The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (40 page)

Several seasons later, Drew enters another phony gay marriage with the nasty Mr. Wick, who is trying to duck the INS so he can stay in the country (“Drew and the Trail Scouts”).
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The Wick situation gets even more out of hand when the Englishman moves into Drew’s home and starts getting too chummy with his friends. In the end (“All Work and No Play”), Drew has no choice but to end the charade and throw the bloke out.
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Caroline in the City
offers a similar plot (“Caroline and the Little White Lies”) involving business partners Del (Eric Lutes) and Charlie (Andrew Lauer). They decide to purchase health insurance as a same-sex couple because it’s cheaper. When their gay insurance broker Todd (Sean Masterson) invites them to a party, the situation starts to get out of hand. Charlie is totally into it, first because it makes Del so uncomfortable and second, because he likes “the clothes, the camaraderie, the grooming products...I like everything except sleeping with men.”
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(In the episode about Richard’s gay art show, Charlie revealed he has a gay brother.) Del is uncomfortable and frustrated when he meets Todd’s beautiful business partner Susan (Angie Everhart) and can’t tell her he’s really straight. When the “couple” find themselves on the stage of a gay rights rally supporting same-sex health benefits, Del realizes it’s time to come clean and apologizes to all gays for the sham (he also thanks them for “disco”).

You don’t always have to set out to cheat the system to get same-sex benefits. On
The Jamie Foxx Show
(“Partners fo’ Life”), Jamie takes his friend Andre (Bill Bellamy) to the County Hospital when he hurts his toe playing basketball. Jamie promises to pick up the bill, which runs to an astronomical $1700. He asks the attendant if there’s any way he can get a discount because Andre is his partner and friend. Thinking they’re a gay couple, she gives him an insurance claim form for a domestic partner, which Jamie thinks means “Home Boy.” When he shows Fancy (Garcelle Beauvais) the form he filed, she explains what “domestic partner” means. Worried about going to jail for insurance fraud and, worse, that people will think he’s gay, he cancels the claim with his company’s human resources manager. Only he still thinks Jamie is gay and invites him to his bachelor party that night. When Jamie and his friends arrive, they’re shocked to see a male stripper jump out of the cake.
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Pretending to be gay can get you “in” with a member of the opposite sex because on sitcoms, all straight women love gay men. They open up to them and tell them things they’d never tell their boyfriends. In
Guys Like Us,
Sean (Chris Hardwick) has his eye on his new neighbor Kara (Jennifer Grant). She assumes Sean and his roommate Jared (Bumper Robinson) are a couple and Maestro (Maestro Harris), Jared’s little brother, is their son. To get Kara interested in him
(and
win a bet with Jared), he pretends she is awakening heterosexual feelings for him. It only takes a few kisses and
voilà
— it worked! Jared gets wind of this and starts playing the part of a jealous lover. When Jared demands a kiss (“like when you were my cowboy”), Sean can’t bring himself to do it and, alas, must fess up to Kara. The inanity of the plot aside, the episode becomes problematic when Jared’s idea of being gay is sashaying into a room and talking in an affected manner. Once again, it all comes down to a kiss. When presented with a choice — the truth or a kiss — the less than usually candid Sean seems to have no choice but to tell the truth for once.
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Just in case anyone
is
offended, the tag at the end of the show concludes the subplot involving Jared’s concern about Maestro being more interested in dolls and ballet than hockey. Jared realizes there’s nothing wrong if a little boy wants to squeeze some dolls and watch ballet.

