Serial Drama

The More You Know, The Less You Care

Some lessons learned.

You see?  Todd does have limits!  He thinks there is nothing funny about child abuse.  Rape, on the other hand, warrants chortles and smirks and air-quotes, but there are limits, people!  Okay, I'm just being naive because I know the limits come into play on very clear occasions, and those occasions are when Todd can reflect on his own victimhood.  What sweet bonding between Todd and James today.  And just in case we were confused, Clint is paying for a child abuser to stay out of jail, while Todd thinks people are justified in murdering child abusers with their bare hands.  Because Todd is complicated but good deep down, and Clint is... oh, I don't even know who the hell they've decided Clint is anymore.  His scheming is fun and, as I repeat like a broken record, is clearly being relished by Jerry ver Dorn, but why resurrect story arcs that had already come to an end to give him a reason for the schemes?  Why not just tell a story in which he gets new reasons that make more organic sense?

Oh hey, isn't it so sweet that Nate thought sex would be better with someone he cared about (has any teenage boy ever actually said that and meant it)?  And what was with Dani's utter shock that Nate constantly thinks about sleeping with her?  What rock is she living under?  I guess when you're getting shuffled off from boarding school to boarding school, you have no access to pop culture or anything in the world that teaches you the universality that teenage boys are completely sex-obsessed -- of course, since she is dating what appears to be a middle-aged man, perhaps she assumes he's tired of sowing his wild oats and is ready to settle down with a nice girl and start a family.

Terrifying French sex!

From Port Charles to the Francophreaking Oscars

General Hospital ruins most things it touches and I thought for sure that this would include James Franco's career because...well, because this happened and that hour represented the lowest depths television could sink to.

But Mr. Franco left Port Charles relatively unscathed. Not only is he a shoo-in for a Best Actor nomination at this year's Academy Awards (I keep telling people that he's absurdly talented, but the longer he was on GH, the harder it was for them to believe and the more overtly judgmental their faces were whenever we had that conversation) but he's also hosting the Oscars with the ever adorable Anne Hathaway. Sometimes all you can say is "What the what?" and imagine just how clumsily the GH writers will allude to this bit of news at Oscar time...

Laughter Amidst The Tears

There hasn't been much to smile about on All My Children these days. Zach's death and the painful fallout for his loved ones, for example. The stomach-churning pairing of Ryan and Greenlee, for another. And the generally piss-poor writing, for another.

The Soup, however, found something funny. Just, you know...unintentionally so.

 

Inappropriate!

This is not the first time The Soup has made fun of ABC Daytime's sad attempts at entertainment (like the time Cameron Mathison possibly wore a thong, or the time James Franco was sexually obsessed with Jason Morgan) and now all I want for Christmas is the chance to watch these shows with Joel McHale...

A Thankless Fordsgiving

Oh lordie.  That was dismal, particularly in light of how lovely last year's Llanview Thanksgiving was. Basically, this year's Thanksgiving episode of One Life to Live was primarily focused on the Ford clan.  Shall we re-visit the agony?  

- Ford and James ran a 10K on Thanksgiving morning! See?  Aren't they wonderful, productive, healthy people, especially the hugely-transformed now-saint-and-all-around-great-guy Robert Ford?  Oh wait, you're not convinced yet?  Wait, let's think of another contrivance to further prove how wonderful Ford is!  It wasn't just any old 10K, it was a 10K run to raise money for the homeless!  Are you fucking kidding me?  

- Then Ford and James went to ruin the Cramer family Thanksgiving by their mere presence, presumably after they stopped by a soup kitchen and served some food, went by the Llanview orphanage to help build the kids' self-esteem, helped a few old ladies across the street, and rescued some baby birds who'd fallen from their nest.  Because somehow the Cramers couldn't just spend the day with each other, providing a little comfort after the traumas most of them have experienced with each other.  This wouldn't have been satisfying enough for a Thanksgiving episode?

- Daddy Ford showed up and further ruined the already-ruined Cramer Thanksgiving.  So far most of Eddie Ford's scenes have been campy-fun-bad, but yesterday's were just plain bad.  Not that I don't enjoy it any time a Ford brother is punched in the face, but he chose the wrong one and it sadly only served to further endear the other characters to these asses.  Eddie did one thing right, though, and that was to appropriately compliment Blair.

