When Ricky Paull Goldin decided to leave Guiding Light and join All My Children to play the role of Dr. Jake Martin, his character of Gus Aituro sustained life-ending injuries in a motorcycle accident. Even though Gus was no longer alive, he seemed to continue to influence the actions of his family members. Did Gus's death have an impact on Springfield, what was it and was there any meaning to it?
Natalia, Gus's wife at the time of his death, was in shock and didn't know how to handle it all. Her finances were in a shambles, and now she was alone again. Rafe, Gus's son with his wife and teenage love, Natalia, couldn't deal with the pain and anger, he felt over his father's death. Rafe hearing that Gus was a corrupt police detective shot the district attorney Jeffrey O'Neill and left him near death. It was revealed that Gus was doing favors for people who may have been guilty of petty crimes to move Olivia Spencer up the organ donor list. This would have cost Natalia and Rafe, Gus's pension if it was revealed that he was acting illegally in his police force job. Harley helped Rafe hide from the Springfield authorities by taking him to Greece. His former wife, Harley went into "widow" mode acting as if her marriage to Gus had never been dissolved. Harley still was in love with Gus even though she had moved on with her niece's former fiancé, Cyrus Foley. By taking Rafe away, she chose her former husband's son over her children and her current boyfriend. Olivia Spencer who had begun to have romantic feelings for Gus was given a new lease of life, when Gus's heart was donated to her.
Th e person who was changed or perhaps "changed" the most from Gus's death was Alan. He started to dream about his deceased son, and then he began to have daytime visions of Gus. Unlike General Hospital (who has done two stories with characters seeing deceased relatives in the last year or two), we didn't see Alan having a two-way conversation with Gus. Alan became nicer in a way, though he still wanted to get back Spaulding as Dinah stole the company from him. He felt at home with Buzz at the Company boardinghouse.
Weirdly enough, Alan's visions inspired people. He got a bunch of groupies that followed him around town asking for Gus's help from beyond. It seemed like Alan could tell the future due to these messages, for example he knew when Ava went into early labor with her now deceased son Max. Olivia, Natalia and Rafe believed in Alan's visions. Olivia stopped paying as close attention to her health, while Natalia convinced Rafe to come home since Alan said it was safe to do so. Lizzie tr ied to believe her grandfather, but he never had a vision from Gus about baby Sarah and lied to her. Bill wished for Lizzie's sake that baby Sarah would be found, but agreed with doctors that Alan was ill. Alex and Dinah were skeptical of Alan's visions and di dn't take Alan's offer to use Gus to co ntact other people who had died.
Sadly, Alan's messages from Gus weren't what they seemed. Alan had a blood clot in his brain, which allowed him to see Gus. Before he had surgery to remove the blockage, Alan spoke to Gus (actually it was Bill posing as Gus) one last time.
Different things could be taken from this story...
Were "Alan groupies", being used to make fun of Ricky Paull's fans who followed him to All My Children? Would they attack RPG's fans in such a way? Making Gus corrup t to save Olivia wasn't exactly a way to endear people and felt a little out of character. Yes sometimes Gus would do things that fell into a grey area to help out his family, but usually we saw guilt or got a real reason for his actions like when Gus found out Alex was a drug dealer. Natalia locking Olivia in the Bauer cabin bathroom causing her to lose a transplant heart was awful, bu t was it worth tossing away his career to maybe save Olivia's life.
Gus became a physical liability that could kill Alan instead of a person who tried to get him to do the right thing. Nothing says loving like a brain clot that causes hallucinations, loss of consciousness, and other physical problems. Did Alan love Gus so much that he didn't want to let him go or was it that Alan couldn't deal with the loss of the sense of power he got by communicating these messages from Gus? Eventually he had no choice, but to let go of his son a second time.
Olivia didn't have much faith in her life. She didn't understand why the universe thought it was more important for her to live and in doing so Gus ended up dead. This changed her temporarily, but finding out Alan's visions were a sham made her doubt again.
Natalia had a strong faith in G-d prior to Gus's death. The clot didn't deter her belief in what happened. S o what if Alan's visions didn't come from Gus directly, they provided something good. Science may be saying that a brain blockage was behind what Alan saw, but that doesn't mean they weren't from beyond.
The questions of belief versus disbelief and faith versus science are forever being debated. Is belief in something like Gus coming from the great beyond to speak to Alan better than believing in nothing at all? Is false hope, better than no hope at all? That's a heady question…that really can't be answered with a soap story. Life experience shapes personal convictions about things such as faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment