C.J.’s kiss with Abby is reflected in these homosexual storylines in several ways. Her bonding with Abby in order to make a career move parallels with male bonding in the workplace, and also suggests that feminism (helping out another woman, in this case) is directly linked with lesbianism—an old stereotype. The killer with multiple personalities is a clear parallel to bisexuality, although a disturbing one. It makes the obvious suggestion that bisexuals are capable of murder and are victims of sexual abuse.

Approximately 14.6 million households watched “He’s a Crowd,” and out of those millions of viewers, only 85 of them wrote or called NBC with their comments. Fifty-one of those were negative, and 33 were positive. Less than five advertisers pulled their spots from the episode, but NBC was quickly able to replace them with new advertisers.

In reaction to concerns that the network would lose revenue, producer Patricia Green said at the time, “There are probably twenty-five million gay people out there, all of whom have friends and relatives and loved ones. That is so many more people than those…who are liable to be offended by it that, to us, the advertiser saying ‘We lose business’ is irrelevant. It’s a perception, not a fact.”

GLAAD issued a statement praising the episode as groundbreaking, adding that the “historic smooch makes attorney C. J. Lamb…the only recurring gay or bisexual female character currently on television.”

But C.J.’s status as the only recurring bisexual character on television would be short-lived. A few weeks after the episode aired, the American Family Association, a fundamentalist Christian organization headed by Reverend Donald Wildmon, announced that they would be contacting the episode’s advertisers to inform them that they had been supporting a show with lesbian content. Wildmon and his organization felt that many of the advertisers probably didn’t know about the episode’s lesbian storyline, and they believed that once the companies knew, they’d want to withdraw their support.