Sunset Beach (soap opera)

The US soap opera Sunset Beach aired on NBC at 11:00 AM from January 6, 1997 to December 31, 1999. It was coproduced by NBC and Aaron Spelling Productions. It aired in over 70 countries around the world, and was especially popular in the UK, Australia, Sweden, Israel and Germany.

Sunset Beach starred Lesley-Anne Down, Laura Harring, Kelly Hu, Barbara Mandrell, Kathleen Noone, Susan Ward, Shawn Batten and Christina Chambers. Cast members who were nominated for various soap opera awards included Hank Cheyne, Margarita Cordova, Priscilla Garita, Jason Winston George, Sherri Saum, Clive Robertson, Eddie Cibrian, Sam Behrens, Dominique Jennings and Sarah Buxton.

The soap opera was named after the small beach community located at the northwest corner of Huntington Beach, California just south of Seal Beach, California and the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

Storylines

Storylines in its nearly three year run ranged from the traditional to the supernatural. One of the first storylines concerned an internet romance. Kansas farm girl Meg Cummings, played by Susan Ward, discovered her groom to be, Tim Truman, cheating on her on their wedding day. Meg had been talking online with SB, a man who lived in Sunset Beach, California, and after catching Tim with another woman, Meg fled to Sunset Beach in search of SB, who turned out to be wealthy, widowed businessman Ben Evans, played by Clive Robertson. The first year of the show revolved around Meg's pursuit of Ben (including her briefly almost stalking him, breaking into his house, stealing a journal she found there and dressing up in his late wife's clothes), who was initially not interested in her, and the gradual development of a romance between them. A side plot showed the atagonistic relationship between Meg and Annie Douglas, Ben's longtime best friend. Meg hated Annie for being close to Ben and wanted to cut her out of his life; Annie was jealous of Meg for her developing romance with Ben. Their problems reached a head with a physical fight in a hottub. meg's ex-fiance Tim Truman came to Sunset Beach to win her back, and ended up becoming Annie's ally and almost love interest. Once Meg and Annie had overcome their differences, Meg soon had a new problem when she began to suspect Ben was a murderer, although this plotline was developed to lead up to the Terror Island storyline, and contained some continuity errors. After the Terror Island/Derek storyline (see below) none of the things raised were ever mentioned again.

Meg and Ben became one of the show's first couples, along with reformed jewel thief Cole Deschanel and local heiress Caitlin Richards. Cole slept with and impregnated both Caitlin and Caitlin's unhappily married, alcoholic mother Olivia. Olivia and her fiendish husband, Gregory, planned to steal Caitlin's baby and pass it off as Olivia's. Caitlin lost the child in a car accident when she found out about her parent's horrible plan, and planned to fake the rest of her pregnancy and adopt a baby to pass off as her own, as she was worried her inability to have children (caused by the accident) would cause problems in her marriage to Cole. She enlisted Annie Douglas -- secretly trying to break up Olivia and Gregory, due to a term in her father's will stating she would only get her inheritance if she wed Gregory, her late father's mistress's husband. Annie drugged Olivia and stole her baby, telling her the baby had been stillborn. Caitlin unknowingly raised her baby half-brother (who was also her stepson, having been fathered by her husband), until a grief-stricken Olivia discovered the truth. Olivia was eventually reunited with her son.

When the show began it was the only soap on the air featuring Asian American characters, though they were written off before the end of the first year. The show also had daytime television's only African American villainess, Virginia Harrison, who plotted and schemed to break up lifeguard Michael and reporter Vanessa so she could have Michael for herself. In one of the most outrageous storylines on the show, Virginia drugged Vanessa and, using a turkey baster and some stolen sperm from a sperm bank, impregnated her with the child of Dr. Tyus Robinson, to make it appear Vanessa had been unfaithful to Michael, who was sterile.

The show was known for other outrageous storylines, such 'Terror Island' in which several of the show's main characters were stranded on an island with a masked serial killer intent on killing them, especially Meg. A handful of characters were killed by the maniac, mostly minor characters introduced as serial killer-fodder, but one lead character, young runaway made good Mark Wolper. In his dying moments Mark pulled off the killer's mask and audiences where stunned to see Ben's face behind it. As it turned out, Ben had an evil twin, Derek, who plagued his and Meg's lives off and on for the rest of the run of the show. Derek was killed after being shot in a struggle with Ben during the show's final weeks, following a long storyline where Derek kidnapped and impersonated his twin for weeks, sleeping with Ben's wife Maria.

