TV Time Capsule

‘Kate & Allie’ on New Year’s Eve: Cold Pizza, Warm Booze

“New Years Week” continues.

On December 31, 1984, CBS aired “New Year’s Eve,” the “Kate & Allie” episode in which Kate and Allie (Susan Saint James, Jane Curtin) struggle to find something to do on the final night of the year.

The problems begin when they give teenage daughters Emma and Jennie (Ari Meyers, Allison Smith) permission to throw a New Year’s Eve party – and then are told they aren’t invited.

On the big night, Allie rejects all of Kate’s ideas – bowling, riding the Staten Island Ferry, shopping (“Bloomingdale’s was closed!” she whines) – so they sneak into their basement to eat cold pizza and drink warm champagne.

Allie recalls her many holiday disasters (“My Worst Birthday, by Allie Lowell;” “My Worst Christmas, by Allie Lowell”) and by the end of the night, she and Kate are drunk. “You know what? I’ve had a terrible life!” Allie says, laughing.

As midnight approaches, the women count their blessings: Allie is thankful for her kids, her wardrobe, her two pair of lizard shoes – and Kate.

Kate returns the favor: “I put you right behind Emma – and ahead of my calfskin luggage.”

See for yourself: “New Year’s Eve” is part of the “Kate & Allie: The Complete First and Second Seasons” DVD set.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Monday, December 31, 1984:

8: “Hardcastle and McCormick” (ABC), “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” (CBS), “King Orange Jamboree Parade” (NBC)

9: “The Big Red One”* (ABC), “Kate & Allie” (CBS), “Hard Knox”* (NBC)

9:30: “Newhart” (CBS)

10: “Cagney & Lacey” (CBS)

 

The Record

For the week of December 30, 1984:

Top novel: “The Talisman” by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Top song: “Like a Virgin” by Madonna

Top movie: “Beverly Hills Cop”

Top TV show: “Dallas” (CBS)

In the news: War raged in Afghanistan

 

Captions: Allie, played by Jane Curtin, drinks from a bottle of champagne while reminiscing with Kate, played by Susan Stain James in “New Year’s Eve” (top); Allie lays down the law for New Year’s Eve party planners Jennie, played by Allison Smith, and Emma, played by Ari Meyers (middle, bottom).

‘Frank’s Place:’ Hanukkah in the Big Easy

“Eight Crazy Nights,” a celebration of Hanukkah-themed episodes, continues.

Night No. 5: December 14, 1987, when CBS aired the “Season’s Greetings” episode of its much-too-short-lived comedy-drama “Frank’s Place.” 

In the story, when college-professor-turned-New-Orleans-restaurateur Frank Parrish (Tim Reid) expresses his fascination with Jewish holiday customs, his friend Bubba Weisberger (Robert Harper) invites him to accompany him to his mother’s home for a Shabbat dinner.

“There’ll be the traditional prayers, the lighting of the candle, the meal. Then we’ll all sit around and talk about why I’m not married. That, too, is an ancient ritual,” Bubba jokes.

Sure enough, Bubba’s mother (guest star Nan Martin) spends dinner berating him for not settling down. Frustrated, Bubba announces that he and Frank are lovers, practically sending her – and Frank – into cardiac arrest.

Gregory Itzin – “24’s” weaselly President Logan – plays Bubba’s brother-in-law.

In a touching subplot, John Witherspoon, known for his buffoonish roles on “The Wayans Bros.” and in Ice Cube’s “Friday” movies, appears as Frank’s worldly Uncle Ray, whose life isn’t as glamorous as it seems.

“Season’s Greetings” was seen in 11.3 million homes, ranking 44th in the weekly ratings.

See for yourself: Sadly, “Frank’s Place” isn’t online or on video. “Eight Crazy Nights” will continue tomorrow.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Monday, December 14, 1987:

8: “MacGyver” (ABC), “Kate & Allie” (CBS), “ALF” (NBC)

8:30: “Frank’s Place” (CBS)

9: “Monday Night Football” (ABC), “Newhart” (CBS), “Motown Merry Christmas” (NBC)

9:30: “Designing Women” (CBS)

10: “Cagney & Lacey” (CBS), “Secrets Women Never Share” (NBC)

 

The Record

For the week of December 13, 1987:

Top novel: “The Tommyknockers” by Stephen King

Top song: “Faith” by George Michael

Top movie: “Throw Momma From the Train”

Top TV show: “The Cosby Show” (NBC) 

In the news: NBC considered leaving Rockefeller Center for New Jersey!

 

Captions: “Frank’s Place” cast members, from left, Robert Harper, Tim Reid, Frances E. Williams, Daphne Maxwell Reid, Tony Burton and Francesca P. Roberts in a photograph from TV Guide’s September 12, 1987, fall preview issue (top, photo by Mario Casilli); CBS’s advertisement for the “Season’s Greetings” episode, from the magazine’s December 12, 1987, edition (bottom).

