kish

Is One Life To Live Writing Off the Gays Because They Decimated Ratings?

When ABC’s soap opera One Life To Live was enjoying a ratings resurgence and newfound buzz, producers were happy to credit the gay romance of Kyle and Fish as the reason why. But now that OLTL has seen its numbers dip? The soap’s brass are reportedly blaming it on their decision to go overboard with the gay stuff. Which is why Scott Evans and Brett Claywell’s characters are being written off the show.

We first learned OLTL would feature a gay romance last summer; when the pair’s first on-screen kiss arrived in August, the gays were agog. And middle American stay-at-home moms, too. But in October, when “Kish” got married, OLTL was trailing its soap competition, landing in sixth place (out of seven spots), when such an exciting plot development should have been reeling in the viewers.

Now showrunner Frank Valentini says, “We are concluding the story that we set out to tell with Kyle and Fish. We are very proud to have broken new ground with a same sex couple on daytime.”

Characters are usually written off shows for one of two reasons: Their actors demand unreasonable salary hikes, or viewers are turned off by them. If producers were utterly pleased with the Kish storyline and the response from audiences, undoubtedly they would keep their characters around. But that doesn’t appear to be happening, and so into the soap sunset they will ride. But they’ve had a good run, no? Kissing on camera. Sexing on camera. Marrying on camera. It’s been a pretty spectacular representation of gays on television, broke ground in the genre, and we can’t fault OLTL for giving it a go.

Let’s just hope they don’t get killed off.

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