Due to it being February, the month of love, all my posts this month will have to do with TV couples (one of my favorite topics to write about). Today’s topic of choice is my top three all-time favorite daytime soap opera couples.
Daytime soaps are a dying genre, something I’m sad about but at the same time, not too sad. Being a soap watcher is a never-ending cycle of ups and downs, but mostly downs, because as in almost all entertainment mediums, writers think happy = boring and once a couple gets together on a daytime soap, the countdown immediately begins to when they’ll break up. Then get back together. Then break up again. Then get back together. It’s quite exhausting and after the last soap I liked left the air (All My Children), I decided I was done with daytime soaps and none of the remaining ones (General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, The Young & the Restless, The Bold & the Beautiful) have been able to lure me back.
But in the golden days of soaps, I was obsessed. I shipped so many couples and yet, when I thought about which ones I still loved all these years later, only three came to mind. So here they are, in order of their places in my heart.
3) Simon and Katie, Skatie, As the World Turns
I’m not ashamed to admit one of the main reasons I fell in love with Skatie is because Paul Leyden (Simon) is SMOKIN’. I mean, look at that picture. Those cheekbones, those eyes, that little scruff under his gorgeous mouth. Plus Simon had an Australian accent (due to Paul Leyden being Australian, and I’m so thankful the ATWT’s producers didn’t try to make him use an American one).
But it takes more than a hot guy to create a wonderful love story. He also has to have chemistry with his co-star and boy, did Paul and Terri Conn make sparks. I won’t get into the whole history of them because that would take forever, so I’ll just mention the highlights:
-Simon, a con artist, follows his married lover to her hometown of fictional Oakdale. Katie, meanwhile, after faking a stalker to get a guy to like her then going after a married man, is the town pariah. Simon and Katie meet at a bar, both get drunk, go back to Simon’s place, and have sex. Katie’s ready to try for a relationship, Simon is not, and does his best to put her off.
-The INS comes after Simon and tell him he needs a green card to stay in Oakdale. Simon’s married lover can’t put a ring on it so when Katie volunteers to marry him, he has no choice but to accept
-Simon is forced to pretend he married Katie for love but is desperate to divorce her at the first opportunity. Eventually he ends things with his married lover and starts to realize how cool and sexy and great his wife is.
-Katie gets tired of waiting for Simon to come around and starts dating a guy who turns out to be in the mob and Simon saves her and then they both admit they love each other and want to have a real marriage.
Once Simon and Katie settled happily into married life, things went to hell, of course, and the conflict the writers came up with for them sucked. Then Paul Leyden decided to leave the show, then he came back, then he left again, then he came back. All these comings and goings wrecked havoc with the Skatie love story and when the show was finally cancelled, it ended with Katie engaged to the guy she’d originally tried to manipulate into a relationship by pretending to have a stalker.
But for awhile, Skatie were magic.
2) Leo and Greenlee, Greenleo, All My Children
Leo and Greenlee are the first soap couple I fell hard for. They paved the way for Skatie and my number one all-time favorite couple. I can’t even really explain why I loved them so much. It was a combination of the fantastic writing and the excellent chemistry between Josh Duhamel and Rebecca Budig. Most amazing of all, I think, is the fact that initially, the writers weren’t going to put them together.
Greenlee arrived in Pine Valley as a spoiled little trust fund baby whose only goal was to land a man. She seduced her college boyfriend, Scott, first and then moved on to Ryan, who was grappling from his recent divorce (and his still-strong feelings for his ex-wife). Then Leo, a quippy playboy, arrived in town to track down his mother. In the process, he met Becca, a sweet girl he liked a lot. When Leo and Greenlee met, they instantly recognized a fellow snarky schemer. Soon, they became good friends and vowed to help each other win Ryan and Becca. Watching them slowly realize they wanted each other was a total delight. They probably have one of the best, if not the best, slow-burn-friends-to-lovers storylines I’ve ever seen.
Since this is a soap, they went on to have many ups and downs and obstacles thrown in their way but finally, after two years, they tied the knot and got a few months of bliss before Josh Duhamel left the show and Greenlee was made into a widow. I stopped watching after that because I knew Josh and Leo would never be back but Greenleo have always held a place in my heart since.
1) Jonathan & Tammy, Jammy, Guiding Light
Oh, Jammy. How do I love thee? Let me count thy ways.
-Your insanely soapy romance
-Your melt-the-screen kisses and sex scenes
-The hotness of Tom Pelphrey
-The delicate beauty of Stephanie Gatschet
-Your total devotion to each other even during crappy storylines
I don’t really have much to say about Jonathan and Tammy except this: if you have not seen their entire beautiful, damaged love story, go to YouTube right now and look up the clips. Then be prepared to spend hours in front of your computer as you get sucked in.
This post has gotten really long, so here’s a brief recap of how Jonathan and Tammy came together. Jonathan arrived in Springfield hellbent on revenge. He wanted to get back at his birth mother for his crappy life (she gave him to another couple to raise to literally save his life) by punishing the people she loved (her family). His first hit was his sweet, virginal half-cousin Tammy. He lied about who he was and took her virginity. When she found out, she was devastated and furious, he didn’t give a damn, and continued to wreck the rest of his mother’s family. Then, ever-so-slowly, Jonathan and Tammy started talking. Started realizing they had a lot in common. Started realizing they were attracted to each other and wanted each other in a not-very-cousinly way. To fight her feelings, Tammy got engaged to another man while Jonathan tried to convince her to change her mind and give him a chance. After finding out her new husband was a bigamist, Tammy embraced her love for Jonathan and they dated despite most of the town disapproving. Then a whole bunch of stupid crap happened that I’m not even going to recap and after two years, both Tom Pelphrey and Stephanie Gatschet left the show. Which you would think meant that Jonathan and Tammy rode off into the sunset together, but alas, you would be wrong (and that’s still a sore spot for me and lot of other Jammy fans).
So there you have it, my top three all-time favorite couples. Maybe one day I’ll do a post about some of the couples who almost made the list (like JT and Colleen from The Young & the Restless).