Soap Opera's Greatest Characters: The Brilliant Egomaniac- David Hayward

So Carlivati said that they know fans want to see old AMC characters but they won't use them unless there's a reason.  Normally, I believe nothing that comes out of his mouth.  So, there's no reason to do this, but what the hell.  There may be some room on the last ABC show for some AMC characters before they cancel it, so just fire more of the GH cast and fill it up with interesting characters played by people who can act.   So, here's my first choice for merciless pimping:  The Man, the Legend, you know him, you love him, you can't live without him,  Dr. David Hayward!

There are some characters who are unwatchable. They're just awful.  In my mind, Greenlee Smythe was one of those characters.  Ryan Lavery, as well.  However, when truly wonderful characters played by great actors show up in the scenes with them, they become not only watchable, but not irritating, which is quite a feat.  Such was the case with the man above.  David Hayward, played by the spectacular Vincent Irizarry, made these two useless characters surprisingly not annoying.  In fact, for a moment here, I almost liked Greenlee! Now, that's an actor!

David Hayward, brilliant physician, demented scholar, and shockingly out of control egomaniac, was not only one of the most interesting characters ever on daytime, he was also one of the most enduring.  He was fun and smart and obnoxious and self-aware and kind and interesting and, more than anything, a real kick in the pants!  And, among others, I really miss him.  I doubt we'll see anyone so complex again.  We should be so lucky to have one half as good.

I  remember when he first strolled into town and he was downright evil.  Funny, he was involved in the Ryan/Gillian romance then.  Ryan was not irritating at first.  Gillian, another great character, made him seem interesting and charming.  Obviously, she was masking his really dull personality and pomposity.  At any rate, David was blackmailing Gillian about something and trying to make her sleep with him. I don’t really remember but I remember thinking he was so cute and funny and mean and I loved him.

He was, of course, punished but I don’t remember how or why, but he remained on the show, so he must have been punished. This was AMC, not GH, so the bad guy went down eventually, he just always came back. Excuse the double entendre there. I always thought certain characters would be adept in certain  sexual areas and all the bad guys I liked, well, they’d go downtown regularly.  David, for sure, Adam, yes, Todd, no doubt.  Sorry, I got sidetracked there………….

But I have to admit I became a silly, blushing David fangurl when he fell in love with Dixie. I loved me some Tad and Dixie back in the day but David was SO in love, I couldn’t believe I was rooting for him over my long time boyfriend, Tad.  Yet, there I was- hoping Dixie would dump Tad the No Longer Cad for Doctor Dave the Devil.  He was so adoring and sweet and Dixie was so much less dull with him.  I should have known that she’d be pissed about him drugging the town with Libidozone.  What an uptight bitch!! I thought it was funny and would have been complimented that he would go to such extremes for me.  Blair would think so, too. I bet David could give Todd a run for his money.  Not sure I would side with Todd because, well, I'm David's bitch.  But, I digress, yet again.  Alas,  Dixie failed to see his love shining through the crazy act.  She was pissed. Back to the Martins for her!


I know everyone hated that story but I loved it. I thought drugging the town was so much fun and everyone losing inhibitions and such was so damn hysterical, I couldn’t take it.  See, that’s why I loved David. He was not a sociopath, he was, well, different. He had different ideas than other people.  He justified his anti-social deeds with his contributions to science, which were quite substantial.  He was saving the world in some ways, so he should be able to play crazy mad scientist.  He was so convincing of that point, I agreed with him.  That’s David.  In a crazy way, he made a lot of sense.

I think a lot of it may have been Irizarry who I think walks on water, really, and no offense to him as I hear he’s very religious, but I  love him anyway!  He’s a great actor who understood his character and could make him sympathetic and lovable while also emphasizing he was a fucking megalomaniac. He knew how to make David bad, but not evil.  He made him stand apart from the self-righteous Martins, as he called them, and be the town pariah, but the brilliant town pariah.  And, personally, there’s nothing hotter.  And, let’s be honest, there’s nothing wrong with the man’s looks….nothing….really, I mean, like nothing.  He’s very, let’s say, appealing to me physically. Yeah, that’s it.

David, unlike the men discussed in the “bad boy” discussion, is not someone who hated women or preyed on them. In fact, I think David loved women.  He really didn’t like men- and I think that’s what makes him successful as a soap bad guy. He’s subverting the patriarchal order in some ways as he’s a man who shuns and manipulates people but mostly other men.  He respects women, in his own way, and I especially want to point out his relationship with Greenlee, his Mother, and Angie as the show closed.  All three of these relationships show his ability to not only love women but respect the role of women in the world- in a twisted, David way, of course.