‘Kate & Allie’ and Wendie Malick!

“Thanksgiving Week” continues.

On November 25, 1985, CBS aired “Thanksgiving,” the “Kate & Allie” episode in which Manhattan divorcee Allie Lowell finally meets Claire, her ex-husband Charles’s new wife.

The episode finds Allie (Jane Curtin) preparing a holiday feast for her family and friends, including best pal and roommate Kate McCardle (Susan Saint James). One by one, Allie’s guests cancel or are called away, leaving her alone with icy Claire (guest star Wendie Malick).

During their tense conversation, Allie realizes her volunteer work undermined her marriage as much as Charles’s medical career and his affair with Claire:

ALLIE: I always thought Charles left me. You say I left him. Maybe we’re both right. Maybe we needed the hospitals and the committees because we didn’t have each other to go home to. Maybe it wasn’t Charles’s fault or my fault or even – God help me – your fault. And maybe – just maybe – the happy ending I always wanted is just what I got.

CLAIRE: So now what do we do? Make friends?

ALLIE: Please. Let’s not push things too far.

“Thanksgiving” ends with everyone dining together peacefully.

See for yourself: “Thanksgiving” is part of the “Kate & Allie: The Complete Third Season” DVD set.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Monday, November 25, 1985:

8: “Hardcastle and McCormick” (ABC), “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” (CBS), “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes” (NBC)

9: “Monday Night Football” (ABC), “Kate & Allie” (CBS), “Mussolini: The Untold Story, Part 2” (NBC)  

9:30: “Newhart” (CBS)

10: “Cagney & Lacey” (CBS)

 

The Record

For the week of November 24, 1985:

Top novel: “The Mammoth Hunters” by Jean M. Auel

Top song: “We Built This City” by Starship

Top movie: “Rocky IV”

Top TV show: “60 Minutes” (CBS)

In the news: Gay leaders began building a political platform

 

 

 

Captions: Kate, played by Susan Saint James, tastes the turkey that Allie, played by Jane Curtin, cooked with cleanser in “Thanksgiving” (top); Wendie Malick as Claire and Allie’s long-dreaded confrontation with her successor as Mrs. Dr. Charles Lowell (middle); CBS’s advertisement for the episode, from TV Guide’s November 23, 1985, issue (bottom). 

‘An Early Frost:’ A Breath of Fresh Air in the Era of AIDS

On November 11, 1985, NBC aired “An Early Frost,” the first TV movie about AIDS – although its greater historical significance may lie in its depiction of gay men, which was unusually honest for the time.

The two-hour film cast Aidan Quinn as Michael, a young Chicago lawyer who discovers he has AIDS – and that he probably contracted the mysterious disease from his live-in boyfriend Peter (D.W. Moffett), who confesses he’s been unfaithful.

Michael leaves Peter and heads home to New England, where he decides to tell his parents that he’s gay and has AIDS.

Michael’s mother Katherine (Gena Rowlands) is upset but supportive; his macho father Nick (Ben Gazzara) is seemingly as anguished to discover that his son is gay as he is to learn that Michael is dying.

Michael’s grandmother (Sylvia Sidney) is more compassionate, telling him he shouldn’t feel ashamed, but his pregnant sister (Sydney Walsh) is afraid to be in the same room with him and shouts him away when he tries to hug her young son.

Of course, Michael also experiences prejudice outside the home: When he suffers a seizure, the paramedics refuse to transport him to the hospital. Later, when a new friend dies of AIDS, Michael watches a nurse toss the man’s possessions into a garbage bag, fearing contamination.

“An Early Frost” doesn’t depict Michael’s death, but it offers viewers some closure: Before the movie ends, Michael and Peter reconcile, and Nick finally accepts his son’s homosexuality.

The final scene shows a smiling Michael telling his parents he loves them as he departs for Chicago, presumably to die at Peter’s side.

Out, Dated

“An Early Frost” – the title comes from a line of dialogue about rose blossoms being nipped prematurely – is typical of the era’s disease-of-the-week TV movies, with the on-screen doctors (including one played by “Lost’s” Terry O’Quinn) delivering dialogue that sounds like it was lifted from a waiting room brochure.

Inevitably, this dates the film: No one, for example, mentions “HIV,” which wasn’t identified as the virus that causes AIDS until six months after the broadcast.

“An Early Frost” also seems old-fashioned in its portrayal of Michael’s life in the closet: The fact that the filmmakers chose to make the character’s coming-out a major subplot underscores how being openly gay in the 1980s was the exception, not the rule.

Contrast this with contemporary series such as “Modern Family,” where another gay lawyer, Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), is out to both his family and coworkers, and Kurt (Chris Colfer), “Glee’s” out-and-proud high school student.

TV’s First Gay Yuppies?

Not everything about “An Early Frost” is outdated; its depiction of Michael and Peter’s relationship was decidedly ahead of its time.

