ATWT: Election Day

Tuesday, November 4th:

The campaign on the other side makes me sick. Maybe I gave too much credit to Kevin last time. When he said to Luke that there are other issues that are important and when he kept warning Mark against campaigning nastily… you know, for one second, I thought he actually seemed to care just a little bit about this election. But in the end, not one real issue came out of his mouth during this whole time. Luke is still getting cheap shots by Mark over his sexuality, and the free beer bribing for votes is just absolutely appalling.

I don’t think for one minute that what Luke did was right. Not one bit. Stuffing the ballot box was wrong. However, I do understand his reasons for doing it. Luke was treated like pure crap off screen by Kevin and apparently a lot of the senior class early in 2007, and the mere thought of the campaign on the other side winning by using bribes of alcohol and downright dirty tricks like that homophobic video that lackey Mark put on USTUBE (that’s YouTube for the Oakdalians for those out of the know) makes him furious and he‘s tired of the B.S., and he’s also sick of being the underdog. Normally, when a character does something that’s out of his or her usual realm on this show for the worse, there’s no motivation or story behind it at all (i.e. Adam Munson, Craig Montgomery), but in this case the motivation is purely there and Luke’s reasons for having the ballot box stuffed is there for us to see. The viewer doesn’t have to contemplate why and I thank the writers for doing this.

The only true double-u tee eff moment I really had was when Luke was quoting of all people, Colonel Nutjob. Now we KNOW something’s seriously wrong and I’m glad Noah called him out on this too, as well as wanting to stuff the ballot box with phony votes. I just love Noah in this storyline. I like how calm, cool and collected he has been throughout this whole ordeal. The characters really balance each other out. And it was so heartbreaking at the end when Noah and Luke saw each other after the “win.” You could clearly see how disappointed Noah was. This election has made him into a different person now. This isn’t the man that he fell in love with.