When I mention his relationship with Greenlee, I mean his original relationship with her, not the sick one created near the end of the show after it ceased to be AMC anymore.  That doesn’t count.  But, originally, Greenlee was his sister-in-law as she was married to Leo, played to the hilt by the never again so charming, Josh Duhamel.  Who’d think that his best role was Leo?  Alas, it was. I never liked him again but Leo was all kinds of fabulous.  At any rate, David’s only significant male relationship was with Leo. It was so touching and sweet and showed that he could truly love someone completely and unconditionally as he loved Leo.  And, as she made Leo happy, he loved Greenlee.  AMC made the relationship between lost Greenlee and angry David, after Leo’s death, so touching that it made me love David even more.  And I could look at Greenlee without feeling nauseous. Shocker!

It wasn’t sexual at all. It was brotherly and caring. They clung to one another as they both lost the kind soul that made them want to be better people.  David, of course, made Greenlee more appealing to me, as he did with almost everyone who crossed his path.  But the tenderness in his voice when he spoke to her, the way he protected her, and the way he reached out to her as a way to keep Leo with him was truly touching.  Again, Irizarry and the old writers making the bad guy not so bad underneath, and understandable.  I detested what they did to that relationship as the show closed, so I decided to ignore it completely!  Poof- never happened!

The way David dealt with his mother also showed us so much about his potential for love and explained his character. His mother, evil, selfish, manipulative, and a criminal, was not nice.  How’s that for describing her?  David blamed her for the death of his father, another brilliant doctor.  Yet in his hatred, you could see that it was born out of pain and an understanding of what real love is about and how family should be, not how she was.  Marj Dusay played Vanessa perfectly as a vapid, vain socialite who turns out to be a criminal- stupid plot twist- but I thought that David’s disdain for her really explained him as a complex character. He was desperate for love and longed for compassion and understanding as he never got that from his mother. He was resentful and hateful toward her, as he should have been, but it gave us insight into why he could be so manipulative and callous to others.  He was hurt and taught to lash out as a way to protect himself.  Yet he was also coming from a fucked up moral universe that made almost anything seem okay.  The family dynamic was wonderful between Duhamel, Dusay, and Irizarry, and losing that was a real blow for AMC, IMO.  They were all kinds of wonderful.

As the show closed, it was a shell of its former self.  So much so, that I could hardly get through an episode.  That was almost impossible for me to imagine as I’d watched AMC all my life and it represented so much more to me than just a TV show. But, that’s another blog for another day.  The only thing that made the show watchable at all was David and Angie, IMO, and that was one story that they made work. I’d like to think it was all Lorraine Broderick’s doing, but I can’t be sure. But I’m thinking that because, well, I can, so I do!

Angie and David were perfect foils and it was appropriate that David would again be brought down by a woman as all the good soap bad guys must.  But I loved the way they turned it at the end, as he was the one to save her sight and she had to trust in his genius as he was her only hope.  Two great actors, of course, but the way they had  Angie, the strongest, smartest, really, the best female character left on screen at the end, be forced to give herself over to David's care, made it all so poignant.  She had to admit that even though he could be evil in some ways, he was one thing really- a brilliant doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath seriously, well, in his own way!

It was wonderful as she slowly began to see that David was not just a bad man who’s a good doctor, but a man with the potential for greatness that was hindered by selfishness, fear, and arrogance.  He was truly a healer but would get sidetracked by his own needs.  It was as if when she lost her physical ability to see that she saw him for the first time.  He was big bad David, but he was also good doctor David, who, in issues of life and death, could be trusted.  When her sight was restored, she saw differently than she ever had before. She saw David as a man, not a caricature.  He was not the cartoon villain the years of terrible writing tried to make him.  He was just David, misunderstood, with a completely anti-social moral code by which he lived.

That’s the point, I think.  David, unlike so many characters created now, was truly grey.  He was not a good man all the time and was often downright bad.  But even when horrible writing tried to paint him as a mustache twirling villain, he was played with understanding by Irizarry.  We could see beyond the surface of the deeds down to the human underneath.  And that’s what made him special and interesting and relatable.  He was just a man, after all, who wasn’t necessarily a good man.  But he was capable of good things.  And, although he was often bad, he was a savior when it mattered.  And, really, what else can you ask for?

Oh, and by the way, he was always really sexy.  Did I mention that?? Okay, so I'm human, too, what can you do?