This month, The Buzz on HR is giving a salute and farewell to the daytime series All My Children, which will air its final episode on September 23rd. Posts this month will share practical lessons I’ve learned after watching the show and its demise for years. Part 1 shared lessons from the one and only Erica Kane.

Part 2 gleaned lessons from Pine Valley business tycoon’s Adam Chandler and Palmer Cortlandt.

Part 3 will take a look at supercouple Angie and Jesse.

Jesse Hubbard arrived in Pine Valley as a bad boy — a high school drop out who had lost his mother and was forced to move in with his uncle. He befriended neighbor Jenny Gardner, who was also from a troubled and broken family (her parents were addicts who tried to sell her younger brother, Tad, to another Pine Valley family, the Martins). She convinced Jesse to finish high school then enroll in the local college, where the two met and became friends with Angie Baxter, Greg Nelson and Liza Colby.

Angie Baxter was an aspiring doctor from a good family. She met Jesse while volunteering as a candy striper at the town’s hospital –and she was immediately and completely infatuated with him. The feeling was absolutely mutual and the two began dating, much to the disappointment of Angie’s father, Les, who thought Jesse was not good enough for his daughter. The two ran away and eloped. Within weeks, Angie was pregnant. Before Angie could tell Jesse about the baby, he made a comment about not wanting children, which Angie took as a sign they weren’t meant to be together so she divorced him, had the baby in secret and gave it up for adoption.

The power of their love was too great so Angie told Jesse about the baby almost as soon as she returned to Pine Valley. The two went off in search of their child, kidnapped him when they found him, and got arrested. Once they got those pesky kidnapping charges dismissed, they were on track to happily ever after as a family … kind of. They struggled financially and borrowed money from a loan shark. Then Jesse’s no-good brother came to town and framed him for stealing drugs from the hospital. Jesse found the evidence to clear himself — and Pine Valley offered him a job as a police detective! But then he was assigned to investigate a drug ring which revealed Angie’s father to be the King Pin — and Jesse threw his father-in-law off a building during a scuffle to arrest him. Although she understood it was his job, Angie couldn’t forgive for killing her father and she left him. Not long after that, Jesse was shot in the line of duty — Angie arrived at his bedside where he declared his love for her, then died.

Fast forward 20 years and Jesse is alive! He’s been held by criminals all these years. He comes back to Pine Valley to clear his name and reunites with Angie. The two were remarried and resumed their happily ever after … kind of. Both Angie and Jesse had other loves and other children during their years apart so blending the family was a challenge. Then Angie contracted a virus that would cause her to lose her vision. They found an experimental treatment which would slow the blindness at the same time they learned Angie was pregnant. She chose another baby with Jesse over her sight –and she went completely blind. She goes into early labor, the baby is stillborn and Jesse switches their baby with another woman’s … who Angie later hires as their nanny. As the show prepares to close, Angie has regained her sight and Jesse confessed about the baby-swap. After some thought, the nanny agreed to keep living with the Hubbards so they can all be apart of the baby’s life.

So what can HR learn from the Hubbards?

• Nothing in the workplace is ever perfect and the really good times don’t last long. HR sees the highs and lows of the organization more than any other because we deal with really personal and highly sensitive stuff. HR often finds itself making allies with unexpected individuals in order to accomplish our goals. We also find the people we thought had our back will leave us in the lurch at the most inopportune and unexpected times. It can be hard to know who to trust or if we can trust anyone at all to look out for HR’s interests. However, if we stay positive, focus on the goals and all the possibilities within, we can find the spirit of forgiveness and cooperation we need to keep pushing toward happily ever after — even if it doesn’t look exactly how we thought it would …

Farewell, Angie and Jesse Hubbard!