Serial Drama

This Situation Just Got Seriously Adorable

Well, this is certainly not what I anticipated. 

First of all, apparently Sam is getting better life lessons from his family than his big brother Jack is, since little Sam has learned from his Aunt Dorian that we should help the homeless, which manifested itself in his gifting a cola to RHTodd (Roger Howarth's Todd, as opposed to TSJTodd... for the time being).

Little did he know that RHTodd is... or might be... his mother's ex-husband? The father of his siblings? 

Anyway, the point is that on Friday little Sam met RHTodd. 

And it was so effing cute! And you know? It was a little reminiscent of RHTodd's past relationships with small children -- whether we're talking his friendship with little CJ and Sarah or with Starr, all times that he was missing or on-the-run or unknown by the adults nearby, at any rate. I'm enjoying this little call-back, and I'd forgotten just how good Roger Howarth is with little kids. I think it always did a lot to keep us interested in Todd back when there was little reason to do much but hate him for his myriad crimes. There was actually always something about Howarth's Todd that was still a child, and children brought out the part of him that wasn't yet broken.

Romantic Heroine Fail

So Marissa is pretty perfect, yes? JR is obsessed with her. Bianca is head over heels in love with her. Maybe I've missed the scenes where she demonstrated having a single personality trait that would lead one to exhibit mild interest in her, let alone utter devotion; it's possible, since I have a habit of tuning out during her scenes.

But when I listen to JR and Bianca justify their love, well...

Bianca: [Marissa is] a woman who makes me laugh, and who makes me feel good about myself.

JR: She amazes me everyday. How much she loves AJ, how much she never lets anything get in the way of what she wants.

Her most sterling qualities are: (1) isn't mean (2) loves her son (3) is obnoxious in her single-minded pursuit of what she wants? Like, why not just have Bianca say "I love her because the writers say she is awesome?" That would be something else she shares with her twin!

Much more to come this weekend, about Kendall and Griffin, and Susan Lucci's epic performance as Erica and Jane. It's been a crazy few weeks--I have started about a million All My Children and General Hospital and--are you sitting? I hope you're sitting. And, for good measure, not eating anything, lest you choke--Days Of Our Lives (I KNOW! A Days post on Serial Drama! I mean, a hypothetical, anticipated Days post on Serial Drama which, still, was a good reason for me to warn you to sit down and stop eating! You could have choked or fallen down and got a concussion, and I'd feel super guilty) posts this week and then got distracted by all sorts of real life things and the haunting malaise that comes with 98 degree temperatures, so...I'm a deadbeat blogger right now, basically, and I owe you huge posts for all of these shows.

Worst Doctor Ever (or Fairly Decent Brother?)

Wow. Matthew's doctor has the worst bedside manner of just about any doctor I've ever seen. Last week I complained that she was telling Bo and Nora their son was likely brain-dead as if she was telling them it was time to let go of that one dead tooth.

This week? She seems annoyed with them. More tooth.

Nora: Matthew's not a quitter.

Dr. Insensitive: I'm sure he's not. And Matthew deserves a quality of life that... These machines can keep him alive, but they can't give him the kind of life you want for him. Do you really want him to linger like this? Maybe for years?

Jeez, Doc! How 'bout let him "linger like this" for two days before treating his parents as if they're being incredibly irritating and stubborn? Then later when she was trying to persuade them to take him off of life support, she kept using phrases like "very little hope" and "not technically brain-dead," and already talking about organ donation. What the hell? I would punch that woman in the face. She's saying there is some hope but that this would be a bad state to be in for years on end, so they should just go ahead and pull the plug now?  

Outside of this asshole doctor, absolutely everything in the Matthew storyline absolutely broke my heart today. That's all I can say about it because it's NOT REALLY HAPPENING, but it was very well-done drama and tugged at my icy heartstrings.

In other news, I'm sorry about the fact that I know this is going to disappoint some of you, but I have to speak well of a Ford. James was kind of awesome today. When Ford told James about how he'd been to see Tess to tell her he has feelings for her...

James (in an excellent mocking tone): Oh, now you guys are goin' steady?

Ford: No, they kicked me out before I could do anything.

James: Well good. 'Cause she just would've used it against you. "Oh come on, Bobby, bust me out," and then you would've broken the law and she would've gotten free and dumped you faster than you can say (sounds it out for him like the dunce he is) "ALTER EGO."

