Why do all these homosexuals keep kissing Roseanne? That’s the question on everyone’s lips,
but there was only one thing on Roseanne’s lips in 1994 and that was Muriel Hemmingway, on one of the
most controversial TV episodes of the decade. The sitcom Roseanne featured way more queer characters
than other shows of the time. It was one of the gayest shows on television since the obscure
'70s show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which in an unlikely twist featured one of the homosexuals who
would go on to kiss Roseanne. If it wasn’t for Roseanne’s multiple makeouts in the '90s, we
might never have seen same-sex kisses on Dawson’s Creek, and Buffy, and Glee, and more... because
TV executives in the '90s were convinced that a single gay kiss could destroy an entire network.
So … how did Roseanne get away with it?
All aboard, and welcome to Matt Baume’s Culture Cruise. We’re about to set sail
on a voyage through the sights and sounds of queer TV history. This time,
we’re looking at a forbidden gay kiss and then later a gay wedding on the show
Roseanne — episodes that helped forever change the rules about who’s allowed to kiss on screen.
And hey, before we get going, remember to hit the subscribe bell for more videos like this!
And a quick note before we dive in: In real life, Roseanne Barr has said some pretty
indefensible things — from offensive conspiracy theories to racist tweets
to supporting homophobic politicians. But this video’s not about Roseanne Barr’s recent
twittering — it’s about the sitcom Roseanne, which was a collaborative effort involving
hundreds of people. It’s understandable to have some mixed feelings about the show.
I’ve been conflicted about doing videos on these episodes for a long time. But ultimately the
show Roseanne is more than just the work of a single person. And its impact on TV matters.
Now if you’re somehow not familiar — Roseanne was an ABC sitcom in the late 80s to the late 90s.
It tackled real-life issues like politics and drugs and abortion and race — and it was also one
of the highest-rated shows on TV before jumping every shark in sight in its last few seasons.
One of the unique things about the show was that had multiple recurring queer characters
at a time when there were very very few on television.
Like Sandra Bernhard, who’s bisexual in real life, and played a bi character named Nancy.
She came out on a 1992 episode, and the reaction was … well, not bad, for the time:
"I didn't know how you'd react." “We’d react the same way we react
when you tell us anything personal. We'd make fun of you til it gets old and then we move on.”
Coming-out episodes were almost unheard of in 1992, so this was pretty groundbreaking.
Shocking, even. Listen to the reaction when Nancy’s girlfriend arrives — the audience
gasps just to at the SIGHT of a same-sex couple:
“Marla, Roseanne, Jackie. Mom, Bev, this is Marla.”
The show loved pushing boundaries, but there were some that it couldn’t cross — at least
not at first. Nancy and her girlfriend could date, they could hold hands,
but when they go in for a kiss in one episode, watch how the camera cuts away at the last second.
“Yeah bye. Oh hey listen Beck …”
So, why was TV so squeamish? Well, in part because same-sex romance nearly brought down
PBS one year before. An episode of Tales of the City showed a gay couple, and there were
literally Congressional condemnations of the show. Conservative groups organized a campaign
to defund all of PBS over this one show — and it nearly worked. States cut their public TV budgets,
they passed laws banning public television from “promoting” homosexuality. In the end,
PBS decided to cancel the planned second season rather than jeopardize their very existence.
And kind of annoyingly, in the years that followed, PBS ran an ad campaign called “if PBS
doesn’t do it, who will?” Which is kind of rich, considering the answer was about to be “Roseanne.”
Sometimes it didn’t even take a kiss to make people freak out. In 1990, the ABC
show Thirtysomething showed two men in bed, just talking, and there was a massive backlash to that.
Sponsors pulled out, costing ABC $1.5 million dollars — adjusted for 2020, that’s about
40 million bucks. It cost ABC forty million dollars, just to show two guys not even touching.
There was also a kiss on LA Law, but that one cost sponsors too. Picket Fences had to re-shoot a
same-sex kiss with the lights off so you couldn’t see what was happening — not sure how that makes
it better? And on 21 Jump Street, one episode might have had a gay kiss — it’s actually kind
of hard to tell. Watch how the camera suddenly zooms way in on the noses so you can’t see the
mouths — who knows, what could their lips possibly be doing here? And then in the next scene,
one character says “she TRIED to kiss me,” making it sound like they just somehow … missed?
Around this time TV just loved to pretend that gay couples either didn’t exist,
or somehow never touched each other. Like on this 1991 episode of Golden Girls,
the only time this couple hugs in the whole episode is when Blanche is standing between them.
So that was the state of gay affection on TV in the early '90s — a dangerous taboo that
executives were afraid could cost millions of dollars and bring down an entire network.
