Friendship, Closure Connect ‘thirtysomething,’ ‘Boys,’ ‘Dodd’

Peter has taken “the test” and it’s positive. No thunderbolt is needed to tell you what that could mean.

Yet a recurring gay character’s AIDS prognosis is merely the potentially volatile sub-story, not the emotional center of this week’s “thirtysomething” at 10 p.m. Tuesday on Channels 3, 7 and 10.

Titled “Closing the Circle,” the hour is essentially about Michael Steadman’s reluctance to accept, finally, the jolting death of his best friend, Gary, and unshackle himself from this haunting spirit.

Thus more than anything, the episode is about friendship and closure, as is “The Boys,” tonight’s semi-autobiographical ABC movie starring James Woods and John Lithgow as two men whose long Hollywood writing partnership is aborted by terminal illness. It airs at 9.

Preceding both of these programs was the closure of a grand TV series, as “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” ended its first-run existence on Lifetime cable Saturday in much the same way it began intriguing life on NBC four years ago, with irony and ambivalence.

On “thirtysomething,” potential controversy looms because rare positive portrayals of gay characters on television in the past have been a call to battle for the Rev. Donald Wildmon and his reactionary minions.

The only “thirtysomething” AIDS scenario acceptable to such pressure groups would have Michael (Ken Olin) telling Peter (Peter Frechette) he was being punished by God for being gay, then Peter confessing his “sins” and converting to heterosexuality as routinely as one changes TV channels.

That’s because the Wildmon crowd seeks at once to demonize and diminish homosexuality as part of its crusade to liberate the arts and airwaves from reality. Corporate boycotts have been a primary weapon.

Unable to withstand the steamy heat of such homophobic ignorance, some spineless corporate sponsors have fled the kitchen, in ABC’s case, for example, costing the network financially in those rare times when “thirtysomething” has suggested a romantic link between Peter and another occasional gay male character.

ABC reports no sponsor defections or commercial sales at reduced rates for Tuesday’s episode. Whether participating sponsors will later suffer a backlash remains to be seen.

Peter works at the advertising agency now run by Michael, and as it turns out, dealing with Peter’s AIDS worries are only part of the emotional tonnage weighting down the ever-suffering Michael.

He must also settle accounts with Gary, something Gary’s rigid, internalizing, relentlessly pragmatic widow has already done. She empties Gary’s cluttered apartment like a fire sale, unloading even his prized old piano because “I don’t play.”

Even though seeming to be the icy one, she at least has found a way to sidestep ghosts and move toward the future. It’s Michael who’s frozen. “Let him go, Michael,” she urges. “I can’t,” he replies. “I don’t know why, but I just can’t.” Finally he does, though, at least for the moment.

It’s always hard to let go. Michael’s anguish is typically “thirtysomething,” representing the kind of realistic extended pause to weigh tragedy and death that, along with infinite other fine qualities, has helped distinguish it from most other drama series.

Far more often than not, TV has Alzheimer’s, existing in a vacuum, remembering nothing and hearing none of yesterday’s echoes. The character who dies is swiftly forgotten, the human need for reflecting and mourning getting buried with his bones.

There will always be things about “thirtysomething” that make you crazy, including having even a waitress in an obscure diner speaking clever lines that could have been written by Neil Simon.

But a series that has a memory and keeps alive the spirit of characters it ejects is a series that’s special. That’s “thirtysomething,” which seems always to know when to complete a circle and when to keep one open, if just a crack.

Loose ends are being knotted in “The Boys,” too.

The movie is distinctive not only because of its cast but because of its strong anti-smoking theme inspired by writer William Link’s experience with his late partner, Richard Levinson.

Levinson and Link were best friends and best partners for years, becoming one of the most successful TV writing teams ever by creating a spate of popular series including “Mannix,” “McCloud,” “Columbo” and “Murder She wrote.”

Then in 1987, Levinson died of a heart attack. He had been a cigarette fiend, filling himself with smoke and, as they worked together day after day, the nonsmoking Link too.

Thus, Link pulls a switch in “The Boys.”

It’s the nonsmoking Walter (Woods) who gets lung cancer and the chain-smoking Artie (Lithgow) who apparently will survive, theoretically after killing his partner with second-hand fumes.

With this as a backdrop, “The Boys” becomes less an issue story than one of brotherly devotion, with Artie feeling guilty about spreading his lethal smoke and Walter spending his last days trying to put Artie’s and his own life in order.

Link sinks familiar verbal and visual signposts into “The Boys,” giving it the aura of the TV business. Yet unfortunately, neither he, director Glen Jordan, Woods nor Lithgow is ever able to make any of this very believable.

The tone, not the anti-smoking issue, is what rings false. Despite the grim outlook for Walter, there’s an almost surreal flippancy here, with no one, except occasionally Artie, seeming to take Walter’s dying very seriously.

It’s almost as if these two writers believe they are characters in one of their own TV scripts and can make all the unpleasantness disappear merely by yelling “Cut!”

Meanwhile, if only yelling “action” could make “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” start again. It has touched a relatively small audience. Yet this unique, endearing Jay Tarses half hour--starring radiant Blair Brown as a single woman seeking illusive fulfillment in New York--has given TV some of its most luminous moments.

It was Davey (James Greene), the philosopher for all seasons at Molly’s apartment house, who early on set the tone for the series as the building’s elevator operator. Like most of us and Molly herself, Davey never quite got it right at the controls, always halting his elevator a few feet too high or low.

Unlike most TV, “Molly Dodd” was never level with the floor either, and that’s what made it special. It settled its own accounts Saturday true to itself, with Molly having a chance meeting with a man she once knew and liked but had lost track of through the years. Tarses ended with a memorable freeze-frame of Molly smiling.

And closing the circle.