AMC’s Transgender Storyline

They have finally done it. The soaps are taking on the issue of being trans-gender. Well, one soap actually. All My Children is once again playing the pioneer in story telling. When I first heard they were taking on this story I was a bit worried, but mostly intrigued. Considering that people still get freaked out over gay storylines, I was wondering how they were going to approach this and make it interesting and at least somewhat believable.

Leave it to AMC to pull it off (no pun intended). They not only have found a great story to introduce a new character, they have seamlessly brought in the character of Zarf/Zoe and they have dropped her (yes, HER, she is biologically a man, in the process of becoming a woman) right into the middle of all of the most loved characters on the show, Including Bianca and Kendall. Oddly, with all of the forward thinking, cosmopolitan types that are all over the show, the only person that seems to know the lingo and doesn’t bat an eye upon being face to face with Zoe and finding out that it is Zarf is the one they all love to say is unsophisticated, and white trash- Babe Chandler. For once, she is not playing the vapid little twinkie and I am sure we are all grateful for that.

Through Babe we learn the PC terms for transgender people (when they are he or she), and she had the best reaction to a coming out that I have seen in a long time. She didn’t judge, she didn’t get mad and start accusing Zoe of lying, or anything like that. She held her friend and said everything will be fine. While all of the other “cosmopolitan” characters have freaked out, said that Zarf/Zoe being transgender “proves” he/she is guilty of murder (because society loves to blame anything they can’t figure out on anyone they perceive as different) and of course they are bandying words like “freak” and “weirdo” around like a volleyball. And I sit there watching this all unfold and want to start knocking heads together, forgetting this is only a TV show and these people are playing a part. But I have issues with blatant bigotry and prejudice. For the first time ever, they have made me like Babe…and I am willing to forgive them for that, because of the beauty of the character of Zoe.

Jeffery Carlson, who plays the enigmatic Zoe/Zarf is nothing less than magnificent in this role. I had no problem with him as an eccentric rock star when he arrived on the scene last summer, and I have no problem believing him as Zoe. The actor is wonderful and never falters in his portrayal of daytime’s first transgender character.  He plays her torment, confusion, fear and desperation with beautiful precision. He even plays the character's need to be accepted with great care, and manages not to make her needy or annoying. It will just be dirty and wrong if he doesn’t get himself an Emmy for this role. I have no trouble believing him as a man or a woman. He brings humor and heart to a genre where things had become rather boring and predictable. I was bored with seeing the “who’s the father” stories, and the love triangles with a murder thrown in once in a while. This story is a breath of fresh air, bringing with it the moral lessons against prejudice, answers to the immediate questions many people have about this difficult situation, and they present the most common and understandable reactions from the other characters, even when you don’t agree with them. For the first time in quite a while, the soap opera world has delivered something and someone worth watching.

I started watching House MD midway through the first season. I am hooked. It was the first time in a long time that I had the feeling the executives at Fox weren't complete idiots. Aside from the show 24, there was nothing much happening on Fox in my opinion.

Then I was blessed to be introduced to Dr. Gregory House, M.D. who turned out to be the most arrogant, sarcastic, cruel, and bitter schmuck to ever wear the white jacket on television. Dr. Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce would have picked up a gun and shot him within five minutes of meeting him. And I love him. While he is all of the negative things I have mentioned, Dr.House is brilliant. He is brilliant, damaged, angry and annoyed with the world at large.

If you have never seen the show, let me give you an overview. the cane wielding Dr.House is the head of a small team of young doctors who specialize in diagnosing and treating the patients that other doctors have failed to help. They solve the medical mysteries, and are quite effective at it. House, in the process of helping his patients, tends to drive his staff, as well as his best friend and the hospital Chief Of Staff, to verge of insanity. He is a pill popping, genius and lets everyone know it. And at his core, he has a heart. He hides it well, but it is there... somewhat shriveled and hard and Grinch-like, but there.