So I can’t even imagine how terrified ABC executives must have been in 1994
when Roseanne’s producers announced that they wanted to have a same-sex
kiss of their own. And not just that, but they wanted to set it at a gay bar.
The episode is entitled Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a then-timely reference to the ban
on queer people serving in the military, which Bill Clinton signed into law a year earlier.
It starts with Nancy introducing her new girlfriend Sharon. And once again,
the audience is SHOCKED just to see two women together.
“Hey babe, you ready?”
The girls are going dancing at a gay bar, and they invite Roseanne and her sister Jackie along.
“Come on, it'll be fun. I haven’t been dancing since … when was dad’s funeral?”
Roseanne’s eager to check the place out, and I gotta say, this is one of the better depictions
of a gay bar I’ve seen on television. Okay, the name’s a little weird — Lips??? Maybe
it’s foreshadowing about what’s to come — but it at least looks like gay bars I’ve been to,
unlike the brightly-lit set on Maude, or the dentist’s waiting room on Frasier.
The gals hang out and get comfortable — and by the way, check out the bartender,
it’s a very brief appearance by Laura Kightlinger,
who a few years later would become one of the producers on Will & Grace.
Roseanne’s enjoying herself so much at Lips that she doesn’t realize Sharon’s taken an interest.
“Next time let’s leave the wives at home.” “You read my
mind.” “Huh?”
Now let’s pause here — this moment right here was a huge
source of conflict behind the scenes at ABC.
On one side were ABC executives, led by Bob Iger, who a few years later would become the head of
Disney. Iger and other execs were doing everything they could to stop Roseanne from showing a kiss.
They kept talking about the millions they lost after showing a gay couple on Thirtysomething,
and were afraid that they’d lose even more money if there was a gay kiss on one of their
most popular sitcoms. Iger wanted the kiss to be hidden in a cutaway like the show had done before.
On the other side: You had the show producers — several of whom were gay — who were adamant
that the kiss needed to be visible. ABC was breathing down the producers' necks, but they
had a secret weapon: press connections. Roseanne was up for contract renewal around this time,
and they started leaking stories to reporters that if ABC didn’t let them do a gay kiss,
the show might leave ABC altogether. Newspapers started running articles claiming
that Roseanne was taking a bold stand against censorship at the risk of getting cancelled.
But Bob Iger was still adamant that the kiss shouldn’t appear,
even as the day of the shoot approached. Producers planned to tape the kiss as written,
but with all the network pressure they were under, how did they plan to get away with it?
Well, when the day of the shoot arrived, producers invited some special guests to
stand just off camera: Reporters from 20/20, and representatives from GLAAD. The producers
deliberately paired them together. As a result, there was a ton of news coverage full of GLAAD
quotes about how important this episode would be, and how cowardly ABC was for trying to censor it.
So that day, they taped the kiss as written. But nobody was sure if it
would actually air — ABC kept threatening to cut it up until broadcast. Meanwhile,
news coverage was mounting. Talk about the kiss was everywhere. Everyone was in suspense,
even the show runners. The question everyone was asking: Are they going to show it?
And then on the night of the broadcast, here’s what viewers saw:
[Woooooooooo]
How did it go over? It was a huge hit. No sponsors backed out,
calls to the network were overwhelmingly positive, and thanks to the media circus,
20 million people watched — almost a third of everyone who was watching TV that night.
Double the number of people who watched the competing show on CBS — the Grammys.
The second half of the episode deals with the fallout of the kiss — Roseanne’s freaked out about
it, and makes a big show about not being attracted to women. Nancy accuses her of being a hypocrite
who pretends to have gay friends but is actually closed-minded, and they have a little fight.
This feels like an updated version of an episode of the show Maude that I talked
about in another video — in that episode, Maude is proud that she had a gay friend,
but then she accidentally reveals she’s harboring some bigotry she didn’t even realize she had:
“Now you tell me that I have a hangup about your homosexuality?
Well let me tell you something Mary. Uh, Barry.”
I’ve got a link to that video in the description. And meanwhile,
there’s a cute scene where Roseanne’s husband, Dan, tries to model tolerance for their son.
DJ asks if it’s wrong for two women to dance together…
“No son, it’s perfectly fine, and anyone who tries to tell you different is wrong.”
“Does that mean you dance with other men.”
“Yes I do.”
Of course, he doesn’t really dance with men, at least not on this show. But a quick side-note
here: John Goodman did play gay a few years later on the Fox sitcom Normal, Ohio. Sadly, that show
only lasted like three episodes. And if I can go on a side note to that side note, this episode of
Roseanne aired the same year that Goodman appeared as Fred Flintstone in the surprisingly big-budget
Flintstones movie, which has a few queer connections of its own: Rosie O’Donnell plays
Betty; it was produced by Bruce Cohen, who a few years later later helped pay for the lawsuit that
overturned California’s ban on gay marriage; the cast includes gay icon and HIV activist Elizabeth
Taylor; and the movie features a song by the B52s that personally I enjoy more the film itself.
