That Gay Episode: ‘Frasier’ Is Gay Comedy by Gay People Starring Straight Characters

Being a gay viewer in 2019, there are options, honey. Pose, One Day at a Time, Special, Schitt’s Creek, Tales of the City, Riverdale, Killing Eve, The Other Two, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Dear White People, GLOW, Superstore, Queer Eye–I could just keep listing current shows telling new stories about out queer characters. This is a recent development, though, an evolution you can track by looking at a guide to queer representation on TV. LGBTQ representation–specifically the B, T and Q+ rep–has come a long way in just 10 years, let alone 20+. When I was a young, deeply closeted gay in the late ’90s, we really just had two shows: Ellen and Will & Grace, and those two didn’t even overlap on-air. Ellen came out (and was swiftly canceled) so Will & Grace could strut its stuff.

And then there’s Frasier, a show with an 11-season stretch that predated and overlapped with both of those shows (the entirety of Ellen). Frasier’s not textually a gay show, but it’s a really gay show–and it was especially gay if you were watching TV with your conservative Christian parents in Tennessee in the mid-’90s. Sure, that’s partly due to the narrow-minded conflation of “cultured” and “gay,” which is a thing and definitely the South’s whole thing. I knew Frasier was the gayest of shows before I even knew what gay was. I definitely knew it was different from the macho grunting of Home Improvement, which is where the TV in my household was glued on Tuesday nights while Frasier was happening. But as “other” as Frasier seemed to me as a middle schooler, there was nothing explicitly gay about Frasier. It didn’t even have one recurring gay character on it–aside from the deeply closeted, married-to-a-woman Gil Chesterton. Friends, a show where two dudes refused to even change the channel for days for fear of losing the free porn that magically appeared, was actually gayer than Frasier because of Carol and Susan!

But Frasier the show was keenly aware of how it was perceived, which is evidenced by the Season 2 episode “The Matchmaker.” In the episode, Frasier the character is presumed gay by a guest gay for all of the same reasons Frasier the show was presumed gay. Frasier’s into menswear and theater, loves a glass of chardonnay, and flexes his brain instead of biceps. Of course he’s gay! In the Home Improvement episode that aired the same night as “The Matchmaker,” Tim and Al used the magic of a local television studio to have a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids moment in a car engine.

This is where I want to point out that as perplexingly straight as Frasier was on-screen, it was maybe the gayest show of the 20th century off-screen. The show counted gay actors Dan Butler (Bulldog) and Edward Hibbert (Gil Chesterton) as recurring players and David Hyde Pierce (Niles) as a series regular. There’s even plenty of speculation that John Mahoney, who played Frasier’s gruff dad Marty, was gay. There’s no printed confirmation that he was, although I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that it would truly mean the world to me if he was. I digress.

“The Matchmaker” is a first for That Gay Episode because it’s the very first episode to be written and directed by gay men. Novelist Joe Keenan made his Frasier debut with this one; he’d stay with the show until the very end, working his way up to executive producer. The episode was directed by David Lee, a sitcom veteran who got his start on The Jeffersons before jumping to Cheers and then co-creating Frasier. Both men are openly gay, and it very much shows in “The Matchmaker” (which is also probably why this episode won a GLAAD award back in the era when a show just had to be gay for one week to win).

This episode is quintessential Frasier, meaning it’s nothing like what 14-year-old me thought Frasier was back when “The Matchmaker” aired in 1994. Frasier on the whole is not a stuffy and snooty intellectual tour-de-force. It’s a ferociously funny farce, essentially Three’s Company with some opera jokes peppered in–and that’s fantastic. Like the most iconic Frasier episodes, this one hinges on exactly one major misunderstanding: the new station manager Tom Duran (a pre-Caroline in the City Eric Lutes) thinks Frasier is gay and that Frasier asked him out on a date when in actuality Frasier is trying to set up his new boss with a depressed Daphne (“Me life’s a gaping sinkhole and I’m just marking time while the flower of me youth rots on the vine”). That’s it. It’s the same kind of misunderstanding that fuels Season 7’s “Out with Dad”(where Marty gets caught in a big gay lie) and there’s even a dash of Season 5’s “The Ski Lodge” (where everyone thinks the wrong someone wants to bone them), but those later episodes don’t lessen just how funny this one is.

