Serial Drama

Countdown to the Emmys Day 4: Outstanding Supporting Actress

We continue our look at the Emmy reels submitted by the nominated actors and actresses, this time looking at the nominees for Supporting Actress to see just how much Emmy bait they managed to pack into their reels.

What counts as Emmy bait? These ultra-dramatic buzzwords do:

• Alcohol/alcoholic/drunk/liquor
• Anger/angry/furious/fury/rage
• Arrest
• Betrayal
• Breaks down/tailspin
• Burial/cemetery/funeral/morgue
• Collapsed
• Confronts/blasts/rips into/tears into, etc.
• Crush/crushed/sad/heartbroken
• Dead/death/dying
• Emotional
• Goodbye
• Hospital
• Illness--mental illness, cancer, coma, miscarriage, shot, injured, etc.
• Intervention
• Kills/killed/killer
• Pain
• Stun/stuns/stunned
• Tear/tears/tearfully
• Tirade

Did the nominees for supporting actress shoot for "subtlety" and "nuance", or were they smart enough to know that the Emmy voters are unfamiliar with the notion of being over the top? Let's take a look. And remember, after the jump, your chance to vote for who you think should win, and who you think will win, the Emmy.

Beth Chamberlin, Guiding Light: Beth grieved after being told that Coop had died. Later, she told Alan that she was leaving him, despite his claims that she always ran out the minute things hit a rough patch, only to return once things had calmed. Beth visited Phillip in prison to thank him for risking his own life by pulling Coop from a fiery car wreck, thereby giving Coop a few more hours to live.

Score: 2

Carolyn Hennesy, General Hospital: Diane salivated when she learned that Molly was trying to fix up Alexis on a Thanksgiving date. Later, Diane learned from Spinelli that Max had suffered permanent impotency as a result of a car accident. Diane spent quality time with Max -- and a plunger -- and thought that she had cured his problem, but she learned that Max never had any erectile dysfunction. Spinelli's story was just an attempt to get Diane and Max back together

Score: Vomit 0

Countdown to the Emmys Day 3: Outstanding Supporting Actor

Previously in our continuing series How Cheesy Is Cheesy Enough? The Story Behind the Daytime Emmys, we took a look at the reels submitted by the Emmy hopefuls in the Younger Actor and Younger Actress categories. Now it's time to look at the supporting categories, which is where things start to get interesting, because there's often no rhyme or reason to who is considered supporting versus leading. Let's start with Supporting Actor...

First, another look at our complex scoring system. Each actor gets a point based on their reel's inclusion of these key Emmy buzzwords:

• Alcohol/alcoholic/drunk/liquor
• Anger/angry/furious/fury/rage
• Betrayal
• Breaks down/tailspin
• Burial/cemetery/funeral/morgue
• Collapsed
• Confronts/blasts/rips into/tears into
• Crush/crushed/sad/heartbroken
• Dead/death/dying
• Emotional
• Goodbye
• Hospital
• Illness--mental illness, cancer, coma, miscarriage, shot, injured, etc.
• Intervention
• Kills/killed/killer
• Pain
• Stun/stuns/stunned
• Tear/tears/tearfully
• Tirade

Bradford Anderson, General Hospital: Spinelli walked up on Maxie and Johnny kissing. Despite their protests that the kiss meant nothing, Spinelli was convinced that Maxie felt something for Johnny that she could never feel for him. Later, Spinelli told Johnny that he'd let Maxie go, but warned Johnny that he'd better not break Maxie's heart.

Score: 0

 

After the jump: the rest of the reels and your chance to pick the most deserving and the most likely winners.

[Yesterday's] Dumbest Dialogue

After choking David Hayward in a fit of rage, Ryan realized that he should probably try to explain to Madison that his violent outbursts are in his past, except for the one that just happened. And he chose to do so by sharing stories that highlight his kind, gentle nature.

And, to the surprise of absolutely no one, anywhere, no such story exists where Ryan had a pleasant interaction with a human.

Ryan: If I find an ant in my apartment, I take it down in the elevator and set it free.

He must have a special affinity for ants, since they are his intellectual equals...

Totally Clueless

When Sonny posed the question "Do you have any idea the kind of hell I'm living in right now?" on today's General Hospital, I shouted, "Yes! Yes, I do!"

