“Everybody, this is Chris.” “Lesbians. Neat. Neat! We don’t need these!”
Consider, if you will, the quintessential 90s sitcom in which a group of hip young friends
all live together in a humongous New York apartment, joking every week about their lives
and loves and sexuality. I speak not of Friends, but of the show that came before: Living Single,
a queer-friendly sitcom that offered America wise words on overcoming homophobia, while
also asking the important questions:
“So girls! Peppermint Patty: Is she or isn’t she?”
All aboard and welcome to Matt Baume’s Culture Cruise, a journey through LGBTQ milestones
in TV and film! This month we’re heading to Brooklyn for the Living Single episode
Woman to Woman. A celebration of lesbian love, but also a fascinating barometer of how much
the country shifted on LGBTQ issues in just the first half of the 90s.
At the start of the 90s, primetime’s first same-sex wedding ceremony appeared on the
show Roc. And while there’s some differences between Roc’s story and Living Single’s,
they’re similar enough that you can compare the homophobia expressed on Roc…
“Now, I can’t fully accept this.”
With Living Single, which just five years later shows the main characters embracing
their queer friends. So … what changed?
BTW Culture Cruise is made possible by folks on Patreon like Jessica Shook, Seth Burnard,
and Tony Lecosia. Check out the rewards for backers over at patreon.com/mattbaume. And
don’t forget to hit the subscribe bell for more videos like this.
So here’s the premise for Living Single: It’s a bunch of roommates living together
in Brooklyn. Queen Latifah is like the wise house mom, Kim Coles is the spunky one. Max
is the hard-boiled lawyer, and Regine is the gossip. It’s kind of like The Facts of Life,
and in fact Regine is played by Kim Fields, aka Tootie. So there you have… the facts
of Living Single.
The episode in question starts with some extremely sitcommy setup-dialogue:
“You know, I just can’t believe my girl’s getting married.”
That’s Max, the high-powered attorney. Her college roommate Shayla is coming to New York
to get married, and she’s bringing her fiance Chris with her … along with a mysterious
secret.
“Max, there’s something I should tell you...something I should have told you a long
time ago.” “Did I used to date this guy?”
No, you did not. Because this guy is a lady. We get the sitcom-standard audience reaction
— listen to the “oh my God” happening just off screen:
[Woooo] “Hey guys.”
This feels a little dated today, but in the 80s and 90s, every time queer person appeared
on screen the audience would go bananas.
“This is Miriam Goodman, my lover.” “Your wife has been seeing my husband.”
“Mr. Emerson?” “Hello everyone.”
Man, I wish people did that whenever I entered a room. Anyway, the plot is now officially
thickened with a gay marriage. But this wasn’t the only gay marriage this season. For reasons
we’ll talk about in a few minutes, there was a whole run of gay marriage episodes in
a very narrow window from 94 to 96. It started with Ron and Erick on Northern Exposure, then
Roseanne did one a year after that, then Friends had a lesbian wedding a few weeks after Roseanne,
and then this episode of Living Single came a few months after that one.
I talked about this phenomenon a bit more in my video about the show Roc, which featured
a same-sex wedding ceremony back 1991. I’ve got a link to that in the description. That
episode of Roc and this episode of Living Single have some strange similarities. For
one thing, they both start with a guest star traveling to town to come out as gay before
marrying a fiancee named Chris.
“You see, I’m gay. And Chris is a man.” “Everybody, meet Chris.”
But there’s also a few differences. The Roc episode involves the couple being interracial.
And while Roc is about a family member getting married, Living Single is about a friend.
But the context for that family-versus-friend difference is important, because around the
mid-90s, friends started to function more like families on TV.
Prior to this, sitcoms tended to either revolve around groups of coworkers or around biological
family, and sometimes both like on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Chosen-family sitcoms certainly
existed before this, like on Three’s Company. But around 1990, we saw a rise in shows that
centered on chosen family. Like Seinfeld, Ellen, Caroline in the City, Sex and the City,
and of course, the ultimate sitcom about a group of co-habitating friends ... The Golden
Girls, which had a lesbian-coming-to-town episode of their own.
“Lesbian … lesbian … lesbian???”
It’s weird to think about now, but back then, this format was regarded as something
of a novelty. In fact when Friends turned into a big hit, Murder she Wrote — which
occupied the same time slot on CBS — did an episode parodying Friends, with a murder
on the set of a show called “Buds.”
