Serial Drama

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2009, Serial Drama readers!  We hope you had fabulous New Year's Eve celebrations.  Did you drink chamgagne, like Jax and Carly did on General Hospital?

No?  Well, better luck next year!  (You have to appreciate how committed GH is to failing on every single level.)

We know many of you are heading back to work after lovely holiday breaks, so if you need to catch up on all the 2008 year-in-review stuff -- not that any of you would ever do anything like that at work -- here are some quick links:

• Best and Worst of 2008
• All My Children:  2008 In Review
• Days of Our Lives:  2008 In Review
• General Hospital:  2008 In Review
• The Young and the Restless:  2008 In Review

It was a little sad looking back at 2008, since in terms of soaps it was a pretty crappy 12 months across the board.  So 2009 really has to do little to improve upon its predecessor, but improvement isn't really what our shows do well, so . . . hope springs eternal!  Our fondest wishes for 2009 include:

• that James Scott get a haircut
• that Days of Our Lives and General Hospital get new writing teams
• that Agnes Nixon stage a coup and take over All My Children, leading it back to the brilliant soap it once was
• that The Young and the Restless give us a Victor-free episode
• that someone, somewhere, involved with any of the soaps on the air remember what the hell a soap opera actually is and try their hardest to produce one (Oh wait, for that we have Night Shift!  For a mere few weeks, months from now!  Yay?)

As we kick off another year, we want to be sappy for a minute and thank you all sincerely for continuing to read our rants and gripes.  The support and the links to us are completely mind-blowing for a couple of girls who couldn't even get their friends to read this thing at the beginning.  Most of them don't even read now.  So thank you, and please bear with us as juggle our real lives and our posting schedules, and we'll try to pay you back with decent posts.  Or at least entertaining screencaps.

xoxo,
Bec and Mal

Insert "2009, Mighty Fine" Rhyme Here

I was at the mall earlier, on a furious mission for both a pair of jeans and a new planner (it was a complete failure on both counts AND it was freezing cold AND I went to get Mentos and they charged me $1.75, which was highway robbery AND it got the Mentos commercial song stuck in my head) and I was looking at the calendar kiosk for the latter, and out of the corner of my eye, in between a calendar about Ireland and one about One Tree Hill (any hope of organization goes by the wayside after the first of the year), I glimpsed a calendar and said, out loud, "Is that SONNY?!"

And it was! How did I not know about the Hot Guys of ABC Daytime 2009 Calendar?

That's the official name of said calendar, by the way. The people in charge of this stringent adherence to truth in advertising standards may want to have a talk with their soap-promo-making brethren.

I am not going to quibble with any of the men contained therein, but I will take issue with how spectacularly shoddy the entire calendar is. Did they make it with MS Paint? I understand that economic times are tough, but stapling a few recycled publicity shots together and calling it a calendar is pretty sad. Half of them have plain white backgrounds that just look like high school senior portraits and blank-eyed facial expressions in keeping with the senior portrait theme, and then Kamar de los Reyes went all Cinemax on everybody and I just don't understand any of it, except that it proves that ABC Daytime is terrible at everything that it does.

The Young and the Restless: 2008 In Review

The Young and the Restless has improved immensely from where it was this time last year and is, by far, the best soap opera that I watch.

It is, of course, true that neither feat is really difficult: for Y&R to get worse than it was in late 2007 would be almost scientifically impossible (though I have faith that, given the opportunity, Lynn Marie Latham would have done her best to beat those odds) and for it to be worse than AMC, Days or GH would...sorry, I can't stop laughing long enough to finish that thought.

Maria Arena Bell, Hogan Sheffer and Company deserve a lot of the accolades they have been receiving in lots of year-end round ups for the strides that Y&R has been making, and I feel like most of them are deserved. I also feel, in a disapproving guidance counselor sort of way, that the show isn't living up to its potential: it has the raw materials to be phenomenal, and I feel like, even with the improvements, it's sort of plodding along and being decent. 

The show has been, for the most part, respectable. There were moments that drove me crazy (not even just crazy, but cuh-razy), and some moments that were pretty great, but overall, it was decent. I think this is part of why my Y&R posting has been so sporadic: it's easy to provide commentary on something that is ground-breakingly terrible, or something good enough to merit celebration, but it's much harder to wittily discuss something that is...you know, fine. I'm not that clever!

In the dark days of last January, we had to deal with two things that drove me most crazy about Lynn Marie Latham era Y&R: Brad Carlton and dropped plot points. I still suffered paralyzing hatred of Brad Carlton, no doubt still plagued with nightmares from the times that he was the leading man of the show. This point in time can also be referred to, if you are a dork like me, as Unanswered Questions A-Go-Go. Gloria and Kevin tried to frame Jeffrey for murder, when I feel like the best solution for all of us would have been all three of them accidentally falling into a pit and never being heard from again, while Amber was...baffling in her pointlessness. Victoria awoke from her coma, proving that cardboard rocks can't keep a good woman down for forever, just for a few blissful months. At least comatose Victoria had no choice but to be boring. What is non-comatose Victoria's excuse?!

Last winter also saw the start of my campaign of wondering what the hell is with the effed up ethical system in Genoa City when thigh murderers and freaking Gloria run around judging Jack. Spoiler alert, February Mallory: it doesn't get any better!

