i say this with a lot of love in my heart, but i think we need to cool it a bit with this narrative that mohan's story ending is indicative of some broader hatred of woman of color from the show itself. with regards to the showrunners or noah wyle himself, i think @userautumn's critique of the narrative being spun around supriya's departure and how it can read at times like a disingenuous engagement with issues of racism in hollywood is really well-put and worth reading. but i also want to talk about the show itself and how frustrating I find it that mohan not coming back next season is supposedly indicative that the show, the narrative itself, has no vested interest in women of color.
i think it's important to step back and remember that of the four new major characters introduced this season, three of them are women of color: Al-Hashimi, Emma, and Joy. Simply on the level of numbers, we've actually had a net increase when it comes to characters of color on this show; in fact, Joy, despite being a new character and med student, was involved with more of the patient storylines this season than some of the first-season characters all-together. Of the major female cast, only two are white women and Ayesha Harris, who plays Parker Ellis, has just been promoted to series regular and will have a more substantive role next season when Parker joins the day shift.
I understand being disappointed that one's favorite character is leaving, I understand having critiques about how Mohan was written (of which i actually have many!), but I worry that some of us are throwing the baby jane doe out with the bathwater here when it comes to this narrative that mohan being written off means the show doesn't give a fuck about women of color. because, objectively, that just isn't true. the show isn't subtle about its focus on issues of race and diversity: patients talk out loud about being subject to anti-black medical racism, an old white nurse visibly rolls her eyes when two characters speak armenian near her, an ICE storyline is conveyed this season by the arrival of a latina patient. to suggest that none of this matters, really, or that the contributions of the Filipina, Black, Desi, and SWANA women on the cast don't really amount to much because Supriya is leaving is, I think, an impulse worth inspecting. And I think it's no small thing that fandom is making more noise about Mohan than they are about Parker, despite the fact that we have all been rightfully clamoring for a black woman doctor to step in after Heather/Tracy's absence and Ayesha is a visibly masc lesbian at that. Not in all cases, but some people are pushing a narrative that really privileges Supriya in such a way that it seems her absence alone negates the presence of every other woman of color on the cast/show. And I think we need to inspect why that is. I think we need to be really introspective about why Mohan alone seems to carry such disproportionate importance over other women characters of color on the show, how much of that is tied to her actual narrative and characterization versus the version of her that exists in fandom, to what ends she's being used by fandom that, say, other characters of color are not (especially the woc characters who don't lend themselves as easily to being shipped with white men), and if and why any of this makes her more important than Santos, or Garcia, or Parker, or Al-Hashimi.
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