A Reason To Be Thankful: Awesome Writer, Being Awesome

Through charm or ingenuity or trickery or "Hey, Steve Burton, nice new leather jacket. Oh! Bob Guza. Wow, sorry for my mistake. Looking very Stone-Colidsh!", Awesome Writer was given the task of writing General Hospital's Thanksgiving episode this year and will no doubt face harsh repercussions for the quality of the episode that aired at 3 PM today. Not only were there Quartermaines, Davises, Scorpios and Drakes doing things like "bantering" and "expressing love for their family and friends", but not one of them--not one!--had an overwrought soliloquy detailing the great greatness of Jason Morgan! Awesome Writer, you may soon find yourself on the unemployment line, but you can at least feel proud that you went out on a high, soapy note.

 
Today's GH--I have tried to type the following sentence three times and my brain keeps registering it as a typo--made me so happy. How could it not, really, when it included large doses of the following:

Edward Quartermaine

 

I almost titled this entry "Things Edward Quartermaine Said That I Loved", because John Ingle spent his surprisingly ample screentime delivering some great lines adorably (he also got to miss Lila, as pictured above, which was utterly sweet).

The Day of the (Not So) Dead

One of the first things I did after watching yesterday's episode of All My Children was stockpile a number of phrases commonly used to express shock, including "Well, knock me over with a feather", "I am completely gobsmacked!", "IS THIS REAL LIFE?", "Oh em gee" and wordless flailing, because to my utter surprise, the last few minutes of Monday's AMC were some of the soapiest soap to recently soap.  I mean, please: Kendall breaking down as she plays and replays Zach's voicemail message, followed by Greenlee sentenced to life in prison, followed by David strolling, stone-faced, into the courtroom? PURE FREAKING SOAP.

So I eagerly and excitedly tuned into today's AMC, figuring that the writing staff would be able to sustain, if not exceed, this level of awesome and also sort of wondering what brought on this previously undemonstrated knowledge of soapiness.

It turns out that short-term narcotics of some sort were responsible because today, while filled with some compelling moments and FANTASTIC performances, was oddly...off, somehow.

We all knew there was a possibility that David wasn't really and truly dead and was merely faking his death as part of a nefarious plot on Pine Valley, so his entrance wasn't completely shocking but it was wonderfully staged. With the gasps and the hammy double-take from Darnell Williams and Greenlee and David locking eyes, and then the entire courtroom dissolving into sheer hysteria. How did they all react? Greenlee: DISGUST. Ryan: HATRED. Jake: HATRED. Liza: "How the eff did this become my life?"

Math Hurts My Head

Okay, so we knew on Friday that there would be ambiguity about some of the DNA results, particularly depending on how much information we got about Vimmel (?) and what actually went down when someone turned on the lights in the lab, and what actually was asked of him in the first place by Clint.

As of yesterday (which I'm going to have to admit was probably the best episode of this show since Bo and Nora's latest wedding), the characters got the following results: Brody (not Ford) is the father of Jessica's baby, Brody (not John) is the father of Natalie's baby, and Charlie (not Clint) is the father of Echo diSavoy's man-baby.  The audience was also privy to the fact that it was Marty who walked in on Vimmel in the lab and that she definitely did something at that computer and has a copy of some sort of results now in her home -- presumably Natalie's results.  We know that Vimmel's task was to make sure Rex's results listed Charlie as his father, and Clint's daughter's results listed Brody as the father, and that he accomplished both of these tasks.

Bear with me here.

Based on the language Vimmel used, we do not actually know whether it was Clint or Charlie that was a match as Rex's father -- we only know that he "made sure" the results indicated Charlie.  We also know that one of Clint's daughter's baby-daddies is not Brody and is "the other man," but we do not know if Vimmel switched the paternity of Jessica's baby or Natalie's baby -- only that we certainly have one baby on the way who is not a mini-Lovett. 

Sweeps Dreams. Or Nightmares, Rather

This November sweeps is a far cry from sweeps periods past. Historically, sweeps have served as a way for the General Hospital writers to demonstrate to an ever-dwindling audience that there are no limits to the kind of craziness they can dream up (Examples: "Masked men hold a hotel hostage before Jason saves the day"; "A strangler terrorizes a random Black and White ball before Jason saves the day"; "Toxic balls. SERIOUSLY, TOXIC FREAKING BALLS") and while I'm not saying I want to sit through another few weeks of the entire cast congregating together for some half-assed reason, waiting for Jason to save them from violence or other peril, I...I would like November sweeps to have something worth watching, because right now, the most intriguing aspects of this show are:

• Ronnie's dye job.

