Today marks the 40th anniversary of my all-time favorite Guiding Light character’s death. On December 2, 1985, Brandon “Lujack” Luvonaczek breathed his last at Cedars after being caught in an explosion on the tanker Infinity. RIP
Okay so I’m going to now go on a tear with my issues about the handling of Vincent Irizzary, Lujack and Nick.
First off killing off Lujack huge mistake. In a SOD interview co-head writer Jeff Ryder said instead of sending him off on a world wide tour of the OUT IN THE STREETS video killing him would catapult those around him into the next chapter of their lives. SPIN…I’m sure I’ve hears somewhere it was Gail Kobe’s sour grapes for VI not renewing his contract to explore a film career.
So the character was done dirty and we got to see Beth back with Philip after explaining the last two years why she had moved on and couldn’t /didn’t want to be with him anymore.
Now we come to Nick. They went through gymnastics to bring him back as a long lost twin only to pair him with…Mindy! The entire time he was on the canvas they never brought Beth back. That would have been an epic story. After he finally left again he came back for two episodes at Christmas and they did not even write a scene where Phillip who was on the canvas meets Nick. Ball fumbled at every possible turn with Nick.
My hope bloomed when FINALLY Vincent left ALL MY CHILDREN. This was their chance to get him back AND if I could only have been on the writing staff not I had a scenario for his return not as NICK but as LUJACK.
How? He died on screen?
There was just enough wriggle room (especially given all the outlandish back from the dead and other things like clones etc.) to make it work.
Remember Infinity was a powerful crime organization. The government could have been investigating it all along and never got anyone even close to it. The explosion of the ship sets off alarms. They found out a critically injured Lujack was aboard. Did he see something value regarding Largo and Infinity. They had to make sure he lived and didn’t want to trust Cedars. Louie Darnell, I believe was the attending physician when he died (can’t have Ed not save Lujack right?!) Long story short they pressure Louie in to doing something that simulates his death after he cried out BETH and apparently died. Remember, when they came back from commercial, he was gone and everyone was greiving. That was when he was spirited away by the government and eventually into witness protection. He chose not to come back because Beth and Alexandra moved on. He was tempted when Nick came but he stayed away. All this is revealed by a dying Dr. Darnell who wants to go out with a clean conscious. Alex and Beth, who were on the canvas at the time begin a frantic search and low and behold ...they find LUJACK.
It was doable with a scenario like this.
So I voraciously scoured the soap mags for any information on where VI would wind up, fingers crossed….I would have even taken Nick if he could have gotten a Beth/Nick story but no…he went to YOUNG AND RESTLESS as David Chow. When Chow got killed off I prayed he would come back since VI is east coast based…but no GL did not bring him back…every chance wasted and eventually it became too late and the show was cancelled.
So yes, the minute the execs decided Lujack had to die they committed a self-inflicted gunshot wound the show would never recover from. This was Lujack we are talking about, a legacy character not some throw away like Kurt Corday or Detective Cutter and they learned nothing from this debacle when they killed off a certain Bauer.
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Lujack4Ever ·
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