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License
to Drool
Postmark: Pine Valley (by Marlena De
Lacroix, SOW 523/2000)
"I'd like to thank ABC Daytime for doing something unarguably right during this past year: giving us an uncompromisingly intelligent new woman character. In a soap landscape full of dumbed-down women, how nice it has been to revel in All My Children's Alex Devane Marick, as played by Finola Hughes. Alex is every bit as intelligent as Anna Devane, the character Hughes previously played on General Hospital. (Alex is a doctor; Anna was a WSB agent and police commissioner.) In fact, just about every AMC fan has been wondering for the past year whether Alex Devane is actually... Anna Devane. But more on that ambiguity later.
Is it possible for Finola not to play an intelligent woman? She's one of those elite daytime actresses who belongs to the Susan Flannery Club; you can actually watch their characters think on-screen. And on top of adding a certain cerebral quality to her characters, Hughes is also capable of playing a shattering vulnerability. Her characters are so strong, that when they finally do break down, the poignancy of it is utterly devastating. Like Flannery (who plays Stephanie on The Bold and the Beautiful and with whom she is competing for the Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy this year), Hughes makes everyone who is in a scene with her look- or more precisely act- good.
What I really like about Hughes is that she is not pretentious at all. She doesn't hog the screen or the spotlight like some other daytime divas (wink, wink) we all know. She harmoniously shares scenes and storylines (and even in a 1990 TV-movie, The Bride in Black) with the always gracious Ms. Susan Lucci. And during the past few months, Hughes has resurrected the actor who plays Alex's new love interest, John Callahan (the once-dazzling Edmund) from the acting dead! Both in person and on-screen, the ageless Finola is one good-looking chick. In fact, the man who edits this column has such a 'jones' for Finola that his license plates read: WSB Agent, and his internet address is Duke Lavery.
With May sweeps upon us, it's Finolafest time! Alex's thought-dead husband, Dimitri, is just about to resurface. (Oh, how I've missed Michael Nader's shining choppers!) So she's in a triangle with the very suave Marick brothers. And AMC- a soap that has always spotlighted mother/daughter relationships- has just hired Samantha Eggar to play Alex's mother, Charlotte. All those clues AMC has sprinkled about like bread crumbs that Alex may be Anna- such as Alex inexplicably knowing karate and Russian and naming her horse Scorpio- will have to come to some resolution some time soon.
If Alex turns out not to be Anna, AMC is going to have to placate a large mob of angry GH fans, who have become AMC converts on the chance that Alex actually is Anna. But then again, Anna was very good at facing down the mob- or is that Alex? I don't know- you decide. I'm just enjoying Hughes, ABC Daytime's gift to smart women who still love soaps."
