CODE PINK: DOCTORS AND PATIENTS IN THE 90s
Although gay men may have been conspicuously absent from these AIDS story lines, the medical shows of the 1990s did pick up where 1970s series left off by featuring gay and lesbian doctors, hospital staff members, and, of course, patients. Some of the same issues, such as homophobia and sexual confusion among teenagers, continued to be addressed. However, beginning in the mid-1980s, medical dramas started to reflect some of the changes in society’s attitudes toward homosexuality.
The shift in attitudes is first evident in a 1984 episode of
St. Elsewhere
entitled “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” When a reputable medical researcher named Dr. Christine Holtz (Caroline McWilliams) visits St. Eligius, Dr. Cavanero (Cynthia Sikes) invites her to stay with her. Dr. Holtz later comes out to Dr. Cavanero, who is extremely uncomfortable around her lesbian houseguest. When she shares Dr. Holtz’s secret with members of the hospital staff, the rumor rapidly makes its way around the corridors. People even begin to talk about Dr. Cavanero, who, as one character puts it, “never really had a relationship with a man.”
Dr. Holtz hears about the rumor from one of her patients, Mr. Millstein (Harold Gould), who believes lesbians don’t really exist (“it’s just media hype”), though he does have a nephew who “can’t even tell the Celtics from the Bruins.” Mr. Millstein claims he doesn’t care if the doctor who saved his life is a lesbian, but when Dr. Holtz admits it’s true, he doesn’t believe her.
That night, she confronts Dr. Cavanero about betraying her confidence. She says she assumed it wasn’t a secret, but when she shares her true feelings about Dr. Holtz’s sexuality, it’s clear she did have an ulterior motive:
DR. CAVANERO: What you do is perverted. Sex between two women is unnatural...Ever since you told me you were gay, I don’t know how to treat you. I was taught women shouldn’t have those feelings and if you do, it’s wrong. It’s just wrong.
Although the writers try to redeem Dr. Cavanero by having her apologize, they thankfully resist trying to make us believe she is suddenly cured of her homophobia:
DR. CAVANERO: Chris, I stayed up thinking last night. I’m sorry.
DR. HOLTZ: People don’t change overnight. Listen, I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m a lesbian, but it’s not the first thing I tell people. Especially colleagues. It’s hard enough being accepted in this profession as a woman, let alone as a gay woman. All I wanted was to be friends. And you made that friendship suspect. Automatically assumed I was interested in you romantically.
DR. CAVANERO : I hope we can still be that.
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AIDS EPISODES, TV-MOVIES, AND SPECIALS
Andre’s Mother
(PBS)
March 7, 1990
Written by Terrence McNally
Directed by Deborah Reinisch
A presentation of
American Playhouse,
this first-rate drama from gay playwright McNally explores a gay man (Richard Thomas) and his deceased lover’s mother (Sada Thompson), both trying to come to terms with Andre’s death. Thomas and Thompson are superb, as is McNally’s script, making it one of the best original AIDS dramas produced for television.
“Steve Burdick”
Lifestories
(NBC-TV)
December 18, 1990
Written by Richard Gollance
Directed by Aaron Lipstadt
D.W. Moffet, who co-starred in
An Early Frost,
stars as Steve Burdick, a closeted news anchor who breaks down on the air the day his lover dies of AIDS. After revealing to the public he is HIV positive, Steve decides to do a series of first-person news reports on the disease. Loosely based on San Francisco newscaster Paul Wynne, who died of AIDS in 1990, “Steve Burdick” is a touching story that exposes the media’s failure to provide adequate and necessary coverage of the disease.
Our Sons
(ABC-TV)
May 19, 1991
Written by William Hanley
Suggested by the documentary
Too Little, Too Late
Directed by John Erman
While it would seem like every gay boy’s fantasy to have Julie Andrews or Ann-Margret as their mother, this made-for-TV film is a disappointment. Andrews plays a successful businesswoman who never bonded with her gay son, James (Hugh Grant). His live-in lover, Donald (Zeljko Ivanek), is dying. James asks his mother to convince Donald’s mother (Ann-Margret), a gum-chewing barmaid who thinks homosexuality is a sin, to see her son before he dies. This sappy, well-intentioned film tries hard to say something about love, compassion, and acceptance, but despite a stellar cast, it misses the mark.
