Serial Drama

How Do You Offend Me? Let Me Count the Ways.

How many is a gajillion?  I'm feeling a little speechless coming into this one, but Marty Saybrooke spoke well and was appropriately appalled today.  Truthfully, I used to adore Todd Manning.  I even thought Trevor St. John as a recast was fantastic at first.  Both Todds had great chemistry with Blair, both played the darks and lights in ways that made me simultaneously loathe, pity, and feel for him.  That Todd is long gone.

Today, we had the pleasure of watching Todd stop by the office of his two-time rape victim and prove that, once and for all, there is no humanity there.  There isn't a thing there outside of total narcissism.  I can't honestly say I'm truly shocked, because it's been looking this way for quite a while (the dismissive and contemptuous way he has treated all of his other children since he learned of his shiny new possession, Dani, for instance), but I guess I didn't really expect the show to go this far.  Why didn't I expect that?  This was the "rapemance" show!  With these very characters! 

It's just that for the past few months, we've been asked to buy into this notion that Todd has changed, that he's now a decent (if absurdly bland) man who cares about other people and loves his "girlfriend" Tea in a deep, true way that is at least partly unselfish and pure.  Call me crazy, but if they're going to ask me to buy into that and care about this man or his relationship or his connection to his new-found daughter, they're going to have to show me that he's worth it.  Consistently.  This hasn't happened, of course, but today was the final nail in the coffin. 

For anyone who was fortunate enough to miss it, Todd went to visit Marty today to ask her to "stand up for" him when he meets his daughter Dani.  To accompany him to assure Dani that Todd is not a bad man and she has forgiven him for raping her, abducting her, lying to her in the most egregious ways, trying to choke her son... the list goes on, though I really do think "being the ringleader of her gang-rape" should be sufficient.  When she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that what he needed was a mediator in the mental health profession to facilitate their first discussion as father and daughter, she was generous enough to offer a referral.  He scoffed at this, because he's such a good guy.  He responded to all of her protestations with dismissive hand gestures, eye rolls, and smirks.  Because he's such a good guy.  And then my all-time favorite, when confronted with his most recent heinous crimes against Marty, he made this charming, mocking face:

And then said through a grin, "Now look, I know what I did to you was wrong but I was trying to--" and I know some of you who didn't catch the episode might have trouble believing that this even happened, but that "wrong?"  It was in AIR QUOTES.

Air quotes.  Re-raping his rape victim.  Abducting her, letting her think the people she loved had abandoned her, letting her think she had no child, planning to kidnap the infant child of their two teen children and tell both his daughter and her son that their infant was dead so that he could "give" the child to Marty, and then letting Stockholm Syndrome kick in really, really hardcore before sleeping with her.  His rape victim.  This, today, warranted air quotes and a chuckle.  The actions that drove him to jump off a building last year; now the moral issue with those actions now deserves air quotes. 

I have bad news for Tea.  Todd's right, he has changed.  Todd's not better now that he has your love, he is whole mothertrucking shitload worse than he was before your love.  Take your teenage daughter and run.

Was anyone else certain the entire episode that Marty would eventually agree to it?  I was, and I was terrified.  But finally someone said something right to Todd Manning.

Marty: My God, who do you think you are?  Barging in here and insisting
I do anything for you?  Anything?  I owe you nothing!  Hear me? Nothing!"

Preach it, sister.  I would've stood up and cheered if she'd impaled him twenty times with a letter opener in that moment.  Of course Todd responded by smirking, rolling his eyes, and basically swatting her away when he answered his cell phone. 

SUCK IT, TODD.

Destiny out.

Soap Blog Coalition

Daytime Confidential's Regan is back with a fresh batch of juicy General Hospital spoilers. (Daytime Confidential)

Remember how Patrick was wild in college? Or how Jason feels bad that Sam got kidnapped, but she's okay with it? General Hospital thinks that you can't, which is why they repeat these facts endlessly. Thank goodness for Jonathan Jackson's phenomenal performances this week, or else the Serial Drama girls would have completely gone insane. (Serial Drama)

Wub Tub: Sunday Surgery...Daytime Stars get out to the Rose Bowl in CA for Haiti relief. Guess who was there with them? Alberta WUBS! See pics of our lobster with GH and DOOL actors. (Wubs)

And The Word of The Day Is: Awkward

I was originally going to make this post into a poll and pose the question, "Which uncomfortable moment from today's All My Children was the most profoundly uncomfortable?", because there was a bevy of uncomfortable moments to choose from, to the point where I am estimating that I spent at least a third of the episode tittering nervously, but there is one clear "winner" that I could barely even watch all of the way through, although I DID, because I am a professional, although I did watch it with my hands covering my eyes, because if there is one thing I can't really deal with, it's watching something hugely embarrassing happen, which is why sometimes I can't re-watch The Office and also, why I have never been able to go to high school drama productions.