The couple may be prime time’s first gay yuppies: They share a stylish apartment, take expensive vacations and struggle to balance their personal and professional obligations (when Peter confesses his affair, he explains the indiscretion happened when Michael was busy with work).

Michael and Peter never kiss or appear together in bed, but they are affectionate.

As Steven Capsuto notes in “Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television,” the first time viewers see Peter, he is playfully waking Michael for work.

In another scene, the couple performs a variation on what Capsuto calls “one of TV’s classic spousal scenes”: Michael, half-naked, shaves, as Peter sits on the counter.

“The two do not just recite lines that say they are in love: they interact and talk like a couple. They smile spontaneously when they look into each other’s eyes,” Capsuto writes.

Michael and Peter show how far gay men have come in prime time since 1977, when television’s first regular homosexual character – “Soap’s” Jodie, played by Billy Crystal – planned a sex-change operation in order to be with his boyfriend.

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales seemed to hint at this in his review, describing Michael as being “so far removed from the stereotypical homosexual that … he is stereotypically unstereotypical.”

Post-Hudson Hysteria

“An Early Frost” aired six weeks after Rock Hudson became the first major celebrity to die of complications from AIDS.

As the Advocate noted in yesterday’s tribute to the movie, AIDS had claimed just 5,000 lives by 1985, but Hudson’s death sparked hysteria, stoked by nightly news reports on the epidemic.

“An Early Frost” demonstrated prime time entertainment’s ability to educate the public in ways that broadcast journalism couldn’t – or wouldn’t, as the New York Times’ John J. O’Connor noted at the time.

“The single moment of the grandmother’s insisting on kissing her troubled grandson makes an important point far more effectively than a month of breathless newscasts,” O’Connor wrote.

“An Early Frost” is also a reminder of a time when the broadcast networks embraced “prestige projects” that addressed the issues of the day.

Before the film aired, NBC sent viewers guide to hospitals and social services agencies and held advance screenings for science reporters and public health officials.

On the night of the broadcast, Tom Brokaw hosted a late-night special about AIDS, and several NBC stations set up hotlines to answer viewers’ questions about the disease.

An Enduring Legacy

The film was seen in 20 million homes, ranking sixth for the week, and won multiple Emmys and a Golden Globe, but its greatest legacy lies in the way it humanized gay men – not only as victims of AIDS, but also as everyday people.

See for yourself: “An Early Frost” is on DVD.

 

On TV

Here’s the prime-time lineup for Monday, November 11, 1985:

8: “Hardcastle and McCormick” (ABC), “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” (CBS), “TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes” (NBC)

9: “Monday Night Football” (ABC), “Kate & Allie” (CBS), “An Early Frost” (NBC)

9:30: “Newhart” (CBS)

10: “Cagney & Lacey” (CBS)

 

The Record

For the week of November 10, 1985:

Top novel: “Texas” by James A. Michener

Top song: “Miami Vice” by Jay Hammer

Top movie: “Death Wish 3”

Top TV show: “The Cosby Show” (NBC)

In the news: Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited Washington

 

 

Captions: “An Early Frost” stars Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands and Aidan Quinn in an NBC publicity photograph (top, photographer unknown); the network’s advertisement for the movie, from TV Guide’s November 9, 1985, issue.

Monday, February 6, 1989

Let’s say it’s the late ’80s and you’re Brandon Tartikoff, programming chief for NBC, television’s top-rated network.

The first Monday of the February “sweep” – one of four annual periods when broadcasters try to goose their ratings so they can charge more for airtime – finds your competition bringing out their biggest guns.

CBS is airing the second installment of its critically lauded “Lonesome Dove” miniseries; ABC has scheduled Peter Falk’s first “Columbo” movie in more than a decade.

What do you do?

Why, you stunt like crazy, of course!

So on this night 21 years ago, with CBS showing “Lonesome Dove” and ABC airing “Columbo’s” comeback, NBC counterprogrammed with “Night of 1,000 Laughs” – five new episodes of “The Cosby Show,” “ALF,” “The Golden Girls,” “Empty Nest” and “Cheers,” followed by a “Night Court” rerun.

The result?

An average 18 million homes tuned into NBC’s all-comedy night, compared to 15 million for CBS’s lineup (which also included new episodes of “Newhart” and “Kate & Allie”) and 13 million for ABC (which also showed a new “MacGyver”).

NBC aired a second “Night of 1,000 Laughs” on February 12, 1990, but the stakes were lower (the competition that night: ABC’s premiere of “The Jewel of the Nile” and a “Love Boat” reunion movie on CBS), and the ratings were smaller.

 

Elsewhere on Television

TV Guide listings for February 6, 1989:

11:30 ABC NIGHTLINE (CC) – Ted Koppel

11:30 CBS PAT SAJAK; 90 min.

Scheduled: Actor John Goodman (“Roseanne”), author Joseph Wambaugh.

11:30 NBC TONIGHT; 60 min.