“Incident on Main”
Life Goes On
(ABC-TV)
January 10, 1993
Written by Scott Frost
Directed by R.W. Goodwin
Chad Lowe won a much-deserved Emmy for his portrayal of Jesse McKenna, an HIV positive teenager. During the show’s fourth season, Jesse’s health begins to decline steadily and both he and his girlfriend Becca (Kellie Martin) are forced to come to terms with his inevitable death. In this episode, Jesse is beaten up outside of a hospice by a group of Neo-Nazis who assume he’s gay. When Becca tries to help him, she gets his blood on her hands, though thankfully her HIV test comes up negative. This underrated series broke new ground in its dramatization of a teenager living with AIDS.
Roommates
(NBC-TV)
May 30, 1994
Written by Robert W. Lenski
Directed by Alan Metzger
Eric Stoltz and Randy Quaid are a mismatched pair of AIDS patients. Stoltz is an educated, privileged gay man, while Quaid is a straight, homophobic ex-convict who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. Despite their differences, they develop a close friendship.
“A Mate For Life”
Beverly Hills
90210 (Fox Network)
September 4, 1995
Written by John Whelpley
Directed by Burt Brinckerhoff
In a storyline similar to
Sisters,
Kelly (Jennie Garth) is sentenced to community service at an AIDS Hospice, where she befriends a gay man, Jimmy (Michael Stoyanov), who has only a few days to live. Not as effective as the
Sisters
storyline, but Stoyanov is terrific.
“A Sudden Change of Heart”
Sisters
(NBC-TV)
January 6, 1996
The first episode of a storyline in which Reed (Noelle Parker) is sentenced to community service at an AIDS Hospice, where she befriends a transvestite named Chardonnay (K. Todd Freeman). Reed later asks her Aunt Teddy (Sela Ward), Chardonnay’s favorite designer, to design her burial dress. When Reed reluctantly returns to the Hospice after Chardonnay’s death, she finds comfort in speaking to her ghost. A well-executed storyline with some terrific moments between Parker and Freeman.
“The Violin Lesson”
Touched By An Angel
(CBS-TV)
December 22, 1996
Written by Glenn Berenbeim
Directed by Peter Hunt
Angel Monica (Roma Downey) serves as an apprentice to a violin maker, Jordan (Peter Michael Goetz), whose son, Tony (Lawrence Monoson) returns home for the holidays to tell his family he’s gay and has AIDS. Fortunately, Monica and fellow Angel, Tess (Della Reese), are able to reunite father and son before Andrew, the Angel of Death (John Dye) whisks Tony away. The highlight of this moving episode is Tony’s encounter with Angel Tess. He thinks God hates him because he’s gay and has AIDS. “What you’ve heard has been someone else’s words,” Tess explains, “words of hate and confusion. God is not the source of confusion. God’s love is perfect.”
The episode breaks new ground because, unlike the blatantly homophobic characters on
Medical Center
and
The Bold Ones,
Dr. Cavanero is a series regular. Nor is she painted, like
Medical Center’s
Dr. Garson, as a villain. Instead, Dr. Cavanero is someone who has believed a certain way about homosexuality her whole life. Now, through her friendship with Dr. Holtz, those beliefs are being challenged and possibly re-evaluated.
Like most lesbians on television, Dr. Holtz checked into St.
Elsewhere
for only two episodes. It would take five more years before the first lesbian would be introduced on a prime time series as a regular. In 1989, ABC’s medical drama
Heartbeat
included a lesbian, nurse-practitioner Marilyn McGrath (Gail Strickland), among its ensemble cast. Divorced and estranged from her daughter, Marilyn works at a women’s clinic, Women’s Medical Arts, and has been in a relationship for four years with her lover Patti (Gina Hecht), a recurring character on the series.
Marilyn is a breakthrough character because her lesbianism is a non-issue. As Anne Lewis of the gay newspaper, the
Washington Blade,
observed in February of 1989, Marilyn is depicted “as a wholesome, well-adjusted individual who just happens to be Gay.”
