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Melissa Roth 00:00
Welcome to 80s TV Ladies, part of the Weirding Way Media Network.

80s TV Ladies Theme Song 00:07
80s TV Ladies, so sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, steppin’ out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, often treated kind of sh#*ty. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Melissa Roth 00:24
I'm your producer Melissa Roth. And here are your hosts, Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert Hatem.

Sharon Johnson 00:31
Welcome to 80s TV Ladies, where we love to celebrate female driven-television of the 1980s and beyond. I'm Sharon Johnson.

Susan Lambert Hatem 00:39
And I'm Susan Lambert Hatem. We are so excited to look at an important part of retro pop culture, the representation of the LGBTQ community in television history.

We were sparked to this discussion when we visited with the Rainbow Remix Podcast and started talking about these issues and episodes with JD Danner and Denise Warner.

And in researching for these episodes, I came across our next guest, who is an expert on queer representation in pop culture, and a fantastic storyteller.

Our guess today is Matt Baume, a Seattle-based writer, podcaster and video maker whose work focuses on queer culture, geeks and all things strange and wonderful.

He is the creator of the queer podcast the Sewers of Paris, and a GLAAD Award nominee, journalist and writer. His first book Defining Marriage tells personal stories of the people who fought for decades for marriage equality, and his latest book, Hi, Honey, I'm Homo explains how subversive queer comedy and TV creators transformed the American sitcom.

Welcome Matt Baume to 80s TV Ladies.

Matt Baume 01:47
Thanks so much for having me.

We're very happy to have you on the show. You're kind of a renaissance man-- podcaster, writer, video maker, journalist. What's your story? How did you get started?

Boy, yeah, it's true. I do a little bit of everything. But basically, I make content for the internet. I make podcasts, make videos, I write, often about pop culture from a queer perspective. But you know, I tell stories about the making of iconic TV and film, and about the incredible people behind some of the most interesting stories and interesting pieces of entertainment out there. And I guess, you know, I guess I got started, you know, my origin story, 20 years ago, so as a film student, and went to Emerson College in Boston, studied film, a little bit of television in there. And this, these are these the olden days, when we were actually like cutting pieces of celluloid on a bench. And so after that, you know, my interest was really in, you know, every aspect of movies and TV. And, you know, from the, from the, we got a great foundation of history stuff. And then I went into the, you know, moved to Los Angeles, was working in the industry. I worked for Jim Henson Productions. I worked for Lucasfilm up in San Francisco. So I was really embedded in all that. And somewhere in there, I really started to get interested in, as a total side thing, some of the political stuff that was going on around gay marriage, or marriage equality, because there was a lot of, you know, litigation and legal stuff happening. And I was like, Well, how can I use what I know how to do in my interests and, you know, media production, to try to advance equality in some way? And this was just around the time that YouTube was taking off. So my partner and I started making videos about the, you know, we interviewed same-sex couples about why they wanted to get married, started making videos about the importance of civil rights. And what that kind of turned into was a realization that one of the ways that culture moves, and one of the ways that people connect with each other is through entertainment, and stories, and often through comedy. And that really became a focus for me, especially, you know-- I'm jumping ahead, way ahead a couple of years now. But in the last few years, I've really been focusing on movies and TV and making YouTube videos, writing, making podcasts, how that stuff connects us as people, how we come to understand what's going on around us and with each other. And so that's what kind of got me to the point of that I'm at now where I make YouTube videos about some of the most groundbreaking episodes of television, films, actors, people behind the scenes. And now I've got a book coming out about the history of queer characters on sitcoms. So it really it's become an obsession for me, and I gues-- You know, another place that it started is just, I really love this stuff. I really love television. I really love movies. I love acting, you know, actors and producers and writers. And I just think they do amazing work and they they bring us joy and happiness. But also, there's a lot of important stuff going on just under the covers, behind the scenes that the entertainment that we love reveals about us and about each other. So that's a very long-winded explanation.

No, but a great explanation and kind of exactly why we're doing 80s TV Ladies, like, I was curious about looking at representation of women, and how that shifted from the 80s to now. But we kind of cover you know, we go into the 70s, we, you know, just television history in general is really interesting, because and, you know, it sounds like you might be a little bit younger than I. But I also went to film school when they were still film cutting, and the very beginning of video editing on from VHS to VHS. That's what we have.

Yeah, I remember.

Oh, yeah. That was fun.

Yep, those decks, you put one tape in, you put the other tape in. Yeah.

It was pretty amazing. But the representation matters, as we've learned so many times over and over again. But I'm fascinated, you know, by gender, and our explorations of gender now, but also looking back at the time of the 80s, which was my childhood and young adulthood, and kind of wondering how we got here from there. But also recognizing how much television taught us. Like, we forget that pre-internet, television was definitely a form of information. Even in a sitcom. Right?

Yeah, very much. You know, that was kind of a window to the world, right? Like, you know, for me, I think I might be just behind you. Because 80s was, was my childhood and going into the 90s. I was a teenager in the 90s. But you know, I do remember, like, learning stuff from, for better or for worse, from sitcoms about other cultures and other people. And, you know, I grew up in a suburb in Connecticut. And so there was not a lot of exposure to the great big world out there. And so, you know, sometimes it might be something as simple as like, oh, that's what life is like in a big city, you know, when I'm watching Seinfeld. Or it's something you know, more important where, you know-- I vividly remember Linda Ellerbee had a special on Nickelodeon about HIV. And I, I'm pretty sure that was the first time I'd ever heard that topic discussed on television. That's where we learn that stuff. And you know, so I'm always so curious to hear like, what it was for other people like that, you know, I can I can pinpoint some of the shows that kind of shaped me as a person. And I think everybody has those stories like, Oh, that was the show that really taught me something valuable.

What was your TV diet like as you were growing up? And you know, through adulthood? What were some of the things you remember watching?

You know, I was in an interesting position, because I think my household, really my parents really respected the power of television to shape a person. And so there was a lot of deliberate care put into what appeared on the screen. So there was there were some guardrails, there was a limit on what hours we could watch. Television did not come on until 6pm. And then there was a lot of parental monitoring of stuff, which, you know, looking back on, it was very frustrating for me at the time, because I'm like, I want to watch after-school cartoons. And this could be why I became so obsessed with this medium later on as an adult. But, you know, as a kid, PBS, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Square One a little bit later, The Muppet Show for sure. Fraggle Rock. I really site Fraggle Rock as a show that really imbued a lot of the, you know, imparted the values that I just kind of internalized as a kid. You know, getting along, multiculturalism and pluralism, being kind to others, understanding that there are other, you know, other entities and cultures out there, curiosity and exploration. Star Trek was also a huge part of my childhood, which again, you know, it's maybe a little weird to compare these two things, but I think Star Trek and Fraggle Rock actually have a lot in common in their ethos.

