Lately, All My Children has been working overtime to undo historic firsts. A whole bunch of years ago, AMC was the first soap to write a storyline about legalized abortion. Two years back, the show undid that groundbreaking story by "unaborting" Josh Madden. Last week, Bianca and Reese were married in the first same-sex wedding in daytime history, but it was quickly undone when Bianca learned that Reese and Zach had "slept together." Of course, Zach and Reese only shared a kiss -- and I say only with all kinds of quotation marks and italicizing.
"You knew I had been burned before. You knew what it did to me... and you broke my heart," Bianca sobbed as she confronted the woman who broke their vows before they were even made. I know that there are a lot of people out there who have some strong opinions about seeing a same-sex storyline on television -- I get the emails every day. Looking at the storyline objectively, there are gay couples out there in the world whether someone wants them to be or not. I think it's fascinating that All My Children has been able to show the storyline without sensationalizing it. There is no ten-foot-tall, three breasted lesbian monster hulking around Pine Valley. At its core, this storyline is about love, trust, and the heartache everyone endures when it comes to sharing yourself with someone. On the flipside, I think AMC really made some missteps on the Zarf/Zoe storyline, missteps that made the storyline a little too campy at times.
Moreover, the confrontation scenes between Bianca and Reese were extremely powerful -- and they have to be considered for Emmy contention next year. The exchange also featured a great zinger from Bianca. "I am going to leave you alone so that you can get ready for Zach. You should change into something sexy, open up a bottle of wine, wait for him to come home, so that the two of you can consummate our wedding night."
There's a huge debate over on the message boards about why ABC bothered to "unrecast" Greenlee if Rebecca Budig was only planning to stick with the show for a year. It is a huge disservice for fans to make that assumption. Sabine Singh was removed as Greenlee during the tenure of another head writer. There is no statement as to why Rebecca opted out as Greenlee. It could have been financial, she may have disliked her storyline, she may have missed being out West with her husband, or she may have decided that the time was right to leave. Had Rebecca not returned, there's no assurance that Greenlee wouldn't have been killed off sooner -- or she could still be very much alive. The nature of the uncertainty makes it very unfair for fans to speculate and badmouth any of the two wonderful actresses who have played the role of Greenlee.
What hopefully we can all agree on is that it's a lot of fun to see a "memory montage" when a character is killed off. Soap operas are the only genre that has such a vast history to pull from and -- short of the death of a famous person or politician -- there's no other entertainment format that can pull together so much content for a "memorial."
There will be no memorial services for Annie Lavery or Riley Sinclair. Despite Dr. Sinclair's best attempt, Annie wasn't about to be killed. How did the doctor get a tire iron into the hospital? Isn't there some sort of... metal detector to pass through? There's a metal detector just about everywhere else, why not Oak Haven? The in-between-crazy-and-sane Annie amuses me -- almost like the new icy Kendall. She has a sassy mouth, but seems very much aware of what's going on around her. That's why even after being clobbered by the doctor, Annie was able to avoid being injected with poison. P.S. -- Did you see the size of the needle on that syringe?! It's a shame that Mackenzie Westmore's run on AMC has come to an end. She would have made a very interesting character if she hadn't flown over the proverbial cuckoo's nest.
Everybody out! The casino's closed. Um, Zach, I realize that you own the casino, but I don't think you can just bellow for patrons to hit the bricks. At the risk of exposing one of my happy little non-soap pastimes, I have never, ever heard of a casino being closed for any reason other than government shutdown. And even that was a one-time situation that gave Atlantic City a black eye. I also will not question why the slot machines in Zach's casino still use coins rather than the new, high-tech bar-coded paper slips.
With that said, everybody out! This column's closed!
dan
