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Before and After: Patty Duke’s Diet Mania

On August 8, 2022

If you’ve ever longed to watch Patty Duke eat depressing amounts of cottage cheese and engage in comic pratfalls while exercising, rejoice! (Hey, it’s preferable to the child abuse in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom.) Before and After, a 1979 telefilm about a woman who had the audacity to gain 20 pounds, delivers all that and more. First, you’ll want to prepare yourself mentally—I found it helpful to take a deep breath and contemplate how much worse it might’ve been if not written and directed by women.

Once you’ve done that (and perhaps hidden any sharp objects that normally rest nearby), grab a cake pop, as I did, and gather ’round the TV. If you’re open to the experience, you might laugh as Duke pays homage to Rocky by training in gray sweats and punching dead chickens. You may cry as her mother sabotages her progress and her smarmy husband calls her fat. And you’ll definitely check your pulse to make sure you haven’t died when special guest star Betty White heaps scorn and humiliation on underperforming weight-loss group participants.

Poison Ivy: Cheap Lesbian Thrills in (Mostly) Straight Packaging

By Cranky Lesbian

On August 5, 2022

In '90s Films

Drew Barrymore is a teenage *femme fatale* in *Poison Ivy*.

If you were a young lesbian in the mid-’90s and your parents had cable, you were most likely aware of Poison Ivy. It was the perfect tawdry late-night fare, with a little something for everyone. Your more lascivious straight guys were there, of course, for the lurid sexual content featuring a jailbait antagonist. For everyone else, you had Drew Barrymore’s delightfully perverse machinations and Cheryl Ladd as an emphysema patient dying an unusually glamorous death.

Lesbian overtones (and lip locks) shared by Barrymore and Sara Gilbert were an added bonus for gay adolescents like myself. It wasn’t as titillating as the Aerosmith video with Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler (back then, few things were), or romantic like Fried Green Tomatoes. But its legend was burnished by two simple things: Gilbert, we already sensed, was one of us. And Barrymore was widely rumored to be bisexual. In that prehistoric pre-“Puppy Episode” era, you had to take what you could get.

A Brief Conversational Detour About Sheree North’s Face

By Cranky Lesbian

On August 3, 2022

In Oh No!

Sheree North and Ed Asner on *The Mary Tyler Moore Show*

This is a detour from the Golden Girls: “Transplant” recap. (Sheree North guest stars as Blanche’s sister in that episode.) It’s about the time I got a little too Lou Grant-ish while unwittingly close to death.

Sheree North is one of those actors, like John Schuck, who lingers in my memory for medical reasons. On a Sunday morning only eight days into 2017, I was sitting on the couch with my wife (then-fiancée), watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was one of the episodes in which North appeared as Charlene, Lou Grant’s lounge singer girlfriend.

Normally I would’ve been alone for most of a Sunday, so it was fortuitous that my wife noticed something was ‘off’ about me and chose to stay nearby. This was during a time when it took some effort to keep me out of the hospital. I was having a Crohn’s flare and my hapless doctor, who was soon to be replaced by someone more competent, was in over her head. My potassium kept falling into the twos.

All I remember about that MTM episode, whichever one it was, was that I simply couldn’t keep up with it. I had no idea what was happening and couldn’t quite focus on North’s face. That was odd, because I normally had a bit of a crush on her wisecracking Charlene. Several times, my wife looked at me and asked if I was OK. Several times, I stubbornly insisted I was fine. She didn’t believe me.

The Golden Girls: “Transplant” Episode Recap

By Cranky Lesbian

On August 1, 2022

In Friends of Dorothy Z.

It’s fair to say The Golden Girls was more a celebration of chosen-family sisterhood than its nuclear-family counterpart. Every last one of the girls had a contentious relationship with a sister, from Dorothy and Gloria sparring over Sophia and Stan, to Sophia’s long-running, nonsensical feud with Angela. (The less said about Angela, the better. Nancy Walker’s so hammy in the role that she belonged in a supermarket deli.)

Rose’s moment came in “Little Sister” (S4E21), when the admittedly annoying Holly (Inga Swenson) paid a visit. “God, I hate this woman!” Rose exclaimed when she arrived. Her enmity toward Holly is hard to forget during “Transplant” (S1E4), which establishes Blanche’s rivalry with younger sister Virginia (Sheree North). The episode begins with Blanche obsessively tidying an already clean house. “God, I wish she wasn’t coming. I just hate her,” she complains to an incredulous Rose.

Just the Way You Are: A Different Kind of Comedy

By Cranky Lesbian

On July 29, 2022

In '80s Movies

Kristy McNichol disguises her handicap in *Just the Way You Are*.

“Don’t you sometimes wish you could just meet someone who’d carry you off and take care of you?” Susan Berlanger (Kristy McNichol) asks her friend Lisa (Kaki Hunter) in the opening moments of Just the Way You Are (1984). It’s a funny sentiment coming from a character so ambivalent about all the amorous attention she attracts wherever she goes.

Susan, a flautist about to embark on her first recital tour in Europe, is catnip to men. Her quick wit, adversarial posturing, dazzling smile and structurally complex hair even win admirers over the phone. Jack (Lance Guest of Please Mom, Don’t Hit Me), an answering service operator, is so smitten that he knocks on her door in a gorilla suit. He scampers away just as quickly after noticing her leg brace.

