Cast Off : Why Otalia is a Failure

To so many of us, the town of Springfield, USA seemed to be inhabited by flesh-and-blood friends, and not fictional characters. Since we live in a society that always wants to know "why?" and "how?" - so much so that there's practically a CSI for every city, discovery Channel has explored the "murder mystery" of King Tut, and we even know what that poor Iceman ate for dinner before he died - it's fitting we follow through with Otalia the way we would with the demise of any friend. In other words, now that Guiding Light has breathed its last breath, the time has come for a postmortem.

The Shape of Things

Otalia was meant to be an old-fashioned love story - the sort of story soap operas excelled at in their heyday. There's a formula to such stories, and it goes like this:

1. Boy meets Girl
2. Boy and Girl dislike each other intensely
3. Circumstances force Boy and Girl to be together for prolonged periods of time
4. Antagonistic banter ensues
5. Antagonism gives way to civility as Boy and Girl each secretly realize that they are attracted to the other
6. A crisis arises forcing one or the other to blurt out a climactic "I love you!"
7. Boy and Girl kiss
8. Boy and Girl make love for the first time in some significant setting
9. Boy and Girl become celebrated couple in the community

If we're talking about not just a couple, but that rarest of pairings - the Super Couple - the formula has some added elements:

• Outside forces/circumstances work to prevent Boy and Girl from pursuing a relationship
• Outside forces/circumstances actually force Boy and Girl to be physically/geographically apart for a period of time
• Boy and Girl overcome numerous barriers and hurdles, and beat the odds in order to be together
• Boy and Girl enjoy widely celebrated reunion
• Repeat as necessary

That's it. That's the classic formula for a successful coupling. If one were to change the pronouns to "Girl 1" and "Girl 2", we would have the story of Otalia:

1. Olivia and Natalia meet when Natalia gets a job as a chambermaid at The Beacon.
2. Because of Olivia's aggressive efforts to snag Gus (Natalia's fiancee') and overall bitchiness, the two women dislike one another, intensely.
3. Olivia's illness -both before and after her heart transplant - force the two women to begrudgingly spend inordinate amounts of time together, and even move in together.
4. They argue and spar on a regular basis.
5. As a true friendship develops, Olivia and Natalia each secretly come to love one another.
6. On the day of her scheduled marriage to Frank, Natalia forces the issue with Olivia, inducing her to blurt out the now-famous, "I'm in love with you!"
7. {INSERT KISS HERE}
8. {INSERT LOVE-MAKING HERE}
9. In the future, Olivia and Natalia are a couple, like any other couple hanging out in the park with the rest of Springfield

Knit One, Purl Two

I'm not much of a knitter, but I know what it means to inadvertently drop a stitch. I know that dropping just one stitch can cause the piece one is knitting to unravel. Just one stitch, and the whole thing comes apart. It's that precise, knitting. Every stitch builds on the next, each one carrying its load in terms of maintaining the integrity of the finished product.

Imagine knitting a scarf for your best friend. Somewhere in the middle, you drop a stitch. Observers point it out to you: "Hey, you dropped a stitch!" You ignore them and keep knitting. More observers point out the dropped stitch: "No, seriously - you dropped a stitch. It's coming apart. Fix that thing before it's too late." You get to the end of your knitting project and hold it up to get a good look at it. Running right through the middle is a wide, ugly run. A scarf is a simple knitting project. You still have time to go back and fix your mistake. You can pick up that dropped stitch and still save the scarf. You decide not to. You put the scarf in a box and wrap it and hand it to your best friend on her birthday. She opens the box, holds up the scarf, appreciates your hard work, and the fact that the scarf will keep her warm. In private, she scrunches up her nose at the ugly run, and can't help feeling that you've been sloppy and lazy in your knitting. One little snag, and this scarf will fall apart. Your friend knows this, and you know this. At the end of the day, your knitting project is a failure - a failure as a knitting project and a failure as a gift.

Writers of a story arc such as Otalia follow a predetermined formula, just the way knitters follow patterns. The writers of Otalia dropped a stitch and, instead of going back to pick it up - the way any good knitter would do, the way any good writer would do - they just kept writing, even as the Otalia story line unravelled and formed a wide and ugly run in the overall fabric of Guiding Light.

7 and 8

At this point in time, and for the purposes of this postmortem, talking about CBS or Ellen Wheeler or Jill Lorie Hurst is pointless. The bottom line is this: the story of Olivia and Natalia started out as a beautiful love story. It had all the elements of a classic soap opera romance. It even had the potential to venture into Super Couple territory. All the pieces were in place, but a stitch or two were dropped and never picked up.

Stories about people falling love are only truly engaging and satisfying when protagonists explore what it means to be in love. For two adults in the 21st century, a significant part of being in love is physical intimacy. Hell, this was true in the last century. It's been true since the beginning of time, even if it wasn't openly discussed or expressed. Today, though, literature and film and television most certainly do discuss and portray varying levels of physical intimacy between characters. It's part and parcel of relationship storytelling. A romantic relationship story doesn't ring true if there is no physical manifestation of the love two characters share.

In the Otalia story line, the 7th and 8th steps of the storytelling formula were ignored, completely. Even as we viewers waved our arms and pointed out the dropped stitches, the writers kept going. They kept building a story even as the story behind them unravelled. What started out as a touching, realistic love story with momentum and forward-moving trajectory became static and phony. Otalia failed us in the worst possible way: it started out with great promise, and it ended up in bland mediocrity.

Olivia and Natalia were pretty to look at. The chemistry between Crystal Chappell and Jessica Leccia was palpable. The build-up to their love story was a thing of beauty. The performances - especially by Chappell - were often breathtaking. In the end, though, the de-sexualization of these characters turned Otalia into just another failed attempt at cashing in on the last vestiges of lesbian chic. A stunt. It was as much a stunt as Madonna kissing Britney Spears - except without the kiss. It was pretty to look at, and it tugged at our heart strings and made us hope that this time someone would get it right but, in the end, it was just a stunt. Where Otalia could have been groundbreaking - the depiction of same-sex love that set the bar for all future same-sex story lines - it has done just the opposite. This was not, at the end of the day, a story about two women who fall in love and enjoy a healthy, adult relationship, complete with physical intimacy. Natalia might have said that she didn't intend to give up any of "the things that people in love share," but she did. Instead of setting a high bar, Otalia takes us two steps back, to the idea that fagdom is okay as long as no one has to actually see it or think about it. Melrose Place's Matt Fielding lives!

By neutering Olivia and Natalia, the writers of this story dropped a stitch. They had ample opportunity to go back and pick up that stitch. Olivia and Natalia should have kissed at the spa. They should have kissed when Olivia returned from San Francisco. There should have been at least an implication of sexual activity during all those hours spent alone at The Beacon. There were dozens of opportunities to pick up that dropped stitch and save the integrity of this story, but this effort was never made.

We were promised a luxurious Pashmina. What we got was a pile of pretty yarn.