WHAT is the back story to THAT? I watch ‘Law & Order’ but only once in a while and in old re-runs. There’s a HUGE gap in my ‘TV Knowledge,’ LOL!
I actually spit out my coffee that morning when she said that to Fred Thompson! As far as I knew there was NO back story to her character at all, other than she was a bleeding heart liberal, of course.
*Rolleyes*
I’m not sure what the back story was. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. I saw it mentioned on TV’s Most Unexpected Moments once.
Her departure was noteworthy due to a surprising[3] conversation between Southerlyn and Branch in the very last scene of the episode. At the close of the show, Branch dismisses Southerlyn because he feels she is too sympathetic toward defendants, and that her emotions get in the way of looking at the facts. A stunned Southerlyn pauses for a moment, then asks, “Is this because I’m a lesbian?” Taken aback by the accusation, Branch protests, “No. Of course not. No.” Her final line is “Good.... Good.”[4] This is the first and only instance that Southerlyn’s homosexuality was ever explicitly mentioned,[3] although there had been subtle hints in earlier episodes. In the 2003 episode “Mother’s Day,” Southerlyn is asked out for coffee by the female defense attorney, and later the same woman asks her out for drinks.[5] In the 2004 episode “Gov Love,” she is uncomfortable with a case in which McCoy successfully seeks to have same-sex marriage declared illegal in New York in order to get testimony from a gay defendant’s spouse. Southerlyn had objected to this and refused to assist McCoy, but her sexual orientation was never mentioned.[6]
She mentions in another episode that she dated a male college student while she was still in high school and that he is now a New York State Senator.[7]
The decision to announce Southerlyn’s homosexuality only as the character left the show was widely denounced both by fans and critics.[8][9][10][11][12][13] Slate’s Dana Stevens called the line “a cheap stunt”,[10] as did USA Today’s Robert Bianco[11] and numerous fans.[14][15] The media director for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) stated to Chicago Tribune television critic Maureen Ryan, “For a show that usually employs gay and lesbian characters as sensational plot devices, it’s really disappointing to have one of the leads come out five seconds before she exits the show,” and Ryan cited as “typical” a fan comment from Universal Television’s fan forum that read, “They have never discussed her sexuality on the show before and all of a sudden, she’s gay in her last two lines? Terrible writing decision.”[12] Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle joined those calling the move a “cheap stunt”, adding, “but here’s why it didn’t work: Anyone who knows anything about gay people knows that no lesbian could ever be that bad of an actress.”[16] Diane Holloway of the Austin American-Statesman was one of many critics who chose to answer Southerlyn’s on-screen question, while citing her as third runner-up for a list of “the most annoying actors on television”.