OLTL Tribute Thread

[Vee]

I don't think they knew what they were doing that early on in '91 re: Sloan, tbh. Or what they were even going to do with Joey or the character who became Billy. Sloan wouldn't be on til maybe February-April of '92. And while he was extremely polarizing re: the triangle with Viki and Clint I definitely found him a much more layered and nuanced character than Natalia. I think the William backstory was for Andrew and they were seeding him dealing with those family issues through his father. What became of Billy was also a product of the times, in terms of LGBT characters and how much story they could get. But I still think it's a very affecting, powerful and wonderful story. YMMV.

Edited Tuesday at 04:30 AM by Vee

[chrisml]

I just can't see OLTL doing anything with Joey as a gay man. They barely did anything with him as a straight man after a certain point. I think we would have gotten what we always got with gay storylines on soaps: the gay would sleep with a woman and because gay characters always have magical sperm, the woman would get pregnant. I'd rather have nothing than that. 

[Vee]

Funny seeing Rafe for exactly one scene with Bo at the end of September '91.

[Marco Dane]

Do you have a link to the video?

[Franko]

I always forget how much longer Rafe is around. When did Bo switch from the Banner to the Llanview police?

[DRW50]

Please register in order to view this content

"Men you can't resist." Well, Karen resisted one of them...

Edited Tuesday at 08:07 PM by DRW50

[Jagger1966]

 

Clint Ritchie thought it was out of character for Clint Buchanan as well.  I remember an interview he did in Digest where he said the one story he didn't like was when the show made Clint a homophobe.  He felt Clint would have stood up to bigotry, not be a part of it.  I had a lot of respect for him for making that statement.

[Khan]

I agree!

I would say that someone from Joe Riley's side of the family would've needed to be there in order to provide some conflict to the (hypothetical) Joey coming out storyline, except, given what I know about Eileen and Julie, I can't see them being homophobic either.

[Soaplovers]

Clint was a hothead, but he wouldn't have been homophobic based on the character we saw at play since he came on in the late 70s.  I could have seen Asa having some issues, but never Clint.

I do recall seeing a NYE episode in 1992/1993 where Vicki seemed committed to Clint and reviving their marriage so I do agree that the end game was going to be Vicki and Clint working on their marriage.. and Sloan would be just a passing infatuation/friendship.   

The only time I could have seen Vicki wavering would have been doing the Roger Gordon era, but the actor they picked to play Roger didn't have chemistry with Vicki.

 

[Khan]

IIRC, they even attempted a triangle (of sorts) among Viki, Clint and Tom Dennison, but it was clear that wasn't going anywhere either.  Lee Patterson and Erika Slezak still had chemistry, but Viki never would've hooked up with Joe's twin brother, lol.

[EricMontreal22]

I'm with you--given it was 1992, I thought it actually worked well (and it truly was groundbreaking to feature the AIDS quilt, the first time a scripted program was given permission to feature it and something I'm certain most of the viewers had no knowledge about but shows so clearly the scope of devastation of that disease.)

I guess as a young viewer at the time, I never really thought it did make me more sympathetic to Sloane (actually I did like that it gave more compassion to Andrew and explained his reaction despite being a priest)

OK but now I have to ask--I completely missed Eva la Rue's brief run on GH.  Anyone give me a quick rundown?

If we're talking homophobic OLTL storylines we have to look no further than Higley and the Daniel Colson storyline where a man in the 2000s who by all reports otherwise was a good guy, was driven to MURDER to hide his sexuality (and they even brought back that short term "love shack" Malone/Griffith x 2 character as his BF which just made the storyline all the more confusing because if he had a bf who was keeping his secret... why was he killing people?  Was his name Mark?  I think he was played by Matt Cavanaugh who at the time had a major Broadway career--including Tony in the last West Side Story revival, but seems to have completely disappeared from stage and film a while back)  Talk about a storyline that belonged in 1981 (and would have been tasteless then anyway.)  Sidenote--I did like Riley, Daniel's son who I think also came out of the Love Shack--was that the name?--storyline and recently saw the actor has a lead in the new Amazon Prime trans sitcom which was the last thing Norman Lear did.

This was all a part of my MA project, because I compared the Billy storyline with the gay story four years later on AMC.  (When I interviewed Hal Corley he swore that when planning the story they never brought up the OLTL storyline.)  Which did make a concerted effect to involve more of the canvas and to last longer (it did--starting with a focus on teacher Michael Delaney, then when that played out moving to Kevin coming out, and then keeping him on the canvas--including the first "gay conversion therapy" storyline on US TV--as much as they could until of course McTavish returned as headwriter and he disappeared.  But as far as AMC storylines go that has been overshawdowed by the Bianca storyline a few years later when they finally were allowed to have a core character come out--though I argue they did somethings with the Kevin storyline better...  )

RIGHT, this is what I was trying to say but you said better, especially about Andrew.  But wait--who was Natalia?  LOL

[DRW50]

I can't argue about any of that story - I had stopped watching OLTL by that point and have only seen clips, which look awful. 

