10 TV Episodes That Broke All The Rules
3. He’s A Crowd - L.A. Law/True Love - Dawson’s Creek
We've gone for a double header for this entry, because both of these episodes broke barriers in similar ways.
L.A. Law was a legal drama that ran from 1986 to 1994. In the 1991 episode He's a Crowd, two female characters, C.J. Lamb and Abby Perkins, share a kiss that was among the first of its kind to be shown on TV.
9 years later on teen soap opera Dawson's Creek, characters Jack and Ethan share a passionate kiss, the first portrayal of such between two men.
The He's a Crowd kiss may have only been a ratings stunt, and Jack and Ethan never really developed their relationship beyond the kiss, but these were two huge moments in the representation of LGBTQ+ people on television.
The two kisses drew positive and negative responses in equal measure, with advertisers pulling products from both shows just as often as media outlets praised them for their bravery.
Other TV shows have done more for queer representation that these two, but it's important to remember how radical these kisses were at the time.
Without L.A. Law and Dawson's Creek taking the plunges that they did, we might be looking at a very different TV landscape today.