Maria Torres Evans, who had wed Ben when she was still a teenager and he was barely in his twenties, had disappeared and been presumed drowned after a boating accident that took place some years prior to the start of the show. Ben was haunted by the terrible secret that he had caught her in bed with Derek (it was later revealed that Derek -- who had impersonated Ben to Maria, who was unaware Ben had a twin -- and not slept with Maria, as she had stabbed him with scissors when he tried to rape her). Ben's guilt and grief over Maria caused a shadow over his relationship with Meg from the beginning, which worsened when an amnesiac Maria came back from the dead at Ben and Meg's October 1998 wedding. Ben and Maria grew closer while he helped her to regain her memory, and once he did, Ben flip flopped between the two women for much of the rest of the show's run. During the show's last year a strange woman, Tess, turned up on his doorstep with a son she claimed was Ben and Maria's. After a positive paternity test they raised the child together, causing even more problems for Meg, who left Ben and briefly started dating her sister's boyfriend, Casey. Derek (who was also wrongfully presumed dead) returned to kidnap Ben again, and it was revealed he and Tess were Benjy's parents.

Another outrageous storyline was the earthquake/tsunami story, in which Sunset Beach was struck by a massive earthquake, trapping many characters - most of them each other's rival - together in life and death situations. While half the cast battled the disaster on land, the rest of the cast was on a pleasure cruise aboard a ship that was overturned - a la The Poseidon Adventure - by a tsunami created by the earthquake. This storyline was nearly a carbon copy of the Poseidon Adventure.

The show took a supernatural turn for awhile with some cursed jewels stolen from a religious icon, that turned those who'd touched them into shriveled mummies. The story culminated on Christmas Eve with the return of the jewels to the Madonna just in time to prevent the deaths of several key characters.

The show also featured two murder mysteries in its run, the murder of Annie's father Del Douglas (by Cole's mother, Elaine - Del had kidnaped Cole as a baby and convinced Elaine the child was dead) and the murder of seductress Francesca Vargas, who just about everyone in town wanted dead. The surprise twist in the Who Shot Francesca storyline was that it was main character Gregory Richards.

The show went in for stunt casting guest appearances - Jerry Springer played talk show host Jerry Feller, Marla Maples played socialite Barbara Birch, Judge Wapner played himself - and featured a ripped from the headline story about a Washington intern, Meg's sister Sara, who'd had an affair with a married politician. Her affair was exposed by her supposed friend - Melinda Fall, a take off on Linda Tripp. Sara went on to develop a relationship with local lifeguard Casey Mitchum, and their relationship and her sibling rivalry with her sister made up the bulk of Sara's storylines, although she was also famous for her TV show-inspired fantasy sequences.

The show was cancelled just before the 3rd anniversary of its original air date. Most of the main characters were given happy endings. Ben and Meg and Michael and Vanessa married in a double wedding. Casey and Sara got engaged, Cole and Caitlin were happy in their marriage, and Olivia was happily raising her children alone. Maria gave Ben a divorce so he could marry Meg and met a new man, Ross English. Maria adopted Benjy, the little boy she had regarded as her own, and she had Ben planned to raise him together. The 'baddies' all got their just desserts. Derek was accidentally shot and killed by Ben, his accomplice Tess went to jail, as did Gregory Richards. Tim Truman, who though not a villian spent most of the three years causing problems for Ben and Meg, was murdered by Derek. Virginia remained languishing in a mental hospital, while reformed bad girl Annie also got a happy ending, finding love with relatively new character Jude.

In a twist ending, Meg appeared to wake up in Kansas and realize that the entire three years in Sunset Beach had been a dream - and the characters from the show were actually her friends and family in Kansas. However, at the last minute, Meg woke up from her dream-within-a-dream and was in bed with Ben, the day after their wedding.

See also

Sunset Beach: for other articles on other Sunset Beach topics

External link

• Template:Imdb title
• Sunset Beach sample episodes, dated January 6 and 7, 1997 (first two episodes), from the World of Soap Themes (http://www.wost.org/bonus5.html)