There was a time when soaps were filled with star-crossed couples like Michelle and Danny. But as our photography director, Jody Reines-whose enthusiasm for Danny and Michelle knows no bounds-keeps pointing out, they're soaps' only truly star-crossed couple today. It's hard to write star-crossed couples now. By definition, a star-crossed couple is kept apart by circumstances hopelessly beyond their control. But many of the obstacles that would have been practically insurmountable 20 years ago just aren't so impassable today. The wrong-side-of-the-tracks tale doesn't play in a society where tolerance is the goal, if not always the reality. Pregnancy doesn't have to mean a shotgun marriage. More young people live on their own. Looking back, I think it was pretty wimpy of All My Children's sheltered Nina to let her father manipulate her romance with Cliff, but at the time that story really worked.

In the case of Danny and Michelle, both characters are allowed to be strong. They care what their loved ones think, but they think for themselves. The forces that keep them apart are truly life-and-death (as in, if you marry my son, I'll kill you).

So good for GL for taking the oldest story in soaps and making it new again.

Lynn Leahey
Editor-in-Chief