Isn't that Interesting...
Mar. 5th, 2008 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxOkay, nothing is on tv (until the Project Runway finale! Whee!) so I tuned into SoapNet. It's not often that a storyline on a soap has a twist that hasn't been done to absolute freaking death. Watching the execution the story today surprised me. I think... there's something actually interesting going on here.
Soaps are a somewhat interesting medium because they span decades, and there's a lot of character history. OLTL is the current lucky soap to have a recently appointed headwriter who doesn't suck and who doesn't think that story history is something which should be ignored or overly retconned. On "One Life", the character of Todd Manning is a particularly thorny character. More than a decade ago he was introduced as "Frat Boy #2" in the set up for a sterotypical (but in this case well-executed) "redeem the bad girl through rape" storyline. And yes, he did rape her. And it was HORRIBLE in a "can't tear your eyes off it but the story is well done" sort of way. The actor (different actor then than now) was impressively talented so a storyline was developed for him where, after being convicted of rape (and after trying unsuccessfully to kill his lawyer) he was turned into a long-term character, becoming part of one of the core families after the discovery that he was the bastard child of a skeezy deceased patriarch. Never redeemed into a 'good guy' but turned into a very dark gray character, Todd has since been revealed to be the child of child abuse, raped by a female character, and... long term paired with former villainess Blair. Todd and Blair have had children together (having married each other multiple times now). Their oldest child, Starr, recently turned 16. And this wasn't a kid who was subjected to much in the way of Soap Rapid Aging Syndrome. She's only a couple of years off of actual age and the actress who plays Todd and Blair's daughter has been the same actress since she was about five. Viewers have literally watched this girl grow-up so, when it was spoiled recently that Starr was going to lose her virginity this week to her on-screen boyfriend, posters on TWOP were squicked. (No!!! Not little Starr!) But, soap fans being a pragmatic lot, there was also more than one post saying, "Well, at least she wasn't raped." This isn't just something posted out of the blue. It's pretty much hack-writer standard procedure that a male character who has raped but made into a long-term character (of which there are far too many on soaps) invariably has some female that he loves also raped as some sort of bizarre writerly revenge on the rapist. (Thank God, Abby Deveraux was written off of Days of Our Lives before this happened to her). It's not as though One Life posters were speaking out of their asses when they thanked soap gods for small blessings that Starr's first time would be with her long-term boyfriend who she loves and who loves her... even if she does look twelve! (and even if the guy playing her boyfriend is boring and can't act. At least he's age-appropriate and seems loving.)
Anyway, what was interesting about today's episode when I watched it is that the current writers of the show (and this group of writers is actually somewhat decent. I know! It's so unlikely! And on ABC daytime too!) They seem to have chosen a genuinely interesting (if squicky) approach to this story.
Todd found out through Starr's BFF what Starr was planning to do -- and he freaking lost it. Scary-ass crazy lost it. Lost it like a man with huge honking sexual hang-ups flying into a murderous red rage. He manhandled Starr's female BFF, scaring the shit out of the girl (who should be scared), hit the BFF's teen-aged boyfriend (he hit a kid! A 17 year-old, but still his daughter's contemporary!) Went after his daughter, physically hauled Starr's boyfriend out of bed, and began beating the ever-living-shit out of the kid until the boy broke-free and ran for his life. Traumatized, Starr broke into (justified) hysterics. And the thing is, with this particular character, this isn't overkill.
After a lifetime being the apple of her father's eye, Starr got a good hard look at what a scarily fucked-up man her father truly is as he threatened to kill her boyfriend (and ostensibly meaning it. Seriously. The character is capable of it, too) until Starr's mother, Blair, rushed in, saw the kind of scary-ass rage her husband was in, spurring her to screaming at him to get the hell out. (Blair's pseudo-mother, her Aunt Dorian, also gave him the what-for, threatening Todd... Dorian is another quasi-villainous character who should be taken seriously. Harm her 'girls' and she'd probably cut his balls off. She could do it too.) But that wasn't all, in a display of just how massively fucked up Todd was, he then started going on and on, saying that Starr's boyfriend had raped Starr. He threatened to call the police on the kid, leading Starr to go batshit crazy in her own right, threatening her father about the rape accusation (with the audience's underlying knowledge that Todd is a convicted rapist.) And Todd was... scary as hell as, in a stone-cold rage, he continued to insist that the innocent 16 year-old boy had raped his daughter. Revealingly, and frighteningly, he seemed deluded enough to believe what he was saying, too. It was eerie!
What was interesting in all of this, to me, was that is probably the most honestly that they've handled Todd in years. It's dragging his deeply fucked-up sexual problems into the light (Oh, there was so much projection going on!) It highlighted his long-established violent tendencies (they've always been there). It's tearing his family to pieces because Blair usually sees herself as being strong enough to handle Todd, but this involves her/their daughter. It's also delving into Todd's tendency to be overly connected to Starr to an almost inappropriate degree (not sexually, but he's treated her as a contemporaneous confidante since she was a fairly small child. The girl grew up with some rather screwed-up ethics of her own due to this). She's always been Daddy's Little Princess who never, ever thought badly of him no matter what insane shit he did (look, the guy sold her little brother once). Now, the whole family dynamic is going kerblooey... and it's good soap, as they're (at last! at last!) dealing with Todd as a guy with a truly messed up sexual history and deeply disturbing issues with violence. It's actually (gasp!) good use of long-term story history and established family dynamics on the soap. Who knew that soaps were still allowed to do that sort of thing?
