After a gazillion years on the air (it debuted on April 2, 1956), As the World Turns will end on Sept. 17. The show has been one of some major TV firsts. It also launched the careers of many talented actors, including Julianne Moore and Meg Ryan, as well as theatre actors John Bryggman and Elizabeth Hubbard. The only TV show to have filmed only in New York, ATWT was a hotbed of acting talent from Broadway and off-Broadway, with many of its major and minor stars appearing in notable plays as well as primetime TV. ATWT also had the distinction of having Helen Wagner. Wagner, one of the show's original stars, held the record for longevity on the tube: She debuted with the show in 1956, and her final performance was in April, just before her death at 91.
The second-longest-running soap (after Guiding Light, which ended its 62-year run in Sept. 2009) in TV history, the CBS daytime-Emmy winner has been a ground-breaking show in many areas, not the least of which has been with the portrayal of gay male relationships on the show.
We know daytime soaps (as opposed to primetimers like the Emmy-laden Mad Men or Big Love ) get the sneer from many the elitist viewer, but as we have noted numerous times here over the years, what happens on daytime often takes years to translate to primetime. For example, interracial relationships hit daytime first, as did abortion. Drug and alcohol abuse as well as eating disorders were addressed on daytime long before they became the stuff of primetime drama. And while it might not seem a challenging issue today, D-I-V-O-R-C-E hit daytime a network millennium before it made it to accepted nighttime discourse.
What soaps have always been able to do, which primetime cannot, is take time to build story. The average story arc in primetime is three episodes. In daytime, it's six weeks – weeks with five episodes, not one. (Consider this: the show aired its 10,000th episode on May 12, 1995, and when it ends on Sept. 17, will have aired just under 14,000 episodes.)
ATWT has long been a family-grounded soap. Characters develop out of familial relationships between and among the core families in the show. Thus when Luke Snyder, son of one of the main characters within the core Snyder family in Oakdale, IL, revealed he was gay while he was in high school, it was a story that was bound to take center stage.
Luke wasn't going to disappear as a character because his family ties were too integral to the long-term plotting of the show. What remained to be seen was how ATWT would develop both his character and his gayness. Slowly and steadily, ATWT drew Luke into the center of the show's dynamic plotting. He fell in love with his best friend from high school, Kevin, jock and jackass. The two would hang out together and get drunk, which eventually led to Luke having addiction problems (something he shared with his mother, Lily), but also to some cozy evenings in Luke's grandmother's little carriage house, where back rubs and horseplay were de rigueur . Luke's grandmother Lucinda caught a glimpse of one of these convivial "buddy" evenings, and raised more than an eyebrow. But Kevin was entirely clueless as to Luke's actual emotions.
Of course, in soaps, no secret remains hidden forever. Luke came out to his cousin Jade, and to his parents, Holden and Lily. Holden took it like a man, Jade was happy to become a fag hag, and Lily freaked out, as did Luke's biological father, Damian.
Damian and Lily decided to send Luke into reparative therapy, a disastrous move that led to tragedy within the family, but which made Lily and Damian realize that their son needed their support, not their censure. ATWT took the clear stand that reparative therapy was cruel, homophobic and utterly ineffectual: a bold move that caused the religious right to urge a boycott of the show's sponsor, Procter & Gamble.
Emotional disasters with Kevin were not as easily remedied as the conflicts with Luke's parents. Luke came out to Kevin, and revealed his love for him. Kevin freaked out and had an "I'm no fag, you faggot!" response. But in a classic soap twist of fate, Luke ended up saving Kevin's life when he nearly drowned (yes, there was mouth-to-mouth), but the two had an uneasy peace that would create other problems later for Luke.
When Luke started college he met Noah, his first reciprocal queer relationship. Noah was seemingly bi-curious at first, involved with Luke's best friend, Maddie. But soon their mutual attraction was revealed, and the two embarked on soapdom's first long-term and realistic gay male pairing.
There were, naturally, pitfalls. Noah had an autocratic military man for a father whose designs for his son didn't include the word "queer." The colonel ended up shooting Luke while the three were on a hunting trip, which resulted in Luke's temporary loss of the use of his legs. Luke recovered, but Noah's guilt continued. He toyed with joining the military himself, which allowed yet another issue to be raised: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Again, the show took a stand that DADT was wrong.
Eventually, Luke and Noah became less star-crossed lovers. One huge disappointment for viewers, however, was that while Luke and Noah kissed often and with full-mouth passion on screen, their love-making was entirely off-screen. They were seen leaving the bedroom or bathroom with strategically placed towels afterward, but never seen in bed together throughout their nearly three-year relationship.
In the soap world, true love never runs smooth, regardless of sexual orientation, so impediments continued to plague the couple. Noah's mentor at college showed interest in more than Noah's skills as a budding filmmaker, and Luke got jealous, then even.
Mason, whose bitchy/queeny/soon-to-be-ex boyfriend appeared several times to publicly berate the professor, started giving Noah private tutelage. But when he came on to Noah, who was not interested, Luke decided to reveal the sexual harassment to the college.
A trajectory of events followed that resulted in an accident while Noah was filming, and he was temporarily blinded. (Horrifying medical complications like paralysis and blindness are common soap devices.) Luke, who was seriously wealthy due to his biological father's moneyed Maltese family, brought in the best surgeon for Noah. In fact, Luke practically kidnapped him to get him to treat Noah.
