‘Visible’s’ “The Epidemic” Is the Reason to Sign Up for Your Free Year of Apple TV+

If you’ve bought a new iPhone in the past few months, your purchase came with something extra. I’m not talking about more plugs and cables or that little Apple logo sticker that you’ve shoved away in a random drawer with all your other little Apple logo stickers. I’m talking about a free year of Apple TV+, which comes with the purchase of most new Apple products! If your Apple salesperson did their job as well as mine did, then you were definitely informed of the wide(ish) range of content available to binge on the freshman streaming service. Sure, my associate had yet to watch any of The Morning Show, but she did say that she wanted to. Consider me sold—or at least consider me informed!

But even if your Apple sales-pal told you about Apple TV+, it’s incredibly likely that you didn’t take them up on the offer when you got back home. Either you didn’t remember to sign up or you’re just not interested in watching the adventures of blind, rapping Jason Momoa. Now’s the time to fix that and sign up for that free year of Apple TV+. If you’re still in the 3-month post-purchase eligibility window, you need to exercise this option ASAP just to watch the docuseries Visible: Out on Television—and specifically Episode 3, “The Epidemic.”

More so than any other series on Apple TV+ (my apologies to Ron Weasley and presumably a creepy baby), Visible is the first must-watch show in the platform’s lineup. It’s more than must-watch: it’s essential viewing. The 5-part docuseries documents 70 years of LGBTQ+ representation on television, using the medium to tell the story of the struggle for equal rights from the Lavender scare of the 1950s to the nightmare we’re currently living in. The entire series is worth watching, as it pulls in clips from the shows you know (Golden Girls, Pose) to the ones you’ve definitely never seen before (1950s news footage, otherwise unavailable ’70s TV movies). It’s informed and informative and everything you want—especially Episode 3.

All of Visible revolves around Episode 3, not only because it’s the literal middle of the series. “The Epidemic” gets deep into how TV, and by extension America, grappled with the AIDS crisis. But more than that, “The Epidemic” is a microcosm of LGBTQ rights in one 65-minute episode. It touches on so much, from the activists that forced the AIDS narrative onto the nightly news during a time when everyone in power was silent on the matter, to the groundbreaking TV movies that fought hard to humanize queer people that were otherwise demonized.

But the episode doesn’t just focus on depictions of AIDS on the news and in narrative fiction, which is where that whole “microcosm” thing comes into play. After scraping and clawing towards a modicum of tolerance and dash of acceptance across the ’70s, queer representation took a massive blow in the ’80s that resulted in panic-based episodes and a resurgence of bigotry. “The Epidemic” tackles how creators switched to sneaking gay narratives into mainstream sitcoms via the strong, independent women of Golden Girls and Designing Women. It breaks down how daytime talk shows addressed trans rights, almost always problematically, and how Oprah Winfrey used her increasingly considerable clout to de-stigmatize AIDS in one explosive town hall episode.

By its end, the episode advances the fight for queer rights into the ’90s with segments focusing on the seismic impact made by Real World: San Francisco, which featured AIDS activist Pedro Zamora, and My So-Called Life’s groundbreaking inclusion of a gay actor (Wilson Cruz) playing a series regular gay character (Ricky Vasquez). “The Epidemic” is a dark episode, an intense installment with footage of homophobic freak-outs that—tragically!—don’t feel entirely out of place in 2020. But by ending with Pedro and Ricky, there’s a bit of hope. It’s hard to think of two TV icons that did more to lift up, humanize, and champion queer representation on TV than Ricky and Pedro. I mean, with more research and time, one could probably prove the hypothesis that Generation X’s more nuanced understanding of LGBTQ+ community stems from growing up on Real World and My So-Called Life.

All of Visible is worth bingeing as soon as you can, and as soon as you’re emotionally ready for it. But “The Epidemic,” an expansive yet in-depth journey through the greatest struggle the community has ever faced, is the reason to sign up for Apple TV+.

Stream Visible: Out on Television "The Epidemic" on Apple TV+