soap opera
08/20/2007
"As the World Turns"'s Big Gay Kiss
In the 1990 film Longtime Companion, a group of friends gathered to watch a historical event -- the very first male gay kiss on daytime television. And this week, a mere seventeen years later, reality finally caught up to fiction. (By contrast, the time between Jaime Sommers' bionic ear and the first FDA-approved cochlear implant? Eight years.)
On Friday's episode of As the World Turns, after weeks of will-they-or-won't-they anticipation, teen dreams Luke and Noah sealed their attraction with daytime TV's first mano-a-mano kiss. Yowza.
Sure, All My Children broke the daytime gay-smooching barrier in 2003 when Bianca laid one on Lena, but lesbians are always ahead of the curve. L.A. Law had an all-girl kiss three years before Melrose Place famously cut away from poor gay Matt's one chance at on-screen action. Even Will & Grace, a show whose main cast was literally 50% homosexual characters, had two onscreen gay kisses in its entire eight season run. (Though one was with the delicious Taye Diggs, who by all rights should really count as at least three or four regular men.) So, yeah. It's still a big deal.
Next week: Luke says to Noah's (d'oh!) girlfriend, Maddie, "There's something you don't know about Noah." Yeah, no kidding, Luke. Now, soaps being soaps, he's probably just going to tell her Noah doesn't like her coffee, or something. But still.
