it don't matter if it's black or white

I have been watching the daytime soap opera "All My Children" for a very long time. My oldest sister used to watch the show (she even named her daughter after one of the show's characters), so since it was on, I'd watch too, and that's how I became hooked. Because of school, and because AMC has always been on at noon, I could only watch the show during summer and school holidays. I don't remember if I watched the show regularly when I was in high school, but I remember that when I was in college, if I didn't have a noon class, I would sometimes arrange to have lunch at that time at a pizza place that showed AMC. (That's actually how I found out about the Challenger explosion. I'd gone to the restaurant to have lunch and watch the show, and at first, I couldn't figure out why Peter Jennings was on the screen. And then they showed the Challenger footage over and over again. And then I knew. But I digress.)

As I entered the work force, I stopped watching regularly. I'd maybe watch a show here and there if I was home, or I'd follow the plot by reading magazines or on-line summaries. If I knew that a particular story was coming up, I might tape the show again for some period of time to watch that particular story, and then I'd stop again when that story was done. I've now been taping and watching the show regularly again for some time now. I think I started again when Maria Santos came back from the dead, and there have been enough stories to keep me watching, though I do fast forward through quite a bit. I subscribe to the weekly magazine Soap Opera Digest, which keeps me updated on AMC as well as the other two soaps that I watched for a long time, "One Live to Live" and "General Hospital", and I'm also now acquainted with most of the other soaps and their characters from reading the weekly synopses and articles. My interest in AMC has waned some but there is one particular story - Tad finding out that Kathy is actually his missing daughter Kate - that I'm waiting to develop, so I'll at least continue taping for now.

The big news in the past week or two has been the return of Rebecca Budig as Greenlee, but even bigger news have been the impending returns of Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams as Angie and Jesse Hubbard. Angie and Jesse were one of the supercouples from the 80s, and they were involved in the same storyline as another supercouple, Greg and Jenny. Debbi Morgan took her character of Angie to another related soap for a while, and Darnell Williams played another character on that same related soap and has also been the resident acting coach on AMC for some time now. So now, we come to their grand return. Oh, did I mention that Jesse died *years* ago? If I recall, he died on-screen after being shot, and Angie cried buckets for him. He was a much loved character, so it was a huge deal. Darnell has made one or two appearances as Jesse over the years, sometimes serving as a sort of conscience for good friend Tad, but Jesse was also one of the spirits who welcomed Gillian to the other side when she died. So when I heard that Darnell Williams was coming back as Jessie, I didn't know if he was going to be some sort of spirit (a la Alan and Emily on GH) or what they were going to do. Well, in last Friday's episode, Jesse showed up, alive and well and in the flesh to visit his sick son, Frankie. According to what I've read, they're going to play the "Jesse was involved in some really dangerous stuff so he faked his death to protect his family" angle. Ummm, ok, he must have been involved in some really serious stuff - I can't remember what he was doing that resulted in him getting shot, but it is totally against his character to have abandoned his wife and young son at that time and to further put them through the pain of losing him to that kind of death. Why couldn't they have gone into witness protection, like Noah and Julia did later? And how do you account for his being alive? OK, you could dismiss his appearances to Tad as a figment of Tad's imagination, but how do you reconcile the stuff with Gillian? Gillian wouldn't have known him from before - why would she have hallucinated him with her dying breath? And wasn't Jesse's appearance one of the things that was supposed to convince the audience that Gillian was indeed going to heaven? Yeah, I know, soaps re-write deaths all the time, but I've gotta see how this pans out, no matter how happy I am to see Jesse on again and Darnell back on-screen.

Oh, btw, did I mention that Angie and Jesse are black? No, I didn't think so, because to me, it didn't matter. They were hailed as the first black supercouple. I really don't remember it occuring to me or really noticing that they were black. Angie was from a richer family, and Jesse was a poor kid that Angie's father forbid her to see because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Angie and Jesse and Greg and Jenny and Tad and all of them were just really interesting characters. I'm trying to remember if a big deal was made of the fact that best friends Jenny and Jesse ran away to New York and lived together for a while when they were running away from various things, and therefore, it meant that a black man and a white woman were sharing an apartment together. I can't remember that much from those days, but to me, they were just best friends leaning on each other during a really bad time. When Angie and Jesse were reunited, again, it was just another great couple. It didn't matter to me, and I don't think it even occurred to me to pay attention to what color they were.

There's been some talk recently about how people of color aren't represented on soaps as much as they used to be. I think I'm beginning to figure out that "people of color" pretty much just means black people because there isn't usually any kind of roll call about how many latinos or asians or other non-white non-blacks there are on daytime whenever the subject of "people of color" is brought up.

On the "people of color" front, AMC also has Dre, who we don't know much about, but it looks like they're ramping up his story with Colby, especially with the impending departure of Sean Montgomery, not to mention Sean's inexplicable romp in the hay with Hannah. Mario Van Peebles is also imminently joining the cast as Erica's new love interest and presumably, Dre's father.

My determination of whether or not I'm going to be interested is going to be based on the characters, not what color they are. I'm glad to see Jesse back because I love the character and I love seeing Darnell again, not because of the color of his skin.