home | actors | characters | forum | gallery | guestbook | library | links

Truth or Consequences
Phillip And Beth: Sex, Lies And Videotape
by Donna Hoke Kahwaty
Soap Opera Digest
December 14, 1999

It doesn't turn out to be much of a Thanksgiving on GUIDING LIGHT after Phillip and Beth are presumed dead in the mountains of San Cristobel this week. After one of Edmund's minions sabotages a propeller plane meant for Richard and Cassie, Jim takes Phillip and Beth up in the craft to scout sites for the new Spaulding factory, but a crash cuts the flight short. "Phillip is injured and unconscious and in dire straits, or at least it appears so at the time," shares Beth Chamberlin (Beth). "So Jim goes immediately for help." After Jim leaves, an avalanche unleashes several feet of snow on top of the plane wreckage, and Beth and Phillip are trapped. "They give up hope in increments that they are going to be rescued," says Grant Aleksander (Phillip). "When they get to the point where they believe that it's done, they record a videotape for Lizzie. Beth is in emotional distress and he comforts her." And then, in what Aleksander describes as "one of those bizarre, spontaneous things," Beth and Phillip make love.

"It's about taking care of one another," Chamberlin explains. "It's not about passion, [when] we say, 'Oh, what the heck, we're attracted to one another, let's go.' It's about a deep sense of sadness and you want to be close, about wanting to feel something in those last hours besides fear."

"Beth and Phillip are first loves; they played that for years," adds Aleksander. "I look at them much the way I perceive Nikki and Victor on YOUNG AND RESTLESS. They're not together, but there's a part of them that knows each other better than anybody and will always be strongly connected. It's about really, really, really deep history and emotion. Having never been in this particular situation, I'm guessing that there are all sorts of bizarre things that happen to you."

Once Phillip and Beth are rescued and back in Springfield, they're eager to return to their lives with Harley and Jim and vow to keep their liaison a secret. (GL Script Editor Jill Lorie Hurst assures us that Harley and Phillip will still be a couple when all is said and done: "They are strong enough to survive a lot of things.") What they don't know is that the video camera never stopped running and that soon enough, Lizzie's tape with the surprise ending will fall into the hands of someone who's willing to keep it under wraps--for a price. #