I don’t care for the more slapsticky humor that Jack and Jennifer do sometimes. Sometimes it feels pointless to me, humor for humor’s sake, like Eugene and Calliope. But I do enjoy the banter in their work rivalry—it really does remind me of His Girl Friday. And, at its best, humor gives them a medium where they can connect emotionally, no matter what else is going on.

This, for example, is pretty perfect:

Jack and Jennifer have been arguing for weeks over her involvement in this scheme she’s cooked up: she’s impersonating the princess Katerina (her friend Carly) in order to protect her from marrying a man she doesn’t love. They are not exactly on the outs, but Jack dragging his feet about getting married is part of what send Jennifer off on this scheme to begin with. But here, Jennifer isn’t hurt at all by Jack’s dismayed expression when she mentions getting married. Instead, she says confidently that he can’t say he’s never thought about what their wedding would be like.

The vows are priceless, and this is where the humor comes in. Jennifer strikes just the right note when she says she’ll take him “for better and mostly worse” and calls him egotistical and pigheaded. It’s a very funny, but it’s more than that. One of Jack’s fears has always been that he won’t measure up to Jennifer’s idea of what a husband should be. Here, her teasing, and obvious joy in it, reveals a profound truth: she loves him in spite of, or even because of, his flaws. That is more reassuring than a direct statement, and it’s what allows him to respond in kind, melt a little bit and join the fantasy. The seeming lightness is what lets the genuine emotion come through, and there is nothing pointless about that.

We start in the blue tunnel: when a teenage Stephanie (played by Stephen’s real life daughter) shows up and tells Steve that she has a boyfriend from the Riverfront who everyone says is bad news. I find this maybe just a little pat and convenient, but what saves it is the small smile that Kayla has on her face as Stephanie describes him; she knows just how Stephanie feels. Steve’s protectiveness and indignation is well played, as is his moment of shock when Stephanie tells him he can’t protect her: he won’t be there.

And this, of course, is what pushes Steve over the edge to fight his way back, out of the tunnel, and wake up. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, as a parent I understand that it’s not just love for your children that could be stronger than death, but the driving need to make sure they are safe. But on the other hand, as an S&K shipper I don’t like the implication that coming back for Kayla isn’t enough. The implication is no doubt unintentional—this is supercouple-era Days, after all!—but it is there.

But, Stephen does away with that implication by the way his eyes go right to Kayla, like she is his lifeline. I love that they gave Steve this hero moment by having him struggle back from death. It also gives Steve to interact with his family, outside the tunnel, before he is killed (again).

I had a hard time deciding what moment I wanted to showcase for Kayla around Steve’s death. Mary Beth is so incredibly excellent all through. But it all comes together in the final moments, when Steve actually dies. When she lays down on his chest and tells him to take his strength from her, it’s perfect because it’s emblematic of their relationship. There has always been a wonderful contradiction inherent in their love story. Steve, so tough on the outside, was emotional, vulnerable, and full of love on the inside. And Kayla, her apparent sweetness and gentleness were wrapped around a core of steel.

But there is more to it than that. When Steve thanks Kayla “for my life,” I love how Mary Beth plays Kayla’s reaction, surprised and a little puzzled. Why should he be thanking her, what has she done to deserve thanks? All through their relationship, Mary Beth never played that Kayla as some kind of saint, taking on a charity case. She was scared and wary of Steve, and attracted to him, and fell in love with him—and through all of it, saw him as her equal. Kayla has always depended on Steve too, and drawn strength from him, and he’s maybe the only one she can truly let her guard down with.

And when we come to the final moment when the camera focuses on Kayla as the doctor is yelling and she’s pleading please don’t do this, please don’t take him, with all of those tears streaming down her face. And I can never watch this without tears streaming down mine as well.

I kid, I kid. But it’s true that Steve’s death forces Jack to realize how much he has been leaning on his older brother. He has counted on Steve to be the hero in the family, and without him he has to find the hero within himself. They set this up nicely by having Jack tell Jennifer he’s going back to Salem to seek Steve’s help, and then be called back instead with news of Steve’s accident. We have these scenes of Jack in the blue tunnel and then at Steve’s bedside:

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I especially like the reference to how Steve has always been there for him “even when I didn’t want you to.” It’s a great way to reference their crazy history without going into too much detail.

