A Strange Mix of "Ewwww" and "This Isn't All Bad"

Ever find yourself watching something that totally revolts you and still somehow find yourself thinking that it's got some interesting aspects to it?  That's been my issue with One Life to Live in the last few weeks.   I'm sickened and revolted and think if OLTL keeps doing this they're doing something really bad... and yet I also have to admit that what's on screen has been pretty fascinating.

I freaked out when I read the spoilers, and now those spoilers have aired.  And they went there!  They really, really went there! 

And it was revolting!

I also savored the schadenfreude when Canadian TV guide outed these spoilers to a rape advocacy group who then strong-armed ABC into airing not one, but three public service announcements about domestic abuse and rape following episodes focused on this storyline.

(Brief tutorial for anyone wondering what in the hell I'm talking about.:
 
OLTL is a daytime soap.  Seventeen years ago they penned a story about teenaged Marty Saybrooke drunk in a frat house.  A teenaged boy (Todd Manning) that she'd sexually rejected sought revenge on her by locking her in his room and raping her.  Then he goaded two other fraternity brothers into raping her as well. It was realtively graphic and extremely realistic.  It was horrifying. 

Cut to now: seventeen years later. Marty had suffered brain damage in a car accident and had become basically a blank slate.  Through various circumstances, Todd happened across her and decided to use and mislead her in order  to seek revenge on Marty's son and Marty's boyfriend.  Said son and boyfriend were led to believe that Marty was dead. In this storyline, Todd has manipulated Marty into falling in love with him while painting himself to her as woebegone and misunderstood.  His 'evil' wife left him (she kicked him out of the house when he tossed their daughter down a flight of stairs). His 'evil' ex-wife 'stole' his children (she was granted custody because... did I mention that he tossed his daughter down a flight of stairs?)  Todd presented himself as heroic, nurturing and misunderstood and the show had Marty fall for all of it.  And then... they went one step too far.  The show had Marty sleep with him. Cue fandom outrage.  Cue rape victim advocacy group outrage.  Cue my outrage!  I refused to watch the consummation of this storyline. )

The thing is...  (gulp)  The thing is, the fall out from this has actually been kind of sickly fascinating.  (I feel ashamed to admit that).

They had someone tell Marty the truth about Todd almost immediately afterward and the actress rocked the reaction.  Her revulsion and fury were huge... and kind of magnificent to behold. It was root-worthy as she brandished a gun around and threatened to kill him. And her boyfriend -- who I've never liked -- beating the absolute shit out of Todd is probably the first time I've ever rooted for that boyfriend character.  Hell, I even sort of liked the way the boyfriend stood to the side and did nothing to stop Marty from waving the gun around threatening to kill Todd. She'd earned it.  And his "WTF?  Todd, I thought you were nuts, but you. are. nuts!!!" faces as he was told the breathtaking magnitude of Todd's lies and manipulations were totally hilarious.

But that's not even the really sickly fascinating part. The thing that kind of leaves me watching with my mouth hanging open is that somehow, some way Todd has actually convinced himself that he 'loves' Marty, that she's his 'soulmate' and that she had 'changed' him... and -- WHOA! -- I think Todd has at long last totally and completely broken from reality.  Because what he's done is a few worlds away from even really dysfunctional 'love'.  It's sick.  And... it's kind of fascinating to watch (or would be if I was certain that the show wasn't just yanking our chains in recognizing just how twisted and sick this is.)

This last week has been a series of people confronting Todd with varying degrees of outrage.  From Marty's son threatening to smother Todd (who is in the hospital due to the smackdown beating of Marty's boyfriend) in his hospital bed with a pillow.   To his ex-wife visiting him and telling him that he's the scum of the earth who will never have access to her children ever again. To his favored teenaged daughter (the one he tossed down the stairs) confronting him over all of this.  This seventeen year old actress has been on the show since she was literally four years old, and thus has grown up before the audience's eyes as 'daddy's little girl' who, due to her age and idolization never really, really got on a visceral level how reprehensible her father truly was.  She knew his misdeeds, but she loved him.  She kicked him out of her life after he tossed her down the stairs, but she'd still occasionally voiced hopes that he'd change and she could love him again.  And, while this teen actress isn't particularly strong in many cases, she was quite convincing the other day as she this "OMG! My father is really, really fucked in the head!" expression as she listened to him say that he 'loved' Marty and that she'd changed him and that she was the perfect, most wonderful thing to have ever enterred his life. It was like watching every illusion the child had be stripped away as she heard her father's totally batshit bullshit.  And yesterday, Todd's sister arrived in his hospital room to read him the riot act and correctly identify him as a pathological narcissist while pinpointing not only his crime against Marty, but what he had done to his daughter, to [i]her[/i] daughters, and how ludicrously, impossibly screwed up Todd is.