Well, they really do.

Yeah

I'm a big Star Trek fan. So the prime directive, if you will, that Gene Roddenberry went into is this was going to be a world where a lot of the things that we're still fighting over today have been resolved. And it is a kinder, gentler world that people live in. At least that's what they're striving towards as part of the Federation. That's what they're expected to do as part of the Federation. So I, I totally understand that. Do you have a favorite Star Trek series? Or--

I love this question. You know, it's very hard. I feel like a parent, I can't pick a favorite but-- I can't pick a favorite but Next Generation just came along at the right time in the right place. We watched that as a family. We talked about it as a family. We looked forward to it as a, you know. That cliffhanger where Picard has been captured by the Borg was, you know, defined that summer. We went from part one to part two on the other on the other end of it. So I think it Star Trek The Next Generation was the one that really hit for me. But you know, but if you asked In public I'd say I love all my Star Treks equally.

We won't tell. We'll never put--

What was it for you? I'm so curious like what were what is your Star Trek and who are your captains?

My favorite Star Trek is Deep Space Nine. I watched all the syndicated. I have not watched all the animated and I'm still catching up on some of the more streaming episodes. But Deep Space Nine was and still is definitely my favorite.

Yeah.

I have no problem saying-- I mean I like I like them all, but if I had to pick one Deep Space Ninenis one, is my favorite.

I'm kind of an original, like, because those-- I rewatched-- I know, those better than almost any of the other ones because just because they were in reruns, right? Yeah. But I'm a Captain Janeway. You know, 80s TV Ladies. I mean, 90s TV ladies, whatever.

Deep Space Nine had a lot of strong women on that show. I mean, yeah.

That is true. We got to interview an Nana Visitor from-- And she was fantastic. And it was really quite spectacular. And that's, so we're gonna do a whole series on the ladies, 80s TV Ladies of Star Trek, which will go from the 60s to whenever, now.

Someday. We're we're not sure exactly when that's gonna happen, but it is going to happen. We're gonna make it happen.

That gives me chills. What a great idea. I love everything about it. Because there's so many. Oh, my goodness, so many fantastic actresses and writers and like people behind the scenes. You know, Gates McFadden has a podcast that I just I just adore. She's so interesting to listen to. And yeah, and Nana Visitor. Just an incredible woman. And Kate Mulgrew, right? Like, oh, my god. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah. Wonderful.

Lots of good stuff there. Well, we could just keep going down this path. I actually want to talk about-- So we were invited onto a podcast, the Rainbow Remix podcast, and that got me thinking down this path of representation and queer representation, and or the lack thereof and then you start diving in. And I felt it was an important aspect of 80s TV Ladies to look at is sort of how that representation evolved. And so that's how we found you and wanted to sort of talk to you about. So I guess we can leave Star Trek, even though Star Trek has some good queer representation.

It does. Yeah.

Particularly in the later evolutions.

If we can certainly talk about DS9 and the intriguing lesbian kiss Episode, the Jadzia's whole approach to sexuality. So I'm fully prepared to discuss that topic. If we're if we're sticking to the 80s. Yeah, there's, there's a lot going on there, too. Gosh.

Well, I want to kind of start from beginning if we can, like just a little bit of a like a, you know, 101 on early gay representation on television.

You know, the 101 on early gay representation on television is really that it's that animated gif, that meme of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction looking around, and like where is everybody? (Laughs) There's not a lot of it. Television's about 100 years old, you know, depending on where you start counting. And basically, for that first half of the century, there was not a lot going on, because television was governed by a code that was adapted from the, you know, what movies were using, that referred to-- Had a pretty firm prohibition on what were called sex abnormalities. Not not a great, not a great label. But if you wanted to find anything queer, either on radio or television, you really have to go searching and basically look for either subtext, or, occasionally, if you're really lucky, if you tune in at the right time, you might see something pretty derogatory, without, you know, without the people getting too, without characters getting too explicit, because they couldn't. You know, Bob Hope might tell a joke about Christine Jorgensen, or something like that. And if you know what he's talking about, you'd get it. But it would go over everybody else's head. And so when you would really start to see, what I think of as the beginning, the inklings is probably around the 1960s, around more activity around civil rights, civil rights movement in real life, is when you might see television, pushing the boundary just a little bit, just a tiny bit, and not really talking about anything gay, too much too explicitly. Mostly, you might see some subtext, which is why I start my book with Bewitched, a show that never had any openly gay characters on it. Certainly never talked about that kind of thing, but had a pretty queer cast, a pretty socially progressive cast, and also a lot of subtext that I think is not difficult to connect to either queer liberation or to civil rights in general, to other marginalized groups, to religious minorities, to ethnic minorities to people with disabilities. I think Bewitched is a show that is, you know, it's just a thing of beauty for people who might feel like outsiders. And when you go back and watch through that lens, you know, it's already a very funny show. But it really becomes something beautiful when you consider that and this was their intention. They knew what they were doing, you know, behind the scenes. When you think of it as a show that is giving comfort to people who feel like they don't have a place in the world. Gosh, it's it's such a beautiful show.

Wow. Yeah. You know, I haven't rewatched it. But I have, you know, heard that aspect of it and want to so it's on the list. Yeah, it will be a big long list. But that's really interesting. Is there anything significant? Like, is there an Episode, or is it just the whole tenor of the show and some of the characters?