The Golden Girls: “Rose the Prude” Episode Recap

By Cranky Lesbian

On July 27, 2022

In Friends of Dorothy Z.

Betty White in a scene from “Rose the Prude.”

“Rose the Prude” (S1E03) is a bit of a clunky effort, beginning with its not entirely accurate title. (Rose is less prudish than reserved.) Not only do Dorothy and Blanche steal the spotlight in what is ostensibly the first Rose-centric episode of the series, the St. Olaf native treads similar thematic ground to more humorous effect just 12 episodes later, in “In a Bed of Rose’s” (S1E15). The subject matter is sex, which Rose hasn’t had since her husband, Charlie, died.

As the episode begins, Blanche is looking for help in salvaging a double-date. “Thanks for asking, but I don’t think so. I’m not that interested in dating anymore,” Rose tells her. Blanche isn’t buying it: “Now you know that’s not true, honey, or you’d let your hair go natural.” Rose looks annoyed in response and muses, “You know what my problem really is? I’m spoiled. I had a long and wonderful marriage with a perfect man. Everyone seems so ordinary after Charlie.”

Celebrating A Smoky Mountain (Lesbian) Christmas

By Cranky Lesbian

On July 25, 2022

In TV Movies

Dolly Parton’s *Smoky Mountain* wig is a precious gift to viewers.

Note: This review was written for a subset of gay Parton fans who will understand its jokes. If you don’t belong to that group and take any of this seriously enough to leave bigoted comments — which curiously wasn’t a problem in 2022 or 2023 but has been in late 2024 — they’ll be automatically deleted.

“A film that defies both description and sobriety, you either understand its brilliance or you don’t—it’s the El Topo of made-for-TV movies.” That’s how I described A Smoky Mountain Christmas when Bo Hopkins died earlier this year. But I left out another, more controversial opinion: It’s also a psychosexual lesbian Christmas drama for the whole family.

The peanut butter to Kenny Rogers’ Six Pack jelly, this Henry Winkler-directed 1986 made-for-TV musical holiday fantasy begins with Parton’s voice-over narration. “Once upon a time, and not too long ago, a princess lived in a beautiful castle, built upon a grassy green hill. People thought she had everything. They envied her talent, her fame and fortune—and her special relationship with longtime gal pal Judy Ogle. And they said her spirit could light up the darkest corners of any heart.”

A Dog’s Life in Two Acts

By Cranky Lesbian

On July 23, 2022

In BFFs

“What’s next, chief, eating trash? Harassing rabbits?”

Muriel and I have been coworkers since our first week together. (Her name isn’t really Muriel, that’s an alias selected because she’s frequently told “You’re terrible.”) For our first year together, we worked from an office where she made new friends every day. Since then, we’ve worked from home.

Every morning, including weekends, she follows me into the office and looks at me expectantly. Her preference is obviously for an exotic wilderness assignment, maybe a bit of bird-chasing or ritual squirrel murder. Then she watches me sit at the desk and open my computer, and perhaps notices the nearby stack of ’80s celebrity tell-alls and Kristy McNichol DVDs.

Man on the Land: A Guide to the Men of The Golden Girls

By Cranky Lesbian

On July 21, 2022

In Friends of Dorothy Z.

First of all, yes, “Man on the Land” is a MichFest reference. I’ve found MichFest amusing since learning of it as a teenager. But when I told my wife the name I’d selected for this feature, her eyes widened. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “I know it doesn’t work since they constantly dated men, but I always thought of the girls as living on a lesbian commune.”

At that, I stared at her like she was from another planet, as often happens when someone whose prized possession is a vintage Judy at Carnegie Hall poster takes a crunchy granola spouse. In her defense, she lived for years in Ithaca; if she sees more than three unrelated women standing together, she assumes they belong to a lesbian commune.

“Man on the Land” will be an episode-by-episode reference guide to the many men of The Golden Girls. This page will be updated periodically as more Friends of Dorothy Z. recaps are posted. Alerts won’t be sent each time it is edited, so remember to check back now and then.

Charlie’s Angels: Unshackling “Angels in Chains”

By Cranky Lesbian

On July 20, 2022

In Charlie's Angels

Alas, Helen Stewart ain’t in charge here.

“Angels in Chains” isn’t just the most iconic episode of Charlie’s Angels, it’s a Matryoshka doll of sexploitation. And this time the perv-in-chief isn’t even that scoundrel, serial sexual harasser Charlie. It’s us. Nearly 50 years after it first aired—and even if you don’t consider yourself particularly lascivious—you’ll spend the first 11 minutes holding your breath, waiting for the Angels to finally land behind bars.

The case is straightforward enough: Christine Hunter (Lauren Tewis) hires Charlie to infiltrate Pine Parish Prison Farm, where her sister Elizabeth (Terry Green) disappeared. The Parish has a reputation as a place where comely young women are baselessly arrested, only to never be seen or heard from again. But without evidence of wrongdoing, the governor won’t devote resources to searching for Elizabeth.

This early part of the episode lacks Charlie’s usual ribald comments, leaving us to ponder why Sabrina’s dressed as a clownish lesbian pimp. (Kelly’s in enormous wedge heels, the type Tom Cruise might’ve worn to the Maverick premiere.) “I’ve already arranged for you three to go to prison,” Charlie cheerfully announces. Jill seems less bothered by the assignment than the others.