The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (8 page)

Unsure whether he was exposed to the virus or not, Dr. Griffin must now deal with being “in limbo.”

Months later, Brett checks back into St. Eligius with pneumonia and discovers Dr. Griffin found God and become a Born Again Christian. He is more humane, yet terribly self-righteous — to the point of offering Brett unsolicited spiritual guidance to renounce his homosexuality and ask God for forgiveness (“Requiem For a Heavyweight”). In a moment of despair, the dying Brett wonders if Dr. Griffin is right — maybe he is going to hell. But as Griffin admits to a colleague the morning after Brett’s death (“Split Decision”), he’s the one who made the mistake:

In the Fall of 1994, the medical drama was resuscitated by two new series.
Chicago Hope,
created by David E. Kelley, followed the medical staff of a private Chicago hospital. Like
Medical Center,
the staff’s professional and personal lives are examined in relation to the medical conditions of their patients. Also set in Chicago,
ER
follows a similar format, though the series tends to be faster-paced, grittier, and less melodramatic. In spite of their stylistic differences, both series picked up where
St. Elsewhere
left off by continuing to focus on the AIDS crisis, particularly the rapid rise of reported cases in the heterosexual population.

During
ER’s
first season, two gay men with AIDS passed through County General Hospital’s emergency room doors. In “Long Day’s Journey,” Dr. Ross (George Clooney) treats a young, badly beaten street hustler named Terry (Alexis Cruz). He also has AIDS, but refuses treatment for his pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP). Dr. Ross lectures him about safe sex and gives him condoms, which Terry says he has no intention of using because “that’s not what they [his customers] pay for.”

In the series’s first season finale (“Everything Old Is New Again”), Dr. Benton (Eriq LaSalle) treats Thomas (Jeff Seifer), a gay man in the final stages of AIDS. Thomas needs to have surgery to remove a bowel obstruction, but he has made it clear he’d rather die than endure another operation. Knowing his lover Jason (Charley Lang) would have difficulty carrying out his wishes, Thomas gave his power of attorney to his mother, Marjorie (Sylvia Short), who tells Dr. Benton not to operate. Jason respects her decision and understands it’s time to let his lover go. “We already said our good-byes,” Jason tells Dr. Benton, “but I guess you’re never really ready.”

Through their interaction with their respective patients, both doctors learn something about themselves. When Dr. Ross is unable to convince his patient to be treated for his pneumonia or even to practice safe sex, he questions how much he is really able to make a difference. Conversely, caring for a patient refusing treatment is a cathartic experience for Dr. Benton. Having recently lost his own mother, and feeling guilty he wasn’t with her when she died, the usually unemotional Dr. Benton gets a second chance to say goodbye (at least in the metaphorical sense) by holding a late night vigil at his dying patient’s bedside.

No doubt a sign of the times, the fact both AIDS patients are gay is never raised as an issue. However, this wasn’t the case in a 1996 episode of
Chicago Hope.
In “Right to Life,” Dr. Kronk (Peter Berg), a self-admitted homophobe, is assigned to treat an African-American female impersonator named Ms. Cherchez La Femme (Jazzmun), who collapses while rehearsing her new show. The antibiotics Dr. Kronk prescribed are not helping Cherchez, who’s worried because his mother, who doesn’t know he has AIDS, is coming to visit. Dr. Kronk is initially indifferent and uncomfortable around his patient, but he begins to understand that, like all the others he’s treated, Cherchez deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. To make amends for his attitude, Dr. Kronk borrows a female staff member’s make-up case so Cherchez can put on a healthier looking face for his mother’s visit.

The episode marks a turning point for Dr. Kronk, who had something of a gender identity crisis himself (“Informed Consent”) when he discovered his girlfriend Annie (Mia Sara) is a transsexual. He thought Annie was the sister of his childhood hockey buddy Andy, never suspecting Annie actually is (or was) Andy. Dr. Kronk admits he could have handled it if she was married or a criminal, but he finds the thought of having slept with someone who once had a penis to be revolting.

The following season, a desperate Annie turns to Dr. Kronk for help (“Women on the Verge”) when her estrogen pills stop working. A cat-scan reveals the estrogen is causing her blood to clot, so she must stop taking the drug, which eventually will make her voice deeper and her facial hair regrow. The episode ends tragically when Annie commits suicide in her hospital room, leaving Dr. Kronk, already feeling guilty about the way he treated her, completely devastated.

