Transcript for Episode 2: Roseanne Gets Kissed by a Lesbian
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Roseanne episode “Don't Ask, Don't Tell.” 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.
Sharon: Look. We're going dancing at that new club in Elgin Friday night. You two should join us.
Nancy: Oh, I don't think that would be a very good idea.
Roseanne: Oh, come on. I think it'd be fun. I haven't been dancing since—when was Dad's funeral?
[audience laughs]
Nancy: I don't think you'd have such a great time.
Jackie: Sounds like fun.
Nancy: It's a gay bar.
Jackie: Okey dokey.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Well, Jackie, it doesn't bother us if it's gay.
Nancy: Well, it might. Friday is Convert a Hetero Night.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: What, are you afraid that we're going to embarrass you or something? I know all the etiquette. It's knives and forks on the left and vibrators on the right.
[audience laughs]
[Roseanne theme music plays]
Drew: You are listening to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast that looks at episodes of classic TV series that deal with LGBT issues, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very gay episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: And in case that intro didn't tip you off, today we are talking about Roseanne. We are doing the episode "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which aired March 1st, 1994. It is better known as the episode where Roseanne gets kissed by lesbian, and that title was extremely timely. As the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the US Military had just gone into effect February 28th, 1994.
Glen: What do you think it was originally titled when they pitched the episode?
Drew: It was probably a direct reaction against it because what's the turnaround on writing a sitcom versus getting it to air?
Glen: This was in March?
Drew: One month. Yeah.
Glen: They probably pitched the episode in the fall or summer before, so they had the idea of the episode. I just wonder if they changed the title.
Drew: A little bit of historical context for TV and stuff: Roseanne was the fourth highest rated TV series in 1994, right between Seinfeld and Grace Under Fire, which is such a weird point in history where Grace Under Fire was in the top five.
Glen: Wait. Grace Under Fire was number five?
Drew: Number five, in 1994.
Glen: That cannot be.
Drew: It was.
Glen: Wait, was this with Old Quentin or Young Quentin?
Drew: Quentin is her son?
Glen: I think so.
Drew: Did they recast him?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I don't remember that at all.
Glen: They recast him when the child that she gave up came back as a character.
Drew: Oh. Weird. I don't remember that. Yeah. I was just thinking about how Roseanne is getting a revival. It's about to start airing on ABC. I don't think we're going to get a Grace Under Fire reboot.
Glen: Grace Over Fire?
Drew: Grace Over Fire, yeah. She was on Scandal, though. Do you know that?
Glen: I did not know. Recurring?
Drew: Brett Butler—in at least one episode. I was flipping through channels, and it was Scandal—no, not Scandal—How to Get Away with Murder.
Glen: That makes much more sense. I don't know why that makes much more sense, but it does.
Drew: Yeah. This particular episode of Roseanne was the most-watched episode of TV this week, handily beating its time slot competition, which on Fox was the GRAMMYs where Whitney Houston won Record of the Year for "I Will Always Love You"—did not watch that. I have never willingly watched the GRAMMYs in my life—and NBC's competition for this episode was a special called "Ancient Prophecies."
Glen: I watched that.
Drew: Did you really?
Glen: I mean, I watched a lot of those "Ancient Prophecies" and Bible Code specials.
Drew: I remember those being a thing. I went to Catholic school, so I really didn't need to listen to any of that, but I feel like it was NBC's way of being like, "Okay. If you're going to object to watching two ladies kiss, here. Watch this dumb Bible thing."
Glen: See, I was godless, so I watched all those Bible shows, especially when they tied them to aliens.
Drew: Right. It's weird to think about. I guess this is in the era of The X-files, so that stuff was in pop culture, but it's weird to think about there being a time when NBC would be like, "Yeah. That seems like a good hour of television for us, this dumb documentary on Nostradamus.
Glen: I remember the Nostradamus story where he predicted that they would eat a certain pig for dinner and the king or whomever was like, "Pft. Fucking Nostradamus. We're going to eat a different pig," but then they ended up eating the pig that Nostradamus picked because the one that he didn't pick fell on the floor of the kitchen. I don't know if that's a real thing. And he predicted Hitler, but he called him Hister.
Drew: Yeah. That all seems wrong, and I'm going to assume that you're saying all these things because you didn't go to Catholic school.
Glen: That's true. I didn't.
Drew: You should probably know better. So this is probably one of the most famous lesbian kiss episodes of a TV series ever, and a lot of people might actually think it was the thing that jump-started the trend—it is not. There was two TV shows that had lesbian kiss episodes before Roseanne did it. Can you guess?
Glen: No, but it's weird to think of it as a trend.
Drew: Totally was, though. Remember, Ally McBeal kept doing it?
Glen: Oh, yeah.
Drew: And the two previous lesbian kiss episodes of note were: L.A. Law—in 1991, they had a bisexual female attorney who had a kiss with a female character onscreen; and then Picket Fences was before Roseanne. Did you ever watch Picket Fences?
Glen: No, but that was that weird sci-fi suburbia show.
Drew: Was it sci-fi?
Glen: I feel like there was weird Twin-Peaksy elements to it.
Drew: It was definitely inspired by Twin Peaks, but I think it might have just—I didn't grow up with CBS, so most CBS shows are strange to me and I've had to investigate on my own. I have not yet made time for Picket Fences. But the kiss was between two teenage female characters, one of whom was Holly Marie Combs who's the—
Glen: [gasps] From Charmed!
Drew: From Charmed, yeah. She had a lesbian kiss episode, and she kissed a teenage female friend during a sleepover, and they had to shoot the scene in very low light because the network was skittish about it. But that—
Glen: She was my favorite Charmed.
Drew: She's your favorite Charmed? Mine's Rose McGowan because Rose McGowan's my favorite everything, ever.
Glen: Yeah, but she's not, like, a true Charmed. I mean, whatever. She's not one of the original three.
Drew: But she took over in the—she was making up for the absence of Shannon Doherty, so that counts for something.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. So, Picket Fences aired in 1993; this aired in 1994. The episode was controversial to the point that ABC initially refused to air it. Tom Arnold and Roseanne both protested and went public—I think they talked to Variety about it because "Fuck you, ABC. This is a really backwards thing." ABC relented and ended up actually promoting the kiss aspect of the episode when they decided to air it, although it did run with a parental suggestion—a guidance warning, basically.
Glen: Did it get an Emmy nomination?
Drew: It did not. It got a WG nomination for the writers, who I will talk about shortly—but did not get nominated. Got about 100 calls to their viewer center, most of which are allegedly in favor of the episode. People ended up not having a huge problem with it, which I guess makes sense because it's fairly non-salacious. Maybe that's just 2018-me talking, but watching it today, it does not seem like a very salacious episode.
