“Tempted” Episodes 23-24
Like panicked victims stuck in quicksand, the more the Port Charles residents try to ward off danger, the more they end up engulfed by it. Despite being warned by Rafe, Lucy continues to summon the dark forces in an attempt to control them. Kevin’s suspicions about Ian begin to infect the already jittery Eve, and the insecurity Jack feels about Livvie’s love worsens as he is helpless to prevent her mysterious straying.
After Livvie returns from Caleb’s cave, Jack is desperate to understand her increasingly bizarre behavior. When Jack tells her that he called the sanitarium and found out she had never arrived, Livvie says she intended to go there but realized seeing her mother comatose and unchanged would only make her more depressed. Sadly she acknowledges that her mother’s apparent recovery was just an illusion created by Caleb. “He knew I really wanted a family, and he gave me a lie,” she laments. Her longing for a family inspires Jack with thoughts of marriage. Although Jack waits awhile before actually proposing, he suggests to Livvie that together they can have the family she has always wanted. The moment they kiss, however, a loud crashing sound and an unearthly scream interrupt their romance. Nervous and exhausted, Livvie says she’s going to take a shower before going to bed, and Jack leaves.
Once Jack is gone, Livvie hears Caleb’s hypnotic music. Defiantly struggling to resist its influence, she nevertheless finds herself compelled, as if in a trance, to go up the stairs and towards the bathroom. In the shower Livvie surrenders to the warm water’s caress. The steam enshrouds her, a misty veil dissolving the barriers between dream and awakening, fantasy and reality, wish and actualization. Like a shaman, she drifts in between the worlds, entranced, envisioning.
The shower scene, as in almost every fantasy/horror film since “Psycho,” evokes aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, but without the brutal misogynistic assault. We see, as if watching voyeuristically, Livvie touch her body with her washcloth, savoring her solitary pleasure. She indulges in her sensual bliss, a ritual of delicate eroticism transcending the crassly sexual. Like Botticelli’s Venus, she is the libido aestheticized and transformed into something mystical and sublime.
We see Livvie through Caleb’s eyes; she is his goddess, his romantic ideal. Yet, in contrast to “Tainted Love,” Caleb in this arc is less tender, more guarded and cynical. He is not willing to give up his own godlike status in order to worship the woman he craves as his goddess—at least not yet. Until the balance of power shifts, later in this arc, Caleb is the one in control.
As Livvie tries to bathe away her tension and fear, Caleb’s music continues to seep into her mind. “Stop it,” she scolds. “I don’t want to hear your stupid music! Caleb, are you here? If you are, then stop hiding from me. Show yourself!” In the enveloping mist, Livvie tries to see the presence she feels. Through the shower door, she glimpses her stalker, her eternal lover. Wrapping a towel around herself, she steps out of the shower and sees Caleb waiting for her.
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