Serial Drama

Oh, Kirsten

Kirsten Storms was busted for DUI over the weekend. Not cool, Kirsten. Not cool.

(Also, I know that soaps are considered, like, the ghetto of high culture [although that should probably be reconsidered, what with the Rock of Love and Who Wants to be a Superhero shows out there], but would it have killed them to fact check and see what show she's actually on now?)

(And! I feel dirty admitting to reading TMZ, but TMZ has a copy of the police report and it says she's 5'3" and 110 pounds, which can't possibly be right. Maybe when she actually was on Days, but not so much now...)

Our Column in the 9/18 Issue of SOD

Pick up the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest, currently on newsstands, for our latest "My Take/My Take, Too" column. Becca expresses her disappointment with General Hospital: Night Shift, including the rut Patrick and Robin seem to be stuck in, as well as the silliness of the alternate reality concept. Mallory talks about being all cried out over All My Children and worries about Sabine Singh.

The Day's Most Disturbing Dialogue

Sonny:  Letitia was killed, Michael.  Looks like it might have been one of my enemies. [Inappropriate!  -Ed.]
Michael:  You have to kill them, dad.  I loved Letitia.  You have to make them pay for killing her.
Sonny:  That's not the answer, Michael.
Michael:  I don't care.  You can't let them get away with -
Sonny:  Enough!  Letitia loved you, very much.  She wouldn't want you to grow up to be the kind of person who would want revenge.
Michael:  They have to pay for killing her.

1) How f'ed up is this kid?!  If I am supposed to feel anything other than terror or a full-body cringe at even the mention of Michael's name, this show is failing miserably.  Can't they just SORAS him to 18, so I can feel less bad about wanting a fictional character to get caught in the mob crossfire?
2) Since when is Sonny the voice of restraint in a mafia-related conversation?  It makes me feel icky.
3) People, they killed off the nanny to start yet another mob war, and also to set up the biggest mobsters in town as the victims.  I really need some kind of chart so I can accurately pinpoint just how far below acceptable this show does.  I think I remember from geometry that some lines are infinite, so that will help.

Oh, and this:

Sam to Jerry, indignantly:  You're serious?  You want me to sleep with my sister's grandfather?!

Let me just put on my very best Cameron face and say:  Bitch, please. 

Sam:  If all you wanted was secrets out of Trevor, why didn't you just hire yourself a hooker, or something?
Jerry: No, no, no, Trevor's way too smart for that.  Come on!  You, on the other hand, can bring up any name without raising Trevor's suspicion.  Because you've slept with all of them.

Ha!  Two points to the psychopath.

But poor terribly wardrobed, horribly written-for Kelly Monaco.  The only thing I'm looking forward to is that if Sam follows through with all this revenge sex, it's likely to send her to the bottom of a bottle, and I swear there are few better things on daytime than Kelly Monaco playing drunk.  Cheers, Sam! 

Take Your Own Words to Heart

A couple of weeks back, Annie Wersching's Amelia had this fabulous line, in reference to Sam's stupid talk show that nobody would ever watch if it actually existed:

Amelia:  Recasting is a LOT of trouble.  And it usually ends up a disaster.

Don't I know it, sister!  (That Greg Vaughn was in that scene, though…burn.) 

Anyway, now that the news is that Wersching has been cast as a series regular on 24 this season, I must ask that GH take a rare good piece of dialogue to heart, and not recast.  It seems like this is a good opportunity to sunset both the character and the asinine "talk show about Sam's heroic...ish exploits" storyline. 

So long, Fivehead (note: is a term of endearment). We hardly knew ya, Amelia.  Well, we did, and at first we were annoyed by you, then we grew to adore your crazy self, but then you started worshiping Jason (because there just isn't enough of THAT on this show) and we became pretty indifferent to you.  Love the new hair, though!

General Hospital Week in Review, -ish

No official Week in Review this week, but I feel like that's okay, because I spewed about 17 weeks' worth of venom last week.  Oh, and earlier this week.  And Mallory already hit on the highlight of the week -- Georgie speaking the anti-mob truth -- which would have made this a great GH week if it weren't bookended by another damned mob war.  It really says all you need to know about the people who run this show that as they sat down to map out the next few months' worth of this quickly fading soap, the overriding theme they decided on was "more violence!"  They are seriously, truly, totally damaged.

But enough bad stuff; there were a few positive developments this week.  If "a few" equals "exactly and no more than three."

