As promised, I continue to keep my eye on the progress of All My Children’s same-sex character couple, Marissa and Bianca.  I have written in the past about other “my girl-heart wants your girl-heart” pairings that were intimately handcuffed by the television network, so it’s only natural that I have my finely-honed senses at the ready for any signs of restraint.  I’m happy to report that, so far, the only bracelets slapped upon the wrists of this daytime couple are the ones that separate this steel magnolia from the animals.

In one costume change and less than 48 hours of soap time, there have been two girl on girl kisses (three if you count the Friday/Monday re-do), a relationship reveal to both friends and family, an offer of a place to co-habit, and an explanation to Marissa’s kid that AJ has two mommies.  All this before a first date?  This is fracking fast for even REAL-life lesbians!  I keep telling myself that something has to happen.  Could this be a same-sex, soap storyline for the history books (unfortunately, only to be read in California), or is the other designer shoe about to fall?

I keep thinking that Marissa’s scorned ex, JR, will provide some kind of drama that will put the brakes on this relationship, but he would have to sober up (not to mention loosen up, as he is the stiffest drunk I’ve ever seen) to provide any outside force to act upon AMC’s less than platonic, perpetual motion machine.  Hell, even “Binx”, when given the choice this time, showed some progressive backbone and chose her new affinity over her family.  Perhaps David has replaced Bianca, too, as the old character would have dropped everything to save her mother…again.

So, ABC, I have to ask, will the only handcuffs I see in this affair be the fuzzy pink ones on the nightstand?  And why not?  You have certainly unlocked the strangle hold most other networks’ standards and practices have on same-sex couples.  CBS’s Guiding Light gave their viewers a year long romp in the lovelorn “Hey,” followed by an insulting barrage of faux finger intimacy obviously forged by the front office.  “Minx”, on the other hand (pun absolutely intended) shows no signs that other body parts won’t be utilized in this romantic pairing.

So far, I’m still watching, but I have some questions.  This bloom-boosting romance of Bianca and Marissa, could it have been frantically fertilized by AMC’s cancellation?  And what about the move to the web? Once we begin to see the scenes shot after the web series announcement by Prospect Park, will this slow down the fruition, or will this decidedly deflowering of Marissa continue at the same rate?

I guess ABC holds the key to more than just the handcuffs.  We’ll see.

My last word on the subject of All My Children’s Marissa and Bianca, “Minx” (still roll my eyes) was “surprise me”.  I know, that’s two words, but the definitive, single, pronouncement here is surprise.  And you know what, I’m a bit taken aback that given the chance to beard-up behind once-kissing Chandler cousin, Scott (Daniel Cosgrove), Marissa didn’t even stubble when confessing her love for Bianca to her ex-husband, JR.  Watch:

That clip is about nine minutes long, but it only takes about 40 seconds for Marissa to slip those surly bonds and sore.  As she breaks the barrier, that sonic boom you hear is, “ I want Bianca.”  Trying to keep Marissa grounded, however, is JR, and he’s no good man.  He follows in his father’s formidable footsteps, and I foresee perilous drama in Minx’s future.

And I say, bring it on.  JR is a recovering alcoholic, but last we left him he was Jack’ed-up again and drowning his ego in drink.  True, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but a mythical small town hath no vehemence like a wealthy-soap-villain victimized.  Bianca better pull out some of those pyro skills of old, because with any luck, this is about to be an inferno in need of a back-burn.

Nice job, AMC, juxtaposing Krystal’s (Bobbie Eakes) reaction to her daughter’s news with Erica’s initial reaction to Bianca’s admission almost 12 years ago.   The Erica Kane/Susan Lucci montage was a lovely (and possibly parting) tribute to what could arguably be the most over-the-top, yet dynamic, character on daytime.  There is nothing quite as efficient as the daytime device of mnemonic possession to remind viewers that “I am Erica Kane” invented the me generation and she still holds the patent.  There is little doubt that Erica wouldn’t have initially made Bianca’s truth all about her.