And do you know why that is? It's because the show has broadcast every second of that hell in painful detail, every single day of every single week of every single month. I am so sick of Sonny and Dante that I have a visceral reaction to hearing their names in any context (which can be embarrassing, like when I was watching The Weather Channel and heard that we were having a stretch of sunny weather and moaned, "Damn you, Corinthos, why can't you just leave me alone?!")

I'd love to just fast forward all of their scenes, and all of the scenes where people are talking about the things we've already covered in their scenes, but that would leave me only able to talk about, like...Patrick and his decision to reside in Schmuck Manor, and if I did that I'd (a) cry at the turn this character has taken and (b) be forced to look at and write about the horrible hair situation that Brianna Brown has going on.

But all of that is a moot point because there came a point in today's episode where I literally stopped hearing. Like, Sonny said this thing, and you all know what it is because at that point in the episode you probably also stopped hearing, and the world was devoid of sound and my mind was devoid of thought. How can I craft a witty rant about Patrick when my brain is broken?!

Sonny: Dante, why can't you ever see me in a good light? You always see me in a bad light!

If you'll excuse me, I am going to be translating the words "BECAUSE YOU SHOT HIM IN THE CHEST" into a variety of different languages because screaming it at him in English is obviously not working, because he's an idiot. And also fictional.

Countdown to the Emmys Day 2: Outstanding Younger Actress

Mirror, mirror on the wall, which of the nominees for Outstanding Younger Actress is the most Emmy-licious of them all?

Remember, here is our official scale for judging just how much Emmy bait appears on their reels. Each actress gets one point if their reel includes one of these words, which are all shorthand for "ACT-ING! DRA-MA!"

• Alcohol/alcoholic/drunk/liquor
• Anger/angry/furious/fury/rage
• Betrayal
• Breaks down/tailspin
• Burial/cemetery/funeral/morgue
• Collapsed
• Confronts/blasts/rips into/tears into
• Crush/crushed/sad/heartbroken
• Dead/death/dying
• Emotional
• Goodbye
• Hospital
• Illness--mental illness, cancer, coma, miscarriage, shot, injured, etc.
• Intervention
• Kills/killed/killer
• Stun/stuns/stunned
• Tear/tears/tearfully
• Tirade

Let's take a look at the nominees, shall we? And then vote for your pick to win, and who you think actually will win (because if this awards show has taught us anything, it's that acting talent doesn't always equal awards).

Julie Berman, General Hospital: Lulu confronted Johnny when she believed that he wanted to be with Maxie instead of her. Lulu insisted that Johnny and Maxie slept together, and Maxie said Lulu had been pushing them towards it -- but they hadn't. Lulu was infuriated when Maxie said that none of them were without blame. Lulu threatened to tell Spinelli about Maxie having kissed Johnny. Later, Tracy urged Lulu to get a backbone.

Score: 2

The Components of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

At this point I'm almost impressed.  For a show that so recently gave us three episodes in a row of a great wedding and a number of storylines involving the serious vets to, literally overnight, change gears so drastically and focus almost entirely on the youngest and most insipid characters, including a number of people we don't even know -- I mean it's almost masterful.  They successfully spun gold into shit.

It's almost hard to put into words because, well, words take effort and it's impossible to care.  And it's not as if I'm not trying -- I watch every second of the show, and I cover it here at Serial Drama.  I like doing that, I truly do!  But this? 

Today, we spent much of the episode doing this:

Seriously, for about five segments, they had a phone conversation.  While I'll admit that Brandon Buddy (who, by the way, has just announced he's leaving the show) did a pretty nice job playing the emotion of the phone call (and emotion isn't generally his strong suit), it's a phone call.  This is not high drama.  It's never going to be.  Oh and plus, to add "tension," Another New Dude was lurking in the background the whole time.

Riveting.  And then Starr and Another New Dude had some idiotic argument, as if we're supposed to have any sort of emotional investment in an argument that Starr is having with a complete stranger.  Linking him to Ford, a completely one-dimensional character that's been an amusing diversion for a year but certainly has no depth and no rootability, is not going to help.

