"Don’t take this wrong, but it never occurred to me you might be gay."
"It never occurred to me you might be straight."
It wasn’t easy to put gay characters on TV in the 1990s.
But one show managed to be gayer than pretty much any other mainstream sitcom of the time.
Frasier had two huge advantages when it came to LGBT inclusion: first, a ton of gay people
worked on it, from the cast to the writers to directors.
And second, its comedy hinges on misunderstandings, farce, and unspoken social taboos -- and unspoken
taboos just so happen to be something queer people know a thing or two about.
All aboard and welcome to Matt Baume’s Culture Cruise, where we take a deep dive on queer
topics on TV, in movies, in books and games and more.
This time we’re taking a peek at Season 2 Episode 3 of Frasier -- The Matchmaker.
Culture Cruise is made possible by the lovely folks who pledge their support on Patreon
-- folks like Mark Boeder.
Thank you Mark!
If you’re enjoying these videos head over to patreon.com/mattbaume or click the link
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Like so many of Frasier’s best episodes, it’s a comedy of errors and manners that
hinges on incorrect romantic assumptions.
These kinds of comedies used to be much more common in decades past, when it was socially
taboo to discuss topics like romance openly.
But by the mid-90s there wasn’t much left that couldn’t be talked about on TV.
The one exception was queerness, still considered forbidden and risque enough to facilitate
a screwball misunderstanding.
Gay storylines were the secret ingredient for a perfect comedy of errors -- all that
was required was that a show be brave enough to broach the topic, and queer enough to get
the tone right.
The episode starts with Daphne lamenting the state of her love life.
"You've been seeing a man?"
"Only when I close my eyes and concentrate."
Frasier is determined to find Daphne a date.
But when his producer, Roz, suggests a few men, Frasier only manages to insult her.
"You and Daphne are entirely different kinds of women.
While Daphne is very shy and inexperienced, you are more, well a lot, well one would be
hard pressed to find anyone more..."
"Oh I get it.
I'm out of here."
"Roz, please."
"No, I can't stay.
The fleet is in."
And Roz is still a bit miffed back at the office, when the new boss pops by.
Tom's the new station manager, just arrived, and Frasier makes a good first impression.
Better than he realizes, in fact.
When Tom mentions that he recently had a breakup, Frasier gets the idea to introduce him to
Daphne…
"I take it then, you're unattached?"
"Yes, but I haven't given up hope."
"Well you may have come to the right place."
"Really."
"Yes."
And of course, Tom thinks he’s flirting.
What we're seeing, although Frasier doesn't realize it, is the dance of subtext that queer
people have to go through all the time.
Especially in the 90s, there was a risk to openly identifying as LGBT, so queer people
had to employ subtle signals to communicate.
Things like noticing each other’s appearance …
"Say that's a beautiful tie."
Sharing interest in culture...
"Yes, I love London.
The museums, the theater."
"Oh yeah, I'm a big theater buff.
Three shows a week."
A hundred years prior, queer people in England spoke in a dialect called Polari, which they
used to communicate without risking violence or arrest.
"How is Pauline?"
"She's had nanti bully fake.
Dyed her riah, her ends are a real mess."
"Nanti bona.
I hope she vaggeried straight to the crimper."
These days, it’s not quite so perilous to be publicly gay.
We don’t need a whole second language.
But even today, in most states you can be fired for being gay.
You can be evicted, lose your student loans, get kicked out of school.
So no wonder Tom is cautious, and uses subtle signals to identify himself in a way that
he could still plausibly deny that he’s gay if needed.
Of course, the problem is that Frasier’s too clueless to realize that’s what’s
going on.
Having established some rapport with Tom, he invites him over for dinner -- oblivious
to the conversation that Tom thinks they just had.
"He seems like a nice guy."
"Ah, he's okay."
"I hope he's more than okay.
He just asked me out on a date."
Misunderstandings like these have long been the backbone of sitcoms.
