 Finn later described "Falsettos" as a "catharsis for people who've been going through the AIDS epidemic as well as for people not going through it", hoping that the show would allow people who had only read about the epidemic to empathize with people who had lived through it first-hand.The inclusion of lesbian characters Charlotte and Cordelia is a tribute to the lesbians who assisted gay men during the epidemic.Finn expressed that the inclusion of women in the story was paramount to the message of the show, explaining, "Gay men's lives have a lot of women in them.