Reflections by Jill - A Weekly Commentary for OLTL for September 10, 2007

I had a hard time last week keeping track of all the citizens of Llanview who have totally lost their minds. There were the crazies who are usually insane, like Todd, although he was more insane than ever last week. Then there was Roxy with her “Free Lindsay” tee shirts and her idea to have a sit in at the jailhouse, but hey, that was par for the course for Roxy. Then we have Lindsay, who has always had at least 90% of her screws loose but has definitely lost the final screws since she lost Jen. But now we have Michael, Marcie and John flipping out and I think I am going to need a scorecard before this Tommy business is settled.

Marcie’s behavior makes me very uncomfortable. At the end of last week she didn’t even know yet that Tommy was Todd’s son (paying no attention to all the clues) and she has gone way over the edge in her quest to prove that John has railroaded Lindsay. Michael has totally lost his mind ever since he made the decision to keep it a secret that Todd was Tommy’s father. He has been lying to his wife for months and has put John in a terrible position. Even when Michael should have realized that the jig was up and his world was about to explode, he still wanted to fight to keep his little world together. And John, the one person who usually thinks with a totally organized mind when it comes to the law, has gone crazy.

I know how much John loves Michael, Marcie and Tommy, but I couldn’t believe that he went so far as to arrest Todd and throw him in jail for the night so that he couldn’t run and tell Marcie about Tommy being his son. I think Michael has made John feel like he has no choice but to go along with the deception and John acted out of pure emotion (strange for him) when he arrested Todd. Once Marcie runs away with Tommy (and I don’t know how long she’ll be gone), John’s won’t get a minute’s peace because Todd will make his life miserable for keeping him from his son.

It sure didn’t take long for John’s prediction to Michael to come true. He did warn him that even though he promised to keep the secret, it would come out anyway. They always do. Of course now Michael is not even going to be able to keep the secret from Marcie that he knew the truth about Tommy. It was not too smart of John to come up with that plan anyway, where they would pretend that John was telling Michael and Marcie the truth at the same time as if Michael didn’t know. It’s just one more secret that would never be able to be kept. I know that John was desperate to help Michael at least keep his marriage together, but it was just making a horrible situation even worse.

I just want to talk about Blair for a moment. I have said a lot of things about this woman and most of them have to do with the fact that she uses her body to get what she wants out of men which I think is disgusting. But I have always known that under all the scheming and bad behavior, Blair has a big heart and that was never more evident than when she gave John a reason to arrest Todd by admitting that she witnessed him assaulting Miles at The Palace. Blair’s heart went out to Marcie and she could only imagine how horrible it would have been for Marcie if Todd ran over there and tried to rip Tommy out of her arms, let alone how traumatic it would be for the baby. Blair loves Todd and wants him to have his son back, but she had a big enough heart and enough of a sense of what’s right to make it impossible for Todd to hurt Marcie that way and I stand up and applaud her. She didn’t consider what it would take for Todd to forgive her, if he ever does and she knew that he would be furious. It’s too bad that even the Llanview PD couldn’t keep Todd in check for one night.

I’m sure it was hurtful to Blair when Todd looked her in the eye from his jail cell and said, “You never would have put me here if it were your kid.” Todd never sees beyond what he wants. If it’s possible, I think Todd is even more selfish than Dorian and that’s saying a lot. We all know what he’s gone through looking for his son and wondering if he was dead or alive all this time, but he hasn’t given a moment’s consideration to anyone else, even Tommy. It doesn’t even dawn on him that if he rips that baby out of the arms of the only parents he knows, it will hurt him. Todd just says, “That’s not my fault.” Everything that has happened in the past two years in Todd’s life is his fault, starting with him playing with Margaret’s affections to get what he wanted, which was to hurt Kevin.

Even Todd’s conversation with Lindsay didn’t make him realize the horrible things he’s done. Lindsay had no business threatening to tell Jack that Todd gave him away at birth and told Blair he was dead. Jack has been through enough with Todd and Blair as parents as it is, but Todd wouldn’t even admit that what he did was so bad. He had the nerve to say to Lindsay, “Well, I didn’t know he was my kid.” Lindsay really hit him between the eyes when she said, “Yes, but he was Blair’s.” Todd doesn’t consider it important that no matter whom he thought Jack’s father was he was the son of the woman he supposedly loved. This is why I can’t stand to look at Todd most of the time, except when he’s showing a bit of his human side with Viki and once in a while with his kids.

And here’s what I mean about Lindsay being over the edge. She had the never to threaten to tell Todd’s little boy a horrible truth about his parents, yet when Todd threatened her back and said he’d hurt Will if she told Jack the truth, Lindsay was appalled and yelled, “Don’t you dare hurt my family!” Is she kidding? She made a horrible threat to a little boy and her grown son wasn’t fair game? It shows how insane she is to even dream about threatening a sociopath like Todd Manning.