OLTL Tribute Thread

[MissPalmer]

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[DRW50]

Thanks @MissPalmer.

That channel often begs for subscribers. Normally I am not fond of that, but they upload OLTL content that you can't find anywhere else, so if you aren't subscribed, I'd say go for it.

[Vee]

Watching this key transition in '91 alongside BTG and Marland's ATWT '87 is a wild time, let me tell ya folks. I so love Chris McKenna's Joey. Dumb short-term roles on modern soaps can never make me hate him.

Also cute: Joey pushing Viki to dump her typewriter for a com-pu-ter and their doing a 'how old is it?' bit.

Viki's ahead of the times too! "You and Harvey would link up your machines and have a fine old time! Get online on those bulletin boards, play those ghastly games!"

Edited yesterday at 12:50 AM by Vee

[Franko]

Oh, how I wish OLTL made Joey daytime's first gaymer.

[Vee]

It was the intent, of course. I didn't realize until McKenna mentioned it in an interview recently that he'd actually played a gay teen (and did a kissing scene) onstage around '91/'92 as well, so he didn't see why the network had an issue.

Were OLTL around today, I'd have McKenna still in the Joey role, still as a local talk-to/social conscience and counselor a la Andrew (though probably not still a priest) and we'd discover he's been quietly hooking up with a (recast, guest star) Billy Douglas for decades. Because why not make Joey bi?

[chrisml]

IT makes sense why they didn't want Joey to be gay since they would never have done anything with the character beyond the initial coming out storyline. Is it better to do nothing or to start something and then avoid mention of it ever after? I can only imagine what subsequent producers would have done (or not done) with a gay Joey once Gottlieb left. Most likely it would have been like Dynasty's Steven all over again.

[Franko]

And I call myself a theater fan. I didn't know that, either. I just knew McKenna played one of Kevin Kline's students in In & Out.

Why not, indeed. The idea of Joey being bi and compassionate (maybe a local counselor, or involved with a LGBTQIA+ group that's also religious) might be "boring" to hack soap writers, but it's slice of life storytelling.

[Vee]

I think he named the play, I can't remember what it was. Maybe off-Broadway. It was an interview from maybe 5-6 years ago on the soap sites.

He'd still have stories and probably romance, but he would definitely still be in the Andrew heir role Malone first wisely moved him into in the 2000s.

[Khan]

TBH, I'm not sure I would've liked Joey or Kevin coming out of the closet.  One of the many misconceptions about gay men is that they tend to come from homes with domineering mothers and little to no male influence.  Although Clint essentially raised Viki's sons, all you would need is for some narrow-minded homophobes out there to bring up the fact that their biological father (Joe Riley) had long since died before things would get messy, onscreen and off.

[Vee]

Maybe so, but no soap fan is gonna let them get away with that if they have a memory of Clint Ritchie/Buchanan, who was an active presence for Joey from before Day 1.

Edited yesterday at 02:39 AM by Vee

[Khan]

I would hope so!

Another reason why I've always been lukewarm to the idea of Joey (or Kevin) coming out: I couldn't see how that would've caused tension in Clint and Viki's marriage.  Clint might've been a "good ol' boy" from Texas; however, he and Viki always struck me as compassionate people who would've accepted their son if he had come out as gay or bisexual.  (Asa's a whole other story, lol).

As it is, I thought it was OOC for Clint to be as bigoted he was (or appeared to be) during the whole Billy Douglas storyline - just one more reason why, on the whole, I don't hold Linda Gottlieb and Michael Malone's regime in the same, high regard as others.

Edited yesterday at 03:10 AM by Khan

[Vee]

I think there were even more layers with that choice than were intended by the show frankly, from what I've heard at times over the years.

I do think Clint should've been more tolerant, but I also wonder what would've happened if they'd gotten to play the original end of that triangle that was intended in '93, where Clint swoops in to Viki and Kevin's aid at the start of the rape trial saga and leaves Sloan on the outside, just in time for Ritchie to have his major tractor accident and vanish from the show for months. You can see the allegedly planned endgame (Clint and Viki back together, Sloan dying) coalescing. At the same time I do think the show highlighting and examining the chauvinism evident from the Rauch era was important in '91, even if they often took it too far in how Cord treats Tina just in these early eps.

[DRW50]

That certainly is the reason they avoided having Joey as gay, but when you think of how little of note they ended up doing with Joey anyway, I wish they'd tried.

What I found distasteful about that story was inventing a dead gay son to make us feel sorry for Sloan. If they want to talk about homophobia in writing, that type of choice isn't far off. 

[Vee]

I don't think that's homophobic, I think that's the absolute reality of AIDS at that time and place. Andrew mentioned William to Megan on his first airdate in September '91. The scenes about him in the story the following summer still make me cry.

[DRW50]

I don't think that part is homophobic, but having this backstory to make us feel sorry for Sloan, especially when they knew they were never going to have a gay character on the show in any prominent role (yes there was Billy, but he mostly just had one story and not much else) is offputting to me, as the recent variation with Eva la Rue on GH was. Heathers was already parodying that type of writing choice several years earlier.