The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (38 page)

Chandler has a “quality,” but Joey is constantly finding himself in situations involving close contact with another male. In “The One With Barry and Mindy’s Wedding,” Joey goes up for a role in Warren Beatty’s new film and has to learn how to kiss a guy. He tries to find someone to practice with, but both Chandler and Ross refuse. At the end of the episode, Ross, feeling guilty about not helping out his friend, walks into Joey’s apartment and plants one on his lips. Joey compliments him on the kiss, but tells him the audition was this morning (and he didn’t get the part). Ross and Joey grow even closer when they fall asleep on top of each while watching a movie (“The One With the Nap Partners”). They wake up at the same time, see what happened, and freak out. Later, Joey admits it was the best nap he’s ever had. Ross agrees, but tells him they can’t do it again because “it’s too weird.” But Joey keeps dropping hints to Ross that he should come over to take a nap with him. They eventually “do it again,” only to get caught by the gang.
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Joey finds himself in an equally odd situation (“The One With the Ballroom Dancing”) when he offers to teach the building’s super, Mr. Treeger (Michael G. Hagerty), how to Ballroom dance. On the night of the big ball, the two men go up on the roof for a final spin around the dance floor to Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “Night and Day.”
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Homosexuality is never turned into a joke on
Friends,
but then again, there is also never anything
really
gay going on.

Apparently Chandler and Jerry Seinfeld, who is mistaken for being gay because (in his own words), he’s “thin, single, and neat,” are not the only heterosexual men in the New York area with a “quality.” When his apartment is flooded,
The Single Guy’s
Johnny Eliot (Jonathan Silverman) moves in with his gay neighbors, Mike (Michael Winters) and Jeff (Mark Harelik), who assume he is gay (“Neighbors”). But they’re not the only ones. Jonathan meets
Friends’s
Ross Geller (guest star David Schwimmer) and invites him to see Jeff in a production of
Hamlet
starring Leonard Nimoy. Through a series of misunderstandings, they each think the other is gay. The situation is resolved during an awkward, yet funny conversation in a taxicab. Both men want to say they’re not gay without offending the other. After straightening things out with Ross, Jonathan next comes out as a heterosexual to his neighbors, who he thinks are upset by the news. “Why would I be upset?” Mike asks. “Some of my best friends are straight. My parents are straight. Well, at least my mother.”
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Another New Yorker with a quality, at least as far as his father is concerned, is
Just Shoot Me’s
Dennis Finch. To his friends, Finch is a horny, duplicitous devil whose behavior borders on lecherous. For example, in “Two Girls for Every Boy,” Finch tries to fulfill his fantasy by arranging a
ménage a trois
between a lesbian model, Jill (Dara Tomanovich), and his unsuspecting heterosexual co-worker, Maya (Laura San Giacomo).

So it comes as quite a surprise in “Pass the Salt” when Finch’s father — Fire Chief Red Finch (guest star Brian Dennehy) — arrives in the Big Apple with Finch’s butch fire fighting brothers, Buck (Christopher Michael Moore) and Scottie (Adam Setliff) for a firemen’s convention. The Chief takes the opportunity to tell his gay son how much he loves him (and takes him to see the Broadway musical
Showboat).
Nina (Wendie Malick) and Elliot (Enrico Colantoni), Finch’s co-workers, don’t have to be convinced he’s not gay because he’s a terrible dancer, is neither tan nor toned, and has an ugly apartment, no sense of space or style, and no women friends. No matter how much Dennis insists he is straight, his father doesn’t get the message until the end of the episode, when Chief Finch discovers it’s actually his son Scottie who’s gay. Red’s only response is the conversation stopper — “Pass the salt” — which Finch explains is the most emotional thing his father ever said at the dinner table.
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The mistaken identity plot is taken a step further in an episode of
The Secret Lives of Men
(“Dating Is Hell”) when Mike (Peter Gallagher) assumes his gay client Brad (Tom Virtue) has the hots for him. When Mike shows his buddy Phil (Brad Whitford) the new leather jacket Brad bought him, Phil puts the idea in his head that he’s sending out “gay signals” to Brad by the way he walks and holds a glass. When Brad invites Mike out to the Hamptons for the weekend, Mike, in a comical display of straight male narcissism, tells Brad he’s not gay. That’s no news to Brad, who’s known it all along. Just as Lowell assured Chandler, Brad tells him, “I’ve been in the gay business a long time. I know who’s gay. You’re not gay.”
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Sometimes the character you least expect can have a “quality.” On
Everybody Loves Raymond,
a question is raised about Robert’s (Brad Garrett) sexuality (“What’s With Robert?”) when he breaks up with his girlfriend Amy (Monica Horan) once again. Amy has her doubts as well. She tells Ray’s wife Debra (Patricia Heaton) she wonders if Robert is gay because “he color coordinates his clothes, he can dance, he’s certainly very attached to his mother, and he didn’t pressure me to sleep with him when I wasn’t ready the first whole year.” Debra passes on her suspicions to Raymond (Ray Romano), who mistakenly raises the question to his father Frank (Peter Boyle) and mother Marie (Doris Roberts).