Two straight men pretending to be a gay couple can also be found on the first episode of
The Love Boat: The Next Wave
(“Smooth Sailing”). Josh
(Melrose Place’s
gay resident, Doug Savant) is left at the altar by his bride, so he decides to take his best man, Luke (Jason Brooks) on the honeymoon cruise. As the pair are lodging in the Pacific Princess’s honeymoon suite, the single women on the ship mistake them for a gay couple. Like many other straight men pretending to be gay, Josh decides to use his honorary gay status to score with the ladies. Luke thinks it’s wrong to be dishonest and comes clean himself by telling Josh he
is
gay, which his friend has no trouble accepting.
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Besides checking into a honeymoon suite, another way to be mistaken for gay is to wear a T-shirt with a large pink triangle on it. In
Alright Already
(“Again with the Laser Surgery”), Vaughn (Maury Sterling) has no idea he’s wearing a gay symbol on his shirt. He gets the attention of an attractive, yet not too bright, model named Kelsey (Michele Maika) who’s tired of being harassed by straight men. Striking up a platonic friendship with her, Vaughn confesses to having had sexual thoughts about women and wonders if he could be straight. Kelsey volunteers for the experiment but when the big moment arrives, Vaughn gets what he deserves: he’s impotent, leaving Kelsey absolutely sure he’s gay.
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Pretending is also an effective strategy for keeping a member of the opposite sex away. On
Men Behaving Badly
(“The Odds Couple”), Jamie (Rob Schneider) misbehaves when he begins spying on the nurse living next door, Brenda (Dina Spybey) and her friend Ellen (Heather Page Kent), who is in town on a visit. Convinced Brenda and Ellen are lesbians, Jamie tries to catch some girl-on-girl action. He tries drilling a hole through his closet into their apartment, but the drill accidentally goes through Brenda’s aquarium, killing her fish. His next approach is less subtle — standing outside on her window ledge. Figuring it’s the best way to get rid of him, the two women pretend to make out, which causes an excited Jamie to topple right off the ledge.
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On
Frasier
(“Out With Dad”), Martin (john Mahoney) reluctantly accompanies his son to the opera and catches the eye of Frasier’s girlfriend’s mother (Mary Louise Wilson). To avoid going out with her, Martin pretends he’s gay, so Frasier’s girlfriend decides to fix Martin up with her gay uncle Edward (Brian Bedford). In one of the 1999-2000 season’s funniest moments, Martin tells Edward he’s involved with Niles (David Hyde Pierce), who has no idea what’s going on, but plays along and pretends to be his father’s lover. Although Martin’s original lie was in his self-interest, his perseverance in sustaining his ruse turns into a gallant gesture because he doesn’t want to embarrass Edward or ruin Frasier’s chances with his girlfriend.
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Tired of being seated next to losers at weddings,
Then Came You’s
Cheryl (Miriam Shor) decides to pretend she’s a lesbian (“Then Came a Wedding”).
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What she doesn’t count on is the cute guy she finds sitting at her table. Another wedding guest who poses as gay (but not by his own choice), is Steve Rutledge (Tom Amandes). On
Pursuit of Happiness,
Steve agrees to pose as his law partner Alex’s (Brad Garrett) date (“Wedding Dates”) in order to show an ardent ex-boyfriend he’s attached.
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Steve’s extremely uncomfortable, particularly when the groom publicly introduces Steve and Alex as a couple and has them join in the first dance. The scheme doesn’t exactly work because when Alex’s ex cuts in, it’s to dance with Steve.

