Question: I like watching ER, ...
Question: I like watching
ER, but I'm not a true-blue fan. If I miss a week I don't shrivel up into a wailing ball. However, I feel motivated to come to its defense on two points you've recently made negative comment on. The more recent is the death of Weaver's wife, Sandy, and what you referred to as DLS (Dead Lesbian Syndrome). You may have missed what I think the writers were going for: to depict how truly deep and solid a relationship bond can be between members of the same gender. Through the at-home glimpses and powerful acting, we saw just how "normal" and beautiful the love and marriage of two gay people can be, how similar it can be to the best of what that institution has to offer. We saw how agonizing losing that partner can be and we saw how vulnerable the survivor of that loss can be to the technicalities of their lack of legally recognized status. It gave us something the mean-spirited debate over gay marriage threatened to drain away, and that's the realization that these people are individual human beings, like us in virtually every way that really means anything.
Lastly, regarding your high dudgeon at the manner of Romano's death by helicopter. I happen to still be amused by that because of its incredible irony. Romano was the character on the show most emphatically negative and cynical in his view of life, believing that there are no happy endings and life's a bitch and then you die. The manner of his death, following his strenuous, fearful and panicked effort to get far away from that helicopter was a blackly humorous affirmation of everything he lived his life by. Plus, it was extremely deft echoing of classic Greek and Roman mythology. Like Oedipus, the harder Romano tried to evade the fate he feared, the more directly he put himself in the path of it. I enjoy your column even when I don't agree with your perspective, so party on, dude. — Laura
Matt:
I never thought I'd see Rocket Romano and Oedipus mentioned in the same paragraph. Kudos! I appreciate both of these arguments, but I thought I was pretty clear in admiring the way ER had always handled Weaver's gay life and relationship. I liked how we knew it existed, and admired the character's determination to keep things private. I thoroughly agree that the more normal and realistic the depiction of gay relationships on television, the better. Several people wrote in to make this point, and to note the political timeliness of Weaver's struggle. My gripe, which also applies to the death of Romano, concerns the way these storylines played out so predictably, obviously and melodramatically, regardless of whatever great literary traditions they evoke.
