Serial Drama

Charm! Chapters 14-24

I am the worst person ever, dear readers, because I have gotten HUGELY behind in my Charm! recapping duties. Depriving you of the saga of Avery & Co. for so long is just cruel. Things just got so insane, what with the whole "Diego is the TMK on GH" thing and the "Stripper Pole at Fusion on AMC That I am SO Writing About Soon" thing and the "Javier Bardem is totally sexy" thing. Please forgive me.

When we last left our fair heroine, she was having dinner with newly discovered sister Lucy and dealing with the fallout of her discovery that her birth mother is Patricia Lucas, a once famous actress who only gave birth to A. because she was afraid of having a botched abortion and mulling over the idea of dating the mysterious Brad Henry who seems to have a shady past.

CHAPTER 14

Lucy and Avery dine at a fashionable restaurant near Lincoln Center, specifically chosen because Avery thought Lucy would like the "seen and be seen" factor there. They dine on salad, pasta and white wine. They make a toast to sisterhood and Avery asks Lucy to spill the details of her life.

Lucy's life, thus far, has been boring: her parents divorced and both remarried before she was in high school, then her mother married again before she went to college and, finally, she wound up in New York. Her father was a movie producer who turned his back on Hollywood and moved to Costa Rica with his second wife to run an eco-resort.

She grew up in Beverly Hills and, coincidentally, went to the same school as Parker, though Parker was a few years older. They have a good laugh about Parker's wild child ways. Avery asks about Patricia, and Lucy wonders if she's ever going to call her "Mom". Avery points out that she's only known her for a few days and really wants to know what Patricia is like as a mother. Lucy says that actresses don't work so well as mothers; Patricia was, obviously, self-absorbed and didn't pay her daughter much attention and Lucy would up being very lonely. Avery pities her sister for being "overweight and a little clumsy".

Patricia would fall in love and run away, returning with a new husband. Her second husband was creepy, but he was rich enough to balance out the fact that Patricia's career was on a downward spiral, and her third husband was a very sweet cinematographer who eventually left, and Patricia never really got over it.

Avery wonders if Patricia ever mentioned her and is disappointed to hear that she did not. Lucy tries to make her feel better by telling her that when Patricia finally did tell her about the older daughter she gave up for adoption, she said that she felt guilty and empty without Avery, and Avery is happy to hear that Patricia feels guilty.

Lucy asks how Avery feels about their mother, and Avery non-answers that she's glad she knows the truth and still needs some time to sort out her feelings. She tells Lucy the sanitized version of her life story (middle class, only child, nothing fun), but feels badly about not being able to tell her sister the whole truth. She feels ashamed about her past again some more, because I don't think that point was driven home yet, despite being mentioned in every chapter.

Lucy says that Avery is making up for her boring childhood with such a glam job. Avery says that her job requires a lot of hard work.

They make a toast to Avery's amazingness and Lucy says she wishes Avery wasn't so pretty. Avery, who is kind of an asshole sometimes, says that Lucy is "very attractive" and thinks to herself that "when the time was right, Avery would make some suggestions on Lucy's wardrobe, treat her to a gym membership and teach her a few makeup tips". (p. 68)

But for now, Lucy is just an ugly, poorly dressed behemoth living in Williamsburg with two friends she went to Middlebury with. She hints that she's looking for a job, and Avery offers her an assistant position, but warns her that she's going to have to earn the right to keep it.

Maybe, Like Alanis, They Don't Understand What Irony Is?

For those holding out hope that last week's anti-violence public service announcement was the sign of the tides turning, of the GH showrunners demonstrating -- for the first time since gas was under $2 a gallon -- that they understand that violence has turned this once-great soap into a steaming pile of, well, corpses . . .  Good god, what the hell were you thinking?  Do you even watch this show?

The word of the day is:  Juxtaposition. 

The PSA last week:

"Violence is never the answer.  And violence in our communities committed by young people is a tragedy, and needs to stop.  It can be prevented if we set the right example.  To find proper resources to help prevent youth violence, please visit safeyouth.org."

Is GH living up to those big, self-righteous words?  Of course . . .

. . . not.  Let's look at yesterday's episode, shall we? 

Our Column in the 3/4 Issue of Soap Opera Digest

Check your mailboxes or pop by a check-out stand near you, because our column is in the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest.  Becca discusses her personal lack of balance in the literal sense, Days of Our Lives' lack of balance with respect to Marlena, and General Hospital's newfound attempts to balance out the mob storylines. (It's, like, a theme and stuff.)  Mallory celebrates Lucky's progression out of dunce-ville (and continued residence in hotness-town) but laments his sister Lulu's downward spiral into Carly-burg.

Also:  Photos of James Scott (shirtless! Don't our editors know us well?) and Greg Vaughn.  Those right there are worth the price of admission, friends.

