Our man John McBain has been getting a pretty bad rap lately and, frankly, I’m sick of it!

Now let’s all remember something key. We’re talking about one half of the phenomenon known as John and Evangeline – One Life to Live’s newest Super Couple. Without Johnny Mac, there wouldn’t be a John and Evangeline. He is crucial to the existence of the couple we’ve all fallen in love with. So how come he’s being vilified all over the place lately? It’s just not right.

Remember that this is a character who is been damaged. He has abandonment issues – big time. We all know his story. First his father was ripped from him, forcing him to step up and take care of the family in his father’s place. Then he lost Caitlyn - the woman he loved - because of his work chasing a serial killer. John’s MO has always been to sacrifice himself and his own needs for the sake of the people he cares about – no news there.

Fast forward to Natalie and Cristian Vega. After losing Caitlyn, John threw himself into his work as an undercover FBI agent, taking every difficult assignment – the more dangerous, the better he liked it. It was through this role that John met Natalie and Cristian Vega. Before this episode in his life had ended, Cristian was presumed dead, his young wife Natalie was a widow, and John McBain felt responsible for it all.

Guilt over what happened to Cristian, his overwhelming need to protect, and something in his past all conspired to convince John that his life’s work would from that day forward be to take care of and look after Natalie Vega. And man was that an assignment. Natalie would test the patience of Job himself with her antics and her seemingly instinctive ability to find her way into perilous situations, only to sit back and wait for John to ride in on his steed to save her. And Johnny Mac was always there to bail her out – to protect her. In fact, they almost became a couple – almost. But John needed time to get over Caitlyn – to learn to let another woman into his life – and Natalie wasn’t interested in waiting. So she took up with Paul Kramer – partly to have fun (having tired of the sad widow thing after a few short months) and partly to make John jealous. Her actions backfired, though, when rather than take the bait, John decided to accept her relationship with Kramer.

And then there came Evangeline Williamson.

From out of nowhere, this incredible woman – an attorney – walked into his life and took up residence. Nothing was the same for the damaged and guarded John McBain once this dynamo took hold of him. He tried to end it after it began – to try to regain some self-control where she was concerned - but he couldn’t. He was virtually powerless in the face of what was happening between them. They both were. Before either of them could catch their breath, they’d gone from an impromptu and impulsive kiss to a night of passion in a stranger’s apartment to complete denial about the significance of that night, to another night of passion in John’s small room at the Angel Square Hotel. That’s when they both realized that they were caught up in something pretty powerful – something they were both powerless to stop. And for these two control freaks, this was BIG!

Over the next year, their relationship turned from one of “no commitments” to one with a few strings attached to football games to outside attacks on their relationship to seeing in the new year together to birthdays to pearls to valentines to difficult families and interfering bystanders – virtually every kind of disconnect there is. And each disconnect led them to an even deeper connection.

But ultimately, for Evangeline, the connection wasn’t deep enough. Evangeline needed to hear the words – needed to know with confidence – in John’s own words – just what her place in his life was. And for some reason, he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her.

And so she walked away from him, leaving him clearly broken and devastated once again.

So now there’s another serial killer on the loose, targeting the people in John’s life (just an aside: how many of these situations can one cop encounter in a career?). Both Evangeline and Natalie Vega are taken by this killer, presumably to get to the lead investigator on the case. They are separately tied to posts while fire is lit around them. John rides to the rescue – as you all knew he would. When he gets there, he sees Natalie on one side of him and Evangeline on the other. His first steps are toward Evangeline – his eyes only on her at that moment. Am I the only one who remembers this? Then he looks over and sees that Natalie is unconscious and overcome by the smoke and heat while Evangeline is still conscious and trying to work her way free. So John does what any cop with the intention of saving both victims would have done in the situation. He gets to Natalie first because hers was the more immediate need, untying her and getting her away from the fire. When he looks up at Evangeline, she too is falling unconscious. So he leaps over the flames to get her free as well, severely burning his hand in the process. But it doesn’t matter to him because all he can do is to caress Evangeline (as he did not caress Natalie, by the way), virtually pleading with her to know if she is alright. And with John’s total concentration on Evangeline, the kidnapper is free to take Natalie once again.

