Exactly. Like you, I could appreciate and defend the impulse to want Todd and Blair teamed up for a common goal. I just wish he'd found something more worthy, like something related to the newspapers and that short-lived Banner-Sun merger.
And if TSJ had kept his complaints to "why would we even want Asa's house when we already have so much money" or offered anything, really, other than "I'm so bored and I hate this," I'd have slightly more sympathy.
But...
This. Checking out wasn't fair to viewers, and it certainly wasn't fair to KDP or PC or anyone else who was sucking it up and doing their job without airing complaints about how this boring material was so beneath them as actors.
And I don't remember an apology, either.
Thank you for articulating this. This is it exactly.
I laughed out loud, especially that last line. Perfect summation.
I haven't seen enough of '97 and '98 to comment yet, but, you know, actually, one thing that TSJ phoning scenes in is it made me look more...charitably? on RH's 2000s run. When I started the show in late 2002, I heard a lot online about how RH was bored and it was showing on screen. So then when I did go back around that time and watch his 2000s stories, I looked at it through that lens. And I understood that criticism, especially because I could also see a really clear difference in the more morose, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin Todd of '95 and the fast-talking quip-machine of the 2000s. So, obviously, something had changed.
But going back to the 2000s later, after years of watching what TSJ looked like when he was phoning it in and the way he took it out on everyone else when he was bored -- RH's acting-while-bored doesn't seem nearly as bad in comparison.
Exactly.
What I'd be curious to know, since it was such a bone of contention when he left in 1995 -- and what we probably never will know, unless RH has decided to get chattier in recent years than he used to be (I think he's on Y&R now, right? I don't follow that soap or him, so I'm not sure if he's any more given to doing interviews than he was on OLTL) -- is if RH believed that, and was playing Todd as if, the character had been rehabilitated to the extent that he'd never choose sexual violence again, or if he didn't believe Todd was capable of that change but also didn't want the show to go there ever again because of his personal discomfort.
A scene just came to mind that I think is from the weeks you mentioned where he was putting in obvious effort just before he left -- I think it's after Todd learns that Mitch raped Viki, where Todd is being self-loathing and Viki rattles off a list of all the people who have forgiven Todd for raping Marty, and he snarls with surprising vehemence, "Don't you dare tell me to forgive myself."
Maybe the way RH played that scene is the best answer to my question I'll ever get, actually.
I thought the same, and I think TSJ even said as much. I know I remember an interview where he said he decided that the plastic surgery would allow Todd to be comfortable with physical touch in a way TSJ felt RH had not been willing/able to play.
If only he had just stopped with that.
That he was so present and that so much was healed by his 2011 return, and then later by his decision to do Prospect Park, really was a boon to the show, both on-screen and, it sounds like from interviews with people like KDP and KA, off.
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