Days of Our Lives Week in Review

Sweeps went out with a bit of whimper on Days last week, but it was still some pretty good soap.  In a week of overall non-outrageousness, though, there were some outrageous happenings.

How outrageously excessive has Deidre Hall's 2008 screentime been? Enough with Marlena-palooza!  If I have to sit through another week with Marlena on every day, my soul might react thusly:

But whatever.  They're back in Salem, so Marlena can't possibly be on every damned day anymore, right? 

I was all prepared to be extra-traumatized this week by a John and Marlena sex scene (I occasionally read my Soap Opera Digest, you know!), but it turned out it was just them making out a little bit.  Regular readers know I have been traumatized on the regular by these two getting it on, but somehow with the cheesy soundtrack covering up any overly dramatic moaning, and the absolute non-smurfiness of John's mad woo-ing skills made it okay this time.  I mean, this was freaking hilarious:

Marlena: ...You're not here.
John: Well, maybe my mind isn't.  But my body sure as hell is.  So just take what you can get.

Hee.  Are you swooning yet, Doc?

And then, when she decided to take what she could get, right before they got down to business, this:

John: Brace yourself.

Haaa!  Robotic dickhead John never ceases to amuse.  (Marlena did later use my most despised soap phrase, "making love," but I can't rant about that without access to lots of alcohol.  I am, seriously, physically revolted by that phrase.)

Anyway, "Brace yourself" is the new "You complete me."  You heard it here first.

This Effing Show

There was a time in my life when I thought that the ridiculous decision to reveal that James Craig is actually a short, blonde, face transplanted Jerry Jacks was the dumbest thing that General Hospital had done in years and that they'd need to exert considerable effort in order to top that.

And we all know that the GH powers-that-be exert effort as often as they give screentime to Jacklyn Zeman. After all, WHY write for a dozen characters when you can just have the same four people have the same conversation every day? And WHY write stories about women being strong and independent when you can just use scripts from the 1950s and have women on your show solely to be victims or incubators? And WHY dress your cast in clothes that seem like they could be sold in actual stores when you can instead borrow hats from kindly grandmothers?

But that was foolish. Because the GH powers-that-be DO sometimes work hard to do something and when they do it, they are unfailingly committed to it. Unfortunately, that "something" is not "creating an entertaining, engaging soap opera" but is, rather "rewrite history with a blatant disregard for medical science, an overriding lack of originality and a massive amount of disrespect for the audience watching at home".

This is a lengthy way of saying that I despised today's big reveal of the Text Message Killer. That's the best they could do? In the words of Cam, "Bitch, please".

Squealing Fangirl Alert

I've sat down about a dozen times in the past week or so to write about how much I loathe AMC lately and yet, mysteriously, I can't manage to finish one of my novella length screeds about how terrible this show is.

And you know that's never a problem for me; I pretty much live for the opportunity to criticize people, places and things. There was a period of time, late into Megan McTavish's last era as head writer of AMC, that I was frothing at the mouth with hatred for the show. I lambasted her stories at every chance I got, derided the casts' lackluster performances and started saying "Ugh, Zarf!" in lieu of swearing.

It's not like the show is actually better now. If anything, Barbara Esensten and James Harmon Brown have actually made the show LESS watchable than it was under McTavish, which is so beyond my comprehension of the laws of life that I can't even describe it with anything but a befuddled "...???..."

And yet, if you were to come up to me after an episode and ask how the show was, chances are I'd be all, "OHMIGOD! Seriously, OHMIGOD! It is so good! LOVE! AMC for Outstanding Daytime Drama! Woo! Wooo!"

You know why? Because Brian Frons is an evil genius. He brought back Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams.

Unlike the humiliating and awful way General Hospital botched the return of Tristan Rogers, the powers-that-be at AMC have given Angie and Jesse a front burner storyline and has treated the two characters with the respect that they deserve, rather than just using them as a sweeps stunt (for now, obviously. This could change in a few weeks). All I know about Angie and Jesse, I've learned from YouTube and their episodes now and watching the two of them do their thing has turned me into a complete fangirl. <33Jesse&Angie4Ever<33

Jesse's explanation for being gone for twenty years makes no sense to me, but...I don't know, I am not having a problem ignoring the inconsistencies (well, except, how did no one, from the hospital staff to the police not see that the body of a cop killed in the line of duty had gone missing?) just because he and Angie and Frankie, who is an almost eerie combination of his onscreen parents, are so awesome. I feel like it's simply not possible for me to be more of a sucker than I am at the moment. I cry myself to sleep at night, because I have to live with the tragic knowledge that Brian Frons has gotten one over on me.