Even Favorites Get The Blues

Okay, y'all. So I drag myself out of bed this morning and meander out to the living room to do my morning workout video, and whatever channel the TV is on when I turn it on is playing an infomercial for that hair removal torture device (this is not an informed opinion, just an assumption) called No No, and I've seen several infomercials for this thing in the past but never before the infomercial starring Kassie DePaiva! Very, very exciting. And I can't sit here and lie to you people. I rather adore this woman, beyond all healthy reason. Because, seriously? 

  

I may now order the damn thing. Huh. I guess this is why they hire celebrities to pimp this stuff. I am such a sucker. (Hand to god, I just thought this was adorable [even though it's over a year old] and am not trying to get anyone to buy anything. Though if anyone does buy it now, I want kick-backs! Or a free one. That thing looks like it hurts.)

But I digress. The show! Oh yeah. Blair, the alter ago of Mrs. DePaiva (and by "alter" I mean the role she plays rather than Lair, the naughty one, Stair, the cerebral one, and Gair, the dude who's always lookin' for ladies), is... how shall I put this? Failing at motherhood right now. That's a slight exaggeration, but I don't really understand why she stayed at the gym and sent Jack home with the driver after another bullying incident with Shane, and then after her workout went over to make out with Tomas, leaving Jack at home with complete computer access (I thought that was forbidden??) to continue to plot against Shane. Granted, Jack's other parent has not (that we know of) spent one freaking second with his son since the brief chat he had with Jack about the bullying incident after coming out of his coma, nor has he (even at a bare minimum, as Blair did today) even talked it through with someone else to try to figure out how to handle it. But Todd is ostensibly the problem with Jack, so it follows that the burden of actually bothering to do some parenting would fall entirely on Blair. And we're not seeing her do it. In fact, we're seeing every restriction she placed earlier being completely disregarded.

Words Of Wisdom From a Pocket-Sized Doormat

Reasons That Jason Morgan Should Not Even Consider Leaving The Mob Even Though "It's Dangerous" and "Our Unborn Child(ren) Will Be Shot At And/Or Kidnapped Eight Times Before Their Third Birthday" and "Remember The Time My Uterus Was Obliterated?"
A List By Sam McCall

Is it just me, or is Jason the world's most perfect boyfriend ever? I mean, hello, he asked me for my opinion on something! Can you imagine? It's like my wants and needs are as important as his, which is just crazy. But even crazier than THAT is the question he asked me: should he give up the business? And I was like, "Jason, you can do whatever you want, because you're Jason! And I will do whatever you tell me to because I love you! I love you so much Jason. Love."

Can you imagine Jason giving up the mob? Sure, we could make it through a week without being part of a shootout, and we could travel the world, which is apparently a dream of mine, but, um, have you ever heard a worse idea? Because I haven't, and here are just a few reasons why:

1. Spinelli would be super sad.

2. Carly cannot even function in the real world without Jason cleaning up her messes, and even though Carly is, without exaggeration, the worst person to walk the planet, it would just be cruel to expect her to take responsibility for her own actions.

3. If Jason leaves the mob, that means he won't be on call 24/7 for Michael to contact when he needs help covering up a crime or finishing his physics homework.

4. Also, I have a family! And I might miss them, maybe!

Did you read that and think it was satire? Oh, you fools. It was practically verbatim!

Jason: If it were up to you, what would you want?
Sam: Well, I don't see you being very happy doing anything ordinary.
Jason: Yeah, you're probably right about that.
Sam: I could see you traveling the world.
Jason: Oh, you like to travel...
Sam: Oh, I do and if you're offering to sail away with me, I just might be tempted. Then I start thinking, Jason. What about my family? My sisters and my mom...it's just not very realistic. Because what would Spinelli do without a PI partner? What would Carly do without her Jason? She would wind up in jail and probably go crazy. And who would Michael turn to?
Jason: So you want to stay?
Sam: I just want you tobe true to yourself, no matter what happens.

To summarize: the wants and needs of criminals with social disorders are more important than Sam's own wants and needs and also safety.

