GLAAD Nominations

[Jonathan]

All My Children is up against As The World Turns for Outstanding Daily Drama. Team Rinks vs Team Nuke. Who will win?

http://www.glaad.org/mediaawards/

[Southofnowhere]

Rinks vs Nuke , it's on like Cam Math's thong!

Couple that has been degayed the least will come out on top!

[NorrthCafe]

That leaves Nuke the winner, by a mile! I'm betting folding money on a Reese/Zach/Kendall triangle. Kendall will wake up and find out about Gaby, Erica's suspicions, and Zach and Reese's eye-boinking, and then the stink hits the fan.

It's still pretty cool that there are TWO couples to nominate (maybe three by next year with GL's Otalia storyline)

[All My Shadows]

Rinks!

[DRW50]

Since most of the courtship phase between Reese and Bianca happened before their trip to Pine Valley, and since AMC has spent two or three times the amount of focus on building a relationship between Reese and Zach than they have on Reese and Bianca, I can barely even call them a couple. I would have to go with Noah and Luke, until ATWT finds a way to completely tank them, which they probably will.

These awards aren't worth the fuss. Remember when OLTL got an award for a coming out story, then a short time later reduced the character to nothing more than a secret tryst for crazy, closeted murderer Daniel Coulson?

[Cat]

In terms of detailing a story about coming out and falling in love as a gay person, yeah, ATWT wins.

But in terms of the balls to show an actual love scene between a couple (and I know GLAAD are probably not going to take that into consideration, so this is just me making up a whole new category!), one week in and Rinks were getting it on. In a bed. In a bedroom. Getting quite into it if I recall. OK, it wasn't like Dorian going down on David last week but still.

[juniorz1]

In ATWT's defense, it's a helluva lot easier to convince a misogynistic Daytime Prez to do a love scene between two women than it is to convince the religious right to have a love scene between two men. It's sad, but it's fact.

[Cat]

Yeah, I was just thinking that after I posted. Frons going "Our lesbians are better looking than Grey's Anatomy's."

[juniorz1]

Love your Stephanie Beacham avatar. Ms. McKay & Sister Kate FOREVER!

[All My Shadows]

Honestly, it can really go either way. Neither relationship really received ample time to show why/when/how the couple fell in love.

IMO, Rinks (see, that's a couple name I can get behind!) may have gotten together off screen, before they came to Pine Valley, but that still ranks them higher than Luke and Noah to me. With Bianca and Reese falling in love off screen, we can assume that they had build up to a relationship when they were together in Paris. With Reese's copious amounts of issues, I have to wonder how the two of them fell in love, and I'd appreciate it if that was explored more (if, that is, Rinks is the end game here). So I deduct points from them for that.

Luke and Noah's "courtship" might as well had been off screen. We didn't see anything between them until the writers popped open the big bag of Nukeness and stopped holding back. I feel like...they made two big mistakes with the Noah character. First, they introduced him with the intent of making him "for Luke" (which is a concept that I object in general, introducing characters "for" someone). Rarely do I go off on "The worst British soaps are better than the best American soaps" rants, but I was reading an interview with Daran Little (of "Coronation Street" and now AMC), and he said that they (Corrie) would seldom introduce a character with a storyline planned for them. They introduce characters and have them interact with the others and see where they can go from there. That's something that I wish all of our shows would do, because then, when you have this new character on, it's not about setting up their storyline from the gate and having that happen, it's more about developing the character and his/her relationships with all of the other characters. The other mistake was letting everyone know that Noah would be "for Luke." That immediately created a gigantic amount of anticipation, and I just know that they (writers, TPTB, whoever) felt pressured to get the ball rolling on Luke and Noah very quickly. They did some wonderful things with Noah and Maddie, but the hardcore Nuke fans (who were hardcore Nuke fans before Nuke even became Nuke, before Noah even made his first appearance) didn't want to see that. They felt that they were promised Luke and Noah, and so they wanted Luke and Noah as soon as they could get it. And so TPTB slapped together some pisspoor "buildup" and once Luke admitted to Noah that he had feelings for him (WHERE did those feelings come from, by the way?), they felt ready to jump into the next stage. After they were ready to do the Nuke thing, the concept of "buildup" became unimportant. The most important thing was that there was a gay male couple in daytime. Who cares how or why they even got together in the first place.

