Dave Holmes Pays Homage To The Greatest TV Dad Of All-Time, Homer Simpson

The two shows that tie for 20th this week really give you a sense for the diversity of 1990s network television’s nerd-centric family sitcom offerings. I mean, get a load of these episode synopses: “Urkel learns that a bully has contracted leukemia from smoking cigarettes, and stages a bone-marrow drive to save his life,” and “Frasier’s plan to fix Daphne up with his new boss Tom goes awry when he learns Tom is gay.” Both seem to mix the high and the low, the socially conscious and the slapstick, one just does it with Gilbert & Sullivan references, the other with peppy teens Doing The Urkel.

In 1994, your worldlier homosexuals were absolutely fascinated by Absolutely Fabulous, and as is our custom, we decided we must have one of our own. So we paired Cybill Shepard up with Christine Baranski, then known mostly from Broadway and a scene-stealing turn in Addams Family Values— and let the pinot grigio flow.

Fact that is fun except for the part where he dies: Christine was married to one Matthew Cowles until his death in 2014. You may know Matthew as All My Children’s indestructible psychotic yokel Billy Clyde Tuggle, a man who haunted Pine Valley every few years from the ‘70s right on through the show’s misbegotten online return in 2013. Here’s a scene with the both of them, from right around the time they married. Fine, subtle work from both.

This week, ABC re-ran the episode “The Dentist,” in which an ethered-up Ellen acts out a not-particularly-convincing crush on her handsome dentist, played by Robert Gant, at the time one of Hollywood’s very few out gay working actors. Was this an early in-joke to those in the know? I’m not sure, but I do know this and I won’t keep it inside anymore: Ellen-era Jeremy Piven was incredibly hot, and I do not approve of the shiny, wig-wearing yoga goblin into which he’s transformed in middle age. You were on the right track a quarter-century ago with a regular person’s body and male pattern baldness, Jer-bear! I mean, check it:

Mercy.

I have no idea what was on PrimeTime Live this week, and I’m still too broken up by the recent death of Harry Anderson to get into Dave’s World. So let us turn our attention to the pop charts, which were absolutely ruled by R&B. I mean, we have high-level Boyz II Men and TLC singles at #1 and 2, with Brandy’s debut just behind. Would you like a scented candle in song form? I give you Des’Ree’s “You Gotta Be” at #12. Do your tastes run toward the vaguely dirty and deeply irritating? You have the choice of 69 Boyz’ “Tootsee Roll” at #15 or “Short Dick Man” by Gillette at #20.

But you do not want those things. No, what you want is the best R&B pop song of the whole decade, which this week jumps to #45: “Candy Rain” by Soul For Real. Turn it up, close the blinds, dance. I will see you in twenty minutes, minimum.

Hey, welcome back! So Murphy Brown is one of the wave of reboots of successful ‘80s and ‘90s sitcoms that’s currently crashing down around us, and unlike some of them, I welcome this one. There is a whole new insane world for Murphy and the gang to take on. Plus, I can’t help but wonder whether they’ll bring back a character they introduced in this episode: McGovern, a former MTV VJ with an off-kilter fashion sense and weirdly regressive conservative leanings. I wonder if that character was based on anyone in particular.

The Dante’s Peak to ER’s Volcano. The Deep Impact to ER’s Armageddon. The K-9 to ER’s Turner & Hooch. Still, it gave us Peter Berg as Dr. Kronk, which is enough.

But let’s get back to that gorgeous Simpsons episode, this week at #47. It’s a flashback, in which we learn that Homer once escaped the power plant. He had a plan to pay off his debts, and because the character was not yet the slapstick goonball he’s since turned into, he stuck to it. With two kids and nothing to hold him back, he quit the plant and went to work at a bowling alley. But in celebrating his new life, he and Marge conceived a third child, which meant a permanent return to a soul-crushing job and a steady paycheck for our Homer. Mr. Burns makes him a plaque that reads “Don’t forget, you’re here forever,” which Homer cleverly covers with pictures of Maggie, in such a way that the sign says “Do it for her.” It is a heartbreaking, honest look at the sacrifices that fatherhood entails, and probably a major reason I don’t have children.

I’ve been on a break from Twitter lately; anything new going on with Roseanne Barr and the Roseanne reboot?

This is the first of two Mad About Yous in the top 20, as NBC doubled its Reiser and Hunt this Must See Thursday with a rerun, which oddly rates higher. We’ll get into this show later, but for now, back to the pop charts, if only to tell you that at Deadeye Dick is at #36 with “New Age Girl.” The song has a chorus which ends on the line “She don’t eat meat, but she sure like the bone,” a thing that, despite the vulgarity that defines our current political moment, would absolutely not fly in 2018.

