Okay, so it wasn't a wall, it was a high-rise window, and he didn't exactly fall, he was pushed.  But T. Marshall Travers has been controversial from day one, and Lamman Rucker has done a wonderful job of characterizing this screen-dominating character.  He barreled into Oakdale about 18 months ago, and fans quickly chose sides to either love him or hate him.

Brought to town to defend Barbara Ryan on a kidnapping charge, Marshall was on the payroll of James Stenbeck, the most notorious villain to ever hit town.  A slick attorney, Marshall got the judge to declare a mistrial.  Then Jessica Griffin, the prosecuting DA, cheated on her boyfriend Ben Harris in a wild affair with Marshall.  But every viewer knows that if James Stenbeck is involved, things are never over till James decides they are over.

It was about then that we found out why Stenbeck had Marshall in his back pocket; he knew the whereabouts of Marshall's long lost teen daughter.  Eventually Marshall showed us that he had a conscience, and stood up to James, whereupon James shot him. During his long  recovery, Jessica decided she would help Marshall find his daughter.  She invited him to stay at her house, and he hoped their intimate relationship would start up again.  After a night of lovemaking on Jessica's couch, Marshall was shocked when Jessica cried rape.  He was clueless as to the extent of his deed.  Jessica filed charges, and the case went to trial.  In scenes that had me on the edge of my seat,  Jessica was able to convince him that it was indeed rape.  Although a mistrial was declared, Jessica decided she'd been vindicated.

It was about this time that Jessica's daughter Bonnie decided to go after Marshall herself with a gun, and she accidentally shot her mother instead.  She was ordered to do community service and met a teenaged girl named Sarah at the youth center.  We viewers knew immediately that Sarah would turn out to be the long lost, supposedly dead Sarah, and sure enough, she was.  When the blood ties were revealed, Sarah became a child torn between a father she didn't know and a woman who'd become more than a friend to her.  But Bonnie and Marshall were eventually able to work together to help Sarah.

Enter Jessica again, determined to protect her daughter from Marshall.  She reasoned that he'd raped once, he might do it again.  So Jessica reopened the rape trial, mainly to force Marshall and Sarah to leave Oakdale and Bonnie.  But things went awry, as they so often do in soap land, and in a struggle, Bonnie shoved Marshall out the window of his apartment.  It was a long way down to the ground, and Marshall was history. 

Viewers have been on opposing sides in regards to T. Marshall Travers from the beginning.  Was he a bad guy, a good guy caught up in a bad situation, a man with a conscience, or a criminal who deserved to be punished?  As soaps often do, ATWT put Marshall in the forefront of the show, featuring him prominently in storylines for over 18 months, which alienated some viewers who wanted to see the veterans featured more.  Fans either loved him or hated him.  But then the rape happened, and everything changed.

Can a soap rapist be redeemed?  GH's Luke and OLTL's Todd immediately come to mind.  They were both redeemed, to the delight of some and the consternation of others.  Some fans of ATWT held on to the hope that Marshall would also be redeemed.  Others wanted him punished for what is certainly a horrible crime of violence.  Still others didn't care what happened as long as Lamman Rucker was not let go. They felt his acting was superb and a credit to a show already loaded with top talent.  All summer, between the actual rape and his demise, fans argued about this, and it wasn't always pretty.  Women who'd suffered similar acts of violence clamored for the show to punish the character.  Letting him sashay around Oakdale sent a negative message to viewers.  Fans who still burned over the Luke-Laura and  Todd-Marty rape stories demanded that this time justice should be done: no turning the rapist into a hero!  Marshall's character had served its usefulness and it was time to let him go. 

Other fans cried for, if not his redemption, at least some kind of reprieve; punish the character, but keep the actor.  ATWT had established a precedent for putting minority actors in non-stereotypical roles, and Lamman Rucker was one minority actor who deserved to stay in town. Fans hoped that, as the summer progressed, he would stay on the canvas, as a constant irritant and reminder to Jessica about what he'd done.  Still other viewers, myself included, shook their heads at writers who had painted this corner for Marshall and left him there, with no chance of the paint ever drying. 

So when Marshall's daughter was introduced, it seemed to be a signal.  When soap characters get families, that means they are staying, right?  Here was Marshall's chance to hit that long rocky road to redemption by becoming a good father.  Viewers envisioned stories of Marshall relating to Sarah, the rebellious teen, as the two of them tenuously felt their way through unexplored realms.  Marshall would have to realize that Sarah was not just a child but a budding woman, who needed some mature emotional guidance to reach adulthood successfully.  He would have to explore his own feelings about being a parent, and realize that his own daughter could someday be raped, by a person exactly like him.  He would have to be a role model for her in a town where people knew he was capable of an animal, criminal act.  And he had to come to terms with the fact that his darling daughter had bonded tightly with Bonnie, the daughter of the woman he had raped, who had tried at one time to shoot him.  Lamman Rucker is a very talented actor, and this viewer was excitedly anticipating these character-exploring scenes, the revelations about himself as a man, that being a father would draw out.  So when I heard that he'd been let go, and that the character was departing in a violent way, I was disgusted.  Once again, ATWT had tossed storyline possibilities into the air like so much confetti, just to be swept into the gutter.

What were the writers thinking?  Instead of writing some great stories for Marshall, Sarah, Jessica, and Bonnie, they have xx-ed out Marshall, and Bonnie is soon to follow.  Is there a viewer who can NOT predict this one?  Bonnie will confess to killing him, and she is gone.  Jessica will feel sorry for Sarah, and take her in.  Ben, Jessica's fianc通, has an adopted teen son named Curtis  out there somewhere; poof, instant teen romance.   ATWT is supposedly looking for an actor to play Curtis, and he'd better be good, because  Joanna Hartshorne, who plays Sarah, is not ready to handle a major storyline on her own.  She may develop into a talented actress in the future, but right now she is a novice who needs stronger actors to work with in her scenes (like Lamman Rucker!!).