January meme: Night Court stuff

dorinda asked a question that I had actually just been thinking about recently myself, so I'm gonna start with that:

Do you think it would be possible to have a story, written today, centered around the Night Court episode "Best of Friends", or would the period-accurate (& therefore sometimes transphobic) handling of some of it make it a non-starter or drawerfic?

So, for background: ( the Night court ep 'Best of Friends' )

There is just so much scope in this episode for fanfic, looking at Dan's willingness to move past at least some of his rigid way of looking at the world, and how when he loves someone it's intense and real, and how maybe that's why he doesn't have friends - he knows how to do transactional relationships, but not really how to do casual friendships; it's all or nothing with him, and he anchors himself to his real relationships, so he's at risk of being set badly adrift if something goes wrong.

But that said, this would be really dicey to write about today, because even though this episode at heart is about accepting people for who they are, regardless of who that is, it's still done in a mid-80s way, which is 30 years out of date.

I think it could be done, but drawerfic or a locked-down posting might be the way to go. I would hate to see someone looking for trans tags stumble into 80s transphobia (and even 80s trans norms - lots of things were different) without realizing it.

My brain is all aswirl with caveats and but-ifs, but yeah: in this particular case, I think an episode-centered story should be kept more private.