Marissa’s mom saw it coming, as mothers usually do, and Krystal welcomes the news with open arms (and heart) as if scripted in a Disney movie.  I don’t know about you, but mine was more of the fables Grimm.  Maybe it’s my own personal experience that makes me skeptical of the realism in Krystal’s reaction to the, “Mom, I love a girl” moment, but what do I know…I’m a big cynic.  If I was queen of the world, and I have often wished I was, I would hand down an edict that requires all politicians to wear sponsor logos sown to their suits like NASCAR drivers, and that all parents, when confronted with the courageous act of their child’s coming out, react like this:

I have to say, though, is there no other more obvious way to get an actress out of a scene than “my cornbread is burning”?

Ok, now I will address the two-handed elephant in the room:

Yep, it’s the daytime lesbian version of third base.  Ok, I’m going to let this one slide for now because, one, they already had an intimate moment by fake Willow Lake, and two, only hours have passed.  Yes, I know, any red blooded lesbian would have raked those over-cooked, corn-muffins right off the table and taken Marissa right then and there, but deference for the public display wins out, and the fact that all this is so “new” to Marissa.  My advice to the novice, there are several good books and few good movies, and it pays to have a good teacher.  Wax on, wax off.

What’s that I hear, the beep, beep, beep of a Uhaul backing up?  This thing is moving quickly, but not THAT quickly…I don’t think.  Though I don’t believe there is any kind of official timeframe for hitching one on, either.  In any case, a very confident Marissa informs her friend, Scott, of her budding relationship with Bianca…and the reason she is moving out of the Chandler Mansion.  Ever get the feeling that Marissa is bursting to tell anyone and everyone the good news…like getting another A on a chemistry test…or a new pair of really great pumps and wearing a pencil skirts for a week?  Ok, whatever.  Fill in your own blank.

Thank you, Agnes of God, as this has your sign of social significance all over it.  So far, this burning bush has no indication of backtracking or indecision.  Sure, there is fear, there is always fear when you leap into the unknown, but there is a huge difference between fear and being paralyzed with apprehension.

That being said, do you think Daniel Cosgrove is being typecast as a lesbian whisperer?  Do you think casting agents all over the country are clamoring to get him, that one actor who can go into the homes of his female friends (and former lovers), and with no prior preparation or knowledge, achieve that special balance between two women in love?  Just a thought…but perhaps he has a necktie artifact and should be taken to Warehouse 13 to be placed on a shelf beside Myka and H. G. Wells.  A girl can dream…

Agnes Nixon is a woman with a set of ovaries.  I have always admired her brave forays into the tides of social antagonisms.  Now she has decided to tip her toe into the waters of social networking and blogging as www.agnesnixon.com

As the creator of my all time personal favorite daytime drama, All My Children, Ms. Nixon gave me more days of personal angst than I care to admit.  As a result, I was loathe to succumb to my own personal crises when I had a role model like Erica Kane!  As I was growing up in Atlanta, Erica Kane was the modern day Scarlett O’Hara that managed to use whatever means necessary so she would never go hungry or lonely again.

Ms. Nixon has chronicled her own mental scrapbook and virtualized it for all of us to enjoy.  We can now sit back and pick Agnes Nixon’s brain from the comfort of our own homes and smartphones.  The opening page is a video message from Ms. Nixon herself with a personal greeting inviting each of us to poke around and ask her questions.

I’ve got one…God, I hated Enid Nelson.  Why was she so damn mean?  Pardon my language, Ms. Nixon, but these are the characters we loved to hate.  The woman was pure evil in bad Junior League fashion.  And Brooke, she was such a tart.  I loved her as a motorcycle wench in a leather jacket.  What do you think of how her character turned out after you were no longer involved in the creative control of All My Kids?

Here’s a good one, too.  You have been credited with saying, “Make them laugh, make them cry, and make them wait.”  Have you seen Guiding Light’s OTALIA?  That CAN’T be what you meant?  Watching continental drift is painful.

