Episode 65 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 65:

How will Chris and Danny finally get back together?

Danny looks so out of control to me, I keep expecting him to hurt someone and I see no reason that Christine should be immune. So I wanted to see what would happen if the `obvious' reconciliation didn't occur.

What's behind Michael's recent transformation?

This was partly inspired by my recently seeing the movie The Three Faces of Eve.

I know a lot of people like Michael but many don't want him to lose his mean edge. For a writer, that's a hard situation to make work. I asked a friend of mine with a background in behavior disorders whether it was possible for Michael to have had some transformation in prison that led to a multiple personality syndrome, so that we could explain his two different modes as different personalities. She said it wasn't likely to happen except in childhood, but that some trauma in the prison could certainly disrupt the balance. So I thought it'd be interesting to establish this as a possible explanation for why Michael would seem so nice now when before he was so mean. It would also give him the possibility of reverting to meanness without giving up his niceness. Played out over time, rather than in one encapsulated episode like this, it offers a lot of possibilities even if it is a little on the contrived side.

By the way, multiple personality disorder is extraordinarily rare. My friend used the phrase `in the extraodinarily rare cases where this ever really happens' to preface nearly every answer she gave me (and I passed this phrase through to my story because I found it so striking). I conclude from this that there are probably a lot of dubious cases where people are faking or incorrectly diagnosed or even incorrectly reported by third-hand accounts.

Still, soaps have never balked at the implausible--sometimes they don't even stop at the impossible. I like to push the edge the best I can. Whether one gets away with it seems less a function of the plausibility and more a function of whether it leads someplace fun. People will forgive almost anything for a good story.

By the way, something I'd put into an early draft that didn't make it into the final version explained Michael's bird drawings. My theory is that the `other Michael' is the one that drew the birds. To communicate to the `good Michael' that he was still in there, caged up. I don't know if that's realistically possible under multiple personality syndrome, but it seemed like it might be, and anyway it seemed like a neat explanation.

This scene was also yet another a chance to bring Tim Reid back into the show. Given his involvement with Phyllis, I think he'd be very uneasy about treating anyone who had an involvement with or relationship to Phyllis. But he also wouldn't want to come out and say it. So it's an opportunity to watch him at least squirm--and maybe some day to do something rash.

Are Paul and Joani destined to go bump in the night?

Ok, ok. Joani has nothing really to do with this story fragment. Her presence here was just silly. But then, her presence is always just silly. What a waste of one of the most beautiful faces on the show. She needs a plot!

The rest of this was because I've always had the theory that Paul probably spends his nights with Christine trying to pretend she's Michelle Stafford, who almost certainly was more fun than Cricket in bed, even if it was only for a few minutes. Every time Phyllis is with Paul, I look for some hint that maybe he remembers fondly his "little excitement" with her. But it never happens. Well, I was tired of waiting so I wrote the scene myself.

That's all for Episode 65's morals. Don't miss Episode 66 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.