Homosexuality was dealt with from the first season, which was rare in the early 1980s on American television.[9] In the first-season episode "The Boys in the Bar" (the title being a reference to the play and subsequent movie The Boys in the Band), a friend and former teammate of Sam's comes out in his autobiography. Some of the male regulars pressure Sam to take action to ensure that Cheers does not become a gay bar. The episode won a GLAAD Media Award, and the script's writers, Ken Levine and David Isaacs, were nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.