Serial Drama

Charm! Chapters 5-13

PREVIOUSLY in Charm!: Finn died; Marcus was a cad; Parker was a spoiled bitch; Avery grew up poor and unhappy and thinks about it all the time; Avery is intrigued by Brad, a handsome stranger; Avery receives a strange voicemail from a woman claiming to be her mother; the awesomeness and badness went up to eleven.

I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and Charm! is prominently featured in one of their displays. A woman who was browsing picked it up and said to her friend, "This girl is pretty!" and it took every single fiber of my being not to squeal and accost her and say "Ohmigod, it's the worst and simultaneously most BRILLIANT book I have read in AGES". Because it is!

CHAPTER 5

Avery is not perfect--she doesn't rise early to work out, eat a sensible breakfast and go to work in a jolly mood. And on this particular morning, she overslept and is incredibly out of sorts and is having a horrifically bad hair day. She's still a little freaked out about the fact that a woman called claiming to be her mother, but shrugs it off as an over invested crazy doing the sort of thing that over invested crazies do. I, on the other hand, would be totally bugging about some nutbar claiming to be my mother and probably wouldn't be able to go to sleep at all, let alone sleep and then oversleep.

As she makes coffee, she daydreams about the kiss that she and Brad had and tries to get over it because you don't succeed in life when you go all gooey and lovestruck over a guy you spent half an hour with. Which does not bode well for me, a lot of my day is spent going gooey and lovestruck over Chace Crawford, who I do not even know. (aside: OMG! New episodes of Gossip Girl may be ready in APRIL!) I am never going to succeed in life!

When she leaves for work, she finds Marcus and curses his handsomeness. He's charming and sincere and she's giving him the proverbial hand, because the face isn't listening, and she starts to walk away. He tries to apologize by saying that he's been busy at work and he needed to have some fun. She counters that there are other ways to have fun besides getting trashed and sleeping around. He's all "I did it! And by admitting it, you can't be mad at me anymore" and says that he knows it will hard, but he'll get her trust back. She asks if his escapades were due to the fact that he was mad at her and he says "I hadn't thought of that but, yeah, well, probably. You've been so damn busy. It's like, if she's so into me, what gives?"

That Neanderthal logic brings out the drama queen in Avery and she says, "What gives? My future gives, that's what gives. This is make-or-break time for Flair, you know that. Couldn't you just bear with me for a little while? You bastard!" (p. 27) Melodramatically saying "You bastard!" will never not make me positively gleeful. Like, when the fax machine gets jammed up? Kick it and say "You bastard!" and you'll feel much better.

He's still trying the whole, "If I agree with you thing and show that I think you're right, it will be easier for you to stop being angry with me" thing and when she starts to leave for her train, he tries the last desperate move in his arsenal, shouting after her that he loves her.

Avery hesitates before finally saying that more than words is all you have to do to make things real, then he wouldn't have to say that he loves her because she'd already know. Girl power!

My Valentine's Gift to Patrick: A Clue!

Dear Patrick,

1) You had sex with your ex-girlfriend.
2) During The Sex, the condom broke.
3) The Ex-Girlfriend is now pregnant.
4) You heard The Ex-Girlfriend say she is lying, that she did not use an anonymous donor, that it is someone she had The Sex with who has commitment issues.

Dr. Brain Surgeon, you are going to be a daddy.  Please figure this out soon, lest I have to reconsider my recent decision to consider reconsidering the revocation of your hotly modifer, a revocation which originally involved much consideration and reconsideration.  Oh dear, I've further confused you, haven't I?  Let me simplify:  Hot=Good.  Stupid=Not Hot.   

Sincerely,
Becca

P.S.  Egg+Sperm=Pregnancy.  Also, 2+2=4.  Good luck with all that life savin'!

P.P.S.  I want Claudia's arms.  If you could take time out of your busy brain-fixing, nurse-schtupping schedule to arrange some kind of transplant, that would be fab.  And would likely speed up that reconsideration of revocation thingie.

What the eff are the writers doing with this story?  And these are the decent ones!  What happens when the reign of terror resumes?   Oh my god, Robin's totally getting shot in the head while she's in labor, isn't she?  And Patrick will be there, but he'll be all "Why is there a hole in her skull?  What's that red stuff?  Why is she so quiet? . . . Hey, do you think this might be my kid?!"

Oh, Happy Day!

In the words of Lisa Simpson: Today's top story-- little girl on cloud nine as dream comes true.