There are some very significant episodes. One, one of the very first, I think it's Episode five, or six or seven, in Season one is called The Witches Are Out, which is so close to an allegory for homosexuality. So it begins with Samantha-- And if you're not familiar with the premise of the show, it's about a witch a, a woman who's secretly a witch who marries a mortal. And this couple this, sort of you might think of them as interfaith couple is how they were often thought of, they attempt to move to the suburbs and blend in and live a quote-unquote, normal life. Which means that the witch Samantha is often called upon to hide who she is. Well, at the start this Episode, the witches are out early in the in the series run, she's hanging out with some other witches, and they are lamenting how unpleasant Halloween is for them, because there are all these stereotypes about them, all these misunderstandings about their community. One of the witches says something like, I don't see why we don't just come out and show people who we are. And then they can see what lovely people witches can be. And it's such a mirror of the conversation that was happening in, you know, the proto-queer liberation groups-- the Managing Society, Daughters of Bilitis-- groups like that in real life. In fact, the Episode has a scene where Samantha confronts her husband, Darren. Darren is an ad executive, and he's running an ad campaign that features witches, stereotypical, you know, ugly looking warts, green skin, the hair, and Samantha directly confronts him. She says, when people like us see images like that, don't you understand how it hurts?

Wow.

What an incredible conversation to be having in 1960-something, probably 1966 or so, 1966 or seven. And then at the end of the Episode, the witches stage a protest. They have big signs, they picket. And because they're witches, and because they can't reveal themselves for their own safety, they do it in the dreams of an executive, they invade his dreams, holding these signs, explain to him the harm of stereotypes, and that, you know, this, these myths about them aren't true. And he comes around and he decides not to use those stereotypes anymore. Holding these signs. And what's incredible about this Episode is that it aired just a few weeks after what is generally recognized as the first in real life public protest by queer people. It happened in New York. It happened outside an Army recruiting station. And we're talking like six-ish people. Not a huge crowd, but they're holding signs that say, you know, messages about, we demand sexual freedom, and homosexuals died for the US too, because they're protesting the Army recruitment. It just, it looks like the signs are from the same event. Now, obviously, Bewitched was not pulling from that, but they're both affected by what was going on in the in the air, in the zeitgeist at the time, which is minority groups getting a little tired and feeling like, hey, maybe we can actually come out. Those of us who have the ability to come out safely, let's, let's see what happens if if we ask for more. And so yeah, so I think-- I often site that Episode of Bewitched. There are others, but I think that is that one is just remarkable.

Wow, that-- Okay, we're adding Bewitched--

(Laughs)

To our 80s TV Ladies-- We'll just do a sidebar.

Yeah. When Elizabeth Montgomery was still working in the-- I mean, you--

I know. That's true.

She's great. Yeah.

It is interesting how in the writing in the 60s, and certainly more I think more so in the 70s and 80s, there was almost this subliminal effort, whether it be for gay rights or for civil rights or others to try to get that message through. For a lot of people. It just went right over their heads, I'm sure. But it did manage, I'm sure to get through to some

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just imagine like how comforting it would have been as a queer person or any marginalized person to see like people talking about that. Just, you know, if you need to hear that message, there it is.

And television is so great with the metaphor. You know, like it really is like, you know, from Buffy. I think about Buffy a lot.

Yeah.

And how much the metaphor of that show was resonant to so many people. Wow. All right. So some of the stuff that I saw in my little research was really like one-offs. Like it would be Episode to Episode, things like that. What were some significant moments that were like, Okay, here's a huge, you know, this is-- This goes on the timeline.

Yeah.

In terms of, you know.

Yeah, well, the big some of the big milestones-- Obviously, All in the Family. You know, Norman Lear did a ton for representation. I would say 1972, I believe, All in the Family premieres, also the last year of Bewitched. So it's just incredible to think like those two shows overlapping, very different approach, very different vibe. Anyway. So All in the Family in their first Season, they had an Episode called Judging Books by Covers which featured a queer person. They never say the word gay. The gay character himself does sort of envasively talk around who he is, around coming out. But he is also presented as a big, bold, macho guy. It's-- He's not the stereotype that people might think of. Part of the point of the Episode is that you cannot judge people based on appearances. And then a little bit later in the run, I think one of the most memorable characters that All in the Family did was a character named Beverly LaSalle. She was a character who-- The show presents her variously as a drag queen. She also uses the word to transvestite. You know, the the terminology was really not solid at that time. But I was fortunate enough to ask Norman Lear-- I interviewed Norman Lear for my book and asked him, how should we think of Beverly LaSalle. And I'll describe the character moment. And he said, essentially, the performer that they hired, they got out of that person's way and let them just do their thing. And they're basically playing themselves. And so Beverly LaSalle as she appears on screen on All in the Family is a drag queen who comes to the Bunker house because Archie, the patriarch who is rather conservative and set in his ways, and very, you know, right leaning, he has saved the life of what he believes is a big, tall, classy, broad as he calls her. She fainted, and he gave her mouth-to-mouth and she had now come to the house to thank him. And in so doing reveals that she is actually a female impersonator, is the one of the words that, terms that she uses. And there's a great moment where there's Archie continues to misunderstand what this means. He says to her well, let me just say thank you Miss-- Unless youse ladies likes to be called Ms. And you know, he thinks he's being so like wry, like, Oh, Ms. Haha. And Beverly says, Why don't you call me mister, and pulls off the wig. And you know, the Episode is hysterical and wonderful and presents Beverly is as a real hero. Beverly comes back a Season later. She comes back a Season after that. She becomes a recurring character. The family's relationship with her deepens. She really becomes a part of the family, which I think is significant on a show called All in the Family. That family refers to and includes Beverly. Edith, at one point-- Edith is Archie's wife-- says to Beverly, to me, you're like a sister. Well, brother. Well, both rolled into one. And it's just it's very sweet. There's another Episode where they discover that they have a lesbian cousin named Liz, who they only learned this after Liz passes away, and they meet her partner. And there's a lot of drama around whether to recognize this partner as a member of the family. And that episode's very significant because the partner, the lesbian partner, is a teacher. And part of her alarm about people learning that she's a lesbian is that she could lose her job if the wrong person finds out. And this Episode happened to be rebroadcast one night before of a real-life vote in California on whether queer people should be, you know, barred from holding jobs in schools. It went down in a landslide. And I really think that this Episode of All in the Family was a contributor to that, not certainly not the only factor, but putting a sympathetic, lovely character on the screen that shows the consequences of bigotry, I think that I think that went a long way towards changing people's minds. So I put All in the Family like up on the board is one of the most important shows,

I love all that and, you know, for listeners, you gotta go check out Matt's videos on All in the Family because the he really breaks down the episodes quite beautifully. All in the Family, so groundbreaking, so important. Not an ladies show. And a show that I appreciated. Like I was like, This is better than other shows. I could appreciate that. And yet, because the two female characters were not women I aspired to hold positions like at the time, there wasn't really a way in--

Yeah.

