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Outstanding Performer For Week Of September 15

Soap Opera Weekly

After winning a Daytime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Supporting Actress category for her work as gang-rape survivor Marty Saybrooke, Susan Haskell continued to do excellent work, although none of her subsequent storylines did justice to what she displayed during the rape and its aftermath. True, she and leading man Thorsten Kaye became the show's long-suffering supercouple after Kaye joined the series as Patrick Thornhart, but thanks to a revolving door of head writers and executive producers, the couple nearly became a caricature. It's a little sad, therefore, that it wasn't until one of her last scenes on OLTL that Haskell was given the kind of material that reminds us just how talented she really is.

After the EMS technician pronounced Patrick dead, Marty let out an anguished howl that had even the cynics in this office fighting back tears. Sitting next to her husband's body, Marty listened as Todd feigned ignorance to Bo about why an Irish terrorist had broken into Todd's home and shot Patrick. Pointing a finger at Todd - just as she had done nearly four years earlier in a packed courtroom during the rape trial - she challenged Todd to tell the truth. "Tell him how this is all your fault!" Marty commanded, her voice rising. Reminding Todd (and everyone within earshot) of all his transgressions against her and, later, Patrick, Marty declared that Todd was not a man, but "a curse" whose reckless behavior and thirst for revenge ruined her life and took Patrick's.

Wow! This was the Marty - and Haskell - viewers first met: a feisty, angry, and lonely young woman who drove motorcycles through storefronts in a desperate bid for attention. Marty may have turned her life around, but until this moment, much of the character's spunk was watered down or fell by the wayside.

Later, of course, we learned that Patrick didn't die, and we saw the newlyweds go off into the perverbial sunset. While Haskell's final scene may have been with her character's truelove, her best scene was (as in the past) with Roger Howarth's Todd.