Daddy's boys
By Stella Bednarz, Soap Opera Digest, 1988	Home   Cette page en Français

Rich, rebellious, dependant... and screwed up. They're daddy'boys, sons who proclaim the need for freedom, but never wander far from the family mansion, that is, if they ever more out of the house at all. The absence of a mother figure often adds to a son's warped thinking. And if Mom should somehow return from the dead, or from exile (or both), the son is usually caught in the middle of a struggle for power and affection. If he's clever and ruthless, a poor little rich boy can manipulate parental love and play both ends against the middle to advance his own cause. After all, fidelity isn't exactly his strong suit, whether it's in reference to affairs of business or of the heart.

A daddy's boy may criticize his father's questionable tactics, but often he commits deeds just as devious, proving that the apple never falls far from the tree. An honorable father can produce an unethical son and their confrontations resemble to a modern day morality play. But no matter how down and dirty the in-fighting may get, father and son always unite the name of the Family, that sacrosanct institution to which both men swear undying allegiance, as long as it's convenient to do so.

Mason Capwell

Mason always seems to be the family outsider, viewing things from a distance, never feeling like he truly belongs. Well, didn't Dad always like Eden best and look to her to help run Capwell Enterprises ? And since Mason is Pamela's son, isn't he a living reminder of the hell C.C. went through in his first marriage ? And hey, as the first Capwell son, why wasn't he named Channing Creighton, Jr. ? You get the feeling that Mason ponders these questions from time to time, and the answers he comes up with aren't apt to make him smile. (Actually, Mason doesn't smile a lot, anyway.)

He's walking bundle of insecurities and some of them are understandable. How many sons do you know whose mother and stepmother came back from the dead ? Mason sorely resents the fact that his father deprived him of contact with Pamela (before her presumed death) and seems determined to help his Mom even the score. Perhaps because he's been hurt so many times, Mason frequently avoids revealing his true feelings by hiding them beneath a veneer of studied indifference and biting sarcasm. One gets the feeling he desperately craves his father's unqualified love, and is frequently hurt when Dad doesn't come through in the "proper manner".

There have numerous attempts at rapprochements between father and son, but they only seem to last as long as the crisis that precipitated the cease-fire. Opinionated. Tough. Pigheaded. Overbearing. These character traits are shared by Mason and C.C.. When father knows best and son knows best, conflict is inevitable.