The Punishment
like her again. I'm not sure that would work with Marlena though. Even if the killer is a lookalike, Marlena has to address this. Friends and family would have to struggle with it. The betrayal family should not just disappear. Even those who want to be kind, want to understand I would think would have so much trouble looking in her the eye. Intellectually, they would know it wasn't her that murdered their loved ones, but the pain would be too deep. And Marlena herself would have trouble coming to terms with a person in her place killing people she loved, destroying her relationship with them, and any guilt she would feel about what she could have done to prevent it. Perhaps even anger that nobody realized it just couldn't really be her. But that kind of tackling of the issue would take thought, character development, time, and human emotion and Reilly seems to be giving that out sparingly (especially on Days).
Meanwhile General Hospital and One Life to Live actually had characters where the illness thing could have really worked but they both chickened out. For ages, they've flirted with Sonny having bipolar disorder on GH which would finally address his outrageous behavior but also would have give a voice to that behavior, an opportunity for growth and change, for human struggle. Instead writers constantly take the easy way out and have his character remain stagnate and have all those around him worship him despite it. OLTL's Todd could have had DID and really helped me at least get over the hump of this serial rapist being accepted by Viki let alone his victims or anyone else in town. They didn't and so his struggle between right and wrong where he often choose wrong is just criminal. Once again we are left to either overlook it or be disgusted by it. Quite sad really because any story about a mood disorder could be quite educational and doesn't sacrifice the character. By nature they would remain gray, always too dark to be an out and out hero. But IMO dealing with real life illnesses in an attempt to help redemption along can be in poor taste; especially if fans are rooting for pain and suffering until that characters learned their lesson. Of course, it isn't as poor in taste as the most severe form of villain punishment, rape.
Anyone who has read my column
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