“We’ll have a gay old time!”
They knew what they were doing.
Also, I just want to note that a few years after that, they made a prequel Flintstones movie,
in which John Goodman was replaced with Mark Addy, who you may know better as
Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones — looks pretty good under the beard! It also features
Alan Cumming as a tiny alien named Gazoo. And Rosie O’Donnell was replaced by Jane Krakowski,
who does some pretty impressive roller-skating moves. It's a callback to her role in the Andrew
Lloyd Weber musical Starlight Express, in which she played a horny train.
What does all that have to do with all the gay kisses on Roseanne?
Nothing, I just love how weird it is. What were we talking about? Oh right ...
The episode ends with a hasty hug-and-make up scene in which Roseanne admits that her
reaction to the kiss taught her that she’s not as accepting as she thought,
but she’ll try to be a better friend to Nancy. The end.
If some other, smaller show had attempted this, it’s likely it couldn’t have happened.
But the show Roseanne was so popular and powerful, producers could make demands,
and the media would pay attention.
And not only did get their way, they actually forced changes in network policy:
After the episode aired, GLAAD stuck around at ABC. They started working with the network
to re-write their standards and practices, and a few months later, ABC created a new
rule that shows could no longer make jokes that were demeaning to gays and lesbians.
So was that it? Problem solved, gay kissing ok?
Well, no. There was still clearly a ways to go — as much of a milestone as it was,
the scene shows a straight woman getting a clearly unwelcome kiss, rather than an
actual couple in love kissing. And Roseanne’s reaction reinforces that it’s kinda gross to her.
But this was only the start. A year later, the show decided to push the envelope even
further — this time, not just with a gay kiss, but with an entire gay wedding.
In the episode December Bride, Roseanne learns that her boss Leon, played by Martin Mull,
is planning to marry his partner Scott, played by Fred Willard. At first, she teases them …
“Even in a small town like this one, he’s at the bottom of the homosexual heap.”
“Well, that sounds like fun.”
Leon and Scott are actually quite sweet, and they have great chemistry.
That’s probably because these two actors had been working together for decades — and now
bear with me for a moment, because we’re about to talk about some really weird TV history.
Martin Mull and Fred Willard’s first big collaboration was on a weird experimental
show in the 70s called Fernwood Tonight, a fake talk show set in a fictional Ohio town where,
for various contrived reasons, real-life celebrities kept accidentally winding up.
The show’s sense of humor was … let’s call it oblique, so oblique you might not even be able
to figure out where the jokes were. And it did occasionally veer into some slight queerness,
like with this song that’s kind of an American version of Monty Python’s lumberjack sketch:
“We’re men and friends until the end,
and none of us are sissies. At night we sleep in separate beds and blow each other kissies.”
But wait, there’s more... homosexuality. Fernwood 2 Night was actually a spinoff of another even
weirder 70s show called Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which was basically another
experiment by Norman Lear to make a hybrid soap opera-slash-sitcom. It only ran for two seasons,
but what a run — they made over three hundred episodes. The vibe of the show is like a dream,
kind of like Soap meets Twin Peaks but also incredibly cheap. In case you haven’t noticed,
I’m obsessed with this show’s existence, while also acknowledging it is hard to watch.
But! The reason I bring it up is that Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman featured one of the first
conversations about same-sex marriage ever to appear on American primetime television.
The show featured a recurring gay couple named Ed and Howard, who live in a home
decorated like the inside of a stomach. In one episode, they debate whether they should marry:
“Oh get serious.” “I am serious,
about you. Why, I couldn’t tell you exactly at the moment, but I am, and about getting married.”
How did a network allow this blatant homosexuality back in the 1970s? Well, the answer is simple — a
network didn’t allow it. Norman Lear sent Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman directly to local stations,
bypassing the networks altogether, so they had a lot more freedom to include gay stuff.
But that also meant that its schedule and availability was really unpredictable,
so not a lot of people watched.
That was not the case with Roseanne, which was watched by millions of people when they
decided to do a gay marriage episode 20 years later. Lawsuits around marriage were taking
off for the first time in the '90s, it was a very timely moment for TV to tackle the
topic. It's also a nice touch to have Martin Mull and Fred Willard, cast members from one
of the first shows to address gay marriage, at the center of Roseanne’s gay storyline.
