Bonus! Why do so many 90s sitcoms have gay marriage episodes?

Great video, and agreed about Modern Family! I found it so cringy and everyone annoying. I actually find a majority of single-cam comedies to be cringy rather than funny to me. I often feel like I’m the only one that loves and prefers the multi-cam sitcoms. One of the many reasons I love your channel and what initially brought me to it: our shared love of multi-cam sitcoms. 🤗

My mom born 1930 didn't believe that unmarried people should have children because then the kids would be considered bastards, and they would be bullied by both kids and adults. So when it came time to get her to vote against Prop 8 all I did was throw mom's words back at her. I told her that homosexual couples would be having children even if they can't get married, so wouldn't it be better these children not be considered bastards? She thought about it for a bit, and after more discussion, she voted against Prop 8.

Great video! I know you know this, but the vid was about 90s sitcoms, and at the end you're saying they weren't effective because the characters getting married would need to be recurring characters. But since openly gay characters couldn't be main characters until Will & Grace, which I just googled & it says it started in 1998 (and Ellen's coming out episode was 1997), that's the end of that decade. They just got openly gay starring characters on, but the writers probably had pressure from the execs so they didn't dare to allow them to get married until... was it Modern Family? I'm not sure if it was the first recurring married couple, but that didn't start until 2009. But, you're definitely correct that it was that time when it began to be acceptable - since marriage was legalized in 2015. Let's hope the MAGA don't take it away.

I do think almost any mention of the gay marriage topic in the sitcoms did help desensitize the TV watching population to idea. In that way it may have helped lay the groundwork. And, like you and others posting here, we did not watch Modern Family and found it annoying. Ha, who did watch it? Bon Voyage!

Thank you for giving me the courage to come out of the sitcom closet and say that I was not a fan of "Modern Family". You summed it up perfectly: The characters were annoying. And I did get a wee bit tired of friends and coworkers asking why I didn't love it when the show featured a gay couple. Gay couple = Good. Unfunny sitcom = Bad. One greatly outweighed the other for me. So there you have it.

I'm glad that I wasn't the only one who just couldn't get into Modern Family. I was pretty excited to see it before it premiered. I knew that featured a gay couple as regular characters, and I was really looking forward to seeing Ed O'Neill acting on a sitcom again. In the first few episodes, Ed's performance and character were indeed great, and the undisputed highlight of the show, but not one other character actually felt anything close to being a real person to me. Even worse, not only did I find every other character just a caricature, they were all irritating ones to boot, with Ty Burrell's Phil being at the very top of mount annoyance. So, while part of me wanted to continue watching it to see more of Ed, I just couldn't stomach all the Phil needed to do it, and so, that was it for me.

The Rock and Golden Girls episode of Gay Marriage were really good, but I hate the friends and Seinfeld gay marriage episodes because they treated the subject and queer people like a joke. Cheers did the same thing but only with queer people, also those last three shows didn’t have any people of color on them so another reason I didn’t like those shows where a lot of people did. I agree with you that none of those shows changed how people thought about queer marriage but they did help change how people felt about queer people, so in a way they did help. And YAY, I’ m really glad that you said you didn’t like modern family because I don’t like it either and sadly mid century modern is a horrible show. At least we have some amazing queer animated shows to watch