ATWT: September 2010 Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

They probably would have made him a psycho...

[P.J.]

Actually, try arrogance. He's going off to bitchslap some other doctor for doing and acting EXACTLY like he did a mere nine months ago. He's convinced he's going to overrule him, and instead of obeying a simple traffic rule, he stomps on the gas to beat a train.

[Saving ATWT]

Yes, Reid is being cocky by driving over to Bay City to take the heart; the same can be said for Chris who failed to seek proper medical attention, and also Tom for 'calling in favors' to get Chris bumped up on the transplant list. I can, at least, feel sorry for Reid because, honestly, what are the odds of a newish cas stalling right on the train tracks and then the seat belt getting stuck? In a way, I wish they had made Reid hetro and then paired him with Katie. Luke and Katie are similiar (annoying drama queens) and I highly doubt they would have killed off the str8 guy this late in the game tied to a core character. I'm not calling the storyline homophobic but it seems like all the gay men in Oakdale either get shot, go blind, have kidney transplants, are kidnapped, get bashed or are hit by trains. In Pissy's world, no gay man is ever safe. I know Str8 characters (Dusty, Paul) have gotten hurt but none seem to have taken so many rapid fire beat downs roughly every three weeks.

[dragonflies]

I'm sorry but HELL NO! Pairing him with Katie would have ruined him from the get go

[DeliaIrisFan]

I don't think

is homophobic (not letting Luke and Reid have a love scene is, but I guess we should see it as monumental progress for P&G/CBS Daytime that they were even allowed to kiss on Friday). I do think it's an incredibly dumb story, though. However many tragedies the writers try to pile on top of tragedies, even I, a cursory viewer up until a couple of months ago, know that there is not enough of a foundation between Luke/Reid, Reid/Chris, or Chris/Katie to have earned the kind of tearjerker that they are going for here. Bob getting John's heart (or Kim getting Susan's) would have at least been many decades in the making, and wouldn't have come out of left field since the characters in question have a history of health problems. Then there's the fact that Chris has spent months refusing medical treatment (and he's a doctor!) and they've basically said he would not be in the dire straits he's in now if he had not done so, so I kind of feel like a viable organ should go to someone who has actually wanted it all along. And everything is just so rush, rush, rushed, to cram in all of this contrived melodrama at the last minute. I remember when GH did what I guess was the first soap heart transplant story when I was a teen (BTW, I love that at least one soap cliche has come to be in my lifetime - before GH did this, I don't believe any soap had ever had one character receive another character's heart when they died, and now whenever a character has a heart problem the immediate question is, "Ok, who's going to be killed off so they can get a transplant?"). The GH character getting the transplant had been in the hospital for weeks/months, getting sicker by the day, and her loved ones had to visit her behind some kind of protective plastic barrier - I guess to shield her from germs, which she would have been too weak to fight off. Whereas Chris went from playing golf in the heat and sun of summer, with none of his family (including doctors and nurses) realizing he was sick, to flatlining, to getting on the transplant list and receiving a heart...all in one day.

I'm also really disturbed by the way ATWT has depicted how the transplant list works. Had Chris indeed been found to be the most in need/compatible recipient of this eleventh hour heart, or did Tom and Margo finagle it for him? I was so turned off by that distasteful plot point that I couldn't keep watching Tom and Margo having been dragged out of mothballs to be yelled at by Chris for trying to buy him a heart to see what the outcome was. In any case, if he had made it to the top of he list, I'm 99.999% sure that some doctor who just happens to work in the hospital where the donor died would not have been able to just steal the heart out from under Chris for his/her own patient! There is a national registry; there are protocols. And while I originally thought that it was kind of a cute shout-out to some other long-gone P&G soaps that Margo and Tom were going to Springfield and Bay City looking for a heart for Chris, the fact that it's a doctor in Bay City who pulled this stunt really cancels out the goodwill. If anything, they should have had Chris get a heart from Bay City or Henderson or Monticello and made it clear to anyone who had watched AW, SFT, or EON from the description of the donor that it was a beloved character from the show in question. At least audiences of both shows could be left to assume that the character had lived a very happy life for many years since they saw them last and died quickly, in good health, and saved another life in the process. I'm not sure, realistically, how old/how much older than the recipient a heart donor could be... There's probably no way that Chris could have gotten Joanne Tate Vincente etc's heart or something (too bad...that would have been a nice last nod to Mary Stuart's contribution, as the P&G soap era officially comes to an end), but maybe one of the younger characters from a core family on one of those shows toward the end?

[Jay]

Maybe they found Morgan Winthrop, and the reason he never came back to the ER is that he's been practicing cardiology all these years.

