Guiding Light is out

Good Morning,

I have a confession to make. It’s a habit that formed way before college and I feel certain grew out of my mother’s refusal to let her kids watch Love Connection or the Newlywed Game. I watch a Soap Opera…there I said it.

It started the summer my mom finally let me be my own babysitter and I joined a bike gang. My best friends and I would furiously pedal down to Hook’s Drug store to load up on candy and then zoom back just in time to watch the giant beam of the lighthouse twirl and the announcer boom- THIS IS GUIDING LIGHT…

We were maybe 12 years old and thrilled to have this invitation and forbidden insight into the adult world.

As young girls, we learned such important lessons as…

It can take well over a week to deliver a baby, a murder trial can go on into infinity, and your wedding day will take over two weeks.

At the age of 16, I was perhaps most surprised to learn that paralysis can be cured in the course of a single sweeps month. I lay in the hospital bed with my very own spinal cord injury and could find none of the enjoyable drama in it. They never showed the beautiful people rolling off the bedpan or clenching their jaw in fear as a nimble fingered nurse gloved up and said, “It’s time for your suppository!”

Oh dashes and dratted this crummy storyline!

But still somehow through all of this my love for my soap survived. After returning to school, there was always homework to do or some therapy to attend but modern technology would not leave me behind.

Thanks to the arrival of the cell phone I could catch a 20 minute segment any day of the week and learn most of what I needed to know. Now instead of the awkward recap given to the new girl in town on a Friday…the cell phone taken everywhere provided running commentary or instant updates I could follow…

“This is Lizzie and I think I’m being kidnapped! I’ve fallen into a big pit…here I will hold the phone up…do you recognize his voice?”

(Oh yes. Lizzie is being kidnapped by Grady. Where’s Bill?)

“Hi Bill this is your father calling. Are you still at the hospital recovering from your amnesia?"

(Why does Bill have amnesia?)

“Hello Bill’s Dad, this is Frank the cop at the accident scene. We’ve found the wreckage and your empty scotch bottle in it. We need you to come down to the station for questioning."

Anyway! these days, again, I am called home by the Light…

The Guiding Light- The longest running and lowest rated in daytime. It takes place in the fictional Midwestern town of Springfield. It tells the stories of love, loss, triumph, and revenge of three families.

All three families interact on a daily basis and are at least facile with their cell phones…

Still, no ones heard of Match dot Com or eHarmony because with a staunch commitment to first and forever loves these folks keep dating within the inner circle…

Storyline coverage has included almost every imaginable love angle.

Boy meets girl. Girl goes blind. Girl dates his father.

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Girl marries her cousin.

but,

Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Girl falls in love with another girl?

What? I almost fell off the elliptical machine in mid-stride…Someone must have seen and knows i'm watching!

While there is still the preponderance of men doing heroic driving to stop weddings, this program (first aired as a radio program in 1932 as a means to sell soap to housewives…) is telling the story of Olivia and Natalia daytimes hottest new lesbian couple!

Two women who have been heterosexual all their lives find themselves living together out of necessity. Olivia needed someone to help take care of her after major surgery and to help look after her young daughter. Natalia needed a place to stay after her husband’s sudden and unexpected death and Olivia’s powerful influence to help get her son out of prison.

You know typical stuff.

A romantic relationship was not in the show creators plans. The intent was to show an alternative to the Joneses (i.e. traditional American family) or maybe even develop an old-fashioned best friend story like Lucy and Ethel. An unlikely pairing was supposed to resolve in intense friendship, self-discovery and each woman finding a new course and direction…with men.

However, they did not factor in a largely positive fan base giving a boost to ratings and asking for more "Otalia!"

My viewership never completely waning has been instantly invigorated with the new possibilities!

As a writer, I would enjoy seeing "Otalia" go through a coming out into the community phase…where they embrace some of the cultural artifacts on which a shared identity can be built...rainbow flags, chunky watches and thumb rings.

There might also be a phase when the wardrobe department is completely confused. Fewer blouses with capped sleeves, sequined ballroom dresses, sheer scarves…Instead, cargo shorts, message t-s, and during the winter months? Flannel.

Hair and makeup could also come into its own as a new friend “Bev” arrives in town wearing her hair in a tight mullet and offering lines like "I feel like a clown in this lipstick."

For what this show might lack in depth and sophistication, I have every confidence the Guiding Light's team of writers will get it right in the end.

Unlike the L Word where main characters often arrived ready to step into a new fully formed identity as soon as they could slip out of their underwear, “Otalia” promises to evolve. In closer to real time, five days a week we will watch this new couple struggle to come out to themselves and then each other.

but for now...

I am emboldened thinking about what good this show could do…

In Springfield a small anywhere Midwestern city, one can easily imagine that no civil unions or gay marriage exist.

The Guiding Light could shine its light on the platform of Social Awareness/Advocacy. How will we handle problems with Olivia’s failing health? How will we feel if the sweet Natalia is shut out of the care decisions that must be made for her partner at the end of life? What if Natalia has no rights to parenting Olivia’s daughter?...a child they are raising together and who proudly writes essays such as “My Two Mommies.”

Oh dratted how will it all end? (well for one thing the show will air its last episode September 18th...)

So, what I’m trying to say is in the middle of a bustling world my soap's my small town entertainment. It’s my ride bikes around the neighborhood, and maybe stop to catch crawdads in a creek moment

In its lack of complexity in the middle of an increasingly complicated world, shine on Otalia until the Guiding Light is out.


Happy Monday,

Amanda "Michelle Hawthorne" (aka my soap name)