slept with Rose."
Drew: That was well done.
Tony: Thank you.
Clayton: Well, I ran into Rose in the park, and—
Blanche: And?
Clayton: And we had a long talk, and—uh—
Blanche: And?
Clayton: And—we slept together tonight.
[audience laughs uproariously, whoops, and applauds]
Drew: Rose's reaction is very good. Rose has a big nonverbal reaction that we really can't capture here, but—
Glen: Tony's doing it now, and he's doing it perfectly.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: I do think it's a very awkward thing that a lot of four-camera sitcoms have to do when they're cutting out on a joke but also have to hold on these actors' reactions. They just have the camera linger on these actresses who have to run through the same emotion for five to ten seconds.
Drew: Right, which is unrealistic, and that's a lot to carry. "Just you. Just keep going. No, keep going. Bigger. Keep doing it. Yeah."
Glen: Well, it's like in the episode of Maude when they cut out on her bringing her friend in and she has to keep pointing at difference people like, "But don't you tell him how much we fought." It's like—ugh. Just cut to commercial already.
Drew: I don't think we really do that anymore. I don't think they really did—they don't do that on Frasier, really.
Glen: No. And even stage actors don't have to do that because there's not that closeness. They do things in the background, or the curtain just fucking drops, or they exit. There's no—you don't have to deal with the mid-close-up just watching that body twitch [laughter].
Drew: So the implication is not that Clayton is saying that he and Rose fucked in a park—or is it? I
Glen: I think that's what it's saying [laughter]. I don't know where else they'd fuck.
Tony: Does he say—they slept together. I think those were his literal words.
Glen: I mean, yes. He did not say "fucked." Not on a Saturday night sitcom.
Tony: But I mean—
Drew: "I porked her. I porked Rose. I porked her good!"
Tony: [laughs] No. What I'm saying—
Glen: "I put my spermies in her, but it's okay because—"
Drew: [laughs]
Tony: But where?
Glen: "—she can't have babies anymore."
Tony: Oh, my god [laughter].
Drew: On the note of that Rose non-fucking in a park, we're going to stop for a commercial.
Singing Tony: [hums "I'm Lovin' It" jingle]
Tony: There you go.
[The Golden Girls' transition music plays]
[Glen and Drew promote Gayest Episode Ever's Patreon campaign]
[The Golden Girls transition music plays]
Drew: Oh. We're back.
Glen: Hi.
Drew: Hi.
Tony: Hola.
Glen: Tony, are you going to buy whatever it is we are selling?
Tony: I'll buy what you're selling. Yeah.
Glen: Cool.
Tony: It was an ASMR tape that you guys host—record?
Drew: Is it weird that ASMR is infuriating to me? The noise of someone whispering I find to be—it drives me up the wall in the worst way.
Glen: Hey, Drew.
Drew: I hate it so much. I have headphones on, so you guys are being dicks.
Tony: You've never had someone blow into your ear?
Drew: No!
Glen: [laughs] Never had someone put a pinwheel up to your ear?
Drew: No! No. And this is not going to make any sense because I'm going to chop out everything you guys said. But ASMR is gross to me. Ugh. I hate—I can't believe anyone gets off on that. All right.
Glen: I'm jerking off right now.
Drew: Yes, you are.
Tony: Glen's Reach-Around.
Drew: No, it's—
Glen: You have to say the full title. It's "Glen's Reach-Around Corner."
Tony: I'm writing the theme song.
Drew: That's true. He's got you there. Oh, hey! We're back!
Tony: [laughs]
Glen: Sophia wants to be cremated.
Drew: [laughs] Yeah. What's the context for that?
Glen: I don't know, man.
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: We don't care about Sophia in this episode. Rose comes in, and they're talking about the situation. Dorothy very progressively supports Rose's privacy and her autonomy to have sex with anyone she chooses, and she's like, "It's not that, and I don't know if I should even say it," and then she whispers it in her ear.
Glen: Yeah. She's too embarrassed to say "homosexual" or "gay" out loud, so like a child, she whispers it into Dorothy's ear.
Drew: And Dorothy's like—
Dorothy: Clayton is a hobo?
[audience laughs uproariously and applauds]
Rose: No, Dorothy.
[audience laughs]
Dorothy: Oh. Oh! Now—now I get it.
