Jeff Perry

It is depressingly difficult to get a good image of Jeff Perry. I should have Hulu access but can’t make it work right now, and I’ve never successfully gotten a good screenshot from a DVD. I’ve had to ask an online friend who has never seen the show¹ to use their Hulu and walk them through finding him in the episode. I couldn’t even go with my second choice, an episode of Crossing Jordan, because my image search skills failed me and I couldn’t find a still from the episode even though it’s one of the most intense ones in the series. Even his Grey’s Anatomy appearance had few high-quality stills, and he seems to be kind of an important character in a much more popular show.

Which is astounding, because he’s an extremely important actor. He’s one of the founding members of Steppenwolf, which is presumably—due to his working relationship with Tom Irwin—how he got hired to play Mr. Katimsky in the first place. I suspect a lot of his TV career stems from that. His film debut was A Wedding, which has a lot of the Steppenwolf regulars in if nothing else uncredited minor roles. His TV debut was Goodnight, Gracie, which was literally just PBS filming a Steppenwolf production. I grant you it doesn’t explain the Family Ties or the Columbo.

Perry’s father was actually a teacher, at Highland Park High School—which he attended with Steppenwolf cofounders Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney and where they started the company. Obviously I don’t know if he talked to his father about Mr. Katimsky, but he easily could have. The missing English teacher had been a running joke in the show up until Perry shows up in episode twelve and actually starts doing the job. And he cares enough to take in Rickie even though doing so could endanger him personally.

Because Perry was willing to play a closeted gay teacher. Let’s not dismiss the value of Wilson Cruz and all of the firsts of Rickie. Because those are definitely important. But Mr. Katimsky was a gay teacher who wasn’t leching after any of the kids—he was trying to protect an abused runaway kid, and it was only a Bad Thing because of the gay aspect. If everyone involved had been straight and Katimsky was taking in a kid who’d been kicked out by his family and had nowhere else to go, a lot more people would’ve seen it as admirable. As it was, he was risking his job.

It’s a sweet performance, and it’s so wildly different from his Crossing Jordan role, where he plays a lunatic who locks kids up in his basement and ends up with Dr. Macy down there while he’s at it. I haven’t seen much that he’s done, but it’s clear that he is capable of incredibly wide range. He’s particularly good at a certain kind of baffled affability, I think—even as the madman, he initially comes across as fairly nice, if distracted. And of course he’s one of those people who spends a lot of time on the stage when he’s not onscreen, and good for him.

1Thanks, Diemwing!