 
How does he get his hair SO BLACK and SO SHINY? Is it shoe polish? Printer ink? Or does he lovingly color each strand with a marker and, if so, what kind of marker? Sharpie? Or maybe Mr. Sketch? I doubt that he is cool enough to know and love the Mr. Sketch line of markers, but I can dream.

• Lisa's makeup situation.

 
I know I gripe about her hair all the time (I'm fixated, but it's a justifiable fixation!), but her makeup right now is giving me even more pause. Perhaps the over-the-top application of, um, everything is a way of conveying that she's going even more over-the-top in her quest to rid the world of Robin? But even if the heavy makeup is a character choice, I have to ask: how can a person own that much makeup but not a single blotting sheet? You can get the for, like, a dollar at Target.

• Um...

Okay, so maybe that's a slight exaggeration. While the majority of the show is so boring that it defies description (how many times can I say the words "and then [CHARACTER] talked about Brenda to [OTHER CHARACTER]" or "and then Brenda talked to [CHARACTER] about Brenda some more..."?) there have been a few moments of entertainment. And most of those moments include, of all people, Jason, Carly and Maxie. If you had told 2006 Mallory that I would one day type those words, I'd probably panic and think that a serious brain injury was in my future!

My Eyes, My Eyes! or Who Is Too Big For Her Britches?

The list of things I never need to see is a long, long one.  I'll grant you that.  But a sultry, hot-n-heavy sex scene between Rex and Gigi definitely falls on that list somewhere between Dick Cheney in a bathtub and my parents getting it on.  I honestly can think of few soap opera hook-up scenes that generated less heat than that.  (No wait, Todd and Marty.  But for such different reasons.  By the way?  More on that later.)  I'll give them credit for making one good call -- they played it with a comedic edge -- but that's it.  Were we supposed to be happy for them?

Hot?

In other desperate-attempt-at-generating-interest-in-a-couple news, Langston needs to be taken out back and shot.  Really, it's just time to put her and us out of our collective misery.  Not only is she stupid, duplicitous, and dull-as-dirt, she's now decided that she is in some position to insult Blair.  She's decided she's in the position to suggest that she could get herself a man that Blair could not.  Look, I make no pretense that I'm impartial when it comes to Blair, a character whose choices and actions I often disagree with but cannot help but always root for (oh, except for the singing... I never like the singing), but... I mean first of all, Blair had already played this game before.  She'd propositioned Ford in order to expose his player ways, and it worked.  Of course when he showed up to sleep with Blair, Langston answered the door and bought his lie that he was there to see her, but regardless of whether she bought it or not, Blair explained to her what she had been trying to do -- and yet this time around, it wouldn't occur to that little bint that Blair is just trying to prove the same point?  She actually thinks Blair is just trying to seduce Langston's boyfriend? 

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column

My Take
By Mallory Harlen

Even though ALL MY CHILDREN and GENERAL HOSPITAL have far more misses than hits these days, all hope is not lost: Both shows have at least one storyline that is hitting the right notes.

I was a vocal critic of GH's story that saw Patrick cheat on Robin with Lisa. There was no plot buildup aside from "Well, this is the reason we brought Lisa to Port Charles last year, so..." It neatly undid all of the growth Patrick experienced on his journey from Lothario to family man, and using Robin's trip to Africa for AIDS research as a scapegoat for a one-night stand was all kinds of wrong. Consider me shocked, then, by how much I enjoyed the aftermath. Lisa's trip to the land of the crazies was ripped off from Fatal Attraction , but what a fun rip-off it was! Brianna Brown, clearly relishing the chance to do something besides tell college stories and smile blandly, has made Lisa's unraveling equal parts compelling and hilarious; her friendly, breezy, conversations with Patrick and Robin after instances of kidnapping and attempted murder are amazing. Jason Thompson (Patrick) and Kimberly McCullough (Robin) are reliably excellent, but the fallout from this affair has seen some of their best work yet, getting to play guilt, fury and grief. Fingers crosses that this gets them some recognition when award season rolls around! This story also incorporated the return of Michael Sutton as Stone Cates--a return that, unlike most of GH's big returns in the past few years, did not rewrite history or serve as an excuse to sing Jason and Sonny's praises. I honestly didn't think the GH writers had it in them!