And these scenes have all had a great deal of impact, as the confrontation with his daughter and his sister -- his perennial support system through whatever batshit he'd done over the years -- were long overdue.  They had been his safety net and his enablers through whatever insane thing he'd done. . . in the past.

And all of this sounds like support for the storyline, but I tell you, as fascinating as it is to watch his enablers at long last turn away, as much as it seems clear that the show realizes that Todd is not okay.  It seems like they've written him as at long last having had something close to a psychotic break because he isn't tethered tightly to this world but has gone into whole sale construction alternative one with a population of only himself.  As much as it seems that the show gets that he's one sick fuck...  I don't trust 'em.  Reading writer interviews, I doubly don't trust them.  I'm not sure that having riled substantial portions of their fan base, the media, and a couple of victim advocacy groups that they aren't having characters correctly identify that he is abusive as CYA action, while still planning to have Marty be the soulmate who 'understands' the 'real' Todd beneath all his batshit crazy narcissistic and abusive nature.  I fear this.  I truly do. And it robs the satisfaction out of the long overdue moments where his usual support system crumbles out from under him. It also robs the fascination of seeing Todd exposed as being truly batshit crazy, because... are they really?  It seems like the show has reached a tipping point with the character where they've concluded that this time he really is full-gone nuts.  But... I don't trust them.

However, at least for the moment it's been bizarrely, almost sickeningly fascinating watching Todd completely lose hold of what is real because as much as he's deceived everyone around him, the person he's deceiving most at the moment is himself.

That said, honestly, I don't know where in the hell they go from here.  At this point, they should just kill Todd off or ship him to a prison for the criminally insane (and not cushy St. Anne's sanitorium with the oh-so-lovable and sympathetically crazy, Iraq war vet with post traumatic stress syndrome Brody.  With Brody it's easy to believe that beneath the post-traumatic stress issues, he's a genuinely good guy who deserves to find health and peace, whereas with Todd, after seventeen years without any sustained improvement, I think it's okay to say that he is bad to the bone.   I really think the show should bite the bullet and kill Todd off.  There's little left to be mined from the character.

A Strange Mix of "Ewwww" and "This Isn't All Bad"

Ever find yourself watching something that totally revolts you and still somehow find yourself thinking that it's got some interesting aspects to it?  That's been my issue with One Life to Live in the last few weeks.   I'm sickened and revolted and think if OLTL keeps doing this they're doing something really bad... and yet I also have to admit that what's on screen has been pretty fascinating.

I freaked out when I read the spoilers, and now those spoilers have aired.  And they went there!  They really, really went there! 

And it was revolting!

I also savored the schadenfreude when Canadian TV guide outed these spoilers to a rape advocacy group who then strong-armed ABC into airing not one, but three public service announcements about domestic abuse and rape following episodes focused on this storyline.

(Brief tutorial for anyone wondering what in the hell I'm talking about.:
 
OLTL is a daytime soap.  Seventeen years ago they penned a story about teenaged Marty Saybrooke drunk in a frat house.  A teenaged boy (Todd Manning) that she'd sexually rejected sought revenge on her by locking her in his room and raping her.  Then he goaded two other fraternity brothers into raping her as well. It was realtively graphic and extremely realistic.  It was horrifying. 

