During the sixth season, Lucy wonders if John Ross’s camp counselor Peter Richards is gay because he doesn’t want to date her (she doesn’t realize Peter is in love with Sue Ellen), but the show never again identifies a character as being gay. There are only fleeting gay allusions in later episodes. Kit is also a footnote: “Dallas” ran 14 seasons and produced 357 episodes, yet he is the only character whose homosexuality is ever acknowledged on the show. al.), is handled with surprising sophistication, making Kit one of prime-time television’s breakthrough gay characters. This episode, which reflects the ’70s trend toward “socially conscious” television (see also: “All in the Family,” “Lou Grant,” et. The show stops dancing around the issue in “Royal Marriage,” the 1979 episode where Kit Mainwaring, an oil-and-cattle heir who is secretly gay, breaks his engagement to Lucy and comes out of the closet. creates a scandal by making it look like Pam is involved in a three-way relationship with a man and another woman. questions Cliff’s close relationship with his male campaign manager, and “Call Girl,” when J.R. “Dallas” makes subtle references to homosexuality in early episodes like “Election,” when J.R.
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Maybe my middle-school gaydar was stronger than I realized. But when I think about those years now, I wonder if “Dallas’s” gay subtext helps explain its appeal to me. I didn’t catch a lot of this while watching the show in the 1980s, when I was a pretty confused gay kid. It regularly explores themes – empowerment, identity, gender roles – that resonate with gay audiences, and often in ways that are surprisingly smart. Yet “Dallas” is very much a show with gay sensibilities. Dusty Farlow wears ascots to keep dust out of his face, not because he’s fabulous. There are no same-sex office romances at Ewing Oil. Southfork never hosts a “Brokeback Mountain”-esque love story. By today’s standards, “Dallas” isn’t a “gay” show.