Do's and Don'ts in Port Charles

There are many DO's and DON'Ts that invariably come up during a conversation about General Hospital: DON'T watch this show because it's an ungodly mess. DON'T ever be tricked by the fleeting moments of quality into thinking that this show is on a creative upswing. DO enjoy the brief glimpses you get of Jonathan Jackson, Tyler Christopher, Becky Herbst and anyone remotely related to the Quartermaines, because that's all you're going to get since they've basically been reduced to day-players.

But the biggest of the GH DON'Ts continues to be Maxie's hairdo, as in "There are so many don'ts in Maxie's 'do that there was a moment this afternoon where I seriously worried about going blind and what would happen to me then? I'd learn to adapt, I'm sure, but how humiliating would it be to explain the story of my blindness to people?"

 
I have three questions. 1.) What is that? 2.) Why would Kirsten Storms do that? 3.) How did no one run around the set screaming, "Big mistake! Big mistake! Abort mission!" while grabbing random sets of hair extensions?

Kirsten Storms is famous for switching up her hairstyles, and I applaud that, since I am exactly the opposite (there was a depressing event last year where a request for a haircut of an inch or two led to a Katie Holmes chin length bob, and I was on the couch for days crying). I just wish that she had a pal or a confidante to tell her, "Uh, that's even worse than the cheap looking BJ wig they put you in". It distracted me to no end today.

Although perhaps that was a good thing, since there is another Maxie DON'T: her personality. When she went to visit Jason today about the picture she received from Franco, I winced.

Maxie: I want you to catch Franco.
Jason, gesturing around as if to say, "I'm in fucking prison, you dumbass": That's not going to happen.
Maxie: Yeah, you have to protect Michael. I get that, but still--
Jason: Michael's gone home. He was released today.
Maxie: Get them to let you out of here, Jason. You let yourself get sent to prison for two years so you could protect Michael for a few weeks? That's the most selfish thing you've ever done. Spinelli is basically in freefall and I am the target of a freaking maniac. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Jason: Okay. Take the picture to Claire. I'm counting on you, okay?
Maxie: Don't try to be nice. This is all your fault.

I had to rewind this scene, like, five times because I couldn't hear anything over the sound of me saying, "Ugggggggggh". There is so much that is annoying about it, the most annoying being the assumption that Jason being a HITMAN is not something he should be ashamed of, but "deserting" Spinelli and Maxie in their time of "need" is. As I groaned, out loud, earlier this afternoon, "Uggggggggh".

Countdown to the Emmys Day 1: Outstanding Younger Actor

It's time for our annual look at the actors and actresses nominated for daytime's biggest (?) honor (??) and this year, we're going to do things a little differently. In the past, we watched their Emmy reels and offered our lovingly critical take on the acting, which often included the phrases "We have no idea what's going on here because we don't watch this show" or "[He/she] submitted THIS scene, which was the start of that HORRIBLE STORY where [the writers introduced this crime against humanity and passed it off as entertainment]". And it was a really nice idea in theory, except for one glaring problem: nobody who votes for the eventual winner actually gives a damn about acting skills. We don't know what they do give a damn about, but they have an obvious soft spot for over-the-top Emmy bait.

This year, we are going to follow suit and study the submitted episodes (courtesy of soapcentral.com) to see just how Emmy bait-y they really are, using a highly scientific scale. Each actor and actress will be given one (1) point if their submission includes one of these Emmy buzzwords:

• Alcohol/alcoholic/drunk/liquor
• Anger/angry/furious/fury/rage
• Betrayal
• Breaks down/tailspin
• Burial/cemetery/funeral/morgue
• Collapsed
• Confronts/blasts/rips into/tears into
• Crush/crushed/sad/heartbroken
• Dead/death/dying
• Emotional
• Goodbye
• Hospital
• Illness--mental illness, cancer, coma, miscarriage, shot, injured, etc.
• Intervention
• Kills/killed/killer
• Stun/stuns/stunned
• Tear/tears/tearfully
• Tirade

Let's take a look at the Outstanding Younger Actor nominees and see how in it to win it they were when it came time to choose their episode!

Drew Tyler Bell, The Bold & The Beautiful: An unapologetic Thomas tore into his family for their lack of action in handling Rick, a man who'd been responsible for his sister's death, bedded his mother, and then turned his sights to his other sister, Steffy. While Ridge seemed to understand and even approve of Thomas' actions, Steffy did not and angrily confronted her brother.