(There are a lot of YouTube clips for people wise enough to stay away from the clusterfuck that is the non Jesse/Angie parts of AMC, by the way)

Can You Buy Self Awareness on Amazon?

If there is anything, in the world, that is as baffling as the PSA at the end of yesterday's General Hospital, I haven't seen it. And, you know, I watched the entirety of General Hospital: Night Shift and the Melaswen era of Days of Our Lives, so I know from baffling.

But watching Megan Ward valiantly tell us that violence is never the answer while Dylan Cash tried his best to read cue cards about gun violence without messing up, I found myself thinking that there are ways that I can justify the existence of Casey the Alien, or people coming back from the dead but I can't wrap my mind around the ludicrous hypocrisy of the powers-that-be at GH and ABC Daytime for having the audacity to say that violence is bad when they produce a show that is five hours a week of violence and murders being glamorized and deified. That's a lack of self-awareness on an epic scale.

Because WHERE would the audience POSSIBLY get the idea that violence is peachy keen, jellybean?

Could it be the artfully lit shootouts set to romantic ballads?

Could it be that when I google "Sonny orders Jason to kill", I get links to

• Sonny ordering Jason to kill the person who stole his therapy records
• Sonny ordering Jason to kill Manny
• Sonny ordering Jason to kill Faith
• Sonny ordering Jason to kill Lorenzo
• Sonny ordering Jason to kill Johnny
• Sonny ordering Jason to kill Trevor

???

Could it be that when I google "Sonny threatens to kill", I get links to

• Sonny threatening to kill Johnny
• Sonny threatening to kill Jerry
• Sonny threatening to kill Ric

???

Could it be that when I do a little digging around through the transcripts at TV Megasite, I found Sonny threatening to kill Alexis, the mother-of his child, twice

• Once, just for being the District Attorney: "You're not going to allow me to do anything because you have no authority over me here, no power over me here! And if you don't keep your mouth shut, stay out of my business, I will treat you like any other D.A.--have you thrown out on your butt, locked up for corruption or even disappear! And I don't want to hear "I'm the mother of your daughter" crap
• Again, after Sam bumped into her at the opening of the Haunted Star: "Keep your distance from her. You got to respect the fact that [Jason]'s just trying to protect her, right? Sam doesn't like you; you don't like her. Keep your distance, otherwise--hey, whatever Jason does, Jason does".

???

Could it be that the leading men and moral compasses of this show are a life long sadistic criminal and his unrepentant hitman who are unfailingly portrayed as right, just and good people?

Because from where I'm sitting, the only reason why this is classified as a "bad" shooting on this show is that Michael is a kid and also shot Kate completely by accident. If he were a couple of years older and did it on purpose, it would be totally lauded and we'd hear about what a good man Michael is.

THIS SHOW IS SO FUCKED UP.

General Hospital Week in Review

There was no significant story movement, Patrick is all of a sudden operating with the intellect level of Spam, at this point I'm convinced that there is a backstage pact to make the Text Message Killer storyline the longest and yet least-involving in the history of the soap genre, and the Who Hit Sam? story has me bored before she's even out of the hospital, but weirdly . . . I didn't hate GH last week.  Maybe it's because the day-to-day dialogue still seems like it's a bit improved?  Or maybe it's the heavy medication and binge drinking.  I foreclose no possibility.  Anyway, I don't have a whole lot to say, because taking out the storylines I hate and given the aforementioned lack of movement, almost nothing of interest happened.  But there were some fun (or "fun" in some cases) lines.

First off, I admit, not all the dialogue was good.  This, from when Alexis opened her front door holding a jar of spaghetti sauce, was probably the worst.

Diane:  Prego, the working woman's friend!
Alexis: It's heart smart, okay?
Diane: So is what's in here. ::points to wine::

You groaned in disgust just reading that, didn't you?  I hope Nancy Lee Grahn and Carolyn Hennesy went out and got drunk on that wine after shooting that scene, trying to drown their sorrows over being turned into shills for shitty pasta sauce.  First the V8 Fusion thing, now this. 

Someone in the comments said this is an ABC Daytime deal with Campbell's.  If that's the case, might I suggest alternate product pimping avenues?   For example, Patrick is in the hospital cafeteria and spills tomato juice on himself, requiring him to take off his shirt.  And possibly also his pants.  It could be a really big can of juice!  Or, Jax is out surfing (shirtless) and rehydrates with a quick tomato juice.  Or, Lucky is doing a police drill in which he gets shot, and they use tomato juice as fake blood, and then for the medical part of the drill a paramedic has to rip off his shirt.  Or, Ric is watching Molly and she spills her tomato juice all over his shirt, which he must immediately remove in order to clean.  Or if they're set on working products into dialogue, Logan could say "It's impossible for me to walk even a few feet without some huge anvil with 'serial killer red herring' etched into it slamming into my head.  You know what, I should have had a V8!"  (Oh, and he is shirtless.)