“Who would have thought a group of 20-something young people sitting around all day long discussing
their sexuality would turn out to be a top TV show?”
The weirdest thing about that, of course, is that Murder she Wrote and Friends were
both on TV at the same time. Seems like that can’t be true, right? But yeah. They overlapped.
It’s weird. Murder She Wrote: Surprisingly modern.
Anyway, on sitcoms like Living Single, friend groups operate in much the same way that family
did on shows that came before. And learning that her friend is a lesbian really shocks
Max. To the show’s credit, there’s never any sign of overt homophobia. Not even once.
They immediately accept Shayla and Chris.
But Max is clearly upset about … something. It turns out, she doesn’t mind that Shayla
is a lesbian — she’s mad that she wasn’t told.
“I tried to tell you for years. But every time I called I couldn’t find the words.”
“‘I’m gay’ is a real toll saver.”
Well, that’s easy to say now. Max isn’t really acknowledging here how hard it is to
say those words — to take a chance on someone, especially back then in the ‘90s, and especially
in the ‘80s when they would have been roommates.
Shayla had no way of knowing how Max would react, or how it would affect their friendship.
And as kind as everyone is once the surprise wears off, the outing itself clearly creates
at least some amount of discomfort. Listen to how the tone changes from when Shayla arrives...
“Hey girl!”
...to when she comes out:
“Hey… girl.”
Max is unhappy that Shayla kept this a secret, and after a commercial, she pours her heart
out in the kitchen to Kadijah, played by Queen Latifah… who, it turns out, knew Shaylah
was a lesbian all along.
“Does everybody know? What is it, the joke’s on me?”
“She just wanted to tell you in her own time.”
This is a plot point that this episode shares with the lesbian episode of The Golden Girls,
which also involves a bit of secrecy.
“You told everybody but me?” “Honey I didn’t even know if you’d know
what a lesbian was.” “I could have looked it up!”
I don’t think Living Single is copying other shows at all. Just that the dangers around
coming out and outing were inherently a part of many queer people’s lives at this time.
And with that “in her own time” comment, Kadijah’s pointing out that it’s up to
Shayla to decide when she comes out, and to whom, and under what conditions. This line
probably isn’t meant to apply only to this one character, but to say that in general
everyone should be able to choose how they talk about their personal life. Queen Latifah,
herself, in real life has always been very firm that she doesn’t feel like sharing
personal details about herself.
So saying “she wanted to tell you in her own time” seems to be a gentle reminder
that everyone is entitled to have control over the conversation around their own life.
But Max is still mad. She confronts Shayla again at the bridal shower. Shayla reminds
her that in college, they bet each other ten bucks on which one would get married first,
and she tries to pay up:
“Why don’t you keep it. You hold onto things so well.”
Clearly, they need to talk this out. And Shayla drops one more big surprise:
“You didn’t think I could handle having a roommate who was gay?”
“No, I didn’t think you could handle having a roommate who was in love with you.”
Now that is an act break. Max is left speechless for a moment, and then she says that she won’t
attend the wedding. Shayla storms out, Max is left brooding by herself, and their differences
seem irreconcilable.
It’s important to note here that this episode is about what was a very political topic at
the time — same-sex couples getting married — but the episode itself never touches on
politics. Instead, the story is exclusively personal. Outside of the show, gay marriage,
as it was called at the time, was a huge deal and frequently in the news. In fact, I wrote
a book chronicling some of the personal stories behind the fight for marriage equality, Defining
Marriage, available now on Amazon.
One reason for all the attention to marriage around this time, and one of the big cultural
shifts that happened between Roc and Living Single, was the 1992 presidential election.
Issues affecting LGBTQ people took a much more prominent role than ever before in that
election. Republicans staked out a strong homophobic stance — here’s Pat Buchanan
at the Republican National Convention:
“That an militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that same convention
and say that Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-gay and pro-lesbian ticket in
history, and so they do.”
Contrast that with the speeches at the Democratic National Convention that year:
“The gay and lesbian community is a family in the best sense of the word.”
HIV was a major issue, as it had been for a decade. But now so was military service,
adoption access, nondiscrimination laws, and of course, the big one, marriage.