[DRW50]

I guess them going to Bay City was supposed to be tribute, but you're right, they could have done much more. But then they had to whip up some melodrama and angst for a character who has had very little to do anyway.

I know a lot of people hated GL's last years and their finale stories and I think it was very uneven and poorly put together, but I thought Phillip's storyline, where he tried to come to terms with death and tried to get to know his family (at least the ones the show cared about -- Alex, you're not allowed to have a story), and then lived without anyone else dying for him, only for Alan to then pass away from natural causes, was much better.

I think they should have had Chris get sick, pull through, and then when he's celebrating with the family, they learn Nancy has passed on.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I didn't much like GL's ending, by and large for different reasons, but the one thing it had in common with what ATWT is doing now that made me cringe in both cases was the made-up soap opera disease as plot device. After all of the ground that soaps - and GL and ATWT in particular - have made in accurately depicting real medical conditions and raising awareness at the same time that they provided moving, compelling drama, I just think it sets the genre back 50 years and reinforces the most negative stereotypes of soaps. If they wanted to have a tragic, tearjerker ending, then I say they should have done something based in reality. In ATWT's case, I actually think Nancy's passing was more than enough sadness, regardless. If the show had been ending on an otherwise happy note, though, I think a story where a character like Margo were dying of cancer and Katie helped her take an overdose of morphine would have been a better example of how soaps can show true-to-life problems in (almost) real time - at a time when people/critics who have never watched ATWT in their life might be seeing it/hearing about it for the first and last time. And a story like that would have even drawn from history and still showcased "America's sweetheart" (ugh, I actually liked Chris Goutman for a long time, and I have not watched ATWT enough in the past decade to feel strongly about Katie one way or the other, until this week, but now that quote is all I can think of when I see this twit on-screen) too. If they didn't have the guts to show something like that, then they should have gone for a low-key, happy ending. Either way, I wish they'd left nonsense like people getting heart transplants in the same day that they had been playing golf at the country club in the same file drawer in the P&G archives that they should have left fake pregnancies and temporary blindness and other hackneyed plot devices that ATWT's last few months have been wasted on. As it is, the only thing that would have made this story more ridiculously melodramatic is if, instead of Reid's car stalling on the train track, James Stenbeck had come back from the dead again to tie him to the railroad track.

[DRW50]

I don't mind made up illnesses if the drama is there. I thought that Phillip's last story had some drama, moreso than when GL and ATWT tried to deal with leukemia. Lizzie "slaying the dragon" to cure her leukemia, or Liberty's leukemia amounting to her sulking in the hospital for a few weeks and then wearing a Mouseketeer wig, didn't do much for me. These stories were about the drama behind women being pregnant with the child of a man they aren't currently involved with, which is cliched and in ATWT's case, uninteresting.

I just don't see a lot of drama in the story with Chris. Obviously he's not going to die and I can't help resenting how stupid and contrived everything with the story and Reid's death is.

[Actor87]

AAAAA-freakin-MEENNN!!!

One thing I absolutely hate about ATWT (in the JP-headwriting era) is this: Just when you start to feel comfortable with, and get used to, a new character...they turn out to be a psycho, or die, or get carted off to jail, or any and all combinations of the three. There's no way to possibly invest in a particular character. How are you supposed to have faith in the writing, when you have VOTM's and instances like Reid, where a well-liked (or sometimes well-hated) character is shoved in our face for months and months, only to be shown the door just before closing time...?!?!?!!!??!

That sort of dates back to one of Marland's ways to ruin a soap, actually. And look where we are.........

Like I said before, if Reid is written off, it's a p*ssy move. To keep them from having to make a choice about Luke's "soulmate", as to not upset a certain fanbase.

[Soapsuds]

Just watched last Monday's show. I loved the Lisa/John/Kim/Bob/Reid scenes. I could watch them 5 days a week.

Just started Tuesday's show. Wow...all the vets are on??? Lucinda, John, Margo, Tom, Barbara, Kim, Bob and Susan.....As much as I wanted a lot of returns for Nancy's funeral...still bummed about it....To see all these vets on reminds me of the Marland years...sigh...had to take cancellation and HW to pass for us to get this.

[Soapsuds]

Lucinda and John....EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I thought I'd never see these two again together on screen.

Nancy's apartment is nice but that's not even close to the replica of the original she lived in.

[Errol]

For a scenic re: Reid and this weeks episodes, click: http://www.soapoperanetwork.com/soaps/previews/3043-this-week-in-soaps-what-will-happen-what-you-cant-miss

[Jay]

The whole week is like that. Nobody bad is on. And you know the rest.

[Soapsuds]

I'm almost done with Tuesday's show.

Yes, I know what happens. I've known for months. But if ESS is happy with the ending I guess we have to live with it. I'm surprised he didnt want the off in the sunset ending.