Anyway, as Mary, The Soaps Examiner, and I have been discussing and reminiscing about the soaps of old, we decided that perhaps a page of retro soap memories were in order.  If the American soap opera is dying, why wait until it flat lines to have the wake?

So, I would love your thoughts on a retro soaps page where we can all wax philosophical on the days of watching while our grandmothers ironed…or the days we skipped school to see a hook-up because the VCR was broken.

Oh I remembered another question.  Ellen Wheeler, what was it like to have been involved in a socially controversial storyline about AIDS in the 80’s?  Did you feel the same sense of responsibility to a marginalized community involved when you proceeded with OTALIA?  I know that’s not a question to Agnes Nixon, but I thought she might use her influence.

Shall we dance?

One Step Forward: The fan writing campaign was an astounding success, and Liz Hendrickson returned to the show only a couple of months later.  Mary Margaret “Maggie” Stone arrives in Pine Valley to find out who murdered her identical twin sister, “Frankie”.   Inevitably Bianca and Maggie run into each other in the small town, Bianca faints at the likeness to Frankie, and as a result they become fast friends, evidence that soaps can move quickly when they so desire.
One Step Back: Bianca brings champagne to celebrate Maggie and Frankie’s birthday.  The situation gets a little too close as a slightly intoxicated Bianca touches Maggie’s face.  Maggie runs to a neutral corner professing with frenzied anguish, “I am not gay, I am not gay.”   Me thinks she doth protest too much…just like Reverend Ted and the meth massages he used to pray away the gay.

One Step Forward: Bianca and Maggie mend their friendship as soap time has a way of accomplishing.  Maggie’s heart goes out to Bianca as she overhears the resident Pine Valley High “mean girls” verbally gay bashing Bianca.  As a result, Maggie asks Bianca to be her date to the prom.  Pining looks held just that much too long lends to foreshadowing…and angst.
One Step Back: Maggie kisses a boy and tells Bianca about it.  That’s the natural progression, don’t you think?

One Step Forward: BAM takes a playful midnight swim protecting each other from the fabled “monster of Willow Lake”.  Maggie asks Bianca why she swims away every time she touches her, was it because she freaked out at the champagne incident? Maggie also questions how Bianca knew she was gay…
One Step Back: Bianca confesses her romantic feelings to a “friend” once again, but this time she feels she has reciprocation.  Maggie says, (all together now) “I’m into guys”, a natural progression, don’t you think?   Enter Henry, the nearest escape hatch for Maggie, All My Children and ABC.

Bianca, with desires of her own and tired of riding the pine so to speak, becomes involved with another woman, a dark, smoldering eastern European, named Lena.  Daytime’s first same-sex kiss is a result of this pairing.  A media blitz by ABC did little to soften the effect as a warning label was slapped across the beginning of the opening sequence.  ABC, citing the often quoted, but never producible book of Network Standards and Practices, thought the kiss required a few moments warning for the housewives of the Midwest to lock the kids out of the room.

See a pattern, but wait, there is more.  You might want to take your Dramamine now.

One Step Forward: In one of the most heartfelt, yet vulnerable scenes ever, Bianca reveals to her best friend, Maggie, that Pine Valley’s resident evil monger had raped her.  Maggie lovingly holds Bianca all night and tells her she is safe.
One Step Back: The message of this particular part of the storyline was somewhat lost in the backlash of gay and lesbian groups accusing AMC of raping the lesbian as a statement.  Gay fans of this couple, with years of soap-watching experience, saw this for what it was, an act of violence and revenge, not the prescribed cure for lesbianism.  We are our own worst enemies at times.  Who knows, AMC’s reluctance to move forward could have been partly shaded by this incident.

One Step Forward: This part of the storyline is truly groundbreaking.  For the first time in daytime television history we have an all female love triangle as Maggie becomes jealous of Lena for taking her place in the acronym.  Maggie kisses Bianca, then freaks, and you guessed it, runs away screaming in her mind, “I am not gay, I am not gay!”
One Step Back: Maggie sleeps with the nearest Y chromosome to prove she is not in love with Bianca.