The runners up:

• Greenlee, in her hospital bed, daydreaming of Ryan and swooning as she wished him a happy birthday, while he enjoyed a romantic dinner with her father's ex-wife. Goodness gracious, is that tragic in every sense of the word.

• JR and Jake exchanging a solemn handshake after learning that the latter, not the former and certainly not David, fathered Trevor. I have not been involved in any paternity scandals (knock wood!), so perhaps that is the proper way to accept defeat?

• Erica FLIPPING THE EFF OUT to hysterically explain to Ryan that she likes him, but doesn't like him like him and certainly didn't mean that she LOVED him when she said that "You just make me feel so extra alive. I love that about you". Erica Kane, shut your damn fool mouth and stop getting all aflutter over Ryan Lavery and acting like an eighth grader.
• Colby obsessing over Adam and Annie's sex life. I know she is consumed with getting Annie out of her family's life forever, but I would never, ever, ever...ever ever ever want to have a conversation with a step-mother about their sex life. Or, as she delicately phrased it:

"I'm just worried about him. He always plays the tough guy, but he just had a major procedure. Maybe until he gets used to the pacemaker and we know it's working okay he should, um, he should be left alone. At night".

Fun fact: Blanche Devereaux dealt with the issue of sex and pacemakers on a very special episode of The Golden Girls that was on yesterday. She, naturally, chose sex.

Colby did get the hilarious line, "She is playing a game. And if we're not careful, game over. Whodunit? Annie, in the bedroom, with a negligee", but one hilarious line does not make up for this oh-so icky line of thought.

And now, the most uncomfortable of all uncomfortable moments. I tried to look for video evidence of this horror show, but the internet looks to be ignoring that it exists, which is better for all of us.

Barely Concealed Hatred

There are so many people that the above could apply to! I could be discussing Lucky's barely concealed hatred of Nikolas. Or everyone's barely concealed hatred of the PCPD. Or Lisa's barely concealed hatred of the institution of marriage. Or my hatred of 90 percent of the people in Port Charles.

Well, we all know that the last one does not apply to this show at all, because my distaste for many of the goings on in Port Charles is far from concealed.

Lucky, having witnessed Elizabeth and Nikolas exchanging "I love you"s and getting it on, had a series of visceral reactions that quite nicely mirrored the horror I've felt throughout this unfortunate pairing.

First, there was shock.

Then, there was anger.

My display of anger was less over-the-top than his, probably because "Liz and Nik are ew, and they are ruining Liz's character and EW" isn't as good a reason for physical rage as "my fiancee, the love of my life, is sexing up my brother".

Then, pure anguish.

The only emotional response we didn't get a chance to see was him becoming sick to his stomach. I am assuming that the collapsing and vomiting occurred off-screen.

It's no secret that I think Jonathan Jackson is the bee's knees/cat's meow/other peculiar slang term best left in the 1920s, so I very predictably enjoyed all of his scenes today. He was fantastic at having very big reactions to this news without becoming completely campy (although I admit that the sobbing verged quite nearly into that territory). So good. But I think my favorite moments were the ones where everything was internal. Like, when he got home from Wyndemere and looked like a man who was kicked in the soul.

Or when he went to tell Nikolas not to go to Paris (I am hoping that this is so Lucky is able to play a series of increasingly twisted psychological mind games with him) and you could see how much he was trying to keep the pent up rage and hatred bottled up. I hate this story in every way possible, but I loved this performance.

You know who I did not love? And whose reactions to this episode's various happenings defied the boundaries of common sense and good taste? Liz, and her pretty, pretty hair, because double you tee eff, people?

First, she's all, "I love you and am going to have sex with you before you go to Paris and then we'll have a conversation about how we wish this could have been different and you'll talk about all of your lost loves and I'll say 'hang in there, buddy!"

And then she's all, "I just finished having sex with my fiance's brother, who I allegedly love and who is leaving the country for forever so let me scamper over to my fiance's house immediately to say hey. Hmm, he looks like he's been crying. Weird!"

And then! "Let me go over to the hospital and charm my equally adorable brother into giving me the weekend off so that I can spend it with Lucky. Nikolas who?"