I know that I frequently go off on rants about Nuke, but I can't help it. There were just holes in that story, holes that I'll never get over because they're just so gaping (eww...pardon that disgusting pun, it wasn't intended). Luke had barely known Noah for a couple of days (in ATWT time...maybe a week or two or three in real time) before he declared that he was "falling for the wrong guy again." Not to mention that most of the time they'd spent together, Maddie was there as well, and the two of them didn't really share anything. The first seed of Luke's attraction to Noah was when Noah helped him pick up a pile of videotapes, and then immediately afterwards, Luke is all "falling for the wrong guy." So on Luke's end, we didn't know what the initial attraction was even built on at all. And then on Noah's end? It was even worse. Remember when Luke came out to Noah? If Noah was battling feelings within him that maybe he was gay and that maybe he was attracted to Luke, Noah's reaction to Luke coming out to him should have been a major thing for his character as well as Luke's. But what happened? Luke came out and Noah barely batted an eye. We should have seen right then and there that there was something on Noah's end. Noah reacting and feeling closer to Luke at that moment would have made much more sense than Luke immediately having feelings for Noah after only a couple of days of knowing each other, and even then, not knowing much about each other still.

Noah as Maddie's boyfriend was way too convincing for me to believe that Noah is 100% gay and has no attraction at all to women. He had no problems having sex with her, there was no awkwardness shown on screen with that at all. There was no real buildup to Luke and Noah, at all, until Luke told Noah that he had feelings for him, and even then, I'd give someone my life's savings if they can tell me why Luke had feelings for Noah. They were little more than friends before that, and that's my issue. That and the fact that I feel like I'm supposed to ignore that and just concentrate on the fact that they are a couple now.

Sorry for the lecture. I know it can be tiresome, but I always seem to get long-winded when discussing this subject. It's just something that's very, very close to my heart and I'm passionate about it.

[dragonflies]

Neither one personally, but of the two Nuke doesn't seem as contrived as Reeks. Reeks don't even act like a couple

I certainly don't want AMC rewarded for writing crap

[DRW50]

Maddie and Noah were both very awkward after the first time they had sex, and the implication was it hadn't been a very pleasant experience for them.

The writing for them is so bad I can't even believe that they ever fell in love. They knew very little about each other and began to drift apart soon after arriving in Pine Valley. The love they did have must have been in early stages. I think we're supposed to believe Reese was running away from her life, and her problems, and rushed into a relationship with Bianca. Now that she's met Zach, she's truly in love.

ATWT, for better or worse, did tell a story about two gay men, two flawed characters, who fell in love. AMC is telling a story where two women, one of whom claimed to be a lesbian but quickly began spending more time mooning over her brother-in-law than her fiance, have a relationship which is nothing more than a plot device. Romance takes a backseat to the old idea of the right man being able to turn a lesbian, while the other half is presented as paranoid and unfair for even questioning the matter. And AMC is so determined to let us know how perfect Reese is that the storytelling comes before Pratt's efforts to showcase his pet Tamara Braun.

The anticipation helped ATWT get buzz and arguably helped their ratings for an extended period of time.

Meanwhile, AMC launched a campaign saying Reese was for Bianca, had the actresses talk about how their characters were in love, had Tamara Braun say Reese was not interested in men, and then, after a very brief love scene and some brief kisses, Reese almost immediately gravitates towards Zach.

I'd rather a soap tell viewers what is going to happen and then follow through then a soap tell viewers what is going to happen and this turn out to be a con.

I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I almost dislike even defending Nuke, because sometimes they've had such poor writing and poor treatment, but I just hate the way AMC misled viewers with Rinks and how insulting the storyline is, in several different ways.

