The More I Know, The Less I Understand

Soap characters.  Sneaky ones, scheming ones, sweet ones, and not-so-sweet ones.  Small-business owners, and CEOs of major corporations.  People who built their empires from nothing, and people who inherited their many luxuries without ever having to put in an honest day’s work in their lives. Family-oriented men and corporate-minded women.  People who Macbethed their way up the ladder, and people who stepped up every rung without once stepping out of line.

When I say “people”, of course, I mean straight people.  Gay people have no time for all the aforementioned frivolities, like exploring different facets of their personalities, or nurturing/destroying relationships with friends/family/classmates/co-workers/etc.  They have their hands full teaching bigots and homophobes how to sing in peace and harmony.  Or at least that’s what Days seems to think.

Days forgets more often than not that it’s a soap, and not a fucking afterschool special.  Remember less than a year ago when Will suddenly came to life after he caught EJ surfing Sami on the waves of the DiMansion sofa?  It was a truly amazing thing.  Will went from being Rafe’s weenie dog to being EJ’s handsome, young Igor in a matter of weeks, which plucked him from the dull and vapid younger crowd and dropped him into the orbit of the far more interesting thirty-somethings.  He was no longer just the guy who watched the kids while Sami and Rafe were having sex or out judging the general population of Salem.  He was no longer insufferable ol’ Gabi’s uninterested boyfriend.  Suddenly he just snapped and realized that nice guys don’t always finish last, but that it happens often enough that he should start looking out for number one.  And that’s exactly what he did.  He went out and blackmailed up a job for himself working for EJ, along with a car and an apartment.  You see, gay people can blackmail people just as well as straight people can, and, just like straight people, some are better at it than others.

“They really want to tell a story that is unique and different from all the other stereotypical stories. I think they realize now is the time to take a risk and do a story like this where it’s not all PG, and not all happy, and everyone is loving and accepting. I think that is what makes this story so great; it’s twisted and dark and has so many facets to it. Another thing I like is they are not making Will the misunderstood goody-goody. He has some edge. He is going into a gray area instead of being such a clean character. I think that’s good too, because most of the storylines I have watched or read about involving a gay character, they seem to be afraid or hesitant to make the character bad. The lines are blurred here.”

-Chandler Massey, December 2011
MichaelFairmanSoaps.com

At first Will's reason for blackmailing EJ was to get enough cash to get the hell away from his mother.  But then something amazing happened.  He started to love his job, and he started to respect EJ, and he started to embrace his sexuality and come of age.  He started becoming comfortable in his own skin.  He was proud of his accomplishments, and unabashedly unafraid to stand up for what he thought was right (which, at the time, was keeping the object of his affection out of prison for a crime he didn't commit, having his own apartment away from Mother Hubbard and her shoe full of kids under the age of nine, being able to hit a gay club or two with Neil, and being one of the only people in all of Salem with a car).  In short, he was an engaging character with layers and all sorts of delicious quirks and qualms that could unlock so much storyline potential.

He had chemistry with so many different characters on the show.  His scenes with Marlena as she carefully nudged him towards the threshold of the closet he was still in were sweet and funny.  He had his group of friends that now included Sonny, and despite declaring that Sonny was not going to be reduced to being his gay life coach, well…Sonny was his gay life coach.  He was interacting with characters he’d never really interacted with in the past – Nicole and Abe, for instance.  Hell, we even saw him talking to Roman.  Like an adult, no less!

But for me, it was all about EJ and Will.  Ejill?  Wilvis?  Fucktacularly homolicious?  Whatever you’d call it, it was fun to watch.  So of course Gary Tomlin had to come in and pour sand on the fire.  There’s a line from Sex & the City that comes to mind when I think of Ejill’s time together.  “First come the gays, then the girls, then the industry.”  That’s pretty much what happened.  Yes, there was the coming out story that people had been anticipating forever, but there was this strange, palpable something happening between Will and EJ.  Chandler Massey and James Scott were clever enough to pick up on it and played it to the hilt.  Will smiled and snickered around EJ like a schoolboy in love (which essentially was how most of us were seeing it, too).  He looked positively starry-eyed around him.  EJ would deliver his lines with a glint in his own eyes that suggested he might be aware of the double-entendres, or might not.  It was up to us to decide if there was subtext, and what that subtext was.  In short, viewers were allowed to make what they wanted to make of what was happening on screen, rather than having “the word of God” telling us how and what to make of their dynamic. 