WHO DOES THAT?! She didn't seem at all guilty about what she's done, and she didn't seem broken up about Nikolas leaving. I am so confused, both by her actions and by the continuing employment of this show's writing staff.

Our Column In the 1/28 Issue of Soap Opera Digest

In our latest My Take/My Take Too column, we reveal our hopes for soaps in 2010.  ("Hopes for Soaps" sounds like an anti-Brian Frons group waiting to happen, BTW.)  Join us as we try on optimism for size, set aside reality and all recent history, plus do really crazy stuff like ask that our shows feature more of our favorite over-45 actresses.  It's truly amazing that we manage to keep our gig while spouting such lunacy.

The Fast & The Furious: Genoa City Drift

As was briefly mentioned the other day, Friday's episode of The Young and the Restless was quite good and dropped the kind of bombshells that require capitalization and exclamation points: Victor is BACK! Tucker is possibly Katherine's SON! Mac is having Lily and Cane's TWINS! Ashley and Sharon know they were at the mental institution at the same TIME!

But.

(I know, I know, soaps are supposed to be filled with shocking bombshells and intrigue and excitement, so how can there possibly be a but about an episode filled with them? Oh, you seriously underestimate my ability to whine)

For starters, we sit through an awful lot of boring episodes over the course of a given week where literally nothing happens. Couldn't some of those bombshells have been spread out a little bit? Putting one of those revelations on a boring day would have saved us a lot of yawning.

And most importantly: WHY are some of these bombshells happening already? I'm sorry, Tucker revealing that he's Katherine's son?

Kay: I have owned this company outright for decades, and I have given it every fiber of my being. So why would you want to take my legacy from me?

Tucker: Times change. Legacies don't mean that much anymore.

Kay: For me, they do! For me, they do. Now I thought you were my friend and my ally, but you are neither of those.

Tucker: No. I'm your son. 

WHY IS THAT ALREADY HAPPENING?! This should not have happened until, I don't know, this time next year. He's been on the show for literally eight minutes! And this takeover story is bizarre, and makes little to no sense if you actually stop to think about it (I don't blame you if you have not stopped to think about it. The entire story has been thirty seconds long, so there is no real time to sit and think about it), but that, too was rushed like a rushing thing. Way to freaking pace yourselves, Y&R!

Especially since rushing this story along means that we barely had any time to sit back and appreciate the wonder that is JoJo before she was cruelly taken from us.

Jo-Jo: I'm having too much fun in my fancy new digs. Come on, Ess. I got a taste for some of that fancy Russian caviar on my scrambled eggs. I can't get enough of that stuff. Come on.

JoJo was given hardly any time to make the world smile and, meanwhile, Amber Moore continues to exist. Life is completely unfair!

Comments And, Um, Comments

Yesterday was a pretty interesting soap Friday, no? In Pine Valley, David's (surprisingly shoddy! Really, why did he choose a hereditary disease to claim to be dying from?!) lie has led Jake and Amanda to wonder if Jake, not David, is Trevor's father (of course, this is a question that could have been answered immediately after Trevor's birth with this newfangled notion called a "paternity test") (how many parenthetical notations is too many for a single sentence?). On The Young and the Restless, Victor is back, Ashley and Sharon now know they were at Fairview at the same time, and Tucker is Katherine's son. And in Port Charles, Lucky knows about Nik and Liz, and will now probably go blind since he had the misfortune of seeing them going at it.

All noteworthy events that are begging to be discussed in greater detail this weekend, but right now we have a question for you, dear readers. We know that many of you have had problems commenting in recent weeks and we're trying to work with TypePad to figure out what the deal is (our working theory is Brian Frons ruining things, as is his wont). If you are one of our readers with commenting issues, drop us an email and let us know about it, and hopefully we will have things squared away soon, and we can all go back to bitching together about the state of our soaps. We're sorry for any aggravation this may have caused!

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

General Hospital's remarkable inconsistency in everything they do, from writing to wardrobe, makes every episode somewhat intriguing, because you can never sense what's coming up in the next scene. Will it be better than the previous scene? Will it be worse? Will it be so much worse that you're forced to unplug your television in order to exorcise your room from its badness?