Ray realizes maybe his brother is in the closet because their father is the kind of homophobe who tosses around gay slurs like “Nancy.”

Like Archie Bunker and Arthur Harmon’s comments, Frank’s anti-gay slurs keep the audience laughing. But to show times have indeed changed, Marie reminds her husband about a non-sexual encounter (at least we assume) Frank had in Korea with another soldier who he huddled with to stay warm.

Ray and Robert have a brother-to-brother talk and even though he listens to
Hello, Dolly,
has knickknacks on his mantle, and notices other guys at the gym, Robert insists he’s not gay. In one of those touching sitcom moments, Robert tells him it wouldn’t matter, “You’d still be my brother. My big homosexual brother.”

As all male homosexuals are supposedly cultured creatures, it only makes sense that if a straight man befriends a gay man he too must be gay. On
Doctor; Doctor
(“Torch Song Cardiology”), Dr. Mike’s (Matt Frewer) colleague Dr. Grant Linowitz (Beau Gravitte) gets help writing a speech from Mike’s gay brother Richard (Tony Carriero). Grant and Mike, who share an interest in fine wine and theatre, hit it off and plan a weekend together in New York, until Grant realizes his colleagues are wondering if he’s gay. Convinced Richard has a crush on him, Grant comes down with a bout of homosexual panic and admits to Richard he’s afraid people will think he’s gay. Richard is hurt: “I look at you and I see a friendship. You look at me and all you see is a fag.”
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After spending a weekend with Mike doing “manly” things (like drinking beer and watching female mud wrestling), Grant realizes he misses Richard. He apologizes and they become friends once again.

What’s puzzling in this otherwise hilarious episode is Dr. Mike’s reaction to the whole situation. At first he chastises his colleagues Abe (Julius Carry) and Dierdre (Maureen Mueller) for making jokes about Grant being gay. Then Mike does a complete reversal and confronts Grant when he sees him wearing a leather jacket and scarf. He seems to be more worried about Grant, almost as if he’s protecting him from his own brother. At the same time, Mike expresses how sorry he feels for his brother because their own father won’t talk to him. Mike also has nothing at stake in being concerned about Grant’s sexuality. If he’s fine with his own brother being gay, why turn it into an issue? (Answer: it’s a sitcom.)

In “Toe in the Water,”
Designing Women
takes the mistaken identity plot to the extreme. The title refers to Julia stepping back into the dating pool after the death of her husband. When the obnoxious Allison (Julia Duffy) meets Julia’s new beau, Mark (Charles Frank), she tells her he’s “the gayest human being I’ve ever met.”
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Allison’s gaydar has him pegged immediately: Mark is wearing a Lacoste shirt and makes a passing reference to Ida Lupino. Allison tells her it makes perfect sense for her to be seeing a gay man because he’s a safe date. Julia is sure Allison is wrong, until she walks into his apartment and sees a wall adorned with theatre posters (including
Torch Song Trilogy
and
Follies)
and a record collection featuring gay icons like Judy Garland, Lena Horne, and Ethel Merman. He also complains about his weight (“I’m as big as a house”), lives close to his mother, and vacations in Key West.

When Mark makes a pass at her, a confused Julia asks him if he’s gay. He denies it and later proves it by pretending to be a macho, sexist idiot. Wearing a ripped T-shirt, he crushes a beer can on his head, and tells Julia to “get that blouse off, get in the kitchen, and fix me up some vittles so I can watch the big game.” Julia gets the message and even though he’s not gay, she admits she needs more time to get over her husband’s death before getting involved.

