SVU cuts lesbian kiss, keeps homophobic remark

03/04/2010 by JR Russell

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In last night’s Law & Order SVU episode, “PC”, we saw Kathy Griffin’s character, Babs Duffy, almost kiss Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson.

We know, of course, from the sneak previews that a kiss was actually filmed. We also know that Kathy Griffin tweeted that her kiss was cut.

However, they kept in the part where — formerly gay-friendly – Olivia warns her colleague to stay outside, lest the lesbian in the apartment attack her too. What we also saw was a scene where Olivia and the lesbian activist character spent time reflecting, and Olivia was comforting her. The character did not just jump on Olivia just because she thought she was there, but because they’d had some shared “moments” (think, “Chasing Amy”) and because a comment of Olivia’s about the impossibility of her and Elliot getting together had lead Babs to believe that Olivia was indeed gay.

But true to form, SVU’s writers managed to characterise the worst of the lesbian stereotype. You have the crazy, agressive, split personality lesbian, the dead lesbian (because who doesn’t love a victim!) and the loudmouth activist lesbian, who really isn’t a lesbian at all. Yup, the lesbian character is screwing a dude. Nice. Oh, also, she doesn’t fight for anyone but lesbians. Lesbians, of course, should fight for the rights of everyone. It’s their job.

I’m not going to say this episode didn’t have its moments. The scene where Olivia and Elliot talk about Olivia’s “gay vibe” is one of the best partner scenes we’ve seen in a while. The way he ribs her later on about it as well brings me right back to the first seasons where Elliot and Olivia weren’t saints, weren’t always angst-ridden, but were damn good cops with an amazing friendship that has somehow gotten lost over the years. Kudos to Dan Truly on this one, even though I’ve dissed him before — looking at his record, he is very good at writing the two of them together. Too bad the rest of the episodes suck.

I know the arguments. SVU contains a lot of crazy straight characters too. The problem is that it contains so few gay characters (how long did it take to get an out member of the core cast? Ten seasons, that’s right.), that the representation of gay and lesbian people on the show is dreadfully skewed towards crazy. They’re either the perp or the victim, or somebody getting in the way. Worse, they are two dimensional stereotypes with little to offer except their gayness.

So what did you think after seeing the episode? Why did Olivia say what she said? And why do you think they cut the kiss?