[All My Shadows]

True dat, but wasn't the awkwardness stemming from Maddie not being entirely over Casey? I don't think that they portrayed it was Noah not being totally into her. They'd make out and flirt frequently for the couple of weeks that they were together. The true tension really came, I think, after Noah found out that Luke liked him, and that's when Noah started to move extremely fast with Maddie (let's move in together!) in order to try to prove something to himself.

I agree, and that's why I've never been a big huge Rinks fan, and also why I'm kinda bored with them. When they first came on, it was like "Whoa!" because you got the impression that these two women were TOTALLY feeling each other. With each week since then, though, the "Whoa nah!" has turned more and more into a "What nah?"

We'll just have to interpret ATWT's initial Nuke stages differently. I don't think Noah was developed well at all...we hardly knew anything about him when Luke declared his feelings for him, and Luke didn't know much about him either. If AMC is using Rinks as a plot device (and I'm not trying to refute that because it's highly possible), then it could be said that ATWT used Nuke to get attention/buzz/headlines. That's why they tossed it out there several months ahead of time...I think we first heard of Noah maybe three months before his first appearance? They got what they wanted, for sure. But, IMO, it was the expense of developing Noah and developing a mutual attraction between Luke and Noah. Noah wasn't the least bit interested in Luke until Luke told him that he was, which is sad, and kinda describes the Nuke relationship as a whole in a nutshell.

Right, but all of that instead of a good, decent story in which everything makes sense and all of the pieces fit together like they're supposed to? It's totally subjective, but I don't think that we got that from Nuke, and part of that was because by the time Noah made his first appearance in June 2007, people were ready for the "love story" to begin. They were being called a supercouple before Noah even made his first appearance...everyone talked about how great they were, how amazing the story was going to be. I can't blame them...I was pretty excited too. I was a huge Luke lover all throughout 2006 and so I wanted my boy to meet a guy, and connect with him on that certain level, and fall in love with him. I don't feel like I got that. It was a very, very rushed courtship.

Those two mistakes that I mentioned...I want to elaborate on them after thinking for a while. Neither one of those mistakes would have been mistakes at all if Noah had come to the show already out of the closet. And then, instead of having Noah and Maddie as a couple, Noah would have put the brakes on that and came out to Maddie and Luke. Once Luke finds out that Noah is gay, well then it would make sense for him to feel closer to Noah than he had before. He'd come out to Noah, and they'd allow an attraction to form, if it was meant to be. It would have been completely organic...we would have seen it all happen right before our eyes. But for whatever reason, ATWT/CBS/P&G/whoever decided not to go a route like that, and they just tossed the two of them together on no basis, and that satisfied anyone who'd been hankering for the couple from the second Noah's casting call had come out.

Well, in AMC's defense (I'm not making any excuses for them, though), when Reese was brought on to the show, she and Bianca were already a couple, so it wasn't a case of bringing her on and then putting her with Binks. It would have been silly to have plans for Bianca to come back with a girlfriend and not mention it to the press. They would have been dying to know who Tamara's character was. But what you're saying, I agree with. AMC jerked the Rinks fanbase around (do they have a big fanbase? I'm not sure) by having Reese suddenly want ol' dumbass, and I doubt that couple (Rinks) is going to get back together, and if they do, it won't be like it was when they first came to town.

I think that both Nuke and Rinks have suffered from TPTB's bad, bad qualities. Rinks got caught up in the sextet (not the whole 'tet, but at least 2 members of it) that pretty much dominated AMC in 2008, and now they're looking at several months of being stuck in Zendull hell. Nuke, if you don't even think about my feelings about the beginnings of their relationship, have ended up in the same stagnation that most of the other couples on this show have been in: having the exact same storyline all the time, just with different ingredients. Most, if not all, of their story, post becoming a couple, has involved one being thisclose to leaving the other.

Honestly, GLAAD should just save themselves some money and leave daytime alone. Neither couple is really worth rewarding lol

[marceline]

I say we put them in a ring and make them fight. My money's on Rinks.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Both couples suck, so what the hell ever to this category...