But why Charles?

Were any of you wondering?

I need to frame this discussion. Where I grew up, a little less than an hour outside Boston, there was a local television station that filled up its hours primarily with rebroadcasts of Taxi, Cheers, and M*A*S*H. Every day, after my paper route and before dinner (and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune-- which we watched while we ate) I took in a couple episodes of the life and times of the 4077.

Even before that, I used to listen to the strains of the theme song, "Suicide is Painless," drifting up (well, blasting) through the floorboards to my sister's and my room, back when it was still an original series that aired after my bedtime. (There are a couple themes I feel close to for that reason-- the one from "Hill Street Blues" is another. I used to play them both on the piano. Badly.)

J's experiences with the show were similar. It's rare that we see an episode we don't remember. And considering the series ran longer than we've been married, that's saying something.

I don't know what it says about us, or the current state of basic cable, that a show that's been in syndication since we were in elementary school is still frequently the most appealing thing on.

So, I thought I'd explain why, when I said J would be Charles Emerson Winchester were he a character on the show, he accepted it with little demur. Not to mention why I saw that connection in the first place.

Because it doesn't seem like a flattering comparison, does it? After all, Charles came on to the show to replace Frank Burns as the annoying roommate in the Swamp. But Charles is no officious buffoon or sycophantic climber. He's a Boston Brahmin, of the first order. He doesn't care about military rank-- he's a legacy from Harvard Medical School.

He's a snob. You can tell, because he sways a finger in the air while he listens to concert music on his portable turntable. You can tell, because he will tell you himself. He's an elitist and he feels no shame for it.

Americans generally don't cotton to someone like that. But there's something brave about a person who's willing to assert that what he likes is better than what other people like-- and here's why. There's something attractive about someone who fully owns his sense of taste.

I'm not saying Charles and J like the same things-- just that they share a sense that there are finer things, better things, that are worth valuing, and worth holding out for. And they can be equally sharp in their dismissal of things that don't hit the mark.

These are things I'm talking about here-- I'm not talking about a dismissal of people. Because neither of them do. Charles... I think Charles gets lonely at camp, because there are so few people to talk to that take an interest in things he cares about. Every now and then he'd encounter someone who really excited him-- a woman who surprised him by playing Rachmaninoff, when he'd thought she only did the boogie woogie. Someone who knew how to appreciate an exceptional meal...

And Charles cares very deeply about his patients. In marked contrast to Frank Burns, Charles is an exceptional surgeon. In his very first episode, though, we see how that excellence is Charles' particular cross to bear.

He's scrubbing his hands. People tell him to get a move on. He informs them, "I do one thing. I do it very well. And then I move on."

But this isn't Massachusetts General. This is Korea. This is meatball surgery.

Charles gets knocked down to size. And that costs him, in that particular respect, much more than any of the other surgeons. Consider Hawkeye, writing letters to his doctor father back in Crabapple Cove, Maine. Hawkeye is a good doctor, a very compassionate one. But don't you think he was cut out to be the local doc? The county GP who delivers babies and sets broken bones and occasionally gets paid in bushels of corn?

Not Charles. Charles became a surgeon, because that was his way to be an artist.

He's very frank about it, in an episode that is my favorite Charles episode by far. A young man in his care had suffered a blast, and Charles tells him with pride how he was able to save the man's leg (I get the sense, watching this, that few of the other doctors would have had the skill, or would have taken the time in the rush of casualties, to do so.)

The man doesn't care about his leg, though. He can't move his fingers.

Three fingers on the right hand were paralysed. Charles assures him, "It will look perfectly normal."

But the young man doesn't care. He was a concert pianist. His life is ruined.

Charles tries to bring the man out of his despair. He orders some sheet music of Ravel's compositions for the left hand. But that's just a token, to open up a discussion about art and music and identity.

Charles tells him how long he tried to learn to play well. "I could play the notes, but there was no music. I didn't have that gift. I have hands that can make a scalpel sing. But music... isn't in the hands. It's in the brain. It's in the heart."

Ah, I'm paraphrasing here. But this scene makes my heart break for both of them.

Charles enjoins him to remember he can compose. He can conduct. He can teach. He can write.

Slowly, the man begins to play. Then he starts to play with more confidence.

Charles watches him, with wistfulness. Then the music leads him to something that looks like transcendence.

Charles Emerson Winchester is a beautiful man.

That's why I could see my husband in him.

Comments

[tracey]

Oh, I remember that scene, that episode. This is a beautiful tribute to J, roo.

Thanks for this glimpse into him and how you see him.

Now that I think about it, I can see some of MB in Charles, too.