The brief but happy life of RoATWT

My sometime roommate, Kyle, kindly asked me to contribute to his blog, Vogue Republic. I've decided that this will be a more productive use of everybody's time. It'll also allow me to talk about other things, but mostly still As the World Turns.

Thanks for tuning in, and remember that ATWT airs daily at 2 pm, 1 pm central, on your local CBS Station.

Noah

Line of the Week

"You've had my husband, you've had my son; it's a good thing I never got a dog!"

-Margo Hughes to Emily Stewart over lunch, Monday 7/28/08

NEXT: Do Holden and Lily have a responsibility to keep their family together?

My Own Moral Compass

Recently, one of the more interesting storylines in ATWT was the revelation of the affair between Holden Snyder and his best-friend-and-cousin's ex-wife, Carly Tenney, who happened to be the best friend of Holden's wife, Lily. I shall now endeavour to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, the moral rightness of various actions taken since.

(1) Holden telling Lily about the affair. 8
(2) Lily attempting to run Carly over in her car. 2
(3) Carly promising never to see Holden again. 9
(4) Carly seeing Holden again. 3
(5) Lily yelling at Holden in front of hitherto-unaware daughter Faith. 5
(6) Luke comforting said Faith. 10
(7) Emma trying to get the family back together at the most awkward barbeque since the aptly named "Pasadena Meet the Mistress Barbeque" of Brothers & Sisters.* 8
(8) Parker calling Carly a "slut." 5

NEXT: Line of the week.

*Credit Kyle Mathews

Something for everyone: an ATWT tonight!

Last week, ATWT taught us all a valuable lesson about Republicans and Democrats. In one corner, we have the Republicans, the brothers Jack and Brad Snyder! In the other corner, we have the Democrats, Katie Peretti Frasier Coleman Kasnoff Snyder Snyder [sic] and Janet Ciccone!

To briefly summarise the relationships: Jack and Janet are sleeping together; Janet and Brad sired a daughter, Liberty, together; and Jack and Katie are married. (For the record, Jack and Katie were also married for about ten days last fall.) Jack is Parker's adoptive father.

The interesting part of the burgeoning romance between 17-year old Liberty and 15-year old Parker is their parents' reactions: both men can't countenance the idea of their children having sex (as though they were some kind of role models), and both women just give in, recognizing that there's not really anything they can do about it. The conversation is predictable (and somewhat paraphrased):

JANET: I'm going to take Liberty to the gynaecologist!
BRAD: Why?
JANET: Why do you think?
BRAD: I don't know! I'm not the brightest bulb in the wheelbarrow!
[...]
JANET: I gave Liberty birth control!
JACK: Why?
JANET: They were going to have sex anyway. I just made sure they had it safely!
BRAD: I'm going to kill Parker!
JACK: No, you just encouraged them to have sex!
KATIE: Look. She was looking out for her daughter. She didn't want Liberty to repeat her own mistakes.
BRAD: I'm going to kill Parker!

Meanwhile:

PARKER: Want to have sex?
LIBERTY: Sure! I have condoms!

So everybody wins. The conservatives can say that "giving condoms to children makes them have sex! Look at Liberty and Parker!" The liberals can say that "giving condom to children makes them have sex safely! Look at Liberty and Parker!"

This is the balancing act that the writers did really well with this story that they couldn't really come up with for Luke and Noah.

NEXT: Holden, Lily, and Carly. [This one might not come until Thursday. Apologies in advance.]

All the problems with Nuke, Part II

So what is it about homosexuality that makes it somehow worse than incest, adultery, divorce, and all the other bugaboos of traditional culture? What makes it so much more drastic that its depictions are completely taboo and practically unshowable on television, when we're given moderately graphic (at least by daytime standards) shots of Liberty, a 17-year old girl, putting a condom on Parker, her 15-year old cousin-by-adoption?

And what makes this homophobia so intrinsically American? On German daytime, the popular Seifenoper Verbotene Liebe, has much more graphic depictions of homosexual sex than anything we've even dreamt of seeing on ATWT. None of the other seven serials even has homosexual characters, whereas on British shows like EastEnders and Coronation Street they're par for the course.

I wish I had answers to the questions. To say that America is somehow more "conservative" or more "religious" than Europe is tautological but also a lame cop-out. But I struggle to come up with another one. Perhaps someone smarter than me has an answer they'd care to share?

NEXT: Why Jack and Brad are Republicans, and why Katie and Janet are Democrats

All the problems with Nuke

As I write this, I'm catching up on today's episode, and, having fallen a week behind, will be totally au courant.

It's only fair to begin the discussion of As the World Turns with the storyline that got me into the show in the first place last Thanksgiving. That would be, of course, the long-running relationship between Luke Snyder and Noah Mayer. Unfortunately, this is now the storyline that has absolutely nothing going for it.

Let's review. Since I started watching the show, the following are the dramatic points in the relationship between the two young men, when Luke was recovering after being attacked by Noah's homophobic father.

• The two looked for a place to live, settling on the Snyder Farm for Wayward Gay Teens, where Luke's grandmother Emma strictly forbids physical contact.
• Noah gets married to an Iraqi refugee to get her a green card.
• Said Iraqi refugee is supervised by the ICE, causing all sorts of shenanigans!
• Noah's father kidnaps the Iraqi to New York (taking 30 minutes to get there!); the boys chase after; lots of tedium; Noah's father is killed and the Iraqi leaves forever.
• Noah enlists for all of about 15 minutes.
• Cyndi Lauper helps the two reconcile, in a very special episode.

