#ben reade

[babadork]

I am deeply disappointed that whoever nominated Matt Bomer forgot about his amazing work on Guiding Light. As it is more fitting for the competition, I went with him doing a dance routine to "I'm Too Sexy," but his character Ben Reade was peak soap opera ridiculousness.

I'll let Matt describe his time on this show in his own words: I was a trust fund baby who bet my fraternity brothers that I could be first to deflower the town virgin. I fell in love with her, but she found out about the bet and dumped me. I met a new girlfriend, lost my trust fund and was embarrassed to tell her, so I became a male prostitute, because that's what you do when you lose your trust fund. I had all these cougar clients... Then my girlfriend found out I was a male prostitute, dumped me of course, and then I went crazy, killed five people, kidnapped her to a remote cabin in the woods, confessed to her that I’d been molested by my middle school teacher and then committed suicide in front of her, her father, and her new boyfriend. Then, I hung around for one day in the hospital to confess my sins.

[behindthesefangirleyes]

Ben Reade walked …

… so Jamie Burns could run

[archivistsrock]

Matt Bomer in Everything  →  Guiding Light (2001-2003)

I was a trust fund baby who bet my fraternity brothers that I could be the first to deflower the town virgin. I fell in love with her but she found out about the bet and dumped me. I met a new girlfriend, lost my trust fund, was embarrassed to tell her so I became a male prostitute. [...] Then my girlfriend found out I was a male prostitute; dumped me, of course. And then I went crazy, killed five people, kidnapped her to a remote cabin in the woods, confessed to her that I had been molested by my middle school teacher, and then committed suicide in front of her, her father, and her new boyfriend. Then hung on one day in the hospital to confess my sins.

[behindthesefangirleyes]

Matt Bomer and Aubrey Dollar on ‘Guiding Light’ (2003)

[whatawhumperfulworld]

Guiding Light (July 9, 2003)

[scarletfieldsofcankanorey]

Omg I almost gave up breathing early this morning as I was watching back through old eps of GL and actually re-lived the trauma of how they ruined that precious baby (a flippin’ legacy character too, man!), Ben Reade, for absolutely no reason whatsoever omg omg I’m in emotional paiiiiiiiin 😩😫😩😫😩😫😩

[hopelessdreamer80]

30 Days Shipping Challenge - Day 24: A crazy love triangle/quadrilateral that worked out badly.

Marina, Ben & Shayne (Guiding Light)

I have already talked about the dreadful Marina/Shayne pairing in the 'absolute worst pairing' entry. I won't elaborate further, aside from stating yet again that I will never get over the fact that GL ruined my beautiful Ben for Absolutely. No. Reason.

[hopelessdreamer80]

30 Days Shipping Challenge - Day 16: What is the absolute worst pairing?

Shayne Lewis & Marina Cooper (Guiding Light)

I chose them as worst pairing for two reasons: 1) they shared no chemistry whatsoever; 2) even worse, their story made no sense, and in order to make it happen, they literally trashed one of GL's best young couples ever. Aubrey Dollar's Marina was in a pairing with Matt Bomer's Ben: it was a fun pairing, their chemistry was off the charts, and Ben was a complex character that made the spunky Marina sparkle even more. An unfortunate change of executive producer changed all that. It was decided that Marina should enter a predictable and boring teen romance with Shayne, but it wasn't enough: not only Ben became the obstacle for the endgame couple, they turned him (a legacy character!) into a serial killer who ended up killing himself. And, 16 years later, I'm still bitter about it.