A Nuke Hits Daytime
It doesn’t take courage in this day and age to tell a gay story on a soap opera. AMC did the first one back in 1982 and followed that up with the Michael story in the mid-90’s and Bianca at the end of the decade and into the new millennium. ATWT had Hank in the mid-eighties. OLTL had Billy in 1992. Even the manliest of soaps, GH, apparently, has a character named Lucas, who likes guys, but he’s spent most of the last 20 years at diabetes camp and I’m pretty sure his Mom moved out of town or something. Hell, even Passions has done both a lesbian story and a man on the down-low story (with all the class, tact and honesty one expects of that show.) So telling a gay story is not the new, shocking, earth-shattering prospect it once was. What does take courage is to tell this story well. And ATWT is showing an awful lot of guts these days.
The story of Luke Snyder, a classic legacy character -- son of the show’s heroine, member of more than one core family -- falling in love with closeted film buff Noah Mayer has been told with restraint, honesty, subtlety and, most importantly, heat. The biggest reason for this success is probably the performances by Van Hansis (Luke –the best young talent find of the last ten years. Yes, better than Jennifer Landon), Jake Silbermann (Noah), Alex Chando (Maddie), Daniel Hugh Kelly (Colonel Mayer, Noah’s Dad) and Trent Dawson (Henry, Maddie’s brother). But for now, I want to talk about the writing. Because the Luke/Noah story is without question the best thing on ATWT right now and probably the best thing in daytime period. And the foundation the writers have given is the reason.
While the subject matter, two guys in love, is new, all of the underpinnings of this story are pure, traditional soap opera. Two characters are drawn to each other, long for each other, but conflicts both internal and external are fighting to keep them apart. Aside from the whole “Noah’s Dad may be a murderer” angle, the conflicts in this romance have been absolutely realistic: Noah’s struggle to please his father, Maddie trying to get over Casey by throwing herself blindly into a romance with Noah, Luke struggling with his friendship with Maddie, his feelings for Noah and his own self esteem and history of picking unavailable men. There is no spurned lover setting up contrived drama to drive them apart, no stupid misunderstandings, no supervillains. Everything has been realistic, domestic and true. And that’s what soaps used to do best. It is strange that this revolutionary story is what it took to get these writers back to basics.
I’ve watched most of the major gay stories on soaps in the past 30 years. I watched the Billy story on OLTL religiously. And it was gutsy for its day. But Billy was practically asexual; I think he had one date. Ultimately, this was a story about Andrew, Marty, Viki, Clint, Sloan and Joey. Billy was the inciting incident, not the lead. In the end, it was also a story about AIDS as much as it was about Billy’s coming out, what with the Quilt coming to town and whatnot. Still, for its time, it was about as good as it got on TV in terms of presenting gay issues.
When I found out that Bianca Montgomery would be coming out, I immediately tuned back in to AMC. And a lot of that story was well done, especially the Bianca/Erica stuff. But the Kane daughter’s forays into dating were usually quickly over and forgotten or set-ups in Erica’s story. And then Agnes Nixon introduced Lena to the mix. She was a sexy bad girl with a foreign accent hired to seduce Bianca to bring down Erica. And of course worldly, desperate Lena fell in love with the sweet, young Bianca. And when the suits actually let it happen, the story was hot and romantic. But it always felt so hesitant (not on the part of the actors), so fleeting that I could never really invest. Which was a good thing since Megan McTavish came in as Head Writer, threw all of that careful relationship-building out the window and finally achieved her lifelong dream of raping a virginal lesbian on national television. And then after an unending baby-switch story which presented Bianca as either sobbing or comatose and never as a sexual being, Eden Riegel left the show with her heretofore heterosexual best friend Maggie. The Bianca/Maggie relationship was one some fans had clamored for for years but it was given very short shrift. Then they brought Bianca back and had her fall in love with a dude. Sure, he was a pre-op transsexual so, eventually, it would be a fully lesbian relationship. But the symbolism of the thing was not lost on the gay audience. Nor was McTavish’s obvious attempt to present only one option for Zarf and Bianca’s shipper name: “Barf”. God, I hate that woman.
