Serial Drama

Days of Our Lives Week in Review: No Plot Developments But Better Fashion Than GH

I figure if the showrunners aren't going to put any effort into moving storylines forward, I'm not obligated to pretend to care about the little bit of that that actually happened this week.  Plus, there were pretty dresses!  And other than shiny objects and cute boys, pretty dresses are like the most distracting things ever.   Which is something the powers that be at GH should learn, because maybe some prettier dresses would divert attention from the fact that their writing makes absolutely no sense and that they're destroying the good things they had left.

I know what you're thinking:  How hard is it to do something better than General Hospital these days?  But traditionally, possibly the only show on television with worse fashion than Days has been Cops, so the fact that it is currently outperforming GH in this arena is actually quite stunning. Seriously, there were several years in the 80s and 90s when every female character on DOOL wore polyester outfits and suntan pantyhouse and flesh-colored Naturalizer pumps every day -- and that includes the teenagers. Plus I'm pretty sure as recently as a year ago there was a epidemic of Mom jeans. Anyway, things on the fashion front are looking good in Salem! Which is good, since the show is otherwise regressing into seven-week long conversations and chemistry-less couples.

Casting News

If you are like Evil But Twinless and are majorly swoony for tiny men who never age and who repeatedly get treated like crap by the producers of shows they work for, you, too, will be thrilled to learn that Billy Warlock is making his way to Genoa City.

Let's ignore the fact that (a)the entire Senate race story is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever watched (b)since Jack is Y&R's character who can do nothing right, his campaign manager will go down in flames with him and I feel badly that Billy Warlock will have to go through that again and (c)it's getting creepy that he looks exactly like he did in 1987 and be just happy that he is once again on daytime. Yay!

Breaking Non-News: Jason Thompson Is Still Dreamy

When we heard Jason Thompson was starting a blog, we were a little concerned.  What if turned out he wasn't that bright?  What if he was a jerk?  What if he...I can hardly type it...had terrible grammar?!  But lo, his first couple of entries are up and he is the other end of the soap star blogging spectrum from poor Austin Peck.  Jason Thompson is adorable and articulate and humble and surfs and hangs out with his friends and loves kids and OMG call us Jason!!1!!!11!!!!!

All My Lapses In Logic

Remember the episode of Friends when Chandler was guilt-ridden about kissing Joey's girlfriend and everybody was mocking Monica for wanting to date Richard's son and she freaked out and said, "Fine! Judge all you want to, but... married a lesbian, left a man at the altar, fell in love with a gay ice dancer, threw a girl's wooden leg in a fire, lives in a box!"

That's all I can think about during All My Children lately. I mean, practically the entire town has rallied together in their crusade to make Adam pay for being mad at Krystal and kicking her out of his house like the heartless bastard he is.

And he is a heartless bastard; that's his thing. But I'm sort of thinking that in this case, it's deserved, what with the whole "my wife had an affair and got pregnant with another man's baby and she lied about it for months and planned to name the other man's baby after my dead sister and only told me the truth after an aborted fetus mentioned it to me first" thing.

What Do I Have To Do To Make You Love Me?

 

 

From the Desk of Nancy Lee Grahn,

If She Were Not Such a Nice Person*

Dear Daytime Emmy Voter-Types:    

My therapist told me that I should write everything out in a letter.  I won't ever send it, but this way I can get all my feelings out on paper and vent about your idiocy, but still show up to the ceremony looking fabulous and non-homicidal. 

Here's the thing.   I ROCK.   I am a great actress, and not just in that "oh, she's a great soap actress" kind of way.   No, I'm just plain great.   Put me in any role, and I could pretty much kick ass.   You've almost acknowledged this on several occasions, even nominated me a few times.  (There was that one time I tied – tied! how does that happen?! – for the win, but that was when Dubya's dad was president so I think we should agree it's high time you stop resting on that particular laurel.)    This year, you didn't even nominate me.  This is unacceptable.

