January meme: Night Court stuff

[arduinna]

dorinda asked a question that I had actually just been thinking about recently myself, so I'm gonna start with that:

Do you think it would be possible to have a story, written today, centered around the Night Court episode "Best of Friends", or would the period-accurate (& therefore sometimes transphobic) handling of some of it make it a non-starter or drawerfic?

So, for background: the Night Court ep 'Best of Friends' aired in 1985, and the main storyline was about Dan Fielding, absolutely giddy with delight at an upcoming visit from his best college buddy. This level of delight is so weird for Dan. He doesn't have friends, see; he has conquests, and he has contacts, and he has people he sucks up to or uses for whatever he needs, but he doesn't have friends. And yet clearly, he adores this guy, Chip, who's coming to see him, and he is so excited! They were drinking buddies and womanizing buddies and they told each other everything and YES! CHIP IS COMING TO VISIT! He has always been Dan's ideal of manhood, and Dan can't wait to relive their former glories.

But what Dan doesn't know is that "Chip" is really Charlene, who was AMAB and struggled terribly with that for years, and who is finally living the life she always wanted and about to get married, and wanted Dan (whom Charlene also adores - it was a genuine friendship) to know the truth, and to get his blessing. (Erk, wrong word; she wants him to be happy for her, because he really matters to her - but she loves her life and isn't going to not live it the way she wants to if Dan can't deal with the truth.)

Okay, so: 1985. Dan Fielding. A big chunk of the episode is Dan's furious, cruel, betrayed reaction to Charlene's appearance and explanation. Transphobic is putting it lightly.

But otoh, it doesn't end there; Dan works through it, and although it's incredibly difficult for him to see that Charlene is the same friend he always loved, he gets there. And he even gets protective of her (which okay, seriously sexist for him to tell her fiance that if he hurts Charlene, Dan will kill him - but Dan is sexist through and through, so it still comes as a sign of progress).

There is just so much scope in this episode for fanfic, looking at Dan's willingness to move past at least some of his rigid way of looking at the world, and how when he loves someone it's intense and real, and how maybe that's why he doesn't have friends - he knows how to do transactional relationships, but not really how to do casual friendships; it's all or nothing with him, and he anchors himself to his real relationships, so he's at risk of being set badly adrift if something goes wrong.

But that said, this would be really dicey to write about today, because even though this episode at heart is about accepting people for who they are, regardless of who that is, it's still done in a mid-80s way, which is 30 years out of date.

I think it could be done, but drawerfic or a locked-down posting might be the way to go. I would hate to see someone looking for trans tags stumble into 80s transphobia (and even 80s trans norms - lots of things were different) without realizing it.

My brain is all aswirl with caveats and but-ifs, but yeah: in this particular case, I think an episode-centered story should be kept more private.

Comments

[sholio]

You know, I rewatched about 3 seasons or so of this show a few years ago, when it started coming out on DVD, and while certain aspects were awfully cringeworthy and dated now (like Dan's constant sexual harassment played for laughs -- I still love Dan, and I remembered it so it's not like it came out of nowhere, but it's still a lot cringier now than it was for me in the 1980s) ... I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how hard the show tried and how much they got right. I never made it as far as this episode, although I think I vaguely remember it from the first airing (didn't remember she was engaged, though!), but there was another one along those lines in which Dan found out that one of his old friends, a super macho dude who had been in the military, was gay. It played out along similar lines, starting out with Dan reacting with betrayal and ended up with the two of them getting stuck in an elevator together and (if I remember right, it's been a few years) talking it out and getting found after they'd fallen asleep together and were basically cuddling. On the one hand, it's a very '80s sort of Very Special Episode that is clearly centered around the straight character's journey rather than the gay one. But on the other hand, it was, what, 1988 or something?

And the show had a lot of that sort of thing, and a lot of episodes like that. In a way it reminds me of a 1980s version of Community, where it was capable of both missing the boat in spectacularly faily ways, and also getting things right in ways that most other shows of its era didn't.

[dorinda]

Yay my question! Yeah, I've been thinking about this lately, on and off.

looking at Dan's willingness to move past at least some of his rigid way of looking at the world, and how when he loves someone it's intense and real, and how maybe that's why he doesn't have friends

That whole paragraph about Dan is spot-on (of course! You have a tremendous grip on the complexities of Dan's personality). And we get a little bit of insight in this episode into how that was in his youth, which, when I think about it, is kind of amazing. I mean, here's Dan, giant sexist horndog douchebro...whose past relationship with his roommate included said roommate (who at the time Dan thinks is a man) crying in Dan's arms. This is not the traditionally-appropriate high-five-bro dynamic. But it does seem to have been *Dan*'s dynamic, which is fascinating. In all his reminiscences, he doesn't appear to have been carrying any feelings of awkwardness about that.

I can imagine a Dan (Reinhold :D ) who wore his nerve endings on the outside like that at first, who could have that kind of intimate connection with someone else (and not feel awkward or constrained by the rules of toxic masculinity)--but then as he learned how to climb and succeed and escape his rural poverty, he smashed those nerves forcibly back inside. But as you say, this left him with no way of interacting with others besides 1) sexually objectify them (for women), and 2) compete with them (for men)--transactional relationships, which I think is a great phrase that feels spot-on. But there's that Dan/Reinhold inside who is starving for more, and who I think we get to see glimpses of now and then.

But yeah--30 years has pushed a lot of water deservedly under the bridge. (Even aside from the deadnaming and misgendering stuff that the episode does end up disapproving of--which feels advanced for its time--as you mention, the stuff with Bull not understanding can be really cringey and upsetting, with IIRC some unfortunate emphasis on surgery. Yeahhhh the 80s, sigh.)

So even though the episode is amazing in its potential for unraveling Dan right where his biggest neuroses and fears live--gender, sexuality, vulnerability, fluidity--it feels like, in order to be accurate, it might need to include a wodge of toxic stuff. Not that the ha-ha stuff with Bull would need to be continued--but if it were completely detoxified, not only would the tone and context be lost, but also a lot of Dan would be lost, and then what's the point.

[killabeez]

Wow, fascinating question and answers/discussion. I don't think I ever saw that episode, but I really appreciate hearing your (and everyone's) thoughts on it—particularly about the focus of the story, which made me think of "Death in a Different Place," one of my all-time favorite Starsky & Hutch episodes (that I haven't re-watched in probably 15 years).

It is amazing how, even having had out trans friends for 20+ years, living with a trans partner has opened my eyes to the pervasive presence of transphobia in...well, basically everything. And yet, they were trying.

[gwyn]

This reminds me a lot of a similar episode (also about the cisgender main character's journey, not the trans person) on WKRP. Similar cringey bits, but also an amazement that they did that in the late '70s and they tried--and by the knowledge and rules of the day, they did a pretty decent job. I remember as a person in my late teens, in fact, being astounded that that was a thing people could do, I knew about some famous people who'd transitioned, but it was always discussed in this almost sniggering way. There's a ton of jokes about it built in to the episode, because ha ha it's so funny ::dies of cringing:: but I still had to at least give them props for doing it at a time when things were really changing and most "average" Americans were freaking the fuck out.