Very Special Gay Episode: Queen Latifah Was the Lesbian Fairy Godmother Holding Together Living Single’s Same-Sex Wedding
Welcome to Very Special Gay Episode, a fun little series where I recap standalone lesbian episodes from classic TV shows that are not otherwise necessarily gay. In this installment, we will discuss Living Single Season Three, Episode 22: “Woman-to-Woman”
There are few television shows that I would consider myself a legitimate TV “scholar” of — not in the way I would Living Single. Famously, my obsession with the peak 90s FOX sitcom lead to me having a Queen Latifah-themed birthday party in second grade. I’ve watched it quite nearly daily since it first went off air in 1998, first in after-school reruns and cable syndication, then on DVD (they only released the first season, a tragedy, but that did not stop me), and now on streaming. And every reunion show? Behind-the-scenes oral history? I was there. The Internet loves to joke about “besties” but Khadijah, Maxine, Synclaire and Regine? Those are my besties forreal. Those girls hold me down. Not past tense.
And maybe it’s because Living Single is still so alive for me, such a part of my everyday life, that I was shocked to find out that September marked its 30th birthday. For one, I refuse to be that old. But more to the point, I never thought I’d see the day where, even for a second, Living Single would get the well-earned due it deserves. But there it was… a commemorative sticker underneath its title on Max streaming, a special edition billboard on the same production lot where it used to get paid dust for Friends.
It is hard to talk about Living Single without talking about Friends, because rock ’n’ roll and Elvis Presley vocals barely scratch the surface of what white America has stolen from Black people and Black culture. If you’ve never seen Living Single, first you should remedy that immediately — it’s available for streaming on both Max and Hulu. But also, the basic plot is that a group of twentysomethings learn about love, dating, and the meaning of friendship while stomping through hijinks in New York in the 90s. There’s also a few cross-group dating and big “will they/won’t they” romances peppered throughout. Is that sounding familiar? The show came out before Friends by exactly one year, and they both filmed on the same lot. I don’t have to say more on it, because plenty of others — including Living Single cast and crew — already have.
Plus, I mean, right now we’re here for the gay. And to celebrate Black greatness on its own terms, not in comparison to white people.
The structure of Living Single is that Khadijah (Queen Latifah) lives with her childhood best friend, Regine (Kim Fields), and her cousin, Synclaire (Kim Coles), in a Brooklyn brownstone. Across the street lives Khadijah’s college best friend, Maxine (Erika Alexander), and above the women’s apartment live Overton (John Henton) and Kyle (T.C. Carson). Today we are focused on Max. Let us begin our story.
Max and Khadijah both went to the HBCU Howard University. At Howard, Max’s roommate was Shayla (Karen Malina White) — which is a great winking nod to the fact that Erika Alexander and Karen Malina White played teenage best friends Pam and Charmaine on The Cosby Show, adding a little emotional depth to the story, if you know where to look.
Shayla is traveling up to Brooklyn with her fiancé, Chris, because the whole crew is throwing her a bridal shower that will somehow be only a few days before her wedding. The wedding will also take place in Brooklyn despite the fact that seemingly neither Shayla or Chris live there.
Does this timeline make sense!? No, but nothing made sense in the 90s. Go with it.
Everyone is getting ready for the bridal shower (Synclaire is hand-making little brides and grooms out of toilet paper) when Shayla shows up. We find out that Chris is short for Christina, her fiancée. Synclaire immediately starts ripping apart the toilet paper grooms while cheerfully exclaiming, “Lesbians! NEAT!” And we cut to the opening theme song.
People often wonder what life is like as the Editor-in-Chief of a gay magazine…
To jump around a little bit, because we only have so much time here, the most important thing to know is that even though Living Single is typically a very straight show (obvious lesbian prowess of Queen Latifah not withstanding), it is STUNNING and EXHILERATING how gay this episode is — not only in plot, but also in jokes.
About halfway through the episode, I noticed the trend and tried to keep a running tally of every gay joke I heard, and after roughly five minutes my hand was already cramping. My brain had broken. I gave up. On top of that, nearly every joke, every zinger, lands.
Even the jokes that made me most nervous, end on solid ground. Kyle — a known “ladies’ man” — stands out of Khadijah’s apartment before the lesbian bridal shower, proclaiming he can “change” every woman that crosses his path. When one woman in particular turns him down, he huffs, “You’re just like the rest of them, afraid of men.” Synclaire looks at him, her face in a confused pout, “That’s Khadijah’s friend Jamie — she’s straight.” His bruised ego rightfully becomes his own punchline.
But the star of “Woman-to-Woman,” surprising no one, is Queen Latifah herself.
Khadijah has always been read queerly. Maybe its my imagination, I know that ‘90s Queen Latifah was still far from being out herself, but I swear to you that Queen has never stood more proud, more swaggy, more effortlessly f*cking gay (in the every best possible way) than she does here. It’s not in what she says, it’s in how she says it. Her smirk, her hair bounce, her posture.