The shipper name for Luke and Noah is “Nuke” and it’s as fitting as it could be. A bomb has gone off in daytime. This is the most buzzed about story ATWT has told in, well, maybe ever. New fans show up on the message boards every day, drawn in or pulled back to the show by this story alone. The video of Noah kissing Luke was the first or second most watched video on YouTube the weekend after it aired. This is the kind of attention-magnet story soaps have been looking for since Genie Francis left GH the fist time. And thanks to the fantastic and dedicated work of poster LukeVanFan, the entire story from the first meet-cute (or meet-cranky, as the case may be) on has been compiled on YouTube for newbies to catch up or stalwarts to relive. And that is, in itself, a bit revolutionary. With YouTube, fans can watch this story, and only this story, without having to deal with Meg whining inaudibly about Paul or Katie acting like a shrill harpy with no sense of her own past (where the hell she gets off acting holier-than-thou to Carly IN FRONT OF HOLDEN, I have no idea.). If the higher-ups were smart, they would start repacking their shows on their own websites, scene by scene, story by story, so newcomers can quickly catch up on the things that confuse them. Or maybe it’s better that it comes from the fans in the relative democracy of YouTube. The simple act of seeking this stuff out on the net gives a sense of ownership and investment beyond simply watching the show at 1:00 every afternoon.
This is the first time in a long time I have tuned into a soap for a story, not an event or sweeps stunt, but a story. I don’t want to just catch up with what happened using recaps on the net. I want to see every beat of this tale play out and I feel a long-missing sense of giddiness to watch on days when I know Luke and Noah will be featured. I don’t want to be too hyberbolic here, but I’ve been drifting away from daytime for a while now (spurred on by the ABC shows, which are in my DNA, all running headlong off a cliff). This story is single-handedly saving daytime for me. This is what this medium is about: Real people, in real situations, desperately falling in love. No amount of supernatural shenanigans, mob violence, or weather-related stunt work can compete with a simple, well-told love story. Part of the reason I am loving this story relates to the gay thing, sure, but another part is that it’s simply well-told regardless of sexual orientation.
And now we come to the things that are great about this story. And there’s only one place to start: Van Hansis. Dude has serious chops. Scenes with him fill me with the same bittersweet feeling I used to get from Sarah Michelle Geller or Sarah Brown: Enjoy this while it lasts. He is able to imbue Luke with so many layers: decency, longing, sadness, hope, anger, remorse. And he consistently brings humor, either overt or veiled, to his dialogue. See his smirking at Noah’s Dad when the Colonel was yelling at him about what “his kind” do. He did great work last summer as Luke came out to his parents. And while that story became a little histrionic (Jade’s manipulations, Lily’s tumble, Damien and the death camp of heterosexuality) Hansis’s performance (and those around him, especially Jon Hensley’s scared, compassionate Holden) kept everything moving in both senses of the word. But now he has stepped up into the role of romantic lead and is continuing to stun me with his talent.
And that’s one of the great things about this story: Luke is the lead. This isn’t a piece of Lily’s story or part of a larger umbrella plot, this is about Luke. Normally, if the gay character was the lead, we would see a story like this from the Noah character’s perspective. Luke, the hot, young, out guy, would be the complication forcing Noah to choose to be himself or live a lie. And while all of that is going on, it’s Luke we are rooting for. It’s his happiness we as viewers care about most. We’ve watched him grow up, discover himself, face rejection and now we want him to be happy. Instead of focusing on Noah and letting his own ambivalence about his sexuality stand in for the audience’s, the lead of the story is the out and proud man. And that is awesome. This isn’t Bianca and her random day player friends from “the youth center” or “the bar” who were all Pride-Parade out in contrast to her own wishy-washiness. Luke is out, everyone knows he’s out, everyone in town is okay with it. And when the relationship does come to light, the town is not going to see Luke as the interloper, they are going to see him as a victim, just as much as Maddie, of Noah’s desperate desire to live up to his father.
