One Life to Live Tribute Thread

[Vee]

I thought ES and Jerry verDorn had wonderful chemistry together and I was fine with Viki and Clint's reunion at the end of the network show, though I found it somewhat rushed. (Honestly though, they'd been doing a lot of careful groundwork for it for the better part of a year and compared to some post-cancellation reunions for other soap couples Viki and Clint had it pretty damn good.) I always wanted them tried more with other people, though, so I was fine with the PP show breaking them up for a while, though with the conspiracy angle and Clint being drugged it was clear they would find their way back together. Which was fine, because they absolutely crackled onscreen in that drama. He wasn't defanged or just a stalwart, and she wasn't just folding clothes and chiding him.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Vee

[DRW50]

Clint Ritchie + Erika Slezak - one of my favorite soap couples of all time

Jerry ver Dorn + Erika Slezak - didn't work for me, in any way shape or form, sad as that is to say.

Not getting into Viki, a victim of sexual abuse, getting together with a man who nearly had a close friend raped and murdered. That's just "soapy goodness," so who am I to criticize.

[Vee]

I think what Clint did to Nora was awful, but I also was secure with the fact that he never intended for things to go that far, that Eddie was a loose cannon. It helped that Clint's regret is something we saw happen in what was relatively the immediate moment, not as a belated retcon months or years after the fact when Ron tried to cover his own ass, as he did with Franco, Sonny, etc.

I thought the darkening of Clint over several years was a slow burn and a great reconception of the character, because it was rooted in his history and his family, and there was something Shakespearean to the runaway son being forced to become his father to save their empire. And I think that what came later, with Clint striking back against Bo and Nora, was great drama, and I enjoyed a lot of it. I thought the climax of it - which I think was in January 2011, with these two aged brothers facing down in the Buchanan stables - was amazing stuff, what soaps do best with longtime characters and conflicts. No other show on the air at that time (or now, really - GH has sequestered most of its older non-Sonny/Luke vets in recurring holding pens) was secure enough in itself and its history to let that kind of drama play with two long-standing characters of a certain age.

But I think where they fucked up was with the Nora thing. I think that putting Clint in a position to be partially, if unintentionally, responsible for Nora nearly being violated was the beginning of Ron's meta-epidemic as a writer, of pushing the envelope every time and then never pulling all the way back out. The way he destroyed Todd/Victor with the rapemance was one thing, but with what he did to Clint it began making its own way into all kinds of characters, leading us to what he later did with others on OLTL and GH. That being said, I think they pulled Clint out of it, just barely. Most RC antiheroes since have not been so lucky, speaking for the ones we ever liked at all.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Vee

[John]

Patrick Gibbons Jr (Sam, OLTL)

http://www.chestnuthilllocal.com/2015/02/05/hill-area-actor-now-tv-stage-dramas-age-9/

[DRW50]

I just felt like Clint was made a plot device to help push many failed characters and pairings. What he did to Nora (to help us cry for the Fords) and to Shane (to help us cry for Rex and Gigi) was handwaved because he had a heart attack and isn't that sad. Add in that they were probably going to give Matthew's heart to Clint after he'd also helped destroy Matthew's life, and the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm not a puritan and I've been invested in many nasty characters over the years, but none of this ever made any sense to me. The last story of his that sort of did was with Kim, because as much of a cipher as Kim was, Setton and JvD worked well together.

[Vee]

I think we were supposed to cry for Nora there, really - I felt the poor Fords stuff came a little earlier, though they remained unbearable to the end of the show. And I don't think we were expected to forgive Clint until well after Gigi's death. As contrived as I found that whole conflict with his heart transplant and as wretched as I found most of the entire show during the spring of 2011, I felt they played both ends of that family divide - Clint's longtime loved ones feeling for him (with exceptions; I think Bo and Nora were pretty conflicted), and other people still having a right to be disgusted with him, including the annoying Rex. I think that's the difference between that storyline and, say, what's going on with Sonny on GH right now, where we are mostly expected to immediately forgive him and Michael is portrayed as unreasonable.

Good for little Patrick! It's a shame he couldn't grow up in the role.