My absolute favorite part of this scene, though, is the way Jack reminds Steve of the promise he made him in the orphanage, that he would always take care of him. The show sets up from very early on how that unkept promise (unkept because Jack was adopted) has haunted Steve. It was a part of what made him give Kayla up for Jack. Here is the scene where Steve first tells Jack about it, right after Jack has found out his true identity:

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This scene is so painful (and wonderful). It’s painful twice over–to watch Steve break down and open up to the man who raped Kayla, and then to see Jack scorn and reject him on top of that. But because we understand just how much Steve loved Billy and how this promise has haunted him—in the heat of the moment of Jack finding out the truth, Steve can’t help leaping to do what he’s probably been waiting to do his entire life: apologize for failing Jack and hope to be forgiven. But Jack, of course, has so many of his own issues crashing down on him that he has no room for Steve’s. But he does see, and finally understands, the love Steve has for him—and he recoils from it. To hear now, two years later, that this moment actually made an impression on Jack, that it became incredibly meaningful to him, is wonderfully redemptive.

Also, it’s one of the first times I think Jack identifies personally with something that happened to baby Billy. Because he was just a baby, he couldn’t remember their relationship as boys the way Steve could. But here, because it connects back to something that Jack does remember vividly—Steve telling him about the promise, not the promise itself—and connects it to how he has always counted on Steve’s bedrock-like presence in his life. That early relationship was so important for Steve, and now we see it is important to Jack as well. The whole arc of Jack’s story could be viewed as Jack and Billy slowly coming together, two people becoming one person. And the sad irony is that it is happening just as he is about to lose Steve for good.

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First, a quick note on the Blue Tunnel of Death. (For those who don’t know, after Steve’s accident he ends up in the hospital in a coma. We see Kayla, and then other members of the family, one by one, talking to Steve in a swirling blue tunnel, trying to talk him back from “going toward the light”—from dying.) I’m generally not a fan of Days when it goes supernatural. I don’t care for Angel Steve, and I don’t care for this either. Many of the things they do with all the characters talking to Steve in the tunnel, they could do in classic “coma bedside” scenes (which we also see). It also unfortunately seems to create the impression that Steve wants to die, because all this arguing against it forces Steve to take the other side. But, there are a couple of benefits to the blue tunnel, and one is that we get to see Steve reacting to the specific things his family says to him, and that turns out to be very important in some cases.

This is especially the case when Jo takes her turn in the blue tunnel. One of Jo’s key traits is her tendency toward self sacrifice, especially on behalf of her children. But, in Steve’s case, her sacrifices have always ended up hurting him in some horrible way. It all goes back to that seminal moment in Steve’s life, when she gave him up for adoption at the age of five, after he tried to kill her abusive husband. From Jo’s point of view, she was sacrificing herself, because she knew she was always Duke’s real target. If she stayed around to be Duke’s punching bag, Steve and Billy would be safe from him. But there is more to being safe than being physically removed from danger, and the consequences of Jo’s sacrifice were borne by Steve as much as by Jo. And that thread has run through their adult relationship as well.

If Jo’s first instinct with any problem is to sacrifice herself, her second has usually been to ask Steve to do so. Putting aside the the perfect storm of circumstance, character, motives and cross-motives that led Jo and Steve to be each others’ enablers in the sacrifice of Kayla for Jack, a simpler example will suffice. Before Jack knew he really was, Jack was hot on the trail of a “Billy Johnson,” who he knew nothing about other than he was somehow connected to something Steve wished to conceal. In order to keep Jack from finding out the truth, Jo thought nothing of asking Steve to fly down to California and break into the orphanage there and steal the adoption records. Kayla at this point was struggling to recover from being attacked by Harper and adjust to her possibly permanent deafness—but hey Steve, why don’t you leave your injured wife and go commit a crime for the man who raped her and is actively working to destroy you? All this, keep in mind, not to save Jack’s life or anything like that, but merely to prevent him from finding out something that might hurt his feelings. Cost/benefit analysis is not Jo’s strong suit.