His name was Mark, yes. I mainly remember him for doing a striptease, which I think Viki watched...?

Eva joined GH as a character named Natalia. Natalia was the manager (?) to her lesbian daughter, Blaze, who was a big recording star. She wanted Blaze to stay in the closet for her career and she also morally disapproved of homosexuality. This led her to have conflict with Blaze's girlfriend, Kristina Corinthos, made worse because Kristina was a surrogate mother at the time and thinking of keeping the baby for herself and Blaze to raise.

Blaze was outed by Ava, Kristina lost the baby while arguing with Ava, and Blaze then left town. Natalia stayed and is dating Sonny while her crime boss ex husband is arriving in town. I think (someone else will know more) we are now meant to believe she regrets her behavior.

Edited Thursday at 05:10 AM by DRW50

[Vee]

I did love Jay Wilkison as Riley (named for Joe Riley per Malone II, who said Daniel's ex-wife supposedly worked for him at the Banner - we talked about that in here not long ago when discussing Cathy Craig and the discovered '70s episodes). Good for him. I felt bad when that close relationship with Nora and Matthew was discarded upon his exit.

I actually think the closeted Colson story (ripped from the headlines re: Jim McGreevey) was prime for use on a soap in one way or another. The big finish where Bo confronts Colson at Daniel's televised swearing-in was very well-done. But the actual storyline in its execution was deeply toxic and reprehensible, like virtually all of Higley's work. There was a way to do a story like that, even with Daniel as a bad actor (or even murderer, which he was) while offsetting more prominent positive LGBT characters. This was not it. And it was partly used to try to drive HBS/Nora off the show and replace her with Cady Huffman's Paige, who heavily resembled Hillary in mannerisms. It's a miracle Nora survived that long contract coma; Hillary allegedly had to talk to some network people.

Mark Solomon (Matt Cavanaugh) was introduced by Malone II along with all the other silly Love Crew kids - Malone introducing a ready-made teen/college set, presumably to satisfy Frons, and jamming Rex, Adriana, Jen and Riley all into it as well, to try to mimic the youth set from the early '90s. Higley had closeted Daniel secretly dating the much-younger Mark. I think Malone had intended to do some sort of gay story, any gay story in 2004 (after what happened with invisible C.J. and the original Paul Cramer got nixed in '03) with Mark and Marcie's gay brother Eric, briefly played by Bill Dawes. But I can't say I found any of those insta-characters very inspiring or interesting. Don't get me started on the Love Crew story, the fake 'haunting' of the Love Center (which I suspect was intended to be real until it got a quick rewrite to end it), or the diaries of the mysterious ancestors of the Lords and McBains on the property...

Edited Thursday at 05:21 AM by Vee

[Soaplovers]

Wasn't Riley involved with Tina's daughter (when she was in her gothic era) and then later Jen?  If so, Riley was Jen's best pairing and it was tragic that she was killed off just as her character finally had purpose and the actress had finally learned how to act.

And I think the Daniel Colson story would have worked perfectly in the first half of the 80s, and I even think it could have worked in the 2000s if it were better written and developed.   Even back in the 2000s, I can't tell you how many times there were married straight men looking to have a guy on the side and the lengths they would go to in order to ensure no one knew about his private activities.  So the story was realistic.. but the serial aspect was an interesting twist on something that was the norm in 00s suburbia.  It just wasn't written well.

 

[Vee]

Yes, Riley came on as just a dayplayer in Flash/Sarah's entourage in '03. When the Flash story tanked Riley caught on with the audience and got a bigger role, and they put him and Flash together as a minor pairing. Then they cut her in January '04 and made Riley a more prominent male lead and put him with Jen, after Jen's story with Joey and Rex had also tanked.

I don't think Jessica Morris ever learned how to act much though she did improve, and that team tried very, very, very hard to retrofit Jen into Marty Saybrooke for Y2K. It was embarrassing, but they wrote for her heavily, tried to infuse her with layer and nuance (mostly stuff riffed from Marty in '92/'93) and some of it at least had an impact on the character. I do think she was semi-tolerable with Riley. I was thrilled when she died, but I did think her death was brutally realistic and probably just unnecessary in an already trashy story.

I do think the Daniel story under Higley was ultimately a problem of execution and priorities.

Edited Thursday at 11:42 AM by Vee