the backlash to the backlash over supriya ganesh leaving the pitt is really starting to reek of misogyny to me.
tv fans being upset with the showrunners and writers of their favorite series is not a new concept. its happened as long as television has existed. it’s not exclusive to the pitt, and it’s not exclusive to young women, but the way that the tide in this case has so quickly turned to “you people are hysterical and you don’t get how tv works” i do think has to do with the fact that so many of the people expressing their dissatisfaction about this decision are women in their twenties and thirties. we must inherently be acting from an irrational place!! it must be about samira’s proximity to fans’ favorite white man on the show!! we just don’t get that it’s not bad, actually, because her place on the show is being filled with another queer woman of color!!! we’re so blinded by our desire to self-insert that we can’t appreciate how many woc are still on the show!!!!
i think there are people that have written thoughtfully about how ayesha harris’ promotion to series regular has been overshadowed in a really unfortunate way by supriya’s departure, and i do think the fact that parker ellis is likely a canonical lesbian & samira is likely not (& is involved in a fan-favorite heterosexual ship) is an interesting factor to consider in people’s varying degrees of attachment to both characters. but the fact of the matter is that (intentional or not on hbo max’s part), these announcements arrived in a way that implied a message of “don’t worry, we’re not racist!” that i don’t blame fans for taking in bad faith. the characters are not equivalent; we as the audience have different relationships to them. right now ellis is a character that we haven’t had a ton of substantial time with, and we don’t know well. samira is. it makes sense that there’s a more intense relationship there. is it worth integrating whether some of that is tied to mohabbot as a ship? yes. but to say that’s all it is is, to me, quite frankly, the same flavor of misogyny that implies women can’t understand dramatic storylines without the inclusion of romance. young women related to samira in ways that had nothing to do with whatever romantic dynamics they were or were not developing for her in the show. the character is more than her relationship to abbot, and fan’s love for her is more than that as well.
i’m also disturbed by how quickly the online conversation shifted from “supriya’s leaving, that’s upsetting, that sucks, why is this happening?” to “look at these insane, unhinged fans in noah wyle’s comment section!!! on second thought, it’s good she’s gone!” the vast majority of people expressing anger about supriya being written off the show were not taking our frustrations to noah wyle’s instagram to leave death threats. acting like that was the average fan’s baseline response to this news is, again, lumping a very real frustration about the pitt’s pattern of dismissing women of color into a relatively fringe & extremely shitty response. i can only speak for myself, but i’m aware that noah wyle is not the sole creative force behind this show. there are several other executive producers and a whole team of writers. i think targeting frustration at noah alone is misguided & unfair, and those frustrations taking the form of harassment or spreading misinformation is helping absolutely no one, including supriya. but i don’t think that frustration is in and of itself wrong or irrational or representative of some unique brand of never-before-seen fandom psychosis.
it’s troubling to me that people have been so eager to do hbo’s work for them in going a) “well look! they added another woman of color! you can’t be mad!” without considering that woc are not interchangeable, and people can be upset over losing supriya specifically because of the character they played, not just because of their race or gender, or b) “all these samira stans clearly don’t know how to watch tv, her whole storyline this season has been about her leaving!” when her entire storyline this season has actually been about her scrambling to find a way to stay in pittsburgh (side note: i think a huge issue is that people don’t understand what a fellowship is, and that samira isn’t deciding to leave emergency medicine for geriatrics or whatever she chooses but rather specialize further in EM, and i’m going to blame the show for not making that clearer), or c) “it’s just realistic for her to leave! it’s just realistic!! people don’t make it!! she’s not suited for the emergency department!” when the show is perfectly happy to bend reality for other characters to stay (langdon, whitaker) or return (dana) when in real life they might not, and when “she’s wrong for EM” has quite frankly never been the story that the show has been telling.
not to be petty, but all of the above reasoning is making me feel like the people making those arguments are the ones that are bad at watching tv! to be honest, i watch tv & movies professionally. i know that i’m good at it, and perfectly capable of character analysis. despite all of that (or maybe because of it!) i’m upset about supriya’s departure. not because she’s the whole show to me, or because i don’t understand that robby is the lead, or because i don’t care about other characters, but because i do, and i think the pitt is a weaker show without samira as a character. and i’m a woman who related to & felt represented by her. multiple things can be true.
sports fans riot in the streets when their teams lose. they burn things & break windows. i don’t really want to hear another male entertainment journalist’s perspective on why the pitt fans are being just so insane about this news.
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