The Great Debate – OLTL
By Dianna
Particularly in soap opera fandom, there are great debates that ensue online about a variety of different topics du jour. At Eye on Soaps, we have many readers who have wonderful thoughts of their own, many of which are shared in the comment function on each of our columns.
We thought it would be fun to bring out a current soap topic and open it to debate among our readers and staff. Feel free to join in. Please keep it friendly, respectful, and clean or comments will be removed. There is no “right” answer, just your own opinion.
Talk amongst yourselves about today’s topic, which is: “Todd Manning: How Bad Is Too Bad?”
It’s not very often that we get to see a character as complex and multi-dimensional as the Todd we see on One Life to Live. Rarely does this character fail to surprise and engage and it’s even more rare that he becomes stale. In fact, the only time I find him truly unbearable is when he gets his relationship with Blair repaired. Admittedly, I’ve never been a Blair fan. That woman can suck the life out of even the finest of situations, but that is a story unto itself.
I hate to use the word “fan,” because how unnatural does it feel to be a “fan” of a cold-hearted, smug rapist? Roger Howarth, however, managed to do just that. I am in no way trashing the Todd that Trevor St. John has given us; however, Roger Howarth will always be my man. Todd made the unspeakable, the unforgettable, actually kind of forgivable. I wanted him to be a better man. I wanted to make excuses for him and try as I might have, I couldn’t resist him even after he gang-raped Marty. Obviously, I wasn’t the only one because this character took hold and to this day, no one seems quite ready to let go.
Todd has gone up and down every day since then. He found humanity. He rescued Marty, CJ, and Sarah from the car crash and then just as quickly, he found some other blasphemous act to commit.
There is little this man has not done. He has kidnapped his own children (and sold one in Mexico). He has killed, raped, lied, punched a woman in the face, stolen, paid for a bride twice, and even pushed his pregnant daughter down a flight of stairs and then, he always manages to do something that makes him human again. He knows the difference between right and wrong. He loves and he does so fiercely, but he hates just as fiercely. He can feel remorse and he can show self-hatred. Trying to figure out who Todd really is makes for a constant struggle for both the characters and the viewers.
Hate him or love I think it is impossible to ever feel indifference towards him. Who’s with me? Against me? Bring it!
January 13th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
1. I love him- because he always, even when doing HORRIBLE things, seems redeemable!
2. It’s always interesting watching Todd because many of the best story lines involve him.
3. It also doesn’t hurt that St. John is a strong actor.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Dianna, I must agree with you…Roger Howarth will always be the reason why I could never hate the Todd character. He brought out the damaged Todd that came from such a dark place that as bad as he gets, you know that he will never get it “right”. True, he needs to stay the hell away from Blair. The relationships that he has with loved ones be they his kids or Vicki are strong and always a pleasure to watch because he really loves them and unlike the Sonny character on GH, Todd doesn’t try to pretend to be the good guy hero with them. No false facades for him. Complex, he is, but whatever he does…we always understand why.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:34 am
Todd is truly the man you love to hate. I really fell for him most when he was strapped to the table for his lethal injection. I wanted him to receive an Emmy for that performance – chillingly he made me feel sorry for him. WOW!
I just don’t feel it with Todd and Tea. I really believe this relationship was so rushed. I never got to like Tea before they tried to make me believe that Todd couldn’t live without her. What a rushed story — and then to find out he has a daughter? Geez, just how they fit that into his story is quite amazing. I know it only takes once, and then I have to remember how many ONS children there is on soaps! LOL
January 14th, 2010 at 6:36 am
I have written about this before. For me, RH is Todd. TSJ is a good actor, and I loved it when he was Walker, but I’ve never bought into his version of Todd. I know it is a combination of the writing and the way TSJ plays Todd, but ever since he took over the role it seems Todd has lost his humanity. The writers had RH’s Todd grow and evolve and become a complex character that you grew to feel for, even if you didn’t like what he did. It seems when TSJ took over the role, the writers had him stop evolving and growing. It is hard for me to be objective and answer the question about just the character of Todd, because I often wonder how RH would have played this scene or that scene and I suspect I would feel differently if he were still in the role. The scene that comes to mind most is when he accidentally pushed Starr down the stairs. I felt no remorse from Todd at all, and I highly think that was an acting choice and I would have felt a lot different with RH playing that. In those scenes, Todd didn’t even seem to care about his daughter, and that is sooo not Todd. That scene, along with his brutal beating of Cole, is also why I think he has gone too far to redeem. Having said that, I don’t buy this new (brand new!) “softer” Todd that he supposedly is w/ Tea. I saw the original TnT relationship, and they never had this undying, undeniable love that the writers are trying to portray. They were passionate and they did (at one point) love each other, but Blair was always in his blood. The way the writers are writing it now, it’s as if Tea was always in his blood, which is simply not true. I don’t find Todd a compelling character anymore. I don’t want him w/ Blair (and I was a big TnB fan), I agree with Rose that this relationship w/ Tea feels rushed and forced, I don’t want Dani to be his (yet another possession), I don’t buy his pain and his instant love for Dani and I don’t feel this version of Todd is all that redeemable.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
I love to love hate Todd, whether the actor is RH or TSJ…..
