A nice sitcom which aged rather well. And even the general public picked up the subtext:
[quote]The Odd Couple’s executive producer, Garry Marshall, remembers that Midwestern focus groups were turned off by The Odd Couple because “they thought it was about homosexuals”: "When I did the show before, the network was afraid they were two gay characters, so they kept saying, ‘put more girls in it.’ And to make them crazy I had them hugging all the time."
[quote]ABC apparently added an intro narration because it did not want the audience to speculate about a homosexual subtext, given changing perceptions of masculinity at the time. ABC also insisted that every episode mention that the characters were both divorced.
[quote]Randall notes that they did attempt to mention gay people a few times in The Odd Couple. Felix finds an article that Oscar is writing about gay liberation, assumes that he is gay, and muses, “If it was going to be anyone, you’d think it would be me.” Oscar and Felix accidentally book themselves onto a gay airplane flight, and fit right in with the other couples. But all such references were summarily nixed by the network censors. The producers got so fed up that they filmed clips of Oscar and Felix kissing, and sent them in just to get the censors mad.