Not to say that Noah is being presented as the villain here. He most certainly is not. The villain is his father. But Noah is certainly an antagonist both in leading Luke on and in promising things to Maddie he can’t deliver. While he’s a lot greener than Hansis or Chando, Jake Silbermann is doing a very good job of showing all of Noah’s feelings. Neither of these guys is trying to subtly tell the audience, “I’m not really like this. All this kissing boys is gross” like a lot of actors would do. When Noah looks at Luke, we feel the desire, the longing, the pain. Whether Silbermann is gay or not is immaterial, but Noah never seems anything less than gay and in pain over that fact.
Alex Chando is also doing fantastic work. She’s got a hard job. Obviously, the rooting factor in this relationship has to be Luke and Noah. Maddie is the complication, the other woman. But she’s carefully walking a line to show us that while Maddie cares about Noah and wants to be with him, it’s ultimately not about Noah. She just, as she told her brother Henry, wants someone to buy furniture with. It’s all about her pain at losing Casey and her longing for companionship. It makes it okay for us to root for the boys to get together while also making us feel bad for Maddie. But she never seems like the innocent victim of those two evil gay dudes. She has her own responsibility in this mess and she knows it.
Originally I was disappointed that we weren’t going to get any scenes of Noah and Luke hotly sneaking around, having an affair behind Maddie’s back. But the writers made the right call there. As scorching as that would have been, Luke would never do that to Maddie (nor would Noah for that matter). Ultimately, Maddie wasn’t in the dark for very long and now we can move on to the meat of the story, no pun intended, the inevitable coming together of Luke and Noah.
Except -- and there’s always an except in daytime – for Noah’s homophobic, violent abusive wretch of a father. At first I thought this story was going in a Chris Cooper in American Beauty direction, where Noah’s courage would finally force his father out of the closet. But now it looks like he’s a murderer, so that’s off. I hope this part of the story doesn’t go too far off the rails (I can deal with Luke having an “accident” at the hands of the Colonel, just no comas. Enough with the comas.) And while the senior Mayer has morphed into a stock villain, Daniel Hugh Kelly needs to be praised for bringing needed depth to the role. We know what the ending will be here: Noah will accept himself, Luke and Noah will deflower each other in the Snyder barn, Colonel Mayer will be hauled off to prison. But Kelly brings both a sense of real menace to the proceedings as well as clear motivation. He’s not just a homophobe, he’s controlling in the worst way and terrified of anything out of the ordinary. I have a feeling we are going to find a lot out about this guy in the future and he’s just going to get creepier and creepier. If they had to go this route with the bad guy in the story, I’m glad they had the sense to cast a real actor to do it. By the way, Kelly is becoming the go-to guy for parents of gay kids on daytime as he previously played Bianca’s accepting, though dead, father Travis on AMC.
The last actor I want to single out (and this is no slight to Martha Byrne, who cracked my shit up as she slowly caught on to Luke and Noah’s relationship in Emma’s kitchen) is Trent Dawson. Henry has long been a favorite character of mine. He originally came on as the Addison DeWitt to Katie’s Eve Herrington and I am, of course, naturally disposed to love anyone playing the Addison DeWitt character. Over the years he has morphed into a comic and romantic lead (after spending a few years in an asexual wasteland between straight and gay). His scenes with Colonel Mayer have been both funny and creepy as he subtly tested the army man after one too many comments about Noah hanging around with “the wrong people”. The choice in both the writing and Dawson’s performance to have Henry gently bring his suspicions up to Maddie softened the blow to her character and kept the story grounded in honesty. There was no overdramatic Friday cliffhanger scene where Maddie walks in on the two guys doing at it. She simply figured it out for herself, got confirmation from Luke and told Noah he had hurt her. No one swore eternal revenge. It was just a couple of sweet brother/sister scenes to ease Maddie through the truth.