Cut to now: seventeen years later. Marty had suffered brain damage in a car accident and had become basically a blank slate.  Through various circumstances, Todd happened across her and decided to use and mislead her in order  to seek revenge on Marty's son and Marty's boyfriend.  Said son and boyfriend were led to believe that Marty was dead. In this storyline, Todd has manipulated Marty into falling in love with him while painting himself to her as woebegone and misunderstood.  His 'evil' wife left him (she kicked him out of the house when he tossed their daughter down a flight of stairs). His 'evil' ex-wife 'stole' his children (she was granted custody because... did I mention that he tossed his daughter down a flight of stairs?)  Todd presented himself as heroic, nurturing and misunderstood and the show had Marty fall for all of it.  And then... they went one step too far.  The show had Marty sleep with him. Cue fandom outrage.  Cue rape victim advocacy group outrage.  Cue my outrage!  I refused to watch the consummation of this storyline. )

The thing is...  (gulp)  The thing is, the fall out from this has actually been kind of sickly fascinating.  (I feel ashamed to admit that).

They had someone tell Marty the truth about Todd almost immediately afterward and the actress rocked the reaction.  Her revulsion and fury were huge... and kind of magnificent to behold. It was root-worthy as she brandished a gun around and threatened to kill him. And her boyfriend -- who I've never liked -- beating the absolute shit out of Todd is probably the first time I've ever rooted for that boyfriend character.  Hell, I even sort of liked the way the boyfriend stood to the side and did nothing to stop Marty from waving the gun around threatening to kill Todd. She'd earned it.  And his "WTF?  Todd, I thought you were nuts, but you. are. nuts!!!" faces as he was told the breathtaking magnitude of Todd's lies and manipulations were totally hilarious.

But that's not even the really sickly fascinating part. The thing that kind of leaves me watching with my mouth hanging open is that somehow, some way Todd has actually convinced himself that he 'loves' Marty, that she's his 'soulmate' and that she had 'changed' him... and -- WHOA! -- I think Todd has at long last totally and completely broken from reality.  Because what he's done is a few worlds away from even really dysfunctional 'love'.  It's sick.  And... it's kind of fascinating to watch (or would be if I was certain that the show wasn't just yanking our chains in recognizing just how twisted and sick this is.)

This last week has been a series of people confronting Todd with varying degrees of outrage.  From Marty's son threatening to smother Todd (who is in the hospital due to the smackdown beating of Marty's boyfriend) in his hospital bed with a pillow.   To his ex-wife visiting him and telling him that he's the scum of the earth who will never have access to her children ever again. To his favored teenaged daughter (the one he tossed down the stairs) confronting him over all of this.  This seventeen year old actress has been on the show since she was literally four years old, and thus has grown up before the audience's eyes as 'daddy's little girl' who, due to her age and idolization never really, really got on a visceral level how reprehensible her father truly was.  She knew his misdeeds, but she loved him.  She kicked him out of her life after he tossed her down the stairs, but she'd still occasionally voiced hopes that he'd change and she could love him again.  And, while this teen actress isn't particularly strong in many cases, she was quite convincing the other day as she this "OMG! My father is really, really fucked in the head!" expression as she listened to him say that he 'loved' Marty and that she'd changed him and that she was the perfect, most wonderful thing to have ever enterred his life. It was like watching every illusion the child had be stripped away as she heard her father's totally batshit bullshit.  And yesterday, Todd's sister arrived in his hospital room to read him the riot act and correctly identify him as a pathological narcissist while pinpointing not only his crime against Marty, but what he had done to his daughter, to [i]her[/i] daughters, and how ludicrously, impossibly screwed up Todd is.

And these scenes have all had a great deal of impact, as the confrontation with his daughter and his sister -- his perennial support system through whatever batshit he'd done over the years -- were long overdue.  They had been his safety net and his enablers through whatever insane thing he'd done. . . in the past.

