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Thursday, April 28, 2011

OLTL: The Special Viki Episode

On One Life to Live, they honored Erika Slezak’s 40th anniversary with a special episode focused on her character that aired on Wednesday. Here are my thoughts on the show.

During this episode, we saw the inner workings of Viki’s brain and the fight among her main personality and two of her alters: Niki Smith and Jean Randolph. Her other personalities (including Tori and Princess) were behaving themselves and not shown during this episode.

As of late, Viki has been under a lot of stress. Her marriage to Charlie Banks was destroyed as cheated on her with Echo DiSavoy. Charlie and Echo’s affair was more than sexual, but emotional as they were in love. Her daughters Natalie and Jessica are in crisis too. Natalie lost her fiancé John after it was revealed she slept with Jessica’s fiancé Brody. Everyone believes that Brody is the father of Natalie’s son Liam. Jessica couldn’t deal with Natalie’s betrayal and finding out that her son Ryder was fathered by Robert Ford. Jessica allowed her personality Tess to come out and married Ford. Her former husband Clint was involved in various crimes to protect the family, which also frustrated Viki as she didn’t have his help to support their daughters.

Prior to the special episode, Niki came out and harassed Echo. Niki got the proof from Dorian of Echo’s duplicity regarding Rex Balsom. Echo knew Clint was his biological father, and allowed everyone to believe Clint duped her too. Niki was willing to help Tess and Ford get Ryder as she had no interest in the boy. If she played her cards right, she could be out of Llanview for good.

During this episode, Niki appeared in court pretending to be Viki. She admitted that she didn’t want the baby, so Ford and Tess could get custody. Joey especially figured out that Niki wasn’t Viki, though Natalie wasn’t sure. Even if Viki is upset with Clint, she would not ignore his hospitalization. While this was going on, Viki watched helplessly as her chance to get Ryder faded away.

She called upon Jean to get Niki out of there. Jean appeared in court, and Niki and Viki were locked together in her brain. As the logical one, Jean donned glasses and explained how she should get custody. Jean didn’t care about loving the baby, just taking care of it like a dog, though dogs are less work in her opinion.

Viki passed out in court. She started to fight again to take control as Natalie and Joey spoke to her. Eventually she woke up not knowing what was going on, but she was back in charge, hurrah.

This episode was interesting, but it is too bad more characters who had history with Viki and her alters weren’t involved like Dorian. I hope even if Viki is okay that the show references her getting checked out as Niki and Jean being out meant she lost time. Viki’s mental health is important to her and she would not ignore it. The press on the anniversary along with the footage of Erika's party were greatly appreciated as there are very few people who can proudly state they worked in daytime for 40 years.

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