Glen: Yeah. It's not salacious, and also—it's not non-consensual, but it's a surprise. It's not like Roseanne went around kissing everyone. She was kissed.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Right. And she doesn't receive any pleasure from it, really.
Glen: I mean, I guess not visually.
Drew: Yeah. The way it's shot—well, we'll talk about the kiss later, but it's not an erotic moment for her. She's weirded out by it, I guess. We can talk about it when we get to it. I will point out that this aired before the lesbian wedding episode of Friends, and when Ross's ex-wife and her girlfriend got married, they did not kiss onscreen.
Glen: [gasps]
Drew: I know. Weird, right? They'd already had women kissing onscreen but having two women in love kissing to celebrate a marriage, that was something NBC just didn't want to do, I guess.
Glen: I don't know. From what I remember of that couple, they came off as kind of loveless anyway.
Drew: No. They just hated Ross.
Glen: Well, everyone hated Ross.
Drew: Right. Well, yeah. So, yeah. This episode was written by Stan Zimmerman and James Berg, who had previously worked together on Golden Girls. They also worked together on Gilmore Girls. I actually have met Stan Zimmerman. I interviewed him for a Golden Girls piece, and the next episode we're going to do is a Golden Girls episode, so I'll talk about that interview then. But, very lovely person. He and his writing partner both were nominated for a Writers Guild Award for the script, and I think they totally earned it. I was surprised they didn't get nominated for an Emmy because I thought the writing on this episode was actually pretty great.
Glen: Yeah, but it would have been in direct competition with the Frasier episode.
Drew: I know. I know.
Glen: Don't make me choose—I choose Frasier.
Drew: Okay. Fine. This episode was directed by Philip Charles MacKenzie, who was previously an actor. Are you familiar with an '80s sitcom called Brothers?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Initially aired on Showtime, about three brothers, one of whom happened to be gay. Philip Charles MacKenzie played the gay brother's gayer friend. But I have to say, this is a blind spot in my pop culture experience. I've never actually—I think I watched the pilot on YouTube just to get an idea for it, but I haven't watched most of the show. But it's crazy to think about a show that started in 1984 being about—one-third of the main cast was a gay man. He is also married to Alison LaPlaca. Do you know her? John Larroquette Show?
Glen: [gasps]
Drew: She played Catherine on John Larroquette Show, which is an episode I would love to do for this show but I'm not sure if they did a really great gay episode.
Glen: What else was she on?
Drew: She was on Friends. She played Jennifer Aniston's boss Joanna on Friends, and she's the voice of Baby Doll on Batman: The Animated Series.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: I know. Yeah. She's awesome. They are married. They are still married, and I'm glad we got to talk about her.
Glen: Yeah. In my memory, she is a very strikingly handsome woman, so I'm glad that someone who directs a gay episode is married to her.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yep, and played a gay. So, he understands. Speaking of strikingly handsome women, the guest star in this episode is Mariel Hemingway, who I've just always had in my head that there's a lesbian aura around her but looking into it, the only reason that exists is because of the 1982 movie Personal Best where she played an Olympic hopeful who has a lesbian affair with her female coach.
Glen: Ooh, is that based on a true story?
Drew: It is not, although the female coach is played by an actual athlete who wasn't really an actress. But well-received and was fairly explicit for the time. That is the only lesbiany thing I can actually find about Mariel Hemingway. She's been publicly in relationships with men, so I guess that was the element of stunt casting bringing her in here, but she's just kind of awesome.
Glen: Is she the Hemingway from Delirious with John Candy?
Drew: Oh, I don't know. Let me look it up real quick. Nope. It is Mariel Hemingway. Yeah.
Glen: Oh. Then she is my favorite Hemingway. I mean, the author's pretty great, too.
Drew: She only really got into acting because her sister was in a movie called Lipstick, and Margaux was the star of that movie and Mariel played her little sister onscreen, and that's what led to her role in—is it Manhattan where she plays a high school girl who's romanced by Woody Allen, which is a really awkward thing.
Glen: So, they're like the Richards Sisters, Kyle and Kim—Kim and Kyle.
Drew: Sort of. They've had really—I think all of those sisters but Kyle has been very straightforward with their struggles with mental illness.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: Yeah. And Margaux—Margaux's dead, so.
Glen: Yeah. Well. Speaking of celebrity cameos in this episode, for the entire scene which we'll get to later, I thought the lesbian bartender was Geena Davis.
Drew: She looks like Geena Davis. She totally does. Yeah. That is Laura Kightlinger, who after this—I think the year after this she was on SNL as a featured player, and she's done a lot of cool comedy stuff. Basically, since I've been aware of pop culture, she's been doing cool stuff. She's, I think, a consulting producer on the new season of Will & Grace right now.
Glen: Oh.
Drew: But yeah, just a strikingly beautiful woman who has been doing good comedy for a really long time.
Glen: But have her and Geena Davis ever been in the same room at the same time?
Drew: I don't know that. But Laura Kightlinger was in a relationship with Jack Black for a long time, and that's what makes me think that it's not actually Geena Davis, because Geena Davis would not consent to that.
Glen: No, but Geena Davis killed a deer in the woods.
Drew: Probably, like with her hands, or with her archery tools.
Glen: No, no. With her hands.
Drew: Oh, okay. I mean, probably. So this episode opens at the Lanford Lunchbox where Roseanne and Jackie both work, and so does Nancy—the character played by Sandra Bernhard who came out two years previous.
Glen: I believe so.
Drew: I think—1992. And they're talking about how she's getting picked up by her new girlfriend Sharon—
Glen: Ooooh!
Drew: —and Roseanne and Jackie are eager to meet this person who Nancy has seemingly made a point of not introducing to them.
Glen: Yeah. It's a source of many reverse-logic jokes on Roseanne's part where Roseanne pretends that Nancy must be ashamed of her straight friends.
Roseanne: Well, why don't you bring her in so she can meet the folks?
[audience laughs]
Jackie: Yeah. You've been dating her for, like, three months. We've never even met her.
Nancy: Nothing personal, Roseanne. I just haven't introduced Sharon to any of my friends.
Roseanne: Oh. You mean any of your straight friends, right? Because you've never been able to accept our alternate lifestyle.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Well, it isn't a choice, you know.
Drew: Nancy probably is embarrassed by her straight friends, though.
Glen: She's embarrassed of Roseanne, yes. That's true.
