Archive

ER’s Dr. Weaver Comes Out Again

The producers of ER should be lauded for actually keeping Laura Innes’s workaholic character gay over these past four years, but ER‘s focus on Dr. Kerry Weaver’s lesbianism has been hit and miss (and mostly miss) since Weaver first fell for firefighter Sandy Lopez (and was outed to her ER crew) in the serial drama’s eighth season.

In this week’s episode, we’re offered yet another dramatic “coming out,” this time to Weaver’s long-lost religiously-conservative mother, Helen Kingsley (played by Frances Fisher). Weaver interrogates her mother as to why, four years after Weaver sent a letter in search of her, Kingsley’s suddenly trying to meet the daughter she abandoned long ago. We’d like to know the same thing: why is this character suddenly showing up? ER is obviously playing out this strained mother-daughter reunion to make a timely reference to the rift between gays and conservative Christians since last year’s election-geared attack on gay marriage (a topic Wife Swap tackled last week too).

“Just As I Am” begins with a provocative flash forward. Dr. Kerry Weaver tromps bundled-up through the snow to a hotel. She doggedly enters without addressing the bell boy, who asks “Can I help you?” to her cold non-response. Weaver beats on a hotel room door, a red-haired woman answers, and in the doorway, Weaver delivers an overwrought plea: “I don’t want to leave it like this!” We are unsure given the high melodrama, if Weaver’s perhaps in love with a woman we haven’t been introduced to yet? The ambiguous nature of this hallway-set outpouring of emotions is intentional, and we’re tricked into waiting with bated breath through the episode to find out the juicy details on Weaver’s potential new affair.

The slew of patients rushed into our familiar Chicago emergency room in the midst of this week’s snowstorm include a sliced-open ice skater, a pushy Demerol addict, an older woman with dementia who’s been cutting up her hands, a potty-mouthed man stabbed multiple times with a screwdriver, and a woman-the redhead from the flash forward-whose only complaint is a un-diagnosable shortness of breath. This last patient asks specifically for Weaver, claiming she’s seen the doctor previously. When the hospital records on her come up empty, Weaver becomes suspicious and chases the woman, who bolts out to the street. Weaver warns that she should stick around for the test results on her breathing problems. “There’s nothing wrong with me” the woman says, admitting her ruse to see Weaver, and says, “I’m your mother.” Our hopes that Weaver is back on the horse, dating-wise, are dashed.

Instead, we learn that Kingsley, who at fourteen gave away her infant daughter in hopes she might have a better life, is in town for the Christ Crusade, and decided to pay a visit to Weaver, her forgotten progeny. Weaver is understandably shaken up, and goes on a number of uncharacteristic “breaks” from her rounds, shocking her colleagues and staff. “Does she have multiple personalities?” they quip about the normally-tireless hospital tyrant. Reunited, mother and daughter go out for coffee, Weaver attends her mom’s chorus practice, and their day together culminates over dinner, when Weaver pulls out a portrait of herself, her late girlfriend, and their baby son.

“No wonder you need a nanny,” Kingsley says, referring to Weaver’s busy schedule, and to the woman in the framed photograph. Weaver summons up her bravery and explains “This is my family, Helen. This woman’s name is Sandy Lopez and she’s not my nanny, she was my partner…my lover, my wife, the mother of my child. She was a firefighter and she died last year.” Kingsley, true to zealot-type, upon swallowing her daughter’s declaration of lesbianism, immediately insists that they pray together.

Innes does an excellent job of making ER‘s occasionally tired lines emotionally resonant, and of realistically showing the underbelly of self-inflicted shame in her character’s admission of gayness even as she attempts to assert her sexuality proudly and unabashedly to her mother, who she knows will be combative. Weaver has come a long way in her own self-acceptance; it’s visibly been a struggle, and she now refuses to be framed within the terms of her mother’s bigotry. She reminds her mom of her previously-voiced expression that “All Jesus’ children are perfect,” and the two argue opposite sides of whether gay children, too, are due God’s unconditional love.

Weaver remains strong and refuses to be pitied. She insists “If you’re disappointed, it should be in the limitations of your faith, not in the way that I’ve lived my life.” Their discussion, although it is a bit too straight out of an Op Ed debate, is moving and handled well. Their inability to become true family comes down to the difference between love and acceptance, a matter Weaver understandably will not budge on.

The creators of ER are producing multiple closet doors for Weaver to open, again and again?first, dealing with being out at work, then fighting a child custody battle in court to retain rights to the son she co-parented with her lover who passed away, and now defending her lesbianism to her birth-mother-who-popped-up-out-of-nowhere.

Although ER is leaps and bounds ahead of most network television in terms of lesbian representation, it still tokenizes Weaver’s sexuality, and gives her personal life airtime only when it’s controversial, when questions of the “closet” abound. That’s why portrayals like those on The L Word–where lesbian characters are not constantly defending their sexuality, and their personal lives are rich and complexly drawn–are so important.

Although the dialogue between Weaver and her mother accurately shows both characters’ perspectives, and it was satisfying to see Weaver stand up for herself and express her queer pride articulately, I’m looking forward to a Weaver who isn’t constantly defending herself.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button