TEXAS BECOMES ELECTRA
Soap opera characters have never been known for their mental stability. In fact, they tend to shatter at the drop of a hat. (They also bounce back from psychiatric traumas relatively easily. On any given day, your average soap town has at least a handful of accidental, repentant and reformed killers walking around as productive members of the community).
But then, there are those characters who... well, there's really no nice way to put this... are walking headcases. We're not talking the obvious psychos, the killers, the rapists, the mob bosses (though, as we learned on GH, if your killer has a perfectly moussed coif, your rapist delightfully curly locks and your mob boss dimples, they're A-OK). We're talking about the functioning, devastatingly attractive, seemingly normal folks... who, in reality, are really, really messed up.
Take the case of TEXAS's Reena Bellman.
She's gorgeous. She's intelligent. She's resourceful.
She's nuts.
This girl has an Electra complex bigger than Greece itself.
Electra Complex: The Freudian concept that a young girl will be sexually attracted to her father, while hostile toward her mother.
And how!
In 1980, when we first met her on Another World prior to being spun off to TEXAS, Reena was a grown, married woman. Seriously obsessed with her Daddy, Striker.
Furious that her beloved father had reconciled with her estranged mother, Vicky, Reena didn't just stomp her feet, voice an objection, and then move on with her own life. She hired a detective to follow Vicky around and take pictures of her in a compromising position with her lover (Reena wasn't wrong about her mother being no good for Daddy, she simply seemed way too interested in proving it).
How will Vicky and Striker react to their daughter's inappropriate intrusion into their relationship? How will Reena's husband, Kevin, handle yet another sign of just how much her heart belongs to Daddy? And will anyone suggest a visit or two with a shrink? Tune in to AOL/PGP's Classic Soap Channel's broadcast of TEXAS and find out!
P.S. Anyone surprised to learn that Reena's good pal was AW's original Daddy's girl, Iris Cory?
2 comments:
The scenes between Carla Borelli and the last Elizabeth Allen are fantastic. Over the show's run, these two actresses did an outstanding job of morphing the characters from initial sparring partners to a loving mother and daughter rekationship. The final shows featuring the interaction between the two (particularly during the telethon) and Allen's farewell toast in the last episode have stayed in my memory all these years.
The previous should read the "late" (and sorely missed) Elizabeth Allen.
Post a Comment