Clip: SOAP - Season 1 recap - Jodie's story - Billy Crystal - 8/31/1978
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- TODAY IN QUEER TV HISTORY
SOAP - Season 1 Recap Special - 8/31/1978, ABC
The first hit series with an LGBTQ regular (Jodie, played by Billy Crystal) was a sendup of daytime soaps. Note that the soapy plots in this clip include a suicide attempt.
This recap of Jodie's season 1 plot is from a 90-minute special that aired before season 2. Jodie usually identified as a gay man but also explored other identities (in the first episode he considered whether he was a trans woman, which later scripts explained away, and he had at least one relationship with a woman, later leading to parenthood and a custody battle).
Billy really knew how to walk in a dress! He looked amazing🔥
"I love you...and I'll always love you."
I was fourteen when I first saw that scene and I had to hide in my room to cry my eyes out.
So it was a thing 😅thank you for posting this.. never would have seen it otherwise 🤷 wtf
the reactions from Danny Chuck & Bob when Carol asked Jodie out were hilarious
Wow~
Thanks for the upload!
I used to love watching this show back in the day when I was coming out in my mid-teens~
Amazing now how many years later that I could finish some of the lines before they were (re)delivered!
Oh.... Billy did the "comfort a girl who cries" in When Harry Met Sally. Hahaha!
So then Jodie was actually a bisexual homoromantic? Or Carol was just his weird exception?
To me a lost cause
Seems like a case of straight writers in the 70s lol
But also yeah possibly your first option. Sexuality can be on a spectrum etc
After Dennis, Jodie only has sex with women. It is a cheat to the audience.
Carol took advantage of a suicidal man grieving a relationship. She didn’t force him, but she used him for her own ego. There wasn’t language then for the complexities of consent and coercion. Men have done his to lesbians too. It’s corrective grape, but awfully confusing when you do care about someone.
WKRP had similar stories... Episode 1 I believe. These stories felt authentic. And it's from 1978.
And note that he wants a "man" and a sex change wasn't going to make a relationship work.
Brilliant. It's not PC but we shouldn't expect the past to be. Billy Crystal, you are ace!
Seems like this gay/trans subject was aready brewing hard in’78. Nice performances.
A huge step forward for TV but such a shame they got gay people confused with trans folk, but still a huge step!
So what happened next
After having sex one time, Jodie got Carol pregnant.
Jodie and Dennis wanted to get back together, but they didnt ... when Carol got pregnant, it ruined the gay relationship.
Jodie proposed to Carol.
But, on their wedding day, Carol left Jodie at the altar and disappeared.
When the baby was about 9 months old, Carol's mother brought Baby Wendy to meet Jodie.
The mother told Jodie that Carol does not want the baby ... and Carol ran away with a creepy cowboy guy.
Jodie kept the baby.
Until Carol came back, with her cowboy boyfriend, and wanted the baby back.
Jodie and Carol went to court to fight for custody of Wendy.
The custody case was a mess ...
this was the 70s, when a gay man raising a child didn't happen ... in the 70s, it was still believed that being gay was a mental illness.
Amazingly, Jodie got custody of Wendy.
But, then Wendy was kidnapped.
Jodie hired a woman private investigator to find Wendy .... then Jodie fell in love with that woman.
I dont think that Baby Wendy was ever found before the show was cancelled.
But, after Dennis, Jodie never had sex with another man .... which I think was an insult to the audience.
I'm crazy about this show Katherine played Mona on who's the boss