(Yesterday's) Dumbest Dialogue

I love a good addiction storyline. Seriously. I find them to be endlessly dramatic and when they're well done, they are just awesome, especially if there is a big, soapy intervention. Bailey's intervention on Party of Five remains one of the greatest things I have witnessed on television. Remember how he got all up in Claudia's face for tricking him with a story about Owen falling? Delicious, although it would have been even better had it been Sarah, whose usefulness had already evaporated by that point in time. Remember how Scott Wolf was the new Tom Cruise, just as pocket sized with an affinity for television stars (is a Real World cast member a "star"?)? Remember when Julia got pregnant?! Remember her abusive boyfriend (who was played by Scott Bairstow, who got arrested for having sex with a 12 year old)? Remember Paula Devicq?!?!?! That show ruled.

Very Important Memo

DATE: March 27, 2007

TO: Julie Hanan Carruthers, Jill Farren Phelps, Frank Valentini

FROM: Brian Frons

RE: VERY IMPORTANT - Updated Info

As you all know, we've been moving forward full steam ahead with our new goal of younging up ABC Daytime and you've been doing a great job:)

Frank added a big name to his list today by getting rid of Phil Carey. Your bonus check is in the mail, Frank! Way to go!

We've been making a lot of progress, but we still have some work to do. Remember, the viewers want to see NEW characters, not the same one's they've been watching and attached to for decades. They just don't know it yet.

I have some suggestions:

- Julie, do you think we could possibly bump Susan Lucci to recurring status? And then possibly only show her on the phone with Kendall, Josh or Bianca, much in the manner of Chrissy on Three's Company?

- Frank: we can't have Vicki and Dorian, we can only have one or the other. Which one is older? Fire that one.

- Unrelated, but Jill, I think we should look into bringing Courtney back. Maybe she has a twin sister who can get together with Jason, or a cousin on her mother's side who can be Sonny's new love interest. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks for all of your effort and hard work. Pretty soon, we'll have the median ABC Daytime cast age down to 27 and ratings will be through the roof.

Brian

UPDATED GOAL TRACKING

JULIE

Julia Barr Cady McClain

David Canary

JILL

Stuart Damon

Tony Geary

John Ingle (again)

Jackie Zeman

FRANK

Phil Carey

Hilary B. Smith

Robert S. Woods

- Promising Ingénue

Go Fug Yourself, Soap Style

PROMISING INGENUE and I are both big fans of the Fug girls, Jessica and Heather.  Those who read their fabulous site, Go Fug Yourself (And who doesn't read it, seriously?  If you don't, I hope you know you're hurting America), know that the Fuggers are longtime soap fans.  Today they hilariously fugged Ron Moss, and we had to share the brilliance far and wide.

- Evil But Twinless

What Just Happened?! Revisited

Okay, so the fight that Robin picked with Patrick on Friday's episode was not the result of some behind-the-scenes threat by Craig on Robin and her loved ones.  It was just Robin being INSANE and making no sense whatsoever, breaking up with Patrick for reasons that up until that point she'd made no mention of. (Yeah, I know she said she didn't want to break up - in spite of the whole being doomed, hating each other thing - but let's face it, that was a break up.) I do slightly enjoy watching Patrick hotly sulk, but that's only going to fun for so long. Well, that's a lie - I think I could watch him hotly sulk - or hotly anything, really - for the entirety of every episode for the indefinite future, but let's pretend for the sake of argument that that would get old. They better give him something interesting to do, soon, and start him and Robin down the road to reconciliation. In case they don't, we are preparing our stilettos and drawing up a list of shins as we speak.

What Just Happened?!

I try not to read spoilers, so imagine my horror when I watched Friday's General Hospital.   Did Robin really dump Patrick?!  What the hell?   I know GH has pacing issues, but Robin and Patrick were blissfully happy a DAY EARLIER!  Hotly talking about moving in together, hotly making out, hotly bantering. Then, boom!  And then another boom, when it apparently turns out she was forced to do it? By Craig, who as far as we knew she hadn't seen since he shot her? A little twist revealed with absolutely no build up? No drama? On a daytime DRAMA? This show is terrible.