Score: 2

After the jump, the rest of the actors, plus a chance to vote for who you think should win the Emmy and who you think will win.

It's The Most Wond...Well, It's The Most Semi-Entertaining Time of the Year

It's that time again. The time where soap fans find themselves either celebrating the fact that their favorites walked away with an award and think to themselves proudly and, admit it, kind of smugly, "I totally knew that they were the best" or angrily voice their displeasure with the whims of the [insert insulting adjective here] Emmy voters who did not recognize their favorite's brilliance. The time where normally personable media personalities suddenly become wooden, cheesy awards show hosts and daytime actors and actresses visibly pledge their allegiance to Team Pretty or Team Fugly.

Yes. The Daytime Emmys are here, and we could not be more excited! Because as much as we try to present ourselves as cooler-than-thou and jaded, we are shamefully and hopelessly addicted to all kinds of awards shows, and the Emmys are no exception. Even if they are obviously wrong in the head, since they gave General Hospital the most nominations, but whatever: we're totally excited!

Next Sunday, June 27th at 9 PM on CBS, the Daytime Emmys are airing live, hosted by Regis Philbin (does this make anyone else nervous? We watch Regis and Kelly at the gym because Kelly is adorable and it makes the elliptical more tolerable, but Regis is...prone to saying things that raise the ol' eyebrow, if you know what we mean, and we think you do, but just in case you don't, we mean that he's crazy), honoring Dick Clark and granting the phenomenal Agnes Nixon a Lifetime Achievement Award. 

We will be marking this occasion with Emmy content all week, including your chance to vote for the actors and shows you think deserve to be winners on the big night, all leading up to the triumphant return of the Serial Drama Daytime Emmys Live Blogging Extravaganza. Join us here at next Sunday at 9 for our play-by-play commentary, snark and creative ways to say, "What would possess a person to wear such a thing?"

poll by twiigs.com

Sins of the Father...That We're Being Punished For

I had a day that was, shall we say, less than great, which is surprising, since it had all of the ingredients necessary for a great day (Friday, sunny, warm) and I won't bore you with the particulars of the badness, but it ended with me shouting at my friend, "I am in no mood for shenanigans tonight!", an outburst that was both rude (despite my fondness for all caps yelling on the internet, I don't actually like to shout) and unlike me (since when do I not like shenanigans?!).

Because of this, I am holding off on commenting on today's episode of General Hospital that saw Sonny and Alexis talking about their daughter, Michael being released from Pentonville and Johnny and Olivia breaking up, because my reaction to everything, especially that last item, was...unkind.

(REALLY. I have nothing against Lisa LoCicero, except for maybe jealousy over that outstanding head of hair, but the facial contortions and dramatic moaning were alarming. I suppose she thought, "Now's as good a time as any to work on my Emmy reel", which is true, I just wish the theme of this hypothetical Emmy reel was something other than "crazed").

What I WILL comment on is the fact that SOAPNet is having a very special Father's Day marathon. Called "Sins of the Father. All about Sonny and Dante.

• 3 PM--Sonny visits Dante in the hospital and thanks him for saving Morgan’s life. As Olivia wrestles with the idea of telling them they’re father and son, she’s shocked to walk in and see them bonding over childhood stories.
• 4 PM--The tension builds as Sonny prepares to kill Dante for betraying him. When Dante realizes what’s happening, he starts to arrest Sonny who pulls out a gun and shoots him. As Dante falls to the floor, Olivia walks in and tells Sonny that he shot his own son.
• 5 PM --Dante is in the hospital recovering from Sonny’s gunshot and the two have their first conversation as father and son. Sonny hopes they can try to build their relationship, but Dante rejects him. Sonny goes to the chapel to pray and realizes that he doesn’t want to give up on making things work with Dante.
• 6 PM--Dante lashes out at Sonny, telling him he’s the reason all of his kids are having problems. When Dante ends up punching him, Sonny says he’ll let it go this time, but can only be pushed so far. Dante scoffs at that and tells Sonny to come and get him any time.

Because, first of all, "Happy Father's Day! Remember how a father shot his unarmed son in the chest? But it's okay, since he didn't know he was his son at the time. Those were some good times". And second of all, how is this different from every other day in Port Charles, ever? GENERAL HOSPITAL IS ALWAYS A SONNY AND DANTE MARATHON!