The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV by Stephen Tropiano Page B
Authors: Stephen Tropiano
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Marilyn works at a women’s clinic, Women’s Medical Arts, and has been in a relationship for four years with her lover Patti (Gina Hecht), a recurring character on the series.
Marilyn is a breakthrough character because her lesbianism is a non-issue. As Anne Lewis of the gay newspaper, the Washington Blade, observed in February of 1989, Marilyn is depicted “as a wholesome, well-adjusted individual who just happens to be Gay.” 69 Like other medical dramas, the focus of each episode of Heartbeat shifts between the characters’ professional and personal lives. In comparison to her female and male colleagues, who all seem to have relationship and/or sexual problems (i.e. impotency, jealousy, divorce), Marilyn is the most stable character on the show.
The two-part finale of the series’s initial six-episode run looked at Marilyn’s reunion with her daughter Allison (Hallie Todd), who’s returned to California to get married (“To Heal a Doctor”). Allison makes it clear she doesn’t want her mother to bring Patti to the wedding. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to bring her,” she tells her. “A lot of my friends don’t know about you.” Patti understands and encourages Marilyn to take care of “the biggest piece of unfinished business” in her life and talk to her daughter.
Their conversation reveals why Allison resents her mother:
ALLISON: It’s not that you’re a lesbian. That’s not what bothers me. It’s — why did you marry Dad?
MARILYN: I thought I could make a life with your father. I wasn’t in love, but I liked him and I wanted children. And I decided I could keep those different feelings buried deep within in me.
ALLISON: But you left me.
MARILYN: I didn’t have a choice. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but believe me it would have been more devastating for you if I had stayed. 70
Allison is concerned she might also turn out to be a lesbian, but after Marilyn assures her that won’t happen, mother and daughter finally reach an understanding.
Patti does attend the wedding, but as Marguerite J. Moritz points out in her insightful critique of the two-part episode, Marilyn and Patti are only shown twice during the wedding ceremony (“The Wedding”). In fact, the mother of the bride has only one line. (“I think I’m going to cry.”) After the ceremony, they virtually disappear, which is absurd considering all of Marilyn’s colleagues are in attendance. What Moritz finds even more problematic is how the heterosexual characters all resolve their relationship problems during the reception in scenes involving “overt sexual exchanges in which the men exert their virility and dominance over the women in their lives.” 71 Patriarchy and heterosexuality are ultimately affirmed:
While the heterosexual couples exhibit an outpouring of desire as the wedding reception plays out, the lesbians are politely kept from view, never intruding on the show’s vision of what it is to be a couple or to be in a romantic relationship...The overall effect is to reaffirm the patriarchal order and to tell the world what really counts goes on in the heterosexual world, the arena of passion, desire, and drama. 72
Moritz raises an important question regarding the non-stereotypical representation of homosexual characters on television. Even when gay characters are portrayed positively, we must examine how they’re represented in context. In their analysis of Heartbeat , Darlene M. Hantzis and Valerie Lehr find the depiction of the lesbian couple problematic because it is completely nonsexual. While the heterosexual characters are shown making love (one couple even do it in an office), Marilyn and Patti were not even permitted by the network to touch. Hantzis and Lehr conclude that ultimately many so-called “‘positive’ portrayals serve as mechanisms to perpetuate hetero/sexism even as they appear to display the ‘good will’ of various producers, directors, and
Marilyn is a breakthrough character because her lesbianism is a non-issue. As Anne Lewis of the gay newspaper, the Washington Blade, observed in February of 1989, Marilyn is depicted “as a wholesome, well-adjusted individual who just happens to be Gay.” 69 Like other medical dramas, the focus of each episode of Heartbeat shifts between the characters’ professional and personal lives. In comparison to her female and male colleagues, who all seem to have relationship and/or sexual problems (i.e. impotency, jealousy, divorce), Marilyn is the most stable character on the show.
The two-part finale of the series’s initial six-episode run looked at Marilyn’s reunion with her daughter Allison (Hallie Todd), who’s returned to California to get married (“To Heal a Doctor”). Allison makes it clear she doesn’t want her mother to bring Patti to the wedding. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to bring her,” she tells her. “A lot of my friends don’t know about you.” Patti understands and encourages Marilyn to take care of “the biggest piece of unfinished business” in her life and talk to her daughter.
Their conversation reveals why Allison resents her mother:
ALLISON: It’s not that you’re a lesbian. That’s not what bothers me. It’s — why did you marry Dad?
MARILYN: I thought I could make a life with your father. I wasn’t in love, but I liked him and I wanted children. And I decided I could keep those different feelings buried deep within in me.
ALLISON: But you left me.
MARILYN: I didn’t have a choice. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but believe me it would have been more devastating for you if I had stayed. 70
Allison is concerned she might also turn out to be a lesbian, but after Marilyn assures her that won’t happen, mother and daughter finally reach an understanding.
Patti does attend the wedding, but as Marguerite J. Moritz points out in her insightful critique of the two-part episode, Marilyn and Patti are only shown twice during the wedding ceremony (“The Wedding”). In fact, the mother of the bride has only one line. (“I think I’m going to cry.”) After the ceremony, they virtually disappear, which is absurd considering all of Marilyn’s colleagues are in attendance. What Moritz finds even more problematic is how the heterosexual characters all resolve their relationship problems during the reception in scenes involving “overt sexual exchanges in which the men exert their virility and dominance over the women in their lives.” 71 Patriarchy and heterosexuality are ultimately affirmed:
While the heterosexual couples exhibit an outpouring of desire as the wedding reception plays out, the lesbians are politely kept from view, never intruding on the show’s vision of what it is to be a couple or to be in a romantic relationship...The overall effect is to reaffirm the patriarchal order and to tell the world what really counts goes on in the heterosexual world, the arena of passion, desire, and drama. 72
Moritz raises an important question regarding the non-stereotypical representation of homosexual characters on television. Even when gay characters are portrayed positively, we must examine how they’re represented in context. In their analysis of Heartbeat , Darlene M. Hantzis and Valerie Lehr find the depiction of the lesbian couple problematic because it is completely nonsexual. While the heterosexual characters are shown making love (one couple even do it in an office), Marilyn and Patti were not even permitted by the network to touch. Hantzis and Lehr conclude that ultimately many so-called “‘positive’ portrayals serve as mechanisms to perpetuate hetero/sexism even as they appear to display the ‘good will’ of various producers, directors, and
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