I wish for this sign to magically appear every time I walk into a new room.
When Synclaire makes a hot pink sign for the bridal shower that proclaims “WELCOME LESBIANS” — there is Khadijah to rip it down, mumbling to herself “Nah kid.”
When Synclaire proclaims, “I’m not up on lesbian etiquette. It’s not like I’ve ever known any before,” there is Khadijah again: “Aunt Gladys was gay.” (Hilariously, Synclaire’s response? “Aunt Gladys was not gay. She just never found the right man. Like her roommate, Aunt Hazel.”)
When the always exquisitely dressed and extremely straight Regine shows up to the bridal shower in a backwards cap and baggy shirt, arguing “Why put out the banquet, if they can’t eat.” There’s Khadijah with the knockout, “You succeeded. You definitely look like a sack lunch.”
And when Max struggles with her best friend’s coming out, there is Queen Latifah one final time with the simple, non-confrontational, pitch-perfect words of wisdom that every straight person best friend of a gay needs to hear:
Khadijah: Max let me ask you something, the entire time y’all roomed together, did she ever try to come on to you?
Max: No.
Khadijah: Okay, so she played it cool. That’s how much your friendship mattered to her.
Truer words have never been spoken, especially because as it turned out, the reason that Shayla kept her secret from Max for so long (she told Khadijah junior year back when they were all in college) was not because she worried Max couldn’t handle the news that she was gay. It was because she worried Max couldn’t handle the news that Shayla was, for years, in love with her. It’s a scene that plays out beautifully, equal parts raw emotion and well-earned humor, with the kind of charm that you’ll have hard time believing goes by so quickly for how deeply you become invested in it.
Most notably, in a hat trick that a lot of straight shows still would struggle to pull off today, there’s never an ounce of homophobia laced in their confrontation. Max isn’t freaked out that Shayla is gay, or even that Shayla once loved her — she’s bothered that her best friend didn’t feel like she could be her true self around her. It’s that nagging feeling that leads to the two friends making up on the morning of Shayla’s wedding.
Max visits Shayla at the beauty salon and just as the closing credits are about to roll, she can’t help but lament:
“Think of all the time we waisted. All the conversations we didn’t have. All those chances I would have had to diss your dates.”
Release the tape! Release the tape! (ahem. sorry.)
And that final joke, my friends… drumroll.. brings us to the end of this Very Special Gay Episode!
OK, Is It Worth It? I’m biased, but based on the sheer infinite levels of gay jokes packed into 22 minutes, the rareness of Very Special Gay episodes on Black Television, and of course Queen Latifah — this is a clear winner by every known metric. Congrats to series creator and writer Yvette Lee Bowser, a success!! 10/10, Would do it again.
Very Special Gay Episode: In 1986, Golden Girls Created the Most Enduring Lesbian Joke on Television
Welcome to Very Special Gay Episode, a fun little series where we recap of standalone lesbian episodes from classic TV shows that are not otherwise necessarily gay. In this installment, we will discuss Golden Girls Season Two, Episode Five: “Isn’t It Romantic?”
I didn’t really start watching Golden Girls until Betty White died. I mean, I am gay, so I knew enough to get along. I had the basic rubric covered, if you will: all the words to the theme song, that Blanche is… let’s say, sex positive, Sophia’s snark is legendary, Rose is ditzy and Dorothy has the all the quotable one-liners.
This is redundant to say about what’s considered one of the greatest sitcoms ever created, but I’ve been stunned — and I mean just straight up floored! — by how tight the jokes are in Golden Girls. Every refrain is a one-two punch. Watching it this month, I could barely recover from my first laugh when the next came barreling in, either a light cackled Huh or a straight up fucking screammmm. It’s also infinitely comforting — right from the earliest chords of “Thank You for Being a Friend,” which again, yes, I am the last one to the party here. I know it. Don’t judge me.
But not knowing Golden Girls isn’t the same as being lost to its looming legacy, right? I first heard the infamous “Lebanese joke” when Santana Lopez came out on Glee a decade ago. Her future girlfriend and wife, Brittany, knew but the rest of the Glee Club didn’t yet. So when everyone went to perform Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” proudly wearing black-and-white t-shits declaring what made them different, Britney makes a shirt for Santana that says “Lebanese” — Santana’s confused, “I’m Hispanic.”
More than a decade before that, when Ellen pretty much changed gay television as we know it (and it’s sad where we are with Ellen now, but it’s still true), she joked on the The Rosie O’Donnell Show in ’96 about coming out as “Lebanese”, even though neither comedian was out yet.
So that brings us back to Golden Girls because 10 years before Ellen, 25 years before Santana (and if you’re keeping track — 35 years from today), Blanche Devereaux launched the joke that just will not die.
Because you see, all the way in 1986 Dorothy had a gay friend. That gay friend was Jean, who as Sophia correctly clocked back when the girls were in college — is a lesbiannnnn. Le gasp!
