Serial Drama

Oh, Sweeps Stunts, How I Hate You.

It's that time again when, in its quest to provide us with quality entertainment, General Hospital brings out the big guns. By "big guns", I mean "the exact same stories they have done before". And by "provide us with quality entertainment", I mean "try their best to goad the few remaining viewers into quitting".

Yes, it's sweeps time, which means that , in the grand tradition of GH sweeps, we are in for the following:

• A story unfolding backwards

• Clumsy attempts at integrating the mob and non-mob portions of the canvas for the event that we will never forget

• Plots directly lifted from successful primetime shows

• A dead Quartermaine or two

I was all set to be annoyed by how repetitive and lame this latest sweeps stunt looks, but I have decided that, at the very least, it will be something to break up the monotony of seeing people have the EXACT SAME CONVERSATION every single day. Seriously, have Sonny and Claudia even had new dialogue in the last few weeks or is it literally just the same script over and over? If I have to put up with CGI in order to hear about something else besides docks, Zaccharas and trampy daughters, so be it.

poll by twiigs.com

Harlen Vs. Pratt: This Time It's Personal

When I am asked in the future why I look at the glass as half empty, I am going to say, "Bobby" (these kinds of life lesson stories are always told to someone named Bobby) "what happened was that I once hoped for something and I put that hope in writing and in less than two weeks, my hopes were crushed. This is why you shouldn't wish for things: because your wishes will be uniformly ignored by terrible soap opera writers".

Oh, Early-January Mallory! How foolish you were!

The show has already decided to rectify one of last year's wrongs and bring Josh Madden back into town, which is great news. Now the writers just need to give him a storyline. He's Erica Kane's son, and yet he spent months hanging around like a glorified extra before getting saddled with an out-of-left field story that turned him into an embezzler. That's wrong in so many ways.

In the harsh light of mid-January, I have to live with the fact that I have been epically and publicly burned by Charles Pratt. Not that he was out to get me personally--I was mere collateral damage in his quest to ruin the field of entertainment--but still! I feel so ashamed that I can't even laugh at just how tremendously I was wrong.

Look, I understand that the character of Josh is problematic, since his existence rewrote one of daytime's defining moments and McTavish's INSANE decision to undo Erica's abortion is seriously the worst storyline I have ever seen on a soap (sure, there were things on Days and Passionsthat were probably worse, but this was horrendous and, really, not so much a story as a vehicle for the AMC brass to spit on their long-time viewers) and that having him around puts a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. I know, I didn't start calling him Josh until recently, opting instead for the more to-the-point "Aborted Fetus".

However...AMC has a dearth of male characters in this age bracket and Colin Egglesfield works really, fantastically well with the members of the Kane family. Couldn't they have just rewritten history again and had him be related to Erica and Co, but not because they are mother/son? Or had it turn out that Madden was just torturing Erica once again and Josh wasn't related to her at all, but by that point he and the Kanes had already bonded like family, so it was a moot point? I guess I don't get, like I don't get so many of their decisions, why they had to go this route.

But, you know, I don't get so much of this show, so why should this be any different?

Now They're Just Screwing With Me

Seriously, General Hospital, you can't follow through on a storyline to save your life and yet you cling with all of your might to Robin's hideous plaid coat? Double you tee eff?

THIS is what you decide to try that new fangled "continuity" thing with? An ill-fitting, ugly coat?

And then you accessorize it with a dead Muppet?!

Seriously, they murdered and skinned Grover and then paired him with a coat whose pattern was last seen on the set of Maude.

It's not enough that your stories are terrible and anger-inducing and turn our brains to mush, but you also have to sear our retinas as well? I hate you.

Divorced, Beheaded, Died...

Five Observations About Today's Episode Of General Hospital, Made About Five Things That Were Either Legitimately Entertaining And Lured Me Out of My Bored Stupor Or Were So Catastrophically Obnoxious That They Lured Me Out Of My Bored Stupor

1.) During one of Anthony's many* foaming at the mouth rants about something or other, he gave me a flashback to British History class:

Anthony: Retaliate! You have to kill Morgan. It's the code we live by in our business. You cut off Jason's head and leave it on a post to rot.

I first thought that the writers discovered the works of Alison Weir** and are ripping those off instead of their usual ripping off of contemporary movies, but then I remembered that these writers probably don't read and that the more likely explanation is that they have been catching up on The Tudors on Showtime and now I am afraid that Tudor intrigue will make its way to Port Charles. I worry for the women on canvas! If the writers realize that Henry VIII punished his wives for betraying him by putting them to death, this could mean that Sonny's next half dozen wives have a new terrible fate! Beheading instead of his usual combination of verbal abuse/chucking glassware at them!

*I know that Anthony is shouty crackers and, due to said shouty crackerness, is not supposed to make sense, but even less of his yelling made sense than it usually does. I wonder if Bruce Weitz even bothers to read the script or if he just shouts random things like "My son! Shipments! Tramp! Damn Dirty Apes! Corinthos! Slut Daughter! Whore! Soylent Green Is People!"