1.  CARLY WORE A BRA.  Or at least it appeared that way.  With a backless shirt.  I'm not kidding.  I didn't even know how to process it when I saw it.  I thought maybe that switchover to HDTV had happened early and I needed to get one of those translator thingies to see things properly.

Girl, I know!  I was totally puzzled too.

Days of Our Lives Week in Review, Sort Of

Sorry guys, but personal life events require an abbreviated Week in Review this time around (Tragic hair-coloring accident?  Diet soda overdose?  Shoe-shopping induced exhaustion?  You decide).  So I thought I'd hit the main high and low points and then throw it open in the comments to suggestions for new Executive Producer Ed Scott, dubbed by the awesome Stephen Nichols as "The Dude in the Orange Shoes."

On with the highs and lows, with an assist from our underutilized awesome alert scale.

Awesome:

EJ calling Sami a "modern-day version of a Stepford wife."  Word to your crazy-ass, multi-personalitied mother, EJ. 

(Though I think it is worth noting that Stepford wives are less screechy.  What is happening to Sami these days?  She and Lucas are a pretty angry couple.)

Santo and Colleen.  Yes, it's pure cheese, his mustache and her wig are still guffaw-inducing, and the accents are terrible, but I am loving this nice distraction from the usual Salem goings-on.  Plus really anything that gets James Scott shirtless more often is a very good thing.

Night Shift Episode 9: Gutter Ball

PREVIOUSLY on Night Shift: Lainey's father's condition is worsening and he needs surgery deemed by Dr. Ford to be unnecessary because Dr. Ford hates all human beings; we were introduced to a Kentucky fried southern caricature playing the MedCam guy; Epiphany mooned over Billy Dee Williams; Maxie had an abscess in BJ's heart and had emergency surgery performed by the increasingly dreamy Dr. Leo Julian,  but then flatlined due to the machinations of MYSTERIOUS FIGURE; MYSTERIOUS FIGURE was revealed to be Jolene; Robin contracted a case of baby rabies and made plans to adopt Stacy's daughter; Patrick observed the Robin hijinks and responded with his best impression of Marge Simpson's exasperated groan; Nazanin Boniadi was put on contract at the OG GH; Amanda Baker was tapped to play Babe on All My Children; the actress who plays Regina was like "What the hell?!"

There are a lot of things in life that I don't understand, like why people have bad phone manners, trigonometry, how fax machines work, Fergie, etc. And now we can add something else to the list: how Bob Guza and Jill Farren Phelps were given a new show to write without ever having to provide anyone with an outline for how the 13 episodes would go.

BRIAN FRONS: We want you to write a show with some of the GH characters, but make it a little different.
BOB GUZA: What will I write about?
BRIAN FRONS: Don't know, don't care.
BOB GUZA: 'Kay!

I mean, giving this kind of freedom to two people with long track records of decimating shows seems unwise, to say the least.

The Year's Most Awesome Dialogue

In Bob Guza's immaculate corner office, a tired, pale writer walks in, warily looking around at the Steve Burton posters adorning the wall and approaches Guza, who is sitting at his desk, absentmindedly playing Solitaire.

AWESOME WRITER: Um, Bob? Do you have a second?
BOB GUZA: Oh, look who it is! What's goin' on? You look really pale. Maybe you need Kelly to take you to Mystic Tan...
AWESOME WRITER: I'd probably have more color if I was ever let out of my office...
BOB GUZA: Pardon?
AWESOME WRITER: Never mind. So, I've been thinking: you know what this show needs more of?
BOB GUZA: Rape?
AWESOME WRITER: No.
BOB GUZA: Mobsters?
AWESOME WRITER: No.
BOB GUZA: Carly?
AWESOME WRITER: God, no. I was actually thinking we need more Georgie.
BOB GUZA: What the hell is a Georgie?
AWESOME WRITER: Frisco and Felicia's daughter?
BOB GUZA: The slut?
AWESOME WRITER: No, the other one.
BOB GUZA: Oh, right, the other one. What about her?
AWESOME WRITER: You know, we just never see her. I was thinking we can maybe put her with Spinelli and have her, uh, be, maybe, his conscience about wanting to be part of the mob.
BOB GUZA: Why on earth would anybody try to dissuade someone from being part of the mob?
AWESOME WRITER: Because it's illegal, immoral and done to death, no pun intended, on this show?
BOB GUZA: Okay, you're going to have to explain why that's a problem.
AWESOME WRITER: ...
BOB GUZA: Fine, you can write a scene for Gina or whoever. But on one condition--you have to dress her as unflatteringly as humanly possible. Wardrobe has some stuff obviously purchased in Dress Barn in 1998. Put her in that and you've got a deal.
AWESOME WRITER: ...sigh.