And all of this sounds like support for the storyline, but I tell you, as fascinating as it is to watch his enablers at long last turn away, as much as it seems clear that the show realizes that Todd is not okay.  It seems like they've written him as at long last having had something close to a psychotic break because he isn't tethered tightly to this world but has gone into whole sale construction alternative one with a population of only himself.  As much as it seems that the show gets that he's one sick fuck...  I don't trust 'em.  Reading writer interviews, I doubly don't trust them.  I'm not sure that having riled substantial portions of their fan base, the media, and a couple of victim advocacy groups that they aren't having characters correctly identify that he is abusive as CYA action, while still planning to have Marty be the soulmate who 'understands' the 'real' Todd beneath all his batshit crazy narcissistic and abusive nature.  I fear this.  I truly do. And it robs the satisfaction out of the long overdue moments where his usual support system crumbles out from under him. It also robs the fascination of seeing Todd exposed as being truly batshit crazy, because... are they really?  It seems like the show has reached a tipping point with the character where they've concluded that this time he really is full-gone nuts.  But... I don't trust them.

However, at least for the moment it's been bizarrely, almost sickeningly fascinating watching Todd completely lose hold of what is real because as much as he's deceived everyone around him, the person he's deceiving most at the moment is himself.

That said, honestly, I don't know where in the hell they go from here.  At this point, they should just kill Todd off or ship him to a prison for the criminally insane (and not cushy St. Anne's sanitorium with the oh-so-lovable and sympathetically crazy, Iraq war vet with post traumatic stress syndrome Brody.  With Brody it's easy to believe that beneath the post-traumatic stress issues, he's a genuinely good guy who deserves to find health and peace, whereas with Todd, after seventeen years without any sustained improvement, I think it's okay to say that he is bad to the bone.   I really think the show should bite the bullet and kill Todd off.  There's little left to be mined from the character.

A Strange Mix of "Ewwww" and "This Isn't All Bad"

Ever find yourself watching something that totally revolts you and still somehow find yourself thinking that it's got some interesting aspects to it?  That's been my issue with One Life to Live in the last few weeks.   I'm sickened and revolted and think if OLTL keeps doing this they're doing something really bad... and yet I also have to admit that what's on screen has been pretty fascinating.

I freaked out when I read the spoilers, and now those spoilers have aired.  And they went there!  They really, really went there! 

And it was revolting!

I also savored the schadenfreude when Canadian TV guide outed these spoilers to a rape advocacy group who then strong-armed ABC into airing not one, but three public service announcements about domestic abuse and rape following episodes focused on this storyline.

(Brief tutorial for anyone wondering what in the hell I'm talking about.:
 
OLTL is a daytime soap.  Seventeen years ago they penned a story about teenaged Marty Saybrooke drunk in a frat house.  A teenaged boy (Todd Manning) that she'd sexually rejected sought revenge on her by locking her in his room and raping her.  Then he goaded two other fraternity brothers into raping her as well. It was realtively graphic and extremely realistic.  It was horrifying. 

Cut to now: seventeen years later. Marty had suffered brain damage in a car accident and had become basically a blank slate.  Through various circumstances, Todd happened across her and decided to use and mislead her in order  to seek revenge on Marty's son and Marty's boyfriend.  Said son and boyfriend were led to believe that Marty was dead. In this storyline, Todd has manipulated Marty into falling in love with him while painting himself to her as woebegone and misunderstood.  His 'evil' wife left him (she kicked him out of the house when he tossed their daughter down a flight of stairs). His 'evil' ex-wife 'stole' his children (she was granted custody because... did I mention that he tossed his daughter down a flight of stairs?)  Todd presented himself as heroic, nurturing and misunderstood and the show had Marty fall for all of it.  And then... they went one step too far.  The show had Marty sleep with him. Cue fandom outrage.  Cue rape victim advocacy group outrage.  Cue my outrage!  I refused to watch the consummation of this storyline. )

The thing is...  (gulp)  The thing is, the fall out from this has actually been kind of sickly fascinating.  (I feel ashamed to admit that).

They had someone tell Marty the truth about Todd almost immediately afterward and the actress rocked the reaction.  Her revulsion and fury were huge... and kind of magnificent to behold. It was root-worthy as she brandished a gun around and threatened to kill him. And her boyfriend -- who I've never liked -- beating the absolute shit out of Todd is probably the first time I've ever rooted for that boyfriend character.  Hell, I even sort of liked the way the boyfriend stood to the side and did nothing to stop Marty from waving the gun around threatening to kill Todd. She'd earned it.  And his "WTF?  Todd, I thought you were nuts, but you. are. nuts!!!" faces as he was told the breathtaking magnitude of Todd's lies and manipulations were totally hilarious.

