Warning: Spoilers ahead.
In this 79 episode, Jill Munroe returns to the Townsend agency two years after quitting, unwillingly because a wealthy man, Anton Karazna, kidnapped her sister Kris, the angel who replaced her from the second season onward. It’s not difficult for Bosley, Kelly, and Sabrina to find Kris. Karazna wants to find Jill to make her pay for the death of his son Dino: he believes Dino died of heartbreak because of Jill. He leaves clues for Charlie’s angels so they fall into his trap.
When Jill is finally meets the villain, who isn’t so villainous after all, it’s time for explanations. Of course, she’s not to blame for Dino’s death. She can explain to the father that his son and she were friends, not lovers, that Dino needed to figure out who he was, his paintings, his writing poems. Jill explains how she helped him be himself, and that if he died in a racing accident, due simply to the fact that he was not a good driver.
A queer subtext is obvious today. Whether Dino was gay or bi, the story doesn’t say, but, except that that element of the setting deepens Jill’s discourse, who visibly doesn’t dare going to the end of her explanation. The painting : a portrait of Dino, which his father has in each of his nine houses, bears a more than striking resemblance to Oscar Wilde, leaving a big clue for those who know the british homosexual writer. The choice of this painting is certainly not random: it serves to deliver a message : "You have the right to not be like your father, you don’t have to die to satisfy him." Oscar Wilde’s mother had a pen-name "Speranza" that sounds a little spanish like the vilain’s name Karazna.
This gay coded representation is rather sad, as it is that of an accidental death, supposed to be the consequence of a lack of understanding, of acceptance from a father for his son. Despite Jill’s speech for acceptance and tolerance, once again, an LGBT character exists only through his absence.
#CharliesAngels #JillMunroeReturn #LGBTQSubtext #TVAnalysis #OscarWildeReference