Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Out And About
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.26.2001
And now, here's Kevin Williamson on why Jack exited the closet: "'All the characters are all various parts of me….I felt that part of me -- what I consider the best part of me -- my sexuality, which taught me to be honest and how to be a man, was missing from these characters. So I created Jack. I wanted to do it from the first season, but that wasn't the original story I set out to tell." Should I point out that said "original story" sucked ass, and continues to do so to this day? Oh, will you look at that. Then Kerr talks some more about where the show has tried to go with the Jack character, claiming that "[y]ou don't want to make it trite or play into stereotypes, and we haven't done that." Well, no, they haven't, not exactly, but they have sidelined Jack in a supporting role since his outing and refused to give him a realistic storyline; while that's neither trite nor stereotypical, I'd hardly call Dawson's Creek's portrayal of gay teens admirable. Kerr goes on to say that neither he nor Williamson wanted Jack "put on the sidelines like Matt on Melrose Place. 'There was no way I want to do that story,' says Smith. 'It's boring and trite.'" Yes, it's both of those things. Sadly, it's exactly what Jack's turned into in the fourth season. I understand that Kerr doesn't control the scripts, and that he has to say positive things about the direction of his character in order to keep his job, but…please. Anyone who watches the show can smell that that's bullshit. Then we learn that Kerr has reaped compliments from such E-list celebs as Whoopi Goldberg for his work on the show, as well as from gay teens, who frequently come up to him and share their stories of coming out to their parents after watching him come out on the show. It's my impulse to doubt that, but if it did happen -- that's cool, I guess. Kerr says that he doesn't "feel like [he] should be a role model," and again, the Seventeen thing, and…word. But he's become one, he supposes, "[a]nd as long as you can help people I think that it's really cool." At this point, I think to myself, "Okay, he's not the most articulate guy. He sounds really rehearsed, but at least he's not all like 'oh, I'm not gay' and stuff, so I guess he's all right." In the very next sentence, though, I get brought up short by this revelation: "He also confides that playing gay has only helped his sex life. 'My theory is, women want what they think they can't have,' says the currently single guy with a chuckle." Oh, please. My theory is that you get laid because you're famous, Butch Cassidy, so spare us your notions of female psychology and shut up.