Days of Our Lives: 2008 In Review

I really hope I'm wrong, but I fear 2008 was the year Days of Our Lives' chances of sticking around for more than a couple years slowly went down a non-soapy drain.  I know that sounds awful, especially compared to how optimistic I was a year ago.  2008 started off pretty well on Days!  I was all optimistic, writing in our Soap Opera Digest column about all my silly hopes for the coming 12 months:

DAYS has some overexposed characters, too.  Take Sami, for example.  I think Allison Sweeney is great, but I wouldn’t be disappointed to see Sami onscreen a bit less.  She’s really the only character in town in her generation, the one between the sorority girls and their moms, so she ends up involved in too many stories.  On the guys’ side, DAYS doesn’t have a hired killer with an alleged heart of gold, but they do have a redemption-of-EJ arc underway that seems promising.  (Of course, the storyline has involved James Scott being shirtless, so it’s entirely possible my judgment is clouded.)  The DAYS powers-that-be need to develop younger leading men beyond Scott, though – maybe pair them up with new contemporaries of Sami.  Salem needs couples in the 20s- and early-30s-range that viewers can root for.  Here’s hoping that in 2008, DAYS really focuses on the younger set and gets them into some chemistry-filled pairings, because right now the best couples are the same ones I was picking that lock to watch in the 80s.

Let's break down in detail just how stupid I look now, shall we?

I wouldn’t be disappointed to see Sami onscreen a bit less.

I was disappointed, especially now that she's spent like 17 months in a condo -- I refuse to call something a safe house when it doesn't even have a deadbolt -- with the [admittedly quite yummy] dude from Passions.  Also, I think I might actually hate Sami now.  I know my eardrums do.

they do have a redemption-of-EJ arc underway that seems promising

No they didn't, and no it wasn't.

Salem needs couples in the 20s- and early-30s-range that viewers can root for.

Fail.

Looking back, I'm not even sure why I was that optimistic.  In January, Salemites wore really ugly scarves (oh, and John came back from the dead).  The writing became relatively crappy, but Mrs. Partridge showed up as John's long-lost mom for like five minutes, and I became focused on the stupidity of the show firing the only halfway decent writing team it had had in more than a decade and I kind of forgot how much the show was annoying me.  Then February kicked up the annoyance factor again with horrible dialogue and yet another Marlena-OD, but then, bless its solid wooden heart, The Door happened. 

Be my BFF, Door.

General Hospital: 2008 In Review

We sat down to do our General Hospital 2008 in Review -- filled with bitterness and resentment as has become our norm when dealing with this mess of a show -- and we thought, what if our longstanding hatred of Bob Guza and his team's writing has blinded us?  What if there are really oodles of good things that we're overlooking as we focus on the fact that the mafia stole our soap?  How can we be more objective about this?  So we created a purely mathematical, empirical, unbiased approach that ensures we will be able to get a true assessment of whether this show really does suck.  We won't spoil the answer for you!  Walk back with us through the last year of GH episodes so you can understand our multi-layered analysis, won't you?

1995 and 1996

Things that suck:  Tom and Felicia.
Things that do not suck:  Everything else.

Early January

Things that suck:  This show declaring war on brunettes; ridiculous, stereotypical, caricature-ridden version of Kate's Manhattan; this show thinking we're stupid enough to care about Sonny getting arrested; Felicia; Spinelli still not speaking like a human being; Luke's ridiculous coma-dream; Emily the Tumor; Carly's wardrobe; Lulu getting kidnapped AGAIN; Carly; Jason; Sonny; the mafia. 
Things that do not suck:  Maxie; Kirsten Storms' performance as Maxie in the wake of Georgie's death; Kate's New Year's Eve look.

Mid January

Things that suck:  Stories involving kids playing with matches; unrealistic medical scenarios; yet another hostage situation in a hospital; Becky Herbst's highlights; Sonny lecturing Michael about hitting people; Lulu's kidnapping; not caring that Luke and Laura's daughter is kidnapped; Becca momentarily loving Sonny; Carly; Jason; Sonny; the mafia.
Things that do not suck:  Alexis and Diane bonding, especially over both having killed a dude; Jax; Carly's comeuppance; Greg Vaughn's foxiness; Lucky being dreamy and protective.

Late January

Things that suck:  The ad campaign surrounding Sarah Brown's return; Felicia; Kristina Wagner's "performance" as Felicia; Becky Herbst's bangs; Lulu getting to choose between two hot guys; Alexis prosecuting someone who attacked her; Alexis "filling in" as DA while Ric is out of town; the Text Message Killer storyline; killing off Coop; Emily the Tumor; Dr. Devlin being pushed as sexy; Michael buying a gun; Michael buying a gun from Oliver!-esque adolescents; Megan Ward destroying The Bob; Sam's wardrobe; trust falls; Maurice Benard's duh face; Maxie having another boyfriend get murdered; Maxie owning three hideous knit hats; throwing the term "bastard son" around; thinking the writers would do a good HIV-positive pregnancy storyline; Carly; Jason; Sonny; the mafia. 
Things that do not suck:  Sarah Brown's return; the baby who plays Jake; Jason having an honest conversation with Michael about violence; Jason telling off Carly; Logan being hot; Cam; Dr. Julian if he cut his hair; Megan Ward's hair in virtually any style; Patrick shirtless.