Scheduled: Guest host Jay Leno, violinist Itzhak Perlman. Doc Severinsen orchestra.

 

… And in the News

New York Times excerpts from February 6, 1989:

MOSCOW REPORTS EXIT OF ‘LAST SOVIET SOLDIER’ FROM AFGHAN CAPITAL

Soviet troops completed their withdrawal from the Afghan capital of Kabul yesterday, Moscow radio reported, and the last columns of Soviet soldiers were expected to cross into their homeland shortly, ending the Kremlin’s nine-year military intervention in Afghanistan.

For ’88 Returns, ’86 Tax Cuts Are All in Place

As taxpayers begin filling out their 1988 returns in the next few weeks, many will be paying at the lowest rates since World War II. The reason is that 1988 was the first year in which the rate reductions of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 were fully effective.

Fury Over Lawmakers’ Raise Finds an Outlet on the Radio

Across the country the airwaves have buzzed for six weeks with the voices of Americans venting their fury over a proposed 51 percent pay increase for members of Congress. …

Roy Fox, a disc jockey on Detroit station WXYT, where some listeners have called in with their own rap songs and musical parodies protesting the raise.

Mr. Fox started the “Tea Bag Revolution” in mid-December by asking listeners to mail their representatives in Washington tea bags bearing the slogan “Read my tea bag, no pay raise.”

Sunday, January 25, 1987

TV Time Capsule begins “Super Bowl Fumbles Week,” seven days of flashbacks to the critical and ratings failures that have aired after the big game.

The game: Super Bowl XXI, in which the New York Giants stomped the Denver Broncos, 39 to 20.

The network: CBS.

The show: “Hard Copy,” a newspaper drama, debuted with a 90-minute pilot at about 10:15 p.m. It starred Michael Murphy as Andy Omart, a veteran crime reporter for the Los Angeles Morning Post, and Dean Devlin as David Del Valle (or was it David Del Valle as Dean Devlin?), the staff’s newest rookie.

The reviews: What reviews? CBS affiliates balked at carrying “Hard Copy” because it would push back the start of their late newscasts, limiting their ability to cash in on the big post-Super Bowl audience with local commercials. By the time the affiliates agreed to air “Hard Copy” – just days before the game – it was too late for the network to screen the show for critics.

The competition: ABC’s lineup included the premiere of “The Dead Zone,” a 1983 Stephen King flick starring Christopher Walken. NBC’s all-rerun lineup included “Return to Mayberry,” its 1986 “Andy Griffith Show” reunion.

The ratings: Super Bowl XXI was seen in 40 million homes, ranking first for the week – but just barely. That week’s edition of NBC’s “Cosby Show” – the episode in which Cliff helps Theo buy a car – was seen in 36.1 million homes, believed to be the highest number of households to ever watch a half-hour sitcom episode.

“Hard Copy” was seen in 17.3 million homes, tying with CBS’s “Kate & Allie” for 17th among the week’s 70 prime-time broadcasts.

The next episode: The following week, CBS aired “Hard Copy” in its regular time slot, Sunday nights at 10. This installment was seen in 11.2 million households, ranking 49th among the week’s 66 programs.

The result: “Hard Copy’s” ratings never improved; CBS stopped the presses after the fifth episode.

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing January 25, 1987:

7 PM NBC OUR HOUSE (CC); 60 min.

The kids have misgivings when Jessie (Deidre Hall) decides she wants to start dating again. Gus: Wilford Brimley. Kris: Shannen Doherty. David: Chad Allen. Molly: Keri Houlihan. Kaplan: Gerald S. O’Loughlin. (Repeat)

Guest Cast

Jeff Buchanan … Art Hindle

Carla Buchanan … Aarika Wells

Naomi … Andrea Barber

Monday, Nov. 30, 1987

Twenty-two years ago tonight, NBC aired “Fatal Confession: A Father Dowling Mystery,” a two-hour TV movie that doubled as a pilot for the 1989-91 “Father Dowling Mysteries” series.

“Fatal Confession” starred Tom Bosley as Father Frank Dowling, a Chicago priest and fan of detective novels who suspects one of his parishioners – a man whose death police ruled a suicide – was actually murdered.

Helping Dowling prove his theory: Sister Steve (Tracy Nelson), a streetwise nun who’s also an ace pool hustler and card shark.

Their investigation brings them into contact with all manner of unsavory characters, including the deceased’s scheming business partner (Peter Scolari), a pompous senator (Leslie Nielsen), the senator’s devious daughter (Susan Blakely) and a mob family’s intimidating matriarch (Sada Thompson).

“Fatal Confession” was one of the sound-alike titles the networks slapped onto TV movies in the months after the success of the 1987 Glenn Close/Michael Douglas theatrical flick “Fatal Attraction.” (See also CBS’s “Fatal Judgment” and NBC’s “Dangerous Affection”).

