“You’ll do anything to protect your image, won’t you? Perfect Jessie, who couldn’t possibly be in love with a girl!” This accusation by 16-year-old Grace (Julia Whelan) in one of the last episodes of the critically acclaimed (and just-canceled) television drama Once and Again finally verbalized the issue 15-year-old Jessie had been struggling with for months – and marked an historic moment in television.
Once and Again centers around the relationship between two divorcees, Rick (Bill Campbell) and Lily (Sela Ward), and their gaggle of children, including Rick’s teenage daughter Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood). Over the course of the third season, producers Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (who also brought us Thirtysomething, Relativity, and My So-Called Life, three other gay-friendly shows that were ahead of their time) quietly developed the friendship between Jessie and her best friend Katie (Mischa Barton) into something more.The issue came to a head in the March episode “The Gay/Straight Alliance” in which Katie writes Jessie a letter confessing her romantic feelings for Jessie.
The letter prompts much angst on both sides as Jessie starts to avoid Katie, until even gay-friendly stepsister Grace (who is harboring a not-so-secret crush on her male English teacher) gets frustrated and asks “Why won’t you talk to [Katie]?! Just talk to her. You’re lucky you can. You don’t even realize how easy you have it. God, just go for it, no one will care!” Support from her stepsister surprises Jessie, but Jessie still denies the truth since she is not yet ready to face it herself.
Ultimately, Katie forces a confrontation with Jessie, and the following conversation ensues:
Jessie: I’ve just been really – Katie: Confused, I know – Jessie: And I didn’t know what to do. You’re really important to me. Katie: I am? Jessie: Yes! Don’t you know that? Katie: Because you are so important to me.In print, the dialogue doesn’t convey the passion and intensity supplied by the actresses, but on screen it comes off exactly as you would imagine it has happened thousands of times in real life between lesbian/bisexual teens. (As they first demonstrated in My So-called Life, Zwick and Herskovitz are masters of the teenage ability to say a lot while actually saying nothing.)
After a few more words and a long embrace, the girls kiss not once, but twice–making this episode a television first on many fronts. It’s the first time a primetime drama has shown two lesbian kisses in one episode. It’s the first time in primetime television that a teenage girl has had a romantic relationship with another girl that isn’t just a one-episode experimentation (unlike, say, Holly Marie Combs’ blacked-out kiss with her friend in Picket Fences in 1993). The producers of Once and Again made it clear that this was not a one-episode experiment by showing the girls happily sneaking a kiss in the kitchen in the next episode, and then holding hands in the series finale.
It’s the first time on a primetime drama that this kind of relationship among teenage girls has been depicted as a relatively positive event. Normally the focus is on the negative repercussions of the girls’ relationship and the problems it causes for their family and friends. The show did explore some of these issues through the parents’ eyes, but overall the emphasis is definitely on the girls’ point of view.
This is only the fourth time a primary character in a television drama has been developed into a lesbian character during the lifetime of the show(the other three are Bianca on All My Children, Willow on Buffy, and Dr. Kerry Weaver on ER). This is in sharp contrast to the large number of boys/men in soap operas or dramas who have gone through this kind of character development.
Despite the much-talked-about kiss, the characters are still only young teenagers and the relationship is commensurate with their age. That is, Jessie and Katie’s relationship isn’t depicted as any more sexual than most heterosexual relationships among young teens on TV – it’s still a lot of notes passed back and forth, emotional outbursts, and gazing into each other’s eyes.
In short: it’s sweet and idealistic.
Jessie’s confusion, Katie’s growing anxiety over Jessie’s avoidance, and the final confrontation between the two girls is skillfully handled and, if the Internet message boards after the show are any indication, true to life for many lesbians and bisexual women who had crushes on other girls in high school.
Although the show suffered from last-place ratings for months (in part due to the fact that ABC has changed its time slot seven times in the last three years), the “Gay/Straight Alliance” episode garnered record-breaking ratings for the show and the press was almost all positive, with very little backlash–only one station refused to run the episode. A big improvement over the controversy that ensued when Ellen Degeneres’ character came out on Ellen in 1997.
Unfortunately, the series went back to its usual lackluster ratings for the next few episodes, putting the final nail in the coffin for the show, which has been canceled by ABC. The relationship between the two girls took a backseat to other storylines in the next few episodes, and since they unexpectedly turned out to be the last of the series, the Jessie/Katie storyline could not be pursued further as originally planned.
Which means besides losing one of the higher-quality dramas on television period, we’ll also be losing a unique and powerful portrayal of lesbian/bisexual relationships on television.
