Summer Ryan Doyle Made Me Cry

As frequent readers (all 7 of you) of this blog will recall, Summer was the winner for the first "Who is This?" contest. As part of this prestigious award package Summer was going to receive a blog entry all her own entitled "Summer Ryan Doyle Made Me Cry."

And it's true - Summer Ryan Doyle made me cry.

When we were involved in the final auditions for The Six Fifty-Seven Dan Kammer decided that he was going to run "the cast" (or what we thought would be the cast) through an improvisational acting exercise. He wanted each of them to imagine that the show has run for seven years and that this is the final episode. He gave each of the actors a "hook" that they were to incorporate into their performance. All went at this with great gusto.

First up was "Bobbi" (Lee Canali) who informed us that she was pregnant and was going to move in with her boyfriend and she would soon be leaving the morning commute. This lead to "Jenn" (Alecia Batson) informing the morning crew that she had fallen in love with a representative from an African Nation who had come in to her class to lecture. She decided that we was giving up teaching and moving to Africa to be "Mrs. Mumtumabumbwe" (or something like that) and she asked "Tim" (David Grant Beck) to take care of "Mr.Sil" who would not be allowed to travel with her. This is when "Jack" (Anthony Doherty) said that he had good news and bad news. The good news was that some of his art had sold for alot of money. "Liz" replied "Gee Jack, I didn't think your mother had that kind of money".

This made me laugh.

Then "Jack" said, "The bad news is that I've been offered a spot in a gallery in NY and I'm moving there next week".

As Jack was congratulated by Jenn and Tim I watched in fascination as Liz's (the aforementioned Summer Ryan Doyle) heart broke as she heard the news that Jack, the man she had fallen in love with over their seven years together, was leaving her.

And my heart broke along with hers.

What would she do?

I didn't know.

But Summer knew.

From the moment Jack had made his fateful proclamation Summer knew how Liz would react to this news. Summer was so in tune with this scene, with this one moment in Liz' life where she had to open herself to someone that she allowed Liz's heart to shatter into a million pieces before she gathered them up again and made her fateful decision regarding Jack.

And I bought into it completely. I didn't know what was going to happen next...but I wanted to know. No, that's wrong. I needed to know the ending to this story.

It was at this moment that I completely forgot that I was watching actors auditioning for parts in a sitcom that I had created. Instead I became an audience member, watching as Liz tried to come to grips with this news and somewhere, somehow, reach inside herself to try to come up with the words that she would say next. What would she do now? Would she let him go? Would she confess her true feelings for the slacker she had grown to love? Liz heart was broken and I was verklempt at the heartbreak; which is just a manly way of saying "I cried like a little girl".

And this is just one of the many reasons that I constantly refer to the entire cast as "Ridiculously Talented".

Because Summer Ryan Doyle made me cry.