The Continuing Drama and Carolyn Hinsey

Say what you will about Carolyn Hinsey, it does seem she cares about the continuing drama of Daytime Television’s Daytime Dramas. More often than not she comes down on what some may say is the right side, i.e. the viewer’s side, perhaps it is because she is the consummate viewer.

She has recently opined on One Life to Live and the recent plot re: Daniel Colson and his gay related crimes. She wrote in last week’s issue of SOD:

OLTL shot to No. 1 in the demos in the week Daniel was busted, and some people around here said it was due to the gay storyline. Wrong: The fallout from the gay storyline. Give me a clear villain (Daniel) and then let me watch a clear hero (Bo) close in on him with a beloved heroine (Nora) at stake and I’m in. OLTL played all the beats, roping in lots of young people (Rex, Jen, Marcie, Natalie, even Matthew) in a logical way. … I hope they keep Mark around. It would be interesting to watch him struggle to rebound from his relationship with his lover, the murderer, the same way Nora is. (We’re all the same, we all hurt, kumbaya)


Well, the ratings have fallen from their peak to levels that are well below pre-Daniel Colson’s gay-related storyline. Hinsey makes more than a few good points in the above article, but misses the mark. The ratings spike indicates that the young female demographic does for the most part enjoy gay storylines, not to mention the young gay demographic. The current very low ratings exist while Colson is experiencing his incarceration and Mark has disappeared into the woodwork. Bo and Nora are still there in hero and heroine garb but the ratings aren’t.

What the viewer got in compensation was a hokey reconciliation between Marcie’s brother and her father, which is more about Marcie than anything else. Perhaps it was about bringing back briefly Marcie’s other brother, Ron, since internet rumours have it that he is the copycat Killing Club murderer, an instance that would also be like a quick male orgasm without foreplay since the viewer has not been afforded the opportunity to get to know Ron Walsh.

Hinsey reinforces the concept of character development within a plot in order to allow viewers the opportunity to get involved. This is a great opportunity to have Nora bond with Mark. Nora the heroine who knows that homosexuality is not a disease in spite of her lying cheating murderous annulled gay husband. It would have been much more interesting than Nora and Bo continuing their derivative Hepburn/Tracy pairing and just maybe more profitable in the ratings department.


In the same column one of Hinsey’s readers wrote:

As an openly gay man in my twenties, I take great offense to GLAAD’s
statements criticizing OLTL. They’re upset because of a closeted gay character who killed to keep his secret? I’m more offended by the deluge of ‘flamboyant wedding advisors’ and sensitive best friends that most Soaps present us with. Kudos to OLTL for showing that not all gay men fit into neat stereotypes!

JB in the Berkshires

JB has brought up an issue that speaks to the matter at hand, but it might be important to add that Colson is a classic self-loather and perhaps a stereotype that is not, fortunately, very familiar to a gay man in his 20s. It is a very important stereotype – stereotypes, by the way, do exist – in that it is that demon we need to recognize before we can banish it. It is that demon which is the source of a great deal of homosexual drama pre-Stonewall.


In her current column Hinsey refers to Rex and Bo as the show’s supercouple. There is a male/male kinship happening there. The show deserves kudos for utilizing Lauvoisier’s talents and unwittingly perhaps developing a latently homosexual couple.


It should be remembered that this is a show that has missed opportunities in the past to develop so-called chemistry between pairings of people of all stripes. Hinsey declared that OLTL rocks. It’s obvious that it is one of her favourites. It can only be hoped that she, as Viki once declared to Dorian, will keep the show honest, so to speak.


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