I have a thousand of these ideas!

Better yet, just put a picture of whatever crappy Campbell's product they want me to buy in the lower left-hand corner of the screen throughout the show.  Because I can tell you I am a thousand times more likely to buy any of those than I am to watch half the shit that ABC tries to push there normally.  Wife Swap?  Are they high?

Days of Our Lives Week in Review

It's possible I'm just on a three-day-weekend high, but were you as pleasantly surprised by Days last week as I was?  Almost a full week's worth of episodes that took place on a plane about to crash (phobia alert OMGOMGOMG), and they actually made for some pretty good soap. 

First of all, it started off great, because in true Days fashion the fake external shot was ridiculous (and therefore awesome).

That is the largest private jet in the history of the world, other than Phillip's.

And the jet belongs to John, who, I'm sorry, is totally hilariously awesome when he is in unabashed dickhead robot mode.  Which is all the time.  You guys, he called Steve "Dead Eye"!  I love Steve, but I laughed my ass off.  Snotty nicknames and Marlena hate?  This is a John I can get behind.  And he's very equal opportunity in his douche-iness.  No matter the situation, or who's involved, he's going to be a dick.

Marlena: John, have you figured out a way to land the plane?
John:  Well, no sense beating around the bush:  No.  As far as I can tell, we're going to be up here until we run out of fuel.
Chloe: And then what?
John: We join Colleen and Santo in the sweet hereafter.
Chloe: How can you calmly tell us we're all going to die?
John: It's not what I want.  Just trying to be realistic.
Phillip:  There must be something you can do, John.
John:  Probably.  Hasn't hit me yet.  Pilots are unconscious because their water was drugged.  We've got no radio, losing cabin pressure, controls are unresponsive, can't change course, or altitude, which means we can't land, and we will be without fuel in two hours' time.  You do the math.  And the worst part is that this jet has gotta be worth millions.  And the way we're going, she's gonna be a total loss.

Airborne comedy gold.

more at twiigs.com...

Hope, Faith and Charity

Either my allergies are worse than usual today or I cried at an intentionally sad moment on The Young and the Restless (as opposed to the gallons of tears cried over the terrible storylines that we've hopefully seen the last of now that LYNN MARIE LATHAM IS GONE!). Is it just me, or was Hope dying really sad?

It was probably just me, but here is my reasoning:

1. Signy Coleman looks...you know what? I read in either Soap Opera Digest or Soap Opera Weekly about her return to the show and how she was happy to come back and then they told her they'd be killing Hope off and she got so sad that she started crying in the middle of Barnes and Noble and that made me feel unbelievably bad for her, so I am going to be charitable and just say that she looks...different than she used to. Her tan and her extreme thinness and her collegen look uncomfortable. Like, they make me hurt.

2. Even when his ex-wife and mother of one of his sons is dying, Victor still can't help but be a dick and that makes me sad.

Victor: I'm your father, you know? So I think I... know a little bit more what you feel right now than you realize

Victor: I've lived a little longer than you have. And I know that if you don't listen to what she said, her words will keep on running through your mind for the rest of your life. And you will know no peace.

Maybe it's just me, but if I were talking to a boy whose mother was in the other room DYING and who has absolutely no relationship with me and didn't know until the other day that I was his father and is having some difficulty dealing with that revelation (even though the fact that his name being Victor Junior should have been a tip off), I'd try to at least make an effort not to be my normal douchebag self. Not our Victor, though.   

And when Vic comes back to Genoa City, we're going to have a Vic, a Nick, a Victoria, a Nikki and a Victor. I know right now that it's going to drive me crazy.

3. It was actually a legitimately sad scene! I know I'm a sap and all, but how could I not tear up a little bit?

Hope: Just having... both of you here is everything I need. I was... just lying here thinking... sometimes... it takes someone being very unselfish, very powerful love to stay away. Victor... he never forgot you.

Hope: I need you both to know that I have loved you with all that I am, body and soul. You have been... the two greatest joys of my life. And after I'm gone, I won't be here in body, but I will be with you in spirit. My love... will always be with you. You are written on my heart. Please... make peace with each other. Love each other. Take care of each other. Please.

Aww!

It's really a complete waste to kill Hope off. I always liked Hope and Victor's relationship with her, and it seems short-sighted to kill her. Since Nikki's off gallivanting with David Chow (played, hilariously, by Signy Coleman's ex-husband!), Victor's single and it would have been nice to see him reconnect with Hope. But who am I kidding? Y&R doesn't do long-term storylines anymore. But maybe the new writer will!!! Because Lynn Marie Latham was fired! And I still haven't come off that high yet.