Serial Drama

Jason's Lyric

I'm not sure what is with the most recent crop of bananas, but they have been featuring lots of religious icons on them. First there was Banana Jesus, and then today, the banana I had with my breakfast had two large dots on it. But not just any dots: if you have an overactive imagination and spend far too many hours a day thinking about General Hospital, those large dots looked uncannily similar to the cold and emotionless eyes of the most holy of hitmen, Jason Morgan. If I were faster on my feet, I'd have sold it on ebay to a huge Jason fan, but I ate it. Sacrilicious!

In case we'd all forgotten that Jason is the most awesome person to ever exist and do awesome things in an awesome manner, today's episode of GH was a nice refresher course in Jason 101, courtesy of guest lecturer Robin Scorpio!

Here are just three of her lines today.

Robin: He made me want to live. Jason was so patient, and kind and just incredibly supportive. He saved my life, actually.

Robin: Sometimes it's easy to forget how much I owe Jason.

Robin: You know Jason holds a special place in my heart. And hey, if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be with you, I wouldn't be here right now, wouldn't be a wife, a mother, a doctor...

So the moral of the story is that Lifesavers should be renamed Jasons, Valentine's Day should be Jason's Day and we should increase the amount of times we hear about Jason's good deeds from three daily to eight daily. Got it!

Luckily, the new version of Port Charles newcomer Lisa Niles

 
(who may be familiar to some from an episode of Criminal Minds where she played a murderous prostitute, who became weirdly fixated on Hotch. Assuming that some of you are also obsessed with certain CBS crime procedurals, and the procedural's cardigan wearing genius profiler in particular)

was able to learn all of this information before she made another stupid mistake, like thinking to call the police when she saw a random thug holding a gun on a patient!

  

Happy Anniversary, All My Children!

I didn't think I'd ever say these words again, unless I was being held at gunpoint and the only way out was to say it, lest another legacy character get shown the door, and I certainly didn't think that I'd say it about an episode written by Charles Pratt, especially since I was mildly terrified when I realized that the show's 40th anniversary special would come during his time on the show, but: I wish that today's episode of All My Children had been at least an hour longer. At least!

After all, if the show was more than an hour, maybe some of the awesome returning characters would have had the opportunity to actually interact with people, rather than just talk to the camera. And maybe entire scenes of old footage could have been shown, rather than just footage without dialogue. Although a longer show would have given them even more opportunity to talk about Babe in addition to the third of the show they spent talking about her today, so maybe it's for the best.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I will deal with my quibbles later and focus now on the delightful. The very definition of delightful being, of course, the big returns (Brooke! Maria! Nina! Jackson! Lily! PALMER!) which filled me with the warm fuzzy feelings that old memories bring and also gave us some quality tension between Brooke and Erica.

Brooke: Of course I'd come back, but wouldn't someone have to warn Erica first?

 Erica: Brooke who?

Perfection.

So the conceit behind the episode is that this was a very special episode of The Wave that was supposed to highlight the many reasons Pine Valley was worthy of being named the best town in America. Apparently, it's because there are families, love, marriage, loss and hope in Pine Valley, which is markedly different from the rest of the country. Also, it seems that Wave is in a serious budget crunch, because that was some cheap font they used for this episode.

Pine Valley's finest were interviewed by Hayley for their thoughts on life in Pine Valley, and there were so many amazingly wonderful moments. Like, say, every freaking second Palmer was on-screen!

I love him. I know that James Mitchell had to retire for health reasons (he's 89 years old!), so that's why we no longer have Palmer, but I still miss him all the same. I enjoyed everything he said today, and every time he was mentioned by Adam and Nina.

Palmer: My beautiful Dixie. I miss her so.

Palmer: Adam Chandler? He's a rattlesnake. He eats his young.

The Question We're All Asking

I ended yesterday's episode of General Hospital with a serious question heavily weighing on my mind.

It wasn't "On a scale of 1-10, how amazing was the line 'Who do I have to screw to get off this movie'?", because the answer to that is clearly 10.

And, no, it wasn't "What was the point of having a big Carly kidnapping if nobody even knew she was missing until Jason stumbled upon her at the end of the episode in which she was kidnapped?", although that IS a good question. Not that anybody would actually think Carly wouldn't survive this, because duh (I don't think even Bob Guza thinks the audience is dumb enough to seriously worry about Carly's survival), but they could have at least attempted to make this into a dramatic scenario!

And it also wasn't, "What did Greg Vaughan do to the writers that led to their refusal to write scenes for Lucky in which he was on equal footing with Jason, or actually on-screen at all?", but I am curious about that. The difference between the writing for GV's Lucky and Jonathan Jackson's Lucky continues to be striking.

Lucky: What are you talking about?

Jason: Lucky, it's such a long story. I--

Lucky, crabby: Condensed version.

I enjoy competent Lucky, and Jason having respect for him.

And the question wasn't even, "Why would a police officer let the local mobster hang around waiting for a detective, at the detective's desk, unattended and not say anything to the local mobster, even when the local mobster starts oh so casually rifling through the papers on the detective's desk with a plain as day 'Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see' look on his face?", although I can see why you'd think that, because what the hell?  

No, the big question I am left with is: what circumstances led to Johnny encountering a senior citizen and deciding to trade shirts with him, and why weren't we treated to that scene on-screen? What did Johnny give the old man in return? I feel like a bag of Werther's originals and a recorded episode of Matlock were involved somehow.