Given all this history, Jo’s offer in the blue tunnel to go in Steve’s place—to die so that he can live—is both perfectly Jo and perfectly unprecedented. It’s Jo being a mother in the way that she best knows how, but this time, it’s on Steve’s behalf. And in order for us to be able to savor this moment, we need to see Steve’s reaction to it. And Stephen, of course, plays it perfectly, showing how moved Steve is by her offer. I love the slightly wry twist to “you’d really do that, wouldn’t you?” Then, when he goes on to say that his biggest regret he never got to tell her how he felt about her, at first glance it’s hard to know what he means. After all, he’s told her he loves her and they have a good relationship now. But, crucially, it’s always been a relationship of equals, and it’s not just Jo that this dynamic springs from. Steve, as an adult, has determinedly tried to avoid taking anything from her, from counting on her for anything, from being dependent on her. After all, look what happened the last time. But here, at this moment, they are closer to mother and son than they have been since he was five years old.

First of all, I just have to say how impressed I am at how well the whole thing is handled, plot-wise. Nowadays they would toss Steve down the Salem Stairs of Death and call it a day. Here, they do an excellent job folding his death into an umbrella story, and then gathering all his family and friends around in the hospital and sending him off in grand old soapy style. (There’s so much to talk about, I’m going to split it up over a number of different blog posts.)

They also do something quite ingenious, before we even get to the accident itself. Steve and Kayla start planning a trip around the world, setting up a Bo-and-Hope style sendoff. This ups the ante and the angst factor when Steve decides to stick around for “one last case” and it turns out, indeed, to be his last case. They were so close to their happy ending. But it also allows everyone on the show (and in the audience) one big happy goodbye, before the sturm und drang of the accident and his death.

Here’s an example of the kind of scene I mean:

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This is just a very cute scene. Some of it sounds ad libbed to me, like Steve’s comment that he always wanted to be a “one-eyed actor” and Kayla saying, “Westerns!” Hee. Steve’s line about “I’m going to die one happy dude” is heartbreaking, of course, but also a tiny bit consoling. He did die a happy man—and after the life he led, before he met Kayla, that is no small miracle.

For Kayla, no such consoling thoughts exist. So we have to take our comfort from other things. And here’s one thing: Steve’s death gives Mary Beth Evans the chance for an acting tour de force. Let me fast forward for a moment and give you a little tease, in a scene that bookends the scene above very nicely:

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Isn’t Mary Beth incredible? The contrast between the Kayla on the tape and the Kayla watching the tape is so stark—complete happiness versus complete devastation. I love her anger at Shane and how she goes to leave the room when he wants to watch this—it’s a way of showing how fresh her pain still is. But then she stops by the door after all. She can’t help watching. The camerawork is perfect, just stays right on her face as she contemplates everything she has lost. Her facial expressions are perfect. Listening to Steve’s lines about having more children, her expression just breaks my heart—she’s thinking of what will never happen.

(And all I can say is THANK GOD for the 2000′s return and little Joe. I wasn’t in favor of a baby story for Steve and Kayla when they came back; I thought it would take them out of having an active role on the show. But I have to admit, sometimes it was knowing that they got back together and got their happy ending—complete with baby makes three—was all that was getting me through this!)

What I think is interesting is that Jack I think is trying to do exactly that. I think he thinks they should just be able to rewind and go back to how they were before. Yes, he’s trying to keep her out of trouble and keep her safe, but I think he also doesn’t see why this little adventure should be different than any of the other ones where they fought and bantered and tried to outsmart each other. If they can reassert their old dynamic—just forget the island ever happened—it’s a way for him to do what’s best for Jennifer (as he sees it), without losing her entirely.