You know, for me as a young viewer, and yet I also recognize it now as just brilliant, friggin writing, man.

Did you have access to Maude? Was that on when you were watching?

So that was on-- Again, I was much younger, right? So so I was not really like-- My mom also kind of watched what I watched. And like in some ways Maude felt too sophisticated for us to watch.

Maude's a tough one, I think, for kids. Yeah.

Maude and Three's Company were kind of forbidden from us. (Laughs) Now again, you know Maude was talking about sophisticated stuff.

Hmm. Yeah.

You know, for sitcoms for a young person.

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

But the All in the Family. It's always been a struggle for me because it's like, okay, but the the center always comes-- It's Archie Bunker's Place, right?

Yeah.

It always comes back to Archie Bunker. And he is so-- It's a very conflicting show for me because I understand it's groundbreaking. But I also find at its core, it's so misogynist, that it's really-- As many times as they made Archie have to face his prejudice, and he sort of shifted by listening to Edith, he's sort of also never really changed.

No, no, I, you know, I think that that's that character's role. And I think that's something that went over a lot of viewers heads too is that he's, Archie is not the hero, or at least he's not intended to be. But I think the show is also kind of a Rorschach test in that if you want him to be or if you're afraid that he is, it's very easy to see him that way, to sympathize with the the quote unquote, wrong. But you know, the character is not intended to be the hero, just to be like, Yeah, sure. I'm taking-- I'm taking him at face value, Archie. Yeah, it's he's, he's the good guy here. Not how the show was meant, but I do think that's how a lot of people received it.

I seem to recall reading well after the fact that it was one of those shows, and Archie is one of those characters where people who tend to lean towards his way of thinking think he's a great guy. People who don't, think he's an idiot and a buffoon. And everybody is watching the same show.

Yeah.

And yet they're taking out of it something completely different.

Yeah.

And in a lot of ways, that's that's the brilliance of the show for me.

I think a little bit. Yeah, I agree. Like, I think that really indicates like how good the writing is that you can take so much away from it. And I do think that there is absolutely, there's just some misogyny baked in, in part because of the time. There's a story about Norman Lear when he met Susan Harris, who wrote for Maude and then went on to, among other things, create The Golden Girls. When Norman Lear met Susan Harris, reportedly, he said to her, no one can look like you and also write. And she says to him, Well, that's an appropriate remark for a man who's making a show about a bigot. So-- (Laughs) I love that she put him in his place in that way. But also, it sure was different times.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So that-- We can segue into Golden Girl

Susan-Sharon 27:30
(Laugh)

Incredibly groundbreaking show we haven't yet covered immensely. It sort of always comes up, but we were holding it. It may end up being my last, you know, our last series, just because it's, it's got so much, you know, like, it almost feels like, well, that's just the low hanging fruit. We gotta wait to do that show.

Yeah. I agree. I think The Golden Girls and Designing Women are the two like what I think of as the iconic women-led ensembles of the 80s on television. The Nurses is in there. And you know, there's other shows, but yeah, gosh, Golden Girls is, How could I not write about that? And how could I not be like extensively cover it in my videos? One of the most important TV shows ever made, I think.

So I was curious about sort of the video that you made that was about the gay fandom and the gay fandom around Golden Girls and how it became such an important part of that community. I mean, can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. You know, I first discovered that in college. Golden Girls, I just kind of missed for my whole childhood, my whole teenagerhood. But when I was in college, I lived with a guy who was the head of the musical theater society, a gay man, if you can believe that.

Strange.

Who was pretty obsessive about catching episodes of Golden Girls, I think when they aired on Lifetime. And it became, you know, in our little social group, it was really mimetic. You know, we would quote lines from the show, you know. Whenever somebody said something foolish, it was No, Rose. So, we really, you know, made that part of our lifestyle as gay college students. And I found it amazing that as I discovered a gay community as an adult, that it was a real Rosetta Stone, like it was a real point of connection. You know, if you meet another queer person, you don't really know how to connect, you can at least talk about The Golden Girls. And that was kind of a mystery to me for a while, like, how is this the thing that we've all come to? I think there are a lot of factors there. I think one of them is that behind the scenes, off screen, all of the actresses and a lot of the people involved in that show were involved in gay projects. So you would see them in other things. And so you know, you knew that they were an ally. Bea Arthur in multiple episodes of Maude, you know, tackled gay issues. Rue McClanahan was in a TV movie about Leonard Matlovich, who was a real queer pioneer in real life. They're just-- Estelle Getty, of course in Torch Song Trilogy. So these are folks who had a lot of, you know-- They had a lavender pedigree, I would say, coming into The Golden Girls. And then the show itself, of course, they had a gay character in the pilot. They had gay characters frequently on the show. Some of them were even recurring, still pretty rare in those days. So that was, it was not something that we were, you know shying away from. I know they had a lot of gay people working, queer people behind the scenes working on the show. It made like a lot of waves. Like this was a show that talks about marriage equality, it talks about gay members of the family, talks about HIV, just you know, unflinching at a time when it was pretty tough for shows to, especially comedies, to talk about anything gay. Because in part, you know, HIV epidemic made it something that was deeply stigmatized as a topic, but they were not not scared of it. So yes, I think that's a real part of the queer appeal of The Golden Girls.

Were there any episodes-- I'm curious? Because again, we haven't-- I haven't looked at all the episodes. I know there were a lot of gay male characters on the show. Were there gay women on the show?

Yeah, actually, there's an Episode where one of Dorothy's college friends comes to visit, a woman named Jean. And so she's played by Lois Nettleton, fantastic actress who appeared just millions of things. She had actually even played a lesbian, I think, on Medical Center or another show prior to this. Anyway, so Dorothy's friend Jean is coming. Dorothy and Sophia know that Jean is a lesbian, and they are kind of iffy on whether the other women should know about it. And so, you know, it's sort of a, do we out her to them? Do we let her make that decision? And you really see the thought process. And then beautifully Sophia-- Dorothy's kind of dancing around it, and Sophia just goes up to her and she's like, the lesbian thing, you keep it under your hat or what?

(Laugh)

The Episode progresses with the girls gradually coming to an understanding about lesbianism. Rose at, you know, towards the end of the Episode is annoyed that she wasn't told and Dorothy's, like, I wasn't even sure if you'd know what it is. And Rose says I could have looked it up.