After months of complaining about her incredibly cheesy, relentlessly horrible, repetitive plots, out of character characters, unbalanced storytelling and boneheaded casting decisions, long-suffering fans were given a gift from CBS, as they finally took the hint and showed Lynn Marie Latham the door.

I repeat:

Lynn Marie Latham was fired.

I just...I feel like Julia Roberts presenting Denzel Washington with his Oscar. I could start singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing". I could...like, skip through the streets. I am so excited that I'm not even going to be pessimistic and worry about what head writer will come in next.

Since He Knows Everything, Could He Please Explain Crocs?

Jason: Elizabeth, we've been over this. 
Elizabeth: But I could have done this!
Jason: Okay.  Spinelli was able to put three more people on the road who could have been behind the wheel:  Carly, Monica, and Nikolas.  Okay, and Nikolas already told you he had a blackout.  Please, please don't say anything.  Don't put yourself through even more hell until I'm able to check this out.

Spinelli is really good with computers (the show has been really subtle about that, but I followed the crumbs and figured it out!).  Is he also a superhero?  How the hell would he have found out all that?  (I was going to add "and why wouldn't the police have been able to get that same information?" but then I remembered it's the PCPD and the writers think that department has an IQ roughly on par with that of the Pussycat Dolls.)  Wouldn't it have been more reasonable that Jason had connections at all the auto body shops in town (someone has to clean the blood and brains out of trunk carpet!), and so he compiled the list of suspects?  This need to shoehorn Spinelli into so many stories by making him some kind of savant is irksome.  Why not give him a story separate from the mob?

I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking.  A non-hospital employee with a story separate from the mob.  Imagine!

I'm mostly just unwilling to believe that a person of Spinelli's apparently unlimited intellectual resources would not also have the ability to 1) determine the propriety and timeliness of a haircut, 2) figure out he was about to lose his virginity to a serial killer, and 3) talk like a human being.

A Very Special Episode

While watching Chloe the Fashionista make snide comments about Lily's weight, I kept having traumatic flashbacks to Blossom and their never-ending parade of issue story lines although, in fairness to Ms. Russo, not even her wardrobe was as hideous as Gloria's.

I just find this storyline to be silly, because, seriously, how much could Christel Khalil possibly weigh? I know that there's a difference between model skinny and real world skinny, and even model skinny and actress skinny, but I'm pretty sure that any way you cut it, this girl would not have these lines lobbed at her:

Lily: Am I gonna fit into any of these?

Chloe: Barely. I advise, uh, cutting back on snacking.

***

Chloe: Yeah, it's-- it's just--it's too tight. You drink a lot of water? You might feel a little bloated? Let's, uh, try wedging you into another one

I know they're going for "there's an UGLY side to a BEAUTIFUL business" and everything, and it's kind of like the running joke in The Devil Wears Prada about what a lard ass Anne Hathaway was, but it really seems to me like someone in the writer's room was like, "Remember when some bitchy sorority girls were taunting Colleen about her weight for two episodes? We wrote some really good bon mots for them. I wish we could use them...but how? Oh, I know! Lily's a model now, so we can just use them on her! It's perfect!"

So this is either going to lead (a)to a story where Lily has anorexia or bulimia for two weeks before being cured by Cane's love (b)to a story where Lily becomes addicted to diet pills for two weeks before being cured by Cane's love or (c)nowhere, because the Y&R writing staff's follow through is for shit.

I'm not saying that issue storylines can't be done well, because they can. Even eating disorder/body image storylines; Hannah's bulimia on Hollyoaks has been a wrenching story and Blair's eating disorder is handled really outstandingly on Gossip Girl. It's just that this show, and this storyline, is stupid. And it's making me sympathetic to Lily, which I always hate.

(And what the hell was with Lily declaring her love to Cane in the most bored tone of voice ever? You have a hot Aussie heir in front of you, woman! Put some emotion into it!)

However, it's really good to have Liz Hendrickson back on a soap! Remember the last time she was on AMC and it turned out that Maggie cheated on Bianca and Binks totally couldn't forgive her and yet had no problem forgiving Babe for stealing her child? And even though Maggie was all pretty and stuff, Bianca ignored her in favor of Zarf? All throughout that story, I kept saying "Liz deserves way better than this". And while this era of Y&R is, technically, way better than that mess, it's not like it's good or anything. But at least she had that commercial where she got to eat that delicious Special K with Chocolate cereal!

Charm! Chapters 1-4

I'm the kind of person who obsessively tracks her packages online when they are the most mundane of things, so when it came time to track the progress of Charm! by Kendall Hart, I was like a madwoman, refreshing the USPS website every five seconds ("The book's made its way to Secaucus! Huzzah!").

