Meg Cummings is a fictional character from the American television soap opera Sunset Beach, played by Susan Ward.
Her storyline sees her arrive from Kansas to escape her unfaithful fiance Tim Truman (Dax Griffin) and find a man she has been talking to over the internet, Ben Evans (Clive Robertson).
[7] The show's head writer Margaret DePriest told the reporter that "Sara takes a more active role in her sister's life, and she makes a huge mistake which backfires on her, which ultimately affects [the aforementioned relationships].
"[7] Sunset Beach's final episode, which aired on December 31, 1999, featured the double wedding of Meg and Ben alongside Vanessa Hart (Sherri Saum) and Michael Bourne (Jason Winston George).
[8] After leaving her fiancé Tim at the altar, Meg travelled to Sunset Beach to find a man she had been chatting with over the Internet.
Without any knowledge as to that person's real identity, Meg slowly got to know the residents of the town, people who helped her when she fell off a pier after trying to catch a girl who stole her backpack.
For example, her recent wedding ceremony was interrupted by the arrival of her new husband's presumably dead wife, a victim of five years of amnesia.
Meg eventually broke up with Ben, and found comfort in her close friend Casey, who had recently broken up with her sister Sara.
Finally Maria's mother Carmen asked Meg for help, leading to her searching Ben's house and also discovering Derek's identity.
With Ben's help, Maria managed to escape and overpower Tess, leading to a mass fight between the two captors and five prisoners, which resulted in Derek being shot and killed.
The series culminated with a romantic double wedding between Ben and Meg, and their friends Vanessa Hart (Sherri Saum) and Michael Bourne (Jason Winston George).
"[11] Candace Havens of the Kingman Daily Miner opined that the character set the "tone and pace" of Sunset Beach.
He added that "poor Meg" had no idea Ben was her internet lover and opined that because the Sunset Beach story pace seemed slow it would probably "unfold over many episodes".
[16] His Age colleague, Simon Hughes, said that Meg was a "country mouse" in comparison to her "city cousin", Tiffany Thorne (Adrienne Frantz).