I know I've mentioned before that Days is the soap I grew up watching, the one that my mother, aunts, and Grandmother all watched before me. It's also the only soap that I still keep up with somewhat, largely because of my life long history with it.
As I wrote when I first started blogging about gay soap characters, Days did provide a few very early and ultimately misleading hints that it might lead the pack on the issue of gay characters, but they both turned into major disappointments:
"Back in the 70's, there were a few minor blips on the radar, both on Days of Our Lives. Neither was exactly a stellar moment in soap history. First, a minor female character made an advance on Julie Williams, the lead character on the show at that time, and Julie reacted with disgust, fleeing the scene. The character who made the advance on Julie was promptly dropped and no further mention was made of the incident. Later, Julie's young cousin Mike Horton briefly questioned his own sexuality, until sex with a woman made him put all doubts from his mind once and for all. The character has come and gone over the years, but has been resolutely heterosexual ever since."
There has been much speculation over the years about Days doing a gay storyline. When the character of Eric Brady (played by a pre-Supernatural Jensen Ackles) first returned to Salem in the late 1990's, the Internet was abuzz with the rumor that the character was going to be gay. This speculation was aided by the fact that he was being followed by a mystery person and hiding a secret about his time in boarding school in Colorado.
Whatever the story was intended to be, the show dropped it without pursing it and wrapped up the weeks of Eric being followed in a single episode with hastily written scenes about the guy following him being his ex-roommate who'd date raped someone and blamed Eric for getting caught.
A decade later, the buzz has largely surrounded Eric's nephew, Will Horton, and his frenemy Chad Woods. Both characters have dated (and, in Chad's case, impregnated) women, but then they're still young, just out of high school and in that 'self discovery' phase of life. Fans of the fantasy pairing have already dubbed them 'Chill'.
EW.com hints that the new storyline would involve a current character becoming involved with someone new and even wonders if it could involve Will and the newly arrived Dario Hernandez. I've already noticed a few message boards hoping for a 'Wario' pairing.
At the moment, there are no major LGBT characters left on any soap, although a minor recurring character was recently revealed to be gay on One Life to Live, the soap that gave us Kish and then took them away.
Is a Chill, Wario or some other such pairing really in the works? If it happens, will the show be committed to keeping their gay characters front and center like As the World Turns was with Luke (though hopefully with better writing)? Or will they go the 'come out, get bashed, get accepted, disappear' route like General Hospital took with Lucas Jones?
If Days truly does tell a gay themed story, I hope that it will involve a legacy character from a core family, like Will Horton, who is far less easy to write out once he's come out (though admittedly General Hospital had no problems dropping Lucas Jones).
The Kish pairing proved that you can tell a beautiful love story with characters who aren't related to anyone else on the show, but it also reinforced just how easy it is to get rid of those characters.
As far as this latest Days rumor goes, only time will tell if there's actually something to it, and if that something is worth watching.
Whatever the story was intended to be, the show dropped it without pursing it and wrapped up the weeks of Eric being followed in a single episode with hastily written scenes about the guy following him being his ex-roommate who'd date raped someone and blamed Eric for getting caught.
A decade later, the buzz has largely surrounded Eric's nephew, Will Horton, and his frenemy Chad Woods. Both characters have dated (and, in Chad's case, impregnated) women, but then they're still young, just out of high school and in that 'self discovery' phase of life. Fans of the fantasy pairing have already dubbed them 'Chill'.
EW.com hints that the new storyline would involve a current character becoming involved with someone new and even wonders if it could involve Will and the newly arrived Dario Hernandez. I've already noticed a few message boards hoping for a 'Wario' pairing.
At the moment, there are no major LGBT characters left on any soap, although a minor recurring character was recently revealed to be gay on One Life to Live, the soap that gave us Kish and then took them away.
Is a Chill, Wario or some other such pairing really in the works? If it happens, will the show be committed to keeping their gay characters front and center like As the World Turns was with Luke (though hopefully with better writing)? Or will they go the 'come out, get bashed, get accepted, disappear' route like General Hospital took with Lucas Jones?
If Days truly does tell a gay themed story, I hope that it will involve a legacy character from a core family, like Will Horton, who is far less easy to write out once he's come out (though admittedly General Hospital had no problems dropping Lucas Jones).
The Kish pairing proved that you can tell a beautiful love story with characters who aren't related to anyone else on the show, but it also reinforced just how easy it is to get rid of those characters.
As far as this latest Days rumor goes, only time will tell if there's actually something to it, and if that something is worth watching.
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