Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Edna and Leslie discover they have a lot in common!

Episode 1.20 “Edna’s New Friend”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on February 26th, 1986)

Brace yourself.  We are once again about to explore Howard and Edna’s relationship.

Check It Out!, at least during its first season, was never particularly consistent when it came to the details of Howard and Edna’s relationship.  Sometimes, Howard was the most romantic man on the planet and then, other times, he was an insensitive jerk who was incapable of understanding why Edna wouldn’t want to spend all of her time watching television at his apartment.  Sometimes, Edna was down-to-Earth and realistic and, other times, she was flighty and seemingly living in a world of her own.  In this episode, we’re back to Howard being a jerk and Edna wanting to experience life outside of going to work and then over to Howard’s apartment.

Edna has tickets to the ballet.  As she explains, they cost her a lot of money and she’s superexcited about having managed to get them.  However, Howard doesn’t care about the ballet (“I don’t like Russian ballerinas,” he explains) and he’s already made plans to watch television that night.  Edna asks Jennifer if she wants to go but Jennifer has an appointment at a tanning salon.  Marlene has a date and is planning on taking him to a “slam dance, so if I don’t like him, at least I’ll get to hurt him.”  Finally, Edna asks Leslie, who once lived in Paris and who is a ballet fanatic!

Leslie is also a guy but he’s gay so Howard isn’t concerned about him going out with Edna.  Or, at least, Howard isn’t worried until Christian suggests that Edna might try to “convert” Leslie because “women love a challenge.”  Howard starts to panic….

Of course, what Howard should be panicking about is the super cheap beef that Christian has been buying and re-selling in the store.  It’s not beef, at all.  It’s horse meat!  When the truth comes out, the customers form an angry mob.  Marlene even joins them because “it was either be destroyed or become their leader.”

The character of Leslie has been one of the more interesting parts of the first season of Check It Out!  Today, of course, it doesn’t seem like a big deal for a show to feature a regular character who is gay.  But, by the standards of most 1980s sitcoms that I’ve seen, Check It Out! was often downright progressive in its portrayal of Leslie as being an openly gay, angst-free, and happy man who was a friend to and respected by all of his co-workers, even the stupid ones.  And while this episode does feature some humor centered around Leslie’s sexuality, the target of the joke is always Howard’s insecurity and Christian’s ignorance.  Again, this might not sound like much but you have to keep in mind that this is a nearly 40 year-old show.  When Check it Out! aired, most gay characters were either over-the-top caricatures that audiences were invited to laugh at or special guest stars who only existed to teach a lesson to the show’s regulars and who certainly didn’t return for a second appearance.  As corny and old-fashioned as Check it Out! could be, it was ahead-of-its-time when it came to Leslie.

As for the episode itself, it’s okay.  This is one of those episodes that leaves you wondering why Edna puts up with Howard but the stuff with the horsemeat was funny.  Marlene deciding to join the angry mob made me laugh.  Marlene is a force of chaos!  That’s something that this uneven but often funny show really needed.