Drew: Yeah. But before anything can happen, Sharon comes waltzing in, played by Mariel Hemingway. And there's an ooh-ed reaction to this, because fun guest star. And—
Glen: But do you think the audience actually knew who she was?
Drew: —they probably filmed that scene more than once. You've been in a studio audience before, right?
Glen: No. Never.
Drew: Oh, you have to act impressed or surprised by things that you've seen several times before. It's very exhausting.
Glen: I mean, that sounds like my life [laughs].
Drew: Yeah. I mean, that's true, but you would also have to be very expressive with your emotions, so it would be really hard for you.
Glen: Yeah. That's true.
Drew: Yeah. Sharon comes in, and Sharon has a swagger to her. I don't know if this is how Mariel Hemingway actually is or if she's playing a character, but Sharon is a stripper who has a lumberjack swagger to her. It's kind of an awesome little character turn, I think.
Glen: She felt like she was in a bit of a different show, like some sort of community theater project where she was the big star in that and took it upon herself to make her character as interesting as possible.
Drew: I think she did fine. She has as many Oscar nominations as Laurie Metcalf.
Glen: I'm going to kill myself.
Drew: No, no. I'm sorry.
Glen: First of all, too soon. Second of all, I didn't say that what she did with the character was bad. I just think it was strikingly interesting.
Drew: Okay. Yeah. I like it. I like that she's supposed to be sexy but she's not playing feminine sexy, especially because the previous girlfriend we saw Nancy with was Morgan Fairchild. She played Marla, the makeup counter lady. And that episode—it's almost the episode of Roseanne I wanted to do first, but I think this one is more historically important. But that episode "Ladies' Choice," there's a big deal of the fact that Nancy has her first girlfriend and she's very, very feminine. So, they wanted to go in a different direction. Do you remember, right before they introduce Nancy's girlfriend, there's an episode where Roseanne is trying to get a loan to start the Lanford Lunchbox, and Nancy comes in with this friend who's played by Judith Hoag from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The original, live-action April O'Neil?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: And there's no explanation for what she's doing there. She's just hanging out with Nancy all the time, and she happens to be a loan officer and gives them information that helps them get the loan for the Lunchbox? I think that was supposed to be Nancy's first real girlfriend, and they decided to recast the role or change the role, or Morgan Fairchild was available, so they just bucked it to her. But I think April O'Neil was supposed to be Sandra Bernhard's first onscreen girlfriend.
Glen: I've written that slash fiction before.
Drew: Well, we'll post it online.
Glen: Great. Just link to it. I think the teaser has a ton of good jokes, good sitcom-level jokes.
Drew: Like the vibrator joke?
Glen: The vibrator joke. I actually LOL'd when Mariel walks in, and Roseanne comments that Nancy's girlfriends look like that, but when she dates men—
Roseanne: Nancy, how come when you date guys they look like Arnie, and when you date girls they look like her?
[audience laughs]
Nancy: Jackie, Roseanne, this is Sharon. She's an erotic dancer/performance artist.
Sharon: I'm a stripper.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Hi.
Sharon: I've been wanting to meet you for a while, but for some reason Nancy was scared to introduce her girlfriend to you guys.
Roseanne: Why? You ain't one of them lesbians, are you?
[audience laughs]
Glen: I think one of the main points of the scene, other than to introduce Nancy's girlfriend and the plot of the episode, is to make a point of Roseanne going out of her way to seem cool with the gay thing. She's the most progressive one in Lanford. She's the most progressive sister. She goes with the flow. It's Jackie who is sort of uptight and uncomfortable with the gay issues and at the prospect of being invited to a lesbian bar that night by Nancy's new girlfriend. Jackie is the one who's initially uncomfortable, and Roseanne is the one who is gung-ho for a good time.
Drew: I like the exchange of Jackie saying, "What if they think I'm gay?"
Jackie: Roseanne, I really have to go?
Roseanne: Yeah.
Jackie: Well, I'm not going to feel comfortable there. What if everybody there thinks I'm gay?
Roseanne: Well, then you could just think they're gay right back at them.
[audience laughs]
Glen: It's a funny joke that also fits in with what we talked about in the Frasier episode of turning the expectation on its head of why do we have to assume—why do we assume that straight people are straight, but gay people have to go out of their way to announce they're gay.
Drew: Right. But coming from Jackie that's especially interesting, because like we said in the Frasier episode, that seemed to be them making a point of saying, "Hey, no. Frasier's not gay. We know how this looks." They've actually done that with Jackie before. In the episode with Morgan Fairchild as Nancy's first girlfriend, they're talking about their perception of what a lesbian looks like and Roseanne makes this joke like, "A lesbian's, like, some middle-aged lady wearing flannel who drives a truck," and Jackie starts laughing before she realizes that that's what she is, but she happens to be straight. But maybe at this point, Jackie is—even though she's pregnant. She's very, very pregnant. I think she has her baby the next episode. But she's really worried about being perceived as gay because a lot of who Jackie is reads as gay. And according to the series finale—which may not actually be canon anymore—in real life, Jackie really was a lesbian and Roseanne writing the book about her life made her straight for reasons I can't remember.
Glen: I can't keep fantasy Roseanne separate from canon Roseanne. It's all very confusing.
Drew: I guess we'll find out in the very near future what actually happened, but Dan's already not dead, so that's—yeah.
Glen: It's for the best.
Drew: Yeah. Oh, god. Yes.
Glen: I also think—what's his name? Leon?
Drew: Leon. Yes.
Glen: Yeah. Leon gets one of a couple decent jokes in this episode.
Leon: So Friday night, I'll get my chance to see Roseanne out with my people, huh? That should prove quite entertaining [laughs].
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Why?
Leon: Well—hmm. How can I put this delicately? Um—a gay bar is sort of like a size 12 dress; you just won't fit in.
[audience laughs]
Drew: I like that, too. I love Roseanne and Leon's relationship, even though Leanne—ugh, Leanne—Leon is such a bitch to her that—this being one of the shows I watched regularly, and I knew that Leon was gay because I think he came out three seasons previous to this. Importantly, he did not start out as an openly gay character. That was something that was revealed about him over time. But I was always annoyed—when you're a kid watching the show, seeing how mean he is to this female character, that gives you a weird idea about what gay men are supposed to be like, which—
Glen: No, that's accurate.
Drew: Oh, that's accurate? Okay. No. We're not supposed to do that anymore. We're supposed to hold up our sisters.
Glen: #Allies.
