Articles and Interviews: 2000-2003

Bad Boys And the Women Who Love Them (Soap Opera Digest 6/26/01)

(This was part of a section in which a therapist, Dr. Gilda Carle, provided some insight into the relationships that some of soaps' best bad boys have with the women who are in love with them. Dr. Gilda's thoughts are toward the bottom.)

Dark Roots: Todd led a gang-rape of Marty in 1993; after escaping prison, threatening Nora and indirectly causing Suede's death in a fight, he partially redeemed himself by saving Marty, C.J. and Jessica from a car crash in 1994. Since then, he's vacillated between making he lives of the people he "loves" miserable and atoning for those sins by trying to "make it up" to them. On and off from 1995, he's given Blair hell over custody of Starr, and from 1997-2000, he gave Tea general hell (and once, a punch in the face) for trying to get close to him. What's hard to tell is whether the Dissociative Identity Disorder he used as an excuse to escape prosecution for holding much of Llanview's prominent citizens hostage with a bomb in 1998 was fakes. A real case of DID would explain a lot.

Moth To The Flame: With all of that going for Todd, how could terminally insecure, occasionally off-the-beam schemer Blair Cramer not fall for him? She's not averse to marrying for money (as she did with Asa in 1992 and Todd in 1995) or to further a plot (as she did with Max in 1999), but tends not to be a very good con artist because she usually falls hard for her prey.

Playing With Fire: Todd and Blair connected over playing "whose life is most pathetic" in 1994 and tied the knot once she learned that he was a Lord heir (and told him she was pregnant). Though Todd's dumped Blair and dumped ON her innumerably times, their daughter, Starr, has had a humanizing effect on both parents. Today, even as Todd humiliates his ex on the cover of The Sun and even as Blair sucks up to Max by lying that she's carrying his child, Blair and Todd's love-hate-love relationship remains tragic, amusing and compelling.

Dr. Gilda says: "Okay, he's no Buddha in the boudoir, obviously. So, he's got to show his masculinity in another way, and that's by punching people, dumping on them and being competitve with women like Blair. What he's doing is overcompensating for his lack of feeling masculine enough. A lot of women mistake this kind of agression for power, but Blair's no angel, either. We attract not who we want, but who we are. Blair deserves Todd. The fact that they both show some humanity, thanks to their daughter, shows that they do have redemption possibilities."