Soaps are a somewhat interesting medium because they span decades, and there's a lot of character history. OLTL is the current lucky soap to have a recently appointed headwriter who doesn't suck and who doesn't think that story history is something which should be ignored or overly retconned. On "One Life", the character of Todd Manning is a particularly thorny character. More than a decade ago he was introduced as "Frat Boy #2" in the set up for a sterotypical (but in this case well-executed) "redeem the bad girl through rape" storyline. And yes, he did rape her. And it was HORRIBLE in a "can't tear your eyes off it but the story is well done" sort of way. The actor (different actor then than now) was impressively talented so a storyline was developed for him where, after being convicted of rape (and after trying unsuccessfully to kill his lawyer) he was turned into a long-term character, becoming part of one of the core families after the discovery that he was the bastard child of a skeezy deceased patriarch. Never redeemed into a 'good guy' but turned into a very dark gray character, Todd has since been revealed to be the child of child abuse, raped by a female character, and... long term paired with former villainess Blair. Todd and Blair have had children together (having married each other multiple times now). Their oldest child, Starr, recently turned 16. And this wasn't a kid who was subjected to much in the way of Soap Rapid Aging Syndrome. She's only a couple of years off of actual age and the actress who plays Todd and Blair's daughter has been the same actress since she was about five. Viewers have literally watched this girl grow-up so, when it was spoiled recently that Starr was going to lose her virginity this week to her on-screen boyfriend, posters on TWOP were squicked. (No!!! Not little Starr!) But, soap fans being a pragmatic lot, there was also more than one post saying, "Well, at least she wasn't raped." This isn't just something posted out of the blue. It's pretty much hack-writer standard procedure that a male character who has raped but made into a long-term character (of which there are far too many on soaps) invariably has some female that he loves also raped as some sort of bizarre writerly revenge on the rapist. (Thank God, Abby Deveraux was written off of Days of Our Lives before this happened to her). It's not as though One Life posters were speaking out of their asses when they thanked soap gods for small blessings that Starr's first time would be with her long-term boyfriend who she loves and who loves her... even if she does look twelve! (and even if the guy playing her boyfriend is boring and can't act. At least he's age-appropriate and seems loving.)
Anyway, what was interesting about today's episode when I watched it is that the current writers of the show (and this group of writers is actually somewhat decent. I know! It's so unlikely! And on ABC daytime too!) They seem to have chosen a genuinely interesting (if squicky) approach to this story.
Todd found out through Starr's BFF what Starr was planning to do -- and he freaking lost it. Scary-ass crazy lost it. Lost it like a man with huge honking sexual hang-ups flying into a murderous red rage. He manhandled Starr's female BFF, scaring the shit out of the girl (who should be scared), hit the BFF's teen-aged boyfriend (he hit a kid! A 17 year-old, but still his daughter's contemporary!) Went after his daughter, physically hauled Starr's boyfriend out of bed, and began beating the ever-living-shit out of the kid until the boy broke-free and ran for his life. Traumatized, Starr broke into (justified) hysterics. And the thing is, with this particular character, this isn't overkill.
After a lifetime being the apple of her father's eye, Starr got a good hard look at what a scarily fucked-up man her father truly is as he threatened to kill her boyfriend (and ostensibly meaning it. Seriously. The character is capable of it, too) until Starr's mother, Blair, rushed in, saw the kind of scary-ass rage her husband was in, spurring her to screaming at him to get the hell out. (Blair's pseudo-mother, her Aunt Dorian, also gave him the what-for, threatening Todd... Dorian is another quasi-villainous character who should be taken seriously. Harm her 'girls' and she'd probably cut his balls off. She could do it too.) But that wasn't all, in a display of just how massively fucked up Todd was, he then started going on and on, saying that Starr's boyfriend had raped Starr. He threatened to call the police on the kid, leading Starr to go batshit crazy in her own right, threatening her father about the rape accusation (with the audience's underlying knowledge that Todd is a convicted rapist.) And Todd was... scary as hell as, in a stone-cold rage, he continued to insist that the innocent 16 year-old boy had raped his daughter. Revealingly, and frighteningly, he seemed deluded enough to believe what he was saying, too. It was eerie!
What was interesting in all of this, to me, was that is probably the most honestly that they've handled Todd in years. It's dragging his deeply fucked-up sexual problems into the light (Oh, there was so much projection going on!) It highlighted his long-established violent tendencies (they've always been there). It's tearing his family to pieces because Blair usually sees herself as being strong enough to handle Todd, but this involves her/their daughter. It's also delving into Todd's tendency to be overly connected to Starr to an almost inappropriate degree (not sexually, but he's treated her as a contemporaneous confidante since she was a fairly small child. The girl grew up with some rather screwed-up ethics of her own due to this). She's always been Daddy's Little Princess who never, ever thought badly of him no matter what insane shit he did (look, the guy sold her little brother once). Now, the whole family dynamic is going kerblooey... and it's good soap, as they're (at last! at last!) dealing with Todd as a guy with a truly messed up sexual history and deeply disturbing issues with violence. It's actually (gasp!) good use of long-term story history and established family dynamics on the soap. Who knew that soaps were still allowed to do that sort of thing?
