It's possible that I'm just lexically hypersensitive, but has anybody else noticed that Ray says "queer"? I can only recall one instance right now - it might well have been the only one - but in "Eclipse," when he notices something hinky about the coffin that's been brought in, he says "Something's queer." It's not a common usage anymore - outside of people who've been reading a lot of Tolkien or Frances Hodgson Burnett - and, dammit, I want to be able to explain this without reference to the writers (although, hey, what's going on *there*?).
( So let's see... )The other instance where "queer" pops up is in "The Ladies' Man" - Ray is fumbling to explain to Beth why he's here, and Beth, who is, admittedly, kinda crazy at this point, interrupts him with, "I'm here? Because I'm here? Because I'm queer?" Hard to say whether Beth is talking about herself in the first two 'I'm here's, and the third one, well, who knows. Ray's response ("Kinda nutty, huh.") gives no sign of responding to the word "queer" in any case, no matter who he thinks it's being applied to, though, again, he seems to take it in its uninflected sense, to mean 'strange', which is some kind of seriously willful misreading, because "I'm here, I'm queer" is
not to be understood in that sense. (And what's the traditional end to that line, anyway? "I'm/we're not going anywhere?" Apropos...)
And, um, I'm going to stop before I actually attempt to write an essay based on two occurrences of a given monosyllable in a character's twenty-two episode run, because, yes.
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