But that's not even the really sickly fascinating part. The thing that kind of leaves me watching with my mouth hanging open is that somehow, some way Todd has actually convinced himself that he 'loves' Marty, that she's his 'soulmate' and that she had 'changed' him... and -- WHOA! -- I think Todd has at long last totally and completely broken from reality.  Because what he's done is a few worlds away from even really dysfunctional 'love'.  It's sick.  And... it's kind of fascinating to watch (or would be if I was certain that the show wasn't just yanking our chains in recognizing just how twisted and sick this is.)

This last week has been a series of people confronting Todd with varying degrees of outrage.  From Marty's son threatening to smother Todd (who is in the hospital due to the smackdown beating of Marty's boyfriend) in his hospital bed with a pillow.   To his ex-wife visiting him and telling him that he's the scum of the earth who will never have access to her children ever again. To his favored teenaged daughter (the one he tossed down the stairs) confronting him over all of this.  This seventeen year old actress has been on the show since she was literally four years old, and thus has grown up before the audience's eyes as 'daddy's little girl' who, due to her age and idolization never really, really got on a visceral level how reprehensible her father truly was.  She knew his misdeeds, but she loved him.  She kicked him out of her life after he tossed her down the stairs, but she'd still occasionally voiced hopes that he'd change and she could love him again.  And, while this teen actress isn't particularly strong in many cases, she was quite convincing the other day as she this "OMG! My father is really, really fucked in the head!" expression as she listened to him say that he 'loved' Marty and that she'd changed him and that she was the perfect, most wonderful thing to have ever enterred his life. It was like watching every illusion the child had be stripped away as she heard her father's totally batshit bullshit.  And yesterday, Todd's sister arrived in his hospital room to read him the riot act and correctly identify him as a pathological narcissist while pinpointing not only his crime against Marty, but what he had done to his daughter, to [i]her[/i] daughters, and how ludicrously, impossibly screwed up Todd is.

And these scenes have all had a great deal of impact, as the confrontation with his daughter and his sister -- his perennial support system through whatever batshit he'd done over the years -- were long overdue.  They had been his safety net and his enablers through whatever insane thing he'd done. . . in the past.

And all of this sounds like support for the storyline, but I tell you, as fascinating as it is to watch his enablers at long last turn away, as much as it seems clear that the show realizes that Todd is not okay.  It seems like they've written him as at long last having had something close to a psychotic break because he isn't tethered tightly to this world but has gone into whole sale construction alternative one with a population of only himself.  As much as it seems that the show gets that he's one sick fuck...  I don't trust 'em.  Reading writer interviews, I doubly don't trust them.  I'm not sure that having riled substantial portions of their fan base, the media, and a couple of victim advocacy groups that they aren't having characters correctly identify that he is abusive as CYA action, while still planning to have Marty be the soulmate who 'understands' the 'real' Todd beneath all his batshit crazy narcissistic and abusive nature.  I fear this.  I truly do. And it robs the satisfaction out of the long overdue moments where his usual support system crumbles out from under him. It also robs the fascination of seeing Todd exposed as being truly batshit crazy, because... are they really?  It seems like the show has reached a tipping point with the character where they've concluded that this time he really is full-gone nuts.  But... I don't trust them.

However, at least for the moment it's been bizarrely, almost sickeningly fascinating watching Todd completely lose hold of what is real because as much as he's deceived everyone around him, the person he's deceiving most at the moment is himself.

That said, honestly, I don't know where in the hell they go from here.  At this point, they should just kill Todd off or ship him to a prison for the criminally insane (and not cushy St. Anne's sanitorium with the oh-so-lovable and sympathetically crazy, Iraq war vet with post traumatic stress syndrome Brody.  With Brody it's easy to believe that beneath the post-traumatic stress issues, he's a genuinely good guy who deserves to find health and peace, whereas with Todd, after seventeen years without any sustained improvement, I think it's okay to say that he is bad to the bone.   I really think the show should bite the bullet and kill Todd off.  There's little left to be mined from the character.