If Sam is going to exist solely to sing Jason's praises (usually to Jason), let's have her go all out, okay? I'm talking wearing a "JASON RULES!" sandwich board or breaking out into a high-concept "The Glory Of Jason" musical number, because this endless rehash of the "Is my life dangerous?"/"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT, JASON? HOW CAN YOU DOUBT YOURSELF?!" conversation is making my ears bleed.

Reunion Time, In Brief

So they found Liam. Or sorry, John found Liam, because he is King of Heroes. All of it very anti-climactic. And really, most of it about John. John looking longingly at Liam as Brody reunited with him. John looking sad when Brody thanked him for finding his "son." Characters elsewhere blathering about John and how John is really Liam's father and how Marty somehow thinks telling John that would absolve her of all the murdering and attempted-murdering.

Somehow this:

...is worth less than lame-ass broody sour-faced John McBain. I just can't get how a John-and-Natalie reunion is the root-for scenario here, especially because it's been telegraphed from miles away that Liam's paternity will be the game-changer that leads them back together and, yes, that still drives me nuts since it changes absolutely nothing about why they broke up. But I'm a broken record with this one so I might as well just give up. The kiss was cute, anyway.

I don't know who he is, but this kid playing Brad absolutely cracks me up every time.

 

I don't know what it is about him. Maybe it's because he's so miserably miscast for a bully (not just because he's so much shorter than Shane, but also because my quick read on him would be that he's a "class clown" type), and maybe it's because of that hilarious shit-eating grin he gets every time he and Jack are being all evil. I mean I know we're supposed to hate him because he's just a one-dimensional bad guy , but I have to say I'm giddy every time he shows up. (I think, perhaps, that giddiness and laughter are not the hoped-for reactions to this storyline. Oopsie!)

A Ghostly (?) Visit I'm Not Even A Little Conflicted About

Presented without comment, unless "OH MY GOD, JOSH DUHAMEL, YOU GUYS! LEO! LEO! I don't even care how they bring him back. I don't. I don't care if it's Greenlee having a vision of what could have been--I'd relish that, actually. I don't care if it's David having a vision of what could have been--I'd also relish that, a lot! I don't care if he's another angel welcoming someone else into heaven, which is a distinct possibility since this is ABC Daytime and they love killing people off. I don't care if Leo is alive with amnesia and living in New Hampshire. I don't even care if Josh Duhamel and Leo's famous leather pants just stroll through the background of every scene in an episode without any explanation. I DON'T CARE, IT'S LEO!" counts as a comment. It might count as a comment; it definitely counts as mental illness. Anyway: LEO!

Josh Duhamel back to All My Children for a cameo!

In a classy show of gratitude for the show that helped to jump start his career, Josh Duhamel has agreed to perform a cameo on the soon-to-be shuttered All My Children.

Duhamel will reprise his role as con artist Leo du Pres on the ABC soap, which is set to air its final episode in September. The film actor, who went on to star in NBC’s Las Vegas before appearing in flicks like Transformers and Life as We Know It, will appear in an August episode (or two?) of AMC.

LEO!

When The Actors Are Acting

Ah, Sunday morning with the soaps. It's been a traumatic weekend (y'all, I endured the Spiderman musical and I'm still standing and only mildly scarred-for-life), but Friday's One Life to Live is some small comfort food. Very small, because seriously? No Clint or Matthew or Bo or Nora or Viki? 

Blair dressing down John for the fact that he should be looking for Marty and Liam rather than grilling her about her boyfriend was kind of awesome. I mean of course John's right that something's up with Thomas and his reaction to the name "Patrick Thornhart," but that's only because John always has to know everything and be totally omniscient. Still nice to see him get called out for brooding over a cup of coffee digging about Thomas while he's supposed to be leading a search for a kidnapped infant and a crazed murderous lunatic.

And may I just say: please, please, please let TSJTodd be the fake. I don't know how he knows Patrick, which he said Friday he did, but he barely reacted at all to the news he's alive and then went on nonchalantly about how Marty's had "bad luck" with men.

I loved that Marty was trying to run off and TSJTodd came to tell her about Patrick and instead of doing the usual soapy, "I have something to tell you. No, it's really important. No, I swear, this is big news and it's really important and you're walking away but you really shouldn't because there's something I have to tell you, and I would tell you this two-word sentence if you would just stop talking and come back here. I could just say it but I won't because I have to use up all my word space trying to convince you not to walk away, etc, etc," he just said, "Patrick's alive." Good.

