That Gay Episode: An Out And Proud ‘Wings’ Plays One-On-One With Bad Parenting

Coming out isn’t always painful, or at least it isn’t all painful. Some parts are exhilarating while others are exhausting, and it’s that intense high and low, usually in rapid succession, that makes the whole coming out rigamarole memorable. Because coming out is always a major thing, sitcoms gravitate towards that moment when it comes time to do their gay episode. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Roseanne outed characters to get reactions (or, in some cases, non-reactions) from the series leads, and Ellen made history by having the series lead raise her own rainbow flag.

Ellen’s landmark coming out episode depicted the initial vertigo of first acknowledging your gayness, Wings took a different route seven years earlier. Instead of coming out being a nerve-wracking experience, 17-year-old R.J. (played by ER front desk mainstay Abraham Benrubi) goes from closeted to organizing the Nantucket Pride Parade in a matter of days. But as anyone that’s come out knows, that rush of self-aware euphoria comes with a chaser of struggle, and that’s the case in Wings’ first gay episode.

If you’re not familiar with Wings, it’s basically Airport Cheers and can best be described with the word “fine.” That’s why it’s wild to see this Toyota Camry of a sitcom present an unexpected take on coming out. It’s not a blunt condemnation of homophobia like Cheers’ gay episode, but it actually gets a lot more right than Barney Miller’s misguided gay extortion plot.

There’s one reason why the 1990 Wings episode “There’s Always Room For Cello” works: it was co-written by out gay writer (and Wings and Frasier co-creator) David Lee. Lee wrote the episode with his straight writing partner (and Wings and Frasier co-creator) Peter Casey. While working on That Gay Episode, I’ve learned that the best gay episodes come from gay writers. The Golden Girls, Ellen, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and now Wings, are all episodes from gay writers that give their gay characters dignity and position them on the moral high ground compared to whoever in the main cast is freaking out. In Wings, sweetheart high school football player R.J. the comer outer and his sleazy dad Roy Biggins (David Schramm) the comer outee. Or, I mean, the person who is being come out to. You get it.

Roy starts out the episode hella pumped because his son is in the papers for his burgeoning football prowess (which is the gayest way I can think of putting it, because my specialty is sitcoms and not sports talk). Roy, a divorcee and single dad, brags about how he molded his son into an aggressive, iron-pumping , thick-necked man’s man, but he neglects to mention that his son R.J. also called up Helen (Crystal Bernard) for cello lessons. When Roy does bring this up, it’s just to the guys and he reveals the real reason his son wants time with Helen:

So, let’s hit the pause button on the gay stuff for a sec. Roy’s son wanting cello lessons? Great. Cool. A football player and musician? How well-rounded! Roy letting his macho son take cello lessons? Great, he’s doing what a dad should do. But Roy allowing his son to take cello lessons only because the kid says he’s (ugh) “horny for Helen”? And then facilitating those lessons because, as Roy exaggeratedly mimes out to the boys, you think your son’s going to dry-hump your co-worker? And all the guys, including her quasi-beau Joe (Tim Daly), thinking a nearly seven-foot-tall 17-year-old forcing himself on an unsuspecting woman is a hilarious prank? No! Bad! And it’s your son, Roy, your son! Blugh!

Thankfully R.J. is gay and we get a coming out episode and not a sitcom version of Law & Order: SVU. He only told his dad that so Roy would let him take cello lessons. And just as the lesson starts, Helen gets a heads up from Joe–you know, the Sam to her Diane that thought this was a hilarious gag a hot minute ago. Now in the know (or so she thinks), Helen cuts the lesson short by telling R.J. she knows why he’s there. But when he says that he is not actually horny for Helen, she gets a little upset (is it her weight, her hair, her personality, her clothes, her accent, or all of the above?). With Helen now in his face demanding to know why she’s undesirable, R.J. says two very important words out loud for the first time:

This is what I think is cool about R.J. and his coming out: he says that while he hasn’t “found anybody to be gay with,” he knows he’s had these feelings for a long time and he’s done a lot of reading about it at the library (also an entire week’s worth of Donahue helped). It’s super rad to see a high school football player talk about his feelings and, like, go to the library. R.J. is self-aware and invested in learning about himself! It’s no wonder he comes out of the closet so readily, telling the entire Wings cast in the next minute as they wander in and out of the hangar.