In the midst of his brilliance and sarcasm of Olympian proportions, he either does the wrong thing for all of the right reasons, or he does the right thing for all of the wrong reasons. What you see is what you get. And what you see, for the most part, is a mess. And you root for him. Every week, you sit there and know that if he was your boss, you and everyone you work with would rise up as one and slay him, but yet, you are on his side...even when he is wrong.

Hugh Laurie, the actor who plays Dr. House, delivers this character to us with what appears to be seamless ease. The British born actor shows no trace of his British accent and for those unfamiliar with him, you would not readily guess that he made most of his bread and butter doing slapstick comedy, often playing the buffoon. He has fantastic comedic timing and transitions into serious gravity in a blink of an eye, and you go with him. He takes you by the hand and shows you the journey that House is on, and while House hides his heart and feelings to his co-works, you have the sense that he has opened it up to you. Hugh Laurie lays House bare for all of the viewers each week while at the same time keeping him cloaked to the characters surrounding House.

The writing on this show is sharp, witty and shameless. House says and does what the rest of don't or wouldn't. He rarely pulls his punches, he is crass, and he is alone because of it. While he doesn't come right out and say "why me?", you can feel him saying it with every vicodin he takes, every patient he treats, every sarcastic comment he delivers and every outlandish stunt he pulls to get his own way. There is a fearlessness to the way he practices medicine that is only overshadowed by his fear of personal feelings and relationships.

House MD, while outrageous, brutally funny and intense, is solid and takes no prisoners. It is worthy of your time. Currently, House MD airs on Tuesday Nights at 8pm Central time.


HOUSE MD

House, M.D. - Season One

House, M.D. - Season Two

Save the cheerleader, save the world...?

How in the hell did that sentence come to be cool? Was it the fact that the first time I heard it, it was being whispered on my TV screen? Don’t be absurd. Simply whispering something doesn’t make it cool…well, except for those Mazda ads with the little kid whispering “zoom-zoom”. But I digress. “Save the cheerleader, save the world” was the tagline for the freshman show Heroes airing on Monday nights on NBC.

It is only in the last few years that I have developed a true love and appreciation for the sci-fi genre. It was fostered by Joss Whedon when he dropped the Buffy series into my television line-up. I didn’t really get into it until the last two years that the show was on, but I did get hooked, and it was for life. The same goes for Angel. I have every episode of both shows on DVD. I visit them often. It is my personal belief that Joss made a show like Heroes possible. He brought superheroes back to our television. He gave us something new and fresh, and made the comic book and hero genre cool again.

Now, for anyone who has been paying attention, the television landscape is rather bleak these days. There is very little humor and every crime show seems to be a spin-off of another crime show that is pretty much like the original. You know what shows I am talking about. They deal with law enforcement. I like crime shows, but there are too many of the same thing running 24/7 it seems.

We are in a time when we truly need some distraction from the darkness and horror that has been over-shadowing our lives over the last few years. We want to suspend reality for an hour or two in the evenings and be taken out of ourselves. We want to be enraptured. We want something new and worth our time. Where can we find such a thing? Moreover, where can it be found on a MONDAY?

The answer is on NBC (I know, I was stunned too). The show Heroes has succeeded in drawing us back from the vast wasteland of autopsies and detectives badges and shows whose titles are comprised of initials. The premise thus far is everyday people with extraordinary abilities finding their way to their destinies. That’s not an easy thing under normal circumstances, but these characters carry it off with believable beauty. They cover the gamut of emotions that we all go through when our lives change, from confusion to denial and into acceptance and learning. Plus, the show is just plain fun to watch. Heroes has avoided being cheesy and predictable (I wish I could say the same for Smallville…I would love it if Superman just snapped and killed Lana and Chloe and then Lexx just buried Clark in a cave loaded with green kryptonite to put us all out of their misery). Heroes is sharp, intelligent and keeps you coming back every week. I even watch the re-airings on Friday nights on the Sci-fi channel and I am NOT a fan of repeats.

