Tag Archives: soap opera

Out — In Finland!

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Petteri Paavola (left) is out teen Elias and Ronny Roslöf is closeted hockey player Lari in the Finnish series Salatut Elämät.

I first wrote about the Finnish soap Salatut Elämät  back at the beginning of January. Since that time, my original post has been read hundreds and hundreds of times (thanks, btw) and is rarely not one of the most viewed pages of the week here on my little cranky corner of the Web.

YouTube user missfinlandia88, who has been captioning the storyline of Elias and Lari that has caught on with English speakers from around the world, informs us that today’s episode — a good soapy cliffhanger — ends the series until it comes back from its annual hiatus in September. For all you “Larias” fans today’s cut from what I call “Lots of Umlauts” will have to tide you over for the summer!

More Sands Through the Gay Hourglass — Revisiting and Revising

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[Jan. 17, 2014 — Follow-up and update: ‘Sonny Skies’ ...]

In the U.K., “to revise” means “to study” and in the U.S., “to revise” means “to reconsider or change.” In revising this post, I kept BOTH definitions in mind.

Plow through. You need to read the next couple of paragraphs before I get to the point.

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Chandler Massey, Blake Berris and Freddie Smith in a scene from “Days of our Lives,” May 2013.

THE PLOT — In a nutshell, here’s a front burner plotline from the NBC serial drama, Days of our Lives: Sonny Kiriakis and Will Horton meet and fall in love. Right before they get together, Will sleeps with his high school girlfriend, Gabi, and she becomes pregnant. Will and Sonny break up, then they get back together. Gabi meets and marries ex-con Nick Fallon. Nick conspires to blackmail Will into giving up his parental rights to Gabi’s baby. Nick is blatantly hostile to Will and Sonny and uses extremely homophobic language around them.

Will and Sonny follow Nick and Gabi and a suspicious third person to an island (off of the mythical shoreline of Salem?) and realize that they are being kidnapped. Creating a ruse, Sonny draws their kidnapper, Jensen, from a shack. Sonny and Will come back and Sonny leaves with a very pregnant Gabi. Will tries to untie Nick, fails, and is shot by the returning Jensen.

Sonny delivers Gabi’s baby (during scenes both poignant and hilarious — Smith is a gifted comedian). Hope Brady, a cop, bursts into the shack and kills Jensen. Gabi and Will are airlifted to the hospital in separate choppers. Will’s life is saved. Gabi’s baby lives. We learn that Jensen repeatedly beat up and raped Nick in prison. Nick is sorry for everything he did to Sonny and Will and makes the hospital put Will’s name on the birth certificate. Will meets his daughter. May sweeps ends.

How’s that  for typical soap opera plotting?

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Chandler Massey as Will Horton and Freddie Smith as Will’s boyfriend Sonny Kiriakis at Will’s bedside after surgery on “Days of our Lives,” May 2013. In the background, Alison Sweeney and Bryan Dattilo as Will’s parents, Sami and Lucas, look on.

THE POINT — But, here’s the thing: I have watched these scenes over and over again. Why? Because I think Chandler Massey (Will), Freddie Smith (Sonny) and Blake Berris (Nick) may just be the finest trio of young actors on television.

They are all powerhouse performers. Berris, who plays the often malevolent, borderline sociopathic and ultra-intelligent Nick Fallon, and Massey, who plays the tortured Will Horton, forever trying to overcome his upbringing at the hands of his manipulative and inept parents, get the majority of the attention, but for my two cents, it’s been Smith who has shone the brightest recently.

Massey, who won an Emmy for this role last year is a favorite to take it again this year, but two things may work to thwart him. One, the television Academy tends not to award the same performer in the same role in sequential years and two, this year Smith is nominated opposite him. It may be Smith’s time to shine, even though I do think Massey had the stronger reel.  Still I’m rooting for Smith. If he doesn’t walk away with the statue this year, he certainly has the reel to submit for next season’s Emmys based on his recent performances.

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Freddie Smith as good guy Sonny Kiriakis on NBC’s “Days of our Lives.” Smith’s performance is devoid of artifice, making Sonny a relatable and likable hero.

It’s hard to play the “White Knight,” but Smith is astonishingly good at it. Since the character was SORASed and reintroduced in June 2011, Sonny has emerged as a genuine good guy. He’s intelligent, confident, loyal, has a conscious and just a touch of a swagger. He is also completely in love with the flawed Will Horton, whom he never doubted was the right choice, in spite of plenty of doubt seeded by his own mother, among others.

