PODCAST · tv
Gayest Episode Ever
by Drew Mackie & Glen Lakin
Back in the day, a major sitcom doing a gay episode was a big deal. A proper gay episode would get headlines, but it would get the attention of two young guys who were still figuring things out — sexuality-wise and culture-wise. Gayest Episode Ever has screenwriter Glen Lakin and stay-at-home journalist Drew Mackie going through the great and not-so-great gay episodes of sitcoms past.
Episodes
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Drew and Glen and Frasier and Niles
"My Coffee With Niles" (May 19, 1994) And that's a wrap. It's been eight years and three hundred-some episodes, so we're turning off the TV and going to play outside. In concluding, we're springboarding off the first-season finale of Frasier, which has the Crane boys sitting down and discussing...
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Glen Writes a Golden Girls
This is a rerun of an episode that originally went live March 4, 2020. "Vince Meat" (February 22, 2020) Have you seen that one Golden Girls where Blanche accidentally sexes a man to death and the girls have to hide the body? Well, your answer should be no, because that episode didn't air back in...
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Batman vs. Sitcom Nostalgia
"Baby Doll" (October 1, 1994) If you're new here, you might be thinking that this is an odd pick for the second-to-last episode. To this I say, "So what?" It's a great episode about the toxic allure of nostalgia, which will swallow you whole if you don't get out in time. And Alison La Placa's...
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The Gay Origins of Mister Ed
This is a rerun of an episode that originally aired in 2024. "Sorority House" (February 8, 1961) A few times on this podcast, we've bent over backwards to find a gay interpretation of a sitcom that never did anything gay, but this is not one of those. Mister Ed was developed by Arthur Lubin, a...
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Diane Returns for the Cheers Finale — And Brings a Gay Guy With Her
"One for the Road" (May 20, 1993) Because this podcast is ending, we thought we should take on at least one notable sitcom series finale. And because Cheers happens to have a gay subplot in its last episode — and because Diane Chambers is always close to our heart — we're going with that one.…
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Ferdinand the Bull Is Gay (and Other Observations About Disney Shorts)
Tony Rodriguez joins us one last time for a sequel episode of sorts to our one about gay Looney Tunes shorts. This time, we're focused on old-time Disney shorts that lend themselves to a queer reading. If you want to watch this cartoons before you listen, here's a list of where you can find them...
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The Closest Full House Got to a Gay Episode
This is a rerun of an episode that originally aired in 2021. "The Play's the Thing" (November 17, 1992) The big joke with Full House never did a gay episode despite being a show about three men cohabitating and coparenting in San Francisco. However, the fifth season introduced Derek (Blake McIver...
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The Simpsons Meets Tennessee Williams
"A Streetcar Named Marge" (October 1, 1992) Although it was not on our final season schedule, circumstances conspired to make us discuss The Simpsons one last time — and we've picked a classic-era episode that may not scream "gay" but it definitely mutters it under its breath. In addition to Jon...
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Duckman Investigates Homosexuality (If Only Briefly)
"Forbidden Fruit" (January 16, 1996) At long last, we are proud to announce the first episode of our podcast to feature both hosts of Talking Simpsons, Henry Gilbert and Bob Mackey. It's also the last episode to feature them both, because we are kicking this podcast into its grave. But in the...
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Dungeons & Dragons Has the Queeniest Knight in Saturday Morning History
This is a rerun of an episode that originally aired in 2019. "Odyssey of the Twelfth Talisman" (September 28, 1985) Once upon a time, there was a Saturday morning cartoon based on Dungeons & Dragons, and in its final few episodes it had one of its male characters hit it off with a one-off NPC who...
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Oh Grow Up: Short-Lived, Underrated and Gay
Whelp, here it is: the final time this podcast is ever going to teach you about a short-lived show that you maybe never heard of. In the grand scheme of 90s sitcoms about attractive people living in New York, ABC's Oh Grow Up might seem like an also-ran. However, John Ducey's Ford managed to be a...
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Married… With Children Meets a Beach Gay
"Life's a Beach" (May 21, 1989) For our final season, we're not hitting up that many of the GEE favorites. There's no Seinfeld, no Friends, no Roseanne, no Golden Girls. Hell, there's not a Simpsons on the schedule at the moment. But we will make time for Married… With Children, whose third…
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Dear John Meets a Gay
"Stand by Your Man" (February 16, 1989) This might well be the last time we're discussing a one-off gay episode done by a mainstream sitcom. Dear John's popularity burned bright but quickly, and early in its first season it threw a new character into the mix who was not only gay but also gay....