Rose: Oh, good. I thought I was going to have to draw you a picture.
[audience laughs]
Rose: Oh, good. I thought I was going to have to draw you a picture—and I'm not sure I'd know how.
[audience laughs]
Drew: So Dorothy won't tell Sophia, and she's purposely holding Sophia back from hearing the whisper, and Sophia's determined to get to the bottom of it. And there's this interesting scene that plays out where Clayton comes in and she's like, "I have three questions for you."
Glen: They're all very good questions.
Tony: [laughs] I love them. I love them.
Clayton: Hello, ladies.
Sophia: Perfect timing.
Dorothy: Ma.
Sophia: So Clayton, what do you think of this Miami weather so far?
Clayton: Oh, it's lovely.
Sophia: I see. Have you ever been to Europe?
Clayton: No, but it's always been a dream of mine.
Sophia: Interesting.
[audience laughs]
Sophia: How many fingers am I holding up?
Clayton: Two?
Sophia: Fine. You can go back in the living room now.
[audience laughs]
Sophia: The man's as gay as a picnic basket!
[audience laughs, whoops, and applauds]
Drew: Why are those good questions?
Tony: It's just her reactions to them. "Interesting. Hmm."
Glen: It's just great because I had just written down the keywords from those questions, and it's "whether," "Europe," "fingers," and I was like, "Yeah. I could figure out someone's sexuality from that.
Tony: Mm-hmm.
Drew: And her conclusion after Clayton leaves the room is that he's as gay as a picnic basket.
Glen: Which how gay are picnic baskets?
Tony: [imitating Yogi Bear] That ranger's going to get our gay pick-a-nick basket!"
Drew: You know Yogi Bear was gay? He came out late in life.
Tony: Aw!
Drew: He's dead.
Tony: [imitating Boo-Boo] Gee Yogi, you could have come out to me sooner.
Drew: Do you guys remember that poster for the Yogi Bear Movie where it was like—
Glen: Yes [laughter].
Drew: Do you remember what I'm talking about?
Tony: No.
Drew: There was this poster where it's Yogi, and then standing in front of him is Boo-Boo, and the tagline is "Good things come in bears." [laughter]
Glen: It's hanging in my bathroom.
Tony: Oh! I love it! I love it. Oh, I want that.
Drew: What's interesting about Sophia being very intuitive—so actually, Sophia's lying. She doesn't figure it out from these questions. She says that she heard Clayton singing "Singing the Clowns" in the shower—
Glen: "Send in the Clowns."
Drew: "Send in the Clowns."
Glen: Which I also sing in the shower.
Drew: I don't think it's a very—is that a gay song?
Glen: It's Sondheim. Gays love Sondheim.
Tony: Yeah.
Drew: Is it Sondheim?
Tony: Oh, yes. From A Little Night Music.
Glen: Yeah. And it is kind of a gay song. At least I enjoyed it as a closeted college student and then out gay college student because it's about—not unrequited love. It's about love that doesn't work out.
Drew: The most I've ever heard of this song is when Krusty sings it on his comeback classic.
Glen: No. It's sung by a woman who is lamenting a lost love and wondering "Could it work out? Could it have worked out? Could it still work out?" She's just sort of going back and forth and—
Drew: So the clowns are a metaphor.
Glen: For happier times.
Tony: This is going to be so sad. Natasha Richardson was in rehearsals to be in A Little Night Music on Broadway with her mother when—
Drew: Oh.
Tony: I always think of that when I hear the song, though.
Drew: That's sad. I didn't know that.
Glen: I don't know. Who is she?
Drew: Vanessa Redgrave's—Vanessa Redgrave's?
Tony: I think so. Yeah.
Drew: —daughter Natasha Richardson. She was the mom in The Parent Trap.
Glen: She's dead?
Tony: She was Liam Neeson's wife.
Drew: She was in a freak ski accident, and then died. It was very sad. Picnic baskets are gay—
Glen: Because they're—
Drew: They're colorful and full of fudge.
Glen: Oh, my god!
Tony: [laughter] Oh, my god, Drew. [imitating Yogi Bear] "That ranger's going to see my pick-a-nick basket!"