Here’s how you can tell “The Matchmaker” was written and directed by gay men: at no point is Frasier, or anyone for that matter, freaked out by the not-closeted gay man is in their midst. I know that’s a low bar, but practically every pre-1997 sitcom trips over it instead of leaping over it. This isn’t one of them. This is even different from Season 4’s “The Impossible Dream” where a series of erotic dreams about the maybe-closeted Gil Chesterton sends Frasier into a gay panic. Being gay isn’t the thing being laughed at here, but the awkward predicament it puts all the characters in is. You can also see Keenan using Tom to comment on stereotypes. Tom’s like Frasier in that he loves the arts, but he also immediately bonds with Frasier’s dad Marty (who he also believes to be gay because whoops!) over a shared love of football.

Keenan talked about this episode to The LA Times back in 1998, saying, “‘The Matchmaker’ was all about stereotypes, the assumptions made about people based on various cultural clues.” In the same article, Lee comments on all the viewers who were convinced that Niles was deeply in the closet. “I don’t quite understand it, because to me it’s buying into the worst kinds of stereotypes about gay people,” said Lee. “‘He’s erudite, he’s sophisticated, he likes opera and wine, and he dresses well, so he must be gay.’ That’s just tired.”

Those quotes are supported by what you see in the episode. Tom and Frasier hit it off immediately because of their shared love of London, but it’s not apparent that Tom’s gaydar is pinging. You know why Tom thinks Frasier is gay? Because Frasier asked if he was single, said that Tom “may have come to the right place” when it comes to finding a new partner, and then frantically asks Tom on a dinner date at his apartment during a commercial break! Of course Tom’s misconception could’ve been cleared up immediately during his talk with Roz, where he reveals that he thinks Frasier just asked him out on a date. But Roz is given two very clear reasons to not clarify anything: 1. Frasier spent the previous scene insinuating that Roz is a floozy whose taste in men aren’t up to Daphne’s standards and 2. Well, she gets a sign…

Come on, can you blame a Roz??

Okay–taking a step back, this is a colossally petty thing for Roz to do not only to her best friend Daphne but also to her new boss. Can you imagine being the poor HR person trying to untangle the sexual shenanigans Frasier and his co-workers get up to off-the-clock (and sometimes on-the-clock)? Frasier totally deserves getting a wrench thrown in his forced matchmaking plans for unjustly shaming Roz, but think of the bystanders! Daphne goes from wanting no part in this ill-advised set-up to immediately strapping on a push-up bra (“He’s worth every wire digging into me ribcage”).

The farce finally fizzles when Niles finds out that Tom’s sites aren’t set on his beloved Daphne, but rather his brother Frasier. Niles and Marty let things play out for a little while longer and then Niles drops the truth bomb while he’s on his way out (Marty lost the coin toss). Tom’s finally getting his alone time with Frasier–and that’s when Frasier reveals that he’s straight. Shockingly, no one is more than a little peeved about this misunderstanding (well, Daphne is; Jane Leeves does a fantastic bit of physical comedy, tossing her painful bra over her shoulder in a huff back to her bedroom). Honest mistake, apparently! Frasier never entertained the notion that Tom was gay and, well, Tom speaks for my parents in 1994.

I’d wager that the majority of gay episodes pre-Ellen deal with stereotypes, how you can’t judge a gay by his bespoke suit and classical CD collection. “The Matchmaker” is another one of those “Surprise, he’s gay!” episodes except there’s also a “Surprise, he’s not gay!” twist for Tom. And mercifully because this episode was brought to life by members of the community, there’s no fear in Frasier’s eyes when he finds out what’s really going on.

Stream Frasier "The Matchmaker" on Netflix