[Last Call Review w/ Joe Lipsett] Episode 4 Ends the Docuseries On a Note of Love Amongst Horror

Each week, Terry and Joe discuss HBO’s true-crime docuseries Last Call.

Spoilers follow for Episode 4

TERRY

When I finished watching the fourth episode of Last Call, I had to wipe tears away, blow my nose, and sit there in contemplation. We’ve spilled a lot of digital ink talking about the way in which Anthony Caronna and Howard Gertler’s docuseries does what I wish a lot of True Crime documentaries would do.

From the very first episode, Last Call lays out the serial murders and gives us insight from a variety of people working the case, like Bea Hanson and Matt Foreman of the Anti-Violence Project (AVP) to the cops working the beats like detective Nick Theodos and Chief Thomas Macauley. But it also dove deep into each of the victims, pulling in family and sometimes former partners or lovers in order to give them each a eulogy.

I think that’s what I’m going to take away most from this, Joe. The way Anthony Caronna and Howard Gertler honor the victims and tell their stories. But also use their lives as a jumping off point to discuss how exactly this could happen and continue to happen through decades.

The last episode gave us the name of the killer - Richard Rogers - but Episode 4 suggests that the true villain here is the same thing each episode harped on: systemic and institutional homophobia and bias towards the gay community.

The most gasp-inducing part for me was when the narrative switched back to 1973 and the murder of Frederic Spencer at the University of Maine. Police immediately tracked the murder to Frederic’s housemate: Richard Rogers.

He went to trial for it, but was acquitted because of “self defense.” Not just self defense, the docuseries tells us, though; Gay panic self-defense. Unlike “Pick-Up Crimes” or “Overkill”, I think this is a term the queer community knows all too well. Basically, Richard was acquitted because he said that Frederic came on to him and he panicked and murdered him.

Richard panicked so hard he hit him eight times with a roofing hammer and then wrapped a plastic bag around his head until he died.

But in a time consumed with homophobia, the jury found him not guilty.

We also learn about another time in 1988 when Richard drugged, beat and kidnapped a gay man named Fred Lerro in Staten Island and how the court system failed to give that man justice. Instead, Last Call shows transcripts of Lerro on the stand and the personal, probing questions he was asked. “Sir, are you homosexual?”, for instance. And even when the questions were about the events that happened, the way they were peppered in reeked of homophobia; of trying to push the jury to think that a gay man who went to a gay bar, drank, and went home with a stranger for casual sex deserved his fate. That this is the expected outcome associated with that lifestyle.

It made me sick to my stomach.

A lot of this episode made me sick to my stomach when it wasn’t focused on the victims. The finale of Last Call also introduces us to assistant prosecutor Hillary Bryce who worked on the case. She talked about the way they went about selecting a jury in 2005, which included giving the jurors written questions.

The docuseries naturally shows us the most sickening one, which is about the juror’s personal view of “homosexuality and consensual homosexual activity.” The multiple choice answers? “Live and let live” was the only positive one. The rest?

Disapprove
“It is an illness”
“It is a sin”
“it should be illegal” or (the most horrific one)
“AIDS is God’s punishment for such activity.”

One one hand, this does an excellent job of weeding out the religious bigots and homophobes, but in the words of AVP member Bea Hanson, “if the best we can get is ‘live and let live’...that is such a low bar.”

Episode 4 was incredibly dense, Joe, with a lot of information coming in while the docuseries still had to balance the victims’ stories and the police investigation. Do you think it tied everything together? What were your thoughts about the way Last Call tied Anita Bryant’s old tirades about “gay recruitment” to Ron DeSantis’ “groomers” ideology? And did you want more about Richard Rogers? We’re given pretty much no information about him from 2005 onward – or are you happy with the way Last Call focused mostly on the victims’ stories?

JOE

I’ll tackle the last question first, because initially I did find the lack of details about Rogers a little unsatisfying. I wanted to hear him speak, to explain his actions (I actually thought we might see more courtroom footage, but there are only a few still images from the trial).

Then I thought back to a line from Hanson, early in the episode: ““It wasn’t about him. You wanna remember the names of the people who were lost, not the person who did the act.” And that’s really the thesis of the docuseries, isn’t it? It wouldn’t have mattered if the killer was a homophobe, a religious zealot or a closeted queer man; the motivations of this sick individual are immaterial compared to what’s been lost for the friends and family of the four (identified) victims.

And that’s where Last Call always understood the assignment: by focusing on the people left behind, on the human impact and what was loss by not having these four men around. The last few minutes of the docuseries completely abandons all of the police and the activists in order to give the victims’ loved ones the final say and that’s what makes it emotional. Because these were, as Foreman says, people; not just statistics. That’s the battle that homophobes and zealots like Bryant and DeSantis willfully overlook in their inflammatory, hate-spewing tirades: these are people, who lived and loved and will be missed by the people who loved them back.

And that’s what really tugged on the heart-strings and made me well up in the finale, Terry. These men didn’t deserve to die for being queer, and the world doesn’t get to punish us or treat us like second hand citizens for living our lives. That’s what Caronna and Gertler have really captured here, while simultaneously highlighting all of the areas and hurdles that sometimes make it impossible for us to do so.

The details about 1973 and 1988, and how Richards was let go to escalate his crimes is incredibly frustrating. But it’s not surprising.

Nor (sadly) is it surprising when the docuseries ends with recent footage and statistics about anti-LGBT+ bills, about new waves of violence at gay bars, or a FULL screen of black transwomen who have been murdered. For audiences who have been paying attention, this isn’t new information, but what this fourth and final episode did incredibly well was present it all in one 59 minute package: between the crying faces of the friends and family, to the highlighted homophobic questions from Lerro’s testimony, to the multiple choice questionnaire for the jurors, to the 18 incidents between 1975 and 2016 where offenders were acquitted or given reduced sentences for murders employing the gay panic defense to the US map where it is still legal (34!), Caronna and Gertler really bust out all of their visual aids for this one to hammer home just how fucking hard it is to be queer in America.

But they end on love, and joy, and Pride. And while it may run counter to all of the alarming statistics and the bandying around of queer lives for political gains by hateful fear-mongers, there’s still something powerful in suggesting that (to repurpose an old gay adage) “it gets better.”

Or it will…if we fight for it.

I really enjoyed this series, Terry. It didn’t always make me feel good (and, in fact, often make me feel really shitty), but it was exceptionally well-made and rightfully always kept the focus on the victims: humanizing them, eulogizing them, and celebrating them. These four episodes earn an A.

Terry: final take-aways from the docuseries? How much would you love to go for drinks with Hanson and Foreman (or Bryce for that matter)? And what’s your grade for Last Call?

TERRY

I’m completely with you, Joe. I’m very leery about True Crime shows and docuseries and podcasts, etc., because I sometimes feel like it’s presented more for the thrill, the macabre feeling and interest in the darker side of the world. So even though the subject matter is grim and the sociopolitical implications are, somehow, even grimmer, Last Call felt like a relative breath of fresh air.

I would absolutely love to treat Hanson, Foreman and Bryce to a round of drinks and listen to their stories because I think the thing I loved the most about Last Call was how it grounded the murders in historical perspectives. I learned something about queer history here and that, more than anything, is the most important thing. Because, as Last Call states, time and time again, it’s our history. And it’s a history that doesn’t get told very often. So it behooves us to learn, remember and never forget.

Last Call is absolutely a solid A in my book, Joe.