The
new Fox series Tru Calling, starring Eliza Dushku,
featured its first lesbian-themed episode last week, in a story
about a forbidden high school romance that almost ends in tragedy.
Dushku (Buffy, Bring it
On) plays Tru Davies, a morgue worker and recent college
graduate who has recently (and inexplicably) begun to live each
day twice in order to help the newly-deceased avoid the events
that caused their death.
In
its sixth episode, called "Star Crossed," Tru is called
to the scene of a car wreck that killed two teenagers, Adam (Johnny
Pacar) and Jen (Rachael Bella). She sees a gold necklace with
a diamond pendant around Jen's neck and immediately assumes Adam
and Jen are lovers.
Shortly after the corpse of Adam opens his eyes and begs Tru to
"help us!", Tru finds herself back at the beginning
of the day, with only a handful of hours to determine what caused
the accident and try and stop it. She begins her investigation
by visiting the private school Adam attends and going "undercover"
as a prospective student, where she
befriends Adam and his girlfriend Amy (Melissa Lee). Tru is confused
because Amy is not the girl in the car wreck, and her confusion
only deepens when she runs into Jen in the cafeteria at lunch
and discovers that Jen and Adam barely know each other.
Later
that afternoon, Tru interferes in a drag race between
Adam and Jen's brother Derek (Brendan Fletcher), thinking that's
what caused the accident. But later she realizes Jen wasn't wearing
the gold necklace during the drag race, and rushes back to find
her. In the woods, Tru discovers Amy giving Jen the necklace as
the two girls declare their love for one another, then kiss twice.
Unfortunately,
Adam also witnesses this exchange, and, stunned and upset to discover
Amy's deception, he flees the scene. Amy and Jen, meanwhile, are
freaked out that their relationship has been discovered, and Amy
tells Jen that they must leave town immediately, since they will
be treated like lepers once word gets around. Jen protests, but
Amy wins out, saying "you know how people in this town talk,"
and the girls finally agree to go home and pack separately before
meeting up in a few hours to leave town.
But
before Amy arrives to pick Jen up, Adam shows up at Jen's house
and asks to talk to her in his car. Jen reluctantly agrees, but
Adam takes off as soon as she gets in the car, speeding angrily
up the winding roads. Unbeknownst to Adam and Jen, Jen's brother
Derek and Tru are following them, because Derek angrily believes
that his sister is running away with Adam, whom he despises, and
Tru is trying to prevent the accident she knows will kill Adam
and Jen.
During
the car ride, Adam and Jen have a tense conversation
about Jen's relationship with Adam's girlfriend, in which Jen
tries to calm Adam down by explaining that Amy lied to Adam because
she was afraid of losing his friendship:
When
Adam finally stops the car near a cliff to talk with Jen, Derek
pulls up right behind him with Tru in the passenger seat and in
his anger at his sister and Adam, proceeds to ram Adam's car into
the guardrail. Adam and Jen try to get out of the car but are
pinned in between Derek's car and the guard rail, while Derek
continues to ram into them as Tru realizes the guard rail is starting
to give way and begs him to stop. Just as Derek's about to deliver
the final blow that will push the car over the edge, Tru tells
him that his sister is sleeping with Amy, not Adam, and Derek
stops, surprised. Jen and Adam climb quickly out of the car windows
just as Amy's car pulls up behind them, and when Amy rushes over
to embrace Jen, Derek realizes that Tru is telling the truth.
Later
that night, when Tru recounts the events to a fellow morgue worker,
she ends by saying that Amy and Jen decided not to run away after
all, but to stay and face the gossip about their relationship.
When her coworker comments that it all ended well for the girls,
Tru corrects him, saying that "they've still got to deal
with life now that their little secret is out."
The
show's portrayal of the relationship between Amy and
Jen is mixed. One one hand, Amy and Jen appear
more level-headed and likeable than either Adam or Jen's brother
Derek, and interestingly, Derek is less upset at the idea of his
sister sleeping with Amy than with Adam. Tru also does not appear
fazed by the girls' relationship, once she gets over her initial
surprise, and her error at automatically assuming the victims
were heterosexual is obvious to both Tru and the viewer.
But
the girls' relationship is also the source of a great deal of
fear and deception. Their plan to run away when their relationship
is discovered implies both that the girls are involved in something
shameful, and that they believe their relationship is so
unusual and deviant it could not possibly be accepted by the townspeople.
Tru's repeated references at the end to the girls' "secret"
only reinforces this negative association.
Part
of the perceived objection to the girls' relationship
is rooted in class issues: Jen is a scholarship student at the
school, and according to the school's unwritten social rules,
rich kids like Adam and Amy are not even supposed to be friends
with scholarship students, let alone fall in love with them. "It's
always fun to grow up in the middle of a cliche," Amy comments
wryly when Adam explains this dynamic to Tru in the school cafeteria
earlier in the day.
Amy
clearly doesn't believe in these class divisions, but she is also
the one most afraid of facing disapproval of her relationship
with Jen. It is Jen--the one who has less power in the social
structure of the town/school--who is willing from the beginning
to face the disapproval of the town. Perhaps this is because Jen
has less to lose, but it is also likely because Jen has had more
experience with adversity than Amy.
Neither
girl's sexuality is identified in the episode--whether
Amy is bisexual and just fell out of love with
Adam when she met Jen, for example, or whether she was never really
attracted to Adam in the first place, is never addressed. Nor
do we learn how Amy and Jen got involved in the first place, only
that they've been in this "secret" relationship for
a few months.
Both
omissions are understandable given that the series had only forty
minutes in which to unfold the entire storyline, but the absence
of this information divorces Jen and Amy's relationship from its
context in a way that makes it a little less interesting than
it might otherwise have been.
Overall,
"Star Crossed" reinforces some
negative associations with lesbian relationships, but ultimately
delivers a message of tolerance and support for unconventional
relationships--whether the relationship is unconventional because
it challenges class or gender norms. And despite Jen and Amy's
fears, the truth ultimately averts tragedy (when Tru
tells Derek about Jen and Amy), instead of causing it, and helps
the girls realize they need to stay and face the potential disapproval
of their peers rather than run away.
Which
makes "Star Crossed" one of the better lesbian episodes
so far this season, even if there's still room for improvement.
