At Long Last, Love?

I just got home from a pretty tedious day at work and was feeling kind of gloomy when I got online and saw the news that at long last, As The World Turns is officially giving Luke Snyder a love interest. Finally! Things have been so bleak on the soap front lately that I've actually been wanting to just stop watching altogether. Soaps today increasingly seem to exist to insult the intelligence and try the patience of their few remaining viewers. But, maybe there is still hope.

It remains to be seen how well the story is done, but this will still be Daytime TV's first gay teen couple and that's pretty exciting. Plus, finally, Van Hansis will have something to do as Luke!

Actor Jake Silberman has been cast in the role of Noah, Luke's love interest, and will debut on May 31st. That's still two looooong months away, but at least the role has finally been cast!

Jake attended the Glaad Awards last night with co-stars Van Hansis and Jennifer Landon (who plays Gwen Munson), and I've included a picture of them below. Jake is on the left and Van is on the right. Luke & Noah will make a cute couple, so let's hope they get a really great, fully developed storyline this summer and become Daytime's first gay supercouple!

An Emmy Nomination for Van and Continued Lack of Real Story for Luke

I hope everyone is having a good Saturday. I also hope everyone who can is planning to join a march or some other demonstration between now and Tuesday, which is of course the fourth anniversary of the beginning of this whole travesty in Iraq.

Well, this week the Daytime Emmy nominations were announced and I'm really happy to report that Van Hansis received a nod for Best Younger Actor for playing Luke on As the World Turns. The Best Younger Actor/Actress awards are for those who are under 25 years old. If he were nominated again next year, it would have to be as a Supporting or Lead Actor since Van turned 25 last September. Of course, to be nominated next year, he'd have to be given something to do this year!

I'm really glad that Van was nominated. He has done such an amazing job bringing Luke to life and making the viewers care about this character. It's largely due to his performance that there's even a chance Luke might eventually have a boyfriend on the show, since it would have been all too easy for the show to ditch the character (as we've seen with numerous other gay characters, most lately Lucas on General Hospital) if Van hadn't succeeded in making the audience care the way he has.

The coming out storyline was incredible and Van did a beautiful job that deserves both the nomination and the award itself.

Even when Van is relegated to the background of a scene, he's completely in character as Luke. For instance, at the big New Year's Eve party, Van provided nothing more than scenery in the background, but there was a moment where Casey Hughes, a good looking character Luke's own age, walked by him and Luke checked him out as he passed. It was subtle and exactly how Luke would have acted. There's no way that was in the script.

So, congratulations to Van for a well deserved nomination. Hopefully by the time the Emmys air in June, Luke will be involved in a new storyline on the show.

There was a lot of buzz about a story that started this past week, but I'm far from pleased with what we've seen so far. First of all, it's clearly going to be another mini-story that wraps up in a few episodes, rather than an actual storyline. And secondly, it's not even really about Luke, it's about propping up another character.

Back when Luke had those great scenes with his grandmother Lucinda, in which they talked about how school is going for him this year, he mentioned that his essay had been nominated for the Devilibus Award but that he wasn't sure that the teacher who'd be making the final decision liked him much.

Well, this week we found out that the award, which Luke was apparently expected to win by everyone who'd read his essay, was given to another student. Luke played the matter down to his mother, but his cousin Brad overheard their conversation.

Now, you'll remember that Brad made some off the cuff homophobic comments when he first came to town a couple of months ago. At the beginning of this new episode, Luke and Brad were carrying some boxes for Lily and Brad complimented Luke on being able to manage the heavy boxes, since 'guys like you' aren't into that sort of thing.

Luke really let Brad have it, which was nice to see. Luke has always been a bit too understanding about other people's negative reactions to his sexuality, in my view. This time, he wasn't putting up with it for a second and made it clear that he didn't give a damn what Brad thought about him or about anything else.

Of course, the scene was played up to make Brad look misunderstood. He'd just meant that Luke was into 'school and books' instead of manual labor. Which is ridiculous, by the way, because Luke helps out on his Grandma Emma's farm all the time and Brad must know that. Luke is also a star on the basketball team. The idea that Brad sees him as being completely bookish isn't believable, yet it wasn't played like a cover. We're supposed to think "Poor Brad, he didn't mean it that way!" Please.

