Gays of Our Lives: Saying Goodbye

This week in Gays of Our Lives …

We look at As the World Turns as it winds down its final days, starting with last week’s clips.

CLIP ONE

CLIP TWO

I have so many thoughts about these clips. Unfortunately, none of them are very positive. Well, I am positive the show thought about how many different horrible ways they could handle this storyline and then included them all in one week’s worth of drama.

Putting aside the bad decision to kill off Reid in the first place, not to mention leaving three gay characters dead, alone and miserable, respectively, the show simply couldn’t get a good story out of what should have been standout drama. Yes, there are good performances and good moments. But as a story? It’s terrible and it’s utterly rushed.

I knew that Reid was going to die early on in the episode, but he barely made it past the first commercial. Since nearly every scene that followed was about Reid or the reaction to his death, what was the rush? Why not let him linger on for a wee bit longer and give him and Luke a special moment to say goodbye? They dragged out Luke and Reid’s romance to nearly painful lengths, but ended it so quickly.

It’s not like they were going to have sex on the ER table or anything.

I did think the scene where Luke begged Reid not to leave him and talked about all the things they needed to do was quite powerful. Van Hansis was wonderful, but I was really impressed by Eric Sheffer Stevens in that moment.

He really only had his eyes and face to work with, but you could see the love and regret and sadness that they had missed out on by having their time cut brutally short. That might have been one of the best moments in the entire arc.

Alison detailed what went on in the operating room during the surgery and Luke, in an amazingly sad but beautiful scene, described the harvesting of Reid’s organs. The scene in which Luke ranted about losing Reid and how his ‘heroism’ cost them their time together was strong.