Guiding Light discussion thread

[Contessa Donatella]

Any chance you could repeat what she said?

[chrisml]

Her comments were all about "consent" and the storyline. There was controversy at the time about making a strong black male character a rapist and I don't think she got that. 

[Vee]

Unspeakably (her OLTL character was somehow even worse). And both their stories with Gus just prior to his death were uncomfortable and skeevy to me, first from a weird Mormon fundie POV (the whole Natalia mess with her kid) and then Olivia's weird obsession with him. And I was someone with very little time for Gus to begin with.

[P.J.]

Count me in as loathing Olivia, almost from minute one. There is something about CC's acting choices that is just unlikeable. Olivia wasn't a "love to hate" bitch either. I never understood why they kept her past the initial San Cristobal crap. To cycle through families of men? They should've sent her on a train out of town when she knocked Billy off the wagon. 

And the Olivia/Natalia relationship was more about trying to latch on to the Luke/Noah buzz than anything else. Ugh...don't get me started on that. The only reason to go over that story dialogue line by line is to make sure you're not offending anyone...but you just wrote two cousins getting it on? HUGE EYEROLL.

[Vee]

Putting aside the ugly preamble with Gus between them, it was a very weird religious/Mormon take on lesbians to me. Their entire relationship was centered around this cloistered life where they each orbited first Gus, then the alleged suburban dad ideal of Frank Cooper(!!). In the end Natalia(?) had another child by him, once again venerating heterosexual parenthood and homemaking above all else while the two women remained weirdly chaste and retiring onscreen.

[Contessa Donatella]

Thank you. Sounds very ugh to me, too.

[TEdgeofNight]

Re:Wheeler and Hurst. A 70 year old legacy show is crumbling down around you and (allegedly - you can NEVER trust what that person says) and they are going over word for word the disastrous Olivia and Natalia scenes???? Really? That’s your focus while GL dies around you? It can never be said enough that thank God Wheeler and Hurst never worked again in daytime. It’s criminal what they did to kill GL. 

[DRW50]

I think it was more than just Luke/Noah. This was a whole period of time, which still goes on today to a degree (the British soaps keep trying to force straight women into lesbian relationships over and over) where the soaps were trying to tap into an lgbt audience.

I think it may have been less about offending anyone and more about censors. I don't have a problem believing censors would object more to a lesbian relationship than straight cousin incest. 

The oddest part for me was when they had a big chunk of an episode revolving around the women going vibrator shopping...all while making sure to never say vibrator.

That character was so slimy to begin with, so to me the issue was more the story seemed to go into "cry rape" territory until someone at the network got squeamish and he was killed off.

[Contessa Donatella]

No, Otalia had zero to do with Nuke. I'm chuckling that anyone had this thought, which is total news to me. 

Nuke, BTW, was Bianca with guys - literally. ATWT went to someone who wrote on the Bianca coming out storyline & asked her if she could do it again, only with guys!!! Obviously she could - and did. 

Anyway, for 2 women, adults, of an age, who had been with men their whole lives to turn to each other was WAY MORE THREATENING than any other story they could've come up with. But, Wheeler made a mistake thinking they could do it so chaste. 

And why not chase the lgbtq+ audience?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[chrisml]

I have accepted ridiculous storylines if the chemistry is right and the acting works so the idea of Olivia and Natalia getting together didn't bother me. It was the execution of it that was weird to me. It now makes sense that they were going over ever single line as it felt very safe and devoid of any real human feelings. It reminded me a bit of of Nick and Ann Hamilton's NuMindy where it was two actors who felt as if they were on two different shows.