At any rate, once Brad found out that Luke lost the award, he questioned his cousin and found out that Mr. Ledoux, the teacher who'd been in charge of deciding who won the Devilibus Award, had decided that the award should be given not just to the best essay, but to the person who best represented the school, which of course wouldn't be an openly gay student.

If this story had truly been about Luke, we would have seen Luke and Mr. Ledoux playing out the scene in which Luke found out he'd lost and his teacher told him why. Instead, we hear it all second hand because the story was really about propping up the character of Brad and showing that, hey, he might make inappropriate comments, but really, he's just a stand up guy deep down!

Please. The character is disgusting and annoying (and badly acted; ATWT has one of the most talented casts in daytime, so it is beyond me why they went and hired Austin Peck, the wooden 'actor' recently fired by Days of Our Lives after years of 'acting' by taking his shirt off to distract from his painful lack of talent) and they're trying to use Luke's popularity to make the audience like him.

So, instead of seeing Luke dealing with the homophobia of this teacher and the loss of an award which really meant something to him, we get a couple of Luke & Brad scenes and then it becomes all about Brad luring this teacher down to the TV studio (where Brad's become a co-host of Oakdale Now, a local talk show) on the pretense of winning a Teacher of the Year award and getting him to confess that he'd given the essay award to someone else because Luke was gay.

After months of not seeing Luke doing anything but standing in the background at party scenes, it's nice to be seeing him more regularly. But Van Hansis is incredibly talented and they're completely wasting him by not giving Luke a real story of his own! I would much rather have seen Luke finding out he'd lost the award, and why. Those scenes would have been excellent, I'm sure.

What's more, not every story about Luke has to be about him being gay, and I don't think Passanante grasps that. That doesn't mean that they forget the character is gay, of course, but just that the stories don't have to all revolve around people's reactions to his sexuality. Other teens on the show have dealt recently with issues like gambling addiction and sexual abuse, things which had nothing to do with the characters being straight. They dealt with these things while being in relationships, too.

There is still no casting announcement on Luke's potential boyfriend, the storyline which was supposed to begin this Spring, according to what Jean Passanante told AfterElton.com.

While the show received several acting nominations this week, it should be noted that there were no nominations for the writing, and is it any wonder? Get it together, ATWT.

Meanwhile, I should note that over on All My Children the other week, J.R. Chandler was somewhat redeemed after the fact when he had an epiphany about how wrong it was of him to leave Zoe lying beaten in the cemetery. It was too little too late, in my view. Those disgusting scenes turned me off the character of J.R. completely, and off of the show, too. I didn't tune in at all this past week.

I did see that Zoe was beginning the process of becoming a woman, which included a pretty realistic consultation with a doctor and the realization that this is going to be a drawn out process with very real risks, and not something that can happen overnight. She also met with a support group of other transgendered people, played by actors who are transgendered in real life, which I thought was a nice touch.

I may try and follow this storyline a bit more now that the hideous Headwriter of the show, Megan McTavish, has been fired. This is the woman who decided that it would be a cool idea to undo Erica's abortion, destroying a television milestone in the process. Now that she's been shown the door, the show may be easier to watch. It depends, of course, on who they hire to replace her. I'm hoping for someone with some fresh, bold ideas who will also respect and utilize the history of the show in a productive way.

That's always the hope, of course. The reality is that daytime writing has become so stale because these shows keep recycling writers. Get fired from one show, and another scoops you up. Hell, you can be fired from the same show multiple times! This was McTavish's THIRD time as Headwriter of AMC.

I guess we won't see much advancement in ratings and story quality until networks are willing to hire new writers and- even more importantly- to let those writer's tell their stories without interference.

Great Scenes on ATWT, Stunt Kissing on Passions

As I wrote in my last post, As the World Turns is in serious need of some fresh talent in the Headwriter's chair. The show is seriously boring these days, and where has Luke been for the last six months? It's truly become Must-Fast-Forward-TV

But just when I'm seriously starting to despair, along come a few great scenes that remind me of why I love the character of Luke so much and of all the potential that exists with him. Last month, it was the scenes between Luke & his grandmother, Lucinda, in one episode that kept hope alive. Things have more or less been quiet since then, though, and I was beginning to get restless again.

But then today they really hit it out of the park, if you'll forgive the baseball metaphor, with some fantastic scenes between Luke and his father Holden. During the coming out storyline, the scenes between Jon Hensley as Holden and Van Hansis as Luke were some of the best I'd ever seen, and these two continue to have something special onscreen as father & son when they're given something to do.

