| "Naked Eyes" : Analysis of the "Naked Eyes" Arc of ABC-TV's Port Charles
(c) Alison Armstrong |
| An analysis of the "Naked Eyes" episodes of the show Port Charles, formerly of ABC-TV. This site will focus on the scenes featuring the vampire character Caleb Morley/Stephen Clay (portrayed by actor Michael Easton). The character of Caleb Morley/Stephen Clay and any other characters relating to Port Charles are the property of ABC and their creators. This is a fan-run site and is not an official site, nor is it affiliated in any way with ABC, Port Charles, or the actors portraying any of the Port Charles characters. No copyright infringement is intended. The writings on this site are copyrighted by the author, Alison Armstrong, and may not be reproduced without the author's express permission. |
| "Naked Eyes" #5 (cont.) Stephen holds her closer, his hips rubbing against her as he guides her into a slow, sensual dance. Although his mask obscures his face, she sees his beautifully curved lips and the penetrating blue of his eyes. “Who are you?” she whispers, tinglings of desire, fear, and enchantment binding her to him. Her body responds to his, her hips pressing closer, her head thrown back, her eyes half-shut as if in an erotic reverie. The camera whirls with them, a dizzyingly enthralling dream. It hovers above them, and as it focuses on their gracefully swaying forms, the background seems to blur, becoming misty and insubstantial; they are the center, the focus, the axis around which everything rotates. Everything and everyone else is peripheral, inconsequential. The dance, the music, the rhythmic waves of motion and sound resonate in their pulsing blood. They are the eternals in a world of flux and illusion, archetypal lovers karmically entwined from lifetime to lifetime. |
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| In another place, a life so different from the one she has now that it could just as well have been another existence, she sees herself dancing like this with a man she loved. They are in his cave, and in her memory, the amber of the candles, the russet of his tapestries, now seem frozen in black and white. She sees his face, those full, soft, seductive lips, sees even in this grey-tone memory the intensity of his eyes, an intensity that can only be matched by the eyes of the man dancing with her now. Although logic tells her that this cannot be the same man she once loved, the man she killed when he tried to destroy her family and friends, she knows with a wisdom much deeper than logic that this is indeed her lover, her Caleb. She fights against this knowledge because it opens up the wounds that never healed after she stabbed Caleb in the heart. Although she had numbed those wounds by shutting off her emotions, not allowing herself to be vulnerable in love again, all the pain and passion she thought she had renounced forever is awakened as she dances close to this man.. |
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| Between them is the barrier of a mask, a disguise, which like his assumed identity as Stephen Clay, is a façade concealing the truth. He hides his feelings behind these facades, intending to conceal them from himself. Like Livvie, he has numbed his wounds, but as “Naked Eyes” will reveal, neither Livvie nor Caleb can run from their emotions and the unbreakable bond of their temptestuous love.
She touches his face, and his lips softly brush against her own, on the verge of a kiss, when Alison, standing nearby with Rafe, points out the masked man dancing with Livvie. Scowling again and rudely stepping between them, Rafe interrupts the dance. “Maybe it’s about time now you told me your name,” he glowers, grabbing the mask and ripping it off Stephen’s face. However, when the mask is removed, the man standing next to Livvie is not Stephen; it is Joshua. As Rafe and Livvie look at him in astonishment, Joshua casually asks Livvie if something is wrong. “I . . . I thought you were someone else,” she stammers, a look of fear and disappointment on her face. She knows that, like logic, appearances can be deceptive, whereas her heart has sensed the truth. Despite evidence to the contrary, she knows that the man she was dancing with is not the same man facing her now. |
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| Snappies of "Naked Eyes" scenes taken by A. Armstrong |