If looks could kill, Bay City would be in ruins. And you'd have Tom Eplin's Jake to blame. On Another World this past week, Jake's world crumbled as he learned the awful truth about his wife's role in the deaths of Micahel and Shane. Jake's guilt over the accident mutated into fury, and no one caught in his piercing, wounded gaze came away unscathed.

Since Shane's death, the McKinnons' marriage had fallen into a numbing rut: Jake would ask about Vicky's skittish anxiety, and she'd want to explain that she was with Shane in the lodge the night he was killed, but never could find the right moment to tell the truth. The price paid for her procrastination? Vicky had to spill all in an open courtroom.

Hackneyed though her admission and Jake's surreal "arraignement," may have been, you'd never be able to tell it by watching Eplin. Faced with Vicky's betrayal, the bemused anguish he'd been building since the accident leaked out in emotionally charged, subtle ways. Jake's skidding from quavery, frenetic insanity during his public cuckolding to absolute bone-wearness while confronting Vicky at the cottage was mesmerizing. And when he put Vicky on the witness stand, his voice actually seemed to change, as if strained through the vise around his heart. As we continue to watch Jake rake himself over the coals, it's impossible to tear ourselves away from his intensity, even is that means we, too, are cut to the quick.