Too Close For Comfort's "Monroe gets raped" episode (1985)

Another write-up. Many of the links are dead...

Old TV Guide listing:

Contrary to legend this episode has aired in syndication. I saw it once on TVLand or Retroville, or whatever one of those satellite dish streaming channels with old sitcoms was called, sometime in the 00's.

They helped themselves...

This is the one with the laugh track over the rape, right?

I only saw the tail-end of this episode. I believe it was a repeat, I was a kid at the time. Anywho, Monroe and Henty confront the women in their apartment. The woman who is a man comes out, Monroe screams and runs out of the apartment and Henry hides in a closet or something.

I had completely erased the bitch in the middle from my brain until today. Thanks a whole fucking lot, OP.

This episode marks the very moment when rape jokes and Very Special Episodes collided.

R7 April!

This sounds absolutely surreal and I’m now completely dying to see if.

OFF TOPIC, BUT WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE YOUNG FEMALE CAST, ESPECIALLY LYDIA CORNELL WHO GOT ALOT OF ATTENTION AS THE LATEST BLONDE (I.E. AFTER LOCKLEAR, HEATHER THOMAS, ETC.)..

It did air at least once on Antenna TV because I saw it and was like WTF? IT has been discussed here before.

The 80's had some weird as fuck ways of dealing with issues like this that would never happen today. I guess because of the time and the fact that these issues had never really been discussed before. This was around the time that some TV anchor got into trouble for asking an accused rapist and his victim to hug it out on television as well. Golden Girls even made a joke about her firing.

Wow r12, never heard that one before. What the actual fuck?

Picket Fences did an episode that dealt with a woman raping a man in 1993. I was fifteen and it stuck with me. The script was pretty didactic but informative. The discussion starts around the 11:00 mark.

i’m curious to watch . if it’s really rape-rape.

the soap opera As the World Turns did it too

I think Jm J Bullock having sex with a woman would definitely have to be rape-rape.

The she-rapist at R14 is Brenda Strong, the narrator of Desperate Housewives. I saw her in person at an event once and she was a giant, probably 6’3” in her heels. Makes a lot of sense from a casting perspective since she could probably overpower some men, but you can’t really see discern on TV how tall she is.

R18 the braless wonder strikes again

R12, it was Phyllis George who asked the question. Ironically, she stumbled on the right idea. These two were hitting the talk show circuit together. They are a team. Yeah, be up front and hug it out because they were both milking it for everything it was worth.

It seems bizarre to imagine a sitcom today dealing with rape or pedophilia, yet they were common "Very Special Episode" themes in the 80's. Who wanted to see that stuff in a crappy 25-minute comedy TV show?

This is up there with the time on SOAP where there was a wholeaas police inquiry into Jodie adopting and taking care of his biological baby because he was an Out gay man (said baby issuing from a time of confusion/closeting in previous years).

There was a whole TV movie that year about a man being raped - The Rape of Richard Beck (by two men). Richard Crenna won an Emmy for the role.

R21 Yet it was effective as a way of traumatizing kids. I was born in 1978. That episode of Diff’rent Strokes freaked me the fuck out and I didn’t even really know what was going on. And an episode of Punky Brewster in which Punky’s friend Cherie was locked in a refrigerator and almost died gave me a fear of refrigerators for years. I wish I were kidding but I’m not.

R12 - the accused rapist had been falsely accused. He spent many years in jail until she recanted and said she had made it up. She had become deeply religious and finally felt remorse for making it all up.

I wouldn't hug that bitch either. But it definitely wasn't a scenario where they asked a victim to hug a rapist. He never raped her and she ruined his life.

Here's a cringey '80s sitcom fail about AIDS:

Nasty Gary Coleman innuendo!

One of Law & Order SVU’s early episodes dealt with a male stripper accusing a bachelorette party of raping him. Elliott was not convinced a man could be overpowered by a woman but the ladies of SVU showed him it could be done!

Also, I'm pretty sure that for the past 20 seasons, Olivia Benson gets abducted and raped once a year in a very special 2 part episode

R29 Correct episode but incorrect explanation for what they were demonstrating in that image.

April was the Cousin Oliver of "Too Close For Comfort."

I remember as a gayling being confused as to whether I found JM J Bullock attractive or not.

R33 Same. And I settled on yes.

Poor Cousin Oliver gets a little bit of a bad rap. Compared to other young kids brought on when a show was desperate for a new cute kid or in April's case a troubled youth, he was pretty inoffensive and did not really even take up that much screen time. April on the other hand, was pretty obnoxious and unlikable and did steal time away from the original daughters. They also started having the mother-in-law played by Audrey Meadows make regular appearances. She was kind of the senior citizen version of Cousin Oliver and probably would have been better if only used occasionally.

This bitch.

My memory is cloudy but I recall watching it when it was still on YouTube and it was bizarre and strange. I thought Bullock did the best he could, though, with the material. I felt bad for him. He was always the laughing stock on that show.

Someone posted a thread about that TV movie with Ted Danson and Glenn Close, "Something About Amelia". Danson plays a father who sexually abuses his daughter and, after some counselling, he comes home!

Did Cosmic Cow ever go down on Nancy Dussault?

I hadn’t realized that they had gotten rid of the daughters before the show was finally canceled.

R40 THAT’s where I knew Pat Carroll from! I knew Ursula was played by/modeled on her as soon as I saw The Little Mermaid.

Ted died during the syndicated years of Too Close.

The decision was made to just end it though Nancy Dussault (sensing this was her last hurrah?) fought tooth and nails to try and keep the show going.

Her suggestions included having her "possessed" by Ted's spirit and when the producers said "no thanks," she then suggested a grief stricken Muriel should enter into a lesbian relationship with Pat Carroll's Mrs. Stinson character.

Producers politely declined.

TCFC should be lauded for bravely tacking the subject of women who become pregnant at the age of 65.

Catherine O’Hara perfecting the Nancy Dussault head turn.

What a challenge for writers to put comedy and pathos into a 23 min. sitcom. But they were often successful. Like mini-plays filmed before a live audience.

I miss them. Now everything is so dumb.

R42 I remember that. She was on some news/entertainment show where they showed her trying to keep this show alive, making phone calls and crap like that. Even as a kid I thought, 'slow down."