Drew: Yes. My perception of what gay men looked like being shaped almost entirely by The Real World and Ricki Lake, Leon did not look how I thought a gay man should look at the time. Now I'm like, "Oh. He has a beard. And if he didn't wear ties all the time, he actually kind of looks like several gay men I know in real life."
Glen: I mean, we'll talk about his outfit at the gay bar.
Drew: Yeah. That was not okay.
Glen: But, yeah. He is probably, looking back on it, one of the more realistic depictions of gay men on TV.
Drew: Yes. You can't hear this, but I have a mustache, and Glen has a beard.
Glen: But we're not wearing glasses.
Drew: We're not wearing glasses because you don't have glasses, and I don't wear mine. That is all in the cold open. So then we jump from that to the opening credits, and then we get a weird scene which is the only scene where we see Becky and Darlene and Mark and David, who are Roseanne's two daughters and their significant others who are brothers. Do they all live at the house at this point?
Glen: I think they all live at the house.
Drew: They're just always constantly there.
Glen: I forget who gets the bedroom and who has the basement. Wait. No. Darlene does not live in the house at this point. She is in college in Chicago. She's home for the weekend doing laundry—or David is doing her laundry, which is part of the joke with the scene.
Drew: Right. So it's sort of tweaking gender roles where David's very domestic and Darlene is demanding and kind of a jerk, and that is contrasted with Mark and Becky who are more—
Glen: Traditional?
Drew: —more traditional in their gender dynamics. And it's this weird scene where Becky's ex-boyfriend from high school who's a football star shows up, and David is really excited to bring her in to make Mark jealous, but it turns out that he's actually there to drive Darlene to college and David is the one who eventually gets jealous. Becky gets jealous, too, though.
Glen: Everyone gets jealous in this scene, except for Darlene, who just makes a joke about exchanging sexual favors for a ride back to the city.
Drew: Right.
Glen: On the surface, this scene seems very weird for the episode, but I actually think it fits in very well with the themes that's going to go on later in the episode because this establishes that hetero relationships are kind of fucked up and they're all tied up in gender norms and jealousy and all sorts of things that we don't see later.
Drew: Oh, okay. Right. No, I like this. That's a really good point. I was trying to find a reason for why it was there. I thought that they were just contractually obligated to put those actors in a scene—which that might have been it. But even if they were just doing that, it actually works okay.
Glen: Yeah. We'll talk about it later.
Drew: So then, that's it. The next scene is the next night. They are in Elgin, Illinois—
Glen: Which is—I looked it up because I couldn't quite remember. But it is just about 40 minutes away from where I grew up. I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, and this is a northwestern suburb of Chicago.
Drew: Do you think they would have had their own gay bar in 1994?
Glen: It's hard to say. Looking at the exterior shot they gave for it, yes. My only complaint is they called it a new bar, and that does not look like a new bar.
Drew: It does not look new.
Glen: Had it been an establishment from the '80s or '70s that just sort of clung on tooth and nail, I would have believed it because the inside of it is not dank, but it's how you would have pictured gay bars without ever having walked into one.
Drew: Right, which isn't the case because it was written by two gay men, so at least they had an idea of what this place should look like. But my notes actually say it reminds me of when Saved by the Bell has a dance and everyone in school is supposed to be there, but there's actually only eight people dancing in the background. That's what it kind of looked like.
Glen: And it also had the streamers, like a high school thing would have.
Drew: Yeah. Right. That just seems unsanitary to have streamers bumping into your face all night, but whatever. I went to Akbar last night, though [laughs], and I was looking around and was like, "Oh, yeah. This is actually set up very similar to Lips," which is the name of the bar. And I have to say, naming—they call it a gay bar. It's basically a lesbian bar with a few gay guys there. Most of the people there are women. And calling a lesbian bar Lips is actually the most salacious thing about this episode.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I'm kind of surprised they got away with that, but well done tricking the censors.
Glen: I mean, if Lips is still there, it's clearly just a gay bar now. That's just what happens to lesbian bars from the '90s.
Drew: I don't think it's real. I don't think they flew to Elgin and took an exterior shot of this place, Glen.
Glen: No, but it also reminded me—I never went to this place in high school, but there was an 18-and-over club in my neck of the woods. And all I can remember about it—from what I heard because I wasn't cool enough to go—was that it had fake snow, which is weird because it's Chicago and we get real snow very often.
Drew: Right. Fake snow inside?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: That sounds gross.
Glen: The commercials for the club said, "It's the club so cool it snows."
Drew: I don't agree with this.
Glen: So, you don't want to go?
Drew: No. I'm not going to go to Chicago to see this crappy 18-and-over bar.
Glen: That's cool.
Drew: It's probably gone.
Glen: I forgot the name of it, so I can't look it up.
Drew: We're good. Yeah. I'm going to point out, it's basically a lesbian bar. We don't have lesbian bars in Los Angeles. If there is a lesbian bar in Los Angeles that's advertised in that way, I don't know where it is and haven't seen it, and it's weird to me that we have a lot of gay bars which are mostly dominated by men—you see women at them sometimes. But we do not have a bar specifically for lesbians in L.A. It's weird. Right?
Glen: Yeah. That is weird, but that's because we took them. We took them all.
Drew: Man. We're awful. So, they're at the bar. Jackie is freaked out that people will think she's a lesbian.
Glen: Roseanne is, again, outwardly comfortable, I guess, is the term for it.
Drew: Perhaps overcompensating a little bit, but yeah. She's pretending she's Jackie's girlfriend.
Jackie: No. You don't understand.
Roseanne: Oh, now you don't have to hide our love, Pookie.
Jackie: [laughs nervously]
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Hi. I'm Roseanne. I'm the father.
[audience laughs]
Woman: So, how long have you two been together?
Roseanne: Oh, what's it been now, honey? About 38 years?
Jackie: [mutters]
Roseanne: Oh, and she's just as feisty as ever.
[audience laughs]
Woman: You know, I had a feeling about you.
Jackie: You did?
[audience laughs]
Jackie: Why? What'd I do?
Drew: Which Jackie is incredibly uncomfortable with, although she also uses it to her advantage when Roseanne and Sharon go off to dance and Jackie's seated on her own at the bar—
Glen: With Geena Davis the bartender.
Drew: Geena Davis the bartender. This woman comes up and asks her to dance.
Woman: You are one pretty lady.
[audience laughs]
Woman: Care to dance?
Jackie: Oh. No, thank you.
Woman: Come on. What could it hurt?
Jackie: It could hurt you.
[audience laughs]
Jackie: You see that big butch broad over there?
[audience laughs]
Jackie: I'm hers!