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Jennifer Slept Here Is a Little Gay Boy's Fantasy
This is a rerun of an episode that originally aired in 2019. "Jennifer: The Movie" (October 29, 1983) We're celebrating both Halloween and week two of our celebration of Ann Jillian with an episode about how the 1983 NBC series Jennifer Slept Here is both so very weird and also a little gay boy's...
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Star Trek Isn't a Sitcom But It Sure Is Gay
"The Offspring" (March 12, 1990) Yeah, we finally did an hourlong — and if you're surprised that we picked Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you are probably unaware how many fans of GEE are also huge Star Trek nerds. We're joined by friend Mike Gizienski, who knows more about the Star Trek...
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Dinosaurs Uses Vegetarianism as a Metaphor for Homosexuality
Heads up! This is a rerun of an episode that originally aired in 2019. We're putting a few of our favorite episodes in the off-weeks of our final season. "I Never Ate for My Father" (October 2, 1991) When Robbie Sinclair fails to kill his first live prey, he begins to wonder if he might be more...
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Ned & Stacey Is Secretly the Prequel to Will & Grace
"The Gay Caballeros" (February 19, 1996) Full disclosure: We didn't come here to say nice things about Debra Messing. What we will say is that she's forever trapped in sitcom mode, to the point that the laffer that preceded the gay one has her essentially playing an identical character. What's...
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Happy Days Puts Richie Cunningham in the Closet
"You Go to My Head" (October 1, 1974) We're kicking off our final season by discussing what's arguably the most important sitcom that we haven't profiled yet: Happy Days. Technically, Happy Days never did an episode, but what's surprising is how close this one gets, with actual lines spoken...
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Gayest Episode Ever: The Final Season
Yes, we're wrapping up the podcast. Is it Heated Rivalry's fault? Kinda! We had a really good go, but after a lot of conversations about this, we have decided that we will end Gayest Episode Ever with one last ten-episode season. The below episodes will be going live every other week (in the way...
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Sailor Moon Meets the (Trans?) Sailor Starlights
"A Night Alone Together: Usagi in Danger" (August 17, 1996) In our fourth look at Sailor Moon, we're discussing the final season, which features the Sailor Stars. Canonically, they're female superheroes who magically become boys in order to remain in disguise, and as a result some Sailor Moon…
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Ellen Won't Say Gay on Christmas
"Ellen's First Christmess" (December 17, 2001) Yes, we're closing 2025 with a lump of coal rather than a sugarplum fairy. Believe it or not, Ellen Degeneres had a second sitcom between her first one and her reign as the iron-fisted queen of daytime. It's mostly lost in the shuffle today, but…
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The Golden Girls Meet a Gay… for the Final Time?
"The Artist" (December 19, 1987) Over the years, we've shared a lot of laughs with the girls on the laini, but our journey with the four horniest seniors in the history of Miami has come to an end, as "The Artist" is the final gay episode of The Golden Girls that we have much to say about. It's a...
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Happy Endings Comes Out for Thanksgiving
"More Like Skanksgiving" (November 20, 2012) Here you have it: the one other gay-themed Thanksgiving episode of a sitcom. Three seasons in, this one reveals heretofore-unheard canon that the Happy Endings characters exist as they do solely as a result of MTV's The Real World — and that Max things...
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The Gay Subtext of Dobie Gillis, TV's First Teen Sitcom
"The Ruptured Duck" (October 10, 1961) On the surface, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis tells the story of a teen boy who falls in love with every girl except Zelda Gilroy, who pines for him hopelessly. All of this is complicated by the fact that the Sheila Keuhl, the actor who played Zelda was in...
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Marge Simpson Meets a Drag Queen
"Werking Mom" (November 18, 2018) Yes, The Simpsons did a drag episode, and you might be interested to know that the idea did not originate with "Hey, let's do one about RuPaul's Drag Race." In fact, co-writer Carolyn Omine provided some background info, including how the surprising success of…
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Small Wonder Celebrated an 80s Kid Who Was Different
"The Neighbors" (September 14, 1985) "Victor / Vicki-toria" (February 14, 1987) "The Bad Seed" (November 7, 1987) Ignore whatever you might have heard about Small Wonder and focus instead on how the show spotlighted Vicki (a.k.a. V.I.C.I), a kid who was labeled as different just for acting the…
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Fired Up Had the Best Gay Character on Must See TV
"Truth and Consequences" (September 29, 1997) Though it didn't even get a chance to finish out its second season, Fired Up was one of the rare Must See TV sitcoms to feature two female leads. What's more, the recurring gay character, Shannon (played by Mark Davis), is unusual in that he's out,...
