Acting Up

Towards the end, several people at the ball start to vogue to the Madonna song. At the center is Jose Guitierez, who was one of Madonna's dancers for her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour.

At the beginning of the episode, Blanca and Pray Tell are seen traveling to Hart Island, off the eastern coast of the Bronx. Hart Island, which has served as New York City's only "potters field" since 1868 is where unclaimed bodies of unknown or indigent residents of the city who cannot afford a private burial are laid to rest in mass graves where pine box coffins are numbered and stacked together before being buried.

Prior to July 2015, this would have been impossible since members of the public were prohibited from visiting the island. This episode takes place in the summer of 1990, 25 years prior to when the island was officially opened to visits by relatives and friends of the deceased buried there after a civil rights lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the behalf of the families of the deceased was settled with the New York City Department of Corrections (the city agency in charge of the island then). Since December 2019, the island's management was transferred to the city's Parks Department.

References Hee Haw (1969)