Marland Monday: The Big Plum
First Monday of April! That means it’s…
Marland Monday!
All right, if you’ve been reading this for a while, you know the story: Every Monday I look back at the storytelling genius of Douglas Marland, one of the GOATS of soap opera.
Before we go to MM, I want to acknowledge the death of another GOAT, a British one. June Brown played Dot Cotton Branning, the long-suffering busybody we all loved on EastEnders. I think The Guardian said it best: “(Brown was) the chain-smoking queen of the East End.” Below is one of my favorite scenes on EE when Dot visits an old friend before she gets married:
I’m going to try and write something, later on, this week about June Brown. Stay tuned.
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When I started MM nine months ago, it was simply because I missed Marland’s writing. It had started when I had to watch a clip of Guiding Light to refresh my memory about something my grandmother and I watched months before she died. It was the late winter, early spring of 1980. Months before, my grandmother was diagnosed with small cell(known back then as oat cell) lung cancer. It was terminal. She knew she had a short time left. But she wanted to live to see three things: My cousin getting baptized. My mother getting her Political Science degree. Finally, she wanted to see me get my First Communion. She received chemotherapy which made her even sicker.
I knew something was wrong. I knew she was sick. I wanted her to get better. She couldn’t. I was in second grade, so anxious because I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t color inside the lines. I couldn’t jump rope. It was around that time I came down with chronic ear infections. I wasn’t feeling well one day. My school called my aunt who picked me up. I would rest and drink fluids. I would go back to school, but then a fever would come back. Or I’d be exhausted by ten in the morning. Every time, I ended up back on my living room couch. I was worried I’d be held back. I had Scarlet Fever the year before and was worried I was going to get it again or be blind like Mary Ingalls. It was the right time to be sick though. I was spending time with my grandmother. We were bonding watching Guiding Light.
On the show, Roger (Michael Zaslow) was continuing his reign of terror. His estranged wife Holly (Maureen Garrett) took their daughter Christina (Cheryl Lynn Brown) to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. While staying at a hotel, Holly ordered room service. I knew right away the server was Roger from the back. “Why can’t Holly see who it is?” I asked Grandma.
“Well, she’s not paying attention,” Grandma said, pointing out Holly was on the phone with her mother Barbara.
Christina went to the tray to gulp down orange juice. Being kept in the dark about Roger’s dark deeds, her face lit up when she saw him. “Roger!” she cried out. (Christina thought Ed Bauer was her dad)
Terrified, Holly told her daughter to run to the elevator. Christina did. Now from a writing standpoint, I see how well written it was: Holly being distracted, not being aware of what was happening. Christina was delighted to see Roger. Holly couldn’t call for help; she was on the phone with her mother. Her first concern was her daughter. Roger trying to get Christina, but taking Holly hostage as a bargaining chip.
I remember being scared for Christina. “Is she going to be okay?” I asked Grandma.
“She’s going to be just fine. She’ll let someone at the hotel know what happened.”
Which is what Christina did. Ed (Mart Hulsit) and brother Mike (Don Stewart) flew to Santo Domingo to rescue Holly. By then my pediatrician gave me the all-clear: I could finally go back to school. “Do I have to go?” I asked Grandma as I put on my plaid uniform. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to go away from her. I didn’t want to go back and hear yet again why couldn’t I understand double-digit subtraction.
“All children have to go to school,” she told me as she helped me put on my navy blue knee-high socks.
“But what about Holly? Is she going to be okay?” In 1980, VCRs were a thousand dollars. There was no way my grandparents were going to spend a thousand dollars on some contraption to tape television shows. If you missed an episode of a soap, tough luck. Maybe in twenty-five years, when YouTube appeared, you’d be lucky and see it.
“Tell you what: You go to school today, and I’ll tell you what happened. You can watch the rest when you get home.”
I thought it over. “Okay.”
For the rest of that March, my grandfather picked me up from school. I’d run in the house, then asked Grandma what happened. “Well, today they went on a canoe.” Or “Mike and Ed are getting closer. They’re going to find them. Holly is going to be just fine, don’t you worry.”
Getting those small updates oddly, helped me in school. All I could think about was I’ll see Grandma after school. She’ll tell me everything. I excelled in reading, then improved in spelling. Thanks to an abacus my teacher gave me, I finally understood double subtraction and was getting a little better in math.
I didn’t know Marland had taken over the head writing duties a couple of months before. I didn’t know Michael Zaslow decided, after nine years of playing Roger, he was going to leave. He simply couldn’t be replaced. Marland later told writer Christopher Schemering: “…(it) was a wonderful plum to be handed a writer…to devise a demise for as famous a character as Roger was. It couldn’t be a small death… it had to be spectacular.”
Indeed it was. It took me years to see it. On April 1, 1980, I came home and my grandmother told me what happened:
“Well, Ed and Mike found Roger and Holly. They were on a cliff.”
“What happened then?”
“Roger lost his balance then started to slip. Ed started to help him…”
“Why would Ed help him? Roger has always been mean to him?”
“Because it was the right thing to do. Ed wanted Roger to be held responsible for all the bad things he did. He wanted Roger to realize the bad things he did wasn’t okay. But Ed couldn’t hold to Roger, so Roger fell down to the ground.”
“So Roger’s dead?”
She nodded. “Roger died.”
For the rest of the month, she gave me updates about everyone reacted to Roger’s death. I had my First Communion, and except for almost choking on the wafer, it went beautifully. My mother graduated from college with her degree in Political Science. My cousin was baptized right after my eighth birthday. Right after the baptism, my grandmother was hospitalized for the last time. She died on July 22, 1980.
It’s been forty-two years. I miss her. I miss Mr. Marland. Real life isn’t like the soaps; people don’t come back from the dead. When I saw the clip years later of Ed holding Roger’s hand, I hate to say it: it wasn’t as good as my grandmother explaining it.
Tune in next week, everyone.