R.J. tells Helen that coming out made him feel “real good” and “free,” and he’s not wrong. It does feel great to finally stand up for yourself and say the words “I’m gay,” and this is a side of coming out that we didn’t always see on TV pre-Ellen. Coming out was usually fraught, said with a tinge of defiance rather than self-love. R.J.’s face lights up when he says it, and a few days later he’s already organizing the Nantucket’s gay pride parade (“I’m the grand marshal!”). But just because R.J. has found strength in claiming his identity doesn’t mean everyone else–specifically his blowhard dad–is okay with it.

Aside from Helen, who immediately becomes R.J.’s confidant, the Wings regulars have mixed reactions to the reveal. The lively and elderly Fay (Rebecca Schull) doesn’t get what gay means, the rakish Brian (Steven Weber) only deems the information worthwhile because he knows it will devastate Roy, straight-laced Joe gets a little flummoxed, and Lowell (Thomas Haden Church) approaches R.J. with the same caution he would an extraterrestrial.

Helen knows Roy’s gonna flip out, and she advises R.J. to reconsider sharing that info with him. That becomes hard to do a few days later after gay and proud R.J. has told all of Nantucket except his dad. Worried that finding out his son’s gay from someone else will make Roy even madder, Helen arranges for a father and son heart-to-heart.

This level of meddling from a straight adult in a gay teen’s life is… I give it a pass because this is a ’90s sitcom episode that has to reach a conclusion in 22 minutes. And Helen has pure intentions throughout, first wanting to preserve R.J.’s happiness by advising him to not come out to his father, and then wanting to ensure that R.J.’s coming out isn’t ruined by a parade or Brian. Helen is, of course, right, and Roy takes the news about as well as you’d expect.

Wings can go for this over-the-top homophobic reaction because Roy is the show’s villain. Remember, this is a dude that set up his own son in a sex trap! He’s a bad guy and has a bad guy reaction that involves fainting and then macho overcompensation. Roy challenges R.J. to a game of one-on-one, with Roy agreeing to let R.J. be gay if he wins. Instead of showing us the verbal back-and-forth, Wings chooses to make it a physical back-and-forth with each point scored a metaphor for making a point in conversation. And just like coming out to parents that don’t want to hear it, the game keeps going and going, with neither side backing down. Every time R.J. wins, Roy keeps changing the parameters (“best 2 out of 3,” “best 26 out of 51,” etc.).

R.J. only agreed to the game because he thought that’s how Roy needed to come to terms with it. But that game, just like the arguments unsupportive parents trot out, is just a delaying tactic. You reach a point where no matter how many points you make or score, the parent just has to deal with it. R.J. tells his dad that even if he eked out a win, it wouldn’t change the fact that R.J. is gay. Roy tries a full-court shot, asking his son if there was a one in a billion chance that he might change his mind, to which R.J. gives an inch:

And that’s enough for Roy to get back up and keep playing, still resisting his son’s truth. And that’s it, that’s how the episode ends. Okay, it actually ends with Joe planting a seed in Brian’s head that everyone thinks he’s gay, and Brian’s usually unflappable confidence flapping. But as for our gay character, he comes out the other end of his coming out story well-adjusted and proud, but not yet accepted by his father. And he won’t even be just a little accepted by his father until the Season 7 (!) episode “Sons and Lovers,” when the prodigal son returns to Nantucket from law school with his boyfriend.

It’s a surprise move by Wings, a show that flew under the radar for eight seasons, concluding a mostly pleasant coming out story with some real turbulence. In a surprising parallel to life, the episode shows that the coming out talk between parents and kids can take a long, long time, even if the kid is confident. The lack of a clearcut happy ending proves that a little pain comes along with pride.

Watch Wings' "There's Always Room For Cello" on Hulu