Dr. Reid Oliver was all business and no people skills, but he was able to surgically repair the damage to Noah's eyes. Reid, who professed supreme dislike for Luke and banned him from being around Noah while he was being treated, began to develop different feelings for Luke. What had begun as an adversarial relationship started to shift into something else, and one day Reid grabbed Luke and kissed him. The sexually charged kiss altered the Luke-and-Noah pairing for good.
Luke's budding relationship with Reid was everything his relationship with Noah had not been. The sweetly un-complex first love with Noah was replaced by a sexually dynamic and complicated pairing with the volatile and older Reid. The scenes between Luke and Reid had an electricity to them that had soap supercouple written all over it. While Luke and Noah had been a favorite coupling for viewers, ranking in the top soap couples for nearly two years, Luke and Reid was a pairing that seemed to take Luke's gayness to another level. With Noah, Luke was a nervous gay teenager, then college student who wasn't quite sure who he was. With Reid, he was suddenly a grown man with complicated feelings, emotional and sexual.
Reid was wholly unlikable in the beginning, and as fan postings made clear, the audience continued to hope Luke would salvage his damaged relationship with Noah, who still blamed Luke for his blindness. But as the arc developed, Reid unfolded as a character, and all that soaps can do with that five hours of weekly story was revealed. Thus, when Noah tried to rekindle the relationship with Luke and Luke told him he was in love with Reid, we were cheering for Reid and Luke. Luke had finally grown up; he'd realized he needed a grown-up relationship to match his own development into manhood.
But as the end of ATWT grew closer, storylines were wrapping up and a new complication arose. Reid began treating a colleague, Chris Hughes, who was also the son of the chief of staff at Memorial Hospital, and vying with Reid to take over that position when Bob Hughes retired. Chris was sicker than anyone thought, however, and in trying to keep his deteriorating condition from his girlfriend Katie and his parents, he enlisted Reid's aid.
Noah saw the two – Reid was literally holding a very sick Chris in his arms and leading him into an elevator at the Lakeview Hotel – and told Luke that Reid was cheating on him with another man. Luke confronted Reid, and the truth came out. But Chris soon collapsed, his heart so weakened that he needed a transplant.
And so, with 10 days left of ATWT to air, Reid was driving to Bay City to argue for a donor heart for Chris when his car got stuck on the railroad tracks and was hit by a train. It was a shocking twist: Reid survived just long enough to make Luke his power of attorney so he could, as an organ donor, donate his heart to Chris.
The sudden and tragic death of Reid gave ATWT one last burst of queer activism. The funeral director refused to deal with Luke, mumbling about a "gay thing." Lily and Holden ordered him out of the house. But the limitations of queer couplings were front-and-center yet again (including, in our perception, the fact that the queer doctor had to die so that the straight guy could live and not leave his girlfriend).
Noah, who had been going to leave Oakdale for Los Angeles and a film school scholarship, decided to stay with Luke to help him through his grief. Luke scattered Reid's ashes at the iconic Snyder pond, and gave a fitting if bittersweet tribute to his lost love.
Hunk named Hank
As important as the Luke/Noah/Reid storyline was to daytime and broadening the scope of gay male relationships on network TV, particularly by showing men kissing, ATWT had first dealt with gay male relationships two decades earlier. In 1988, ATWT debuted the character of Hank Elliot, the first gay man on daytime TV. Elliot was a colleague of lead character Barbara Ryan, a fashion designer. Later, Hank became involved in daytime's first AIDS storyline as well, when his lover Charles developed AIDS.
The show addressed both homophobia and AIDS-phobia with those storylines when no other show on TV was addressing the AIDS crisis. Because the story turned tragic when Hank was kept from his partner's bedside by Charles' homophobic parents, ATWT did a lot of educating about how endemic homophobia is to all queer relationships.
When good TV shows end, there's always a sadness. But when groundbreaking shows like ATWT end, it signals a distinct shift in the TV landscape. Some of the plot twists and devices used on ATWT have been maddening, as is often the case with soaps. But ATWT was stalwart in maintaining its support for its characters, and Luke Snyder was a main character since he came out as gay.
Of course, such storylines can't work without actors to manage the roles with the range demanded. Van Hansis was superb as Luke, giving a nuanced and believable performance throughout his tenure on the show, which began in 2005. His performance earned him several Emmy nominations. Jake Silbermann (Noah) and Eric Sheffer Stevens (Reid) also imbued their roles with a level of candor that made the gay storylines work. Both men created believable and non-stereotypical couplings with Luke. And Brian Starcher, who created the role of Hank Elliot, in playing the role outside the at-that-time standardized Tim Gunn version of the gay fashion designer, also altered perceptions of gay men with his performance.
We'll miss ATWT. We've become fond of the characters over the years and have found Luke's story especially compelling. There's nothing to fill the gap the show will leave – one more View-style show takes its place.
We remember during our childhood coming in from school to our grandmother watching ATWT. It's hard not to think of all the teens who were first exposed to another gay teen on the tube by catching a few minutes of ATWT after school and watching Luke's struggles. The show airs its final episode Sept. 17, but it leaves a lasting legacy. Let's hope that on CBS' Young & Restless, the writers manage to find a storyline for the two gay male characters, Rafe and Phillip, wandering aimlessly, and separately, through Genoa City.
Until then, ATWT takes with it the only gay male relationships on daytime. And for that and so much more, we mourn its passing. Stay tuned.