OK, I admit it. I got hooked on General Hospital while living in Germany and watching AFN in the afternoons while doing school work.
At any rate, for those who have ever seen the show, Lucas Spencer (son of Bobbie, nephew of Luke, cousin of Lucky) has started to come out to some of the characters on the show. He is in high school and they are writing this very well - so far.
They briefly had a minor Gay male character awhile back who suddenly disappeared from the scene…but this time, by making him the relative of the major characters on the show, I think there are better chances he might stick around for some storylines.
I just think it is interesting, as a few years back there was an article stating that Gay characters were not in soaps because the “average housewife” didn’t want to see that.
They actually planned this storyline several years ago, but backed away from it for some reason. I’m kind of surprised that they’re bringing it back - the headwriter and the EP aren’t exactly known for handling these kinds of storylines well. Then again, I don’t particularly care for either one of them, so I’m not expecting much positive out of this.
A character from one of the main families on Passions (nbc soap) came out to her mother a couple of months ago. Her father and friends are supposed to find out this week.
A number of other daytime shows have featured LGB (no T AFAIK) characters, including All My Children, As the World Turns, One Life to Live and previous GH characters. AMC had the first lesbian back in 1982. ATWT had the first gay male character. Amazingly I was flipping through channels and happened to land on ATWT at exactly the moment the guy said “I have something to tell you” or whatever to the leading town family and I just knew immediately he was coming out right after the commercial break. For the year his character was on I became one of those soap nerds who scheduled classes around the show. The day after his storyline wrapped up I lost all interest in he show and never watched it again.
All My Children had Bianca, daughter of main character Erica Kane, come out a while ago. I think it was handled quite well, they also made sure not to focus too much on her relationships with other women but more with her family and others and their acceptance of that. They actually took the character from a rather whiny brat to one of the most loved characters on the show. It’s too bad they had to ruin the characters credibilty just before she left the show by having her pimp for the writer’s new favorite character who knowingly kept Bianca’s baby and let Bianca think she was dead.
Anyway, I don’t pay much attention to General Hospital anymore. I think the writer’s on that show have to be the laziest writer’s around. Characters travel faster than light from all over the world in a matter of seconds while no times passes for the other characters. They come up with the most unlikely scenarios to get their characters out of trouble. People make up elaborate lies to cover for things when a very simple lie would be better and easier to believe. It’s also too much of the “Sonny Show”. I don’t have too much confidence that they will handle a gay storyline too well. I think I only keep watching this show so I can MST3K it.