In an episode of “Roseanne”, while the closing credits are rolling, Jackie & her boyfriend/husband (the sad sack redhead) were trying to ‘do something wild & crazy’ and have sex on the counter of the Lunch-box (after closing time, course.) After they give up & leave, a swarthy six-pack abs Muscle-Boy comes out of hiding from behind the counter. It seems that just before Jackie & her drippy husband entered, Muscle-Boy was planning on having the very same tryste with…
Martin Mull! (Who had already been established as a gay character, but had been largely asexual up to that point.)
And over across the pond, on “Absolutely Fabulous”, Patsy convinces Eddy to hire some rent-boys to help get her groove on. To get them in the mood, Patsy brings along a vintage 70s porn tape…which of course gets mixed up with the tape that Saffy plans to show at her school DNA lecture. The kicker is that when Saffy inadvertantly shows the porn tape, there is a shot of…
a young Eddy sprawled out on the floor unconscious at the orgy!
[QUOTE=jackelope]
Here’s one that wasn’t shocking at the time, but has become so as the years pass:
Every episode of Sports Night began with a big exterior shot of the World Trade Center, from which the (fictional) show was supposedly broadcast. There was even an episode in which someone called a bomb threat into the studio, leading to now-disquieting scenes of people standing around, ostensibly in the Towers, talking about whether terrorists were trying to kill them.
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It wasn’t of the WTC exactly, it was just of the NYC skyline. In this episode, Isaac says he works in a 54-story glass highrise. The WTC towers were 110. One Liberty Plaza, 1251 Avenue of the Americas, the AXA Center and One Astor Plaza all fit the bill. Additionally, I don’t think the word “terrorists” was ever mentioned in the episode you refer to. The characters kept saying “somebody just tried to blow us up,” and it turned out to be someone upset with a radio show that portrayed Jesus with a lisp.
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
It made me wonder if this is at all shocking? Or were television viewers in 1980 pretty okay with a guy implying he wants a 3some?
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I would not necessarily infer from that that he wanted a threesome. In any case, a gay or bi character on TV in 1980 was not a novelty. The series Hot L Baltimore (1975) had a gay couple, and there was Billy Crystal’s gay character on Soap (1977-1981).
[QUOTE=jayjay]
The world of Leave It To Beaver was absolutely unchanging, midwestern, Republican and lily-white. Everyone we saw was Christian or “respectable” Jewish. It was an idealist’s view of the 1950s.
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You lost me at the “Republican” claim. When did this ever come up on the show?
[QUOTE=Walloon]
You lost me at the “Republican” claim. When did this ever come up on the show?
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I never claimed that it ever came up on the show. Politics never came up on the show (except for student council elections and such). But Ward had a professional position somewhere, given that he worked in a suit. The family was comfortably middle-class. Given the clues and the fact that it’s always the Republicans for some reason that want to return to this era that never was, I indulged in a bit of poetic embroidery.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
But Ward had a professional position somewhere, given that he worked in a suit.
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I dunno about that - June did her housework in heels and pearls. Maybe Ward worked in a clean, modern coal mine.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
for some reason that want to return to this era that never was
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This always bothers me. I did grow up in a time and place very much like the Cleavers lived in, in an upper middle-class, all-white neighborhood. Dad wore a suit to work, and mom stayed home. (She didn’t wear pearls as she did housework, but she owned some.) “Nice” doesn’t make it unreal. It was as real as Archie Bunker’s neighborhood.
Yet another “South Park.” The first episode I ever saw (ten years ago, and not since) was where the boys fall in love with their substitute teacher, who is a lesbian. So they decide they have to be lesbians, too. In one scene, one of the characters is giving the living room rug a tongue bath. Another, comes in and asks, “What are you doing?” “My dad says that if you want to be a lesbian, you have to lick carpet.”
After I picked myself up off the floor and regained my ability to breathe and speak without reconvusling with laughter, I wondered, “How can they say that on television?”