The cast is solid and the characters are endearing, even the bad guys (and I can say that because aside from one individual character, we still don’t know for sure who the “bad guys” are). Peter Petrelli, a 30-year-old male nurse who absorbs other people’s special abilities and powers when he is near them, Isaac Mendez, a 28-year-old junkie who has the ability to paint images of the future, Niki Sanders, a 33-year-old Las Vegas showgirl who seemingly has the mother of all split personalities, Hiro Nakamura, a 24-year-old Japanese comic-book geek who literally manipulates time, D.L. Hawkins, a 31-year-old inmate who can walk through walls, Matt Parkman, a beat cop who can hear other people's thoughts, and Claire Bennet, a 17-year-old cheerleader who is indestructible. As the viewing audience is discovering the nature of each hero's powers, the heroes, themselves, are discovering what having superpowers means to them as well as the larger picture of where their superpowers come from and what they should be doing with them. At the helm, there is Mohinder, the son of a geneticist whose father was looking world wide for people with unique DNA when he was killed in New York City. Mohinder came to New York to handle his father’s arrangements and discovered that his father’s theories had merit and is taking up where his father left off.

Story lines aside, this show delivers a fantastic tapestry of people from all walks of life and multiple cultures. They are beautifully interwoven into the action and the writers manage to sidestep the usual cultural and comic book stereotypes. Whenever the stereotypes are mentioned, it is to poke fun at them. Heroes breaks the rules, and it does so carefully and with style.

If you are looking for something to watch (and aren’t we all?) then give Heroes a try. They will be back to new episodes on 1/22/2007 on NBC.

Soap operas. They have been around for a very long time. Guiding Light has been on the air for 75 years! That, of course, includes the show’s radio days. So what is it about soaps that keeps so many people coming back and tuning in day after day?

I watch soaps. I enjoy them. They are a distraction for me from the chaotic stew that a laughingly refer to as my life. But, there is something else. There is the innate humanness to the characters. Yes, the stories tend to be absurd and overly scandalous, but it is the moments when the characters display feelings and sentiments that we, as everyday people, can fully relate to that makes the soaps like crack for many people.

The writers often try to point us towards hope in the storylines, but they are not afraid to simply have lessons learned rather than the happy ending every time. At this point I will use a soliloquy from All My Children to make my case. The situation leading up to this discussion was this: Dr. Greg Madden stole Tad Martin’s daughter just after she was born. The evil doctor refused to tell anyone where the little girl was. Tad’s cheese flew off his cracker, so naturally, he kidnapped Madden, locked him in a box and buried the guy alive (we had seen so much evil from this dude that most of us viewers stood up and cheered) and tried to make the schmuck spill the beans. An unexpected earthquake killed the doc, Tad lost his only means of finding his child, and he essentially slid down a shit spiral into what was apparently the seventh layer of hell. His loss and his guilt were devouring him. When a friend decided to talk to him about the dark funk he was in, this was his reply, which was delivered with an almost eerie complacency, was softly understated, and smacked of truth:

"Tad Martin is dead. Let him rest in peace. He was buried with Greg Madden. You think you can help me? Save me? Can you cleanse a tainted soul? I’m in hell. I am right where I should be, every minute, of every day. I’m in hell. Where somebody like me belongs, I know, because the voices in my head tell me all about it.

Everything I was, everything I ever had or ever will have, is dead and gone…because I buried it. I made a choice. I took a chance, and I traded away my soul. That’s who I am.

Are we gonna stand around and talk about God now? What do you want me to do? You want me to fall to my knees, start praying, weeping, confessing my sins? Why should I? God knows all about it, he was there. He was there when I turned my back on him, so now he’s turned his back on me. It’s over. I’m done. Look at me. Look at my eyes. You were right the first time. There’s nothing left. That’s all there is to it."

Anyone who has ever suffered from serious depression can relate to these words. This was where they gave us the revelation that this man was going to kill himself. Now, it being the silly season, they did execute a miracle. He found peace. Not a solution, just peace with a layer of hope. He had a conversation with a priest (who mysteriously shows up every Christmas and does a Capra-esqe type miracle here and there, then is gone until next year) who pointed him towards hope. It sounds cheesy and lame, but then so is life…more often than not.