The Great As The World Turns He Said - She Said Debate Part 1 - Initial Reactions- The He Said Version

Welcome one and all to a good ol' fashion "He Said" vs. "She Said" debate! Me and our Melanie will be tackling the end of As the World Turns, in which we will debating the finer points to the final months of this groundbreaking soap opera and how it's executive producers, writers, and cast decided to handle the daunting task of ending such a epic show.

Since our Mel isn't quite ready yet I am going to take it upon myself to start off the debate.

In part 1 of our debate we will simply be tackling our 'initial reactions' to the series finale.

Initial Reaction To The Finale-

After finishing the final episode of World Turns I could not help but grasp that the show was 'really' over. The final story thread of Bob Hughes, played by actor Don Hastings, retiring and narrating his final day was the most brilliant decision that TPTB made when planning the final episode. But unfortunately for me, I found the rest of the episode to be very bland.

When discussing the Guiding Light finale many fans speculated that there was a giant list created to which Ellen Wheeler simply checked off as the episode progressed. I kinda got the exact same feeling from the As The World Turns Finale. That someone had a mandated list of 'things that HAD to happen' and that is why everything was forced into nice little bubble.

The most shocking thing about the finale however was lack of closure for the 'gay' storyline. As I will get to in a moment, the Luke, Noah, Reid storyline was botched in what appeared to be an attempt to give the 'Nuke' fans a happy ending. Only that 'ending' did not appear on screen. While EVERYONE else in Oakdale seemed to be given a happy ending, Luke was left by his lonesome, mourning the death of his boyfriend Reid.

I have come to accept the loss of ATWT, but that does not in anyway negate the fact that the show had it's issues.

So there you have part 1 in our hopefully on-going debate about the end of World Turns! Look for the 'She Said' edition soon, followed by part 2 in which we tackle some of the more gritty details of the shows ending.