But that’s the last thing Jennifer wants. Right after their breakup, she told him that she could tolerate his walls and game playing, as long as they were moving forward. If Jack wants to go backward, she doesn’t want anything to do with that. I think she is telling him all through this time period, in ways both large and small, “You wanted to break up? Well, let me show you what that means.” My favorite scene for this isn’t on my DVDs (you can watch it at D2D—September 14 1990, in the “Missing Heiress” thread, where Jennifer makes Jack give her the loft key back), but here is another short one that I like:

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Jack has just discovered what Jennifer is up to—impersonating the heiress Katarina, about to be introduced to her betrothed, Lawrence Alamain (who we haven’t seen yet). Jack follows Jennifer back to the loft to try to talk her out of this scheme. The beginning of the scene has them in comedy mode, with Jennifer putting on some headphones and a walkman (so funny to see that old thing) and singing so Jack can’t talk to her.

Then Jack gets wound up and ends up saying emotionally, obviously sincerely, that he cares what happens to her. But now, getting confirmation that he cares is no longer a source of happiness for Jennifer–in fact, it’s infuriating. So she calls him on it, saying that he doesn’t want her, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have her either. She’s talking about Lawrence, painfully ironic given what happens later. She’s not seriously thinking she could together with Lawrence, though, just planting the idea for Jack, that she could really move on.

You wanted to break up? This is what it means.

So what happened? Well, like a lot of things, it’s complicated. Some of it, maybe most of it, is that women went to work. It’s a lot harder to keep up with a show that runs five days a week when you’re spending those five days a week at the office. The coming of VCRs and then DVRs meant you could still keep up, but it involved more effort. And, perhaps more crucially, when women went to work, little boys and girls weren’t there to watch the shows on their mother’s knee. The link to the next generation of viewers was snapped.

Thinking back to the beginning of television, back in the 50′s and 60′s, when television genre conventions were being established, there was a clear division between primetime storytelling and daytime storytelling. Primetime shows were sharply episodic. Plot threads introduced at the beginning of the episode were wrapped up neatly by the end of the episode. Also, the degree to which things could change was extremely curtailed. If the Beav’s mom went out and got a job, the end of the episode saw her safely ensconced once again in the Cleaver kitchen. Perry Mason couldn’t stop being a lawyer. We remember things like the birth of Little Ricky on I Love Lucy and Greg’s new room on The Brady Bunch precisely because things otherwise changed so little.

Soaps, on the other hand, had a lot more leeway. Characters could leave, or switch jobs, or marry, or divorce, or have kids—in the fact the genre demanded these changes as part of the long term plots that evolved over time. The story arcs were long, with lots of teasing cliffhangers along the way. Soaps have always trucked in dramatic, over the top plots—that’s part of how they hook you in. What will Mickey say when he finds out his brother is Mike’s real father? And they did all they could to string things out, delaying the payoff, delaying the tidy resolution. But here’s the crucial thing: they made good use of the time in between, letting you get to know the characters, offering emotional realism and depth. By the time that particular plot was resolved, you were so invested in the characters that you had to keep watching. That, in the end, is the appeal. Here were people that you could get to know like friends—but friends who had much more interesting lives than you did!

Part of soap’s problem is simply competition. The niche that soaps filled has been encroached on from all sides. Primetime dramas are no longer purely episodic—they almost always have continuing story arcs now. The lawyer shows still do cases, the doctor shows still treat patients, but we also see their personal lives. They fall in love, they grow and change—at least a little bit. Even sitcoms do it, Friends or Sex in the City have couples breaking up and making up, lead characters having babies. And for over the top plots and heightened reality, reality TV and entertainment journalism can give viewers the vicarious thrill of watching people screw up and ruin their lives, make a comeback and then ruin their lives again … and if it all lacks the complexity of a well crafted plot, it has a little extra zing because it’s all REAL!

But it’s more than that. None of these changes happened in a vacuum. I’ve seen a lot of suggestions for soaps and what they could do to revitalize themselves: try more socially relevant plots, try a telenovella format, go to three days a week, move to a later time slot so working women have a chance to watch. I think all of these could be worth trying. But I have a sinking feeling that the ship has sailed, the decline has been going on too long. In my opinion, the competition from reality TV and nighttime dramas led soaps to do exactly the wrong thing. They revved up their pace, went further and further into the realm of the ridiculous in their plots. And they forgot the other half of the equation: emotional realism, character consistency and rootability.

