"Not That There's Anything Wrong With That!" (Seinfeld)

[Mozenrath]

Matt Baume put out an excellent episode on the famous episode of Seinfeld where he is mistaken as gay. Great look at both the episode itself, the inspiration for it, the political atmosphere of those times, and even how Seinfeld as a show began and nearly ended just as quickly.

It's a great channel in general, but this feels like as good an example as any of the sort of content he covers, which is typically queer topics in sitcoms.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

I’ll check it out later, so maybe I’m talking about things covered here, but the episode was nearly canned because they felt they were basically saying it’s bad to be gay, in the discussion Larry Charles said “Not that there’s anything wrong with it!” And they decided that was their line to please everyone and not make it homophobic.

[Mozenrath]

Aug 1, 2022 18:37:56 GMT -5 Cranjis McBasketball said:

I’ll check it out later, so maybe I’m talking about things covered here, but the episode was nearly canned because they felt they were basically saying it’s bad to be gay, in the discussion Larry Charles said “Not that there’s anything wrong with it!” And they decided that was their line to please everyone and not make it homophobic.

He kinda touches on it, yeah, with the cast feeling like it was just not working the way they originally conceived it, NBC suggesting just axing the idea and doing something else, and this change in tact turning the idea around into something that worked. He doesn't elaborate on it here, but they did axe a different episode for being too dark to actually be something the cast felt comfortable doing, which I looked up elsewhere. Guess that one was going to have a plot where Elaine considered buying a gun and making a joke about shooting herself with it, and it being called off when they decided that one wasn't working. That was only like the 9th episode they were going to film, too, so maybe it would have been considered salvageable later in the series, but they decided that was a bit much at that time, with it never even making it to filming.

So yeah, if they hadn't figured out a way to make it palatable, they weren't above nixing it entirely, too.

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

Love his channel, these videos are a great companion to the podcast "Gayest Episode Ever" which has covered a lot of the same episodes and more, some similar takes, some different ones, there's a lot of episodes, they've gone into more obscure sitcoms in lots of detail, highly recommend.

[salz4life]

I woke up in the middle of the night to this episode being played on Nick at Night last week. LOL

[Mozenrath]

Aug 2, 2022 9:55:48 GMT -5 Futureraven: Beelzebruv said:

Love his channel, these videos are a great companion to the podcast "Gayest Episode Ever" which has covered a lot of the same episodes and more, some similar takes, some different ones, there's a lot of episodes, they've gone into more obscure sitcoms in lots of detail, highly recommend.

I love that Baume gives some historical context, like Barney Miller on the topic of censorship, or The Bob Newhart Show's episode that came I think basically right after homosexuality was removed from the list of mental illnesses, and how that came to pass.

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

Aug 4, 2022 0:48:44 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

Aug 2, 2022 9:55:48 GMT -5 Futureraven: Beelzebruv said:

Love his channel, these videos are a great companion to the podcast "Gayest Episode Ever" which has covered a lot of the same episodes and more, some similar takes, some different ones, there's a lot of episodes, they've gone into more obscure sitcoms in lots of detail, highly recommend.

I love that Baume gives some historical context, like Barney Miller on the topic of censorship, or The Bob Newhart Show's episode that came I think basically right after homosexuality was removed from the list of mental illnesses, and how that came to pass.

Absolutely, I'm not lgbtq+ myself but the history and culture are so important and interesting.