To quote Sophia, “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, that I don’t know!” (Is announcing your lesbian character with a cat joke a bit stereotypical? Sure, but we’re still making cat jokes now in 2022. This is 1986! When cat jokes were fresh! 10 out of 10. No notes.)
(Did I mention that Jean the lesbian is hot? It matters that she’s hot.)
So Jean was married to Pat, who’s recently passed on. The other women in the house have been assuming that Pat was a man and Dorothy’s been unsure about what to say.
Jean tells her that she’s fine with being a lesbian, “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of who I am” and that if the roommates can handle it, “I’d prefer to tell them” — that is until Rose comes out, right on time as always, with Clown Sundaes, complete with raisins for eyes and ice cream cones turned upside down as party hats. If this had been me that obviously gay sundae would’ve only been more reason to drop the news, but Pat worries that The L Word will just be a little bit too much… so they decide to keep it to themselves.
Blanche: “Dorothy has told us so much about you, I feel as if we’re bosom buddies.”
Dorothy, to Sophia: “Ma, not a word.”’
WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT THOSE TIGHT ONE-TWO QUIPS. What. Did. I. Say!!!! Ok moving on.
When Rose tells story of growing up in Saint Olaf (it’s always Saint Olaf) and her dairy cow, it’s not hard to see right away — Jean’s smitten. Soon they’re regular lunch dates during Jean’s time together and really “hitting it off,” according to Blanche.
In fact, Jean decides she’s needs to leave early. Dorothy worries that something serious has happened back home. And no, it’s not “back home” but damn it is serious. Jean thinks she’s falling in love with Rose. Jean hasn’t felt this way since Pat died. Alright, so record scratch —
How long has Jean been in the house? A week MAX? And already she’s in love with Rose, a woman she certainly hasn’t known more than 7 days. But also we’re talking about lesbians here. So sure, that tracks. Back to the show —
Wrestling with Jean’s news, Dorothy can’t sleep, she wakes Sophia up.
Dorothy: “How would you react if you were told one of your kids were gay?”
Sophia: “Your brother Phil is gay? I knew it! When he was a kid we couldn’t keep him away from those Gladiator movies.”
Dorothy: “Ma, Phil is not gay.”
Sophia: “You mean you’re gay? What your friend Jean is having some sort of membership drive?”
Dorothy: “Ma..”
Sophia: “Dorothy, I know you don’t get many dates, but stick with what you know! At your age, it’s very hard to break into something new. Goodnight.”
Dorothy: “Ma, I am not gay. I just wanted to get your reaction.”
Sophia: “I’ll tell you the truth Dorothy, if one of my kids were gay, I wouldn’t love him one bit less. I would wish him all the happiness in the world.”
And yes it was necessary that I transcribed that entire conversation!! I don’t know that I’ll always take long deep dives into the historical context of these Very Special Episodes that we look at in this lil time capsule of my creation, but the pronoun switch (going from Jean, a lesbian, to Sophia’s hypothetical son) is definitely on purpose. Not to over simplify things, but we all know what’s happening with gay men in 1986, right? We get what’s happening here, what our government wasn’t doing (still isn’t) and which vulnerable populations they absolutely weren’t taking care of. Oh and hey — guess what, in 1986 Golden Girls was a Top Five most watched show in America. Sophia making this statement, at this moment? Not a coincidence.
So Dorothy tells Sophia that Jean’s in love with Rose, which is absolutely preposterous because… Rose is Rose, so they both start laughing so loud it wakes Blanche up, too. And that leads us! To the moment we’ve been waiting for!
Blanche: “What is going on?”
Sophie and Dorthy, in unison: “Nothing!”
Blanche: “Come on, I heard you laughing. What’s so funny?”
Sophia: “For starters, Jean is a lesbian.”
Blanche: “What’s funny about that?”
Sophia: “You aren’t surprised?”
Blanche: “Of course not! I mean, I haven’t known any personally, but isn’t Danny Thomas one?”
Dorothy: “Not Lebanese, Blanche! LES-BIA-N.
Blanche: Lesbian. Lesbian. (gasps) LESBIAN.
(If we were really gonna go there with our queer analysis on this Sunday morning, we’d talk about how this exchange happens in bed. But I have pancakes to eat. So moving on.)
From here things wrap up more or less as you’d expect. Jean eventually comes out to Rose. Rose, much like everyone else, takes the news with love and compassion that should be corny but somehow isn’t. Everyone fits in one last laugh (Dorothy and Blanche crouched outside the kitchen window to hear what’s going on) to wrap up… drumroll.. our Very Special Gay Episode!
OK, Is It Worth It? In addition to the whole birthing a 35 year old lesbian joke thing, for this episode Terry Hughes actually won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing of a Comedy, along with Emmy nominations for Jefrey Duteil (writing), Betty White (of course), and Lois Nettleton (Jean, for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Comedy). We’re talking elite shit. 10/10, Would do it again.