Drew: But no, what's interesting is that there is this throughline in all three Golden Girls episodes that we're going to be talking about where Sophia is very understanding about gay issues for kind of no reason—because she's old and very Catholic. But it does not seem to bother her a whole lot, and she's just very practical about it. Other things bother her. This does not.
Glen: Maybe it's the stroke.
Drew: Possibly. I know when I interviewed the writer from the previous episode, he wanted to put the acceptance speech in Sophia's mouth is because it meant more. But yeah, maybe it's because she altered her personality. She forgot to be homophobic.
Tony: Do you think it—also a New Yorker? I mean, obviously an immigrant, but is that—like, Dorothy was a cosmopolitan New Yorker, right? So she was super liberal and Maude-ish.
Drew: Right. Yeah. She would have been around it more than Blanche or Rose would have been.
Tony: Right. I don't know.
Glen: So Rose is reading a cat magazine [laughter].
Tony: [laughs]
Drew: Yes. Is she really?
Glen: Yeah. She's reading a cat magazine.
Drew: I did not notice that.
Tony: No. What?
Glen: Yeah. She is reading a magazine with the cover facing camera, and it's just a little kitty cat on the front of it. It's like a Cat Fancy or something.
Drew: I mean, that's very on brand for her. This is the next scene, by the way. She's in the living room and Clayton comes in, and she's like, "What the fuck?" in her Rose way. And he's like, "Oh, I chickened out," and she's like, "I think you're underestimating your sister. She can be a very tolerant person."
Glen: Which is setting up one of my favorite jokes of the episode.
Rose: Clayton, you're selling your sister short. Now at times, Blanche can be very understanding and compassionate and forgiving.
Blanche: Get away from my baby brother, you cradle-snatching, empty-headed, two-faced dummy!
[audience laughs]
Rose: And then at other times, she can be a real bitch.
[audience laughs uproariously and applauds]
Tony: You haven't asked me yet what I think of the episode in general, but if only for this scene, I do love it. I don't love the Clayton character. At all.
Glen: Wow. I guess we'll get into that.
Drew: Should we? Are we—what?
Glen: Five minutes? No. Let's—
Tony: All right. But I do love them fighting, Rose and Blanche, and Rose still taking the high road the whole time.
Drew: She did call her a bitch, but—
Tony: No. She wasn't wrong [laughs].
Glen: So after Blanche and Rose have their little kerfuffle, Clayton tries to come out to Blanche, and she denies it.
Drew: And she can only really process it in terms of herself, which is a very common characteristic that you see of Blanche in all three of the episodes we're talking about.
Clayton: I'm gay, Blanche.
Blanche: [laughs dismissively] Oh, Clayton. Please be serious. You're just saying that so I won't set you up with any more women.
Clayton: No, Blanche.
Blanche: Well, then you're saying it because you're trying to get back at me for something.
Clayton: Blanche!
Blanche: Clay, I know you too well for this. After all, I know it can't be true. You're my brother!
Glen: I will say, she acted the shit out of this scene.
Drew: Yeah. She's great. And a less talented actress would come off as a really unsympathetic character, but you still kind of feel for her because—yeah.
Tony: Mm-hmm. I agree.
Drew: And then the departing—the line the scene ends on is done very dramatically.
Blanche: You look me in the face and tell me you really are what you just said you are.
Clayton: I think you heard me the first time, Blanche.
Drew: I'll say I think the actor who plays Clayton is—he's not really given funny lines, really, but he does well with the dramatic lines. The most dramatic line he gives is when Blanche says, "Look in my eye and tell me that again," and he says, "I think you heard me the first time," and turns around and leaves.
Glen: Then he goes to a bar where apparently he and Rose had went the previous night. They mention that because that's how Blanche will eventually track him down. She's like, "Oh. This is where Rose said she took you."
Drew: Oh! I completely missed that, and I was wondering how she knew what bar that he went to. That makes a lot of sense. Also, he wouldn't know other bars. Also, it's a weird bar. It seems like it's more of a restaurant, and it's very well-lit.
Glen: There's popcorn. Wait. Gay bars in Chicago have popcorn. Is this not a thing anywhere else?
Drew: I have never been to any sort of bar establishment that gives you a bowl of popcorn.
Tony: I did two national tours across the Midwest, and every major city we went to I would look up the gay bar and go. I can attest to it. There's many kinds of snacks in gay bars all across this great nation of ours.