The thing that I find so refreshing about Smith’s characterization is that Sonny could very easily be portrayed as someone who is unbelievably too good, but Smith adds the right amount of self-deprication into his performance that it works.

Last week, as Will recovered from gunshot wounds, Smith delivered a series of soliloquies at Will’s bedside that were masterstrokes of both writing and acting. There’s a refreshing realism to Smith’s performance. He makes you believe that Sonny Kiriakis really exists. You can’t watch those scenes and not understand how much he loves Will Horton. That’s not only a breath of fresh air, it’s pretty much the definition of superlative acting.

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Will Horton and Sonny Kiriakis — fans use the portmanteau WilSon — the cutest couple in Salem.

In November, TV Guide  noted, “While it took 45 years for the show [DOOL] to introduce it first openly gay character (Sonny) and another year and a half to find him a male partner (Will) the wait was well worth it. This steamy, star-crossed saga has had its drama to spare (Paranoia, Blackmail, Impossible Parents!), but its success lies in the fresh easy charm of these young men.”

I agree with that. I also stand by my original thesis, that this is a hackneyed plot, but the aftermath, with Nick, Gabi, Will and Sonny dealing with the aftereffects of Nick’s prison rape, may prove an interesting twist. I only hope the writing remains excellent for the duo and that Will and Sonny have plenty of screen time in the future.

[Update: This show surprised me. Bravo. See I Do…]

New Kids on the Block — All My Children, That Is.

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Emmy Award-winning actress Cady McClain returns to serial drama and to one of her signature roles, Dixie Cooney Martin on the online reboot of All My Children. Photo: cadymcclain.com.

Here’s a cut from Cady McClain. It’s a terrific piece and any soap fan should take a few moments and read it and think about what she’s saying.

I want to talk about the new young people on All My Children, and why I think (and hope) the audience should give them a chance.  I am not known for blowing smoke up anybodies hoo-ha, right? Let’s just start with that as a baseline for this conversation!

via Let’s Talk About the Kids (of All My Children!) | Cady McClain.

Alert readers will not be surprised at all to learn that I am an enormous fan of continuing drama and what a powerful medium I believe it to be. I also believe that we are just at the beginning of a new era wherein we can harness the Internet as a new platform to tell stories. We don’t know quite how to do it yet, and that makes it exciting. It’s just as exciting as when the pioneers of television — like Irna Phillips — were figuring out how to take Papa Bauer’s family from mythical radio Springfield to mythical television Springfield and make The Guiding Light into a television program that viewers watched.

Phillips had two protégés in those early television days — William J. Bell and Agnes Nixon. And as influential as Phillips was in early television, one could argue that Agnes Nixon has an even more powerful legacy of harnessing the power of continuing drama to tell stories that have tremendous social impact. In 1962, Nixon penned the story of Bert Bauer’s cancer scare on The Guiding Light, before you could say “cancer,” “uterus,” or “Pap smear” on television. On Another World, she created young troublemaker Rachel Davis, who was seen by many as the prototype for her most famous creation, Erica Kane on her landmark serial All My Children.

Erica Kane (Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler [almost Roy] Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marrick Marrick Montgomery) is the most popular character in the history of daytime drama in the U.S. Erica lied, cheated, cajoled, married, married, loved, lost, shocked the world, forced a bear to stand down, had daytime’s first legal abortion and, after 41 years on the air, she was still the most fascinating character ever created for television.

Skip to the point, please.

Fine. Here it is: people get wrapped up in soap operas. People begin to think of actors as the characters they play because they see them in their homes every single day. People get crazy obsessed. People don’t like some things ever to change.

Cady is making a tremendous case for the young people who are new to playing characters established in the previous broadcast incarnation of All My Children. She’s saying, “Approach this with an open mind. It’s different. But it’s good.” What I’m saying is a little less nice. I’m saying, “Change happens. Get the hell over it.” And if you can’t, don’t watch.

Eighty-five year old Agnes Nixon is working her ass off to deliver a product, a powerful story, in an untested medium. Prospect Park is investing millions of dollars in this experiment. Cady McClain and many of the “old guard” actors are putting their careers on the line for this new venture. The least you can do, if you are, in fact, a fan of All My Children, is to watch with an open mind. You might learn something. You might enjoy it.

And if you don’t? If this venture fails? Well, at least they tried. That’s what artists and innovators do. They try. Again and again and again. And no one thanks them enough for being fearless enough to try.

Me on online soap resurrections (with links to other serial related posts).

Me on annoying recent gay developments in daytime.

3/18/13 — Hulu just released their “Save The Date” trailer. Thought I’d stick it in if you haven’t seen it yet.