What’s the Matter With Kids Today, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

February 27, 2010 Martha Thomases 0 Comments

SPOILER ALERT:  This column discusses recent episodes of the ABC soap opera, All My Children.  Those of you who, like Dr. Davis, record the program for later viewing, may wish to skip this week.  I’ll try to prattle on a bit about a few other subjects so that you have time to avert your eyes.

As I write this, the Health Care Reform Revue is live on the news networks.  It’s tempting to write about that, but it’s too depressing.  People are dying in this country because of a lack of affordable health insurance, and our elected officials are making sure their spray tans are applied evenly.

Across the street from my apartment, the Village Nursing Care folks are building a new structure.  They are on the seventh floor, so every morning, when the jackhammers wake me up before the cat realizes what time it is, I see men working at my eye level.  Since it is February, they are, unfortunately, wearing clothing on their upper torsos.

As if all of this isn’t enough to induce despair, Thorsten Kaye is no longer on All My Children.

I started to watch All My Children in the early 1980s.  Up until that point, I had nothing but disdain for soaps, thinking they were dangerous, anti-feminist propaganda that pandered to ignorant housewives.  Educated housewives, like my mother, preferred to watch game shows.  However, when my friend, Norris, landed a part, I tuned in to do my part to increase ratings so she’d get hired more often.

And I was hooked.  I loved watching Phoebe and Palmer verbally bitch-slap each other.  I laughed hysterically when Susan Lucci was presented as a high-fashion model, even though she is shorter than I am.  Tad “The Cad” Martin enchanted me as he discovered sex like he was the first person to ever experience it.  I watched religiously until 1987, when my newly acquired day-job made it impossible.

Other soaps, which I sampled, never appealed to me.  I have no explanation as to why this should be.  Pine Valley, a small town in rural Pennsylvania with an international airport, a beach, and a transporter beam to New York City (there’s no other explanation as to how residents could get through the tunnels so quickly), was the place for me.

Thank you, SoapNet.  In 2000, I discovered that the cable network re-ran that day’s episodes in prime-time, when I was home.  Suddenly, I could re-connect with the Chandlers, the Martins, the Strong Kane Women.  I could try to figure out who these new characters were.

I loved Josh Duhamel as Leo, and David Izarry as the evil David Hayward.  I was less impressed with Ryan Lavery (although Cameron Mattheson, who plays the part, is adorable).  He was so angry.  He was so self-righteous.  Every time he made a mistake, he found another character to blame.  He broke Kendall’s heart, and I liked her best of all..

Naturally, I was delighted when Kendall, played by Alicia Minshew, found someone who would love her without abusing her verbally.  Zach Slater, played by the glorious Thorsten Kaye (pictured) may or may not be a crime boss, but he’s loyal, and he plays with his kids.    And he has the most wonderful burr to his voice, which you can best when he’s the voice-over who says, “All My Children will return in a moment.”

When All My Children stopped filming in New York and moved to Los Angeles, a lot of the actors didn’t move, including Alicia Minshew and Thorsten Kaye.  I thought I might be able to cut the cord.  However, there is now a plot-line that is such a trainwreck that I can’t stop looking at it.

Ryan and Greenlee are supposed to be a super-couple.  This doesn’t mean that they have powers (except, apparently, to wake up after a night of sex with perfectly coiffed hair and expert make-up).  Instead, we are supposed to believe that their love is perfect. When they originally hooked up, they were okay.  A little bit too aggressively adorable, but okay.

Then Ryan faked his death.  Then Greenlee went away.  Then Greenlee came back and they were in love again.  Then Greenlee died, except not really.  While she was in a coma, Ryan slept with her best friend and her best friend’s mother, who is also the grandmother to one of his children.

Soaps, right?  Not only not normal, but not particularly imitatable.  Like Saturday morning cartoons, the viewers understand that this is not real life.

Only lately, it’s been even more creepy.  Greenlee came back, and discovered that Ryan had not allowed a respectable mourning period after her presumed demise.  Angry, she decided to marry David, her former brother-in-law.  Ryan then kidnapped her.

That’s the creepiest part.  She was drugged, kidnapped, and, when she woke up, Ryan was sitting on the bed staring at her.  She tried to get away, but he had locked the door.  In fact, he had rented a castle (yeah, I know, in Pennsylvania) and they were the only people there.  He remembered it was her birthday.  He had prepared her favorite foods.

And he wasn’t going to let her go until she promised to do what he told her to do.

Maybe in the world of soaps, this is how one expresses true love.  In the rest of the world, I’d call it stalking.  And just as women might enjoy rape fantasies because, ultimately, it’s their fantasy and they’re in control, maybe some women enjoy stalker fantasies.

Or maybe that’s the thinking of male television executives (and the producers and programmers of daytime television are, for the most part, male).  I don’t think they understand.   The appeal of a rape fantasy, to a woman, is that she is so desirable that men cannot physically control themselves around her.

There isn’t a real parallel to stalkers.  I mean, my husband knows me better than anyone else, so he knows my favorite foods, and my birthday.  He knows the part of my back that I can’t reach that itches most.  But he doesn’t prove this by locking me up and demanding that I do what he says.

That’s not love.  That’s slavery.  And that’s not fantasy, that’s terror.

—
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, wonders if Thorsten Kaye would work on the construction site across the street this summer.