[QUOTE=Musicat]
If someone says that they’re bisexual, that doesn’t mean to me that they want a threesome, it just means they can swing either way, not necessarily at the same time. I don’t think that particular episode was all that daring in 1980. It was only talk. No blatantly homosexual action was shown except for the chaste, fast dancing in the gay bar at the end.
What does annoy me is the way they cut off the last part of Tony’s revelation sequence when Kirk Bradshaw (the bi-guy) revealed that his interest was not in Elaine, but Tony. In the original, Tony caught on verrrry gradually and as he caught on more, his reaction was repeated and became stronger each time. The progression was interesting to watch, in an acting sort of way. In the reruns and in the DVD, the last part of the sequence was cut off, spoiling much of it. Damn, I hate editors.
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Thanks. And thanks Walloon. I admit that it’s been a few years since I saw that episode, and quite frankly, I expect I just decided “A 3some would be hot” and then that became what happened. My brain has done crazier things. And as for other gay or bisexual characters in television history, I fear I am woefully ignorant of any television prior to about 1988.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
I never claimed that it ever came up on the show. Politics never came up on the show (except for student council elections and such). But Ward had a professional position somewhere, given that he worked in a suit. The family was comfortably middle-class. Given the clues and the fact that it’s always the Republicans for some reason that want to return to this era that never was, I indulged in a bit of poetic embroidery.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t embroider so quickly. There were a lot of professional, middle-class, country club families in the 1950s (mine, for one) where the parents had grown up in the Depression and voted Democratic ever since.
Although I do agree Ward and June probably wouldn’t be happy if Wally had brought home an African-American girl.
For all its sappiness Leave It to Beaver did sometimes touch on “issues.”
In one episode, one of Ward’s old buddies had fallen on hard times, and Ward helped him out by paying him to do a few odd jobs around the house. It turned out that the reason the man had fallen on hard times was because he was an alcoholic, and he tricked Beaver into giving him Ward’s prize bottle of brandy. When Ward and June were about to tear Beaver a new asshole, Wally chided them for never actually saying what the man’s problem was. Beaver wasn’t stupid (that time), he was just trying to help the guy out.
Another episode had Wally hang out with a slightly older friend who had gotten married. It turned out that the married couple had no money and fought all the time. And one of Beaver’s friends turned out to have a father who was on his third marriage and a mother who was dating someone they called “Uncle Dave.”
Not shocking, but given the time, a little more sophisticated than we might expect.
[QUOTE=Garfield226]
It wasn’t of the WTC exactly, it was just of the NYC skyline.
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I’ll bow to your persuasively superior dialogue-recollection skills on this, but:
Regardless of what Isaac said in the episode, I’ve watched the entire series on DVD over the last few months, and most, if not all, of the episodes begin with a full-screen shot of the WTC towers. It’s clearly not just a generic skyline shot; the towers are front and center and obviously framed so as to be the focus.
The DVD set is presently on loan to a friend, or I’d take a screenshot and upload it. I’ll see if I can do that next time I’m at his house, which will probably be Wednesday.
Hey, wait a minute…
Are you by chance in the UK, Australia, Turkey, or Latin America? According to Wikipedia, some episodes have been aired in those places since 2001. I wonder if they changed the opening footage to remove the towers, and thus the suggestion that the CSC offices were in the towers?
There was also a really hilarious episode where Wally wants to look older and so grows a moustache during their week off from school (spring break). After the break, he comes back and the kids laugh at him. When he comes home, he’s all upset and June wants to know what’s wrong. Beaver goes, “Maybe they thought he was Hitler and chased him off!”–it came off really funny. Especially since Hitler and all wasn’t so far off in the past when the episode first aired.
Are you by chance in the UK, Australia, Turkey, or Latin America? According to Wikipedia, some episodes have been aired in those places since 2001. I wonder if they changed the opening footage to remove the towers, and thus the suggestion that the CSC offices were in the towers?
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Nope. I own it on DVD too (thus the dialogue recollection skills aren’t really – just a basic remembrance of what episode it occurred in and DVD player handy. I know exactly what opening shot you’re talking about though, and it is a bit jarring – with that episode in particular. But based on the show’s dialogue, CSC wasn’t based in the World Trade Center towers.