I suspect that many of the viewers that do remain watch in honor of what once was, instead of what is on the screen today. Soaps stopped getting new viewers, people who had never watched a soap before. In their panic, soaps gave up the one advantage that no other show could touch: the time we could spend with the characters, and the richness that was possible because of it. They forgot that over-the-top plots are short-lived—it’s the characters and relationships that make lifetime viewers.

I have now watched up through a good chunk of Steve’s time in the hospital. And maybe it’s only because I was bracing myself for something much, much worse, but I haven’t seen a thing so far that seems inappropriate between the two characters. I think it’s knowing the future that makes all the difference. (This is why I try to stay as spoiler-free as possible—even with these 20-year old storylines! ) If you know what happens later, you can say the show is paving the way for Shayla beforehand. And honestly, they probably were. And I can definitely understand it being upsetting. But, for me personally, if Shane and Kayla aren’t acting out of character, it’s hard for me to get too upset about it. Here is an example of the kind of scene I think you can look back on and see shades of the future Shayla relationship:

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In retrospect, the emotional tenor of the conversation, their conflict over the way Shane treated Kim, and the way Shane confides in Kayla can all add up to a certain intimacy between them. But it’s also a powerful, realistic scene between the sister of the woman Shane hurt badly, and a man who doesn’t have anyone to confide in anymore.

What also gets lost in the focus on Shane and Kayla is that the show also seems to be paving the way for a possible Marcus/Kayla pairing. Check this out:

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This is actually far more overt than anything involving Shane and Kayla. If they had gotten together later, this scene would come across as “ew, he was macking on her before Steve even died!” And I know that Marcus does, in fact, develop feelings for Kayla later, so if you were so inclined, you could read this scene that way anyway. But, although this one skirts closer, this doesn’t cross the line for me either. Instead it seems to be mostly based on the envy we’ve seen all along that Marcus has had for Steve and Kayla’s relationship. But now, faced with the fact that Steve and Kayla are leaving, this adds a slightly different dimension. It’s like he’s realizing he doesn’t just want a deep and abiding relationship like Steve and Kayla have, maybe he wants someone who is well, a lot like Kayla.

There is also a scene where there seems to be some minor chem testing between Kayla and Brian Scofield, of all people. But unfortunately, my choice for post-Steve pairing for Kayla (after a suitably decent interval, of course) had left the show by this time: Michael T. Weiss’s Mike Horton. Here is a great little segment from 1988, when evil Jack sees Kayla and Mike innocently flirting and decides to try to cause some trouble:

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I think there is a nice bantery chemistry between Kayla and Mike. But what I love about this is how stupid Jack looks for thinking it would bother Steve. I think he is comparing his own relationship with Kayla to Steve’s relationship with her, and thinking how he would react. Actually, how he is reacting, because Jack clearly envies the easy give and take between Mike and Kayla, that is such a contrast to how she acts with him. And actually, Mike and Kayla really did have a short relationship (when they were played by two different actors!), so this is great use of history.

Steve and Kayla really aren’t up to much in their last few months on the show. If I didn’t know Steve was about to die, I would feel a little miffed at their lack of storyline. As it is, I just feel grateful they get a few months of (fairly) uneventful happiness. Lord knows they deserve it.

This is a wonderful scene, showing Steve and Kayla taking Shawn D and Stephanie on a camping trip.

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Now, I remember going camping with a toddler and a baby and somehow it was not nearly this fun and relaxing. Clearly, my husband and I were doing something wrong.

One thing I love about Stephen and Mary Beth is how well they play these happy love scenes. There’s is such a feeling of spontaneity. The bit with the marshmallowsis so cute and sexy. It feels like somebody said to Stephen and Mary Beth, “Here are some marshmallows, have a little fun.” I love the way they can go from cute to hot in a heartbeat, like the moment at the end when Steve says “the things I do for you,” and Kayla says “just wait until you see what I call do for you,” and pushes him on his back. I always love when we get to see Kayla the sexual aggressor—it was such an important part of their early relationship.