In today's show, Holden & Luke were working together to fix Emma's tractor (Emma being Luke's other grandmother) and the conversation turned to spring break. Luke had been looking forward to the Senior spring break trip to Florida since he was a freshman, so when he told Holden that he wasn't going it came as something of a shock to him. When pressed for a reason why, Luke finally admited that he's tired of pretending to be having a good time when he's not. Not surprisingly, Holden's first worry was that Luke isn't being accepted by his friends at school.

Luke assured his father that his friends are okay with him, and those that aren't, well, it's their loss, not Luke's. Holden couldn't see what the problem was, then, and Luke finally came out with it:

Luke: No, look, I'm not trying to cut you out, dad. It's just -- spring break. Okay? It's all about hooking up. I mean, it's already started. Everyone's -- everyone's checking everybody else out. Figuring out who is going to get with who. And I don't have anyone. The idea of spending a week in Florida while everybody else is hooking up is not exactly my idea of a good time.

Holden: I get it. It's okay. You don't want to go.

Luke: No dad, I do want to go, it's just --

Holden: Luke, I get it. I just don't want you to think that you can't talk to me about what you're going through.

Luke: Did you talk to your parents about your sex life?

Holden: No.

Luke: No.

Holden: No, not exactly. But the point is, I don't want you to think that I'm second-guessing your choices. This is not easy. It's a small town.....

The balance between Holden trying to reach out to his son and let him know that he was okay with talking about these things, and Luke feeling the natural embarrassment that any teenager would have in talking about sex with a parent was beautifully done. The interaction between father and son was at once both awkward and touching.

Luke went on to admit that there was another gay guy in his high school, but that he wasn't Luke's type, which is an interesting point to make. I think too many people still tend to assume that two single gay guys would of course be together (especially in the soap world, where there tends to only be two gay characters at the most!). The scene reminded me very much of my own high school experience, in fact, because the only openly gay guy in my school (I wasn't nearly as brave as Luke, I was still in the closet) wasn't someone that I found attractive at all. Somehow, that made me even more lonely than I would have been if I'd thought I was the only gay guy around.

Holden tried to make his son see that there was no hurry to find love:

Holden: No, look, I just don't want you to think that you have anything to prove to yourself. You're young. I mean, you may not even be ready for a relationship yet.

Luke: Were you ready when you were my age? You were already with mom. And from what I've heard, she wasn't your first. Dad, I'm just like you. I want the same thing. I do know what I'm missing.

Van Hansis delivered that last line perfectly. He conveyed Luke's sense of loneliness, something that most gay teens have to deal with whether they're out or not, so believably that it made my heart ache for Luke. Pointing out that Luke is just like Holden, or like any other straight person, was important, too. He wants someone in his life just like everyone else, and hopefully these scenes opened the eyes of those who think that the coming out story is all there is to tell with a gay character.

Luke is a character that the audience really came to root for while he was coming out, and that's very important when it comes to any character on a soap. The audience is ready to root for Luke to find love, too, and if they weren't before today, I can't help but feeling that Van must have convinced them in these scenes, when he made Luke's loneliness and his longing for someone to love so tangible.

Holden continued to try and get across that Luke could talk to him about how he was feeling, reaching out in a way that too many fathers seem unable to do with gay sons. In fact, it seemed that Luke was the one who was most uncomfortable with the conversation, mostly because he assumed that the very idea of him being with a guy would make his father uncomfortable, no matter how accepting he was in theory of Luke being gay.

Holden: You know, I raised you to be the best that you can be, and you are. I just had to admit that I never expected you to want to spend the rest of your life with a man.

Luke: Let me get a date first, okay?

Holden: What I'm trying to say here is, -- you know, when you get the opportunity -- you know, you're a terrific person and anyone would be proud to know you -- what? Why are you laughing?

Luke: I'm laughing at you. I am laughing at you, dad.

Holden: What for?

Luke: Because I'm making you feel so damned uncomfortable.

Holden: No, I'm not uncomfortable. I'm just trying to find my way here.

Luke: Well, it's okay. It's okay. There's no hurry.

Holden: That's exactly what I'm trying to say here. There's no hurry. And I would be saying the same thing if you were trying to hook up with a girlfriend.

Luke: No, you wouldn't.

Holden: I would. I would. And Luke, I get it. I know what you're going through. I know the feelings. I know the desires. And I'm your father. I want what's best for you. I want what's best for all my kids.

