More Ewings Checking in to Southfork

I'm getting more and more excited over the new Dallas update as the days pass. Earlier this month came the news that another Desperate Housewives alum was joining the cast, this time actress Brenda Strong, who will be playing Bobby Ewing's wife Ann. I can't wait to meet the new Mrs. Ewing!

Today I read that two more original Dallas cast members will be in the pilot! Steve Kanaly will be back as ranch foreman turned Ewing half brother, Ray Krebbs, while Charlene Tilton will reprise her role of Lucy Ewing Cooper.

Ray was in the second reunion movie, War of the Ewings (which, sadly, sucked), but we haven't seen Lucy since way back in 1990. It will be very interesting to catch up with these two characters!

I wonder if the new writers will remember that Bobby has a second son, Lucas? His mother is Jenna Wade and he was adopted by Ray, who married Jenna and moved off to Europe with her. That could make for an interesting story in a lot of ways, this nephew/son of Bobby's who wasn't raised as part of the Southfork branch of the family. I wonder if we'll be seeing Jenna, too?

Speaking of the Southfork clan, this picture of Larry Hagman, the still beautiful Linda Gray, and their new TV son Josh Henderson, which was posted by the latter on Facebook, leaves me feeling like a kid anticipating Christmas morning! I can't wait!

A Sad Day

It must be a very sad day to be Agnes Nixon. The iconic daytime scribe who penned some of the most socially relevant stories in the history of the medium just saw her two remaining creations killed off at the same time.

I'm talking, of course, about One Life to Live and All My Children, which were both cancelled by ABC today. They will be replaced by a talk show revolving around cooking and a weight loss competition.

Though neither soap has LGBT characters onscreen at the moment, they were both leading soaps when it came to telling those stories over the years. All My Children broke real ground when they became the first soap to give us a gay character from a core family, Erica Kane's daughter Bianca, who came out of the closet back in 2000.

One Life to Live gave us the first teen gay character on daytime back in 1993 when future movie star Ryan Philippe played gay teen Billy Douglas. More recently, of course, that show gave us the amazing pairing of Kyle and Fish, which included the first real onscreen love scene between two men, including showing them in bed together afterward. In fact, that particular scene was better than anything I'd ever seen on primetime on any network. The two men also became parents, but were written off just when the show could have broken even more ground by giving us a story about the first gay dads raising a child on daytime.

Those were far from the only LGBT characters or socially relevant stories that these two shows told over the years, though they were certainly right up there with the best. All My Children was the show that gave us television's first legal abortion back in the 1970's and dealt with the very controversial issue of the Vietnam War in real time.

One Life to Live was the fist soap that had African American characters in major storylines in the late 1960's, including the controversial story of Carla Gray, a light skinned African American woman who passed herself off as Italian in order to get ahead in a racist society. A decade later they gave us the explosive Karen Wolek storyline, about a housewife with low self esteem who was secretly moonlighting as a prostitute. It made actress Judith Light a household name.

These were both greatly important shows not just to daytime TV but to television itself, mostly because of the driving force of Agnes Nixon, a woman who knew that you could tell great stories that were also meaningful and socially relevant. Sadly, her successors in the soap world largely forgot this lesson and all these cancellations we've been seeing in recent years is largely the result of that.

The simultaneous loss of these two particular soaps is in fact the worst blow that daytime TV has ever been dealt. If you had been able to fool yourself up to now that daytime soaps were not a dying breed, you certainly can't deny it any longer. There will soon be a grand total of four soaps remaining on the air.

All My Children will take its final bow in September and we'll have One Life to Live on our screens until January. With nine months remaining and nothing left to lose from those who blamed gay characters for driving down the ratings, can we hope to see a final return from Kish? It may not be likely, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

This is truly a sad day for any soap fan, even those like me who have become disenchanted by the direction the medium has taken writing wise. A lot of television history and a lot of talented actors are about to be thrown out for what sound to me like two very short lived TV shows that no one will even remember a decade from now.

Confirmed: Gays in Salem!

I wrote last week about the rumor that Days of Our Lives was finally, after 45 years on the air, going to embark upon a major gay storyline for one of its characters. In the time since, more rumors seemed to confirm that the gay character would indeed be Will Horton. As the scion of both the Horton and the Brady clans, Will is pretty much the definition of a legacy character from a core family.

I decided not to get my hopes up until I had more definite confirmation that this was actually going to happen, though. After all, I've been waiting for Days to do a gay storyline for years and the daytime landscape doesn't seem very friendly to LGBT characters at the moment, given that there are currently none left on any soap and that the last show to introduce a major gay pairing later tried to blame the couple for bringing down their ratings!

Well, how's this for confirmation? This weekend Chandler Massey, the actor who portrays Will Horton, attended the Kid's Choice Awards and confirmed that the show will be writing a gay storyline for his character this summer!

In spite of all the times that I've been burned by soaps in the past, I'm actually excited about this. After all, this is my soap, the one I grew up with. I honestly had given up hope of ever seeing a major gay character in Salem and it would once have seemed beyond my wildest dreams that the LGBT character in question would be a Horton and/or a Brady!

Of course, I do worry about what the quality of the story will be and if they'll truly commit to giving Will a love life, or any story at all beyond just coming out. Rumors are flying about him being paired with Chad, with Dario, or with an as yet unseen character, but only time will reveal what they have in store for Will.

I think the best part of this news so far, though, is that Chandler Massey, unlike certain other actors in the recent past, honestly seems to be excited about this development for his character. That earns him major respect in my book.