Serial Drama

I Know I'm Setting Myself Up For a Fall Here, But: Eeeee!!!

I don't know if it's because I had a nice long weekend at the beach, or if it's because I found a bottle of Essie nail polish in Aperitif that I had hidden and completely forgotten about, or because I am on the kind of caffeine high that multiple Diet Cokes and iced vanilla lattes can bring, but I am in a totally good mood, which is practically unheard of for a Monday.

My mood is so good that I am even being optimistic about The Young and The Restless. Consider this:

• Sabrina FINALLY died, ending the longest vigil since...Autumn of 2007. And now we won't be subjected to more scenes of Victor and Sabrina talking in French about how awesome Victor is. And there's the distinct possibility that Victor's mourning period will as rushed as their initial courtship was, meaning that we'll stop hearing about Sabrina in, like, a week and a half.
  [I could point out that this is opening up yet more opportunities for Victor to verbally abuse Nikki (like, I don't know, telling her she, the mother of two of his children, should be going to the morgue instead of Sabrina, for example), and Jack's decision to buy the crash scene photos will probably blow up in his face and make him the pariah of all soap pariahs, and it gave us the unbearably awful line "Sabrina was young and naive. He felt very protective of her, like he did with me so many years ago, and he was more than her husband. He was her guardian angel, and now she's dead", but I'm focusing on the positive, remember?]
• Michael Gross was cast as Michael's father. I have a long standing love of Family Ties (between Meredith Baxter's commitment to providing the world with quality Lifetime entertainment, Michael J. Fox's unending awesomeness and the fact that I was named after Mallory Keaton, how could I not?), so I am going to ignore the fact that this means that Gloria will almost certainly get excessive screen time and just say that I am excited about this piece of casting.
• Eva's complete lack of acting talent has made the scenes she shares with Neil awesomely bad, as opposed to plain old boring, which is good in a different kind of way. The sad kind.

Okay, so most of that is totally pessimistic. Looking on the bright side is way hard! But there is one piece of news that I seriously can't stop "Eeeeeee!!!"ing about: Billy Miller is joining The Young and the Restless as Billy Abbott.

AMC viewers know that I completely loved him in his all too short stint as Richie Novak and I thought he was completely wonderful and charismatic and utterly talented. And now there will be another Abbott in Genoa City (!) and it's a character I have always loved (!!) and he'll be playing Jess Walton's son (!!!) and Peter Bergman's brother (!!!!!!!) and I literally squealed out loud from the excitement.

Top 25 Passions WTF? Lines of Dialogue, or, Lines You Won't Hear on As the World Turns

Part of what made classic Passions like crack was the fear of missing the latest “I-must-be-hallucinating; I-couldn’t-possibly-have-just-heard-that” howler of a line of dialogue if you missed an episode. I’ve assembled twenty-five of the most prime examples. Enjoy!

25. SHERIDAN: I feel a connection to this footprint!

24. TC: But Eve, you’re a woman of science!

23. PILAR: At first, Grace thought it must be Noah who was in danger, but the Angel Girl said no.

22. IVY: I'm going to find that bloody bird statue if it's the last thing I do!

21. LUIS: It’s not my hand that hurts…it’s my heart!

20. EVE: I can’t believe you, Liz, my own sister, would say such a thing!

19. JESSICA: It's so brave of Miguel to go back in the closet!

18. ETHAN: Just wait till you see me chomp on that noodle!

17. LIZ: I’ve carried this suitcase with me everywhere I’ve gone for the past twenty years!

16. ETHAN: Not only was that plane carrying passengers and luggage, but my hopes and dreams as well!

15. SHERIDAN: Our noodle broke!

14. LIZ: This should make TC drop his inhibitions…and his pants!

13. BETH: Thank God for the lesbians!

12. SAM: I don't mean to alarm you, but I found TC outside choking a statue.

11. THERESA: Ethan is the air that I breathe and I'll die without him!

10. LIZ: They booed Mama!

9. CHARITY: It was you!  You were the panther!  You're the evil that's trying to destroy me and Miguel and all of Harmony!

8. KAY: No! Siren can’t make love to Miguel! She’s a mermaid! And the mermaid’s curse specifies that once a mermaid makes love to a mortal, he can never be with another woman ever again!

7. WHITNEY: Repent now before God smites you, Theresa!  Get out of here before God sends his fiery messenger to take you to hell!