“I am so glad to discover that I’m not the only one who wants EJ to throw Will on the ground, mount him like a stag, and make the little bitch squeal.”

-James St. James, June 2012

The storyline was getting attention from viewers and the media, both gay and straight, and people seemed to be loving Will’s friendship with Sonny, his smexy, under-the-bridge antics with Neil (Jesse Kristofferson), and his adorable eagerness to please when it came to anything and everything EJ-related.  The storyline and its star won well-deserved awards and accolades. So there you have it - the gays, the girls, and the industry.  You can see why TomSell had to put a stop to it.

The gay storyline at that point was one of a few that Chandler Massey was juggling.  Will wasn’t defined solely by his sexuality (you know…the way us straight folks aren’t) the way he is now.  He was a skilled computer hacker, an astute observer, a competent liar, and a blackmailer-in-training.  He was a student, a loving grandson, a son who had a complicated (to say the least) relationship with his parents, a big brother to Allie, Johnny and Sydney, and a friend and confidant to EJ (even though EJ would never admit that – not until their abrupt “break-up” back in September).  He was more than just half of “that gay couple on Days of Our Lives”.

Stupid me naively thought that a second appearance on Days with
his arms around Will meant something would come of it.

Since then, it seems as though Tomsell has decided that if MarDar can win awards for writing a “gay storyline”, so can they.  It’s pretty evident, though, that Tomsell is still focused mainly on plot-points and less on actual story.  The first thing they did was remove Will from EJ’s orbit, so there went the job he loved, the one he’d spent weeks defending to anyone within a ten-foot radius.  Suddenly, inexplicably, Will decided that he wanted to be his own man.  You know, the kind of independent man who knows who he is and who he wants to be.  A man with a job, his own apartment, and his ow --- Hey…wait a second…

Interviewer:  We’ve heard through you and some of the other press that a Sonny/Will coupling is probably not going to happen.  Do you think that’s a good thing, because maybe it would have been a little too easy just to put these two together…?

Freddie:  It is. And I think that if it does happen in the future – which it could – that there’s gonna be so much more…Imagine being friends with someone for years, and you finally get together.  It’s gonna be explosive.

AfterElton.com, October 2011

Then Will and Sonny were suddenly rushed together.  After several interviews that took place over the course of a year in which both Freddie Smith and Chandler Massey said that it would be silly for Sonny and Will to get together simply because they’re the only two gay men in town, they got together because they were the only two gay men in town.  Neil (Jesse Kristofferson) vanished from the face of the planet, and Brian (Brant Daugherty) was reduced to being Sonny’s truthteller.  He was around just long enough for Sonny to suddenly lose complete interest in him so that Brian could tell him he was really interested in Will.  Boring, ol’ Sonny was interested in Vanilla Will (Wilnilla?).

"I'm sorry, Brian. But since you are not the gay man I'm interested in, we have no need
of you here in Salem.  Two gays per soap city.  You'll have to take your coffee to go."

TPTB announced that there would be an “anti-gay bullying storyline”, which was absolutely laughable.  The bully, T (Brendan Coughlin) beat up Sonny, so Sonny responded by punching him in the face the first chance he got.  Will, meanwhile, logically responded to T’s bullying by sleeping with Gabi, which, I suppose is akin to suicide.

"Sonny was picked on for being gay early on. So it has developed slowly, like it does in real life.  And what's interesting is that the bullying is being done by different people."

-Freddie Smith, August 2012

Yeah. Like…two.  And one is Will’s father.  I think what Lucas is actually doing is called “being a homophobic, unsupportive parent”, which, by the way, is a complete 180 for the character who didn’t run from the room in a panic when his son announced he was gay, but that’s another blog entry.  About a year ago T said a bunch of nasty shit to Sonny, who flipped him off with a big "whatever, dude", then apparently left Salem for a year, resurfacing a couple of months ago to tell Will and Sonny that he didn’t want to catch “the gay” from them.  Nothing about that storyline “developed slowly”.  Worse yet, the dialogue was positively cringe-worthy in its juvenility, with lines like, “Will was straight, ‘til he met you.”