[audience laughs]
Drew: And—
Glen: And we get a shot of Roseanne gay bar dancing, and it's kind of comical. Leon, our favorite gay man who is not us, is also in this scene, and he is wearing a colorful sweater/hat ensemble.
Drew: Why does Roseanne say, "Look, it's Charlie Brown," when she runs into him? Is that—did you understand that reference, necessarily?
Glen: The sweater was striped. Charlie Brown has a zigzag. I think the joke is that he's trying to look younger because he's covering up his balding head with a baseball cap and he's wearing a cute sweater.
Drew: It's not a cute sweater. It's a fucking ugly sweater.
Glen: I mean, I might wear it.
Drew: Not in this house.
Glen: but he does get in another good zinger.
Roseanne: Well, if it isn't Charlie Brown.
[audience laughs]
Leon: Is that you, Roseanne? I thought it was a drag queen doing a really bad Liz Taylor.
[audience laughs]
Jackie: Leon, come sit at a table with us and act like we're together.
Leon: I didn't come here to be with you. I came here in search of stimulating conversation. Ooh, I smell Aramis.
[audience laughs]
Glen: Which is spot on.
Drew: Spot on, but as we were talking about off mic, Roseanne looks kind of awesome this season.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: It's her best combination of looks. Her hair looks great. The styling is pretty stylish for the kind of character she is. Yeah. She looks really good. Yeah. I'd be okay with seeing that Roseanne in a gay bar. I would be terrified of seeing actual Roseanne in a gay bar because—
Glen: Oh, yeah. Nut-farm Roseanne? Yes.
Drew: Yeah. This will probably come up again at the end, but Roseanne did a lot of great things—very progressive, did a lot of cool things for TV, and was a huge advocate for gay people.
Glen: Women.
Drew: Women and gay people in general. Roseanne's fucking nuts now, and it's kind of weird to be like—I feel like it's almost like a Woody Allen situation where people are like, "Can we separate the artist from the art?" And I'm like—I want to watch the new Roseanne series, but she says a lot of fucking crazy things now.
Glen: Yeah. I think we are actually past the era where we can separate artists and art. We sort of have to put them both together.
Drew: Does she get a pass for—I'm going to watch the show. You're going to—
Glen: That's fine. I won't tell anyone you're watching it.
Drew: You're going to watch it too, I'm sure.
Glen: Oh, I am.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: I'm also going to go to the Lanford Lunchbox pop-up restaurant at South by Southwest.
Drew: Oh, that's right. So, you leave for South by Southwest next week?
Glen: Yeah—or I don't know—well, no. Yeah.
Drew: As of the recording of this episode, Glen has yet to go to South by Southwest, but they have a recreation of the Lanford Lunchbox, which I hope you get your picture. Someone needs to photograph you sitting at the counter or something.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. Please do that. There's a little bit more. Jackie—like, gay terror when she sees her mail lady there—mail delivery person who happens to be a woman, which is a hard thing to say—mail lady—and comes over and waves, and is like, "So that's why I never see any mail for your husband. I always had a feeling about you."
Glen: Which is sort of shitty on her part. Like, why can't she be progressive enough to realize, like, "Oh, she's a single mother"?
Drew: Right. She is pregnant. She is very pregnant.
Glen: Very pregnant.
Drew: It's a quite-possible indicator that she's engaging in some sort of heterosexual something. But poor Jackie, I guess. But it is of a certain time to think that being perceived of as gay is the worst thing in the world.
Glen: Yeah. I had to go back and forth in my head a lot about what I thought about Jackie's gay panic throughout this episode, and then I had to keep reminding myself "It's early-mid '90s. They are not in Chicago. They are in Central Illinois in a small town." I don't think it's cutting them slack. I think it's understanding the times. And yeah, if that was the attitude of a TV character now, there might be some sort of outrage, but it's also very realistic for that character and that setting. So, I'm okay with it.
Drew: Right. She's an insecure person in general.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. In 1994, I would not want to be perceived of as being gay. That would have been very difficult for me at 12 years old when I watched this episode. So, I really can't knock her too much for doing something I was unwilling to do in stupid Hollister, California.
Glen: Yeah. I'm also just thinking about if that was just played up to contrast Roseanne's character arc in this episode.
Drew: Probably yes, because in the end Jackie kind of comes around a little. She's a lot more levelheaded about it after they leave the bar.
Glen: Jackie is more levelheaded about it after they leave the bar whereas Roseanne, because of what's about to happen, less so.
Drew: Right. So Sharon and Roseanne depart the dance floor together, and they seem to be having a great time. I'm going to point out that both Sharon and Nancy are dressed like a Laura Ashley couch. And I know it's the '90s, in the mid-90s, and there's a lot of floral prints happening, but it's weird seeing what I perceive as mom fabric on these two women who are supposed to be hip, small-town lesbians, I guess.
Glen: They're hip, small-town lesbians, but also the other fashion option at this bar was businesswoman—businesswoman casual. A lot of shoulder pads. A lot of high-waisted pants. A lot of pleats.
Drew: Right. Okay. Fine. They get to talking, and Sharon tells Roseanne, "I'm having such a great time. I'm so glad you came out-- "
[audience laughs]
Sharon: You know, Roseanne, we ought to hang out more often.
Roseanne: I was thinking that, too, but next time let's leave the wives at home.
[audience laughs]
Sharon: You read my mind.
Roseanne: Huh?
[audience laughs]
Drew: And then Sharon kisses her.
Glen: They have a moment.
Drew: They have a moment. It's interesting how it's shot. It's shot so you can see Roseanne's facial expression, and you're looking at the back of Sharon's head, which makes sense comedically because we're supposed to be reading that Roseanne's not really comfortable with what's happening. However, it being shot that way also means you don't actually really see the kiss at all. So—I don't know.
Glen: Yeah. For all we know, she could have been whispering something to her.
Drew: Whispering directly into her mouth?
Glen: Yeah. That's how whispering works.
Drew: Yeah. That's how lesbians work. They whisper into each other's mouth.
Glen: Secret messages.
Drew: Very erotic. If you have a correction about how lesbians work, tweet at Glen.
Glen: Yeah. I mean—
Drew: Yeah. It's a very unsexy kiss, honestly. I don't think it's supposed to be sexy, but I don't get any eroticism to this kiss. Sharon's obviously into it, but they even downplay what her motives were in doing it when we learn a little bit more about the kiss later on. I can't quite crawl into a 1994 mindset to understand why ABC wanted to not air this episode because of this kiss.
Glen: Because it's their main character from one of their most popular shows, and there are places in the country now that would be upset if the main character of their favorite show had a lesbian kiss on there. So, that's not so much of a stretch for me.
