Marland Monday: You Called Me Friend, While You Can Go Off Like a Fool and Dream New Dreams
Hey everybody! It’s Manic Monday, which means it’s Marland Monday!
This summer I’ve been looking back on the rules writer Douglas Marland set up on not ruining a soap opera. But we’re taking a break this week to celebrate an event that happened forty years ago this week. To quote Katrina Longworth, come join us, won’t you?
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A couple of weeks ago we analyzed the writing of the famous confrontation scene between Kelly Nelson (John Wesley Shipp) and Nola Reardon (Lisa Brown) Finding out he wasn’t Nola’s baby dad helped Kelly reunite with true love Morgan (Kristen Vigard) He proposed marriage, Morgan accepted. Three weeks later these wacky kids were married in a lovely ceremony. Yes, three weeks. It’s a soap opera, people. Even with a good writer, they are in a super fast universe. College juniors can become doctors. Twenty year olds can become lawyers. So let’s just go with the flow,and see how
Marland set it up.
Marland didn’t ignore the elephant in the room: Kelly was in his mid twenties while Morganw was eighteen. This would not fly today. But it was 1981! That crazy network MTV just debuted, along with the IBM personal computer. People were going to see the movie Endless Love, and let’s just say they liked the theme song better than the movie. Now that I’m old enough to be Morgan’s mom, there’s a part of me that thinks “you two crazy kids should slow things down!” Again, 1981. You could get away with stuff back then. The wedding preparations were going well; the ceremony would be performed at the place they fell in love,Laurel Falls, with the Springfield High School Glee Club performing. People are commenting on how happy the two of them are, how they deserve all the happiness they can get. The two lovebirds even had time to do a lovely duet of a Judy Collins song.
Across town on 5th Street, Nola is preparing for own wedding. Her family has found out that the true baby dad is Floyd Parker (Tom Nielsen) Nola doesn’t love Floyd; she pretty much used him to get to Kelly. But he’s crazy for her, and doesn’t notice she’s just not into him. What I love about it is everyone knew Floyd was being used, but Nielsen plays Floyd with a Jimmy Stewart “aw shucks she really does love me” look to him. Nola is moping along, not in control for the first time in months. It is decided for her the wedding will be at a justice of the peace, then they’ll have the reception and live at the boarding house. The fellow boarders are gossiping behind Nola’s back. No Judy Collins duets for these kids.
So let’s do a quick compare/contrast here on how Marland set this up: everything is going beautifully for our Kelly and Morgan. Nola is being forced into something she can’t stand. But Marland writes it that even though we hated Nola after all this time, suddenly we started to feel sorry for her. No one should be forced into a life they quite honestly don’t want.
The two couples are getting married on the same day. Well, of course they are! It’s fiction. While Morgan is greeted by family and friends as she get married, Nola is at a cheap Justice of the Peace with her mom, her brother Tony, and Floyd’s sister Katie. The Springfield Glee Club sings “You Needed Me” (their song) to K and M at Laurel Falls. Nola’s lucky to get an organ playing something. Kelly and Morgan say their vows, everything goes beautifully. Back at the Justice of the Peace, Nola is about to say “I Do.” Everyone is looking at her. “I…” Silence. “I… I can’t.”
Commerical break. End credits.
While there’s dancing and singing at the Laurel Falls reception, Nola gently broke it off with Floyd, then went back to the boarding house and packed up her things. She explained to her mother she couldn’t live a life she knew she would hate. This was the beginning of Nola’s redemption, becoming a heroine. She also knew Kermit the Frog was right at the end of The Muppet Movie when he sang “Life’s like a movie/write your own ending/keep beliving/keep pretending.” Nola had to write her own ending. Good or bad, it had to be on her own terms. Marland knew her well enough by then how much Nola loved movies, how the fantasies later made her more comic than bad. The odd thing was all of Springfield was dismayed by what she did. Ooh, did you see what Nola did? That Nola! How could she hurt Floyd like that? But Nola had to do what Nora Ephron later said in Heartburn: “…and then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.” Nola chose to dream another dream. She took her suitcase, her Raggedy Ann doll, then went off to see what’s out there.
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In the meantime, Morgan closes her eyes and throws her bouquet to Hillary Bauer, then she and Kelly walk off into the sunset with “You Needed Me” playing. I’m going to leave them here. We should see them with rose colored glasses, love wins over everything. Maybe that’s what Marland intended. I will tell another story though.
Five years ago around this time this month I was on a cross country trip to New York City. I was about to enter graduate school in Vermont, but I was going to see my friend Lilly Marie first who lived in Brooklyn. In a way I was like Nola: chosing to dream another dream when several dreams fell through. I was sitting reading Amy Krouse Rosethenal when a man with a New York Yankees hat crossed the aisle then started taking pictures of something. I looked at what he was taking pictures of. It was of a lovely waterfall. I suddenly remembered it was the exterior shot Guiding Light used for Laurel Falls. It nearly took my breath away.
I went to look for the man. He was with his family. “Excuse me?” I asked.
He looked up and smiled at me. “The falls, wasn’t that on Guiding Light?”
“Was that the show with the Bauers? And the guy who was Dawson’s dad?”
“Yes! I remember that shot.”
He took my hand and shook it. “Isn’t it great to see up close what we remember?”
I smiled at him. “It is.”
Tune in next week. And remember, you needed me. You needed me. And it’s okay to dream new dreams.
