Removing the Center: Institutional Memory & Guiding Light (2)

Last year, Guiding Light made a decision even riskier than tossing Maureen Bauer through a windshield. Either in the face of budget cuts or seeking to capitalize on the press Days of Our Lives got for killing off—and then bringing back—about a dozen characters in a few short months, the choice was made to murder Phillip Spaulding, who for several years prior had been the show’s leading male character. As played by Grant Aleksander, Phillip ranks easily among the most interesting, complex characters ever created on a soap opera. He was a noble Marler by birth and a ruthless Spaulding by rearing, and thus combined, in a kind of psychological morass, the twin impulses of both. Phillip, like House, was an asshole you couldn’t help but feel affection, even a kind of pity, for.

Aleksander infused all of Phillip’s stories, be they brilliant or misguided, with an inner dialectic born of this tortured dichotomy: All his relationships had a push-pull dynamic, as if Phillip could never decide whether he needed someone to love him or if he needed no one. Though Phillip had fascinating love-hate relationships with the women in his life, his best scenes were always with his two male influences – his father, the ruthless Alan Spaulding, who always encouraged him to retreat and shore up his defenses, and his best friend, Rick Bauer (Ed’s son), who wanted him to lighten up and do the right thing.

Phillip’s tortured nature had gotten the better of him in 2004, and he suffered depression and eventually a full-fledged breakdown. These scenes—including one where Phillip lay on the floor and refused to get up because he couldn’t see the point—were often difficult to watch and yet represented some of the best in the character’s history.

The new producing and writing team hired after this storyline decided that Phillip’s breakdown could either make him a better man or a worse one. They chose the latter, and Phillip’s return from the hospital saw his character descend, almost ridiculously, into a clichéd soap villain. Like some Bond nemesis, he built a model of Springfield and started moving around buildings like chess pieces. Uncharacteristically, he betrayed his own daughter. Once everyone in town started saying things like, “I could KILL Phillip Spaulding!!!”, the writing was on the wall.

For a while after Phillip’s death, the show really was infused with a new energy, as the writers had intended. Characters who had been friends became mistrustful of each other, and even good old Rick Bauer was a suspect. But as it became clear that Phillip was never intended to be dead after all, GL was dealt a blow when Grant Aleksander refused to return. Despite the fact that they built a story around a character who remained their most important even after his death, they had fallen once again into the trap of creating a hole in the show’s center and being left unable to fill the gap. The characters that once surrounded Phillip now seem unmoored and directionless, wandering aimlessly without anyone to connect them.

What is it about Guiding Light that makes its writers carve out its central characters, again and again? In Maureen’s case, was it an inability to see how important she was to the other characters, boring or not? Or in Phillip’s, was it mistaking his isolationism with out-and-out villainy? The institutional memory at Guiding Light seems to be its fear of itself and its desire to be like others. Losing Maureen made GL less “old-fashioned” and more like trendy and youth-centered General Hospital, which has lacked maternal figures throughout its nearly 45-year history. And killing off Phillip injected Days of Our Lives’ boldness into the show as well as, sadly, its soullessness. Guiding Light could use its heart and soul – Maureen and Phillip – right about now.