Under One Roof

As I mentioned earlier, today was a Luke & Noah day on As the World Turns. Luke started out the episode by sneaking a beer for breakfast (so nutritional!) and had only chugged about a quarter of it before he suffered some kind of pain in the general vicinity of his one remaining kidney.

After pouring out the rest of the beer, Luke seemed to be taking some steps towards getting his life back on track. He went to see his father and asked if he could move back in with his parents at their place. Getting away from Grandma Emma's wild lifestyle out on the farm will certainly help keep him sober, right? Actually, maybe it will, since Emma's rules kept him from ever having sex with his boyfriend. That would drive anyone to drink, I'm sure.

Anyway, Luke seemed determined to get his act together and Holden happily agreed to let him move back home. But wait! Is that a plot contrivance in the distance?

It seems that newlywed Grandmother Lucinda decided to have her mansion redone to celebrate having a new husband. The happy couple were going to stay in Brian's hotel room while the work was done, but once Lily heard the plan she insisted that they move in with her & Holden immediately.

First off, Lucinda is a millionaire who could easily afford to rent a place to stay anywhere in the world while her mansion is redone. Forget renting, actually, she & Brian could stay in the cottage that she owns, the one that Noah & Ameera lived in for most of their sham marriage.

But none of that would put Luke & Brian under the same roof, of course, and that's clearly the goal here. Brian didn't seem too thrilled at the idea of living so near Luke (too much temptation?), but it was clear that Lucinda liked the idea and since he's the perfect husband, he agreed.

Luke tried to get himself out of the new living arrangement, but Lucinda took him aside and asked him to give Brian a chance for her sake. Luke, needing someone to unburden himself to, went to see Noah (at work, naturally; the guy must sleep on a cot in the backroom at Java) and told him that Brian had 'come on to him'.

Noah was skeptical, however, and suggested that Luke had misinterpreted something, possibly because he was drunk at the time. Luke revealed that the 'come on' was a kiss, but Noah remained unconvinced. Luke got frustrated and told Noah that he knows Brian wants to sleep with him, just like he knew Noah did (back when Noah was closeted). Um, considering that Noah never actually got around to sleeping with Luke, this might not be the best way to judge the situation!

Meanwhile, Lucinda and Lily both urged Brian to 'take Luke under his wing' and get him more involved in the day to day running of the Foundation to take his mind off his troubles.

Luke came back from his disastrous attempt at getting advice and support from Noah and hit the bottle once again. After Brian caught him and tried to convince him to stop his self destructive behavior, Luke told him to never touch him again and ran out.

I don't quite know where they're going with this yet. They're either going to end up making Brian completely evil (i.e. he'll try and kill Luke to shut him up, or maybe lock him in a basement somewhere; the current writers of this show specialize in this kind of overblown story, we've seen it multiple times in just the last few years) or he's going to have some sort of a coming out drama of his own. If Noah keeps pushing Luke away and Luke keeps drinking, it's even possible that something could happen between them.

In the meantime, I'm already getting tired of self destructive Luke. Don't get me wrong, Van Hansis is doing a great job. You could really feel Luke's determination to make a change in the first half of the episode and then the way he just sort of gave up after Noah didn't believe him. I'm just ready for the real Luke to reemerge and for Luke & Noah to finally be together.

Over on All My Children, lesbian couple Bianca and Reese had a brief love scene in bed together a few weeks back that was groundbreaking for daytime and I'm ready to see Luke & Noah get their turn to make some more history.