Sex in the City’s
Charlotte (Kristin Davis) finds herself in a similar situation in “Evolution” when she begins dating a gay-straight pastry chef Stephan (Dan Futterman). When she accepts his invitation to the theatre, Charlotte is sure he’s gay, until he gives her an intense good night kiss. Carrie explains he may be a gay-straight man, “a new strain of heterosexual males spawned in Manhattan as the result of over-exposure to fashion, exotic cuisine, musical theatre, and antiques.” Samantha believes it’s better if he is a straight man with a lot of great gay qualities, as opposed to a straight-gay man, who “plays sports and won’t fuck you.”
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Charlotte continues to get mixed signals, such as when he recognizes her dress as “a Cynthia Rowley” and talks about how much he loves Cher (“She’s such a survivor!”). Carrie even introduces him to Carrie’s gay friend Stanford, whose gaydar is unable to determine where Stephan falls on the Kinsey scale. Finally, during foreplay, Charlotte asks him.

“I’m a 35-year-old pastry chef who lives in Chelsea,” he responds. “If I were gay, I would be gay.”

Charlotte is relieved until she sees the man of her dreams standing on a chair in his kitchen shrieking because he saw a mouse. She realizes then that perhaps Stephan is a little too in touch with his feminine side for her taste.

If a woman is a little too much in touch with her masculine side, she may also become suspect. On an early episode of
The Facts of Life
(“Rough Housing”), Blair (Lisa Welchel) makes disparaging remarks to her competition for the Queen of the Harvest crown, a tomboy classmate named Cindy (Julie Anne Haddock). When Blair sees Cindy hug her friend, Blair tells her she’s “strange.” Cindy tells Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae) that maybe Blair’s right (“maybe I’m not normal”). The Eastland School’s favorite house mother offers Cindy a little “milk and sympathy” and some words of wisdom: “There’s nothing wrong with hugging and touching. It shows you’re a loving person. And that’s good. The only people who will tell you it’s wrong are the ones who can’t reach out and do it themselves.” To teach Blair a lesson, Mrs. G. uses reverse psychology and accuses her of being easy with boys because she wears low cut dresses. Blair realizes it’s wrong to jump to conclusions based on appearances and apologizes to Cindy, who dons a dress and enters the Harvest contest (and comes in second to Blair).
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While the episode is not really about homosexuality per se, it seems to deliver a contradictory message. On one hand, wise Mrs. Garrett dispenses Cindy some good advice when she explains the value of being yourself. To assure Cindy it’s okay to be a female and athletic, she names several famous women athletes (Billie Jean King, Nadia Comenici, etc.). Yet, there is a sense of relief that Cindy is heading down the road to heterosexuality because she’s fallen for a guy she met at the dance.

Women who are mistaken for gay may also find themselves being pursued by another woman. On
Titus
(“Sex With Pudding”), Christopher Titus suspects his girlfriend Erin (Cynthia Watros) is having an affair, so he and his buddies ransack her office to find evidence, which they do: some fancy lingerie with a card reading, “Hi, Sexy. Saw these and thought of you” and personal e-mails — signed “Pudding” — inviting her to dinner at “the usual spot.” When Erin confesses she’s being sexually harassed but has it under control, Titus takes it upon himself to find the culprit. While many men in the office confess to lusting after Erin, the person who’s been sending Erin the notes and gifts is her boss — Paula (Lesley Fera) — who was under the mistaken impression Erin was a lesbian and romantically interested in her. Erin, who wanted to be friends, as opposed to
girlfriends,
simply didn’t know how to tell her the truth. The fact it may be inappropriate for a boss to be sending her employee panties is never addressed, let alone why an intelligent woman would be in love with an adolescent schmuck like Titus to begin with (even after he and his cohorts invade her workplace, read her private e-mail, and ransack her office).
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As in the
Titus
episode, most mistaken identity episodes involving women have less to do with having a “quality” and more to do with misunderstandings and miscommunication between characters. On
Golder Girls’
(“Goodbye Mr. Gordon”), Rose and Blanche are mistaken for lesbians when Rose recruits them to participate in a panel discussion on “Women Who Live Together” on a morning television program,
Wake Up Miami.
They don’t find out until the live segment begins that the subject is really lesbians who live together. Rose is eventually forgiven for the mistake, even though Blanche keeps getting asked out by women.
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