(Laugh)

Anyway, it's just a-- It's a, it's a wonderfully, beautifully written show. It was actually, it was written by Jeff Deutiel. He was a gay writer. He sent it in as a spec script because he happened to know one of the producers, Winifred Hervey, and she loved it. They wanted to do a gay Episode. They bought the script from him, put it into production. And yeah, that really, that helped establish Jeff Deutiel, as you know, really helped establish his writing career because he was just doing a lot of work-for-hire up to that point. So yeah, he's just a great, a great story about getting that on the air. That's why I wanted to focus on sitcoms, because there's a quality to them where, you know, you can-- An audience, I think, is more likely to warm to a topic if they're laughing along with, you know, the method by which it is delivered.

That's the great thing you point out about All In the Family, is how carefully crafted the jokes and the revelations are about these characters. And so that both the studio audience, right, which is an important part of what the reaction is going to be, and the home audience is brought along, you know, and that, that typically, Archie is always the last to know.

(Laugh)

So that the audience can fully enjoy his reactions.

Yeah.

And in rewatching All In the Family, I was noticing-- Because with our kid, we're rewatching The Office pretty much constantly. But how much Michael Scott, and Archie Bunker are a little match set in, in many ways. It's interesting. It was like, Oh, my gosh, I betcha he watched Archie Bunker like at some point.

That's such an interesting observation. Yeah.

Carroll O'Connor is so specific in so many of his moments of revelation and understanding-- When you, he was just-- It's so enjoyable to watch him, get it and react, and then react and then react. (Laughs)

The Cousin Liz Episode of All in the Family is wonderful because there's this tension, and it's something that you see across decades, that I refer to in my book as, and in my videos, as 'I Can't Believe It's Not Heterosexual' when there's this assumption that a character, that all characters must be straight and the audience gets it a little bit before the characters. And part of the pleasure is watching for that moment when they figure it out. And in that All in the Family Episode with cousin Liz, Edith gets it in like in a moment. You know, Veronica is kind of talking around the topic. And there comes a moment when Edith stops midword, and her face completely transforms. And then later in the Episode, she has to explain it to Archie and Archie doesn't get it. And then he does and his face completely transforms. And you see that happen from show to show to show, Episode to Episode, decade to decade. It happens on The Golden Girls when Jean, Lois Nettleton's character says in that Episode, she's explaining herself to Rose and you see Rose's face just transform when she gets to that moment. And then in the 90s on The Simpsons on the John Waters Episode, when Marge is talking around it, you know, he he prefers the company of men and Homer says who doesn't? She's struggling to get him to understand. And then and finally gets there and he screams. There's just such a great magical tension. And there's an Episode of Designing Women where the same thing happens. Suzanne Goes Looking for a Lesbian is the Episode. She has a friend who's going to a meeting of an organization called Daughters of Sappho. One of them says to her, what did you think Daughters of Sappho meant? And she said, I don't know. I thought it was a laundry detergent.

(Laugh)

Yeah, I just I love those moments, those discovery moments.

And I love that it's got a theme like it's the what do you call it? The--

'I Can't Believe It's Not Heterosexual.'

'I Can't Believe It's Not Heterosexual.' That's perfect. Because that is the norm. Right? The, you know, American norm.

Yeah.

White, male, heterosexual. How very interesting that that's where we all-- And we all spin off of it. Right?

Yeah. And I, you know, I think I actually will cite Glee as a show that found a new twist on it. There's a gay reveal on an Episode that I think is genuinely shocking. And I think there's a lot that can be critiqued about the show and about that scene and about every storyline. But I think Glee still found a new way to approach a surprise and get just-- It fascinates me how those sort of little coming-out moments have evolved from decade to decade to decade. It actually shares a bit with the early seasons of Ellen in that there is something that seems so obvious, something that we ought to be talking about, something that is so clear to everyone. You know, there's an Episode of Ellen, where Janeane Garofalo is on and sparks really fly. It's a great Episode. And, boy oh boy, it just seems clear. Get these ladies together. But they also have to be really careful and downplay that stuff at the time, because they were so scared of what would happen if they, if they actually used the one thing that could really set the show apart, you know. Instead, we're going to pretend it doesn't exist. Well, I don't know how many people are fooled here. So it just feels weird.

You know. And I'm curious if in your research and looking at these shows, if there was backlash to any of these particular episodes. Were the networks right to be afraid?

Yes or no. So there are some episodes that they you know, they really took a gamble on. I, you know, I'm thinking in particular of Soap. ABC was terrified of what was going to happen when they put Soap on the air. But the reaction was generally pretty positive. Critics were, you know, there's this huge controversial build up to it over months before that Episode aired, because it was going to have a gay character, and a priest who has sex in a church and a nymphomaniac character. And you know, that, Oh, my God, there's everybody's sleeping with everybody else. And so ABC was just terrified. They put a warning message before the Episode when it aired. They put these ads on the air that showed people coming out of test screenings saying like, yeah, it's actually pretty good. Like, they're just trying so hard to reassure the audience. And then it airs and critics are like, oh, yeah, that was okay. (Laughs) That was fine. Same thing happened, you know, even decades-- Not decades, but years earlier, in 1972, when they aired That Certain Summer on ABC, pretty groundbreaking made-for-TV movie that featured a same sex couple. You know, the ABC is poised for that, you know, switchboards are like ready for the angry calls to flood in. Well, calls are actually pretty positive. With The Golden Girls, when they had a Episode about-- I believe it's the Episode where Blanche's brother plans to marry. Or it might be one of the others with a queer theme. Anyway, the bulk of the feedback was actually about Bea Arthur's hair. Some people wanted to weigh in on that topic. So generally speaking, the public backlash from most viewers pretty limited. That having been said, there is an awfully loud, small, but very vocal backlash from groups like, you know-- When Ellen was coming out, the Southern Baptists organized, you know, these colossal boycotts. And so there'd be, you know, essentially interest groups on both sides who would make as much noise as they possibly could. And they didn't represent, by and large, the millions of people who are watching. You know, the Traditional Values Coalition, you know, had a small but very loud membership. On the other side. GLAD had, you know, I would say, not a huge membership, but they were pretty savvy about making their voices heard. So, you know, you got a couple of people with megaphones. But generally speaking, the viewing public was mostly just interested to see what the fuss was about and couldn't be bothered to write angry letters until there was something truly egregious, which was pretty rare. You know, I'm thinking of a made-for-TV movie called-- Gosh, what was the name of it? Born Innocent with Linda Blair in the mid-70s. That really does-- I think it was 74 or 75. Just completely crosses a line. It's about a 14-year-old girl who is in a detention facility. She's sexually assaulted. There is, you know, some pretty derogatory depictions of lesbianism and broadcasts in primetime, you know, at the same time as Happy Days. And it just it went beyond the pale and people were, I think, justifiably outraged by that. Generally speaking, though, you know, people are just like, okay, that's on television. Sure. I'll watch that.

