Can you believe it was exactly one full year ago today that Reid Oliver and Luke Snyder melted hearts with a little kiss. Oh yeah, and Dr. Oliver finally called Mr. Snyder “Luke”…and all bets were off.
Unrelated reminder for NYC area fans
Not sure if I’ll have time to do another post, so I’m throwing this in here. Don’t forget – Vermont Shakespeare Company’s FREE reading of Taming of the Shrew (in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday) is TOMORROW NIGHT in NYC. Among confirmed guests (according to their Facebook event page) are Sheffield Chastain, Parrish Hurley, and Tracy Liz Miller and many more familiar names are on the invited list.
In the beginning…
Many of you have crossed paths with me in the fandom know my story. I was a lifelong Guiding Light fan. My mom was a CBS watcher, and GL was the only one on reliably after school. As the World Turns came before GL, and so I tuned in often enough to become familiar with the citizens of Oakdale. I haven’t watched religiously since high school (my roommates were ABC girls), and I got out of the habit. Over the years, though, I frequently followed by recaps. When I moved to the UK almost six years ago, American television was my “comfort food” and I would glance a the weekly updates when I needed my “fix” of familiarity. It was only now, as I was writing this recap when I realized that the last time I remember following the recaps so closely was about 15 years ago, when I had taken a summer job in a new city with no one I knew – at the time, the world was still largely pre-Internet, so I had to follow via phone recaps!
At any rate, it was only when Philip Spaulding returned to GL in early 2009, followed closely by the April Fool’s Day announcement of GL’s cancellation that I took things seriously – this show that I’d loved for 20-some years would soon cease to be. I soon caught the buzz on Otalia and watched much of their storyline, along with Philip’s return and bits of Bill and Lizzie’s story via YouTube. And while I was at it, I caught up on the weekly recaps ATWT, Y&R, and B&B as well.
So when ATWT’s demise was announced as well, history repeated itself. I started by following the detailed daily recaps of ATWT on SoapCentral.com until I came across this one:
Reid laughed and then punched in the medical board number. He listened to the person on the other end for about twenty seconds and then hung up. He took Luke’s face between his hands and gave him a big kiss. When Reid came up for air, he was chattering about going back to Oakdale, getting in an operating room again, and other plans. Luke appeared stupefied and did not move. Finally Luke asked Reid if he realized that he had kissed him, because it would be "weird" if they pretended that it hadn’t happened. Oliver said he knew exactly what he’d done, and it had nothing to do with the phone call. He said he had wanted to kiss Luke for a long time, and he called him "Luke," not "Mr. Snyder."
Aside: Looking back, I have to laugh because one of the problems with the SoapCentral recaps is that they kept mixing up “Reid” and “Oliver.” At the time, it just confused me, because I’d be thinking “Who the heck is Oliver again?” Now the name problem is like fingernails on a blackboard (note to self – avoid giving characters surnames that are first names!). The end of the April 15th episode particularly irks me, when Luke and Reid are preparing to leave the hotel for the hearing, and Noah calls and Luke tells him flew to Dallas with “Dr. Reid”…and they obviously didn’t have the budget (or interest) to reshoot it! Arrgggghhhh! Talk about a buzzkill (though I guess Noah already accomplished that by calling, so Van’s slip – or the script’s – just added insult to injury!).
Back to my story. At this point, I don’t recall if I read the recaps of the March episodes where Reid is outed. If I did, they didn’t stick (probably in part because of the Reid/Oliver name confusion), certainly because I’d never seen Reid (so I pictured him more like Jon Lindstrom or Larry Bryggman – neither of whom really float my boat – sorry, boys), and partially because I couldn’t see the chemistry and the setup. So the kiss, for me, came largely out of the blue. But it was the part about calling Luke by his first name that stuck out for me. For some reason, I found that incredibly compelling – so compelling that I had to take a look.
After a brief Google/YouTube search, I came upon HappyInChintz72’s YouTube channel. The rest, as they say, is history.
So, in honor of the one-year anniversary of that first kiss, if you’d like to remember it the way I first saw it, I present to you The Reid Oliver Story, Parts 36 (April 15th) and Part 37 (April 22nd):
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LuRed in – hook, line and sinker
How quickly and hard did I fall? Well, let’s put it this way. I read the recaps daily, but usually not on the same day, so the earliest I could have watched the clips was April 22nd. My LRO account says I joined on April 27th, and I posted my first fan video (I Can Be Your Hero) on YouTube on April 29th. Keep in mind that I had NEVER joined a fan forum or made a fan video and started from scratch with finding software. It probably took me a day or two to find software and another 2-3 days to make the video because I was so bad at it. So I had it BAD. This is actually a slightly modified version of the original music video (higher res, better editing and a few better clips – I didn’t realize at the time that you can’t swap once you’ve posted). So in case you’re up for a trip down memory lane, here it is:
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So this obsession all started BEFORE the next episode, Near Kisses aired on April 28th. Looking back, these were unquestionably the best three LuRe episodes ever aired back-to-back: April 15th , 22, 28. These were my favorite clips from April 28th. Or you can click here to view Part 38 on YouTube.
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