“If we look at this story like a mature love story and you get to a point where you
live the characters and you know the point of frustration, the dam has to burst,” explains
DAYS OF OUR LIVES Executive Producer, Tom Langan. And boy, does it ever. After
nearly two years of suffering in silence, loser-in-love Mike Horton finally declares his
feelings to Carrie. “It was just natural at this point in the story,” says Langan. “It didn’t
have to come out of an elevator crash or the house burning down with her inside; it came
out of a real emotional place.”
“Mike just can’t take it anymore,” sighs his portrayer, Roark Critchlow. “She’s there all
the time, they’ve kissed twice and the longing hasn’t lessened any. She’s way too close
and driving him crazy.”
At last, Mike’s frustration gets the better of him: He throws caution to the wind and
declares his love. “Carrie is quite stunned that he articulated this and so is he,” grins
Langan. “In effect, it leads to much more tension between them. Before, everything just
seemed like flirtation; now, they have t deal with a very deep emotion- Mike’s love
for Carrie.
But what about Carrie’s feelings for Mike? She’s married to Austin, but she’s hardly
been the ideal wife lately. “She loves Mike back, but she can’t really say anything,” notes
Christie Clark (Carrie). “It’s a very confusing time for her now. She’s married, and she
wants to tell him she loves him, too, but you can’t just do that when you are
married.”
Her silence doesn’t sit well with Mike, who has basically put his heart on the line. “Mike
is really opening himself up and she’s says, ‘I don’t know what to say,’” previews
Critchlow. “As soon as she says that, Mike is thinking that he made an idiot out of
himself. There was his heart, and she just shredded it.” But what Carrie doesn’t
say is also significant. “She doesn’t deny it,” he points out. She says, ‘I don’t know what
to do, I’m very confused....’ He embarrassed her and it’s horrible. It’s absolute
vulnerability. She doesn’t have the guts to make the move.”
Probably because of that little band of gold on her finger. After all, she and Austin have
only been married a little over a year. Hardly the time for irreconcilable difference- even
in Salem.
“She’s still in love with Austin,” insists Clark. “He’s her first love, and she never known
anything different. It was young love, and when you’re young you think, ‘This is it,’ and
then you’re in another relationship in a year and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, what was I
thinking?’ She thinks she should have waited. She keeps flashing back on Mike saying,
‘You should wait, you’re rushing into this.’ And Austin and it’s the same old thing: Sami
and Will, Sami and Will. So that draws her to Mike more.”
But Mike wants to put some distance between them aster her ambivalent response to his
bold declaration. “He tells her, ‘You’ve got to chill out and give me some room and some
space.’ And he rattles on that maybe she should quit her job [at the hospital] because he
can’t take it anymore,” says Critchlow. “She says, ‘What are you going to do? Fire me?’
He says, ‘I’m not going to destroy somebody’s career that way.’ She says, ‘So are you
asking me to quit?’ I say, ‘Yeah. It would be better if you did.’”
“If she stayed away for awhile and really tried to get him out of her head, they could go
back to being friends,” Clark muses. “But at this point, all they want to do is kiss again
and that’ll go just a little further- and then they’ll be in trouble.”
Critchlow, on the other hand, doesn’t see them going back to “just friends” stage
anytime soon. “It’s still a love affair,” he declares. “There’s not even an attempt to be
friends. To Mike, it’s just a straight-up awareness of what the truth is and then just
dealing with it. He’s not going to stop loving her and be her friend. He can’t. So,
she’s around because he’s willing to take the pain of having her there because he’s a
loser [laughs]. Seep down in his heart, he knows she can’t begin to feel the love he
feels.”
So, where does that leave them? “This is basically the beginning of an affair,” says
Langan. "They’ve kissed twice, she’s broken her vows and she should have gone to
Austin the first time she kissed Mike and told him. That’s what a relationship is all about:
honest ad communication. This is going to be potentially disastrous for all three
people.”
But that doesn’t mean all is lost for star-crossed Carrie and Ausdim. (**sorry, couldn’t
resist**) “I still think Carrie and Austin are the long-term rooting couple,” says Executive
Producer Ken Corday. “They’ve been put upon by the evil sister [Sami] and she’s used
all of her wiles to get Austin to really care about Will.” However, he previews, “He will
risk his love in a kind of not-so-nice way.” Uh-oh.
** This was taken from ‘Soap Opera Digest’ magazine [Jan. 12/99] The pictures are from The Mike and Carrie Saga Page Please do not take this article or simply copy and paste this on to another page. Please email me and ask my permission first. Thank you. **
