OLTL: Discussion for the week May 10

[Vee]

I guess I do. Except not shot on home video on desolate farmland. And not, you know, terrible.

[Khan]

Or, if you're like Mitch Laurence, and you can't die because the HW('s) keep digging you up in order to boost ratings.

[Khan]

Come to think of it, has OLTL ever had a successful teen/young adult love story? I didn't think so.

Great work, Vee! :-)

[All My Shadows]

Didn't Cassie have some somewhat successful romances in the 80s, like with Rob? I'm not versed on OLTL history much at all, so I don't know if that was the only one or if they were even popular (popular in OLTL terms, at least).

[Dale]

So they did! I got 'em! Thanks Scotty!

[Juliajms]

OMG! I had that exact thought when I heard the song! I had never heard it before and I was like wait...What do I do when I don't find it. You skipped a step there Kassie.

[Juliajms]

I love this post so much I want to marry it. I'm a pretty liberal person and even I was thinking this. I mean, come on! No school is going to glamorize teen pregnancy and if they do TIIC deserve to be fired. The last thing any kid needs is some sugar coated notion of what it's like to be a mother before you are old enough to vote or drive alone at night. OLTL was too eager to show another baby switch and feature Todd then they were to show a good, realistic teen pregnancy story. That type of story would have been a lot more dramatic than watching Todd try to steal a baby for him and the woman he was currently victimizing. Starr and Cole are an awful couple and there is no way in hell they should have survived Starr's pregnancy.

[Scotty]

You're welcome. Glad you able to view them.

[Vee]

Oh, I think Tina, Samantha Vernon, Tim and Jenny, Marty and co., Kelly and Joey, etc. were all pretty popular in their heyday. Before Tina was Tina, she was a consistently popular teen ingenue a la the current Starr who they kept bringing back. And young Cassie and others worked out. The original Cristian and Jessica were fan favorites, as opposed to, uh, this. So was Marcie and Al.

Thank you.

[DRW50]

The problem with Starr is similar to what happened with Jessica as Erin Torpey got older -- I don't think either actress is suited for romantic relationships onscreen. It's even more true for Starr. She just seems awkward. I still cringe at the memory of her instalove/obsession with Sky, which helped put that character into a damaging place he never got out of.

I don't mind Starr and Cole together, if their relationship is on the backburner. It's Starr's endless need for her father which bothers me the most.

[Vee]

I thought Erin Torpey did fine in young adult romance. She didn't have a chance to do much more. Today in retrospect, I think she came off far more mature and adult than Bree's Jessica.

[DRW50]

I think Erin was very good at the young and innocent romance with Cris but once they started getting into the story with Will and she became more sexual it didn't work for me.

Bree's Jessica has been written as a victim and a brat for almost all of her run, so I don't know whether Erin would have done any more with the writing, but generally as written at the time I think Erin's Jessica was more mature, at least when she wasn't crazy or on the run. I just think she was more suited for family drama.

[Khan]

That's all true. However, in terms of capturing the attention of fans and non-fans alike, none approached the level of, say, AMC's Greg and Jenny, or DAYS' Bo and Hope, or GL's Phillip and Beth. To me, OLTL's signature couples - Joe and Viki, Larry and Meredith, Bo and Delila, etc. - have tended to be a little older.

Then again, maybe Kevin and Stephanie were just so bad that I developed Buchanan's Syndrome* as a result.

* It's a rare disease that affects the parts of the brain that hold long-term memory, named after the mother and daughter who were the first reported cases. It's in all the medical journals. Look it up.