Friday, November 12, 2010

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: ANOTHER WORLD COUPLES PART #1
By Nicole Walker

Ryan and Frankie: Blasphemous, I’m sure, to the Cass/Frankie and Ryan/Vicky factions, but Ryan and Frankie were such tight BFFs, such fun partners with real chemistry, that I enjoyed the idea of them becoming more than friends and making the transition to lovers much more than each staying with their respective partners. The potential was always there and both Cass and Vicky knew it- and fretted about it- but Ryan and Frankie were true-blue to their significant others (you wouldn’t expect anything else with them being the stand-up heroes that they were) and Fryan never came to be. On one hand, I applaud TPTB for resisting the urge to take every male/female interaction down the torrid lovers path which seems to happen sooner or later to every male/female couple on every soap, but on the other…

All things said, while Cass and Felicia were the standard for a (mostly) platonic friendship between a men and a woman, Ryan and Frankie were in a class all their own. You just knew that when Frankie met her untimely (and brutal) death that Ryan was the first one waiting on the other side to welcome her and do his best to comfort her, support her and see her through, just like always...

Below, Vicky (Anne Heche) is jealous of Ryan and Frankie's closeness.

Donna and Grant: The snark! The wit! The sparks! This once and future dark power couple of Bay City could have been a force to be reckoned with by any who dared cross their paths. Between Grant’s ruthlessness and Donna’s high scheming and plotting IQ, there would be nothing these two couldn’t accomplish and no one they couldn’t crush. Or at least torture very, very painfully.

It would all start so innocently; Donna, in an effort to wedge Vicky and Grant apart, would take one for the team and set out to seduce Grant and draw his attention away from her daughter, only in the process she becomes charmed by the Senator, beguiled by his passion and ambition, and finds herself taking a liking to him even as she thoroughly believes he would be the biggest mistake Vicky could ever make. Grant would resist Donna’s attempts initially, still feeling a pull to the youthful Vicky, but he too would fall under the spell of the more confident, mature, fearless Donna, a woman who was intellectually stimulating, capable, experienced, and connected. A true partner in every way, the Lady to his MacBeth, in what would have most assuredly a torrid, tragic, mesmerizing car-crash of an affair.

Imagine! Dueling Power Couples Grant and Donna vs. Carl and Rachel! The battles these two dynamic duos could’ve had to determine who would reign supreme in Bay City!

Funnily enough we kind of DID get Donna and Grant together as a couple, only they were Greenlee Smythe’s parents (well, in Roger's case, presumed parent) on All My Children...

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Nicole Walker is the Associate Producer of Another World Today.

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