MovieChat Forums > Too Close for Comfort (1980) Discussion > Season 4 episode Shipmates an early refe...

Season 4 episode Shipmates an early reference to AIDS?

posted 12 years ago by Mr. Hole
2 replies | jump to latest

Henry learns his old Petty Officer from the Navy is gay and has a partner of 25 years, near the end of the episode Henry learns the partner named Carol is dying, and no cause is given. The next time Henry runs into the man Carol is dead. Do you think this was an early reference to AIDS and the studio wouldn't let the show use the word AIDS? It would certainly have been big news in San Francisco in 1984 and the show did many episodes where Henry learns a lesson here it was that gay people can feel the same kind of love and Henry does with Muriel.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] davisprof 12 years ago

I don't know about the AIDS reference. 1984 was still very early for mass-market discussions of HIV. What I remember best of this episode was the moment near the end when the partner collapsed and expressed simple feelings of grief, loss, and loneliness. This touching moment was an astonishingly sympathetic representation of gay relationships at the time. Altho I haven't seen the episode in almost 30 years, I can't think of an equivalently moving moment in any play, film, or tv show since. Even the AIDS films tend to mask notions of personal loss in political outrage. One of the episodes of COLD CASE, about interracial lesbianism in mid-20th century, was almost as good. But I still consider Shipmates one of the high points in tv representations of homosexuality, rarely equalled and never bettered. And this was just a sitcom!