OLTL Promo: Shane/Rex/Gigi

[Ryan Chamberlain]

Jack needs to suffer. Ha!

[fanOLTL]

Really though, Blair is a terrible mother. Truly clueless. I wish they had made Matthew a part of this story as well, perhaps seeing the bullying but not doing anything about it. Looks good though.

[DRW50]

Blair had to raise the kids singlehandedly for quite a while. Only when they had to try to make Todd the show's big hero again after Tarty did they trash that.

[All My Shadows]

To be honest, if they can't bother to plot the story out and let it grow and progress naturally, they might as well have just taped the "suicide" scenes using Legos and action figures. Turn my head with a real rooftop for a minute, but five minutes later, I'm still bitching about how much the story sucks.

[IcyOne]

This story thus far has had nothing to do with Todd (he was in like 10 seconds of it.) The promo has nothing to do with Todd. The responses to the promo didn't mention Todd...and yet, unsurprisingly, you still found a way to arbitrarily add him to the conversation. I would call you paranoid, but bitter sounds more accurate. You have issues.

[Khan]

So do you, apparently, if you keep bringing it up to him.

I, for one, cannot fault Carl for his cynicism. It wouldn't be the first time a story on OLTL suddenly became about Todd or about how he and his "circle" are constantly victimized by the rest of society. I'm just saying.

[Juliajms]

Great story. I didn't mean, I want the writers to write that the adults figure it out and do something. That wouldn't make a good story. I mean, I'm sitting in my seat thinking, I wish these people would figure it out. Sort of like I was watching GH and wishing that Liz would run out the door and scoop Jake up before the car hit him. Not going to happen, but I think it's natural to wish for a miracle save when a story like this plays out.

[dragonflies]

Can't view the video, says it's a private video

TV Guide has an article about this:

This storyline will hit a crisis when on April 4th Shane will go to the roof of his school intending to jump. ABC will end the hour with a PSA featuring Fath/Lavoisier and a harrowing stat: A teenager commits suicide in this country every 100 minutes

[DRW50]

Pretty much. They've spent several years saying Jack is just like Todd. Even if he isn't a big part of the story now, it's going to involve him. Otherwise they would have just dragged in another random kid like the mayor's son.

Blair isn't a very good parent, but I thought the show had a potentially interesting story going when Todd became obsessed with Marty and Blair was raising Sam and Jack. Jack wanted nothing to do with Todd. Then, seemingly overnight, he wanted to be with Todd and if he had scenes with Blair it was to insult her.

[Khan]

I think I agree with you, but I'm not sure.

Even if their actions had been the wrong ones to take, making an already bad situation even worse, I still believe Blair, Gigi, Rex and Todd could have been more active in this story, as opposed to just the climax, when they feel almost tacked on. Because internet bullying is so new, many parents "out there" need(ed) to see that the tried-and-true methods of getting your children to overcome bullying at school don't work anymore or under these particular circumstances.

I also believe (judging from Errol's article) that Rex figures out who is behind the bullying far too easily. For him, if not for the audience, there needed to be more mystery. I mean, there was a perfect opportunity to add an ironic twist to the story and have Rex ask Jack to look after Shane, or have Jack offer some assistance in uncovering Shane's bully. But, I'm a believer in slow-building stories, so don't go by me, lol.

[Juliajms]

I guess it just seems more realistic to me that the parents are clueless. High school was 15 long years ago for me, but I remember that we all hid pretty much everything for our parents. It makes sense to me that Blair has no earthly idea what is going on. How many parents are going to see that their child is the bully unless someone at the school brings it to their attention? Even then, a parent isn't going to want to believe it. It would be nice if Blair suspected that something was up with Jack, right before all of this goes down.

Rex and GiGi should probably be forcing their way into Shane's business at this point, but they are pretty young and this is their first child. I can see how they would make the mistake of letting him have his privacy when he tries to shut them down. Maybe there should have been more scenes of the parents on both sides trying to engage with their kids. I agree with you that a slow build is good, that's something the ABC soaps tend to lack across the board.

[Khan]

See, right there is potential for another, juicy conflict - this one between Shane's parents. Young or not, Gigi would be concerned about Shane's personality changes, and even more concerned when he refuses to open up to her. ("But Shane and I have always been close! It just isn't like him to shut me out like this!") Rex might want to respect Shane's privacy, arguing how he would've felt if Roxy had been all up in his business when he was a kid. Gigi would want to get to the bottom of things, however; and when she inevitably makes the situation worse for all of them by snooping onto Shane's computer, she would throw it in Rex's face (in the heat of anger and frustration, of course) how of course he would be all hands-off about the bullying, since he hasn't been Shane's dad long enough to feel as pissed-off as she does about this.

[ReddFoxx]

A working video of the promo

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zfLdOy261ZM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And another promo

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-Tpmn8KoAp0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I thought of another angle in story, Echo knew about the bullying, but agreed not to tell Rex and Gigi. I wonder if she'll tell about her knowledge or if she'll just keep quiet?

[Marco Dane]

I fixed the links as well too

[SHaskellFan]

I don't like it. If it was sensitively done and not a "I am dying to shock people into watching" seeming attempt by Frons and Co. then I could maybe understand it. But I think they will make this really bad somehow. Oh well I am done with the show soon anyway. I just feel its sending the wrong message to kids who may be watching.