But can Evangeline’s mother put her over-the-top hostility aside long enough to at least thank John for saving her daughter’s life? No, she can’t. All she can seem to do is to vilify John in Evangeline’s eyes, constantly driving home the fact that he saved Natalie first. Someone please keep this woman away from me when I need a pep talk. Can anyone see why the rescue of the women went the way it did? Doesn’t seem so. Even the normally level-headed and supportive Nora Buchanan – oops Hanan – can’t put her own issues of betrayal aside long enough not to want to string John up for doing things the way he did. “He needs you but he doesn’t want you?” Really? Now is this what a best friend is supposed to be filling your head with – especially when it’s not true? When I need that pep talk, please make sure that Nora Hanan is locked in the same room with Lisa Williamson, will you? With their wonderful words of love, support, and encouragement, words that serve to invalidate every emotion I’m feeling, I’ll probably stick my head in the oven and turn on the gas.

No one (except Marcie – thank you!) wants to think about how desperate this man was to find Evangeline once she was taken – way before he even knew that Natalie had also been taken against her will. No one wants to give him credit for loving Evangeline virtually more than his own life – enough to race into flames to save her. No one besides Viki Davidson has even tried to imagine what it must have done to John to have had to make that decision in that moment. No, they just want to blame him for not doing things in an order that would’ve suited them better. For Evangeline and in light of where their relationship was at that moment, it only seems natural for her heart to view John’s actions as a choice between her and Natalie – even when her practical mind knows that it wasn’t. But for everyone else to buy into it? Come on.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all happy with the constant and unrelenting push of this so-called triangle between Evangeline, John, and Natalie, which is where this whole choosing Natalie first thing comes from. In my book it’s a dead horse already and should have been buried months ago. But I keep reading in the soap mags that it’s a popular triangle, whatever that means. For me, the only problem with it is that it doesn’t make sense. A grown man like John McBain would never be torn between being with a woman like Evangeline and an immature child like Natalie. No matter how hard they try – no matter what the powers that be at OLTL write – they can’t sell this to me. It just plain does not make sense.

But let’s all step back here – away from the trees so that we can see the entire forest. Over the past year and a half, Michael Easton has slowly and carefully painted a portrait of an incredibly damaged and heartbroken John McBain. We all know who John loves, don’t we? And we all know that John knows who he loves. We’ve seen it play out over the past year, haven’t we? John clearly loves the strong and confident Evangeline Williamson – the woman who got him to feel again, the vibrant character that Renee Elise Goldsberry brings to life day in and day out. So how come it’s so hard for some folks to recognize that anything else is triangle-dictated and therefore does not make sense? In fact, anything involving a triangle in this story should be not only mentally discarded but protested against in communication after communication to the powers that be at OLTL – not blamed on one character.

Well, I don’t know about any of you but I’m feeling pretty darn lost these days without my Super Couple together. Renee and Michael continue to break my heart over and over again with their portrayal of two people in love who’ve been torn apart. They’ve done an incredible job of playing these emotions, touching each and every one of us with the pain and confusion and sadness. It’s been angst at its finest and it’s been great television. Bravo to them both!

But I want my couple back now. I don’t know how much more of the angst I can take. I want to watch Evangeline take her life back from the nay-sayers and to once again trust her instincts about John – that he does love her and that maybe it’s the kind of love that’s hard for him to express verbally for some unknown reason. I want an end to the John bashing that’s been happening (on screen as well as off, where folks need to remember once again that without John there is no John and Evangeline). And I want to watch John hold onto Evangeline as he works his way through whatever it is in his past that’s crippling him in his present, finally finding a way to speak the words that are in his heart and have been almost from the very beginning. And death to the non-triangle once and for all! I want to watch the story of John and Evangeline – period, the only story that makes any sense, the only story that moves me, the only story I want to see. That’s what I want.

And that’s what I intend to tell the powers that be at One Life to Live - as many times as I have to.

To that end, I must go now. I’ve got tons of letters to write!