Father Dowling’s first adventure didn’t wow critics – “Do we really need a priest fighting crime along with everyone else in prime time?” Ray Richmond asked in the Orange County Register – and “Fatal Confession” finished third in its time slot behind a Los Angeles Raiders/Seattle Seahawks game on ABC’s “Monday Night Football” and “The Secret Garden,” a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movie on CBS.

Nevertheless, NBC ordered a “Father Dowling Mysteries” series, airing seven hour-long episodes in the winter of 1989 and then dropping the show. In January 1990, “Father Dowling Mysteries” returned with new episodes, but this time on ABC, where it aired for another season and a half.

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing Nov. 30, 1987:

8 PM NBC ALF (CC)

ALF gets a crash course in civics from Kate (Anne Schedeen), who has a dream that ALF crashes the political scene as a Presidential candidate. Political interviewer John McLaughlin appears as himself. Sen. Hossenfeffer: Louis Felder. Rep. Pearl: John O’Connell.

8:30 CBS KATE & ALLIE (CC)

From last season: In a toast to “I Love Lucy” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Allie (Jane Curtin) receives a letter for Charles and her desire to read it is acted bout in her dreams: first as Lucy with Kate (Susan Saint James) as her cohort Ethel, then as Rhoda to Kate’s Mary. Mr. Harris: Paul Austin. (Repeat)

[Beginning next week, “Kate & Allie” airs a half hour earlier.]

11 PM FOX WILTON NORTH REPORT – Comedy; 60 min.

Debut: Straight news with a comedy approach anchors this weeknight offering. Producer Barry Sand plans an offbeat look at the day’s events with hosts Phil Cowan and Paul Robins; a talk with a newsmaker; and a follow-up discussion with interviewers Nancy Collins and Greg Jackson.

11:30 NBC TONIGHT; 60 min.

Guest host Jay Leno and actor Vincent Price. Doc Severinesen and the Tommy Newsom orchestra.

12:30 NBC LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN; 60 min.

Scheduled: Tom Brokaw. (Repeat)

Saturday, Nov. 8, 1986

“Digging Deeper” is a closer look at notable TV moments from the past four decades.

The most memorable moment in “Isn’t it Romantic?,” the classic “Golden Girls” episode that debuted on NBC 23 years ago tonight, comes when Dorothy (Bea Arthur) lets roommate Blanche (Rue McClanahan) in  on a secret: Dorothy’s visiting college chum Jean is a lesbian.

Blanche is nonplussed.

“You aren’t surprised?” asks Dorothy’s mom Sophia (Estelle Getty).

“Of course not,” replies Blanche, absently patting her pixie haircut. “I mean, I’ve never known any personally, but isn’t Danny Thomas one?”

Arthur waits a beat before slaying the audience with her character’s retort: “Not Lebanese – lesbian!”

Blanche ponders the clarification aloud until it registers.

“Lesbian … lesbian … lesbian?”

Surprisingly, the rest of the episode – considered so daring when it aired in 1986 – now comes off as rather pedestrian.

“Isn’t it Romantic?” has Jean (Lois Nettleton) coming to visit Dorothy a year after the death of her longtime partner, Pat.

Blanche and Rose (Betty White), Dorothy’s other roommate, assume Pat was Jean’s husband; Dorothy, doubting her friends’ ability to “deal” with Jean’s lesbianism, doesn’t bother to correct them.

Jean gets along well with the girls, especially Rose, with whom she has much in common: Both women grew up on dairy farms; both have an affinity for sappy movies; and both are widows who still grieve the loss of their significant others.

Through the magic of sitcom editing, Jean appears to spend most of her visit with Rose. One afternoon, after the two see a double matinee of “Love Story” and “Terms of Endearment,” Jean surprises Dorothy with a confession: she thinks she’s falling in love with Rose.

Jean doesn’t come out to her new friend, sensing Rose – a woman who greeted her with her famous “ice cream clown sundaes” (complete with raisin eyes and sugar-cone caps) – would be too naïve to understand Jean’s homosexuality.

But one night, after staying up late playing cards, Jean tells Rose she’s “very special” and “quite fond” of her. Rose, clearly surprised and disturbed by Jean’s confession, pretends to have dozed off and not heard it.

The next morning, Rose explains what happened to Dorothy, who apologizes for not telling her friend the truth about Jean. Next, it’s Jean’s turn to apologize: she has a private heart to hear with Rose, telling her she’s sorry if she made her uncomfortable the night before.

“Well, I have to admit, I don’t understand these kinds of feelings,” Rose tells Jean.

“But if I did understand, if I were, you know, like you, I think I’d be very flattered and proud that you thought of me that way.”

The women embrace, agreeing friendship will be enough.

To today’s audiences, resolutions like these may seem rote.

But in 1986 – just nine years after Anita Bryant began her “Save Our Children” campaign in Miami, “The Golden Girls’” setting – Rose’s response must have seemed at least a little remarkable.

