To folks on my flist who are new to Otalia (Guiding Light‘s story of Olivia Spencer & Natalia Rivera), here’s a recap, along with some links to some of my favourite clips.

Brief sum-up: Olivia’s got a bad heart. Is on the way towards dying (except how the heck she manages to look that good when she’s sick is beyond me…other than the fact that Crystal Chappell is a Goddess). In her typical state of affairs, the latter being what’s she’s known for, she latches on to Gus Aitoro [son of Alan Spaulding]. Gus is just getting back with his childhood sweetheart, Natalia Rivera; marries her even. Olivia still wants Gus. Natalia knows Gus is conflicted. In typical soap plausibility, when Gus was on his way to the hospital to see Olivia he was in an accident and subsequently died. Olivia got his heart.

I was going to compile a list of YouTube videoclips, but just as I was planning to do that, I saw a post on my flist that so aptly did the same. anomalys wrote up this brilliant piece which gives the linear progression of of Olivia & Natalia’s relationship: Otalia: A Year in the Making, with links and brief descriptions of the episode clips.

As much as the April 13-17th episodes had me in a state of semi-permanent heart-ache, torment, angst-ridden to to the point of feeling like my heart was ripped out, stepped on, fed through a meat grinder and handed back to me on a platter with the declarations of love, this week’s episodes (April 22-24) have been most definitely felt more light hearted and by Friday’s, positively giddy. Hell, they’re only hand-holding and it’s got my heart thumping in a positively gleeful way.

Thanks ces1982 for the banner