Posing as gay may take a character down a path he or she never expected to go. On
Talk to Me
(“About Being Gay”), radio host Janey (Kyra Sedgwick) livens up a boring advertisers’ dinner by taking her co-workers dare and hitting on another woman. Janey plants a kiss on Teresa (played by model Paulina Porizkova), who turns out to be a lesbian. Feeling guilty, Janey agrees to go on a date with her and starts to like the attention and gifts. But deep down, she knows she prefers what men have. When Teresa learns Janey is straight, she admits she could tell because she kisses like a straight woman!
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On
Suddenly Susan,
Todd (David Strickland) joins a lesbian computer chatroom under the name Pepper E-Z (“Past Tense”). He strikes up a relationship with “another” lesbian, Coco B 1-2-3, who shares Todd’s interest in mountain biking, rainy days, and
Xena Warrior Princess.
Todd decides to come clean and meet Coco face-to-face, only to discover Coco is another guy (Shawn Hoffman) pretending to be a lesbian.
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Military school cadet Francis (Christopher Masterson) on
Malcolm in the Middle
is in heaven when he’s assigned honor-guard duty at the Miss Alabama beauty pageant. However, the contestants thinks he’s gay, so he becomes their confidante, including one young woman who tries to get the poor boy sexually deprogrammed.
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The mistaken lesbian plot gets a new twist on a funny episode of
Caroline in the City
(“Caroline and
Victor
/
Victoria
”). Broadway star-in-the-making Annie (Amy Pietz) dons male garb to prepare for her audition to be Julie Andrews’s understudy in the Broadway show,
Victor/Victoria
(which she got by hijacking Andrews’s limo). When Annie shows up at Remo’s, the gang’s hangout, dressed as a man, she proves to Del (Eric Lutes) she can pick up a lone beautiful blonde named Leslie (Andrea Bendewald). Annie gets the date, then owns up she’s really a woman. “And?...” asks a bewildered Leslie — a lesbian — who assumed so all along. When Leslie laughs at Annie’s attempt to pose as a man, they get into a heated argument. Too bad Annie didn’t know Leslie is one of the
Victor/Victoria
casting directors she’s about to audition for. Guess who volunteers to tell Annie she didn’t get the part?
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Wings
put its own creative spin on the drag plotline in “Escape From New York.” Helen (Crystal Bernard) and Brian (Steven Weber) travel to New York City so she can see the musical
Rent.
They end up losing all their money and Helen is forced to enter a drag queen contest under the name “Hell - in a Handbasket” lip-syncing to “I Will Survive.” She loses, but is given two tickets to
Rent
as a consolation prize.
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When
a commercial for a sitcom advertises a “very special episode,” it signals the series will handle some issue beyond the norm. Typically more dramatic than comic, such episodes may, for example, involve a character facing a crisis (a cancer scare, death of a loved one, etc.) or tackle a social issue like alcoholism, drug abuse, illiteracy, or sexual harassment. Sometimes the issue is controversial, as in the 1973
Maude
episode in which she struggled over the decision to have an abortion (“Maude’s Decision”). It may be tied to an actual event, like the end of the Korean War on the final episode of
M*A*S*H
(“Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen”). Or it may be something truly groundbreaking, such as
Ellen’s
infamous coming out episode.

In terms of homosexuality, what constitutes a “special,” let alone controversial, episode has evolved since the early 1970s. The subject of homosexuality was in itself considered a taboo subject when first addressed on episodes of
All in the Family, Maude, M*A*S*H,
and
The Bob Crane Show.
While homophobia would remain the dominant theme of “coming out,” “mistaken identity,” and “pretend” episodes, some comedies became a forum to address more timely issues, such as gay and lesbian teachers and AIDS.

In “Cousin Liz,” a 1977 episode of
All in the Family,
Archie finds out Edith’s late cousin Liz and her “roommate” Veronica, both teachers, were lovers. He tells Edith “people like that” shouldn’t be teaching kids. At the time, gays in the classroom was a national issue, thanks to homophobic crusaders like Anita Bryant, who successfully led the fight to overturn the anti-gay discrimination ordinance in Dade County, Florida in June of 1977.

“Cousin Liz” first aired on October 9, 1977. A week before (September 29, 1977), an episode of
Carter Country
entitled “Out of the Closet” featured a story line about a local high school teacher who is fired when he comes out of the closet. Sheriff Roy (Victor French) of Clinton Corners, Georgia (located next to Plains, President Carter’s hometown) is shocked to learn his old friend and fishing buddy Bill Peterson (Richard Jaeckel) is gay. Bill explains that when the school board passed a resolution banning gay teachers, he felt it was his duty to come out publicly. Consequently, his honesty got him canned.

Bill plans to sue the school board to get his teaching job back and wants Roy to testify as a character witness. Not only is Roy having a difficult time accepting that his friend for twenty years is gay, he’s also torn about the issue itself (and his memory of sharing a sleeping bag on a fishing trip to stay warm isn’t helping). Roy, who is single and has no children, is simply not sure if homosexuals are good role models for children and should be allowed to teach.

When the gay liberation movement decides to sponsor a rock concert in Clinton Corners to raise money for Bill’s defense, the town is divided. Mayor Burnside (Richard Paul) is afraid the controversy will hurt the town’s economy, so he convinces the school board to rehire Bill as an administrator. Bill turns it down because he knows he’s a good teacher who belongs in the classroom.

