my mom is currently on early season 8 of er, and when she got to the lesbian bar scene, she told me, “at the end of the day, kerry is a deeply miserable and lonely person.” and yeah, that’s it.
kerry has no real sense of community anywhere in her life. she grew up in one place and moved to an entirely different continent at twelve, was bullied as a teenager, and later married and divorced without ever seeming to build a lasting family or social circle of her own. we occasionally hear about friends, but almost never in a way that suggests they are a part consistent presence in her life. the most meaningful one i can remember is the lawyer friend who trusted her enough to tell her about his HIV diagnosis, so there was some level of closeness, but that’s all we know. even at county, the closest thing she has to a home, she is disliked by almost everyone she works with.
when kerry first arrives at county, she genuinely seems to believe that she can make the place better and find a place for herself within it. she is ambitious and overbearing, and her people skills are very clearly Not The Best, but she does try to connect with the staff and earn their respect. those attempts repeatedly go wrong, partly because she has no idea how she comes across and partly because the others are unwilling to look past their initial (or in doug’s case, old) dislike of her. there is something very painful to me about watching her begin to harden after she sees doug mocking both her and her disability in front of half the staff. whatever awkward hope she had of being accepted is met with humiliation, and the distance and defensiveness that later make her so difficult to reach are, at least in part, things she learned early on at county.
kerry is also very aware that her position sometimes requires her to be the person everyone else resents. she has to enforce rules, confront people who are not doing their jobs, and make decisions that may be necessary for the hospital even when they are guaranteed to make her unpopular. she knows that someone has to make those choices, and that avoiding them simply because people might dislike her would be its own kind of failure. over time, she almost seems to accept being cast as the villain as part of the job (evident in the rpf book she wrote), but i also wonder whether she sometimes uses that role as a strange form of self-protection. if she convinces herself that isolation is simply the price of leadership, then she never has to admit how badly she wants to be liked, included, or cared for. being disliked becomes something she has chosen and can control, rather than another rejection she has to endure. that does not mean their hatred never hurts her, or that every decision she makes is right, but it allows her to keep people at a safe distance while telling herself that the distance is necessary.
her relationship with jeanie is one of the few times we see her develop a genuine friendship with someone at county. jeanie understands her in a way most of the staff never try to, and kerry allows herself to care for her more than she does with almost anyone else. but even that relationship is complicated, and after the mutual betrayal in season 4, they never truly go back to how they used to be. a couple of moments that kind of break my heart are in s5 (?) when she repeatedly invites jeanie to hang out but jeanie rejects her both times (not out of maliciousness or dislike, just because she has “better” things to do).
her relationships with ellis and kim also show how badly she wants intimacy, and how difficult it is for her to sustain it without retreating behind work or self-protection. ellis is one of the few people who seems to genuinely admire her ambition rather than resent her for it, and kerry allows herself to be unusually open and affectionate with him, but the relationship is brief and ultimately makes her regret opening up to someone and trusting them. with kim, the stakes are even higher: kerry has finally found someone who understands a part of her that she has spent her entire life repressing, but being with her requires a level of openness that terrifies her. she loves kim, but she cannot bear the vulnerability of being known publicly as someone who loves her. and by the time she does, it’s too late. both relationships offer kerry the possibility of belonging with another person, and both end with her alone again.
when she finally enters a lesbian space, she immediately feels like an outsider there too. she has spent so long surviving within straight, able-bodied, male-dominated institutions that she doesn’t know how to exist in a community where she is theoretically supposed to belong. everyone else at the lesbian bar (or at the dinner with kim and her exes) seems comfortable with a part of themselves that she has only just begun to acknowledge, and kerry’s lack of belonging is impossible to miss. she also grew up involved in the church, and although there is no indication that she remains religious as an adult, it is very easy to assume that her upbringing shaped the fear, shame and repression surrounding her sexuality at least in some way.
even after mark dies, kerry’s instinct is to separate herself from the rest of the staff rather than join them at the bar. sandy is the one who has to push her to go, reminding her that these people were part of mark’s life and that she belongs among them too. it is such a small moment, but it says so much about her: even when she is grieving, even when everyone around her is gathering to mourn someone they all loved, even when they invite her, she needs another person (who happens to be the actual outsider in this situation) to tell her that she is allowed to be part of the group.
her search for her biological mother also comes out of that same longing to belong somewhere. we know that kerry had some fears about her bio mom giving her up for adoption because of her disability. after her parents died, she spent years trying to find her, only to discover that the woman she had imagined as a possible connection to her past was a religious homophobe who could not accept who she was. she finally finds the lost family she has been searching for, and instead of gaining another person in her life, she is rejected all over again.
after sandy’s death, kerry says that sandy and henry are all she has in her life, and it is devastating because it confirms how much of herself she had placed into that tiny family. for perhaps one of the first times in her life, she had somewhere she truly belonged without having to justify her presence in any way. she was loved as a wife and a mother, rather than respected, resented, or feared as a doctor. then even that sense of belonging is threatened when sandy’s family tries to take henry away from her and argues that kerry is not really his mother. it is an especially cruel thing to say to someone who was raised by adoptive parents herself, and who therefore knows firsthand that parenthood is not made less real by the absence of a biological connection. kerry had finally created the community she had spent most of her life searching for, only to be told that her place within it is not valid and could be erased.
anyway, kerry is such a tragic character because she is desperate to belong somewhere, but she has built her entire personality around never appearing to need anyone. she wants closeness without the vulnerability of letting another person know how much that closeness matters to her. she wants community, but her first response to feeling out of place is to withdraw before anyone else can reject her. she hides behind authority, ambition, defensiveness, and control because vulnerability has so rarely felt safe for her. she is so profoundly lonely, but she has also spent her entire life developing the exact defenses that keep other people at a distance. that contradiction is at the center of her character, and it is heartbreaking to me.
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
prguitarman
gracieabrams
pixelskylines
