| "Surrender" : Analysis of the "Surrender" Arc of ABC-TV's Port Charles
(c) Alison Armstrong |
| An analysis of the "Surrender" 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. |
| "Surrender" #4 (cont.) She stirs, opening her eyes and gazing upon her enchanted world. “Where am I?” she asks, amazed. “You don’t recognize it, Olivia?” Caleb replies, sitting on the couch next to her. |
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| Snappies of "Surrender" scenes taken by A. Armstrong |
| “I told you I’m not Olivia,” she insists in a firm, angry voice. “I am Tess.”
“For now,” Caleb concedes, smiling. “But I know Olivia’s inside you, and she needs to know she’s finally home.” He reaches out to touch her face, but she draws back. “Don’t be afraid,” he soothes. “Don’t be afraid. This is what we both want.” “What I want is to go home,” she counters, moving farther away. “You are home,” he tells her. “You put this on me . . . her dress?” she inquires, a look of mild disgust upon her face, as if embarrassed that Caleb touched her naked or partially clothed body while she was sleeping, vulnerable. He had even applied make-up on her face and styled her hair, enhancing her natural beauty with subtlety and understatement. |
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| A slightly necrophiliac aura pervades this scene of Tess's awakening. Like a mortician attempting to recreate an idealized image of one who has died, Caleb recreates in Tess a vision of his lost beloved. The scene is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Ligeia” and the Hitchock film Vertigo. In “Ligiea,” the narrator describes the transformation of his ailing, unloved second wife into his beloved, deceased first wife. Although the two wives are very different in appearance and temperament (the first wife brunette, somber, intellectual, the second wife, blonde, cheerful, rather vapid), the narrator watches a death-bed metamorphosis of the blonde into the brunette, a macabre fantasy incorporating elements of wish-fulfillment and nightmare. In Vertigo, the main male character (Scottie) takes a more active role in the transformation. Mourning the death of a mysterious woman he loved (Madeleine), Scottie attempts to re-make a lookalike into Madeleine, forcing her to dress and act like the woman who died. As in both of these works, Caleb seeks to transform one woman into another. He tried to forget Livvie by dating and marrying Elizabeth, substituting, like the narrator in the Poe story, a blonde for a brunette; however, growing tired of his new wife, he seeks to make Livvie’s identical twin, Tess, into Livvie. Even Livvie is, in some ways, a partial replacement for his first Olivia, his fiancee who died. Although Caleb has grown to love his second Olivia more than his first, he still compares her to his dead fiancee, fearing that she, like his first beloved, will turn against him. “I remember the day you first wore it,” Caleb recalls. “I remember the moment I first saw you in it. I was standing right over there. You took my breath away.” |
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| “No! Stop saying that!” Tess protests, walking away.
“Why, Olivia?” he asks. “Because I’m not her,” she exclaims. “You put me in this dress, and can take me away, but I’m not her. I will never be her.” |