I've been wrong about a few things. I was wrong to predict that As the World Turns would keep the Gay Luke storyline on their front burner through February sweeps and I was wrong to predict that General Hospital would backburner Lucas. In the last week or so, we've barely seen Luke. Holden hinted that he and Lily hadn't forgotten about his recent behavior (the drinking, the breaking of curfew, the plowing down pedestrians – all of it), but never followed through on his veiled threat, at least on camera.
Meanwhile, Lucas got two big scenes. Sad news: Lucas's father, Tony, succumbed to the brain fever. I visit the boards, so I knew this was coming, but I still cried like a little girl. Brad Maule's not a bad actor at all and he really went for it in his death scene. (Reportedly, Maule was ready to go. He hadn't had anything to do since the late '90s and the occasional pop-in to comment on the odd G.S.W. or case of amnesia was kind of beneath him. Maule played what was arguably the best single scene in GH's history, when he turned off life support on his young daughter, B.J. He also played my personal favorite, a few years later: with his life on the skids after carrying on a torrid and disgusting affair with a young woman he later learned was his stepdaughter, Tony confronted his ex-wife Bobbie and her new boyfriend at the Nurses' Ball [an annual AIDS fundraiser and no, not what it sounds like] in words that I will never forget as long as I live: “When you grow tired of her, you must try the daughter. There is a talent that runs through this family. Weh weh weh weh WEH.”) Lucas was with his father when he died, and one of the last things Tony did before B.J. came to usher him through the Veil was to endorse Lucas's sexuality, a second time, in even stronger terms.
I was wrong about Ben Hogestyn, too. He did a very nice job with the tears, especially in his other scene, in which his Uncle Luke said the same nice things Tony had said twice, only in weird, vaguely Libertarian Luke-speak.
As good as all of that was, it paled in comparison to the rest of the goings-on on GH. The doctors have turned the titular wacky hospital into some kind of splinter republic, even establishing a “council of doctors” to determine who gets to live and who gets to die. This lasted about a day before they elected a dictator, super-hunky Dr. Patrick Drake (Jason Thompson). Dr Drake's power grab had all the weight of, and, obviously, the exact same logic as, Drew Barrymore telling Jena Malone where to sit in Donnie Darko.
This whole Gay Soap Teen Watch has been a massive failure, though. I'm now recording three hours of daytime drama per day. In addition to ATWT and GH, I'm now recording All My Children, because that “A Lot of People Are Going to Die” promo caught me and because Friday's episode, in which the entire town of Pine Valley has turned up for this masque ball, was so good. This is on top of my regular viewing, plus work, plus school -- I guess I'm supposed to be studying or something? -- Peter
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