Meanwhile, everyone at the sheriff’s station offers their opinion about homosexuals, among them Deputy Jasper DeWitt Jr. (Harvey Vernon) who displays his ignorance in his explanation of the “homosexual conspiracy”:

Chief Roy knows Jasper is talking nonsense. In the end, he agrees to testify on his friend’s behalf because he believes the school board was wrong to claim Bill isn’t a suitable role model:

The Chief testifies, yet we never learn the outcome of the trial. And like Veronica, the Deputy’s good friend disappears and is never seen or heard from again.

Before shooting the episode, producer Douglas Arango sent a copy of the script to gay activist Morris Kight along with a letter soliciting support from “influential leaders of the Gay Community, as to the inoffensiveness and appropriateness of the script from the gay view point.”
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Los Angeles Times
critic Lee Margulies commended the show’s producers for coming down “strongly enough in support of the homosexual character,” yet felt the episode devoted too much time to Roy’s reaction to the situation and not enough on the gay teacher issue itself.
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What Margulies failed to recognize is the strategy being employed by the episode’s writers, Arango and Phil Doran. By having the series’s central character simultaneously question his feelings about his gay friend and whether gays should be permitted in the classroom, the issue is personalized and Roy is able to arrive at a more informed decision.

In June of 1978, California voters went to the polls to vote on the Briggs Initiative. Sponsored by conservative State Senator John Briggs, the initiative, also known as Proposition Six, would not only ban gay men and lesbians from the classroom, but prohibit any teacher who presented homosexuality in the classroom in a positive way. The Briggs Initiative received support from Anita Bryant, the American Nazi Party, and the Ku Klux Klan.
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In a victory for gay rights, Californians defeated the Briggs Initiative by a 58-42 percent vote, a wider margin than activists expected.

The following year, the issue was addressed again on
The Baxters,
an experimental sitcom executive produced by Norman Lear. The first-run syndicated series, which was first televised as a local public affairs show in Boston, opened with a fifteen-minute vignette about the lives of a middle class American family. Fred Baxter (Larry Keith) was an insurance salesman who lived in the suburbs with his wife Nancy (Anita Gillette), and their three children — adopted daughter Naomi (Derin Altay), a college student; 14-year-old Jonah (Chris Peterson); and 10-year-old Rachael (Terri Lynn Wood). Each week the family faces a new moral dilemma around an array of issues such as inflation, child molestation, health care for the aging, etc.

In “Homosexual Teachers,” the family discovers Jonah’s beloved teacher, Mr. Whitehead, is gay when a story appears in the local paper with the headline “Teacher Speaks Out for Gay Rights.” The homophobic father of one of Jonah’s classmates, Jerry Johnson (Chuck McCann), who believes homosexuality is not normal, wants Fred to sign a petition to get Mr. Whitehead (or as he calls him, the “fruit”) fired. Nancy tells her husband not to sign. “If we have done our jobs right,” she explains, “then Jonah and Marty [Jerry’s son] should know what roles they should play.”
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Fred agrees with Nancy intellectually but on an emotional level is not comfortable with a homosexual teaching his children. At the end of the segment, a question is posed to the viewer: should Fred sign the petition?
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After presenting both sides of the issue, the remainder of the half-hour is devoted to a town hall meeting style discussion with a studio audience, who, immediately after watching the vignette on tape, are invited to share their views. The series was syndicated around the country, so the discussion portion was produced locally within each TV market. The participants for the “Homosexual Teachers” discussion in Los Angeles, hosted by Steve Edwards for KTLA-TV, included some openly gay teachers as well as some people (let’s just call them idiots) with a clear anti-gay bias. One of them is allowed to go on a long tirade about how homosexuality is “wrong, sick and immoral.” In sharp contrast, many agreed it was a non-issue. Several young people gave high marks to their gay teachers, while the educators in the audience described first-hand the harassment they experienced from students. The idea to combine a sitcom and a talk show was extremely inventive. Unfortunately, the segment was severely edited to fit the time slot, thereby limiting the depth of the discussion.