Luke: Okay, dad. Whatever you say.

Holden: It's true.

Luke: And it doesn't make you feel uncomfortable? You know, thinking about me and another guy?

Holden: One, I don't think about it. It's not my business. And two, I would have just as hard a time if your sisters were with some boy. Maybe even harder. They could get pregnant. And all the rest of that stuff.

It was so incredibly refreshing to see a scene like this, where it is taken for granted that a gay teenager is just like any other teenager, hoping to find someone to be with. Even better, to see a parent dealing with the reality that their child is even thinking about having sex, while trying to show acceptance of their child's sexuality at the same time. It's a difficult balancing act, and I loved that As the World Turns didn't shy away from this topic and didn't write Holden as being completely confident in what he was doing. He was well meaning but awkward, as probably even the most understanding father would be. This whole situation is as new to Holden as it is to Luke, after all, and that was underscored later in the episode when he confided in his sister Meg:

Holden: It's just -- I don't know. Luke's life isn't exactly carefree right now. And I can't help him fix it. I don't even know what to say.

Meg: Did you guys have a fight?

Holden: No, no. It was nothing like that. We were just outside, we were working on the tractor, talking. I asked him about spring break. And he said that he wasn't going with the rest of his class.

Meg: Why not?

Holden: Because it's all about hooking up. Having someone special. And he doesn't.

Meg: So, it will happen.

Holden: That's what I tried to tell him.

Meg: So, what's the problem?

Holden: Well, the problem is, it was a disaster. I couldn't find the right words. I was starting to have this conversation with my son, I didn't know what to say. But there he was, taking it all in stride.

Meg: He was taking it all in stride because he knows it's unfamiliar territory for you. And he forgives you for it. He loves you, Holden.

All of these scenes were just so beautifully done today. Once again, they showed what potential this show has, potential they're usually wasting. These scenes especially stand out amid the wasteland of everything else going on right now. Which writer, I wonder, is responsible for writing these Luke scenes? Can we make that person head writer for the show and send Passanante packing, please? We need someone who can bring the depth and meaning of these scenes to the show as a whole, or there won't be a show much longer!

After months and months of doing nothing with Luke, it really seems like they're starting to build up to Luke finding someone. Why else would there suddenly be conversations about his lack of a love life? The scene with Jade might have been a throw away reference, but there can be no doubt after today that they're starting to head in that direction. But will they actually get there? And if they do, how long do we have to wait? And, while we're waiting, can we please have more scenes like today's?

All sorts of rumors are flying online about Luke's future boyfriend, but no casting announcement has been made yet. Given that the show tapes about a month in advance, that means we've still got awhile to wait before that story gets under way.

Now that I've talked about the good, I'll mention the bad. I'm talking, of course, about Passions. It's very sad that a show that knows it has been canceled, a show that has nothing left to lose, still isn't brave enough to actually show two male lovers kissing.

I cringed this week as I watched the sex scenes between Chad & Vincent, with the worst stunt kissing I've ever seen. By that I mean, the scene clearly called for the two men to kiss, so they pretended like they did. Very obviously pretended. We never saw their mouths actually come into contact and it was clear that they were just moving their heads together in a way that would make it look from behind or from the side like they were kissing. They can't show a real kiss, but they will show Chad reaching for the condoms on the bed side table and let us hear Vincent's voice saying "Oh, yeah, give it to me?"

What they hell kind of message is that, then? Kissing is too intimate, but that's not? Why, because that's sex and kissing is love? Reilly seems determined to show, one way or another, that two men can have sex but not love.

So, we have All My Children, which only shows a completely non-sexual man to man kiss through the viewer of a cell phone, and we have Passions which is supposedly telling a cutting edge story about two men on the down low, and they back away and give us some very obvious stunt kissing.

How pathetic! Daytime is still in the stone age when it comes to this. Prime time is making pretty steady leaps forward in showing gay men kissing as naturally as straight couples do (as any fan of Brothers & Sisters can tell you), but even though Daytime seems relatively fine with lesbian kisses, they act like showing two men locking lips will bring about the Apocalypse.

Well, it still leaves room for Luke to be the first. But will CBS and As the World Turns have any more guts than the other two networks and soaps? Or will Luke and this future boyfriend we're anticipating so much just hug a lot and maybe hold hands once in awhile?