**Fellow history nerds, if you have not read any of her books, you must.

How Do You Say "Self Righteous Jerk" in a Way Ryan Will Understand?

Ryan Lavery, regarding how difficult it is when relationships end:

It's nobody's fault...it's everybody's fault

Sometimes it's also the fault of two married people who have an ongoing emotional affair, get offended when their spouses question the closeness of said married people having an ongoing emotional affair, go out of their way to interact with the person they are having an emotional affair with, drive a woman out of her mind, move the affair from emotional to physical and then start planning a wedding before they are divorced from the spouses they were emotionally and physically cheating on. Sometimes it is their fault, too.

How To Lose Friends and Alienate Viewers

At the end of today's episode of All My Children, I let out this huge, audible sigh of complete and utter depression. It's the same sigh I make after I sit through a marathon of Law & Order: SVU and realize that I just watched eight hours about rape, murder, child murder, murderous children and overwrought Mariska Hargitay line readings. Complete and utter depression!

Let's look at today's episode, for instance: an adorable dork being shot down by a brat; a marriage completely imploding in the nastiest of ways; schemers pushing people off the wagon and getting other people addicted to drugs; potential child abandonment; nasty Babe propping.

I almost want to do a study to see how many AMC viewers have turned to hard drugs in order to deal with the crippling sadness they feel while watching this show. My educated guess is, like, 76%.

Tad and Krystal's marriage was a total sham, and ill-conceived on every front, and they used to get me frothing with irritation about the myriad ways in which Adam was shafted, but once I got past my bitterness and once I realized that Kathy wasn't actually going to go full-on demon spawn and torture her stepmother, I was too bored to even pay full attention to any of their scenes. I don't remember the last time I even watched them together without, like, singing a song in my head or focusing really intently on the scenery in the background.

Because of this boredom, I was unprepared for just how vicious the disintegration of their marriage is going to be.

Tad: Well, I can't say I'm surprised. After all, you slept with me when you were married to Adam.

Krystal: You remember why? Greg Madden was dead. You thought you weren't going to be able to find Kathy, and you were dealing with the unimaginable. Your daughter was gone. That kind of stuff makes you do things you don't ordinarily do.

Tad: Well, I'm sorry I missed the point. You -- you gave me mercy sex, so that makes it all right to wrap your legs around David? How could you be so naive that you honestly think for one solitary second this is about him "understanding you," about David Hayward helping you?

Tad: And I don't? Well, maybe that's because every time I tried, every time that I begged you to help me and understand, you pushed me away. So what does this mean? Does it mean every single time you disappeared, and you took off, and I was worried that something had happened to you, that you were, what, in the sheets over at Wildwind?

Krystal: That's -- that's not true, Tad. Nothing happened until you --

Tad: Until I left town? Huh. Huh. So, I guess this is -- this is the part where you blame the drugs, right? I mean, you -- you claimed you got married to Adam when you were high on moonshine. I guess now you're telling me that you slept with David because he was feeding you pills.

Krystal: I never meant to hurt you.

Tad: Well, it certainly worked out that way. And we were so close, so close. A safe, stable, loving home. That's what we both wanted, wasn't it? That's what both of us were in for, and not just for the girls, for you, so you would feel protected because you still had feelings for Adam, and you couldn't --

Krystal: I never slept with Adam after we were married, Tad.

Tad: But you wanted to, didn't you? Anyway. It doesn't matter now. It's David. After all the times you looked me in the eye and promised me that this was enough, this home, this family, this life. What the hell is wrong with you? Why? Why would you give up all of this? You know what they're like. You know who they are. Why on earth would you chase after men like Adam or David?

Krystal: Because they make me feel alive!

DAMN!

Brutal as it was, it was also quite educational:

• Krystal admitted that she is a whore when others are sad
• Tad rightly called their encounter mercy sex
• Krystal can't stay faithful if her significant other leaves town
• Tad is tremendously boring and lame

This was seriously the most bearable these two have been together since, I don't know, EVER. If only the writers knew at the outset that the only thing that makes these two click is pure unbridled hatred and verbal abuse, we could have been saved months of boredom!

Vintage Suds: The Robin's Diary Book Club

During our General Hospital: 2008 in Review, Becca was still gleeful over the fact that I outed myself as a former soap crazy last summer, admitting that I own a copy of Robin's Diary, the companion piece to the Stone/Robin saga in 1995 and have, for some reason, held onto said copy.

IN MY DEFENSE, (a) I was twelve (b) I am not the only one who still has my copy (Reader KLe and, I am sure, other Serial Drama readers, shares my shame) and (c) it is awesome.

Looking through this book instantly transported me back to middle school, when GH was awesome, and I survived long, boring bus rides anticipating the soapy goodness that was in store for me. My friend Jill and I, being preteen girls, spent loads of time in and out of school writing notes back and forth. However, we were exceedingly paranoid and never used our real names, or the actual names of anybody we knew, instead opting for code names based on a certain obsession of the time; we also changed the code names every once in a while just in case someone caught on (we were like the effing CIA with our top secret communications). During the GH obsession era, we were Brenda and Robin.