So Roseanne volunteers to plan their wedding, which makes Leon a bit nervous
but he reluctantly agrees despite some warning signs:
“So, have you ever been fitted for chaps?”
The day of the wedding arrives, and Roseanne’s idea of a gay marriage is … well, honestly, I
love it. Two Judy impersonators, beefcake ushers, and the "gay love, gay power" sign is an inspired
touch that I would consider for my own wedding. Leon is … less excited, and gets cold feet.
“I said the wedding is off!”
“Well of course it’s a little off, it’s two guys for God’s sake!”
Rosanne chases him into the bathroom and he expresses his doubts — what if he’s not ready,
what if they’re not meant for each other, and what if he’s not really gay?
“I detest Barbra Streisand and for God’s sake I’m a Republican!”
“But do you like having sex with men?”
“Well…” “Gay!”
He’s still not convinced, and tries to prove that he might not be gay,
leading to Roseanne’s second kiss from a homosexual in as many years:
[Woooooo] “I’m gay, let’s do it.”
Back at the wedding, Leon’s still a bit nervous,
and that leads to some actually quite sweet dialogue as they’re standing at the altar:
“I love you in a way that is mystical and eternal and illegal in 20 states.”
That’s a joke but also not entirely a joke, since it really was illegal
for gay men to have sex in over a dozen states back then. And then there’s this:
“Sure you can handle it?” “No.”
“It’s going to be great, you know.” “Yeah, I know.”
That’s such a simple, small moment, but I find it so moving. Two people in love,
nervous but reassuring each other. “It’s going to be great” is such a lovely way of letting someone
know just how much you love not only them, but the life you’re going to share with them.
“I now pronounce you men. Amen!”
The ceremony ends with a kiss. Well, kind of. Once again, the camera teases us before swinging away.
We see juuuuust a hint of the kiss before the shot moves to the audience reaction.
You can see Roseanne and John Goodman smiling broadly here — there’s a story that I haven’t been
able to verify that Martin Mull and Fred Willard, once the camera was off them, started kissing very
graphically. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a great story and I really want to believe it.
There’s also some clever dialogue here that sounds
like it’s actually referencing the kiss that the show broadcast a year earlier:
“Man, there’s the kiss. I wasn’t sure if they were going to do it, but they’re doing it.”
I mean, that’s literally what people were saying
in real life a year earlier, when ABC kept threatening to cut the kiss right
up until it aired. And speaking of Roseanne's kiss with Sharon…
“It just happens to be two people of the same sex kissing and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Hi.” “Hi!”
That cute little cameo makes it clear. This is definitely a reference to the previous kiss
episode — Roseanne’s line about there being nothing wrong with that could easily be her
speaking directly to Bob Iger. Because even though the kiss episode was a big hit for them, ABC
still had reservations about showing queer love, even when the wedding episode initially aired.
ABC pushed it to a later timeslot, due to what they called its “adult humor.”
And behind the scenes, there was even more squeamishness at the network. This episode wasn’t
actually meant to be a stand-alone episode — it was meant to be a backdoor pilot for a whole new
series. The producers wanted to create a new show with Leon and Scott as gay dads raising a baby,
with next door neighbors RuPaul and Don Rickles, who you may know as the potato from Toy Story.
Kind of a big gay Full House. But ABC said no — they didn’t believe a show with gay leads could
possibly work, which now looking back is bonkers because I have to say that premise sounds amazing.
But even though that show didn’t get made,
Roseanne helped push things forward at ABC. They weren’t ready for a new show about a gay couple.
But just over a year later, they WERE ready for something close:
“I’m gay.”
Ellen came out on her ABC show a year later, and suddenly there was an explosion of gay characters.
Spin City, Veronica’s Closet. Sex in the City, and of course Will & Grace in NBC.
We’d gone from kisses in cutaways to the gayest network TV had ever been.
That included queer couples too. Same-sex kisses became such so commonplace that
it turned into a kind of joke for a while — the lesbian kiss episode as
a way to grab ratings on shows like Allie McBeal, and Friends, and even Star Trek.
Thanks to Roseanne’s producers using their power to push for inclusion,
we’d soon see Tara and Willow on Buffy, and Jack and Doug on Dawson’s Creek,
Curt and Blaine on Glee. But before those couples, first
someone had to kick down the kissing booth door. Someone had to take a chance prove that queer
people are more than just sassy best friends with excellent taste. We’re also fantastic kissers.
Land ho, we’re pulling into port. Thanks for hitting that subscribe bell,
and thanks to everyone who makes Culture Cruise possible with a pledge of support
on Patreon. Head over to patreon.com/mattbaume
to check out the rewards for backers. Or just hit that subscribe bell, ding ding.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a backdoor pilot of my own.
"You are something else, kid."