It made me laugh twice. You know, I'm good.

Yeah. Exactly.

And so let's talk about lesbians on television. Because, you know, when I'm going through, and we're looking for these episodes of queer representation, it's even slimmer if you're looking for women representation.

Yeah, yeah. It's a real shame. I think part of that is because, generally speaking in terms of like, what you might see in newspaper headlines, a lot of the activists and public figures were men. Obviously, not all of them. And that doesn't actually represent what was happening on the ground. But I think a lot of the attention was paid in real life to male activists, and, you know, spokespeople. And also, you know, I think that's just the misogyny of the television industry, that they are more interested, often, in male characters than women. That having been said, I think there's a phenomenon where shows saw lesbian characters sometimes as safer than gay characters. And so you'd see this phenomenon, especially in the 90s, of the the lesbian kiss Episode for sweeps week. And I think that that felt perhaps less threatening than, you know, than a gay kiss Episode. Because, you know, on LA Law, on Roseanne, on Deep Space Nine, I think they were quicker to show women kissing, but also, then to sort of erase the lesbianism by saying, Oh, it was just an experiment. Oh, it was just a one-time thing. Oh, that character is getting written off the show. You know, we just did it for sweeps week, and now they're gone.

So it-- Was LA Law, the first lesbian kiss? Do we know that?

I'm pretty sure it was. There may have been-- Yeah, Picket Fences was in there somewhere. But I'm pretty sure LA Law was the first one.

And then it was literally a scene.

Yeah, yeah.

And then nothing happened.

Yeah, there's, there's there's a kiss. And then it's like, well, that was weird. Anyway. Moving on. Yeah. Yep, very much. I think Deep Space Nine was a little better about it. Picket Fences, I think, was pretty disastrous. They actually shot a lesbian kiss scene, and then the network made them reshoot it in the dark with the lights turned off, so that you couldn't see what was happening. I think it actually makes the scene infinitely seedier to have like this darkness. But yeah, that's exactly-- It will be portrayed as like, just a little fling. That's this isn't real.

Is it like, okay, it's just, that's for those guys that like to see two women kissing.

I think that's part of it, too. Yeah, that it's, you know, considered titillating and exciting, perhaps, to a male audience whereas, you know, we get one of the male characters on screen to have a kiss, it's something far more, I don't know, dramatic or threatening. You know, there was a Episode of, I think Thirtysomething that had two male characters just sit next to each other in bed. Not even touching. And you know that it's a catastrophe. Oh, there's an Episode of not not Sex in the City, but Tales of the City.

Oh, yeah.

That again, on PBS, that was, I don't know if there was a specific Episode was just like, overall, people were upset about if there's a there's a kiss. There's a there's a bathhouse scene. There's clearly gay lovers in that show. And again--

And that was pretty early on. I remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was, I want to say like, early 92 or 90, 94 or so. But men, men in love? That that results in Congressional hearings. Women in love? Wooo! The audience, the audience gasps and wants to see more. And yet, and yet it's just a tease. It always has to be a tease, with a little fakeout of like, we didn't really mean it. Just kidding.

Yeah. It was just know that that character is gay, not the main character. That other--

Yeah.

But you know, but they've moved on.

But I do want to give credit to the show Roseanne because that one actually did feature a recurring character, I think her name was Nancy, played by Sandra Bernhard, who had partners. She was persistently queer. You know, it wasn't like it's a phase. That was a show that I think was a lot bolder about featuring a queer character. Also Martin Mull's character, you know, the recurring, recurring gay character. So, you know, there were those shows. And, you know, for better for worse, Friends with, you know, the Carol character, you know. They, to their credit, showed a lesbian couple getting married on primetime. Not bad. Not bad.

Yeah. So we're gonna take a break. We'll be back in a moment. Welcome back. So anyway, I wanted to talk about the Designing Women episodes, particularly Killing All the Right People.

Yeah.

Because it was such an important Episode. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, it's an astonishing Episode. Uh, so a young man comes to the women and says that he wants to hire them to design his funeral. That he knows that he is going to die. He has HIV. And, you know, this is like the mid-80s. Treatment was pretty rudimentary at that point. It was generally considered a death sentence. And so the women have this incredible scene where they talk about the reality of living with HIV at that time, which is very different from you know, how we understand it today. And there's also a scene that really confronts the stigma, where a character says about AIDS, you know, one thing that it has gone for it is it's killing all the right people. An incredibly chilling thing that, you know, when I hear that, I think how could a person say that? And yet, that line was pulled directly from real life. It was something that that Linda, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason-- Is that her name?

Linda Bloodworth-Thompson, yeah.

Bloodworth-Thomason. Something that she heard in real life in a hospital while she was there. Her mother was ill. And I feel like it just it makes your blood run cold. So--

And her mother was dying of AIDS.

Oh, yeah. From from a transfusion.

She had, yes. What's crazy, it had just happened.

Yeah.

Like it was like less than a year before that her mother had passed away, having gotten HIV through a blood transfusion that she wrote this Episode.

Yeah. Just amazing,

Just amazing.

And I can't imagine you know-- I'm putting myself in her position, the incandescent rage I would feel at somebody expressing a sentiment like that and channeling it into art in a way-- That Episode is educational. It informs the audience in a way that does not sound like you know, a very special Episode PSA. You actually do learn something. It humanizes an issue. There's also there's a B-plot with Annie Potts about condoms, about educating, you know, people about condom usage. So, and this is a time when the government was not doing a whole heck of a lot when it came to educating the public. And so, here you go, here's television-- I mean, talk about the life-changing power of television, here's a television show that's stepping in to be like, people need to know about this. Government's not doing it. We're gonna do it.

I'm noticing that so much, particularly for like 70s and 80s television, how much television was teaching us how to do things.