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Not Just Bugs Bunny in Drag! (Seven Very Gay Looney Tunes Shorts)
It may not be news to listeners of this podcast, but the Looney Tunes cartoons can be very gay. In celebration of the nearly 800 shorts being hosted on Tubi, Drew, Glen and returning guest Tony Rodriguez look at some of our favorites that also lend themselves to a queer reading. And no, it's not...
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The Critic Is Very Gay (Even If Jay Sherman Is Not)
"Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice" (March 12, 1995) Finally, we get around to discussing one of our more formative comedic experiences, and it's one shared more or less exclusively by elder millennials: The Critic, which somehow managed to be both more grown up and more juvenile than The Simpsons. In...
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Laverne & Shirley Check Into the Honeymoon Suite
"Honeymoon Hotel" (February 22, 1977) You innocent TV Land watchers may not have suspected that there was anything queer about Laverne & Shirley, a show about two women who share an apartment and work at a brewery. Sure, they're boy crazy, but also there's this episode where they scam their way...
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The Cleveland Show Whiffs a Potentially Great Bi Episode
"Terry Unmarried" (February 20, 2011) The second season of the Family Guy spinoff makes the surprising decision to have Terry, Cleveland's womanizing coworker buddy, come out as not straight. And while that's good, it's sort of weird how no one ever suggests that he might be bisexual. This retcon...
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Rebecca Howe Is Not a Lesbian (But Kirstie Alley Did Save Cheers)
"A Kiss Is Still a Kiss" (December 3, 1987) We're supporters of Shelley Long on this podcast, but in advocating for the Diane years of Cheers, we've overlooked the Rebecca years. As such, we're bringing Jonathan Bradley Welch back in to speak about what works well during the back half of the…
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Ventures Bros. Is a Very Gay Show, But…
"Handsome Ransom" (October 25, 2009) Let's say this at the top: We are both fans in general of The Venture Bros, but this extremely homosocial show has a tendency to tiptoe up to being full-on gay and then laughing it all off as a joke. It's a product of its time, and even explicitly gay…
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Schitt's Creek Gets a Pansexual Love Triangle
"The Throuple" (January 17, 2017) We're back! Officially, but also now bimonthly — or biweekly, depending on how you want to look at it. And we are coming back in grand Canadian style by doing a show that Drew for years refused to do: Schitt's Creek! Because you asked! And asked and asked and...
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Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Does a Body/Gender Swap Episode
"Switching Places" (October 4, 1993) If you're reading this and deciding that Power Rangers is not a sitcom, you're correct! We're doing it anyway, and as elder millennials who were just a little too old for MMPR when it originally aired, we're bringing in a ringer in the form of Sina Grace —...
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Mork Is the Mommy, Mindy Is the Daddy
"Mama Mork, Papa Mindy" (November 5, 1981) Thus far, we have not attempted the Happy Days universe of TV shows, and we're starting with this season four Mork & Mindy that has our interspecies marrieds creating a baby that redefine their gender roles. Essentially, Mork hatches an egg from which...
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Mary Hartman Meets a Gay Couple
This week, in a first-ever solo episode, Drew talks you through not just one episode of the cult series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman instead the whole of the show's art for its two gay characters, Ed and Howard. What's remarkable about this nuanced portrayal of a same-sex couple is that by virtue…
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The Great North Pushes Aunt Dirt Out of the Bunker — and Out of the Closet
"Bear of Beeftown Adventure" (April 7, 2024) About a hundred episodes later, this podcast is pleased to report that The Great North got even gayer with the season four addition of Aunt Dirt, voiced by Jane Lynch. She's been living in a bunker for sixty years and in this episode she learns about...
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Mr. Belvedere Meets a Kid With AIDS
"Wesley's Friend" (January 31, 1986) Yes, it's this episode. If you've seen any bit of it, it's probably the one line delivered by the focus character, and while we will admit it's a major groaner, it's not representative of this whole episode. No, this is a Mr. Belvedere "very special episode"...
