Why yes, my first post in some time, and my first post about Days in an age, is going to be a rant.
And what’s more a rant about an obscure largely historical point rather than anything actually on the show yet. So, you’ve been warned.
So Days, which has lost/thrown out/is losing most of its under-25 characters – to go with having thrown out half of its over-45 characters – has cast a new Horton lad for the beginning of summer.
We all know how that’s going to turn out.
(By the by, isn’t it kind of amusing that the safest characters on the show seem to be the over-70s and the 30-somethings, the two demographics that for all intents and purposes didn’t even exist on this show two years ago?)
Anyway, we will now welcome Nathan Horton. A character who, I suspect, we will be expected to enjoy due to his (a) supposed Horton-ness; and (b) abs. Not necessarily in that order.
Well I am sorry, bringing on Hortons may be a good idea and abs may be good for many things, but neither are going to distract me (for long) from the fact that this is A MADE UP CHARACTER.
For Nathan Horton is apparently supposed to be the child of classic 80s pairing Pete and Melissa.
I am sorry, but no.
Nathan could certainly be Pete’s child – although he’d need to be named Charlie and there wouldn’t be any point anyway – or he could be Melissa’s child from after she left town. In fact bringing on a child of Melissa’s, a grandchild for Mickey and Maggie, would be a sterling idea (memories of their attempt at Jeremy Horton notwithstanding).
However, the idea of him being Pete and Melissa’s child is just stupid. It reeks of “let’s flip through the Days history book of couples that got the patented Days supercouple treatment and bring on their child”. Without ever looking to see if (a) they actually had a child on-screen; or (b) it was in any way likely that they had one off-screen.
Pete and Melissa certainly got the patented Days supercouple treatment. They were the teen/young couple of the moment when I first started watching – after Hope and Bo, before Jennifer and Frankie - so 12 year-old me had quite an affinity with them. Good rich Horton girl, boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Sound familiar? Runaway teens, drug-related misunderstandings, gangs!, kidnappings, major obstacles in the form of him having to marry the other girl he got pregnant, (adulterous) summer on the run, big wedding.
Of course, their story did have a couple of unique elements. Most importantly his secret career as a stripper at Beefcakes, and the fact that they ultimately broke up because she left him for Lars, possibly the wettest catalyst for permanently breaking up a major couple in the history of this show.
But still, Lars and his leg warmers are important in all of this, because he’s part proof of why Pete and Melissa having a child makes no sense. Melissa and Pete broke up over Lars and Pete left town to go be with Ivy and their kid. Melissa stayed in town for, small break for recasting aside, the best part of 6 years afterwards and then made various other appearances for family events over the ensuing years. She had a series of boring, bad or downright horrid relationships: Lars, in-love-with-Kayla Jack, Emilio, Brian Schofield (he was the in a band with Keanu brother, not the John McBain brother, right?). She was ultimately responsible for knocking off Emilio and his mullet.
She morphed from a “dancer” into a “singer” and moved to Nashville where she was later reported, I believe, to have married a doctor. Which was, I assume, an in-joke about the fact that the original and returning Melissa, Lisa Trusel, was/is in real life married to the actor who after leaving Days played Dr Tom Hardy on GH, a part also played of course by Matt “Jack Deveraux” Ashford because soaps are a small world. But even if that was a to-be-ignored-later in-joke, it doesn’t mean that they can just say she moved to Nashville and married Pete, because if she had she would have said something! You don’t have a character come back occasionally for funerals and christenings and not throw the audience that kind of bone.
Therefore, I say, this Nathan person should not have been defined as Pete and Melissa’s child. Nope. Just wrong. Melissa’s child, fine. Pete and Melissa’s child, not fine.
And that’s even before I get on to the fact that no matter the parental permutation, his surname shouldn’t be Horton. Pete’s surname was Jannings. Melissa married “Dr Unspoken Surname” but I’m willing to bet that unspoken surname wasn’t Horton. And Melissa herself may have been Mickey and Maggie’s adopted daughter, but she was always Melissa Anderson, not Melissa Horton. The slapping on of the Horton surname just seems to be further proof of the plucked out of a barely informed someone’s arse nature of this character. When Nick was introduced they didn’t feel the need to give him a Horton surname to make him part of the family, so why the need now?
Ahhhh. I feel better now. (And perfectly content with dwelling on the past. I am a child of 80s Days, and I am proud. And fond of parentheses.)
And to make you feel better too, relive the most important part of the story, Pete the Beefcake (also featuring Calliope):
Courtesy classicdaysof80s, which you should absolutely check out not only for a lot of Melissa and Pete’s history, but lots of the rest of the show’s classic storylines.