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Like other medical dramas, the focus of each episode of
Heartbeat
shifts between the characters’ professional and personal lives. In comparison to her female and male colleagues, who all seem to have relationship and/or sexual problems (i.e. impotency, jealousy, divorce), Marilyn is the most stable character on the show.
The two-part finale of the series’s initial six-episode run looked at Marilyn’s reunion with her daughter Allison (Hallie Todd), who’s returned to California to get married (“To Heal a Doctor”). Allison makes it clear she doesn’t want her mother to bring Patti to the wedding. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to bring her,” she tells her. “A lot of my friends don’t know about you.” Patti understands and encourages Marilyn to take care of “the biggest piece of unfinished business” in her life and talk to her daughter.
Their conversation reveals why Allison resents her mother:
ALLISON: It’s not that you’re a lesbian. That’s not what bothers me. It’s — why did you marry Dad?
MARILYN: I thought I could make a life with your father. I wasn’t in love, but I liked him and I wanted children. And I decided I could keep those different feelings buried deep within in me.
ALLISON: But you left me.
MARILYN: I didn’t have a choice. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but believe me it would have been more devastating for you if I had stayed.
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Allison is concerned she might also turn out to be a lesbian, but after Marilyn assures her that won’t happen, mother and daughter finally reach an understanding.
Patti does attend the wedding, but as Marguerite J. Moritz points out in her insightful critique of the two-part episode, Marilyn and Patti are only shown twice during the wedding ceremony (“The Wedding”). In fact, the mother of the bride has only one line. (“I think I’m going to cry.”) After the ceremony, they virtually disappear, which is absurd considering all of Marilyn’s colleagues are in attendance. What Moritz finds even more problematic is how the heterosexual characters all resolve their relationship problems during the reception in scenes involving “overt sexual exchanges in which the men exert their virility and dominance over the women in their lives.”
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Patriarchy and heterosexuality are ultimately affirmed:
While the heterosexual couples exhibit an outpouring of desire as the wedding reception plays out, the lesbians are politely kept from view, never intruding on the show’s vision of what it is to be a couple or to be in a romantic relationship...The overall effect is to reaffirm the patriarchal order and to tell the world what really counts goes on in the heterosexual world, the arena of passion, desire, and drama.
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Moritz raises an important question regarding the non-stereotypical representation of homosexual characters on television. Even when gay characters are portrayed positively, we must examine how they’re represented in context. In their analysis of
Heartbeat
, Darlene M. Hantzis and Valerie Lehr find the depiction of the lesbian couple problematic because it is completely nonsexual. While the heterosexual characters are shown making love (one couple even do it in an office), Marilyn and Patti were not even permitted by the network to touch. Hantzis and Lehr conclude that ultimately many so-called “‘positive’ portrayals serve as mechanisms to perpetuate hetero/sexism even as they appear to display the ‘good will’ of various producers, directors, and writers toward lesbian and gay issues.”
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Still,
Heartbeat,
did usher in an era in which sexual orientation on medical dramas was becoming less of an issue. Now when a regular, recurring, or guest character comes out, it is in a matter-of fact fashion. Dramatic speeches about the “sickness of intolerance,” which once echoed through
Medical Center’s
boardroom, have been replaced by more casual conversations in front of the water cooler.
In a
Chicago Hope
episode aptly titled “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” a male resident, Dr. Robert Lawrence (Mark Benninghofen), who is interested in specializing in neurosurgery, volunteers to assist Dr. Shutt (Adam Arkin) with a research project. Dr. Shutt is interested in working with him, until Dr. Lawrence, who thinks Dr. Shutt is gay, impulsively straightens his colleague’s tie and puts his hand against his cheek. A very surprised Dr. Shutt flips out, but later realizes he may have overreacted.
Six months later, Drs. Shutt and Lawrence finally begin their project (“Liver Let Die”). This time around, they become close friends and even share intimate details about their lives. Dr. Lawrence even encourages the hard-working Dr. Shutt to do something about his lack of a personal life. In one of television’s rare honest exchanges between a gay and a straight man, they discuss the respective challenges each faces in maintaining a relationship. By working so closely with Dr. Lawrence, Dr. Shutt’s homophobia slowly begins to dissipate.