Today's episode, for example, featured a conversation that actually made me do a dramatic head-desk. I always thought that was just a phrase! But, no, I actually slammed my head against my desk when Sonny went there:

Sonny: You know, a lot of times you don't know what goes on behind closed doors. And, you know...I don't have to explain this to you, but I'll be happy to. Sometimes there's a couple, they look perfect. Like a--like--or a match made in hell. But on the inside, it's the opposite. Like everybody thought that Claudia and I, we were a disaster. But in actuality, you know, we had a pretty decent dysfunctional relationship. You and Felicia... On the other hand, were like destiny. You guys could do no wrong--

I'm not surprised that Sonny took the low road (it's closer to where he's standing, after all). And I'm not surprised that Mac spent his few allotted minutes of weekly screen time getting a horrible heartbreak thrown in his face. I'm just surprised that that much douche could fit into less than a hundred words. Everything about that piece of dialogue was either offensive or ridiculous.

But! The show made up for it with Lulu, of all people. While her recent history has far too much Sonny worship for my liking, and while she has a habit of getting irritated at things like her brother possibly having a tumor, she was immensely watchable today:

Lulu: I saw Lucky last night. And he told me how he overheard Nikolas proclaiming his love to you, and he confronted him on it, and he didn't even try to deny it. Nikolas actually believes that he's in love with you.

Elizabeth: I know, I know, and I feel really bad about the whole thing.

Lulu: That's really good to know, but I'm not concerned about your feelings. Lucky is a different story. Do you realize how flipped out he is about this?

Elizabeth: Ok, thank you for your concern or lack thereof, but, really, this is none of your business.

Lulu: Actually, it is, since Lucky came to me thinking that I was covering for you, again, like the time you cheated on him with Jason.

Lulu: Are you and Elizabeth reading from the same bad script? The same thing here is Lucky's betrayal, and the only villain he can see in this piece is you. He should be just as mad if not more so at Elizabeth. And if he's wearing blinders, I'm not. I know that you didn't fall in love with Elizabeth out of nowhere, without her active participation.

I love when she uses her smugness for good. Pout and sneer all you want, girl!

Two important GH topics to share:

• Rebecca Herbst is pregnant! I am, of course, happy for her and her husband, but I think that we can all admit that congratulations were our second thought, the first thought being "OMFG, if they write this pregnancy into the show I am setting myself on fire, I SWEAR TO GOD, I'LL DO IT".
• As readers Sarah and Amy noted...Emma has a plaid coat.

 
She can pull it off because she's the cutest to ever cute, but SERIOUSLY WITH THE PLAID COATS IN THIS FAMILY. Maybe I'm paranoid and take things too personally, but I'm starting to think that this show is screwing with me. If Patrick starts wearing plaid scrubs, I'm out.

Soap Blog Coalition

Daytime Confidential's Jillian Bowe recently attended the One Life to Live Cramer Women event and explains the orgins of Bitchy Bangs to the Cramer women. (Daytime Confidential)

This week the PVB examines the latest returns to the show. Brooke, Jack and Dixie... Oh My! (Pine Valley Bulletin)

The Serial Drama girls were full of warm, fuzzy feelings towards All My Children for exactly 24 hours, thanks to the cast being so adorable, sweet and smart at the New York Times "AMC At 40" panel Mallory attended. (Serial Drama)

Soap Opera Examiner's Mary Montanari write an open letter to General Hospital's Franco. (Soap Opera Examiner)

Goodbye Franco, hello Helena! The Wubqueen writes to Bob Guza about the whole Franco-Fiesta and can't wait for Connie Towers to return to the set of General Hospital in February. (Wubs)

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

For the spawn of Victor Newman, Nick is generally pretty unobjectionable. He's kind of a douche, and painfully dim, and he whines and stares blankly a lot, but compared to his deadly dull sister and [insert adjective here to describe Adam, because who the hell knows what personality he is going to have on any given day] brother, he doesn't bother me too much.

Except when he says things so hateful, so condescending and so just plain wrong that you'd think Victor himself said them, but you'd know that wasn't possible, because the line was delivered clearly, with no monotonous mumble.

Sharon: We've both made mistakes.

Nick: Well, I've learned from mine. You keep covering the same ground, throwing yourself into desperate relationships without giving a damn how it affects your family.

Sharon: The only people I have to consider now are myself and Noah.

Nick: Well, you sure as hell weren't thinking about him last night, 'cause he almost died.

Sharon: You don't think I know that, Nick?

Nick: If you did, you would have put our son first, before Adam and before yourself. Sharon, how many kids do we have to lose before you get your act together?

I...I just can't even. That was so horrifying and cruel that I got zero satisfaction from watching Sharon slap him.

Scalping him would have been a step in the right direction, but still not harsh enough punishment for that exhibit of...well, I was going to say "dickitude", but that's not a word, and "that exhibit of Victor Newmanism" is probably more apt.