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. |