Once upon a time, I enjoyed As the World Turns. Those days seem so long ago and far away now, though, that they might as well be from some fairy tale about the days of knights and castles and spinning wheels. Today's episode had me questioning why I'm still torturing myself by watching the Nuke scenes.
Mind you, it wasn't really any worse than any other story we've seen on the show recently. I think I may just finally be reaching the point where I can't endure any more. Or maybe I just can't stand to see wonderful actors, like Van Hansis, forced to choose between trying to bring meaning to this dreck or phoning in the sort of performance that this crap actually deserves.
All right, so we picked up where we left off, with Luke & Noah at the station with Casey, discussing Riley not really being Riley. Luke & Noah decided that he'd probably never even really talked to Hasbro for permission to film on the base.
The three of them ignored Margo's order to stay at the station, with Luke heading to meet with Damian and sign papers for the foundation, Noah leaving for Java to try and get some of his shifts back now that the filming on the base wasn't going to happen, and Casey going home to check on his mother.
Noah only made it as far as the door of Java, which was where Colonel Mayer, bleeding from his gunshot wound, grabbed him. Noah was suitably shocked and then angry to discover that his father was alive and had let him go on believing he was dead all this time.
Mayer went on about having to take this risk to see Noah again and convinced his son not to call for a doctor but to go somewhere private with him so they could have a chance to talk.
Luke showed up at Java to meet his boyfriend and found out that Noah hadn't been there. Then he found Noah's backpack outside the door and went straight to Damian to ask if he'd pissed off any more crazy Grimaldis lately! When Damian assured him he hadn't, Luke called Casey to ask if he'd seen Noah.
By that time, Casey was at the hospital with his mother and said he hadn't seen him. He then added, in a totally offhand way, that Noah's dad was "in town" before remembering to add that Colonel Mayer was also alive. You know, just in case Luke thought his corpse had been reanimated.
Luke filled Damian in and they began to try and figure out where Mayer and Noah could be. While they were doing that, the Colonel took Noah to Hasbro's office to talk.
Now, these scenes between Noah and the Colonel actually weren't that bad. It would have been nice if the show had taken some time on this aspect of the story, rather than focusing on the Psycho of the Month angle. But, a fish has to swim, a bird's got to fly and Passanante's got to fill her monthly psycho quota.
Noah and his dad talked about that last moment on the boat, where they'd actually been feeling a connection again, before Mayer accused Noah of betraying him and jumped overboard. The Colonel said that as soon as those words came out of his mouth, he'd known they weren't true, but it was too late.
The Colonel explained that he'd been keeping an eye on Noah and looking for some sign that he might be willing to forgive him, and when he heard about the movie Noah was making, he finally had hope. Noah informed his father that he'd been trying to understand, not to forgive, and that he hadn't been able to.
The Colonel talked about wanting to make things right and Noah told him the only way he could do that was to pay for what he did to Noah's mother by turning himself in. Mayer said that was not an option and asked Noah to come away with him so they could start again, that everything he'd ever done had been out of love for his son.
Noah refused, of course. Winston then asked his son to help him get away, giving him the choice of helping him or seeing him die a free man, since he was still bleeding from his gunshot wound.
Damian and Luke, meanwhile, had decided that Hasbro might be involved in what was happening. Damian placed a call to the Lieutenant, telling him that Colonel Mayer was going to be leaving the country on one of his ships and Damian needed papers for him.
Hasbro bought the ruse and met with Damian on the docks, with Luke hiding behind a crate right beside them. Hasbro had papers for Noah, too, but before Damian could find out more, a dock worker showed up and blew Luke's hiding place. Luke & Damian then chased down this tough army guy, dangled him by his feet above the river until he cracked in three seconds flat and told them everything. It was so completely ridiculous and so painful to watch!
Luke and Damian showed up at the abandoned army base where Mayer had been hiding out. Wait, so Riley went to see Hasbro there, before he knew it was really Colonel Mayer, and never caught on to the fact that the place was obviously abandoned except for this one random office?! And Noah wasn't supposed to notice that either when Riley brought him there to see 'Hasbro'? Come on! They're not even trying any more, are they?
Noah was attempting to get a weakened Colonel Mayer out of there when Luke spotted them and came running up. Luke whipped out his phone to call the police, but Noah asked him not to, saying that he couldn't live with sending his own father to prison. As Damian showed up and grabbed Mayer, who was clearly not doing well by that point, Luke convinced Noah that his father would haunt him forever if he didn't turn him in, that he'd always wonder where he was and what awful things he was doing. Luke could have saved a lot of time, I think, by just telling Noah that his dad had shot Casey's mom, but oddly enough he never mentioned it.
Anyway, Noah saw the light and placed the call himself.
I became a lifelong fan of Van Hansis during Luke's coming out story and I love the onscreen chemistry that he has with Jake Silbermann. Even those things, though, are starting to feel like not enough of a reason to continue to endure the God awful writing on this show. It's not even just bad writing, either, it's bad writing at warp speed, which just means that instead of a terrible story lasting for a few months, we have to endure many terrible stories, one after another, in that same time period.
Take, for instance, this latest return of Colonel Mayer. He shows up in one episode, shoots Margo in the second, and is turned in to the cops in the third. Wham, bam, f--- you Passanante.
I'm just so sick of it. A recent column by Roger Friedman stated that Proctor & Gamble wants out of the soap business (something that's been pretty obvious to fans for at least a decade now) and, far from trying to save the longest running show in history, actively drove Guiding Light into the ground.
This continuing reign of terror by Passanante and Chris Goutman at As The World Turns makes perfect sense when viewed in that light. If someone at the top didn't want to kill off As the World Turns, those two would have been shown the door a few years ago. I can't think of any other reason a soap would allow a producer/writer team to continue for this long as ratings plummet and the show becomes a bad joke.
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