Drew: I guess so. If you read the script to the episode, it doesn't shake Roseanne's status as a heterosexual, like, at all, in the end.
Glen: No. It was like, it was okay to have gay characters as props but to show them as actual functioning, sexual beings with the same agencies and urges as a main character or an actual person shook some people.
Drew: Right. Do you remember in the episode a few seasons later when Leon gets married—Leon marries his husband? Do they show his kiss?
Glen: I don't remember.
Drew: I haven't seen that episode in a very long time. All I really remember is that Dan reacts to the kiss. He giggles, and Roseanne's like, "Dan, please. It's just two consenting adults kissing each other because they love each other." And then right after that, Mariel Hemingway sits down next to Roseanne. She's like, "Hi, Roseanne," and she's like, "Hi." That's the only time we ever see Sharon again after this scene, really.
Glen: That's a delightful callback.
Drew: Yeah. But there might not have been another same-sex kiss on the show. This might have been it. But it's obviously an important one.
Glen: Yeah. Better than nothing.
Drew: Yeah. So, is that the ad break right there?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So the next scene—
Glen: Lanford Lunchbox again. Kitchen.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Roseanne is upset.
Glen: Yeah. She is cleaning furiously. Jackie gets in a nice little joke that if Sharon had tongued her <laughs>, they'd—what—clear the health code or something along the lines?
Drew: Yeah. I'm surprised—at the beginning of the scene, though, Jackie doesn't know what's happened. She's like, "Roseanne, something's upset you. You didn't say anything the entire ride home." And I'm like, "Wait. You drove home to Lanford with Jackie, and it's just the next morning and you're not—" But that's just a sitcom conceit where they're building in the ad break and you're forgetting that all this time has passed. But Jackie learns, and she's surprised, and Roseanne's response to the surprise is that she's very concerned for Nancy because Nancy's going to be devastated when she finds out that her girlfriend kissed her.
[audience laughs]
Jackie: Exactly what do you mean by "kissed you"?
Roseanne: I mean kissed me, like full on the lips—like Dan used to before we were married.
[audience laughs]
Jackie: My god. You got kissed by a woman? No wonder you're upset.
Roseanne: Well, no. No, I'm not upset about that. I'm just upset about Nancy, you know. I mean, this could devastate her.
Jackie: This is unbelievable.
Roseanne: I just don't even know how I'm going to tell her.
Jackie: You got kissed, and all I got was a couple of women asking if they could touch my stomach.
[audience laughs]
Drew: But Nancy is not worried about it. She knew. Sharon told her, and she's just like, "Yeah, isn't she a kick? My crazy girlfriend just kissed you on the mouth. What a fun thing."
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Hey. I have to tell you something, and you're probably going to get really upset, you know. But I figure if I was you, well, I'd want to know. Last night, Sharon kissed me.
Nancy: I know. She told me.
Roseanne: Oh. She did?
Nancy: Yeah. She just thought you were real cute, and she wanted to kiss you, so she did. Isn't she a riot?
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Oh. So, you're not, like, upset or anything?
Nancy: No. I think it's funny. Why? Did it bother you?
Roseanne: Well, no! No, it didn't bother me. I mean, I pretty much knew it was funny, you know [laughs uncomfortably].
Glen: Which is why I think the earlier scene with Becky and Darlene was important because it showed two straight couples who overreacted to everything and were jealous of everything, these perceived little slights, and if they had just communicated or been cool or whatever, they wouldn't have the hilarious arguments.
Drew: Right.
Glen: And so I think it's great that they're presenting this gay couple that are: 1) open and honest with each other, and 2) cool with something that clearly is not a serious violation of trust in a relationship.
Drew: For this one lesbian couple, at least.
Glen: Yes. But again, in that case, it's also progressive. I'm not saying they're open, but they're at least not going to end the relationship over a small infraction of fidelity.
Drew: It's actually kind of in line with Nancy's character because when she comes out, she doesn't necessarily come out as a lesbian. She comes out as what today we would say is sexually fluid where she's into both and either, and she seems to be attracted to people rather than specific genders. And that is still hard for some people to wrap their minds around and probably all the more so in 1992 when that character arc started for her. So, it would actually make sense that she would have a more open sense of romance in all this.
Glen: Yeah. There's a pierced nipple joke in this scene that the audience was dying over that I just didn't get.
[audience laughs]
Nancy: Well, you left so early I had to hitch a ride with Leon and some accountant with pierced nipples.
[audience laughs uproariously]
Drew: Yeah. That's not—I don't understand why that's supposed to be funny. Do straight people have pierced nipples?
Glen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they do.
Drew: Yeah. So, is the pierced nipple guy the guy that Leon also left with?
Glen: That's where I thought they were going with it, but we didn't really get a follow-up on Leon, so I don't know.
Drew: We don't find out if Leon got any action.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. So, sorry Leon. But Nancy and Roseanne have it out about the situation. Roseanne is clearly upset about this, and it's interesting that Nancy's response is not "You have a problem with this because you are on some level homophobic"; her response is "You have a problem with this because on some level you liked it. There's a tiny part of you that's gay that was into that kiss, and that's why you're uncomfortable, and you're not as cool as you think you are."
[audience laughs]
Nancy: Oh, my god. When Sharon told me she kissed you, I told her there might be a chance you might freak out.
Roseanne: I'm not freaking out. Why would I freak out?
Nancy: Well, you know. Maybe you liked the kiss just a little.
Roseanne: What! [laughs incredulously] That is the most ridi—what?
[audience laughs]
Nancy: Well, it's not that unusual. I mean, sexuality isn't all black and white. There's a whole gray area.
Roseanne: I know about the gray area.
[audience laughs]
Nancy: And you're afraid that just one little, tiny percent of you might have been turned on by a woman.
Roseanne: [hesitates and audience laughs] That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I am not afraid of any, uh, small percentage of my gayness inside, you know what I mean?
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: I am totally okay about whether I- I'm, like, three percent or four percent or lower.
[audience laughs]
Glen: I thought the "sexual gray area," as they called it, was a pretty surprising conversation for them to be having on a primetime sitcom in 1994.
Drew: Right.
Glen: Just acknowledging the spectrum.
Drew: Mm-hmm. The spectrum especially as it relates to a character for whom her heterosexuality is a big part of her character—I mean Roseanne, of course. And all of Roseanne's acting in this scene is really fucking good. She's off guard and dumbfounded and speechless and timid. And those are all characteristics we don't see on her very often, and she does a really good job. And that's the other thing about Roseanne being crazy now that is a bummer is that in addition to being a pioneer for a lot of social causes, she's a really good comedic actor.
