Serial Drama

So You Wanna Be a Crappy Actor

So there's this show that nobody affiliated with this site ever watches, at all, but just in case some of you do we thought we'd update you.  I Wanna Be a Soap Star's next season will select a new castmember for Days of Our Lives.  If we watched this show we would say were were uber excited about this next installment.  And we'd say that even if someone with as little actual talent as last season's winner is the last one standing, s/he will still be better than that 2x4 currently playing Jed.  But we totally don't watch this show, so we can't say anything other than we hope those of you who lower your TV viewing standards and do report back on who we'll be seeing on Days for exactly 13 weeks next year.

- Evil But Twinless

Totally Traumatic

For the record, despite my James E. Reilly paranoid freakouts, I am still so super thankful that Megan McTavish got her walking papers, because I don't know how much more I could take of her poorly plotted, heinously conceived storylines before I went completely, drooling, locked up in the psych ward with Janet From Another Planet level crazy.

And I know, okay? I know that I could easily turn the TV off and just not watch. I know. I always tell people that I will probably never not watch General Hospital. It's been a part of my life since I was a newborn. It's like when you're in school and you have a class with a kid you've known since nursery school and they're kind of annoying with their pseudo intellectual outlook on life like they're the first person ever to read Shakespeare, but...you've known them since nursery school. Similarly, I will always be loyal to Days of Our Lives, which I started watching when my aunt, who was in high school, babysat me when I was a wee little ingenue. To continue with the school metaphor, Days is like the kid who eats paste but who can truly hate the kid who eats paste? The odds are so stacked against them that it seems unnecessarily cruel.

I have no such lifelong loyalty to All My Children. I'm a somewhat recent viewer, only tuning in randomly to catch glimpses of Susan Lucci's diva act, who got sucked in by the appearance of Josh Duhamel in leather pants. Remember when he wore leather pants for like two months straight? Can we go back to that time? Those were the days. Anyway, I think I stick with a Duhamelless AMC because I either hate myself or am trying to learn how to raise my blood pressure.

As the Scalpel Cuts: Beware Botox

...okay, it may be more like "Beware Excessive Face Lifts," but I prefer alliteration.  I thought about not doing this post, because I know that actresses are under tremendous pressure to look young, and I think that's amplified in daytime.  So I didn't want to seem like I was attacking one particular actress for reacting poorly to treatment that's despicable.  But, not to sound all PSA up in here, if we can keep even one more actress from doing this to her face, it will have been worth it.

This post is basically brought to you by disappointment. You see, last week Monica Quartermaine's husband of nearly three decades, the father of her children, died. She must have been very upset. Devastated, even. But that was difficult to tell, because the woman playing her has lost the ability to move almost all of her face thanks to ill-advised cosmetic surgery.  It was so disappointing to see Leslie Charleston, who is actually quite a good actress, be unable to shine when she rightfully should have.

Let's steal a photo from Promising Ingenue's recent post and take a look at how cute Leslie Charleston was:

Days of Our Lives Week in Review

Last week, on Days of Our Liveszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. What is going on with this soap? Why is it back to moving at a snail's pace, recycling storylines, and focusing on extraneous characters? Someone needs to right this ship soon. Some random observations from five days of episodes that I can hardly distinguish from each other:

Ding, Dong, The Headwriter's Gone

I've been on cloud nine since a delightful reader told me the wonderful news that Megan McTavish has been officially fired. It's just...beautiful. I keep having these daydreams that all of the past couple of years will be done away with and there will be no Aborted Fetus, and no Zarf/Zoe, and no pancake murders and no torturing for Tad and no incredibly true adventures of an autistic teenager married to a murderer and no hackneyed breakup for Jack and Erica...

The woman is a poison. She's quite nearly on par with Jill Farren Phelps as far as show ruining goes. I mean, her most recent tenure on AMC goes without saying, but DID YOU KNOW that when she was the head writer at General Hospital , she was responsible for:

- Loon Lake

- Unfrozen Stavros

- Luke and Felicia

- AJ on the meathook

Perhaps most chillingly, the introduction of Courtney Matthews That's a whole lot of dreck in a concentrated amount of time. In some states, she would have been prosecuted and could have gotten twenty years to life in prison.

GH Week in Review, continued

Tracy (and Jane Elliot) Rocks

 

Scene: Carly inexplicably appears at the Quartermaine mansion a couple of seconds after Alan dies, to insert herself and her creepy-ass son where they do not belong (because she has insisted for years that they, in fact, do not belong).

Tracy's initial oh-no-you-di'int reaction is priceless:

GH Week in Review

I've just caught up on the last week of General Hospital. As I've said before, seeing five episodes at once of this show has its pros and cons. Pros include limiting your blood pressure increases to one sitting and fast-forwarding through scenes involving Sonny. Cons include still having to watch several hours of GH writing in one sitting, but seeing only about 1/4 of the show on account of fast-forwarding through scenes involving Sonny.

This week was a bit less Sonny-centric, though, so that was great. But this week the idiots that run this sinking ship unnecessarily and unceremoniously killed off Alan Quartermaine. I would vent about that, but Promising Ingenue has brilliantly already done that. To her I say, "seconded." I got all angry again reading her rant. Now that they've canned the head writer of AMC, could they get going on doing the same at GH? Ugh. Anyway, there were a couple of highlights this week that I had to memorialize, especially because they involved strong women over the age of 35 kicking ass, and that comes about on GH about as often as a total eclipse of the sun.

Alexis (and Nancy Lee Grahn) Rocks