Why was I so excited about the arrival of this book? Because it was practically engineered to appeal to me.

A few key facts:

• I love a good train wreck. For example, I believe wholeheartedly that the people in charge of Grammy and MTV VMA nominations should nominate Kanye West in as many categories as possible so that we can watch him lose and have multiple nervous breakdowns over the course of an awards show. Placing bets on how many violent outbursts he'll have is one of the only ways to get through a bloated awards show. Also, I watch America's Next Top Model, whose entire mission statement is about being the biggest train to ever wreck.
• I read chick-lit. Sure, it's kind of lowbrow, but sometimes you just want to read something you're going to forget about in an hour and a half that will kill your brain cells in a fun, fizzy sort of way. I survived my English classes in college by balancing the dense assigned classics with some sort of frothy book, just for my sanity, although it did lead to one fevered finals week when I was so stressed out that the plots of the books kept intertwining. I stopped short of using Becky Bloom's trials and tribulations in a paper on Virginia Woolf's works, but only just. I do have chick-lit standards, though, and will rant early and often about the crimes against humanity that Jane Green has perpetrated (fun fact: Jemima J enraged me so much that I returned it to the library with a post-it note inside the cover imploring the next person to take it out not to use it and do something healthier for their mind, like...huffing).
• I love perfume. I've spent many an hour in Sephora dreamily smelling all of the different fragrances. I love Miss Dior Cherie, always fall in love with the Escada limited editions that get taken off the shelves disturbingly quickly, and Sui Dreams is my favorite.
• I love Kendall Hart. I just adore her, in any form, from Smidge to Alicia Minshew. I know that she can get on peoples nerves (my choosing her for the Best Heroine of 2007 was controversial, to say the least, and led to several people saying I had no credibility) and she's certainly over exposed at times, but still! She rules!

So the fact that there is something in the world that is a chick-lit train wreck about perfume written by Kendall? It's like Charm! was scientifically engineered to appeal to me.

And appeal to me, it does. It's awesomely bad and cheesy and fun. It's like pre-Federline Britney Spears in written form.

It only seems fair, dear readers, that you get to be a part of this journey so, without further adieu, the first in a series of recaps!

General Hospital Couple of Weeks in Review: As Usual, I Have Questions

At first there were scheduling issues, but now I'm just plain uninspired to write a Week in Review for GH, guys.  I'm not sure why.  The show hasn't been awful, and there have been some great moments.  Just nothing all that commentary-worthy, you know?  (Plus, truth be told, I was more interested in 90s episodes SoapNet showed today -- recaps coming to a blog near you.)  So instead, I bring you my latest list of questions.

• How entertainingly soapy is the ongoing Monica/Tracy catfight?  I heart it.  Tracy being all fierce and defiant, Monica calling Tracy a "litigious cow."  Glorious.
• Why is the Logan/Lulu/Johnny triangle so boring, when it involves such pretty people?
• Am I seriously supposed to care about Leyla and Dr. Devlin flirting?
  
• Is Patrick the dumbest neurosurgeon on earth?  Robin told him she's pregnant.  He knows they had sex a few weeks back and the condom broke.  And he doesn't suspect he might be a daddy-to-be?  This is a guy I'm supposed to believe fixes broken brains?  It's a good thing he's hot enough to distract me from this obvious story gap.
  
• Why hasn't Kimberly McCullough shanked the last three stylists who have come near her bangs?  I hate online petitions, but I am thisclose to starting one to implore her to grow those suckers out.
  

One Million Strong!

We are thrilled to report that due to our rather OCD-like tendencies to check our site stats, we know that one of you today will be the ONE MILLIONTH page load of Serial Drama!  We think this is both insane, and cool.  Insanely cool, in fact. 

You might remember a few months back on our first anniversary we mentioned we'd had more than 500,000 page loads.  Well, things have kicked up so much that now we're already crossing the million mark.  Woohoo!  (Things took a while to pick up, as those of you who were around at the beginning know.  We now have more visitors in a month than we had during our entire first six months, back on the old site.  Our little baby is growing up!)

So, we were totally letting this go to our heads.  And then we realized that Perez [effing] Hilton has like eight million page loads A DAY, and we got some perspective.  So, we modestly thank you for reading and spreading the word, and hope you continue to do so.  We will keep up with our scathing-speaking ways, trying to be worthy of your loyalty.