Glen: Yeah. When Nancy calls out her hypocrisy, it catches Roseanne completely off guard. And it's great, one, to have Nancy be the one to attack her on it because I just don't think that—I think that when Jackie would say something similar, Roseanne doesn't—she would brush that off.
Drew: Because Jackie's not cool.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: But Nancy is.
Glen: You have Nancy, a cool character, call Roseanne out on not being as cool as she thinks she is or says she is.
Drew: Mm-hmm. I also think it is of—it's something that I think is not documented often in TV, but it is the idea of someone who is not a member of a group showing off how supportive they are and overdoing it to the point where it's like a badge of honor how accepting they are and how that's annoying to whatever disenfranchised group is experiencing it. It's like, "It's great. Yeah. You came to the bar," or "You have three Asian friends. I'm so happy for you." Like, shut up.
Glen: You just described 75 percent of Twitter.
Drew: Yeah—yeah. Yeah.
Glen: Yep. Super sad. [@ me – do you prefer the symbol or word here?].
Drew: Also, Nancy's argument to Roseanne that—Nancy's argument is basically trying to convince Roseanne, "You had a problem with this. You need to admit that you have a problem with this." Reminded me of the problem with well-meaning, progressive white people who tell themselves, "I can't be racist because A, B, and C. I'm not racist," but they never take the time to do an inventory of their own thoughts and beliefs and examine something that's gone unquestioned so far to see if they actually do have racism or a bias against a certain group that's flavoring their opinion.
Glen: Yeah. It's easy to say you're not racist when you've never met a black person.
Drew: Right. "I'm not racist for all I know." So then we cut back to the Conner house, and—
Glen: And again, another contractually obligated scene to show the other actors in the show.
Drew: Right. It's John Goodman and Michael Fishman who plays DJ. Do you want to explain what's going on?
Glen: It's basically a mirror of the scene we just saw with Roseanne and Nancy where Dan is in the Roseanne part and DJ is sort of the Nancy in this scene where he is coming in to question how comfortable Dan is with his views. DJ comes in and asks if it's true that Mom was dancing with other women last night and asked if that's wrong, and Dan being a progressive male—especially for that time in that neighborhood—says, "No, it's not wrong." And so DJ's natural follow-up—
[audience laughs]
DJ: Yeah. Mom said she went dancing last night with other women.
[audience laughs]
Dan: Yes.
DJ: Isn't that wrong?
Dan: No, son. It's perfectly fine. And anyone that tries to tell you different is wrong.
DJ: Does that mean you dance with other men?
[audience laughs]
Dan: Yes, I do.
[audience laughs uproariously and applauds]
DJ: Really?
Dan: No. Never. Not once.
[audience laughs]
DJ: Well, I don't want to either.
Dan: That's your choice.
[dialogue with DJ ends]
Dan: Hallelujah.
[audience laughs]
Glen: It's a completely sweet scene had they ended it there. I didn't love that they continued and DJ says, "Well, I wouldn't want to do that," and Dan has a sigh of relief that his son is not gay.
Drew: Right. They've had that thought process with Dan before. Do you remember the Halloween episode where DJ wants to go as a witch, and Dan is trying to talk him out of it? As well-meaning and progressive as Dan is—again, in a way that's unusual considering what kind of person he is and where he lives and what his life is like—he does not want his son to be gay. He's clearly very uncomfortable with that.
Glen: Yeah. I mean, we see that same thing in The Simpsons, which we'll probably talk about later.
Drew: Right. Yeah. Coming up pretty soon, actually.
Glen: On the whole, I love this scene. It's short, every line matters, and again, John Goodman just knocks it out of the park with the acting.
Drew: The "hallelujah" might be the part that I am annoyed with the most. DJ could have decided that he didn't want to dance with other boys, and Dan could have had a smaller reaction. I would have been more okay with it.
Glen: Or Dan could have ended it with a joke, like, "Well, I don't see anyone asking you," or "You don't have to worry about that until someone asks."
Drew: You going to send in these script revisions?
Glen: Through my time machine email?
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Oh, my god. They don't have email.
Drew: Yeah. They don't have email. Okay. So, yeah. We're back to—
Glen: Back to the kitchen.
Drew: We're back to the restaurant where Roseanne is still in denial about why her reaction is so negative, and her take with Nancy is that "I just don't like when people call me things that I'm not. If someone told me that I was an astronaut, or—"
Roseanne: Well okay, Jackie, if you really have to know. Well at first, you know, I thought that I was upset for Nancy, and then I kind of realized that that was just denial. I'm really upset about Dan.
Jackie: Dan?
Roseanne: Yeah, because remember in 11th grade when that Jimmy McQuirter kissed me and Dan felt all threatened and everything, and then he went out after him and he beat the crap out of him?
Jackie: Oh, so you're worried that Dan's going to beat up Sharon.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Yeah.
Jackie: Because Dan would feel threatened by Sharon.
Roseanne: Yeah. Yeah.
Jackie: Yeah. Because you and Sharon might buh-huh-woo-woo-woo.
Roseanne: [yells angrily] Of course not. I am not gay! [scoffs] I didn't mean for that to sound like it was bad or anything, you know, because if I was gay that'd be just fine. But I'm not gay. So, I just don't like people calling me things that I'm not, like a hypocrite, or gay, you know, because I'm not. I wouldn't like anybody calling me, like, an astronaut—because it's fine to be an astronaut, but see, I am not an astronaut.
[audience laughs]
Drew: That's as close to figuring out her issue as she gets.
Glen: Yeah. There's not much of a resolution. Roseanne admits that she's a hypocrite and—well, it's more of a conditional apology. If she were a hypocrite she'd be sorry, and since she is, she's sorry.
Drew: And "I don't want to be mad at you no more, so can we just be done with this?" And Nancy says, "Fine," and they're okay. But there is an unwillingness to confront this aspect of herself that she doesn't want. She does not want to admit that she's not as cool as she would like to think she is, and they hug, and that's actually the end of the episode. It ends with a freeze-frame of Nancy and Roseanne hugging.
Glen: I wish it had ended with a freeze-frame of Nancy kissing Roseanne.
Drew: That would have been—
Glen: Again, let me get in my revision time machine and send these notes back to the writers' room.
Drew: Do you want to tweet this at Stan and James? They're on Twitter. We can—
Glen: No, that's okay. Please invite me over for dinner.