6. PILAR: What would Jesus do, Theresa? Would Jesus take the Crane money? Would He?

5. KAY: Oh my God, Zombie Charity! Not only are you a lying slut, but now you’re a succubus as well!

4. PILAR: How can this be? We saw your corpse after the tsunami when your coffin washed into my living room!

3. EVIL CHARITY: I’m picking mushrooms to destroy goodness!

2. PILAR: Those storm clouds came out of nowhere. Like the trouble in Sam and Grace’s marriage.

And the all-time WTF? champ:

1. TABITHA: I wonder what kind of hell my special potpourri will unleash on Sheridan?

Passions: A Look Back

Hi! I just wanted to say that I love Serial Drama and follow it religiously. We had talked about the idea of my writing some guest entries on Passions once it neared its final episode since I was an absolute Passions fanatic for most of its run. So over the next couple weeks, I’ll be sharing several Passions-themed entries with you: retrospectives, recaps of select episodes I did back in the day, and more! Let’s start with a general overview and look back at the show.

Passions debuted on NBC on July 5, 1999. I didn’t start watching it then, but had read and heard from friends that it was laughably awful. The first episode I saw was later that year when I was home sick from work and from what I can remember, revolved around everyone being at some sort of high school dance where Theresa locked Gwen in a broom closet while Tabitha and Timmy sat in a corner and provided running commentary. I started watching regularly at the end of the year, when, from what I remember, a fake Martin Fitzgerald fell to his death through a skylight at some New Year’s Eve gala, but EVEN THOUGH SOMEONE HAD JUST DIED ABOUT TEN FEET AWAY FROM THEM, Kay was more upset that Miguel was with Charity and Gwen was hounding Theresa to produce this so-called “boyfriend” she kept talking about (who didn’t exist because Theresa, of course, was really in love with, as she inimitably and overenunciatedly pronounced it, “EEEEEEEEEEthannnnn-nuh” because, as she reminded us at the drop of a hat, it was “FAY-tuh”); meanwhile, Tabitha and Timmy parked themselves in the corner and provided running commentary. The whole thing just seemed so sublimely, almost surreally godawful that I started setting my VCR.

(Now, I finally did see the first few months when the Sci-Fi Channel reran the show briefly in 2006 before yanking them with no warning when we were ONLY ABOUT TWO MONTHS AWAY FROM ME HAVING CAUGHT UP TO WHERE I CAME IN. Er, not that I’m bitter or anything. Anyway…oh. Oh my. Sheridan’s riotous fear of dying just like her “dear friend” Princess Diana, including getting into a car wreck in the exact same tunnel and then chirping to the random British voiceover in her out of body experience, “Diana? Diana, is that you?” The Little Angel Moppet running amok singsonging “GRAAAAAAAAAACE… GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE…” while Grace ran around like a nincompoop screeching, “LITTLE GIRL! LITTLE GIRL!” Kay and Jessica shrieking about beepers (hello, 1999!) and bust exercises? The never-ending carnival? I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. And hey—did you know that Sheridan was more like a big sister to Ethan than an aunt?)

The beauty of Passions back in those days was that it was this intoxicating, improbable mix where anything could, and did, happen, yet at the same time nothing actually happened, but overall it seemed to be glacially progressing toward a mythical “something” happening. For example:

Introducing Our New Guest Blogger, Ryan!

As fond as we are of the whole "Serial Drama girls" thing, and as much as we know you enjoy our updates every 17 days lately, we decided that it was time to bring aboard a guest blogger.  And lucky for us, our friend Ryan Mason was ready, willing, able, and soapily-super-qualified.  In particular, Ryan is a Passions expert, and with that show soon leaving us we thought it was important to take a serious look back at that fine piece of televisual entertainment.  You know, for science.  So while he is a human encyclopedia on virtually every soap that ever has aired, is airing, or will air in the future, he's going to kick off his guest blogging with some Passions retrospectives.  Please read his hilarious autobiographical introduction, after the jump.

Note:  Yes, he watches One Life to Live.  You may now send all of your "OMG, why aren't you recapping THE BEST SHOW IN THE HISTORY OF DAYTIME" and "I know you guys joke about it but SERIOUSLY, OLTL is amaaaaazing" emails to him.  Not that he'll be recapping it either, but he has the joyousness of watching a great soap to balance out the nagging emails, and we don't.  We are bitter without balance.

So, altogether now:  Welcome, Ryan!  (Remember to check out his intro after the jump.)