My biggest problem with ATWT right now (along with the horrendous sound editing) is that each story exists in a kind of island. Characters don’t connect (Carly and Rosanna have had one scene since Ro woke up from coma, for instance). The fact that the Nuke story is bumping up against the Cheri mystery is a good sign. But, on the other hand, it is so refreshing to see a gay story told on daytime where the entire town isn’t asked to weigh in. Yes, the Billy story was an umbrella story and that worked. But remember when Michael Delaney came out on AMC? That story tore Pine Valley apart and ended with a freaking assassination and the death of Laurel. Everyone in town had an opinion on Bianca, too. It’s just great that we’ve finally reached a stage where the producers don’t feel the need to give the bigots in the audience a voice. It nearly ruined Clint on OLTL to be put in that position. Seeing Lily struggle with acceptance seems to have been enough. The debate about whether it’s okay to be gay on soaps seems to be over. Now we can tell some actual stories beyond coming out.
In a lot of ways, this is the story I’ve been waiting for on daytime my whole life (at least after accepting my sexuality). Luke’s experience coming out felt similar to my own. He figured it out pretty quickly and the issue was in telling his family, not in accepting it himself. Now to see him falling in love and having that story told so sensitively gives me hope for the future of this medium. But it’s not even about the gay thing, really. It’s about finally seeing a story grounded in reality, full of real-life choices and believable characters. Soaps have gone so far out into the stratosphere in terms of luring back viewers that they have lost the ability to tell the kind of simple young love stories that my generation fell in love with them for in the first. I saw one poster who said this was the best love story he or she had scene since the heyday of Greg and Jenny on AMC. And I can’t really disagree. There’s a basic, barebones quality to it that is so refreshing these days. I hope it ushers in not just an explosion of gay stories on soaps (the gay audience is loyal and a constant number, the bigot audience is fickle and dwindling) but a return to the kind of simple, domestic storytelling soaps were built on.
There’s always a fear in daytime that the writers or the suits will chicken out on a story like this. But so far, they have given us very little reason for concern. If you’re not watching the story yet, I urge you to do so (see the clip below for some enticement). And if you are watching the story, sit back, relax, and enjoy the best story daytime has told in a very long time.
The story of Luke Snyder, a classic legacy character -- son of the show’s heroine, member of more than one core family -- falling in love with closeted film buff Noah Mayer has been told with restraint, honesty, subtlety and, most importantly, heat. The biggest reason for this success is probably the performances by Van Hansis (Luke –the best young talent find of the last ten years. Yes, better than Jennifer Landon), Jake Silbermann (Noah), Alex Chando (Maddie), Daniel Hugh Kelly (Colonel Mayer, Noah’s Dad) and Trent Dawson (Henry, Maddie’s brother). But for now, I want to talk about the writing. Because the Luke/Noah story is without question the best thing on ATWT right now and probably the best thing in daytime period. And the foundation the writers have given is the reason.
While the subject matter, two guys in love, is new, all of the underpinnings of this story are pure, traditional soap opera. Two characters are drawn to each other, long for each other, but conflicts both internal and external are fighting to keep them apart. Aside from the whole “Noah’s Dad may be a murderer” angle, the conflicts in this romance have been absolutely realistic: Noah’s struggle to please his father, Maddie trying to get over Casey by throwing herself blindly into a romance with Noah, Luke struggling with his friendship with Maddie, his feelings for Noah and his own self esteem and history of picking unavailable men. There is no spurned lover setting up contrived drama to drive them apart, no stupid misunderstandings, no supervillains. Everything has been realistic, domestic and true. And that’s what soaps used to do best. It is strange that this revolutionary story is what it took to get these writers back to basics.
