Jeffrey: The blogs are going to go nuts. "The American public are a bunch of idiots who can't be trusted to spell their own names."
Viki: Okay, you cannot print that. Well not without confirmation.
Jeffrey: Well she said it to you, right?
Viki: Yes, she did. But there were other --
Jeffrey: This is huge. Dorian buried those flight manifests for months.
Viki: Not according to her. She claims she gave it to Conan Ashford immediately.
Jeffrey: Who cares? Somebody sat on it. The point is: Are there black sites or not and now we've got these guys by the balls.
Viki: In what sense?
Jeffrey: They have to investigate. And our story made that happen.
Viki: But is it right for us to make Dorian collateral damage?
Jeffrey: Don't get soft on me, boss.
Viki: Oh, Jeffrey, wait a minute. This is a very big story and I have to make sure that we are above reproach. So just as you had to confirm the manifests sources --
Jeffrey: A US Senator squashes information about illegal torture sites and then calls Americans morons for not understanding the way things really work and you want to let that slide?
Thank goodness someone on TV cares about the torture sites, right?
Well . . . not TV.
It used to be on TV but ABC axed it. Last week, One Life To Live returned online with all new episodes. Monday through Thursday, four new episodes. Friday a recap with cast members. Hulu's carrying it and it's immensely popular there (as is All My Children which ABC also axed). Viki is Victoria Lord played by Erika Slezak who has won six Daytime Emmy Awards for her One Life To Live role(s) (Viki - Niki, don't ask us to explain). And the scene above is with Corbin Bleu's Jeffrey King.
Slezak and Bleu are the reason to watch the show. Both for the fireworks between the two actors and the storyline. Let's deal with the fireworks first.
Viki's a woman, Jason's a man. On most shows, that means get them into bed. That's not what great chemistry's meant on One Life To Live. Though, for example, Todd Manning has his freaky fans, the reality is One Life To Life never had a super couple. The closest they came were attempts to revive the Jacqueline Courtney and Robin Strasser rivalry from NBC's Another World. The actresses became famous as rivals Alice Frame and Rachel Davis in scenes largely written by Agnes Nixon. Nixon would go on to create One Life To Live and both actresses would end up on the show, frequently pitted against one another. We'll come back to it.
But One Life To Live, for all the efforts at star-crossed lovers, repeatedly failed. Edwina was a damp noodle with Mario or Marco. Bo Buchanan (Robert S. Woods) had (and has) about as much sex appeal as the generic TV dad of prime time. Asa? Does anyone remember Dorian Lopinto paired with Phil Carey? When they did have a super couple building -- Fish and Kyle -- ABC decided to stroke its inner homophobe and the story was dropped so quickly that actors Scott Evans and Brett Claywell had no clue it was coming.
So when chemistry worked on the show it was the chemistry of friendship. Viki's friendship with Karen (Judith Light). A nothing scene where Viki goes to Waldorf hotel to visit her friend Karen who's left Dr. Larry Wolek and returned to prostitution. Viki carries board games her sons wanted Karen to have. Karen doesn't tell her this is actually an elaborate sting operation. She can't. The two talk but talk about nothing while the silences say everything and the audience just wants the day to come when Karen can tell Viki the truth and the friendship can go back to normal.
There were other variables over the years but when the show works, it works because you believe the characters on the screen deeply care about one another. They're not just actors reciting lines.
And that's why you care about Viki and Jeffrey. Jeffrey's brand new to the show. Slezak's grimace at his use of "balls" in the exchange above is perfect for Viki, it shows her offense and disgust but also shows 'this is someone I care about, I am moving beyond it.' This could be the most important relationship for the show this year. You can see Jeffrey going after stories and getting burned. Maybe he's ordered to reveal his source and he refuses due to ethics. You can see Viki visiting him in jail and telling him, as a journalist, she appreciates what he's doing but, as a friend, a part of her wishes he'd give up the source.