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Jack’s negative wedding fantasy, of Jennifer rejecting him at the altar, raises the stakes for what follows. It shows that for all of Jack’s self-sacrifice at pushing Jen away, it is also about protecting himself, from the day she comes to her senses and inevitably rejects him. The final image, of Jack crushing the wedding bouquet, is suggestive, and a bit chilling. It adds just the barest suggestion that Jack still has that anger and potential for violence with him—at least in his own mind. After all, what drove him to snap last time was Kayla’s rejection. If Jennifer rejected him, what would his reaction be?

Jennifer’s “counterfantasy,” if you will, sets up her attitude going into this confrontation. Her expectation is that she’s found, in Kayla’s letter to the editor about Jack, a the magic bullet that will solve the problem. She’s going to show him that Kayla does forgive him, which she thinks will allow him to forgive himself. It makes sense, but as we’ll see, it backfires in a horrible way:

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It’s not included here, but there is a wonderful setup scene that helps explain why Jack rejects the letter so definitely. Earlier, he overheard Bo and Kayla on the pier, talking about how Harper’s death, and all the talk about it, is bringing back bad memories for Kayla. (Which, ironically, puts Jack and Kayla in exactly the same place.) She told Bo, “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.” The letter, then, ends up making Jack feel worse: she wrote this letter not because it’s true but because she’s such a wonderful person. And he’s not far wrong, that’s what makes this work so well. Kayla is forcing herself to do this, she can’t forget what happened—but it’s because she believes sincerely it is the right thing to do, that he has changed and deserves to have that acknowledged.

When Jennifer keeps pressing the point, that leads to Jack shaking Jennifer in frustration. The staging of that moment isn’t quite as good as I would like, but the impact of it works. Jennifer’s look of fear is clearly not fear of him, but fear of what his reaction will be. And she’s right to be afraid. But when she tries to tell him that normal people get angry, that it doesn’t mean he’s going to go out and “beat people up,” I think she makes it worse. By using the euphemism, she adds fuel to Jack’s conviction that she doesn’t want to face who he is.

That leads into torrent of verbal cruelty from Jack. He belittles their whole relationship and systematically crushes every one of her illusions—illusions in his mind—their love, his redemption, their first time, and especially, the shell ring and what that meant. This scene shows Jack hurting Jen horribly, because he’s so afraid of hurting her more in the future. If he can convince her that the island and the shell ring didn’t mean anything, it will undercut a lot of the source of her faith in their relationship. And maybe he will finally be able to get her to walk away. But, I love the layer we saw before, in his wedding fantasy, that this not just about protecting her. He’s protecting himself too, from her rejection, by rejecting her first.

And, what really makes this work is that he’s not just spinning lies. There is a strong grain of truth to everything he says. When he calls what they have a dream and a romantic fantasy, that connects to the fact that he got into this relationship against his better judgment, that he could only allow himself to be with her if he didn’t think about where it was going. We’ve seen him duck and run away whenever she tried to talk about their future or put a label on their relationship, and Jennifer has seen it too. And I love that he says he’s mad at both of them, and that it’s clear that he really is angry with her. It’s like he wants to punish her in this scene for sweeping him up into this fantasy and put herself in the position where he will hurt her. I love the cruelty we see here, because it shows dark Jack in a way we haven’t seen in months—years. I like this better than the moment where he shakes her, because it’s so Jack—eloquent, snarky, cynical, but taken to the nth degree. Each cruel word lends credence to what he’s saying, that he’s a bad man and Jennifer can’t face that.

That’s perfectly illustrated in his point blank statement, “I’m a rapist”—a rebuke to Jennifer’s euphemism “beat people up” earlier. And she makes it even worse when she says again, as she’s said before, that he’s “a different person now.” She’s not wrong, exactly, but there is the implication is that since it was a different person, she thinks his past is something they shouldn’t have to worry about or even think about. It denies how much the rape is still with Jack—his guilt about it, his worry about what it means for who he is, and who he could be in the future. Her blindness to that point lends credence to everything Jack is saying, and makes him dismiss that she has a point at all. Jennifer’s response, that she doesn’t think he really believes all this, sounds feeble, and I think it’s meant to. Until Jennifer finds a way to come to terms with Jack’s past—instead of just dismissing it because he’s “different” now—they won’t be able to move forward.