Yeah.

And imparting information. And usually in a very clever way, right? Sometimes it felt like, you know, PSA kind of thing. But talking about Designing Women talking about breast cancer.

Yeah.

Cagney & Lacey also looking at breast cancer, talking about abortion, talking about rape and date rape, you know. And obviously, they're able to take a more serious tact, but it's really pretty amazing how much information, you know, pre-internet that was like, Oh, this is what HIV, you know. And, and tying the HIV to high schoolers being able to access condoms or hearing about sex education, basically. Huge, right? Like--

Yeah, yeah. And you know, if, you know, for an audience that's living in a major city, this stuff is not going to be breaking news, probably. But the thing that's amazing about television is, you know, it reaches everywhere. You know, almost 100% of households have a television set. And even then, and, you know, if you're, you don't have billboards about, you know, the local clinic or something in your town, because you happen to live in a small farming community or whatever, you can still just turn on the TV and get exactly the same information that someone in New York City is getting.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm also curious about trans representation. I don't know if you've looked at that.

It's, you know, this is this is an area where television is, still has some ways to go. And you know, it's been, it's been slow. You can really see the evolving understand-- Public understanding of trans issues, you know, over the decades. And, you know, this is, this is something that I'm not speaking about from a position of, you know, personal knowledge. So it's not quite my story to tell. But what I can see is that you have this problem, particularly in the 60s, on news shows. It would be news shows that were discussing, you know, what, at the time, there was really no concrete language around. So it might be, you know, transsexualism or something like that. Then in the 70s, there's a real misunderstanding of gender identity and sexual orientation, where it's just assumed that, you know, gay men, you know, if you if you let them go far enough, all gay men just want to be women. That's, that's not exactly how it works. But that's kind of the understanding. And then eventually, you get into a somewhat better understanding into the 80s. And I actually think, you know, you start to see a few characters like-- I can't remember the name of the show, but it was, actually it was Annie Potts and Alfre Woodard, were on a show--

One Fine Day.

Yes. There's an Episode in which RuPaul plays a transgender woman and you know, again, they didn't hire a trans actress, but also your your choices were pretty limited back then. So gradually into the 90s, you might see there's-- As public understanding was sort of coalescing, gradually television got there. But it was it was slow, you know. I'm thinking of Friends. Friends had a, I would say pretty faulty depiction of the character's, Chandler's parents. And it's really difficult to know how to refer to this character played by Kathleen Turner, alternately referred to as a drag queen-- Sometimes, sometimes this character's drag queen, sometimes it's a trans woman. Sometimes it's a topic that people just don't know how to talk about at all. And Marta Kauffman, one of the co-creators of the show said that they just didn't understand the issue at the time. Looking back, they would have done it differently. Kathleen Turner said that, in retrospect, she wouldn't have taken that role. She would have given it to, you know, allowed it to be cast with a actual trans person. So, you know, I think progress has been made since then. But, boy oh boy, sometimes you really have to drag television kicking and screaming to to do the right thing.

Well, and to reflect people. Right? Like like, that's the interesting thing is it feels like, you know, the loud megaphone voices notwithstanding, these were not-- By the time it's on television, the question is, is television leading culture or is culture leading television?

I think on that issue, absolutely, It, television was a lagging way behind. You know, even you know, if we go back to the, you know, earliest days of this being a public conversation in the 19-1950s, when it was, you know, just a wacky news item at best, you know. Of course, there were people who, this was their lived experience. They understood it better than anybody else, because it was their life. And those voices were just not allowed to speak up. They were not given, you know, a microphone. So, yeah, gosh, it's just, it's, it's sometimes very frustrating to watch a show and be like, All you had to do was ask. All you had to do was ask somebody, you know, are we doing a good job? What's your experience? What are we getting wrong? You see shows do that now. And I think that's great, generally. So, you know, it is it is a shame, to see that there was an opportunity here, television had an opportunity, mass media in general, film, like it all, but it could have been doing so much more and, and yet, we held back. And for what? Why, why? What was what was the point?

But I mean, I think almost inevitably comes down to the gatekeepers, and particularly at that time, there were there were very few. Right? It was a very, you know-- There wasn't 78 streaming channels and YouTube. And so the assumption would be that no one would be interested in that, because they weren't interested in that. That was not their lived experience.

Yeah.

I think that's so much, you realize that so much of television, when you hear about people's behind the scenes experience, you realize like, it just wasn't interesting to whoever had the power to say yes or no,

I think that's absolutely true.

Could it also, though, have been a certain amount of lack of understanding? It feels to me like in the last maybe 10 years or so when it's come to things related to, to the trans community, that there's just been so much more information that we've all been provided. At least that I feel like I've been provided. I didn't know how to talk about it really, before then. I didn't know-- And I don't even I don't even think now I know somebody who's trans, but at least I have feel like I have a better understanding of how I would approach that if I had to talk about it, discuss it, write about it. And either there wasn't the information or there wasn't the curiosity, or there just wasn't enough visibility that forced people to confront it and try to make an effort to understand it. And at the end of the day, TV is about making money. And if the powers that be, as Susan said, didn't understand it, and thought it affected their ability to keep sponsors or get sponsors, and, boy, they were going to run in the opposite direction from that as well.

Yeah.

Why risk it? Right? Like, I think that there's a lot of risk-adverse behavior at that level. But I'm also very curious in in watching these 70s and 80s shows to watch language evolve.

Yeah.

Both the length-- I mean, like, All in the Family, you're like, Oh, please don't like-- Oh, my goodness, he said, and he's continuing to say it. Right? There's a lot of words that you're like, oh, that wouldn't be on television right now.

(Laughs)

Even shockingly, in Season one of Will & Grace, there's an Episode that makes pretty liberal use of the F-slur. And I think intelligently. I think they do a really good job of it. It's a real critique of internalized homophobia. And yet, it is shocking when you hear it. This is like 98 or 99, when it airs, long past when you would expect to hear that on television. They lost advertisers, you know, sponsors dropped out. So it was a real risk to talk about that. Also, you know, that having said, that was the same year, and it was 1999, that one of the major thesauruses-- I think it's Merriam Webster. It's one of the big ones. Dropped that word as a synonym for homosexual. It was until then that it was still in there. So yeah, I think-- And that's the that's the same year that the Will & Grace Episode airs. So I think that's a really good example of the evolution of language, you know, happening in a lot of different media, and sometimes being a lot slower than you might expect it to have been.