Erika Slezak has held her own for years. She's worked with very talented actors before. She's worked with many hacks. She's worked with Andrea Evans who is a force that goes somewhere beyond acting. (We mean that as a compliment.) Slezak always gives a scene as much as she can. But when she's got an actor that she can really connect with, there's an extra spark to the scenes and that's present in her work with Bleu.
All My Children is finding its way and we'll give it its own review within a month or two. Julia Barr back as Brooke is reason enough to cheer. But the reality is that One Life To Live is the crowd pleaser right now.
Agnes Nixon, remember her?
She created One Life To Live and All My Children. The shows made an impact for being about the world we live in. Interracial romance hit daytime TV with One Life To Live. All My Children tackled Vietnam. Abortion, equal rights, same-sex relations, spousal abuse, the world we live in was reflected on daytime TV.
With the story about the torture sites and Viki Lord and Jeffrey pursuing it for the Llanview Banner, the show's exactly where it should be. It's a topical and attention-getting storyline, amazingly well acted, that can pull an audience new to the characters and keep the audience long enough for them to get to know all the players.
Dorian Lord. Robin Strasser has her own Emmy for playing this part. Too often, Dorian's over-the-top for no reason. The battles with Pat Ashley, for example, in the early 80s were laughable. She and Courtney vested a great deal into the dialogue but who really cared?
The Pat Ashley Show features a discussion on Asa's dead wife and Dorian, who owns the station, storms in to berate Pat for "cheap and vulgar sensationalism" and accuse Pat of being "a bit unhinged" only to have Pat respond, "Dorian, what you know about friendship could fit on a postage stamp!"? The actresses had you applauding even as you realized you were watching filler and that, in the end, this scene didn't matter one bit to the storyline.
Too often, the show's used Strasser's strong acting chops as an excuse to poorly write storylines and scenes for Dorian. So how great that Senator Dorian Lord is now in a real crisis.
As David (Tuc Watkins) puts it, "For the first time in her life, Dorian Lord committed the crime of being naïve." And he wasn't referring to what they did to her at the beauty salon ("I've got Michelle's bangs, Pelosi's lips!" Dorian announced). Dorian worked with others on the Senate Intelligence Committee to bury evidence of the government's role in torture. And the senior senators are more than happy to let the junior senator from Pennsylvania take the fall. As longtime viewers know, the best Dorian storylines are always the ones where Dorian's fighting to keep hold of whatever's she's managed to grab.
And that's the storyline that can pull people in to find out what's going to happen to Rama (Shenaz Treasury) and Vimal Patel (Nick Choksi) and their discussions about starting an open marriage. They'll nod in agreement when Blair (Kassie DePaiva) tells Todd (Roger Howarth) that he is "useless as a husband and a lover and you're even more pathetic as a father." Hopefully, they'll be thrilled Victor Jr. (Trevor St. John) is alive. And that he's back with Tea (Florencia Lozano) and back with rage at Todd (just look what he does to the stuffed giraffe after Tea catches him up on the lost baby and all he missed after Todd shot him).
These are characters you care about. Passions, more than anything else, destroyed daytime dramas. It took the nonsense of the Ice Princess and other crap General Hospital (and others) churned out during a writers strike, these idiotic, over-the-top plots and soon you've got Days of Our Lives having Marlena (Deidre Hall) possessed by the devil. How do you top that?
The real question is: Why would you?
Soaps don't have to go that over-the-top. At their best, they're about conflict between characters you know. There's the one you can't stand, there's the one you root for and, somehow, they're all part of the same show. And many of the characters have a history which not only rewards longterm viewing but also gives audiences a sense of permanency in what is a very juxtaposed and changing world.
"You're going to regret printing those lies about me. I'll be exonerated and I will bring you down," Dorian vows to Viki. And that carries more punch than all the elderly ladies and their wooden talking dolls Passions could ever muster.