I’ve watched most of the major gay stories on soaps in the past 30 years. I watched the Billy story on OLTL religiously. And it was gutsy for its day. But Billy was practically asexual; I think he had one date. Ultimately, this was a story about Andrew, Marty, Viki, Clint, Sloan and Joey. Billy was the inciting incident, not the lead. In the end, it was also a story about AIDS as much as it was about Billy’s coming out, what with the Quilt coming to town and whatnot. Still, for its time, it was about as good as it got on TV in terms of presenting gay issues.
When I found out that Bianca Montgomery would be coming out, I immediately tuned back in to AMC. And a lot of that story was well done, especially the Bianca/Erica stuff. But the Kane daughter’s forays into dating were usually quickly over and forgotten or set-ups in Erica’s story. And then Agnes Nixon introduced Lena to the mix. She was a sexy bad girl with a foreign accent hired to seduce Bianca to bring down Erica. And of course worldly, desperate Lena fell in love with the sweet, young Bianca. And when the suits actually let it happen, the story was hot and romantic. But it always felt so hesitant (not on the part of the actors), so fleeting that I could never really invest. Which was a good thing since Megan McTavish came in as Head Writer, threw all of that careful relationship-building out the window and finally achieved her lifelong dream of raping a virginal lesbian on national television. And then after an unending baby-switch story which presented Bianca as either sobbing or comatose and never as a sexual being, Eden Riegel left the show with her heretofore heterosexual best friend Maggie. The Bianca/Maggie relationship was one some fans had clamored for for years but it was given very short shrift. Then they brought Bianca back and had her fall in love with a dude. Sure, he was a pre-op transsexual so, eventually, it would be a fully lesbian relationship. But the symbolism of the thing was not lost on the gay audience. Nor was McTavish’s obvious attempt to present only one option for Zarf and Bianca’s shipper name: “Barf”. God, I hate that woman.
The shipper name for Luke and Noah is “Nuke” and it’s as fitting as it could be. A bomb has gone off in daytime. This is the most buzzed about story ATWT has told in, well, maybe ever. New fans show up on the message boards every day, drawn in or pulled back to the show by this story alone. The video of Noah kissing Luke was the first or second most watched video on YouTube the weekend after it aired. This is the kind of attention-magnet story soaps have been looking for since Genie Francis left GH the fist time. And thanks to the fantastic and dedicated work of poster LukeVanFan, the entire story from the first meet-cute (or meet-cranky, as the case may be) on has been compiled on YouTube for newbies to catch up or stalwarts to relive. And that is, in itself, a bit revolutionary. With YouTube, fans can watch this story, and only this story, without having to deal with Meg whining inaudibly about Paul or Katie acting like a shrill harpy with no sense of her own past (where the hell she gets off acting holier-than-thou to Carly IN FRONT OF HOLDEN, I have no idea.). If the higher-ups were smart, they would start repacking their shows on their own websites, scene by scene, story by story, so newcomers can quickly catch up on the things that confuse them. Or maybe it’s better that it comes from the fans in the relative democracy of YouTube. The simple act of seeking this stuff out on the net gives a sense of ownership and investment beyond simply watching the show at 1:00 every afternoon.
This is the first time in a long time I have tuned into a soap for a story, not an event or sweeps stunt, but a story. I don’t want to just catch up with what happened using recaps on the net. I want to see every beat of this tale play out and I feel a long-missing sense of giddiness to watch on days when I know Luke and Noah will be featured. I don’t want to be too hyberbolic here, but I’ve been drifting away from daytime for a while now (spurred on by the ABC shows, which are in my DNA, all running headlong off a cliff). This story is single-handedly saving daytime for me. This is what this medium is about: Real people, in real situations, desperately falling in love. No amount of supernatural shenanigans, mob violence, or weather-related stunt work can compete with a simple, well-told love story. Part of the reason I am loving this story relates to the gay thing, sure, but another part is that it’s simply well-told regardless of sexual orientation.
