Developments!

Okay, so I haven't finished that post I've been working on this week and which I'd hoped to post last night. Right now I'm between classes, but I had to log on and post the news. After months of no development, it seems like there may finally be some movement in the Luke storyline on ATWT!

In yesterday's episode, they actually mentioned for the first time since last fall that Luke is gay. Not only that, they actually based a story around it! It wasn't much, but it was a start. It was great to see Luke on our screens again, and it got even better when Lily actually asked her son how school was going. Luke's response was that she's got to stop asking that question like she expects him to say that he was 'gay bashed between fourth and fifth periods'.

Finally a mention of how things are going at school for Luke, though not a very revealing one. Still, some foreshadowing of a story to come, perhaps? We'll see.

The real action of the day was when Holden's newly returned cousin Brad Snyder came over for dinner. Brad noticed that the place looked different and Holden explained that they'd had a fire and had to redecorate.

Brad: Did you do it yourself? Or did you get some queer type to do it?

Uh, oh. At that point, Luke wasn't in the room yet, but he walked in just in time to hear Lily beg Brad's pardon and Brad respond by using a fake effeminate voice and a limp wristed gesture:

Brad: Well, I mean, no insult, the place, it looks great. I just figured that you maybe got someone who was, you know -- Fabulous with fabrics and colors.

Luke seemed calm (does this indicate the sort of thing he's dealing with on a daily basis at school?) but Lily was livid. She told Brad that what he'd said was offensive and if he was going to talk like that, he could leave her home. She also demanded an apology.

Brad: Okay, sure, yeah. If you want. But, I mean, what did I say that was so bad? I mean, do you have something against gay decorators?

At that point, Brad's brother Jack grabbed him and drug him outside while Lily looked like she was about to go nuclear on him. Outside, Jack filled Brad in.

Brad: Luke is gay? Why didn't somebody tell me?

Jack: Well it just never occurred to me that you would start spouting off like some kind of homophobe in the middle of a party.

Brad: I'm not a homophobe. I mean some of my best friends are gay. I just didn't know. Wow, cousin Holden, he's got a son who's light in the loafers.

Jack: Brad, please!

Brad: You know what, now that you mention it, I should have seen it right off.

Jack: Would just shut -- stop, shut your mouth!

Back inside, Luke tried to calm his mother down.

Luke: People say things. And sometimes they think about it first and sometimes they don't. But I have to learn to handle that. Mom, you're not always going to be there to run interference.

Lily: Did you expect me to just stand there and take that, from that bigot?

Holden: Lily, there's a happy medium between shutting the guy down and going off on him.

Lily: He insulted our son!

Holden: He didn't know that Luke is gay.

Lily: So that makes it right?

Holden: He wasn't trying to be malicious.

Lily: I don't want him here. No, never again.

Luke: Mom, mom we really don't have to go there. I mean the guy's willing to apologize.

Holden: Brad, he can be rude, but his heart's is in the right place. He loves his family.

Lily: Did that sound like love to you, Holden?

The show wrote it as an overreaction on Lily's part (she's been taking diet pills in secret to lose post-pregnancy, post-coma weight and they're messing with her moods apparently) and I suppose it was one, to some extent. I just would have preferred it to be an overreaction based on her own strong feelings, though, rather than diet pills. I happened to like the way Lily reacted to encountering homophobia for the first time since she accepted Luke for who he was, especially since she was encountering it in her own living room. I think it shows the fierce love she has for her son and her own lingering guilt for her treatment of him after he came out. I was cheering her on, to be honest.

At any rate, that's where the show left things yesterday. Hopefully more will happen today. It's nice to see the show dealing with an issue like this sort of casual negativity towards gays that many encounter within their own families and among their friends both before and after coming out. Not to mention in society and in the movies, television, and music.

Things could be looking up for Luke, especially since according to AfterElton.Com, the powers that be at the Network have confirmed to them that Luke will have increasing visibility over the next months as he helps his family deal with their problems (Lily's diet pills, his little sister's newly developed eating disorder that stems for Lily's reaction to her own weight gain) and that it's all leading up to Luke GETTING A BOYFRIEND this spring! Yes, the powers that be actually confirmed that Luke is getting a boyfriend, and that the storyline is 'being written now'. Check out the article here.

As if all this wasn't enough, Passions, the worst soap on TV (which won't be on much longer, since it's been canceled and will finish it's eight year run this summer) is actually taking a storyline chance that daytime has never done before. If the writing on the show wasn't so spectacularly awful (thanks, James E. Reilly!) I'd be more happy about this development, but I'll share it with you anyway. For months, viewers have been in on the fact that main character Chad, who is one half of Chad & Whitney, a couple fans have rooted for years for and who are finally together & married, is having an affair with a mystery person.

Well, at the end of this week, viewers will learn that Chad's lover is another man! It won't be until the end of February that viewers find out who the man is, but Chad (who is African American) has apparently been 'on the down low' with another man for months. Is this daytime's first truly bisexual male character, then? If so, that's huge.

Well, the actor who plays Chad claims that the storyline was a surprise but "Chad loves his wife, so in his heart this isn't a deception. He is not in love with this other guy. He's addicted to sex."

Oh! I see. So straight sex addicts seek out gay sex with long term secret lovers? This may just be the actor's own reaction to the story, but with James E. Reilly writing the storyline, God only knows what the end result will be. This is the man who punished a female character on Days of Our Lives for having an abortion by having her lose everything- her man, her ability to have children- and then had her forgiven by a vision of the Virgin Mary!

I somehow doubt, given Reilly's track record, that this will be a positive storyline for the glbt community. But we'll see. Like I said, I'd be more excited by this storyline if the person writing it was less of a hack mired in 1950's morality, at least where female characters are concerned. But maybe he'll surprise us on this one and go out with some dignity?

I'm so late for class!