Let's take the position that so many of us have taken - that the break-up of John and Evangeline that happened back in June 2005 was contrived, abrupt, and based almost solely on Dena Higley and OLTL’s desire to create a situation for David Fumero as Cristian Vega to step back into on his second return to the soap in two years - the John/Natalie/Cristian triangle.

The fact is that the break-up of John McBain and Evangeline Williamson – a pairing truly on its way to becoming one of the most memorable in daytime, one that would have arrived at that place by now had their relationship simply been written and their story told without the constant intrusion of “The Triangle” - made sense from neither a character nor a storyline perspective. So if we acknowledge that the break-up was bogus, everything that's happened because of it is just as bogus. This includes:

• John, Natalie, Cristian, and "The Secret"
• Evangeline dumping John over his inability to "say the words" to her and what she overheard between Natalie-the-very-symbol-of-virtue-and-all-that-is-true and Michael McBain
• John sleeping with Natalie with "The Secret" in play
• Evangeline's sudden "bond" with Cristian and her lack of a bond with his brother, whom she has known even longer than she’s known John
• Cristian's lack of any visible concern for Natalie after the tornado and his behaving as if she were a total stranger when they were there in that room together.
• John’s seeming nonchalance in the face of Evangeline’s blindness while being totally overwrought over the idea of a cut in Natalie’s leg
• The idea that Eve McBain wouldn’t make it to Llanview for her youngest son’s wedding
• The idea that RJ wouldn’t spend more time in John’s face after not only what happened with Evangeline but also after John’s role in his loss of Jamie to Antonio
• The idea that Evangeline would only visit her comatose best friend once, not even thinking about her while she, too, was in the hospital
• Cristian's constant presence in Evangeline's career and life and what may or may not come after that and his insistence on taking control of her decisions about her life and career
• Natalie's constant presence at the forefront of John's story about facing down his issues and finding out who killed his father and why, his therapy sessions, and official police interrogations of suspects
• John’s lightning-quick reinstatement to the Llanview Police Department after all of something like 2 of the department-mandated therapy sessions with Dr. Crosby and the subsequent ruling that the force he used in his blatant execution-style shooting of the perp holding his brother hostage was “justified”
• Dr. Crosby telling John that Natalie’s presence is detrimental to him and the performance of his job but seeming never to have told the Chief of Police
• John's inability to tell Natalie to butt out and stand by it, as well as his sudden “need” for her to come with him so that he can talk to his own brother
• Bo's cluelessness about the effect of Natalie’s presence (or constant lack of) in the squad room, not only on his Chief of Detectives and his credibility with the rank and file but on the smooth operation of the LPD in general
• Layla's limited presence in anything involving her own sister
• The absence of the smothering Lisa Williamson during her daughter’s blindness, and the idea that just saying that they haven’t told her would mean that she couldn’t possibly find out about the tornado that hit Llanview, Pennsylvania and a prominent local attorney's resultant blindess any other way – say maybe from a local newspaper or a television newscast
• John not warning his brother about what he suspects Spencer's role was in the cover-up of what happened to their father, resulting in Natalie being part of the story instead of Michael McBain and a completely unconscious and vulnerable Todd lying in the hospital, alone and exposed to whatever else Spencer may have in mind for him
• The dumbing down of John McBain – ex-FBI agent, serial killer profiler, Quantico-trained agent and instructor, veteran law enforcement professional - and his inability to do the job he's done for many, many years without Natalie's "help" and “guidance”
• The watering-down of Evangeline Williamson, the successful attorney-at-law, self-sufficient and independent workaholic woman of the world turned woman who allows herself to be manhandled, quieted, manipulated, and controlled by a man without so much as a whimper of protest against it, essentially allowing Cristian to get away with things she would have killed John for even thinking about
• Natalie's job promotion and sudden "expertise" in investigative analysis having her figure out clues that the experienced investigator can't
• Natalie's total neglect of her family in favor of stalking John
• Cristian's inability to pursue his art and his failure to seek therapy to make certain that he is fully recovered from being programmed to kill and is no longer a danger to the people he loves, accepting instead that he spontaneously cured himself
• John and Layla being absent during Evangeline's incarceration while Cristian was very much present
• John and Layla being absent during Evangeline's hospitalization while Cristian was very much present
• Evangeline failing to enlist John's help with Todd's case, John's failure to admit to Evangeline his doubts about Todd's guilt
• The oh-so-contrived separation of John/Natalie, Evangeline/Cristian after the tornado and the fact that it was just the foursome at the church when it hit
• Scene after scene of John and Natalie, scene after scene of Cristian and Evangeline, and virtually no scenes of John and Evangeline together, even when they're in the same place at the same time
• The idea that Evangeline would call into the room to ask Cristian to come out to escort her back in when John was right there and was the one who’d escorted her out into the corridor in the first place
• John feeling compelled to dash off with Bo after the cop came in to announce that they'd found some woman (Natalie) holding a man (David) hostage.
• John's first move after bringing Margaret in and trying to stop the execution wasn't to head straight for Todd's friend and attorney to fill her in on what had happened with regard to her client
• Natalie never asking how her family was while she was off stalking John
• Viki not calling Natalie on the carpet for (again) being off taking care of her own obsessions instead of being there to support her family during a time of extreme crisis
• John leaving Natalie alone with a gun to watch David while going off in search of Margaret
• Blair actually asking Natalie’s opinion about Spencer’s role in everything that happened to Todd
• A seriously injured Natalie being able to hobble out of the hospital on crutches – unnoticed – and back to Llanfair to retrieve not only her passport but also a nightie, a trench coat, a change of clothes, some make up, and her customary smart-mouthed attitude and still being able to make it to the airport and onto the airplane in time to surprise accompany John to Thailand
• Cristian’s ability to go from spending a year in prison, painting, drawing, sketching, and dreaming of nothing but Natalie - just a few short weeks ago still professing his undying love for her - to forgetting all about Natalie and virtually everything else in his life because he’s fallen so hard for Evangeline, the woman whose life his lies helped to turn inside out
• The idea that Cristian Vega, a newly-released ex-convict would be allowed to be present at the LPD during case strategy sessions, allowed to visit a prisoner in holding even when that prisoner’s sister wasn’t, would actually go behind Evangeline’s back trying to get Todd to fire her, coldly and callously saying that since Todd would be dead in five weeks, he might as well not take Evangeline down with him, and that viewers with long memories, VCRs, and DVD recorders would simply forget these points and still consider him a good guy