Queer issues were constantly in the news, and they appeared increasingly in pop culture
— in sitcoms, in mainstream movies, in music. This was the year that Melissa Etheridge and
KD Lang came out — notably, at Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
“ANd I’m proud to say right now I’m very proud to have been a lesbian all my life.”
For years, anti-gay activists had managed to block queer people from ever appearing
in media. Here’s Jerry Falwell arguing in the 90s that gay and lesbian characters should
be banned from television:
“We do not want the gay and lesbian lifestyle to be paraded into the living rooms of America’s
homes.”
But around this time, civil rights groups started to get a lot better at countering
those arguments, and pushing for more inclusion, both in entertainment and in politics. Here’s
Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, clapping back at him:
“We should be depicted in primetime in the same way any other family structure, any other
is depicted. Because there is nothing wrong with lesbians and gay men and the way we live
our lives. We’re contributing and we should be honored for that.”
Obviously Kate came out on top in that argument. In the years that followed, not only was she
a major force in pushing for more LGBTQ representation, she also played a key role in legalizing marriage
equality. I interviewed Kate about her work about media and marriage and a lot of other
causes on my podcast, The Sewers of Paris — you can hear that at SewersOfParis.com,
and look for episode 203.
So back to Living Single — with Max and Shayla facing the end of their friendship,
what’s to be done? Ultimately, Kadijah is the one who helps Max see things differently.
“The entire time you all roomed together, did she ever come on to you?”
“No.” “Ok, she played it cool. That’s how much
your friendship mattered to her.”
That’s a perspective Max hadn’t considered. That maybe Shayla was keeping it a secret
not just to protect herself, but also to protect their friendship, thinking her crush could
put a wedge between them. In other words, not coming out might have been a sign of how
much Shayla cared.
So Max reluctantly goes to find Shayla. She’s at a salon, being attended to by a very enthusiastic
hairdresser. And we have the Act III confrontation. Max is still angry:
“I mean, you basically told me our friendship was one big lie."
But pay attention here to the source of Max’s anger.
“Think of all the time we wasted. All the conversations we could have had. All those
chances I would have had to diss your dates.”
She’s not actually mad at Shayla. She’s mad that homophobia — even just the fear
of homophobia — got in the way of them being as close as they could have been.
Their friendship is something that clearly both of them valued. Shayla tried to protect
it by keeping a secret that she thought was a threat; but to Max, the real threat was
keeping secrets from each other at all. Sitting there in the world’s most spacious hair
salon, they recognize that they both wanted the same thing the whole time: For their friendship
to endure.
“Maybe if you would have confessed all this back in school, maybe I would have freaked
… But the point is, I wish you would have given me the chance to rise to the occasion.”
I think that’s a really telling line, and one that really sums up the historical shift
that was happening in real life. Compare that to the end of the Roc episode, 5 years earlier:
“Now I can’t fully accept this, but more than anything I want you to be happy.”
In contrast, Max is 100% accepting here. And what’s more, she refers to accepting her
friend as “rising to the occasion.” It’s a moral good, something lofty to aspire to.
I wish we got to see the wedding. This is the one show in that wedding bonanza that
doesn’t end on a ceremony. Still, it’s a pretty amazing evolution in the way pop
culture talked about LGBTQ characters. Max, as a straight character, is saying to the
queer character, “give me a chance to be better than the homophobia that you’ve encountered
in the past.”
The word “chance” is important there, because it IS a chance. A lot of straight
people, especially back then, didn’t respond well when someone came out. Max doesn’t
say “I would have risen to the occasion.” When given the chance, a lot of people didn’t
rise to the occasion, and still don’t. We’re still dealing with employment discrimination;
disproportionte violence against Black trans women; and a White House that’s trying to
make it legal to turn away LGBTQ patients.
But politics aside, Max recognizes what she needs to do on a personal level, and she’s
asking for a chance to try. To test herself and see if she would indeed rise to the occasion.
It’s something that America as a country was testing out back then, and still is. Will
America rise to the occasion? So far, the answer is yes, but slowly, and unlike this
episode, it still hasn’t reached a happy ending.
Land ho, we’re pulling into port. Thanks for cruising along with us, and remember,
if you’re enjoying Culture Cruise, you can help keep the episodes coming by supporting
the show on Patreon. Or just hit that subscribe bell, the algorithm loves it when you do that
and so do I.
Thanks to everyone who makes Culture Cruise possible — and now if you’ll excuse me,
there’s still a killer on the loose on the set of Buds.