January 14th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Todd is entertaining. The character has had the benefit of being portrayed by two wonderful actors. However, I can’t really root for him in any relationship because he’s a rapist (my issue with Luke on GH as well) and I find that I quickly lose all interest in the woman panting after his because I see them as “stupid” (especially BLAIR).
January 15th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Put me in the group that thinks Todd was best when protrade by Roger. I think all the best Todd storylines were the early ones. I was a huge Iodd and tea fan when Roger played Todd and while I still love Tea I could care less about her and Todd as a couple these days. Let’s see Todd has killed atleast 3 people Suede Pruit, Guy Armatage, and Walker Lawrence rather intentional or not he murdered them all and never paid. He has faked his death countless times raped a woman then years later lied to her face while helping her recover from nearly dieing in an explosion then hid her from her family and friends. He has held the town hostage with “fake” dynamite conspired to kidnap his own grand child yet he isn’t the villain of the show. He is like the Sonny of Llandview. The the tortured bad guy with a heart of gold who hasn’t met a woman he can’t impregnate.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I once really loved watching Todd. I thought Roger Howarth was wonderful at showing Todd’s layers. And I really enjoyed TSJ when he showed up as Walker and I was thrilled with the reveal that he was Todd.
However, something has gone wrong somewhere over the years. Todd is now a grandfather and seemingly is incapable of learning anything from his mistakes. I bought into Todd’s redemption at least so far as two things:
1) He would never, ever, EVER sexually victimize a woman (yet) again.
2) He loved Starr more than anything.
However, these two things were totally blown out of the story. I was repelled by the “Rape!… Oops! It’s a brain-tumor!” plot with Blair years ago. Given who Todd was and how the initial scene was staged, I was seriously not amused by that storyline. It took years for me to let that resentment go. Then the show went had had Todd lock up his rape victim (he GANG RAPED HER!) and then he locked her up in his house for months, telling her that she had no one in the entire world but *him*, lying and keeping her from her child. Every moment of Tarty made me want to vomit. It was just repellant. But then they had to push it further. They had to have him have sex with her while she was still amnesic. Without telling her the truth. While plotting to steal his daughter’s child and telling her it was dead.
That was it for Todd for me. Everything his redemption had been built on was gone. He was the same consciousless victimizer her was in the beginning. He’d not only learned nothing, he hadn’t changed. He was still doing the same stuff!
Add in that he’s not been made to pay for ANY of this on top of TSJ apparently deciding that walking through scenes like a zombie is more entertaining for him (but not for this viewer) than actually acting. Because of that we had scenes such as Blair bleeding to death at Todd’s feet and TSJ’s Todd displaying allo the emotion as if he’d been told that he’d missed a call from his dentist. Or the sad display of the Todd/Tea wedding where… I don’t even know what that was (other than ridiculous). Was I supposed to think that Todd even gave a damn? With TSJ who the hell knows what — if anything — Todd feels. He’s just smug, smirks, is totally blank, or a self-pitying sad panda.
Todd isn’t entertaining any more. There’s no “he’ll learn”. He won’t learn. There’s no “he’ll change” he won’t change. There’s no “He’ll pay.” He won’t pay. And it’s only rarely that we see him even REACT to anything much at all.
I’m done with the character. It’s sad because once he was the character I tuned in to OLTL to watch. Now, he’s just a waste of space. And a boring one at that.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
And I realize the gangrape was years ago. But it was still Todd and he’d still gang raped Marty. And he was still holding her hostage in his house, lying to her, and having sex with her while she had no idea that this guy had once not only gang raped her but had murdered her boyfriend while threatening to rape and kill her. Marty may have forgotten during the Tarty story, but I sure as hell didn’t. So to see him keep his mouth shut and have sex with her while she was INCAPABLE of informed consent destroyed the character of Todd for me. Forever.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Thank you Lisa – I have never seen so many woman love a rapist…. The Actors are both excellent but I always wanted Blair to just say one time w/ David V & Jack in the room – “What about the time Jack was born and you told me he was dead??? And then you put him as an infant on the black market!!!” – End of relationship!!! Her and Marty should have killed him when she came back to town and ‘recovered her memories’ to do away with that low life once and for all – Vickie could deal quite well and while you are at it kill Mitch L now!!!