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.
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