Glen: Including popcorn.
Tony: Including popcorn. And pretzels, and peanuts—and fudge! Lots of fudge [laughter].
Glen: Oh. The bar is set up and the scene is set up that there are two men and—was there two women—some number of women at the bar with them. Then one of the men wants to turn on the game, and so the women are like, "Ugh. Sports," and walk out. And that is just so we are cued in that there were women in this bar, but now they're gone and now it's only men at the bar.
Drew: Right. And Blanche walks in wearing a red jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled up and then a shawl draped over one side of her, like a superhero. And the fashion choices on this show are just baffling because I never saw a woman who actually dressed like that in real life. But apparently, she is supposed to be very stylish.
Tony: [laughs]
Glen: When I was a younger gay man, I really wanted to do a coffee table book of some of my mother's outfits and some of the outfits of her friends. My mother is a beautiful woman, a very fashionable dresser. She didn't dress like any of the Golden Girls. I don't know why this is triggering for me, but I think it's because I noted that Blanche would match her earrings to her outfit, like red earrings that were the exact same shade as whatever thing she was wearing. And so it makes me think of how my mom would dress and the effort and the eye to detail that I will never give.
Drew: Well, because you don't have pierced ears.
Glen: It's because I never leave the house.
Drew: It can be two things [inaudible 00:49:31]. So Blanche sits down and is like, "This popcorn—" The only reason the popcorn is there is to give her a segue into this memory of going to a drive-through—not with Clayton. But she and Clayton are parked next to each other and she recalls them both fogging up their cars.
Glen: Like a competition.
Drew: Yeah. I guess it was a competition. It's just weird to be like—I don't have that relationship with anyone I'm even remotely related to. I would not like to be in close proximity to my sibling while they are also making out.
Tony: No!
Drew: No.
Glen: But it is a set-up for my other favorite joke of this episode.
Blanche: [laughs] You know what that popcorn reminds me of? Rex's Drive-Inn out at the lake. You remember the night my date and I parked right next to you and your date? Pretty soon it got to be a contest who could fog up whose car the fastest! I think you won [laughs].
Clayton: [laughs] Well, you weren't doing too badly considering you were in a convertible.
[audience laughs]
Glen: [laughter] And I laughed.
Drew: And also, there was a broken heater in his car, so there's even more reason.
Glen: But it does lead into, I think, a very touching conversation between them when Blanche is trying to say, "I just can't compute the two versions of you in my head—the young you who's very into making out with women and now the current you." And Clayton's response of—I don't know.
Drew: Clayton solves this dilemma by using Blanche's self-centered logic back on her, and it actually works. She finally understands—
Clayton: I'm the same person I always was.
Blanche: No, you're not. You used to be just like me.
Clayton: What, great-looking?
Blanche: Yes [laughs].
Clayton: Charming?
Blanche: Yes.
Clayton: Irresistible to men?
[audience laughs]
Blanche: My god, Clayton. You are me!
Drew: And that is what solves it is making her think about herself [laughs]. She's just a monster.
Tony: Just like with the Jean episode. It's the same thing. Her understanding of other people is in relation to herself. She immediately jumps off the chair and goes [imitating Blanche], "Attention, gentlemen! Gentlemen, I would be honored if any of you dated my brother." Right?
Blanche: You all, over at the bar. I just want to say that I would be very proud to have any one of you date my brother.
[audience cackle-laughs uproariously]
Blanche: I'd rather date you, lady.
[audience laughs]
Blanche: Sweet Jesus, I've just done the impossible! I converted one!
[audience laughs]
Drew: Like literally, she can only experience things through how it interacts with her. She has no sympathy or empathy whatsoever.
Glen: There was a good Blanche moment and a good joke in the middle of this touching scene between them where the waiter comes up and asks—
Waiter: So what can I bring you, Sweetheart?
Blanche: Don't you dare talk to him like that. Now you get out of here.
[audience laughs]
Drew: So she's good, and they go back to—we're back at the house and everyone is mostly on good terms, and she talks about going to—I think it's Jose's.
Blanche: Let's go to Jose's. We always go there to celebrate.
Dorothy: The food is great.