The producers of both
Chicago Hope
and
ER
should be credited for not only treating gender and sexual identity issues with intelligence and sensitivity, but for keeping AIDS on the front burner. When both series first hit the airwaves, AIDS was shedding some of its stigma as a “gay disease,” thanks in part to public figures like basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who announced that he was HIV positive in 1991. In 1994, the year
ER
and
Chicago Hope
premiered, the number of cases acquired through heterosexual contact was rising at an alarming rate (130 percent). AIDS was also the leading cause of death for American men between 25 and 44 (number four for women in the same age bracket).

The AIDS cases on both
ER
and
Chicago Hope
reflected this change. On the surface, the “heterosexualizing” of AIDS seemed problematic because gay AIDS patients (with few exceptions) seemed almost to disappear. Yet, these “new” AIDS episodes, involving heterosexual victims, still focused on the same two primary issues: the medical condition itself, and the “human side” of AIDS, particularly the physical and psychological effects of the disease on patients and their loved ones.

Medical series also started to address more specific social issues of AIDS patients. For example, the controversy surrounding the administering of marijuana for medicinal purposes is addressed in an episode of the short-lived series
L.A. Doctors
(“Under the Radar”). Dr. Tim Lonner (Matt Craven) is treating his childhood friend, a gay man dying from AIDS. The patient is having trouble eating and asks Tim if he could get him some marijuana to stimulate his appetite. Tim’s a bit square, so he enlists help from his slick partner, Roger (Ken Olin), who sets up a meeting in downtown LA to score some weed. The pair get busted and thrown into jail. Dr. Cattan, who doesn’t exactly shy away from the public spotlight, uses this as an opportunity to make a public statement supporting the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Chicago Hope
frequently addressed the ethical questions raised by experimental treatments. The series’s third episode, “Food Chains,” involved the battle over a baboon named Marty. Dr. Geiger (Mandy Patinkin) wants to transplant the lab animal’s heart into his patient, John Lanier (Earl Billings). Dr. Thurmond (E.G. Marshall) wants to inject Dina Russell (Melinda Culea), a prostitute with AIDS, with Marty’s bone marrow to revive her immune system. Both procedures are risky, the odds of them working are low, and the reality is both Lanier and Russell will eventually die. In spite of their experimental nature and protests by animal rights activists, Lanier gets his new heart and Russell a fresh supply of bone marrow. Their ultimate fates are never revealed.

An interrelated story examines how a physician’s attitude toward an AIDS patient endangers her life and almost ends his career. When Dina Russell first arrives in the emergency room with severe stab wounds, she tells Dr. Nyland (Thomas Gibson) she has AIDS. He quickly moves on to a patient whose condition is less critical, leaving Dina almost to bleed to death. Dr. Nyland is reprimanded by Dr. Thurmond and he apologizes to Russell. He admits to her that because she’s a prostitute with AIDS and maybe even an IV drug user, another patient’s life seemed more worth saving. “I’ll never owe a patient a bigger apology than I owe you,” he tells her. She accepts his apology.

Toward the end of the first season,
Chicago Hope
introduced dedicated medical researcher named Dr. Diane Grad (Jayne Brook), who finds it difficult to keep an emotional distance from her subjects. In “Freeze Outs,” she refuses to allow Dr. Hancock’s (Vondie Curtis-Hall) patient, Charles Ellis (Obba Babatunde), to participate in her AIDS studies because there is no more room and Ellis is in the late stages of the disease. His death would also compromise the success of her study, which would put future grants in financial jeopardy. The issue poses an interesting dilemma: is the possibility of saving one life worth risking the potential saving of thousands of lives?

The experimental treatment poses another problem for both patient and hospital. Ellis’s insurance won’t cover the procedure, so chief of staff Dr. Watters (Hector Elizondo) refuses to give them permission, insisting it is too experimental and costly. They go ahead anyway when the hospital’s legal counsel, Alan Birch (Peter MacNichol) is willing to look the other way if Ellis signs a liability release.

The long-suffering Ellis survives the treatment, but returns to the hospital a few episodes later (“Full Moon”) with appendicitis. Dr. Hancock wants Dr. Bob Meriniak (Cotter Smith) to perform an appendectomy, but he refuses because the operation won’t buy Ellis much time and the risk of him contracting AIDS is too great. With Dr. Grad’s assistance, Dr. Hancock performs the operation, which prolongs Ellis’s life long enough to grant his patient’s last wish — to see the sun rise one last time. In a powerful ending, Dr. Hancock sits by Elllis’s side as they watch the sun come up, at which instant Ellis takes his last breath.