Am I crazy, or is everything TSJTodd (or whoever Trevor St. John's character is) does all of a sudden a million times more interesting than it's been in years because this new mystery and (potential) identity is coloring every single choice he makes so differently? I've always thought St. John was a very good actor but I just couldn't reconcile his choices the last couple of years with the character we were being told he was, so I'm really excited to see him digging into something new. It's kind of like he woke back up. (Of course I'll take it all back if he does turn out to still be the real Todd. But frankly, St. John probably doesn't know how this'll play out yet, so he's making interesting choices regardless.)

His scenes Friday with Marty were fascinating, in a weird skin-crawling, bone-chilling kind of way. No matter who his character is. Unfortunately, TSJTodd has now been roped into the boring-ass "OMG JOHN IS LIAM'S DAD THISCHANGESEVERYTHING!" plot.

Whistling Dixie (In a Tone Of Your Choosing)

So, Dixie is back.

Well, she's not back in Pine Valley yet; she's in a mysterious location on a cot, having flashbacks to adventures she had with Tad and their family. But she's back on the show and this return could not have come at a more inopportune time because:

 
OHMIGOD, HOLY CUTENESS! I mean, I know that this isn't a happy moment for both parts of this couple, since Cara, for whatever reason, continues to have it bad for Jake, but I can't help it! Michael E. Knight and Lindsay Hartley sparkle together like crazy and watching these two fall in love for real has been a pipe dream of mine for months and Tad is falling for her and it warms my heart and WHY CAN'T I HAVE NICE THINGS?! 

That's not to say I'm not intrigued by how they are going to bring Dixie back. I am! I am just...nervous. I actually worried about this in my upcoming Soap Opera Digest column, so keep an eye out for that, but really: not only is this ruining my favorite non-romance on the show (which, I know, is selfish. And there simply isn't enough time left with AMC for the writers to really do them justice, which is sad. And it would be nice to see Tad and Dixie finally have a happy ending), but historically, the writers' choices for writing Dixie off of the show and bringing her back have been, um, horrendous. What half-assed story are they going to come up with now, with only a couple of months to tell it? And how pissed is JR going to be when he finds out that it wasn't actually his mother who counseled him in heaven when he had cancer, but a stranger angel instead?!

To Catch A (Sexual) Predator, Soap-Style

You know, at first I was going to say that it was so amusing and confusing to see how they define sexual abuse on The Bold and the Beautiful because I also watch One Life to Live, a show on which sexual predators and rapists walk around town hearing people tell them that they are wonderful, loving men and fathers (but of course I'm not allowed to talk about one of those this week), while over at B&B half the characters are loosely defining "two adult people accidentally take hallucinogenic/aphrodisiac drugs and end up having sex" as WOMAN SAVAGELY SEXUALLY ABUSES STEPSON. But then I realized that in this very same show, we have a situation where a man thinks a woman had sex with him while he was unconscious, resulting in a pregnancy, and instead of charging her with rape (how many times can Scott Clifton play this exact same scenario on different soaps?) he's being civil to her and planning to be there for the baby. 

Now, the irony of course is that neither of these situations actually happened. Brooke and Thomas did not have sex on the island, and Amber did not actually have sex with a passed-out Liam. But as the characters at large don't (yet?) know this, in the case of Brooke and Thomas we've got a whole army of people ready to burn Brooke in the town square for being a sexual predator. One position I'm really baffled by is Steffy's. She is absolutely furious with her brother Thomas for "doing this to" their father. So she thinks Thomas has enough culpability in it to be disgusted with him and to consider him a traitor. But when it comes to Brooke? It wasn't actually Thomas' fault. Or at least not really. Because Steffy thinks Brooke deliberately and diabolically drugged Thomas and seduced him and is an evil woman. So Thomas is plainly Brooke's victim, but Thomas is still in big trouble because he betrayed their father? Please to explain?

By the way, Steffy's presentation of her argument to Brooke was stellar.

I feel like they need to hire a gesture coach for some of the model/actors on this show. But she did, of course, make sure to count on her fingers when she ran down the list of who Brooke has slept with ("my father, my uncle, my grandfather, and now my brother").