Fawlty Towers: Season 1, Episode 5 | Gourmet Night (17 Oct. 1975)

Fawlty Towers: Season 1, Episode 5 | Gourmet Night (17 Oct. 1975)

 

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This past week, I’ve been revisiting Fawlty Towers which is available for instant play on Netflix. Yesterday I watched the fifth episode of season one titled Gourmet Night, which, according to IMDb, originally aired on Oct. 17, 1975. I didn’t remember this episode at all, and I was quite surprised to find out it has a funny little gay subplot. Kurt the cook falls in love with Manuel the waiter, and when Manuel rejects him, Kurt gets stinking drunk and is unable to prepare a special gourmet feast that’s been planned. Hilarity ensues. It was all played for laughs, of course, but I was struck by how they didn’t dwell on the fact that Kurt had fallen for a man. They didn’t make him out to be strange or perverted. And Manuel rejected him simply because he didn’t have those kinds of feelings for Kurt, not because he was horrified by the idea of a man being in love with him.