Blanche: Yeah. And they make all the waiters wear these really skin-tight bullfighter's pants.
Clayton: Really!
[audience laughs]
Blanche: Let's go to Emilio's.
[audience laughs]
Drew: So this is basically the end of the Clayton-Blanche storyline, and it's interesting because it kind of sets up the next episode that we're going to talk about because she can be okay with her brother being superficially gay, but the idea of him actually actively being gay, that's too much for her. She can't get there yet. That takes another episode.
Glen: Like, had she walked into the park and seen him walking out of the bushes late at night—
Drew: Mm-hmm. And then fucking Sophia's weird storyline wraps up. It's 9:00 on a Saturday, and the doorbell rings. There is a very good Rose-is-dumb part.
Dorothy: Listen, Rose. Do me a favor. Look out the peephole and see who's at the door.
Rose: Oh. Sure, Dorothy. Gee, it's kind of hard to tell. All I can see is a fedora.
Dorothy: Oh, my god.
[audience laughs]
Blanche: Who's that at the door?
Rose: It's me, Blanche.
[audience laughs]
Blanche: The other side.
Drew: And then it's Mildred, a character I don't think we've ever seen before or since, and she's Sophia's friend who is very similar to Sophia in stature and demeanor who wears a fedora for no reason. It's her lucky bowling hat.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Apparently, the resolution to Sophia's dream is just that her friend had tried to come by earlier and tell Sophia that there was room on the bowling team and shouted it through Sophia's bedroom window while she was napping.
Drew: Which is not the proper way to communicate any message you want anyone to receive.
Glen: But we do get a little—after that, we get a wrap-up of the Blanche and Rose storyline.
Drew: Right, because everyone's going to dinner and Rose is like—
Tony: [imitating Rose] "Have fun!"
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yep, and stomps into the kitchen.
Glen: But, yeah. Rose is, I guess, staring at oatmeal or mush or something. I don't know [laughter]. Yeah. But Blanche is trying to apologize to Rose—and I forget what the set-up is.
Tony: I know! I remember.
Glen: Go for it.
Tony: [imitating Blanche] "Rose, these are the hardest two words for me to say." [imitating Rose] "Not tonight?"
Blanche: Rose, honey. There's something I have to say to you. It's just two little words, but they are the hardest two little words in all the whole world for me to say.
Rose: Not tonight?
[audience laughs and applauds]
Tony: I mean, come on!
Drew: She's like, "I have a lot of sex." Ugh. Credits. That's it.
Tony: No, it's not!
Drew: No?
Tony: No! Then Rose almost—she can't take it anymore, right? And she takes away Blanche's window to apologize, and then Blanche is like, "You took away my whole speech. The moment's ruined."
Rose: Oh, Blanche. If you've come here to apologize, I accept.
Blanche: Just like that?
Rose: Yes! For me, just the fact that you thought of those words is plenty, considering what a selfish, conceited person you are.
[audience laughs—and one audience member weirdly says loudly, "Selfish, conceited!"]
Blanche: But I had a whole speech planned, Rose—about how nice you were to my brother and how proud I am to have such a sweet person as my friend. Now I can't say it!
Rose: Well, sure you can!
Blanche: No, I can't! You just ruined it!
Rose: Oh, I'm so sorry!
Blanche: Oh. I forgive you, Rose.
[audience laughs]
Drew: And then Rose says, "I'm sorry," and Blanche is like, "I forgive you!" Then it's credits.
Tony: Yep. Perfect. I think it's perfect.
Drew: That is perfect.
Glen: I actually do think that how it ends leads into my overall comment about the episode that where I think this one worked better for me than the last one—even though the last one was a better episode—this episode was able to parry from emotional scene to joke, back to emotion to joke, I think, better. One because they just understand their characters more, and it's just all the more natural—and the joke part didn't feel like they took away from the emotional moments. So I was able to cry and then laugh, and it didn't feel like it diminished the dramatic work.
Drew: I think I agree with you, and I agree with the observation that they do have a better understanding for the characters. The characters are like the classic versions of these four women that we all remember. Tony, what are your thoughts?
Tony: [clears throat]
Glen: Wait. Hold on. Let me get a drink of water.