And that, dear readers, is how we came to hear the most amazing bit of dialogue spoken on GH:

Let's be honest -- he kills people for Sonny...Even if all the people that Jason's ever killed deserved it, it is still a relentlessly negative, destructive way to live your life.

Thank you for fighting the good fight, Awesome Writer!!!

The Role of Babe Carey Will Now Be Played By...

I am a liar.

Remember how I recently said "I know they will never get rid of Babe, but she might be easier to stomach if she wasn't played by someone so insanely smug"?

I lied. Babe will never be easier to stomach. Never!

Especially since she's going to be played by Amanda Baker, known to many of you as the slightly dim-witted, murderous Jolene on General Hospital: Night Shift. Nothing against Ms. Baker, but, as written, Babe is such a horrible character that it would require a great actress to make her anything but wretched. And her tenure on NS has told me that, uh, she's not so much with the great (although she is the best of the Pink Ladies. That's damning with the faintest of faint praise, but, hey, a compliment's a compliment). So this could be interesting or it could be a trainwreck...or it could be an interesting trainwreck.

The most irritating thing of all, though? Is this:

Explains a show rep, "[Havins's] Babe will hug Krystal and when they separate from the hug, it will be Amanda Baker [in] the role."

That's so painfully true to AMC's All Babe All The Time philosophy. It's like they can't even stomach the thought of having Babe offscreen for thirteen seconds, so they need to do an instant recast. I hate you, AMC.

Deja Vu All Over Again

I know, what with her hack related tendencies, that Lynn Marie Latham isn't used to winning Best ________ for anything (aside from, of course, Best Dismantling Of the Greatest Soap on Television) so she must not have known exactly what to do with herself after she won tied for the Best Daytime Drama at this year's Emmy ceremony, because if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

(I mean, obviously, it ain't not broke and is frankly begging to be fixed, but I don't expect her to realize that. See above re: hack related tendencies)

I have to say, I didn't think that even LML would decide that the best way for her to win the Emmy outright, rather than tie, was to repeat every single story from last year. That's, like, a whole new brand of low.

THEN

• Phyllis was kidnapped by Sheila (who had Phyllis's face at the time) and, during her imprisonment, we were treated to weeks of assorted Genoa City folk remembering how Phyllis is the most angelic angel to ever grace the earth with her angelic presence

NOW

• Phyllis is on her way to the slammer and we're being treated to weeks/eons of people talking about how Phyllis is the most amazing person to ever amaze people. Like when Daniel was sick once when he was little? She totally made him soup. It's totally heartwarming if you overlook the fact that Phyllis didn't have custody of Daniel when he was little. Soup, y'all! That's real love. 

THEN

• WHO KILLED CARMEN MESTA?! Let's look at a huge list of principle characters who could have done it before learning that it was actually a random who did it!

NOW

• WHO KILLED JI MIN?! The show is trying to present all of Genoa City as a suspect, but you know it will be a random. My money's on Genoa City Athletic Club Extra #56, although Crimson Lights Patron #5 is looking pretty suspicious, too.
  
  The most tragic part about Ji Min leaving is that it inspired this from Becca:

  BTW, is it true Y&R shitcanned the Daytime Emmys sarong guy?  That’s sa-rong!  A pun!  I hate myself

THEN

• Minutes after Carmen was killed, we were introduced to her identical cousin, Inez! Who was promptly forgotten about, but whatever.

NOW

• If you miss Will Bardwell and are sad that he was killed off for no apparent reason other than that this writing staff has a hard on for killing people off, have no fear, because he, too, has an identical cousin! Wacky!

THEN

• Jack Abbott was apparently more despicable than an amoeba on a flea on a rat

NOW

• Jack Abbott is apparently more despicable than an amoeba on a flea on a rat. Because it's apparently a new and exciting plot for a politician to be accused of being shady. The intrigue!

I know that budgets are tight, but come on, have we really come to the point where we need to re-use scripts? Let's stop gluing faux Swarovski crystals onto Amber's cell phone and use that time to write new stories, people.