Soap Opera Digest
June 14, 2005
Editor's Choice

Sweet Child O’ Mine

As in real life, the death of a soap character is as much, if not more, about the people left behind as it is about the person who has died. Although Jennifer has been a relatively minor fixture on ONE LIFE TO LIVE of late, her death had an impact far greater than her character’s importance to the show because the focus was shifted so that we experienced it through the pain and suffering it caused her mother.

We knew our heartstrings were in for a good tug as we watched Lindsay sit nervously at the restaurant waiting for Jen to join her for Mother’s Day. Lindsay lashed out at Nora and Riley for their connection to Daniel, who she worried would arrest her daughter for Paul Cramer’s murder. Her anger belied the guilt and regret in a mother who, as Nora callously pointed out, was known for “dropping the ball” as a parent throughout the years. Enduring her daughter’s arrest would have been hard enough on this woman. The reality, of course, was much worse.

Rex discovered Jen, and John-Paul Lavoisier delivered a believable depiction of his character’s anguish. As he laid her dead body on the floor of the parking garage, Lavoisier helped us feel the pain of having to accept that Rex had finally lost Jen for good. His frenzied CPR attempt failed to revive his ex-wife, so Lavoisier slowly let Rex’s grief come to the surface, until he finally collapsed on her body and simply cried into her lifeless neck, “Why did you do this?”

It was Catherine Hickland who stole the show, however, Lindsay was already a wounded woman, so when Bo took her aside to tell her Jen was dead, it was almost too much. But Hickland handled Lindsay’s suffering without taking it over the top. She displayed a careful balance of pain, anger, guilt and disbelief as Lindsay reeled from the news and tears started to roll.

She again berated Nora and Riley for their ties to Daniel, but she also blamed herself. “She would always call me,” she sobbed, “Why didn’t she call me, Bo?” Few people have seen a mother receive news that her daughter had died, let alone taken her own life, but Hickland’s tempered hysterics felt real and seemed to come from a woman who would give anything on Earth to relieve her daughter’s pain and bring her back.

Once the news broke, a dark, ominous cloud hovered above Llanview. Characters whispered like people who had absorbed an unthinkable blow. Nora set aside her differences with Lindsay and called R.J. so he could be there to comfort her. Paige let go of any jealousy and offered to watch Matthew so Nora could go with Bo to the hospital.

OLTL didn’t shy away from delivering a knock-out blow at the morgue. A stunned Lindsay stammered to R.J., “How can I not know? How could I not see this coming?” There was only one way she would be able to believe the nightmare was real. “Take me to see my little girl,” she whimpered to Bo.

As a heartwrenching Rachael Yamagata song refrained, “I’ll find a way to see you again,” a blanket turned down to reveal Jen’s pale, dead face. Lindsay’s initial reaction was a smile. It was still her little girl after all. She’d waited all day to see her this Mother’s Day. Then reality hit. Lindsay collapsed on her daughter, sobbing, and few of us watching weren’t right there with her. The bird’s eye shot didn’t linger, giving a painful glimpse, then quickly fading to black.

It was a powerful end to Jen’s life, an emotional beginning to Lindsay’s life without a daughter, and one darn good stretch of soap opera.