Soap opera to deal with harassment of pro-peace character

Much as I sometimes like to keep it my "dirty little secret", I have to admit I'm something of a soap opera fan. One of my longtime favourites is ABC's "One Life to Live", which has long prided itself on trying to deal with various social issues. It was one of the first soaps to deal with interracial romance, gang violence, literacy and racial prejudice, among others, and received wide acclaim when, in 1992, it did a story featuring a homosexual teen (played by a young Ryan Phillipe), homophobia and AIDS, and which culminated with a display of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

They've got a new storyline they're just starting that I have to say I'm really looking forward to. Recently, they introduced a young woman named Marcie to the show. Marcie is unusual for a soap character. She started as a kind of dumpy outcast girl desparate for a friend who let herself be used by a very popular bitch. She was awkward socially and larger than anyone else on the show - yet there was something about her that really hit home with me (probably because I was also very socially awkward and have always been larger than most people around me). I must not have been alone, because what was supposed to have been a 5-episode part has now turned into a long-term gig. Marcie played a critical role in helping one of the show's "young hunk" characters (Al) in getting off drugs, and the two of them have begun something of a romance, dealing with issues regarding her insecurity and difficulting believing someone could really want to be with her. They've quickly become one of the most popular couples on the show, and Marcie is frequently voted as the favourite female character on the show in the weekly polls that some of the soap magazines run.

Now they've added another twist, and this one should be very interesting. Marcie decided to hang a flag with a peace sign on it in her dorm window. When she came back to her room, she found her room trashed and her peace sign flag torn. The show spoilers say that she will find her personal safety in danger from people opposed to her pro-peace stance, and will deal with her, her boyfriend, and one of the more powerful women in town's efforts to deal with the harassment she receives.

The main writers for the show, Josh Griffith and Michael Malone, are ones who have written many of the previously lauded social commentary storylines, and are well-known for tacking controversial issues sensitively and powerfully. I expect no less from them this time around. I love that they are taking one of the shows most popular heroines and putting her at the middle of this storyline because she's someone so many people identify with.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time they've tried to bring up the subject of the debate over the Iraq war. Initially, they had planned to have two other characters with a rather long and complicated history have a series of debates and tension over differing opinions of the war, and had even intended to have them tape some scenes closer to the air date than usual (there's typically a three-week lead time between taping and broadcast), but the "major combat operations" of the war itself were over so fast that they never really got a chance to implement it very well. As a result, they've decided to take this route instead - having a popular character suffer serious harassment for making her feelings against the war known.

So, here's a tip of the hat to the writers and actors on OLTL for being willing to take on yet another controversial subject, and to ABC for letting them (ABC owns all of it's soap operas, so they tend to have final say on what gets on the air and what doesn't). Here's hoping it's every bit as good as I know they can make it. I'll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE (8/6/2003 1:33 am): I just found out that one part of the above story came from an exceptionally well-written parody that I hadn't realized was a parody. The 2nd to last paragraph, about an earlier plan to tackle some of the same subject matter in a series of debates between two characters actually came from a message posted to a mailing list I read, written by Brad Beam. The rest of this post still stands though, based as it is on my actual viewing of the show *g*. Sorry for the misinformation - I was working from memory when I wrote it, when I should have made sure I knew where the information came from, first.