[DRW50]

I see what you're saying. I never really liked Ron Carlivati's writing - maybe I never gave it a chance, I don't know. I just didn't like it. Frankly, I just don't like him, period. I had already separated JvD's Clint from "my" Clint, because to me there was zero resemblance, but that story just took too many leaps for me. If they hadn't forced a reunion with Viki I could have accepted it a little better, but it just shouldn't have happened, IMO. There was no need for her to be back with him just because the show was ending. The show started with Viki alone - I wish it had ended that way.

At least the PP version did.

[Vee]

I just don't think Viki should end up alone. I cry when she cries and I like her happy, and I think with JVD's more grey Clint they had both chemistry and plenty of potential for organic drama and ups and downs, which we saw on PP. She was able to be independent and have her own story and force while also having a man, and they were fighting it out over [!@#$%^&*] they frankly should have fought it out over before the show went off ABC, and it was the logical follow-up in their relationship IMO. The whole paper/pride/Lord legacy conflict, and all its throughlines of the professional and the personal and their fundamental differences of opinion on the work and the paper were good story, and they pulled too many punches with it early on by letting it fizzle out with Clint saving her ass. But fortunately it didn't end there. It was also partly due to the machinations of a conspiracy, and it was clear Clint and Viki could and would work through it. I just wish we'd gotten to see that.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Vee

[DRW50]

It's not that I want her to be unhappy, I just thought that someone who had been forced into a role of being whatever Victor wanted her to be and then went on to have longrunning, exhausting relationships throughout her adult life - having her stand on her own and take a breath (without it being painted as a failure on her part, as it was with Higley's tenure) - it's what I would have liked.

I do see what you're saying, and I appreciate you still taking the time to try to point out the bad and good of that era's writing when it's easy to just dismiss it.

[DRW50]

November 1983 Daytime Digest

[BKuzak]

Now don't everyone hate me at once, but i would have perfered Viki to find someone more like Sloan at the end. He was someone more her style. I know Viki almost always went for a man who was against what she grew up with but I thought during her breif time with Sloan, she really showed her "Lord" colors. Because he had been in the army, he grew up with the same sense of honor and discipline that Viki did as Victor's daughter. I know their relationship was based on adultery but it was because she saw so much of her former lifestyle in him that she felt the strong power to him. And if you noticed, when they were together, Viki wore more proper busienss suits than she had before or since. It was her signiture look but she wore it more during the Sloan years than any time before. He encouraged her to be that person she was when she was growing up. Joe brought her into domesticity, Clint wanted her to be his cowgirl so he could protect her, Ben was the bartender who brought danger to her life from his mob past and Charlie had to many demons of his own. She loved all those men very much in different ways but Sloan was more her type. I never actually saw Steve Burke so i can't coment on him.

She grew up in that very uppercrust,"Downton Abbey" type lifestyle. Even though she "freed" herself from Victor's influence, she never really freed herself from the uppercrust glossy venere of the Lords because it had been incoded in her DNA. From the time she was very young Victor taught her how to be a proper Lord and as she grew up, she wanted him to be proud of her so she continued using those values. And when she became a mother (to the three children she remembered dand later the other two), she wanted to teach them all those lessons and values she learned by "leading by example". So by the time she was older and found out all his horrible secrets, she was still Victor Lord's very proper daughter because it was who she had always been.

I know they wanted to put her with Clint but i thought it would have been nice to let her find someone who would have shared her background. But it was nice for her to get back to doing stories for The Banner, something that the network version hadn't really delt with him many years. I didn't buy her putting 10 million dollars into a stock tip though. I know she was trying to save The Banner at any costs but she was always very cautious. She threw caution to the wind and lost. Then she thought about selling Llanfair to pay the Banner. But at the end, she agreed to keep Clint's money to keep The Banner going. I would have sold The Banner for a high price and then started another newspaper if she wanted. Or retired.

[Bright Eyes]

If there was OLTL after PP, I would have killed off Clint in a hopeless rescue mission, after which we never see Alison ever again one way or another, and given the right amount of time have a slow burn romance for Viki with Hank Gannon. I think that could really work if done right.

[Khan]

I'm not sure about Hank Gannon, but I wouldn't have minded seeing Viki in an interracial relationship.

[NothinButAttitude]

Are you trying to cause Middle America to have strokes and heart attacks?

[DRW50]

If any soap could have made that work for viewers it would have been OLTL.