I have been blogging about this GL storyline for a couple of months, and I have been recapping for AfterEllen for two weeks now.  My inbox looks like a meeting of the United Nations.  Never would I have imagined such an international appeal for a daytime drama.  I have received feedback and commentary from six out of the seven continents.  The seasons are changing in Antarctica, or I’m sure I would have heard something from the penguin outpost by now.  Just today I received messages from Italy, the Philippines, Hong Kong, New Zealand…and New Jersey.

I would like to believe that my impeccable skills as a writer are bringing in the multitudes, but I have no such delusions of grandeur.  The dramatic telling of Olivia and Natalia has reverberated across the globe as the language of love is universal. A caress of a trembling hand or an impassioned look held long between adoring eyes needs no translation.  Love is love whatever the coordinates.

According to an administrator of the OTALIA Big Purple Dreams fansite, perhaps as many as ten percent of the registered board members are international. They represent over 25 countries from Australia to Wales. It could be more when considering those who reside in the land of Lurkdom.  How has this soap phenomenon gone global at a speed that rivals Susan Boyle or Octo-mom? The simple answer would be to say the internet, but hundreds of dramas are broadcast everyday with little more than a world wide web mention.  Most remain buried beneath the tenth page of the odd Google search.  The internet is merely the vehicle transporting this shot at love heard ’round the world.

Write it, and they will come; write it well, and they will come back; write it like OTALIA, and they will stay.  Even a cynic like me has to admit this GL storyline is captivating, the performances by Crystal Chappell and Jessica Leccia are riveting, and the dramatic tension is disquieting.  Where else in the world can you find a love story of boy gets girl, boy gets killed, girl gets heart, girl gets girl?  Nowhere else but Springfield. That’s just a heartbeat away from Italy, the Philippines, Hong Kong, New Zealand…and New Jersey.

I guess I have to humble myself and come clean.  No need for Father Ray or Sister Anne’s private confessional; I freely admit it.  When I watched the OTALIA scenes today, I felt like my heart had been the one transplanted.  I sat there holding the one I am in love with, moved beyond words.  How do you write when the ability of cognitive thought has failed you?

Crystal Chappell’s performance at Gus’s gravesite was better than anything I have ever seen in daytime, rivals any classic film, and has no comparison in same-sex storylines bar none.  The emotion was gut wrenching and raw, and better yet, believable.  I could feel her soul being torn loose from within.  A cemetery is no stranger to demise, and aptly, Olivia was dying inside.

I am the self-professed OTALIA widow, a kinship I now know I share with a multitude of others.  I make no pretenses that I lament the time my significant other spends on the computer watching clips, downloading podcasts, and chatting with our big purple friends across the country.  I lost count the number of arguments started because I rolled my eyes or intentionally pronounced the acronym wrong.  Today, the sacrifice became worth it.  My cynicism fell to the floor as my tears fell from my eyes.  I followed my story performed before me with a passion and a vulnerability worthy of my struggle.

For the rest of this love story, I plan on sitting on the couch with my baby, fighting over the remote, wearing matching jogging suits, and finishing each other’s sentences.  The OTALIA journey will culminate in an ultimate destination we have never been before.  Hey, baby, scoot over.  I’m getting in.

3 martini lunch

It’s all cozy and nice talking to little Emma about cupcake wedding tiers, but what Liv needs right now is something fermented, straight-up (so to speak), adult, and dirty.  Add a little oily fruit, and what do you get?  Doris.

“It’s not a date.  I said drink, not dinner.”

What better way to escape a farmhouse full of Frank than a three martini lunch with the mad hatter.  For Olivia, getting wasted away again in Martyr-itaville is better than facing the fact that Nat and the Frank-furter have moved up the wedding…to this afternoon.  Olivia may have been looking for a “sista” with a little compassion, but Doris is not the caring kind to allow her one pathetic moment of cowardice or pity.  Doris is living her closeted life through OTALIA right now, and like so many of us, will be damned to see it screwed up by a daytime diva hiding behind her well aged gin.

Doris is us; she is the mouthpiece of the viewer, the fan, and the OTALIA widow that wants her spouse back from the abyss.  She is bellied up to the bar telling Olivia not what she wants to hear, but what she needs to hear.  For every angst ridden big purple dreamer yelling at the TV and computer screen, Doris is telling her to stop talking with her eyes and start speaking with her mouth!   Olivia, tear your right foot off the Beacon barstool and get back to the farm.  You have to stop this wedding before it ruins the lives of all of us…and I mean ALL of us.

Doris, now is the time to don that superhero cape, you know, the one that goes with the pretty hat, and save the world as we know it…and want it.  We are counting on you to give Liv a snoot full of confidence to go along with that libation.  Those martinis are not the only thing shaking…or stirring…in Springfield.

Having heard last week the long running daytime soap opera, Guiding Light, was being canceled due an average 0.9 Nielsen ratings share, I thought I would do a little investigating.  Just who are these Nielsen families, and just what DO they watch?  What does a 0.9 share mean?  What is their definition of a “representative family”?  I would be willing to bet that the viewing audience of OTALIA’S Big Purple Dreams is larger than a collective 0.9 share, and we all know they are watching Guiding Light.

From what I can gather from reading, Nielsen families are at first solicited by random phone calls.  This ought to tell you something as caller ID would keep most intelligent consumers from answering.  Next, a small stipend is offered.  Once again, this is a red flag.  Nielsen family lottery amounts will never be published, however, I can’t imagine the commitment to be all that profitable, especially in this economy.  And let’s face it, if there isn’t enough in it for a new pair of Jimmy Choo’s, then I’m not doing it!  So there you go, they lost the well dressed, female professional. 

For those unfortunate enough to answer the phone, and for those who are willing to accept the monetary contract, a “people meter” developed in 1987 is attached to your television set.  Admittedly, new advances like digital television have posed challenges for Nielsen Media Research and their ability to continually determine who is watching, but hey, no body watches digital, right? 

Families in smaller markets and others deemed not people meter worthy for one reason or another, receive “diaries”.  If this summons up visions of a teenage girl, lying on her bed, iPod in her ears, writing, “Dear Diary, today I totally watched Gossip Girls.”, then think again.  In all probability, Nielsen families franticly fill out these diaries with little recall of the week’s viewing habits mere minutes before they are popped back into the mailbox. The reality is, for a stipend of a couple of bucks, these handwritten dinosaurs have gone the way of the thank you note and the perfume scented love letter.  For better or for mostly worse, no one has time anymore for handwritten correspondence.  “Prbly L8 4 dnr gtg <3″ is the customary prose I receive from the one who loves me most. 

A “people meter” can be programmed to determine a few things like age, sex (that’s gender, not amount), and the channel/program viewed.  The meter is also used to reflect categories of viewers such as African-American and Hispanic.   I guess Asian viewing habits are not quite so important.  And recognize any other glaring omission?  Where are those Subaru buying, Carnival Cruise loving gays and lesbians?  I guess when it comes to determining Nielsen families, the Defense of Marriage Act, left the alternative familial unit cancelled by the networks. 

A mistake?  I think so, and if what I hear about Procter and Gamble shopping around Guiding Light with the same sex storyline of OTALIA as the high beam, they just might have experienced an epiphany themselves.  This is an extremely powerful consumer group.  According to a newly published analysis by Witeck-Combs Communications, the total buying power, or disposable personal income, of American LGBT adults in 2008 was $712 billion up from $690 billion in 2007.  That’s a hell of a lot of soap…for the unclean…and the anti-Nielsen.