And now we come to the things that are great about this story. And there’s only one place to start: Van Hansis. Dude has serious chops. Scenes with him fill me with the same bittersweet feeling I used to get from Sarah Michelle Geller or Sarah Brown: Enjoy this while it lasts. He is able to imbue Luke with so many layers: decency, longing, sadness, hope, anger, remorse. And he consistently brings humor, either overt or veiled, to his dialogue. See his smirking at Noah’s Dad when the Colonel was yelling at him about what “his kind” do. He did great work last summer as Luke came out to his parents. And while that story became a little histrionic (Jade’s manipulations, Lily’s tumble, Damien and the death camp of heterosexuality) Hansis’s performance (and those around him, especially Jon Hensley’s scared, compassionate Holden) kept everything moving in both senses of the word. But now he has stepped up into the role of romantic lead and is continuing to stun me with his talent.
And that’s one of the great things about this story: Luke is the lead. This isn’t a piece of Lily’s story or part of a larger umbrella plot, this is about Luke. Normally, if the gay character was the lead, we would see a story like this from the Noah character’s perspective. Luke, the hot, young, out guy, would be the complication forcing Noah to choose to be himself or live a lie. And while all of that is going on, it’s Luke we are rooting for. It’s his happiness we as viewers care about most. We’ve watched him grow up, discover himself, face rejection and now we want him to be happy. Instead of focusing on Noah and letting his own ambivalence about his sexuality stand in for the audience’s, the lead of the story is the out and proud man. And that is awesome. This isn’t Bianca and her random day player friends from “the youth center” or “the bar” who were all Pride-Parade out in contrast to her own wishy-washiness. Luke is out, everyone knows he’s out, everyone in town is okay with it. And when the relationship does come to light, the town is not going to see Luke as the interloper, they are going to see him as a victim, just as much as Maddie, of Noah’s desperate desire to live up to his father.
Not to say that Noah is being presented as the villain here. He most certainly is not. The villain is his father. But Noah is certainly an antagonist both in leading Luke on and in promising things to Maddie he can’t deliver. While he’s a lot greener than Hansis or Chando, Jake Silbermann is doing a very good job of showing all of Noah’s feelings. Neither of these guys is trying to subtly tell the audience, “I’m not really like this. All this kissing boys is gross” like a lot of actors would do. When Noah looks at Luke, we feel the desire, the longing, the pain. Whether Silbermann is gay or not is immaterial, but Noah never seems anything less than gay and in pain over that fact.
Alex Chando is also doing fantastic work. She’s got a hard job. Obviously, the rooting factor in this relationship has to be Luke and Noah. Maddie is the complication, the other woman. But she’s carefully walking a line to show us that while Maddie cares about Noah and wants to be with him, it’s ultimately not about Noah. She just, as she told her brother Henry, wants someone to buy furniture with. It’s all about her pain at losing Casey and her longing for companionship. It makes it okay for us to root for the boys to get together while also making us feel bad for Maddie. But she never seems like the innocent victim of those two evil gay dudes. She has her own responsibility in this mess and she knows it.
Originally I was disappointed that we weren’t going to get any scenes of Noah and Luke hotly sneaking around, having an affair behind Maddie’s back. But the writers made the right call there. As scorching as that would have been, Luke would never do that to Maddie (nor would Noah for that matter). Ultimately, Maddie wasn’t in the dark for very long and now we can move on to the meat of the story, no pun intended, the inevitable coming together of Luke and Noah.