This time also makes me think of mixtapes and, while not specifically GH related, I must take a minute to share my jealousy over this generation and how they can just download songs to burn CDs. I used to have a blank tape ready at all times just in case I heard a good song in the radio to record. Those song were invariably ruined by the DJs yammering at the end of the song. It took me, like, six weeks to finally get a good version of TLC's "Waterfalls". The moral of this pointless digression is that I love technology.

So, Robin's Diary: the book is, as you might guess, a novelization of Robin and Stone's love story, starting in January of 1994 to Stone's death in November of 1995. It also has adorable pictures.

I will be posting excerpts of this work of literary genius over the next few weeks so that we can reminisce about the golden era of GH and cry a little bit about what once was. Like, for example, the list of Robin's Friends and Acquaintances that is at the beginning of the book as a primer for non-GH readers...

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column

In case you missed our most recent Soap Opera Digest column (which, um, both of us did. We blame the flurry of activity that comes with the holiday season and our troubled memories), it appears after the jump. This month, we try our hat at consulting and give the powers-that-be at All My Children, Days of Our Lives and General Hospital our suggestions for what should happen in the New Year. Since we generously gave them advice last year and were roundly ignored, we aren't expecting much (and, indeed, some of our hopes have already been shot down, according to spoilers), but we figure a little optimism never hurt.

  

Double The Pleasure, Double The Fun

Greenlee: I'm sorry...for all the crazy talk. Opal just pushed some buttons, that's all. I don't think our wedding is doomed. It's going to be perfect, just like the rest of our lives.

Yes, Greens, you're totally right. Your wedding is going to be perfect, what with the date being picked on a whim, the complicated issue of the divorces you and your fiance have to go through and the fact that you are sharing it with Bianca and some woman that you don't know at all. What could possibly go wrong?!

The AMC writers don't even need to exert any sort of effort in writing a terrible story for these four but, bless their hearts, they just are not content to sit and rest on their laurels. They really want to try! It's admirable, if you ignore the part about them trying to be a new brand of awful.

Bianca: What? You guys -- you guys are getting married on Valentine's day?

Ryan: Yes, we are. We just chose it. A very scientific method, actually. Why?

Reese: That's actually when we were going to tie the knot.

Greenlee: Oh, then we'll have to choose a different date then.

Ryan: Ah, yeah, well, no.

1.) OF COURSE these morons are getting married on Valentine's Day. OF COURSE.

2.) OF COURSE Ryan is the biggest Bridezilla of them all. OF COURSE.

Ryan: That would be kind of like tempting, you know, fate. The gods might get angry with that. You know what I mean?

I do know what you mean, Ry. The gods totally frown upon randomly chosen dates being changed, but they are totally cool with a wedding being planned while both participants are still in the process of divorcing their current spouses. 

Greenlee: Yeah, but we would want to invite the same people that Bianca and Reese would be inviting, so --

Ryan: Yes, that's true. That is true, but we could just kind of alter the time a little bit. You guys could take the evening. We could take the afternoon.

Bianca: You know what? Why -- why don't we just do a double wedding? That'd be fun.

It totally will be! For the audience! Who will no doubt turn to massive quantities of hard liquor in order to make it through two complete farces. Eeeeee!!

Reese, perhaps because of her supersonic greatness, is completely fine with sharing her wedding with two strangers.

Bianca: Are you sure you're ok with this whole double wedding thing?

Reese: Yeah, it'll be great.

"I love the idea of sharing the most special day of my life with two people I don't know who aren't even divorced from their current partners yet. It's going to be rad! Why don't we go all out and have a triple wedding with people we meet online?!"

Erica, Erica Kane is the sole voice of reason in this entire situation and pointed out to Bianca that this is a sucky idea on all fronts AND nobody wants to jinx their nuptials by teaming up with the Ryan/Greenlee train-wreck, but Bianca completely ignored her. Bianca, you fool! Listen to your mother! She's the smartest person in Pine Valley, no matter how many brain cells she kills with her liberal usage of hairspray!

2009 Is Off To a Great Start For One Port Charles Resident

Lucky Spencer, especially in the Guza regime, experiences joy so seldom that, on the rare occasions that he isn't being written as a slow-witted foil for the "true" "heroes" of the show, I have to re-watch those scenes to understand what actually happened, since on first viewing, I can't focus because of how new and special the occasion is.

And today was pretty much the pinnacle of good times for Lucky!

Lulu: Really? And I bet you didn't even investigate this did you? Right? You just took this Pervis guy for his word, because you think throwing Johnny into prison is going to make me forget about him. But trust me, I'll forget about you first.

!!!

Take her up on this offer, Lucky! Run and cut all ties forever! Your blood pressure, mental stability and hearing ability will thank you for it!

Related: Lulu is a vile shrew.

The rest of today's episode can be summed up, as so many General Hospital related things can, with a combination of swearing, eyerolling and the phrase DO NOT WANT.