“There’s people in this country, that, just because they have a last name like 

mine, have to show papers to walk down the street. Did you know that?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”

I’d love to know the answer to that question, too, 

but that would just mean more of Gabi talking, so fuck that.

I think the most infuriating thing about all this is that the storyline turned out to be little more than a way to get some free advertising from gay media outlets while also acting as a way to get Gabi pregnant with some precious Brady stock.  Why have the Hernandez family earn a permanent place on the canvas by endearing themselves to viewers when TomSell can just keep handing them shit.

Hey, NBC.  How’s about getting rid of some
of the real-life bullies on your Facebook page?

Okay, okay.  Back to me trying to stay on topic.

While I love what Sonny and Will represent, from the perspective of a soap opera viewer I’m completely bored out of my gourd.  Their sex scene was executed well enough (I was beyond impressed that they showed Will and Sonny’s bare thighs, which suggested that they weren’t wearing pants, which suggested actual sex took place!), I don’t see a lick of sexual chemistry between the two.  Obviously chemistry is in the eye of the beholder, and there are plenty of people out there who think Will and Sonny are hot.  I’m happy that they’ve found something to enjoy about the show these days, and – coming from someone who’s been waiting since mid-2008 for Sami and EJ to fuck in a bed – I truly, truly mean that.  For me, though, it feels like they were quickly tacked together to fill an agenda.  Will’s coming out story won awards.  Will kissing Neil got mainstream media attention.  Anti-gay bullying storyline?  Will and Sonny have sex?  More free advertising for the show, but little more than that.  And now that Gabi is pregnant, could a story about whether or not gays can be suitable parents be that far behind?  Since September, everything that’s happened to and between Will and Sonny has felt so cold and calculated.  There’s just no heart or heat in it anymore for me.

Our anti-gay bullying cast. Or something. Oh - and Caleb Hunt,
who I just stuck in there because I think he's gorgeous.

Poor Will hasn’t had a chance to do what a lot of characters get to do at his age on television – go out, meet people, date people, fall spectacularly in love, fall ever-so-dramatically out of love, then fall in love all over again.  All soap staples.  But Will isn’t just a soap character anymore.  Will has been groomed to be the award-winning gay Rosa Parks of daytime.  TomSell stripped Will of anything that might have kept him even remotely interesting, might have kept him from being more than just “that cute, blonde, gay kid from Days”.  After all, it wasn’t just anyone coming out.  It was Will coming out.

Nipple nibbling?  Milky-white thighs tangled in sex-messed
bed sheets?  You go, Wilson!

I’m going to pretend the past couple of months haven’t happened.  I’m going to pretend that Will continued working for EJ, honing his scheming skills and dreaming of starting his own empire.  I’m going to pretend that Will and his mother still have that tumultuous relationship Sami had with her mother for so many years so I can watch him in all his snarky, mirror-carrying, truth-telling glory.  I’m going to pretend that the show still has an interest in character development, and character-driven writing, and develops Sonny so that when he and Will finally do get together, I know who the hell that guy is and give a shit when Will has an argument with him and walks out looking absolutely crushed.  Most importantly, I’m going to pretend Will didn’t sleep with a girl whom we've previously established through months and months of storytelling he has no physical attraction to just because he was sad.  A girl he insisted on using protection with the first time they had sex, but for some reason couldn’t care less about the second time around. 

“I did not go through all of that story for them to now have [Will], ‘in a moment of sorrow’, fuck a woman.  I am a gay man.  I have never fucked pussy in sorrow.”

-Larry Flick, September 2012

I’m going to pretend that, like with any straight couple on a soap, the interloper is someone who could feasibly keep two characters “meant to be” apart.  Nicole and Eric had Lucas and Greta.  Bo and Hope had Carly.  Jack and Jennifer had Dan.  And Frankie.  And Brandon… Every couple deserves a decent, plausible interloper.  How lame is it that Will and Sonny’s interlopers are Gabi’s inability to keep track of neither her birth control nor her menstrual cycle, and Lucas?  At least if Ejill was still around, we’d have Will crushing on the bad boy, letting us viewers soak up all that chemistry between James Scott and Chandler Massey, while the good boy worked at winning his heart.  Le sigh.

Wasted potential.  Wasted Days.