By 1995, the Movie of the Week was pretty much a relic, but once in a while, the networks would trot out the big names for a modestly-budgeted two-hour throwdown. This week, Michelle Lee produces and stars in a biopic of country superstar Dottie West, whose life turns out to have been a barrel full o’ trouble. Here is Lee as West going full “Before He Cheats” on husband Al Winters, played by Ben Browder, who was about to move up to San Francisco to play Neve Campbell’s racist boyfriend on Party of Five, at this time languishing near the bottom of the ratings in its first season.

Country was hot hot hot on network television this week, with Garth Brooks doing a concert special on NBC. It didn’t blow up in the ratings, so there’s no real reason to talk about it, except that it gives me an excuse to show you the first video Garth Brooks ever put up on Facebook.

Very natural. Very cool.

There is no real way of knowing what 20/20 might have covered this week, and you don’t care, and neither do I. Instead, let’s explore the cool stuff, neat stuff, slick stuff that Fox was trying to make happen on Sunday nights. I speak of course of House of Buggin’, the Latinx sketch comedy show produced by 2018 Special Tony Winner John Leguizamo. In honor of the new FX show Pose, let’s take a look at their sketch “Learning to Vogue,” surely a respectful and subtle take on a dance movement that galvanized and empowered queer communities of color.

MAN, Fox sketch comedy shows did poorly by their gay viewers. But at least there was Matt Fielding on Melrose Place (at #23 this week), who would occasionally have up to three lines of dialogue in a single episode. Happy Pride month, everyone.

I’m sure this show truly was groundbreaking and significant, but when I close my eyes and try to remember specifics about NYPD Blue, here is what my brain gives me: butts and swears.

As the world spirals further into chaos and I retreat into my own personal house of emotional buggin’, I find that I need to make time for self-care. I cook. I run. I listen to the showtune channel on SiriusXM, where all the DJ breaks sound like Tony acceptance speeches. But often it is not enough. This is my way of telling you that I’m thinking about getting into cozy mystery. Cozy mystery, as I have just learned, is a whole-ass literary genre unto itself. Cozy mysteries are quirky and whimsical little affairs where amateur detectives in quaint little New England towns full of eccentric characters solve murders, often with the help of cats. We do what we must to survive.

Friends was still at its introductory 8:30 Thursday time slot this week, weeks from moving to 9:30, before settling in season 2 at its traditional 8pm. This week was the one where Chandler accidentally sees Rachel’s nipples. The chances that I was in front of my television in my much smaller New York apartment, watching this with my much more regular-looking roommates and friends, doing the four claps in “I’ll Be There For You” right along with the Rembrandts, are exactly 100 percent.

As for Grace Under Fire, here’s something I never knew: Brett Butler got her big break as a writer and occasional performer on Dolly Parton’s ABC variety show in 1987. (Another thing I never knew: Dolly Parton had an ABC variety show in 1987.) Here’s a moment from that show that bears her unmistakable fingerprint, that touch of Butler.

I’ve been on a break from the daily churn of right-wing outrage culture; anything new going on with Tim Allen and Last Man Standing?

This being January, the pickings at the multiplex were slim. New releases included House Party 3, and a Disney film called Iron Will starring a pre-Usual Suspects Kevin Spacey, and a Mackenzie Astin who I suspect could tell you a story or two.

What’s the Mad About You of now? Is it Love? You’re the Worst? Casual? Or are they just going to reboot Mad About You like everything else, and make that the Mad About You of now? Fact that is fun except for the part where we’re all going to die: Mabel, the baby born in season six, would turn 21 this year.

This week’s episode introduces us to “regifting,” “hate the Drake,” and Bryan Cranston, unless you watched Cranston on abysmal ‘80s soap Loving. Here he is in the premiere episode of that show, as a drenched and passionate woman commands him, “Make love to me.” How old were you when you learned that that’s not the way anyone actually talks? I was 27.

Watch "The Label Maker" episode of Seinfeld on Hulu

This is Clooney at the first of what would turn out to be several peaks. This is the Clooney that made millions of men go to their barbers and say: “give me a very short, blunt bang, please.” This is Clooney giving you daddy, 22 years before he would become an actual father for the first time. I would take this Clooney to the house of buggin’, if you know what I mean.

Happy Father’s Day, all you dads and daddies out there. I’m going to listen to “Candy Rain” eight more times.

Dave Holmes is an editor-at-large for Esquire.com, host of the new Earwolf podcast Homophilia, and his memoir Party of One is in stores now.