As Dr. Grad continues her research, she also becomes involved with several HIV-positive patients. The list includes Ivy Moore
(American Beauty’s
Mena Suvari), a 15-year-old girl who refuses to take her medication (“Sympathy for the Devil”); and Mrs. Slater (Leslie Hope), who wants to get pregnant (“The Ties That Bind”) even though she runs the risk of passing the infection on to her baby. Dr. Grad also finds out what it’s like to be a patient herself when she’s bitten by an HIV-positive lab ape named Bam-Bam (“The Ethics of Hope”). Luckily, she escapes exposure, though several seasons later she has another scare when she accidentally slices her finger during a C-section on Mrs. Slater. When Dr. Grad’s first HIV test is inconclusive (“Teacher’s Pet”), she repeats the test. Forty-eight hours later, she and her husband are relieved to find out that the results are negative.

ER
has also featured several non-gay AIDS cases, such as the man who arrives in the emergency room with his fiancée looking for a cure for his hiccups (“Full Moon, Saturday Night”). Dr. Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) treats him with Thorazinc, but his blood test reveals he’s HIV positive. He claims he has never engaged in any risky behavior, but his fiancée tells Dr. Lewis she suspects her boyfriend may have been unfaithful to her. She gets tested, but her results are never revealed. The episode preaches a straightforward message about why practicing safe sex is a necessity and how the lack of honesty between two people can have catastrophic consequences.

Pediatric AIDS is the focus of another story (“Make of Two Hearts”) involving an HIV-positive Russian baby girl, Tatianna, abandoned by her adopted mother. The mother does return, but only to explain to Nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) that her husband died two years earlier and she is afraid of getting too close to her baby, knowing she will die soon. Hathaway decides to adopt her, but her application is denied when a background check reveals she once attempted suicide.

Over time, the episodes involving AIDS continued to be more complex and, at times, heavy-handed. An episode of
ER
(“Flight of Fancy”) involves a teenager named Trent (Blake Heron), who was never told by his grandmother (Joanna Miles) that he contracted AIDS from his late mother, a heroin addict. So Dr. Carter (Noah Wyle) takes it upon himself to inform Trent of his HIV status. Trent brings his girlfriend Emma in to get tested and the two have a fight, causing Trent to run out into the street and get killed by a car. Dr. Carter feels guilty and questions whether he did the right thing, but Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) assures him he had no choice. The tragic, over-the-top ending, in which Trent crashes through a windshield, undermines the story’s message about how shame and guilt continue to interfere with the treatment of AIDS.

A more realistic and highly disturbing
ER
episode (“Thy Will Be Done”) involves a gay man, Jeff (Robert Beitzel), who comes in with a case of mononucleosis and asks Dr. Carter for an HIV test because he had unprotected sex with an infected partner. When Dr. Dave Malucci (Erik Palladino) gives Jeff and his significant other Sean (Noah Blake) the good news (he’s negative), they’re disappointed. Dr. Malucci asks if Jeff is a “bug chaser,” a slang term for someone trying to contract AIDS. Apparently Jeff wants to get infected because Sean is HIV positive and, in Sean’s words, “they’re together in everything.” When a second test comes back negative, Dr. Malucci counsels the patient by explaining that even though people with HIV are living longer, AIDS can still kill you. The February 2001 episode is a powerful response to the recent rise of HIV infection among young gay men, who health officials fear are abandoning safe-sex practices because recent medical advancements have improved the quality of life for people living with HIV.

The most complex and longest ongoing AIDS story line on ER involved physician’s assistant Jeanie Boulet (Gloria Reuben). She contracts AIDS from her husband Al (Michael Beach), who tests positive for the HIV virus when he comes to the emergency room for the flu (“Take These Broken Wings”). Jeanie is eventually forced to disclose her HIV status to Dr. Weaver when she’s unable to remove glass from a patient’s chest, fearing she may cut herself and infect the patient (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”). Jeanie also reveals her HIV status to hospital administration, which has developed strict work guidelines for HIV positive employees. However, she finds it increasingly difficult to adhere to them and is eventually reprimanded by Dr. Weaver for violating policy (“When the Bough Breaks”). Jeanie’s job later gets downsized, but when she learns a new RN has been hired for the ER, and Dr. Weaver recently received a salary increase, she threatens the hospital with a lawsuit. Weaver is forced to rehire Jeanie, even though Weaver believes she is only using her HIV status to get her job back.