Except -- and there’s always an except in daytime – for Noah’s homophobic, violent abusive wretch of a father. At first I thought this story was going in a Chris Cooper in American Beauty direction, where Noah’s courage would finally force his father out of the closet. But now it looks like he’s a murderer, so that’s off. I hope this part of the story doesn’t go too far off the rails (I can deal with Luke having an “accident” at the hands of the Colonel, just no comas. Enough with the comas.) And while the senior Mayer has morphed into a stock villain, Daniel Hugh Kelly needs to be praised for bringing needed depth to the role. We know what the ending will be here: Noah will accept himself, Luke and Noah will deflower each other in the Snyder barn, Colonel Mayer will be hauled off to prison. But Kelly brings both a sense of real menace to the proceedings as well as clear motivation. He’s not just a homophobe, he’s controlling in the worst way and terrified of anything out of the ordinary. I have a feeling we are going to find a lot out about this guy in the future and he’s just going to get creepier and creepier. If they had to go this route with the bad guy in the story, I’m glad they had the sense to cast a real actor to do it. By the way, Kelly is becoming the go-to guy for parents of gay kids on daytime as he previously played Bianca’s accepting, though dead, father Travis on AMC.
The last actor I want to single out (and this is no slight to Martha Byrne, who cracked my shit up as she slowly caught on to Luke and Noah’s relationship in Emma’s kitchen) is Trent Dawson. Henry has long been a favorite character of mine. He originally came on as the Addison DeWitt to Katie’s Eve Herrington and I am, of course, naturally disposed to love anyone playing the Addison DeWitt character. Over the years he has morphed into a comic and romantic lead (after spending a few years in an asexual wasteland between straight and gay). His scenes with Colonel Mayer have been both funny and creepy as he subtly tested the army man after one too many comments about Noah hanging around with “the wrong people”. The choice in both the writing and Dawson’s performance to have Henry gently bring his suspicions up to Maddie softened the blow to her character and kept the story grounded in honesty. There was no overdramatic Friday cliffhanger scene where Maddie walks in on the two guys doing at it. She simply figured it out for herself, got confirmation from Luke and told Noah he had hurt her. No one swore eternal revenge. It was just a couple of sweet brother/sister scenes to ease Maddie through the truth.
My biggest problem with ATWT right now (along with the horrendous sound editing) is that each story exists in a kind of island. Characters don’t connect (Carly and Rosanna have had one scene since Ro woke up from coma, for instance). The fact that the Nuke story is bumping up against the Cheri mystery is a good sign. But, on the other hand, it is so refreshing to see a gay story told on daytime where the entire town isn’t asked to weigh in. Yes, the Billy story was an umbrella story and that worked. But remember when Michael Delaney came out on AMC? That story tore Pine Valley apart and ended with a freaking assassination and the death of Laurel. Everyone in town had an opinion on Bianca, too. It’s just great that we’ve finally reached a stage where the producers don’t feel the need to give the bigots in the audience a voice. It nearly ruined Clint on OLTL to be put in that position. Seeing Lily struggle with acceptance seems to have been enough. The debate about whether it’s okay to be gay on soaps seems to be over. Now we can tell some actual stories beyond coming out.
In a lot of ways, this is the story I’ve been waiting for on daytime my whole life (at least after accepting my sexuality). Luke’s experience coming out felt similar to my own. He figured it out pretty quickly and the issue was in telling his family, not in accepting it himself. Now to see him falling in love and having that story told so sensitively gives me hope for the future of this medium. But it’s not even about the gay thing, really. It’s about finally seeing a story grounded in reality, full of real-life choices and believable characters. Soaps have gone so far out into the stratosphere in terms of luring back viewers that they have lost the ability to tell the kind of simple young love stories that my generation fell in love with them for in the first. I saw one poster who said this was the best love story he or she had scene since the heyday of Greg and Jenny on AMC. And I can’t really disagree. There’s a basic, barebones quality to it that is so refreshing these days. I hope it ushers in not just an explosion of gay stories on soaps (the gay audience is loyal and a constant number, the bigot audience is fickle and dwindling) but a return to the kind of simple, domestic storytelling soaps were built on.
There’s always a fear in daytime that the writers or the suits will chicken out on a story like this. But so far, they have given us very little reason for concern. If you’re not watching the story yet, I urge you to do so (see the clip below for some enticement). And if you are watching the story, sit back, relax, and enjoy the best story daytime has told in a very long time.
posted by Mark at 4:37 PM
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