Sorry folks but, for me, if the break-up was based on contrived nonsense, then everything that's happened since as a result is also based on the same contrived nonsense.

I mean, how stupid does Dena Higley think OLTL viewers are? How stupid does Frank Valentini think OLTL viewers are? If we look at the two or maybe three episodes leading up to Todd’s execution and the genuine tension and emotional wallop delivered by those episodes, not to mention witnessing some of the best performances we’ve seen on OLTL, we can clearly see what a writer is capable of when they’re focused on just telling a story. That’s when a writer is at his/her best. However a writer is obviously not at his/her best when instead of telling the story at hand, they insist on jerking the viewing audience around for about the one-millionth go-round, playing one set of viewers off against another, over and over again in some lame effort to “entice” with what doesn’t and hasn’t enticed in the past, to “captivate” with what doesn’t and hasn’t captivated in the past, to “excite” with what doesn’t and hasn’t excited in the past, to merely string isolated situations together without taking the time to build a bridge between them, to insist that they’re intriguing and inspiring viewers to stick around for “whatever comes next” when more than a year in, viewers can by now recognize that likely whatever comes next will be just as unsatisfying and lackluster as what came before.

Do I like what I’m seeing on OLTL lately? Nope. Will I just fall in line and let OLTL off the hook for what they’ve done and continue to do, not only to the storyline I connected with but to other storylines and the integrity of not only my favorite characters but virtually every other character on the show? Nope. Will I just accept the ho-hum and so-so and what’s just passable or barely so when there are gifted performers sitting around on the sidelines waiting to be used, when there are so many legitimately appealing stories that could be told, when there’s actual lightning waiting to be unleashed which is instead trapped in a bottle, held hostage to contrivance after contrivance, weak substitution after weak substitution, re-hash after re-hash, and character assassination after character assassination? Nope, nope, and nope!

We must each follow our own path. As for this disgruntled consumer?

So very many letters to write, so very many emails to send, so very many calls to make, so very little time…