Yet such attitudes abound in “Isn’t it Romantic?”

Sophia sets the tenor early in the episode, when she offers Dorothy – and the viewer – her perspective on homosexuality: “Jean is a nice person. She happens to like girls instead of guys. Some people like cats instead of dogs. Frankly, I’d rather live with a lesbian than a cat.  Unless the lesbian sheds – then I don’t know.”

Later, Sophia declares if one of her own children came out, she would “wish him all the happiness in the world.”

Even Blanche, the man-hungry Southern belle, doesn’t mind Dorothy’s friend being a lesbian – once she understands what the word means.

“I’ll never understand what Jean doesn’t see in the opposite sex but hey, if that’s what makes her happy, that’s fine by me,” Blanche says.

(Sexually confident Blanche is offended, though, when she learns Rose is the object of Jean’s affection. “To think Jean would prefer Rose over me? That’s ridiculous,” Blanche tells Dorothy. “Now you tell me the truth: If you had to pick between me and Rose, who would you pick? Who?”)

Jean – a character who must be in her late ’50s, at least – is also portrayed as being sexually liberated and comfortable in her own skin.

Early in the episode, when Dorothy is debating whether to tell her roommates about Jean’s sexuality, Jean tells her friend she isn’t “embarrassed or ashamed of who I am.”

According to Steven Capsuto’s excellent 2000 book “Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television,” Jean was originally supposed to tell Dorothy, “If you think [your friends] are sophisticated enough, let’s tell them.”

NBC objected to the word “sophisticated,” reported Capsuto, who quoted a network censor who said he felt the line “might be demeaning to anyone who disapproves of that lifestyle. It’s like saying if you don’t approve of homosexuality, you are not sophisticated.”

Ultimately, the line Jean delivered to Dorothy was changed to: “You know your friends better than I do. If you think they are the kind of people who can handle it, I’d prefer to tell them.”

Today, “Isn’t it Romantic?” is remembered as one of the most beloved episodes of “The Golden Girls,” especially among the show’s many gay fans.

It’s also one of the series’ most honored segments: Director Terry Hughes won an Emmy and a Directors Guild of America Award for “Isn’t it Romantic?,” while guest actress Nettleton and the writing team of Jeffrey Duteil and Susan Harris each received Emmy nominations.

Nevertheless, the episode lacks the inventiveness of “Landlady,” the lesbian-themed episode of CBS’s “Kate & Allie” that aired two years earlier.

Then again, if the biggest complaint about a sitcom with gay themes is that its characters’ enlightened attitudes now seem commonplace, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing Nov. 8, 1986:

8 PM NBC FACTS OF LIFE

A reunion of Eastland alumnae brings back fond memories (in flashbacks) and produces unexpected revelations about the present. Sue Ann: Julie Piekarski-Probst. Cindy: Julie Anne Haddock. Nancy: Felice Schachter.

8:30 ABC ELLEN BURSTYN (CC) – Comedy

Ellen (Ellen Burstyn) gets a $1 million pledge for a new library from a dashing entrepreneur (Harvey Keitel) – who can’t read. Dean Morton: Roscoe Lee Browne. Sydney: Elaine Stritch. Molly: Megan Mullally.

9 PM CBS MOVIE – Drama; 2hrs.

Tom Selleck plays “Lassiter,” a suave jewel thief in 1930s London, who’s blackmailed into heisting gems from the German embassy. A 1984 movie.

Other Cast

Sara … Jane Seymour

Kari von Fursten … Lauren Hutton

Inspector Becker … Bob Hoskins

Breeze … Joe Regalbuto

11:30 NBC SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE; 90 min.

Host Rosanna Arquette tries to retrieve her soul form the devil in a spoof of “The People’s Court.” Ric Ocask sings “Keep on Laughing” and “Emotion in Motion.”

[Postponed from an earlier date.]

Monday, Oct. 15, 1984

“Digging Deeper” is a closer look at notable TV moments from the past four decades.

There’s no evidence the “Kate & Allie” episode “Landlady” stirred any controversy when CBS aired it 25 years ago tonight, even though it addresses issues – homophobia, gay relationships, the definition of family – that are as provocative now as they were then.

Nexis and Google searches don’t turn up any old headlines about nervous network affiliates refusing to air “Landlady” or sponsors dropping out before the episode’s broadcast or religious groups threatening boycotts.

Maybe that was the point.

Perhaps the “Kate & Allie” producers conceived “Landlady” not as mechanism to court publicity or goose ratings, but as a tool to educate viewers – to help them develop a deeper appreciation for the everyday challenges facing gay men and lesbians.

If, indeed, this was the producers’ goal, they succeeded.

“Landlady” has divorced mothers and roommates Kate McCardle and Allie Lowell (Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin) facing a big rent increase when the woman who owns their Greenwich Village apartment, Janet Franklin (guest star Gloria Cromwell), discovers they are two families sharing a single-family dwelling.