One Step Forward: Lena leaves town to care for her ailing mother.  Maggie confesses to a friend she has feelings for Bianca, or according to every soap magazine spoiler, Bianca and Maggie grow closer…
One Step Back: Even though Lena is off screen, it’s a very convenient device to avoid moving BAM forward.   Maggie confesses her love to Bianca, but Bianca reiterates her commitment to Lena…somewhere in the Balkans.  As a result, Maggie runs to the waiting arms of an abusive relationship with a man.

One Step Forward: Long distance relationships just don’t work, so Bianca breaks up with Lena over the phone (classy), giving Bianca the space she needs to save Maggie from her verbally and physically abusive boyfriend.   When Maggie said she needed Jonathan because no one else loved her, Bianca once again confessed her love as more than friendship and tenderly kissed Maggie on the lips.

Now, finally, there is nothing, no antagonist, no unrequited love, nothing left unspoken to keep the powers that be from moving forward with this storyline.  Think again.

One Final Step: Bianca decides to leave Pine Valley and asks Maggie to go with her.  They fly off into the off-screen sunset together only after Maggie once again confesses her confusion and her inability to commit to Bianca.  Essentially, after three very long years and a myriad of  “growing closer spoilers”, we have BAM standing somewhat where they started…only the geography has changed.  True, the writing had to reflect the sudden decisions by the actresses to move on from daytime, but once again, we have to play pretend with characters off screen. Did they, or didn’t they, will they, or won’t they?  I don’t believe as committed fans, a mad rush into “the mile high club” was desired, either, but something other than the status quo would have been a more acceptable closure. However, as I pronounced in Part 1 of this posting, although fans would have preferred more network commitment to a more forward movement of the BAM storyline, at least the dance was begun with this pairing.  Being the first is never easy.  As a result of BAM’s success, soaps have dedicated more front-burner space to same sex couples.  Through a forward and back and forward again progression, BAM eventually sambaed down the daytime door allowing pairings such as Breese, Nuke, and now Otalia, to two-step through it.

An Aside
An article about BAM and how the couple became the first same-sex super couple cannot be written without acknowledging the fanbase that provided the support and the gentle network pressure required to move the storyline forward as much as it progressed.  The Bianca and Maggie pairing set the standard for which all other same-sex pairings would be compared.  The same can be said for the BAMfans, who danced that Sapphic samba with the network until the very end.

As I noted in Part 1 of this piece, there was a large contingency of viewers searching for any semblance of representation in the media.  Having seen little more than titillating exploitation from primetime television, AMC’s Bianca became a symbol of possibility.

A group of talented and creative individuals from across the nation became a network of concerted voices united in their desire to have BAM portray their own untold story. Until the Internet age, there was no way of organizing these voices.  Fan pages and forum boards became the party lines of the decades past.  A simple “Google” search connected you to a community welcoming your participation and your views.

Respectfully commenting on aspects of the BAM storyline that were sensitive to the ones it represented, the legion of BAMfans used letter writing campaigns, graphically designed materials, and themed giveaways to bring attention to the cause. The BAM brigade was given national mention in televised and written media across the county.  When was a fan group ever contacted by Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly for a quote used in production?  The BAMfans created a marketing campaign that rivaled anything Madison Avenue could produce.

Having the desire to be an effective force outside of the entertainment world, the BAMfans turned their attention toward charitable organizations.  Realizing its outreach numbered in the thousands, and having well placed contacts in the soap industry, the BAMfans began to make a difference in all parts of the county.  With the unselfish and unwavering help of Eden and Liz, the BAMfans have raised tens of thousands of dollars for such charitable organizations as RAINN, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, the Pediatric Aids Foundation, and BCEFA.

Part 3 – AfterBAM, the present.  (to be continued)