Drew: It's a very strange thing to talk about a creative product that was made by someone you happened to have known in real life. Stan is an amazing person. And I'll probably cut all this part out, but—
Glen: About him being an amazing person, or my revision time machine?
Drew: I don't know. I'm friends with him on social media. There's a chance that he—
Glen: It's fine.
Drew: Small chance he will listen to this. But in talking about this, how we feel about it all these years later, obviously we picked it because we thought it was one of the better LGBT-centered scripts of a TV show ever.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Stan, you're nice. Hi.
Glen: Oddly enough, the episode does not end with the freeze-frame. There is a post-credits sequence which on the one hand led to Drew and I having a debate over which show made it standard that there would be more scenes under the credits. This one runs a really long time. Actually, the credits run out and the scene keeps going.
Drew: It's longer than the scene with Dan and DJ.
Glen: Yeah. It's just Roseanne and Dan in bed, post-coitus. It's clear that Roseanne is proving her heterosexuality to herself with some mind-blowing sex. Also, maybe a callback to Nancy's joke that she wouldn't want to picture Roseanne and Dan having sex—ew.
Drew: Yeah. Then they make us picture it. Why is the sex so mind blowing, though? Is it so mind-blowing because she's proving her heterosexuality, or is it mind-blowing because that small part of her was turned on enough that she could go to 11 with Dan tonight because she had this new sexual experience of kissing a woman?
Glen: I don't know what she was picturing while Dan was inside of her. It then goes into a pretty long back and forth where Dan is just having the typical male lesbian fantasy sequence in his head. Once he finds out that Roseanne has kissed another person, he first reacts with the setup of the jealous rage.
Drew: Like, "What's his name?"
Glen: Yeah. "What's his name? I'm going to punch him. I'm a man, and I'm going to punch him." And then when Roseanne informs him that—quote/unquote—his name was Sharon, Dan goes from rage to arousal.
Drew: Confusion, and then very quickly into arousal, like, "You were dancing together? What was she wearing?"
[audience laughs]
Dan: A woman kissed you?
Roseanne: Yeah.
Dan: What was this, that gay bar?
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Yeah.
Dan: I don't know what to say.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: Well, so—well, you're not angry.
Dan: No. I'm—I'm more concerned. I mean, that must have been very unpleasant for you.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: It was. It really was. It was the total opposite of pleasant. It was un-pleasant.
[audience laughs]
Dan: So [chuckles], how'd it happen? She just walk up and kiss you?
Roseanne: Well, no.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: No. You know, we were dancing.
Dan: Wow [exhales, aroused].
[audience laughs]
Dan: She was probably wearing that tight leather stuff like they like, you know, low-cut kind of thing.
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: What does it matter what she was wearing?
Dan: No, I just—helping me imagine your painful moment for you [claps].
[audience laughs]
Dan: So [exhales, aroused], I suppose she was probably one of those blonde hardbodies that think they can just walk up and kiss some woman [chuckles]. Did you see her kissing anybody else?
[audience laughs]
Roseanne: You would really love it at that bar, Dan. They got a lot of men there, too, you know, and they're rubbing their hard bodies up against each other and kissing each other.
Dan: [claps]
[audience laughs]
Dan: I'm going to get something to eat.
[audience laughs]
Glen: The thought of two men dancing turns Dan off.
Drew: To the point that the light comes back on and he's like, "Okay. We're good."
Glen: And then he slits his wrists.
Drew: That's not what happens. No. I do like the idea of people taking things that they're uncomfortable with and weaponizing them. It happens with Jackie when she lies to the lesbian and says that "That big, butch broad, I'm with her," and it happens again with Roseanne who's like, "Okay. I see what's going on here. My husband's getting turned on by this lesbian act. I'm going to gross him out by picturing two men because apparently a straight man can't keep a hard-on knowing that men somewhere are touching each other." That might be accurate. I have no idea.
Glen: It's an episode about insecurities. Everyone in the episode except for the lesbian is incredibly insecure.
Drew: And Darlene is not insecure about anything, but—
Glen: That's Darlene.
Drew: Yeah. And also, Darlene is also a lesbian in real life. No—but, yeah. That doesn't mean anything. But—no.
Glen: No.
Drew: Yeah.
Glen: Thanks, Roseanne.
Drew: Thanks, Roseanne. I have a little epilogue for this episode.
Glen: Who died?
Drew: I don't think—no, I think everyone's still alive. Mariel Hemingway hosted SNL, the season premiere in 1995, and that was the year they fleshed out the cast and they brought on Cheri Oteri and will Ferrell and a lot of new people—not Molly Shannon. She was actually there before. And the opening monologue is her being like, "Oh, there's all these new faces. We're going to introduce you to everyone." She's like, "Hi, Will Ferrell. Nice to meet you. Hi, Jim Breuer. Nice to meet you," and then "Cheri Oteri! Oh, my gosh!" and then kisses her full on the mouth. And then she's surprised by this, and then keeps introducing people—kisses Molly Shannon full on the mouth, kisses Nancy Walls full on the mouth, and that's it. And it's just—
Glen: So, a year later she's just doing a callback to this Roseanne episode?
Drew: More than a year later. So this aired in spring '94, so then September '94, and then a year later she hosted. I don't know if she was—
Glen: She had to be promoting something.
Drew: I would guess that she was, but also, the previous year SNL was not doing hot, so Mariel Hemingway's who they got. But they—yeah. They called back to her kissing ladies. So, that. Yeah. A fun little legacy for her. I would love to go back and do the episode where Sandra Bernhard's character comes out, or I would love to do the episode where Leon gets married—the two future Roseanne episodes we may do should we have the time and interest.
Glen: Yeah. Maybe if the losers out there in podcast land actually listened to this.
Drew: Don't call them—please don't call them losers.
Glen: Maybe they shouldn't be losers.
Drew: Ugh. Yeah. Wow. Glen, where can people find you online?
Glen: @Brosquartz on Instagram or @IWriteWrongs—that's "write" with a W—on Twitter.
Drew: Spell Brosquartz because people won't—
Glen: Oh. It's B-R-O-S, and then quartz. It's a Stephen Universe reference.
Drew: Right. It's going to come up every episode. You can find me on Twitter, @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. Thank you for listening, and please, next week—our next installment is about The Golden Girls. We're doing the one with Dorothy's friend is a lesbian, so that'll be really fun.
Glen: Sorry to make you wait three episodes for Golden Girls.
Drew: We're building up suspense. We're building momentum. Yeah. So, yeah. Golden Girls. Golden Girls. Yay! Yeah. That's it.
Glen: Bye.
Drew: Yay, end of episode.
["My Sharona" by The Knack plays]