The door to John’s apartment opens and Evangeline takes one or two steps out into the hallway. Suddenly a hand around her wrist pulls her back in and the door slams shut. And on the other side of the door, Evangeline stands – her back against the door, John's body on hers, their lips pressed together…

“I wish we could do this all day, several times a day, every day of the week…” she sighs afterward.

It’s happening right before our very eyes. Their relationship is moving forward in leaps and bounds. Have you ever seen a man looking so very much in love when he looks at a woman? Have you ever seen a woman looking more in love with the man in her sights?

Even when John and Evangeline are angry with each other, the love they feel keeps them holding on tight, fighting not to let anything separate them – fighting to work their way through the problem at hand without letting it tear them apart. Look at this past week for several examples. John says something that even though it may have been provoked by Evangeline, is hurtful. A clearly stung Evangeline sadly walks away from him. Then, before we know it, John seeks her out and apologizes and she does, too, both recognizing where they went wrong. Or how about when Evangeline crosses the line and John’s got every reason to be furious with her. Oh, he is furious – for about a minute and a half. Then he looks at her and those cold, steely blue eyes become soft and warm and he melts. “We’ll talk about this later?” he asks in a gentle tone of voice. And again, after she thinks about it, she figures out what she should have done differently, apologizes, and they’re okay again.

We’re watching an adult relationship on our television screens. The initial infatuation stage has passed and now Evangeline and John are into the part where they have to keep working at it – the part where they figure out how to balance their personal relationship and their sometimes contentious professional one. It’s not easy, as they’re finding out. But it’s what they both want.

And don’t you love how they’re finding out more about each other as they go along – how so many of their respective layers are being revealed? John can clearly be pretty moody and hard to deal with when he wants to be, in this instance, when he’s working a case. He can be cold as ice, completely uncommunicative, and downright mean-spirited. But give him a minute and he remembers that there’s something else in his life that’s just as important to him. Evangeline can be a little too single-minded at times. When she’s protecting a client, that’s all she sees and it can cause her to do the wrong things for all the right reasons, attempting to justify it afterward – no matter how wrong she’s been. But then she takes a step back to reassess, recognizing where she went off track and how that might damage another part of her life that’s equally important.

I don’t know about you but I’ve felt like an intruder from time to time this past week watching John and Evangeline together. The dialogue’s been pretty good but it’s what Michael Easton and Renee Elise Goldsberry add to it that’s been the key. It’s in their eyes when they look at each other. It’s in the way they touch. It’s in how they do the things that the script calls for them to do – the subtlety, the nuances, the odd giggle here or what seems like an ad-lib there, the seemingly effortless way they relate to each other. That’s where the real connection shines through, making us feel like we’re peering at them through a keyhole somewhere instead of watching actors at work on our television screens.

Wanna know what it takes to make a Super Couple? Well, just watch One Life to Live.

Let Easton and Goldsberry show you how it’s done!

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE them?