I’m sitting here just after the final moments of the final ER and realizing that Helen and I have been together longer than the show has been on, but only by a year. ER brought us some of the only images of lesbian moms on mainstream television, starting with Dr. Kerry Weaver and ending with an anonymous couple whose lesbianism was obvious but not central to their storyline.
Tonight’s closing episode upheld the show’s LGBT-positive-but-not-pedantic stance, giving us a minor storyline about a gay man with AIDS who was, it turned out, dying of cancer. They showed us, rather than told us, he was gay, however, with a few loving shots of him and his partner.
Perhaps I’ve always been a fan because until it ended tonight, the show has followed almost the entire course of my relationship with Helen, and I remember watching it with her in our early days. I’ll miss it, and hope that for all its flaws and occasionally overblown personal dramas, some other show will pick up on its best characteristics of moral questioning and human sympathy.