Tony: Okay. You're going to drink a water while I talk?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Tony: I don't care for the actor's performance—Clayton—Monte Markham. Of course, it's hard with these four women. Any time a guest star came in rocking the boat of—they either work or they didn't. Jean absolutely worked. I think she was flawless. She was a perfect guest star in "Dorothy's Friend is a Lesbian." Here, he's like—and I know what they're going for. He's from a Tennessee Williams play, and Blanche is as well—her character—but she does it so well, and he's just serviceable to me. It's not enjoyable. You're just like, "Oh." And also, it's a message episode, and they do that well. His character has dignity. I mean, when he comes out he has dignity, but not until then! Not the best episode. It's just serviceable in those moments with Clayton. You know what I mean? It's written well, but I would have loved to have seen a different performance.
Glen: I would agree that character and maybe the actor didn't have as much range as Rue is giving in any scene with him.
Drew: He is not a female Blanche. He is a more subdued character. He's more subdued than any of the four leads. Maybe that's sort of how he's written because I really don't think he's given that much—he's not given good lines.
Glen: I disagree. Again, that line that was like—the two-versions-of-himself moment. He's given the good line of saying, "Yeah. One of those versions is a lie, but it's not the one that you are hoping for."
Drew: He's not given funny lines.
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: I think he actually does okay with the dramatic stuff—but, yeah. It's just not as deeply felt a character as Jean was, and this may be unfair to compare because I said before I think that's one of the better—it's probably the best episode of TV we've covered on the show. And also, she was nominated for an Emmy for that and this guy wasn't. It just wasn't as big of a performance.
Tony: All that said—this was '89?
Drew: I think '91.
Tony: Okay. So the AIDS crisis is happening.
Glen: We're going to talk about that next episode.
Drew: Oh. 1988, actually. But still, yeah.
Tony: To have a character like him, obviously they were having to be careful with it, and presumably he's a straight actor—
Drew: I believe so.
Tony: —who they would find—actually, let me step back from that. Let's say the guest stars usually are kind of terrible. In general, on Golden Girls, there's few that rise to the level.
Glen: It's okay to say that because most of them are probably dead now.
Tony: Oh, god. So—
Drew: Spit on their graves, Tony.
Glen: They're probably in L.A.
Tony: Spit on their graves? Jesus Christ. Take this all out. Take it all out!
Glen: No.
Drew: It's really hard to be a guest actor on this show because the four leads are so good, and they really understand their characters, and the writers seem like they really understand the characters. And the dynamic between the four of them is kind of perfect, and they don't really need guest characters. If it's just the four of them interacting—like, they get locked in a bank vault—that episode's good. You don't need anything extra because they know how to make them bounce off each other perfectly. So I think it's harder for writers to wedge one or two new characters in there and also get an idea for who these people can be in regards to the four women, and that's tough. That's really tough. And there probably are other shows where it's easier to have guest characters. They do better with guest characters. Like Seinfeld has maybe a better batting average for guest characters than Golden Girls does.
Glen: Also, I think maybe just you and I personally are a little spoiled at this point—like, however many episodes of this show we've done—
Drew: This is our 21st episode.
Glen: Oh, that's nice. Legal. Maybe it just takes more to wow us with a gay character. I don't know. I just feel like none of our conversations about, like, "Oh, wow. How groundbreaking to have this older gentleman coming out late in life presented on TV, and in a non-disaster way. He's not going through a crisis by any means. He is just discovering himself late in life and no longer lying," and that's nice. He is a perfectly functioning human being who happens to be gay.
Tony: I must have seen this episode around the time it aired. Jesus. Take that out [laughs].
Glen: Why? I also did.
Drew: I watched this episode around the time it aired.
Tony: And it must have made some impression on me. I don't know where I was going with this.
Drew: Is that why you became a Southern dandy?
Tony: That's right. Southern dandy.
Glen: What you're saying, though—this episode made you gay.
Tony: Yeah.
Drew: I have vague awareness of this episode, too, and I think it was unclear who Clayton was. I was like, "Is this someone I'm supposed to know?" And no, we've never seen him before. He's never been part of the show before. But maybe it's just because I didn't understand the Golden Girls universe as well as I do now.
Glen: Right. This is fourth season, so Blanche has been living with these women for four years. He's never come to visit. He's never met the other girls before. He got divorced two years ago and didn't visit then. I mean, that's the nature of a lot of sitcom characters, like these people that should be in their lives more just aren't. They come out of nowhere.