Notice what's missing here. Any form of sex whatsoever. In this time frame, the boys kiss twice. (And let's not even get into the now-infamous mistletoe moment, where the camera pans up as the two are about to kiss.) Meanwhile, let's see what's going on with the more heterosexual members of the cast:

• Brad Snyder and Katie Peretti have NSA sex solely for the purpose of making a baby.
  
• 38-year-old ex-prostitute newspaperwoman Emily Stewart and 22-year-old ex-con Casey Hughes fall in love and have repeated sex, never mind that Emily is the mother of Casey's half-brother and has also been in a relationship with Casey's uncle Chris.
• 15-year-old Parker Munson Snyder loses his virginity to his adoptive cousin Liberty Ciccone.
• Holden Snyder destroys his marriage by sleeping with his cousin Jack's ex-wife.
  

(More on all of these stories in later posts.)

I leave it to the reader to draw the obvious conclusions about P&G's real feelings about gay sex on network television. When the best the writers can come up with for a gay couple is Cyndi Lauper, I think the premise of their relationship needs a revisit.

NEXT: I'll look into this a little more.

Ohne diese Seifenoper kann ich nicht leben

Sitting in Toronto-Lester B Pearson Aeroport for the second day in a row, an addendum to the most recent post just occurred to me.

7. It never takes any time to go anywhere. Characters seemingly drive around Oakdale without losing any time whatsoever, making you wonder what sort of futuristic technology Worldwide (the international Trumpesque 30-billion dollar industry headquartered in Oakdale, though what exactly the company does is never really explained, though its ownership is usually highly disputed) invented. Similarly, trips from exurban Illinois to New York City take all of about 2 hours, judging from how quickly characters show up in Times Square. Sure, a few of the characters have private jets, but still. The point is that, in opposition to point 6, chronological realism is sacrificed in the name of compelling stories, even though the SLs when characters jaunt off to the city usually wind up being a waste.

NEXT: Luke and Noah, I swear.

12.30-4 pm

Before I get into the specific storylines of ATWT, such as Nuke, Janet/Jack, Parker/Liberty, Casey/Emily, and, oh my god, Lilden/Carly, I want to lay a few things out for those of you who may not be well acquainted with the soap genre.

1. There are currently eight bona fide soap operas on television: All My Children (ABC, 1 pm); As the World Turns (CBS, 2 pm); The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS, 1.30 pm); Days of our Lives (NBC, 2 pm); General Hospital (ABC, 3 pm); Guiding Light (CBS, 3 pm); One Life to Live (ABC, 2 pm); and The Young and the Restless (CBS, 12.30 pm). Passions, though still on the air on way-extended cable, doesn't count anymore.
2. Some soaps are still produced by the soap companies! ATWT, along with its sister GL, are still produced by Procter & Gamble Productions.
3. Perhaps because of (2), soap operas are a very conservative medium. There's little incentive to do particularly daring storylines because often more people are offended than is worthwhile. (E.g. the Luke Snyder/Noah Mayer storyline and the American Family Association)
4. Soap operas are produced five days a week for fifty-two weeks a year. The importance of this cannot be understated. In order to constantly come up with new situations, oftentimes they miss the mark (E.g. everything Sofie Duran ever participated in)
5. Actors constantly change. Because being a soap star requires an almost year-round commitment, and to keep up with the ever-present need for novelty, characters are constantly being introduced, SORASed (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome-ed), killed off, &c. Furthermore, characters are recast for a fresh face or to get a lower-paid actor in the role. (E.g. Martha Byrne's unceremonious dismissal from her longtime role as Lily Walsh Snyder)
6. Soaps revolve around huge families. ATWT has the Snyders and the Hughes. Days has the Blacks and the Bradys. These families form a complex web of marriage, sexual intrigue, and cousinhood. However, they firmly establish the baseline for the show and forge connections between the characters and the audience. There's something touching about seeing Holden Snyder (despite being embroiled in an illicit affair with his wife's best friend) taking the time to care about his sister Meg (who is the #1 suspect in the long-awaited murder of the aforementioned Sofie Duran.) The two storylines don't overlap, but the verisimilitude of Oakdale is established by the family ties. (This of course has nothing to do with the real life actors of Holden and Emily Stewart being married.) Luke and Noah may have drawn be to ATWT, but it's the families, in retrospect, that made me stay, even as Nuke drift off into meaningless drivel.

As I continue to analyse ATWT in the coming weeks and hopefully months, keep these things in mind.

NEXT: The obligatory post about why Luke and Noah have become so disappointing.

Like sands through an hourglass, so does the World Turn.

So this blog came about during my excessive time-wasting reading of the so-called Yale "Mafia." Being still unemployed, I figure I have nothing better to do than watch daytime television and post some thoughts--if indeed they deserve the name--on what I've seen.

Before I get into this, I'd like to credit a few people. First, former actual roommate Kyle, who I give full credit for getting me into the wonderous world of small-town-with-skyscrapers-(a.k.a. Brooklyn)-but-also-farms-(a.k.a. New Jersey) Oakdale and As the World Turns. Second, to steal a term, quasi-"house"mate Dara, who, though not actually sharing a house, spent enough nights sleeping on my couch over the last year to qualify for at least "quasi-" level. Third, Meredith M. Morrison, who only encouraged me in my habit; she will always be Liberty to my Janet (of both of whom, more in a later post).

For my first week, or so, I'd like to apologise in advance. I've been in Canada, so have been unable to watch the Snyders, Hughes, et al., but hope to catch up as quickly as possible, if the CBS Media Player is good to me, which it rarely is. So I'm a bit behind on the storylines (SL), but I still have plenty to say.