Young love! It can be a beautiful
thing, can’t it? A boy and a girl, a budding romance–it’s the stuff soaps
were made for, right? Daytime drama has long been a place for starcrossed
duos who are either doomed from the start, or budding super couples. They
make us cheer, they make us cry, and we can’t tear ourselves away from their
stories. But they shouldn’t make us cringe.
Chris Hughes and Allison Stewart are the
latest lovebirds on As The World Turns. There’s history in their names;
longtime viewers know that the Stewart and Hughes families put Oakdale on the
map. So when Allison turned 18 and formally declared her intention to pursue
the young intern, I thought at first it was kind of sweet. After all, she was
giving up her year-long Aaron obsession, wasn’t she? She didn’t have to chase
someone else’s boyfriend, she could chase her own! And I’ll admit I find
Allison charming at times, when she isn’t being exasperating. Then slowly but
surely, as she and Chris started snuggling, my ick-ometer started pinging.
Chris, son of Bob and Kim Hughes, is a
man with a past. He was kicked out of Columbia University, and dropped out of
Oakdale U. He drove a cab, and later worked as a reporter for the Intruder.
He finally returned to school and got his medical degree, and is now an intern
at Oakdale Memorial. Allison, although a lot younger than Chris, is a girl
with a past. She’s a convicted arsonist who faked an illness to keep from
going to jail. She has always been ready to do anything to get what she
wanted. Where Chris’s parentage is pretty straightforward, Allison’s is a bit
more twisted; her adult sister Emily donated an egg to Susan, Emily’s mother,
so that Susan and her husband at the time could have a child. So technically
Emily is both sister and mother to Allison, while Susan is her mother and also
her grandmother!
After different misadventures involving
other Oakdale teens, Allison finally decided that she loved Chris, and when
she turned 18 she decided to show him that she was a sexy, desirable woman.
She worked at the hospital to be closer to him, and constantly found ways to
‘accidentally’ run into him. Chris tried to fight it, but he clearly had
feelings for her too. They spent the summer chasing a killer and falling in
love. It didn’t take long for them to do the deed. And it was about this
time that my ick-ometer started to kick in.
Chris Hughes is a serial
mom-and-daughter dater. Before he became a doctor, he dated Abigail Williams
and slept with her mother, Molly McKinnon. After that messy little affair
blew up in his face, he moved on to Emily. Emily shares a son with Chris’s
brother Tom, and Chris was trying to help Tom with a custody issue by spying
on Emily while working for her at the Intruder, her newspaper. It wasn’t long
before they were hitting the sheets, and when Tom found out, Chris decided to
move on and get that medical degree.
So when I realized that Chris had now
slept with both Emily and Allison, the ick-ometer needle started to tremble, and
the warning bell started to ding. I know worse things have happened in soapland,
but for some reason, every time I see Allison bounce and quiver over the
prospect of another rendezvous with her dreamy doc, that warning sound turns
into a firebell, and I start to mutter, “ick, ick, ick!” So it’s time to check
my ick-ometer readings.
First, Allison is a child; yes, she’s a
lying, sneaking, conniving child, but still a child. Did she HAVE to jump in
the sack with Chris the minute they got serious? I know that’s probably typical
for today’s society, but it would have been nice for ATWT to buck the trend and
let this go from puppy love to serious romance. Next, is Allison in love with
Chris, or in love with an older man who’s a doctor from a prominent family who
gives her prestige and bragging rights? She spent a long time chasing Aaron
Snyder with no success, now she’s as proud as a fisherman who hooked a giant
marlin that she’s moved onward and upward. And finally, can we say unhealthy
obsession? Allison doesn’t just love Chris, she lives and breathes him. Her
every waking moment is centered on him! I can just picture her writing “Mrs.
Chris Hughes, Dr. and Mrs. Chris Hughes, Allison Hughes” along with little
hearts and arrows, all over every message pad in the hospital.
Let’s not forget Chris here; he’s a
doctor, he knows how these things work, yet he has unprotected sex with an 18
year old? Chris, Chris, Chris! Don’t you remember the med school filmstrip
about the papa sperm and the mama egg??? And now, after a short romance and a quicky affair, Chris is ready to break it off, and dumped Allison in the hotel
room where she’d planned their next tryst. So of course the lovesick girl
hopped right into bed with Aaron, the boy she spent a long time pursuing last
year but could never catch, while Chris went off to whine and moan to his
family. Are we viewers in for another round of, “Who’s your daddy?”? I
certainly hope not; we just finished that game with Jack, Mike, and Carly, we
don’t need a new season of it with Chris, Aaron, and Allison. If Allison
becomes pregnant, I’m afraid my ick-ometer will spring a sprocket!
How to get my ick-ometer down into the
safety zone again? Well, other than Jennifer and Barbara, there aren’t many
viable mother-daughter combos left for Chris to date, so this doctor needs to
find a serious woman who is more his type, and get serious–Hughes serious. His
dad did it, his brother Tom did it, Chris can do it too. There are a few single
women his age still floating around Oakdale that he could check out. And
Allison has a lot of growing up to do before she is ready to handle a
relationship. She needs to realize that she can be a strong woman on her own,
without a man-prize to cling to. Looking at the other women in her family, Emily
and Susan, I know this will be a long arduous road for her to travel. Both
Emily and Susan were tumultuous girls. But breaking up Chris and Allison will
certainly cut down on that firebell that keeps clanging every time I see them
together on my tv screen!
I'm in an Oakdale state of mind!