Days of Our Lives Week in Review

This week of Days was a rollercoaster of soap-viewing emotions for me:  On the one hand, the dialogue has gotten SO AWFUL that I start looking for things to do while watching the show, including but not limited to sorting my socks by season and color (true story).  But on the other hand, about a third of the week was flashbacks to episodes that sucked less, and plus you saw John slam Marlena's head into that big wooden door, right?  Then I'm sure you can see that there were bright spots.

I know I sound like a broken record, but dudes, Marlena is annoying the hell out of me.  I'm sure Deidre Hall is a nice person, and there's no question she's a Days icon, but for the love of the god that Colleen won't shut up about, could I get a Doc-free couple of days?  And John.  Ugh.  Drake Hogestyn has totally embraced the ham, with a side of robot, and while it is entertaining in an "oh my god, this is SO bad, I have to call Mallory this instant" kind of way, it's otherwise, you know, not good.  (He tasted his tears, people!)

HOWEVER.  All is forgiven, because this week, when John bashed Marlena's head into that door?  SOAP HEAVEN, ladies and gentlemen.  I mean, I am totally opposed to violence -- unless it is perpetrated against the people at both Ann Taylor and Gap who decided there was a need for a size called "00 - Curvy" -- but did that fake clunk of a skull against wood not make weeks of ODing on Marlena airtime completely and utterly worth it?!  I am giving myself a pass on enjoying what is technically domestic violence because of the high-camp factor, and because, well, Marlena annoys the shit out of me.  I am absolutely content with my moral relativism.

So anyway, Nolebucgrl in the forums posted that someone had made a video of The Slam on a loop, so of course I had to check it out.  If you like your uproarious physical assaults in small pieces, here is The Slam.  If you like it repeatedly and digitally manipulated in a most hysterical fashion, here is the video Nolebugrl mentioned.  Awesome.

And then there's this next video.  Here's the thing:  I hate those compilation "OMG, isn't MY couple so awesome?!1!?!11!!" videos on YouTube.  Or I should say, I don't understand them.  Who has that kind of time?  And inclination?  Who decides to make a video about the tortured relationship of Jason and Elizabeth instead of doing something really productive, like reading fashion blogs or watching 80s teen movies on cable?  I don't know.  But, all that being said, I've totally watched a few of them.  Nostalgia kicks in and I'm all, yes, I DO need to see Steve and Kayla's story set to a Journey tune!  Right now, on my laptop!  I so do!

Ahem.  I've gotten a bit off track.  Back on it, there are an assload of John and Marlena: The Truest Love In the History of All Love That Is So True We've Lost Track of the Fact That It's Fictional videos on YouTube.  So if that's your thing . . . never mind, if that's your thing, you're probably not here (but you're welcome here, regardless; just please don't email me any links to those things).  Anyhoodle, YouTube also has a recap of the less romantic moments of their relationship (capped off with The Slam), in the form of an awesomely snarky video called "Love Hurts" that is set to both that song as well as, I shit you not, "Smack That Bitch Up."  I implore you to watch it, and also write in its creator evilgenius1967 for president on any available ballots, because this thing is made of funny.  I emailed the link to Mallory and she replied:

I think I can say, with absolute certainty, that Al Gore's dream of the world wide web has served its purpose and can close shop now because nothing will ever, ever be better than that.

We think you'll agree that is not hyperbole in the least:

Dear Kendall: When Did You Get Dumb?

Dear Kendall,

I'm surprised that I have to write to you, of all people in Pine Valley, to remind you how to keep a secret. Mostly because you're fictional, but also because you used to be a pro at sketchiness. I could totally see myself schooling Annie in the art of being shady, because she's bland as the day is long, but you? It's shocking to me. I know you've turned over a new leaf and are pretty much an upstanding citizen and that's great. I'm proud! I'm just wondering if your growth as a human being has made it more difficult for you to tap into your past experience as a bad girl to remember how to act normal whilst doing shady things. Perhaps when Homer Simpson said, "Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?", he wasn't just being hilarious, but actually describing a real medical condition.

So, in the interest of teaching you some sort of common sense, I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that if you don't want your husband to find out that you had ill-advised sex with your ex-boyfriend when you thought that your husband and your ex-boyfriend's girlfriend were dead, you probably should not talk about it ad nauseum whenever you and your ex-boyfriend are in the same vicinity. Ideally, you shouldn't act like a neurotic twit, complete with flapping arms and a shrill voice, whenever someone mentions your ex-boyfriend's name, because that makes it look like you're (a) hiding something (b)mentally ill (c)auditioning for a role on a zany, Sex and the City-esque sitcom in case your portrayer chooses not to renew her contract when it ends.