Unable to afford the rent hike – and unable to find another affordable apartment in Manhattan – Kate and Allie decide to lie to Janet, telling her they’re a lesbian couple – and therefore, one family.

Then Janet, who appears to be in her early 60s, comes out to Kate and Allie, introducing them to her lover of eight years – sweet, cardigan-clad grandmother Miriam Goodman (Chevi Colton).

Janet and Miriam, under the impression Kate and Allie are fresh from the closet, try to counsel them through the coming-out process, even arranging a dance in their honor at the local gay community center.

One lie leads to another, and Kate and Allie grow increasingly guilty about deceiving their new friends, but they conclude they have no other choice.

On the night of the dance, Janet and Miriam drop by the apartment to pick up “the girls,” as Janet has come to refer to Kate and Allie. When Janet accidentally overhears a conversation between them and discovers they’re only pretending to be gay, she’s hurt and angry.

“I am so tired of people who think they have the right to condescend to us – just because we’re different from them,” Janet says.

“Wait a minute,” Kate responds. “You were ready to penalize us $648 a month just because we’re different from you.”

JANET: This apartment is a one-family dwelling!

KATE: Sure, as long as you get to say what a family is.

JANET: Everybody knows what a family is.

KATE: I’m not so sure. A lot of people wouldn’t consider a gay couple a family, but you do. And now, so do we.

MIRIAM (gazing sympathetically at Kate and Allie): Oh Janet.

ALLIE: A family is anybody who wants to share their lives together.

KATE: Right – raise their kids together, put up with each other’s craziness. …

ALLIE: It’s love that defines a family and it could be any kind of love – your kind, our kind, theirs.

KATE: Who’s to say which kind of family is best? You above all people ought to know that.

Janet, having been gently forced to confront her hypocrisy, relents. She still wants Kate and Allie to accompany her and Miriam to the dance.

Allie reminds Janet that she and Kate aren’t really gay. “I won’t tell anybody if you don’t,” a smiling Janet responds.

The resolution may be a little pat, but it doesn’t undermine the brilliance of “Landlady” and the sly way it forces viewers to consider what life in the closet must be like.

As Steven Capsuto writes in his 2000 book “Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television:

The script turns around situations that many closeted people face every day to avoid losing a job or a home: Kate and Allie have to concoct lie after lie, avoid talking about boyfriends and ex-spouses, and remember what lies they have already told.

It’s clear the “Kate & Allie” producers went out of their way to present Janet and Miriam in a positive light: the couple is depicted as happy, well-adjusted and free of angst.

When Miriam tells Kate and Allie she hasn’t seen her grandson Andrew in more than a year, the viewer might expect to find out it’s because the boy’s parents don’t understand Grandma’s lesbianism. Instead, Miriam explains her son-in-law’s job was transferred to Frankfurt.

“Landlady” is also distinguished by the realistic manner in which Kate and Allie deal with their feelings and attitudes toward gay people.

Allie, a suburban Connecticut housewife before her divorce, is visibly nervous around Janet and Miriam. As soon as they depart after inviting Kate and Allie to the dance, Allie tells her roommate, “I don’t care if we have to live on skid row, I am not going to a gay dance!”

Free-spirited Kate is depicted as being much more casual about homosexuality. When Allie asks what she should do if “some woman asks me to dance,” Kate tells her, “What if some man asks you to dance? You either say no or you dance.”

Then, on the night of the big event, when it appears Allie isn’t going to budge from her rocking chair, Kate’s nerves are revealed. “I can’t go without you!” she tells Allie. “What if some woman asks me to dance?”

The episode’s final scene depicts the two couples happily dancing at the gay dance. (A straight couple and a gay male couple can also be seen, although the two men are the least visible.)

“Landlady” leaves open the possibility Janet and Miriam could become recurring characters, but only Miriam appears on the show again, popping up in a 1987 episode about Allie’s surprise birthday party.

The characters may have proven fleeting and “Landlady” may not have drawn much attention when in 1984, but no matter.

Kate and Allie and Janet and Miriam still have something to teach us, and as long as we have reruns, their lessons on love and family will endure.

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing Oct. 15, 1984:

8 PM ABC WORLD’S GREATEST MYSTERIES

George C. Scott and Arthur C. Clarke (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) are the hosts for a look at some mysteries. Segments on near-death experiences; a grandmother’s premonition of her granddaughter’s fatal accident; and poltergeists. (60 min.)

8 PM CBS SCARECROW AND MRS. KING

Amanda’s life is in jeopardy when a bitter ex-spy threatens to name names in an expose on security agencies’ use of amateur spies. Arlene Francis appears as a TV talk-show hostess. Amanda: Kate Jackson. (60 min.)

