Okay, thank you, that makes more sense -- I just remembered something about a note and there being something a little more cloak-and-dagger about his story than what I'd first assumed, which was just that he saw Malone and was like, "Time to leave again." But getting a note from someone trying to get him over to OLTL's timeslot competitor feels...odd? Then again, I guess it's not like there were that many soaps left in NY.
I definitely understand the problems with their post-rape dynamic and why both RH and SH would have been deeply uncomfortable. But I always gave Malone the benefit of the doubt, that he wasn't actually planning a Luke/Laura romance but going for...some other kind of story? About what can or can't be forgiven or something something about the human spirit or grace or the question of redemption that may have worked better in a book and not on an ongoing soap opera where the lead actor was already being traumatized by fans asking him to rape them next.
I'm actually at episodes not long before Spring Fling in my first-ever watch of 1993, and I definitely don't get the sense from the writing that there was even an inkling in Malone's mind that he'd get around to pairing them after the rape, which fits obviously because RH was just supposed to be short-term. Todd's a misogynistic louse; his function as lead gang rapist is clear and foreshadowed well; and there's no hinting at any layers to him or to the gross way way he, as Jason says at one point, treats Marty like garbage.
I haven't seen RH in anything pre-OLTL. I know how good he is on OLTL. I just wonder at what point it became clear to TPTB that they'd made a horrible, horrible mistake casting him as Rapist #1. How they chose to try to course-correct is of course controversial, and I'm not here to defend it. I just want to know when they realized they screwed up, and that they could have cast any number of good-looking young actors to play "cute guy who is actually a monster" for a handful of weeks before getting killed off and that they should have put RH in some other role that wouldn't require trying to redeem him from unspeakable acts.
Or maybe RH on OLTL only happened the way he did because he was playing Todd.
I do remember the rape revisit of 2003 and 2004. At the time, I thought Malone was just trying to ground TSJ's version of the character in Todd's history of rape. But I think it makes more sense that he was planning it for RH and RH said nope and bailed. (As an aside, when I started watching OLTL, I remember chatter on message boards about RH supposedly hating the pairing with Blair and hating working with KDP. But RH's various comings and goings and what motivated them seems like serious evidence to the contrary.)
RH shocked me with his return to OLTL, not in how committed he was to the material, because he usually, to me, seemed committed even if he maybe didn't personally care for the story, but in, like you said, his zen approach to the character. It was like a weight had lifted off his shoulders. I wonder what did it.
TSJ had the tools to make a new version of Todd work, and like you said, that was evident early on. But he was apparently a poor fit for a soap opera role. It's a little shocking the degree to which he chose to express his displeasure behind the scenes. Like, buddy, I know you were upset Dan Gauthier was fired -- I was upset, too! But it's like when that happened (coupled with I guess not getting paired with REG?) he just gave up on the show and gave up on playing any actual semblance of the character he was hired to play, just like the writers gave up on writing any recognizable version of Todd.
Okay, I won't ask any more, but that does make me feel more settled I guess about not getting to see more of them when I started watching, which was when they were both still on the show. I haven't seen them in any real way in any of the periods I've watched so far, but at some point I'll get that part of the '80s.
Thank you to you and @DRW50 for the cast info-- I'm 90% convinced I read something once about Tuc being attached to that pilot, but I just did a Google search and can't find anything. Maybe it was in one of the magazines. But the memory is so strong that whenever I remember that pilot exists, he's one of the ones I think of. It'll be embarrassing if I'm wrong! But I might well be.
@slick jones, you are welcome!
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