The following article appeared in the February 6, 1992 issue
of the New York Times. It is reprinted exactly as it first appeared.
Megan Truly Has (Sob!) Only One Life To Live
by John J. O'Connor
Forget tissues. This tear-jerker cries out for towels, big, absorbent
ones. Megan is dying
this week on "One Life To Live," and as family and friends gather at her
hospital bedside,
the occasion is being used to provide a retrospective of the show. "Tell
me everything
about the old days," Megan weakly whispers. And every weekday from 2 to
3 PM, the
visitors do just that, telling her stories to keep her going, with help
from a sprinkling of
clips from the 6,000 episodes churned out since the show made its debut
on ABC in July
1968.
Triggering this 'retro splurge was the decision of Jessica Tuck, the
actress who plays
Megan, to stretch her talents elsewhere, perhaps in prime time. How to
get rid of her with
maximum impact? Linda Gottlieb, executive producer, and Michael Malone,
head writer -
a team who joined the show just in July - decided to hit her with an
immune-deficiency
illness, in this instance lupus. The disease is not normally fatal, so
kidney complications
were added as plot insurance. Mix with the Scheherezade storytelling
gimmick, and
viewers get what the network hopes will be "an uplifting emotional
journey." Welcome to
daytime drama.
"One Life To Live" was created by the soap doyenne Agnes Nixon as an
alternative to the
WASP-dominated stories found on shows like NBC's "Another World," on
which Miss
Nixon had been head writer. Her new show, set in Llanview, Pa., a suburb of
Philadelphia, reflected an ethnic and social diversity unusual for the
genre in the 1960's.
Viki, daughter of the local newspaper's publisher, married a
working-class Irish-American
Catholic named Joe Riley. Other important characters were
Polish-American. Black
characters were introduced; in 1979 Al Freeman, Jr. became the first
black actor to win a
daytime Emmy for his role as the police captain Ed Hall.
Ratings have been erratic, probably to be expected with a show that could
send nuns to do
dangerous missionary work in Latin America or conclude one of its Gothic
story lines with
a masquerade party that lasted a month on the air. There has been a
goodly share of
casting problems. Early on, when an actor decided to leave, his
character was badly
burned in a fire. After plastic surgery, the bandages were removed and,
voila!, the
character was being played by the actor's brother. The ploy proved
popular on other
shows, not the least on "Dynasty."
Under the team of Gottlieb and Malone, "One Life To Live" has gone from
11th to 4th in
the ratings. Ms. Gottlieb's background includes producing feature films
("Dirty Dancing")
and television movies. Mr. Malone is a quite favorably reviewed novelist
("Foolscap"),
said by one critic to possess an "underlying wicked humor masked by the
steady hilarity on
the surface." As for his connection with "One Life To Live," Mr. Malone
in an interview
in The New York Times Book Review, said: "I think Dickens would have done
it. I make
up characters and there they are in the flesh. I have my own Shakespeare
company." A
bit of that underlying wicked humor, no doubt.
But back to poor Megan. Things don't look good. "She's septic," Dr.
Larry Wolek
(Michael Storm) says grimly. "Tell you what," says Viki (Erika Slezak),
Megan's mother
and, just three weeks ago, her kidney donor, "I'm going to tell you
another story." Not
content with recalling her own weddings and birthings, Viki, herself the
victim of a split
personality linked to some nasty pornography scandals, recalls memorable
moments from
others' lives.
One is the doctor's ("Had more than his share of sadness in life," Viki
says), specifically
that time he discovered his wife was a prostitute. In a tumultuous court
scene, she
scramed: "Why don't you punish me? I've been waiting so long to be
punished. You want
blood? You want me to say that I'm lower than the lowest scum?" The very
dramatic, and
heavily watched, scene won a 1980 daytime Emmy for Judith Light, who
moved on to
prime-time fortune with Tony Danza in "Who's the Boss?"
For most of this week, Megan's husband Jake, has been trapped in a
foreign prison with
Andrew, a minister out of Yale Divinity School who, not so secretly, is
also in love with
Megan. Jake is blunt: "You wouldn't happen to have, uh, a thing for my
wife?" Andrew,
though, is too nice to provoke a scene. Both men will be back in
Llanview, of course, in
time to say goodbye to Megan tomorrow afternoon as just about everyone on
the show
gets an opportunity to let the tears flow freely. Although a week early,
a Valentine card
looms large. And, taking a cue from Heathcliff, Jake carries Megan to
the hospital
window, enabling her to see the tree they planted on their wedding day.
The emotional
journey hits pay dirt.