Additional Cast

Douglas Harriman … Steve Eastin

Barney Sleece … Michael DeLano

Roland Brooks … Kaz Garas

8 PM NBC TV’S BLOOPERS & PRACTICAL JOKES

Scheduled: Practical jokes on singer Cyndi Lauper, who faces a difficult baby-sitting job; and Joan Van Ark, who must evaluate a play Ted Shackelford wants to invest in. Also: bloopers by the “Family Ties” cast, with commentary by Michael Gross; David Letterman’s visit to a novelty-item exhibition; sports clips with Fred Roggin; silly cinemas; toy commercials. (60 min.)

9 PM ABC NFL FOOTBALL

Green Bay at Denver. (Live)

9:30 CBS NEWHART

In the third-season opener, Dick (Bob Newhart) may not survive a guilty conscience after he unloads Kirk’s face on a gullible buyer (Ray Walston), and then learns that a TV producer (new regular Peter Scolari) is preparing a grossly isleading promo for his new show. Hinton: Ford Rainey.

9 PM NBC V: THE FINAL BATTLE (CC) – Science Fiction

Part 2. The rebels stage a daring rescue at the aliens’ security headquarters and also seek to sabotage their plan to siphon Earth’s water into their giant spaceships. (Repeat; 2 hrs.)

Cast

Mike Donovan … Marc Singer

Julie … Faye Grant

Ham Tyler … Michael Ironside

Robin … Blair Tefkin

Diana … Jane Badler

Martin … Frank Ashmore

[Concludes Friday evening.]

10 PM CBS CAGNEY & LACEY – Crime Drama

The detectives begin a third season as they investigate a child-molestation charge, but the victim’s father refuses to let his 7-year-old daughter testify. Meanwhile, Petrie files a civilian complaint against two fellow officers who mistook him for a thief. Cagney: Sharon Gless. Lacey: Tyne Daly. (60 min.)

Guest Cast

Jeremy Mitchell … John Reilly

Carrie Mitchell … Natalie Gregory

Rhonda Gallegos … Rose Portillo

Traeger … Christopher Rydell

 

Monday, Oct. 8, 1984

Twenty-five years ago tonight, Farrah Fawcett delivered what many consider the performance of her career when she portrayed a battered wife in the classic TV movie “The Burning Bed.”

The NBC film, like so many TV movies of the era, was based on a true story.

Fawcett portrayed Francine Hughes, a Michigan housewife who killed her abusive husband by setting fire to his bed while he slept. A jury acquitted Hughes after finding her temporarily insane.

“The Burning Bed” is probably best remembered for giving Fawcett her breakthrough role as a “serious” actress, but at the time of its broadcast, critics were equally impressed with Paul LeMat, who portrayed her husband Mickey.

The New York Times’ John J. O’Connor reserved his strongest praise for Grace Zabriskie and James Callahan, who played Mickey’s “unfailingly supportive parents, their unquestioning devotion rooted in some primal fanaticism.”

“The Burning Bed” earned eight Emmy nominations but didn’t win any; Fawcett lost the actress award for outstanding actress in a limited series or special to Joanne Woodward, an Alzheimer’s victim in CBS’s 1985 movie “Do You Remember Love?”

More than 30 million households tuned into “The Burning Bed,” giving NBC its best performance since the week of Sept. 15, 1980, when it aired “Shogun.”

“The Burning Bed” remains the fourth highest-rated TV movie ever, behind ABC’s 1983 nuclear holocaust fable “The Day After,” CBS’s 1976 Charles Manson docudrama “Helter Skelter” and ABC’s “Little Ladies of the Night,” a 1977 prostitution drama.

Perhaps most importantly, “The Burning Bed” sparked thousands of calls to domestic violence hotlines.

One woman called a New Jersey hotline, saying her husband was beating her because she refused to stop watching the movie.

Counselor Kathy Moore told the Associated Press the woman “was screaming. She had three children and she was trying to get them out of the house. He was abusing her right then. … I gave her the location (of the shelter), but she never called back.”

 

From the Pages of TV Guide

Also airing Oct. 8, 1984:

8 PM ABC CALL TO GLORY – Drama

Sarnac (Craig T. Nelson) bails out of a demonstration flight and is stranded by a storm in the mountains with his injured Japanese copilot (John Fujioka). Vanessa: Cindy Pickett. Jackie: Elizabeth Shue.

Additional Cast

Hollins … Kenneth Mars

Dotty Hollins … Kelly Jean Peters

Takamine ... James Salto

Mrs. Cunningham … Holgie Forrester

9 PM CBS KATE & ALLIE

As the series begins it second season, Kate (Susan Saint James) listens with alarm to the ticking of her biological clock. At first, though, she’s simply caught up in the excitement of a co-worker’s pregnancy. Then she discovers a “physical yearning” for “someone little to take care of.” Before long, Kate’s taking her yearning so seriously that she considers having a baby despite being single. Allie: Jane Curtin. Emma: Ari Meyers.

11:30 NBC TONIGHT

From 1983: George Burns, Jacqueline Bisset, Conti Condol. Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon. (Repeat; 60 min.)