And although Roz could clear up the whole thing with a single sentence, she's still
annoyed at Frasier, so...
"Listen, Tom, there's something you need to know about Frasier."
"What?"
"He's nuts about chardonnay."
What follows is a standard Frasier dinner party of errors, where every innocent line
is a double entendre.
"That's a hell of a view."
"It's even better from the bedroom."
Queer people have always had to live in entendre, and become fluent in subtext for the sake
of survival.
As a result, we're always listening for the meaning behind the meaning, even when none
is intended.
"I usually hang out a place called Duke's.
Great crowd.
Lot of young cops."
"I didn't ask Tom to dinner so he'd end up talking to you all night in the kitchen.
There are others who would like to have a crack at him."
This episode is able to deploy those double meanings so well because it was written by
a gay man, Joe Keenan.
It was directed by a gay man, David Lee.
And the series itself stars multiple queer people, though they didn’t talk about it
at the time: there’s David Hyde Pierce, who would publicly come out years later.
John Mahoney avoided talk about his sexuality, but outside of Frasier he aligned himself
with LGBT projects.
The actor who played Bulldog, Dan Butler, is gay, as is Edward Hibbert, who played Gil
Chesterton.
With so many queer people involved with the show, it’s no wonder it’s so fluent in
gay misunderstandings.
It’s almost a shame when the farce finally enters the inevitable unravelling stage:
"I sensed you had a problem with me dating Frasier."
"Well if you must know...I’m sorry, what was the question?”
It's interesting that Niles is the first one to understand what's going on, and also that
he instantly gets it.
Though his character is presented as straight, he is very queer coded.
Not only does Niles conform to the gay stereotype of prissy fussiness, there’s also a more
genuine undercurrent of timid inhibition and self-restraint that mirrors the caution exhibited
by so many closeted gay men.
So it’s not so surprising that Niles is the first to be taken into Tom’s confidence.
And unlike most sitcom characters who learn that someone is gay, he accepts it instantly,
instead of going through denial:
“That's impossible.
Tom’s not gay.”
“He seems to be under that impression.”
With the dinner party breaking up, Frasier finally realizes what’s happened and he
has a little gay panic.
“You’re cute when you’re nervous.”
“Well then I must be downright adorable.”
And then we get to the misunderstanding that is the basis of the episode’s farce:
"Don't take this wrong, but it never even occurred to me you might be gay."
"It never occurred to me you might be straight."
That confusion -- the double-meanings, the subtext, the potential for misunderstanding
-- is a natural component of queer conversation.
Because of the violence directed at LGBT people, we often have to talk in code so we can avoid
detection, or to signal each other without anyone else noticing.
That the subtext goes over the head of people like Frasier isn’t a bug.
It’s a feature.
Tom departs the dinner party with a few questions:
"Does this mean your dad's not gay either?"
"No, no, dad's not gay."
"But Niles -- come on."
And once again, there may be a double meaning behind his words.
He’s asking about Martin and Niles the characters, but he could easily be asking the same about
John and David, the actors who play them.
Two men who had, at the time, chosen to avoid being open about their sexuality -- and who
were working in an industry where coming out could mean the end of your career.
In 1994, primetime TV certainly wasn’t ready for a conversation about THAT.
So you could take that line at face value, and believe that’s it’s ONLY referencing
the characters.
You could plausibly claim that there’s no subtext whatsoever to those lines spoken by
a gay character, penned by a gay writer, and crafted by a gay director.
That’s certainly possible.
But for there NOT to be at least a little hidden meaning to the closing line of the
show would just be a little bit … queer.
Thanks for cruising along with us!
And thanks to everyone who makes the Culture Cruise possible with a pledge of a dollar
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Perks like early ad-free access to videos like these.
Thanks again to Mark Boeder for making this episode possible.
And now if you’ll excuse me, these salads aren’t going to toss themselves.