It's an old man sweater, is what I'm trying to say. And yet the terrible sweater made Olivia infantilize him more than she usually does!

It's all very confusing, but one thing I do know for certain is that I spent more time creating an elaborate backstory for this sweater (which, if it is a recurring wardrobe staple, may become my newest irrational wardrobe obsession) than the writers have spent thinking about Johnny in general. That says a lot about me, and about the writing staff, and none of it is good.

AMC Turns 40, Birthday Wish Is To Be Good Again

Okay, technically, I'm not positive that All My Children's birthday wish is to be a quality soap opera again, but I feel like it's the most likely of all wishes, since AMC pretty much has everything: award nominations, a hugely talented cast of actors, brand new West Coast digs that serve as a symbol of ABC's faith in the show. The only things missing are (now that Zach and Kendall have left Pine Valley) a couple worth rooting for and writing that doesn't make the audience want to drink Liquid Plumber.

The show is taking tentative steps towards this goal by bringing back assorted favorites for their 40th anniversary show (Brooke and Palmer being two of the most exciting people back tomorrow). Of course, this is AMC we're talking about, so the setup for these returns is beyond gimmicky: Pine Valley was named the Best Town In America.

I'll give you a few moments to compose yourself after the fit of laughter you no doubt had after reading those words.

I'm assuming that the deadline for voting must have been well before the start of 2009, because the events of last year surely would have rendered Pine Valley ineligible for any accolade with the word "best" in the title. Either that, or there was a nuclear Holocaust and Pine Valley was one of a small handful of towns left in the entire world and even then, bribery and/or blackmail was involved.

This big Pine Valley victory is the subject of a documentary being filmed by Hayley and Mateo, who arrived at the Chandler mansion via helicopter while a bunch of uncomfortable people were gathered to watch Annie and Adam renew their vows.

Yes, that's right: Hayley is BACK and ADORABLE and KIND OF BITCHY and SUSPICIOUS OF ANNIE and ADORABLE. I love Hayley, and, as I've mentioned before, adore Kelly Ripa beyond all reason. I think she is hilarious and cute, and I willingly watch Regis and Kelly, even though I am in my twenties and can't tolerate Regis (unless he's doing a guest appearance on How I Met Your Mother and scaring Barney, or being mocked on The Soup). She is just the pint-sized, hyperactive best.

A roundabout, embarrassing way of saying that I am happy that Hayley and Mateo are back, even just for two days.

(ADORABLE!)

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column

For our column in the December 29th issue of Soap Opera Digest asked us for our thoughts on the Best and Worst of 2009 in soaps. And we had...well, we had many thoughts, which we compiled for this month's Our Take.  (It's our first ever jointly authored one, for those keeping track -- which we assume is roughly zero). You've seen some of these choices before in the Serial Drama Best and Worst of 2009 entry (along with those containing profanity, as well as thoughts on One Life to Live), but we are both slightly OCD and bring you the column below anyway, because incomplete archives would drive us crazy and/or to drink. Plus watching soaps has taught us that redundancy is not only a good thing, it earns you the most prestigious awards in your field.  And we're totally shooting for that.

As two practically semi-professional list-makers, we look forward to Best and Worst lists at this time of year like little kids do to holiday gifts.  In truth, we look forward to holiday gifts with similar zeal, but it seems shallow to admit that, so…on with the year-end soapy analysis!

2009 brought a regrettably large number of stories that can be aptly summarized with a groan and an eyeroll, but standing out as the Worst Story is the murder of Stuart Chandler on AMC. It’s troublesome that the show’s powers-that-be listened to the storyline we can only assume was pitched as “The three times a year that Stuart is onscreen being cheerful and sweet is just too much, so for our big sweeps story, he gets murdered. And then it turns out that ADAM killed him. What’s more exciting than a twin killing a twin? Nothing! And then Kendall confesses to the murder that she didn’t commit because…well, the ‘because’ part isn’t important” and not only didn’t run away screaming from the story’s inherent badness but agreed to film and televise it. The debacle’s lone saving grace is David Canary, who proved again that he is daytime’s Best Actor by rising above the material and giving amazing performances in a story that does not deserve it.

Days of Our Lives: 2009 in Review

I was a seriously derelict Days blogger this year.  (Uh, last year.  See, I am so far behind that I don't even know what year it is.)  So anyway, this Year in Review is less "here is a summary of what happened on the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives this year" and more "here is a summary of the 3.5 posts I did about the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives this year, which cover approximately 7% of 2009's story arcs and focus heavily on how many hot men are on the show and how bad James Scott's hair was through mid-summer."  Thank you for your understanding.

So here we go; 2009 in very brief and incomplete review:

Days started the year off on a couple of veteran-canning notes, first ignominiously writing off John and Marlena (if you can even call that writing), then by sending the recently returned Steve and Kayla off into the sunset without really writing them off at all and making for awkward conversations about how they were just hanging out around town and then in some new undisclosed location.

In March, basically everything on the show was still bad.  Among other things, Chloe and her ginormous hair talked to God and/or ceiling tiles a lot, tragic things happened to James Scott's hair, Bo had ridiculous psychic visions, Melanie was a grating caricature of a character that made my kicking foot itch, and there was a super-hot bartender that we have inexplicably never seen nearly naked again.

Until her recent character pseudo-rehabilitation, the only thing I liked about Melanie was when she got smacked in the face by nasty hospital food.