Yeah. And, you know, it's like, we have trans, we have nonbinary, we have, you know, so many different words that I think are still evolving. Right? So I'm curious what you think is coming next?

That's a great question. You know, I think we're at a really good place where we've reached some sort of, I will say, equilibrium maybe, about certain terminology. You know, transgender is certainly understood, you know, more or less, what that means, I think by most people in an audience in a way that, you know, 20, 30 years ago, there was a lot of like, flipping and flopping around between, you know, transgender, transsexual, female impersonator. What does, you know, what are these things all mean? And so I wonder if, you know, it feels like, that's actually one area where you can kind of, kind of make a checkmark and say, like, Okay, we got it. We understand the terminology now. And I think, linguistically, I think right now, we're actually in a pretty good place. However, I think there is also an opportunity for new harmful terminology to come along along. I'm thinking specifically of the word groomer and the way that that has been weaponized to mean something other than-- You know, there's a, there's a real clinical meaning for that word, and there's an actual meaning that it has. And then there's the meaning that conservatives might want it to have, and might use it in a way that that's not intent, you know, in the same way that the word woke has been mutated by, you know, a bigoted, right wing, I think we got to watch out for language being turned around to, you know-- Words that are either innocuous or meant something else being turned against us. And, you know, I don't really know what to do about that other than to, you know-- I think the language is less important than the depiction. I think what's important is the representative. Both are important. But what is really important is the representation of real, lived experiences. And that happens through people in real life living their lives. And if they're in, you know, if they're privileged enough to be able to do this safely, to be a role model, and an example, not everybody can do that. Not everybody should have to do that. But if you're in a position where you can, great. I think another aspect is being really annoying. And again, not everybody should have to do this. Not everybody should. But I think progress happens when activists are noisy, demanding, insistent persistent . You know, I'm thinking of the protesters in 1970s, who, when something aired that they didn't like they would invade television offices and refuse to leave until they were listened to. Sometimes you got to be real annoying. And also, what that requires is some bravery on the part of people who are inside the belly of the beast. And, you know, whether they're at the top of the pecking order or the bottom, using their position within the industry to advocate for change to the extent that they are able to, and sometimes that takes some some courage. Sometimes it means taking a risk. And sometimes it means taking a calculated step back so that you can live to fight another day. But it you know, basically, this is a very long-winded way of saying that progress requires people operating at all different levels, with all different strategies, all pushing in the same direction. I believe that we're all working in the same, moving in the same direction, which is liberation.

Very well put. I mean, and I think it also has to do as you sort of referenced in some of your videos, and I'm sure in your books, that it's also people have to be represented, that are developing these stories, that are putting these stories out, and, and having different voices in the room. For that, means that those conversations will just come out differently. Right?

They'll be better.

They'll be better.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking of-- In the book, I spoke to writer and producer Richard Day, who worked on a ton of shows -- Ellen, Drew Carey, Garry Shandling Show, Arrested Development. And he shared a story of being in a writers room. This is the 1980s, I believe, or maybe early 90s. And one of the writers tosses off a comment about how they could never have a gay person in the writers room, because they wouldn't be able to tell the gay jokes anymore. And he said, Richard said that what he took away from that was like, wow, they are willing to exclude an entire group of people from their profession just for the sake of being able to tell their terrible jokes. And so yeah, like, what can you do about that? All you can do is make noise, be out, let them know that they're wrong. Something that Cleve Jones once said to me. I worked with him on some marriage equality stuff about 10 years ago. He said, If you don't demand everything immediately, then you'll never get anything eventually. And I have really made that, I put that into practice. I demand everything immediately, expecting to get something eventually,

Susan Lambert Hatem 1:00:08
Oh my god, that's my-- One of my best friends from high school who is a lesbian in the South said, ask for 100% of what you want 100% of the time, because you only ever at the most get 50% of what you want 50% of the time. So--

Matt Baume 1:00:23
It's true. I'm glad to hear that. I glad to hear lesbian wisdom behind that.

Lesbian wisdom is behind that. Thank you, Laurie. Two more things. One, we should find out where people can find you and your stuff.

Yeah, so I've got my book about the history of queer characters on American sitcoms. It's called Hi, Honey, I'm Homo. Orders now open at gaysitcoms.com. I'm also gonna be doing some live events around that in New York and Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and some other cities. So those events are on the website, gaysitcoms.com. And then I continue to produce a lot of YouTube videos about those milestones of television. So my next video is about George Takei, his incredible life. I think a lot of folks might be aware that he was incarcerated in one of the you know, the concentration camps with his family during World War II in the US, and then after that really pigeonholed in some terrible roles, as you know a lot of minority actors were, continue to be. And how he basically, you know-- I've done all this research into his life and his career, was able to use the lessons that he learned from his father in particular, to overcome all this injustice to fight against it, to win reparations for other Japanese people who were incarcerated in those camps, to advocate on behalf of civil rights and for queer people after coming out. Just what an incredible life he's had and how inspiring he's been. So yeah, I've been doing a lot of research into George's life and career and it is a real joy to research someone who is just an unqualified a lovely human being. It is just a real pleasure to talk about George from every angle. It's just like, he's a lot of fun. He's very kind. He's so gracious. And he's incredibly wise for you know, all the stuff that he has experienced in his life. So yeah, anyway, those are on my YouTube channel. You can find those at MattBaume.com if you just search my name. And I've got a podcast called the Sewers of Paris, where I chat with folks, queer folks about the entertainment that has changed their lives. You can find that at sewersofparis.com.

I love it. I'm so curious about your process and because you produce a lot of content across a lot of things.

I, yeah, I'm very fortunate. My partner James is a huge help. So we're kind of a pop-and-pop production company.

Okay,

Churning out, churning out the content.

It's very impressive, because it's all very, very excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely a pleasure. Really enjoyed talking about this.

Sharon Johnson 1:02:44
Same. Really appreciate your time today. Take care.

Bye. It's time for audioagrophy. You can find all things Matt at MattBaume.com. That's M-A-T-T-B-A-U-M-E.com.

His podcast is the Sewers of Paris. And the new book is entitled Hi, Honey, I'm Homo: Sitcoms, Specials and the Queering of American Culture.

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Episode 202: “Advanced TV Herstory w/ Cynthia Bemis Abrams, Part Two”

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