Drew: Yeah. I think at this point, two sisters have appeared on the show of Blanche's, and they don't fucking mention their brother. But whatever. That is something that changes by the time we get to the next episode, and that will be an interesting conversation to have when we talk about that episode in two weeks. Is there anything else you guys want to talk about this episode?
Tony: No. Can we have a glass of Rosé Nylund now?
Drew: There's pizza and Rosé waiting for us.
Glen: We'll unlock your shackles [laughter].
Drew: Tony, thank you for coming in and talking with us about Golden Girls on back-to-back recordings. If people want to find your antics online, where should they look for you?
Tony: Okay. On Instagram, I'm @TonyRodrig. And Twitter, I guess, @TheTonyRodrig—but I don't know if I'm going to use it anymore.
Glen: I don't follow you.
Tony: Oh, my god. I think you just started following me on something.
Glen: Instagram. Yeah.
Tony: It was Instagram.
Glen: I definitely got a message from you right after I started following you, like, "Wait. You're only now just following me?"
Tony: But you've been following Barbafella for years, right? My drag character?
Glen: I'm familiar with the works of Barbafella.
Drew: Tony, if people want to—
Tony: Oh, and my Spanish podcast upcoming at Earwolf July 16th: SAP—Spanish Aquí Presents.
Drew: So in July, go to earwolf.com, and you'll probably see it broadly promoted. Social media TK.
Tony: Yeah. Drew, where can people find you?
Drew: Oh. Thank you, Tony. You can find me on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. And by the way, if you want to listen to the podcast I did with Tony, we have 18 great episodes of us talking with people about movies they love. It is called You Have to Watch This Movie, and you can listen to all the episodes at youhavetowatchthismovie.com. Wait. Are you on the most TableCakes shows at this point? You might be on more TableCakes shows than everybody else—no, Katherine is, because Katherine has been on Singing Mountain and you have not. But you can be tied with her.
Glen: Hey, Tony. Where can people find me?
Tony: [clears throat] You can find Glen on Instagram @Barbafella.
Glen: You son of a bitch.
Tony: [laughs] You can find Glen Lakin—wait—Glen Theodore Lakin—
Glen: That's not my middle name.
Tony: —on Twitter @WritesWrongs. That's W-R—
Glen: Mm, it's @IWriteWrongs.
Tony: Well then, you say what your—
Glen: No, because you did so well before.
Drew: I'll fucking say it [laughter]. @IWriteWrongs—"Write wrongs" with a W. He's on Instagram @BrosQuartz—yes, it's a Stephen Universe reference—B-R-O-S-Quartz, like the stone! Sorry.
Tony: [sighs dramatically] We need a glass of Rosé Nylund right now!
Drew: Okay. The other spiel is follow this podcast online @GayestEpisode on Twitter, Gayest Episode Ever on Facebook. Listen to all previous episodes at gayestepisodeever.com. This is a TableCakes podcast. If you want to listen to the other TableCakes shows—including two of which that I'm on—go to tablecakes.com.
Glen: I will say that Drew actually does excitedly screen capture every nice thing that anyone tweets or reviews and sends it to me first thing in the morning.
Drew: I don't think we've gotten any new reviews, so if you're listening to this and you're like, "Oh. These guys don't suck," just give us a review. We'd really appreciate that. Alternately, if you don't want to do that, maybe pass this on to someone else you know who you think might like it—maybe a Golden Girls fan, because everyone loves The Golden Girls. So if they love The Golden Girls and they don't hate gay people, maybe they'll listen to us talk about it. Try it out!
Glen: Are there Golden Girls fans who do hate gay people?
Drew: I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are old people who, like, this is the one episode they just can't stand. "Those three episodes they did!" But people have been very nice on Twitter lately, and it has been nice to read those messages.
Tony: Aw.
Glen: So, thank you.
Drew: Yeah. Can't wait for someone to tell us that we're horrible and they hate us.
Glen: Other than our parents.
Drew: [laughs] Podcast over!
Glen: Bye forever!
Drew: Bye forever! Tony, say bye.
Tony: Bye!
["(Walls of) Jericho" by Brothers Return plays]