I am usually in the mood to de-stigmatize the melodrama as a genre and today is no exception, since we’re talking about Albert Alarr’s A Million Happy Nows.  This time around, the romantic couple is a lesbian one.

Daytime Emmy winning actress Lainey Allen (Crystal Chappell) has been a soap star for two decades. But acting is a precarious gig. An award doesn’t guarantee compelling writing and characterization. So she worried about the show shoving her into the background. She quits the show and the business at 49 years old. Again, her main reason is to protect herself from a volatile business, but there’s something else she’s hiding.

Lainey and her younger girlfriend and publicist Eva (Jessica Leccia) move to a California beach house. She has to adjust to being a homebody in a new home. She forgets where things are in the house, which is normal for most new home buyers or people in general. But Eva suggests, and strongly, for them to go to a doctor (Robert Gant). He then tells her that she has early onset Alzheimers. Note that she is 49, receiving a diagnosis for a disease that hits people in their 60’s. She is 5% of the people who get the disease when they’re younger.

Lainey already knew that her genetics can give her a higher chance of getting the disease. She never mentions this to Eva, which angers the latter and starts their first fight. Screenwriter Marisa Calin points to the instinct to lie, as well as all of Lainey’s choices. That’s something relateable to everyone in the LGBT community. There’s this fear of showing weakness. Weakness, we believe, lessens our value as romantic partners or as members of the community. But the film balances that by showing that people love us despite of our weaknesses.