Soap Opera Digest
April 16, 2002
Editor's Choice

Big Wheels Keep on Turning, One Life to Live

Never underestimate shock value. The war between OLTL's Nora and Lindsay was raging even before they first met in 1998; the festering boil between Sam and Troy is fresher, but almost as sensitive. So, how could there be any more steam in the seemingly endless tale of To Catch a Lindsay?

Well, there was. OLTL treated fans to high-voltage, tension-riddled scenes that had us biting our nails between cheers of delight. Sure, it was grandiose silliness on par with cliffhangers that once prefaced movies--fights! fire! falling debris! killer spiders! handsome men heroically grappling one another! (okay, that one's for us)--but when OLTL goes all out, it does so with a bang.

Tales like this work best when they're unisolated, and viewers get to see wheels within wheels turning. The long setup to the climactic conclusion took that concept literally with poor Troy chained to a man-sized wheel. (And while we felt for Troy, having to stand with arms aloft for days on end, the pathos of having no bathroom facilities was perfectly undercut by the cheesecake factor of his permanently ajar shirt, surely proof that Ty Treadway is getting paid not by the episode, but by the percentage of skin revealed.) He'd been caught in the sort of instantaneous irony soaps specialize in--trapped in his own web by a spurned Lindsay, complete with a spider bite, with only girl-who-cried-wolf Starr to put in a good word for his rescue. All to the better for watchers, who could enjoy the delightful interplay of these unexpected allies (and observe again that Kristen Alderson was robbed in not getting an Emmy nod).

And if that weren't enough, OLTL kept pouring on the thrills-n-spills. Fire engulfed the fun house, and in a clever tweak to the traditional heroine-saved-by-hero, Sam helped Troy out of his chains--after a momentary, dark pause in which he knew if he set his rival free, then he'd likely lose Nora.

Meanwhile, the fight of the century was shaping up across town with Nora and Lindsay in the art gallery--sans sissified hairpulling. "What is that idiotic grin on your face?" Lindsay sneered at Nora, who held high her enemy's taped confession. Dark eyes focused and hard, mouth dancing with barely concealed hateful delight, Nora threw back, "I'm sorry, I don't mean for it to be idiotic, it's just that I've waited so long for this particular moment that I wanted to savor it. Do you mind? A little savor?"

Moments later, they were rolling around on the gallery floor. It had to come to this: In the end, the only thing that Lindsay and Nora hadn't done was beat the crap out of each other. There was even drama in the filming of it--a long shot of the tape in the foreground as it slid across the floor, the women scrambling for it out of reach in the background lent an unexpected artful touch to the scene.

But the best part, of course, was the wallop heard 'round the world. "Get your hands off me," shouted Lindsay, so Nora released her lapels, hauled off and punched (not smacked) her in the face, rendering her briefly unconscious. (Still looking fabulous, of course--Cat Cosmetics never wavers, even after a blow to the cheek) "Game over, Lindsay," said Nora. "You lose."

Only in the end, the results for truth-seeker Nora were bittersweet. After a dive through the Dumpster, she was the victor and handed the tape over to the police. But she lost Sam, whose heroics went overlooked amidst Lindsay's mewling for pity and arrest. All in all, a set of performances and pecs that ran the gamut of emotions (including rampant silliness, but also unexpected emotional depth in small moments)--and like all great stories, ended nothing. Instead, OLTL has just thrown the pieces in the air--and the real fun now will be watching them tumble slowly to the ground again. Shocking.