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Titus Is the Real Star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
"Kimmy Goes to Her Happy Place!" (April 15, 2016) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a funny show. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a flawed show. These two things can both be true simultaneously, and you can not like the plotline given to Jane Krakowski's character, where it turns out she's actually…
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What's With All the Orphans in 80s Sitcoms?
If you grew up watching TV in the 80s, you may have noticed that there was a preponderance of… if not shows about orphans specifically then similar shows where the care of children was entrusted to people who weren't their parents and maybe didn't know how to raise kids. We're talking Diff'rent...
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My Two Dads Can't Escape the Gayness of Its Title
"The Family in Question" (May 9, 1988) It might seem like a joke today, that a show called My Two Dads is about two very hetero bachelors. But don't let that stop you from appreciating My Two Dads for being a smarter, funnier version of Full House. They debuted the same week, and unlike Full…
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Gilligan's Island Does a Body Swap Episode
"The Friendly Physician" (April 7, 1966) Sure, Gilligan's Island may have skewed family-friendly, but its love of genre parody meant that it did a body swap episode in which all of its female characters end up in male bodies. Horny! That's enough to get our attention, even without the mad…
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Curb Your Enthusiasm Acknowledges That a Child Seems Gay
"Larry vs. Michael J. Fox" (September 11, 2011) For better or worse, Larry David is a truth-teller, and the fictional version of him can help but to poke at social taboos. In this Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, Larry suspects that Michael J. Fox may be using Parkinson's to get away with bad…
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Sailor Moon Meets a Beguiling Genderfluid Villain
We are keeping our tradition of making our first post of the new year about Sailor Moon. That ep, about the debatably trans Sailor Starlights, is now live on Patreon — at $1 for subscribers but it can also be purchased for $3 for non-subscribers. But we're putting last year's Sailor Moon ep…
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The Grand Unified Theory of Why Frasier Seems Gay
"The Matchmaker" (October 4, 1994) Whelp, it's our 250th episode (sort of), and we're celebrating by going back and reexamining our first-ever episode and, really, the reason this podcast exists in the first place: "The Matchmaker" from Frasier's second season, which the show used to tell viewers...
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It's All Relative Was ABC's Attempt at a Will & Grace
"Pilot" (October 1, 2003) Even NBC tried to replicate the success of America's first popular gay sitcom, and this week we're joined once again by Steven Capsuto to discuss an attempt to bring same-sex parents to prime time. It's All Relative only lasted a season, but that's actually longer than...
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Bob's Burgers Gives Marshmallow a New Voice
"Hope 'n' Mic Night" (November 10, 2024) Long-running animated sitcoms face a unique challenge in having to account for an episode that aired more than a decade previously, and this recent Bob's Burgers proves that this can be accomplished thoughtfully and deliberately. "Hope 'n' Mic Night"...
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It's a Will & Grace Thanksgiving!
"Homo for the Holidays" (November 25, 1999) What? An episode of Will & Grace that Drew actually likes? Kind of! This season two episode has Jack coming out to his mother over Thanksgiving dinner, and it's basically the gayest Thanksgiving episode of any sitcom ever. And it's a good piece of TV…
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King of the Hill Accidentally Explores Muscle Gainer Subculture
"Bill, Bulk and the Body Buddies" (May 20, 2007) Can one illustration of a buff Bill Dauterive change your entire life in an instant? Well, for some people, yeah. This King of the Hill outing manages to stuff in a whole lot of imagery that will be familiar to a certain gay subculture. It's...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Back in the day, a major sitcom doing a gay episode was a big deal. A proper gay episode would get headlines, but it would get the attention of two young guys who were still figuring things out — sexuality-wise and culture-wise. Gayest Episode Ever has screenwriter Glen Lakin and stay-at-home journalist Drew Mackie going through the great and not-so-great gay episodes of sitcoms past.
HOSTED BY
Drew Mackie & Glen Lakin
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Gayest Episode Ever have?
Gayest Episode Ever currently has 317 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Gayest Episode Ever about?
Back in the day, a major sitcom doing a gay episode was a big deal. A proper gay episode would get headlines, but it would get the attention of two young guys who were still figuring things out — sexuality-wise and culture-wise. Gayest Episode Ever has screenwriter Glen Lakin and stay-at-home...
How often does Gayest Episode Ever release new episodes?
Gayest Episode Ever publishes regularly with 317 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Gayest Episode Ever?
You can listen to Gayest Episode Ever on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Gayest Episode Ever?
Gayest Episode Ever is created and hosted by Drew Mackie & Glen Lakin.
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