Serial Drama

The Day's Most "Really? REALLY?!" Dialogue

I'm sorry, WHAT?!

Siobhan: Now, I bought into the whole mother grieving over the loss of her child story.

If I were the heroine in a quirky dramedy, my reaction to that line would have included a dropped jaw and the sound of a record needle scratch because seriously, what the hell?! IT'S NOT A STORY! Jake IS dead. Liz IS grieving. You ARE a heinous bitch. Or have been turned into one since the writers have obviously decided that you've outlived any sort of usefulness and are shunting you off to Harridan Lane, living in a glass house next to Carly*.

 

*I literally cannot even talk about the bullshit that is this custody story. It makes me RAGE.

Sucks So Good: True Blood 4.3, "If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?"

Even with the threat of Monday and its Monday-ness hanging over my head, I was impatiently waiting for 9 PM to roll around on Sunday, because the first two episodes of True Blood have been so good this season that not even their proximity to Monday could possibly ruin them. Will 4.3 continue this streak?

After the jump, "If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?"!

A Weird Day Indeed

Well, I sat down to watch today's One Life to Live, thinking it probably wouldn't do enough for me to actually do a write-up because today's bizarre "the shows got saved....kinda" news would overshadow everything, but I already flipped out about three times in the cold open. Jack, Shane, and Rex are face-to-face for the first time since Gigi's death, Viki and Dorian are face-to-face for the first time since Viki found out about Dorian stalling on getting Clint help during his heart attack, and most importantly, RHTodd actually said the words "that son of a bitch stole my life!" and I about jumped off my couch.

So I'm excited. So here we go, gang, it's an old-fashioned recap day, starting from immediately after the credits. 

So, RHTodd is still talking to himself in his motel room trying to figure out how someone stole his life and nobody noticed. It's a fair question! But my favorite was: "And who the hell are Sam and Dani??" He needs someone to help him make sense of it, and notices Viki's name on The Banner website.

Viki and Dorian are awesomely bickering. Dorian mentions that Clint is guilty of every crime he confessed to, and Viki looks nervous since she knows the one exception (which, really, what he confessed to is enough for a healthy prison sentence regardless).

Destiny continues to play with a pregnancy test box.

Matthew's doctor explains that he was just joking about being out of options for Matthew, and just meant he couldn't stay at this hospital anymore. Bo and Nora get upset about sending him away until the doctor (a better one, mind you!) says there's a great facility in Philadelphia and the show remembers it takes place in a Philadelphia suburb, so that's totally not sending him away at all.

Ionia shows up to continue trying to seduce David.

Jack apologizes to Shane. Or sympathizes. Or something. It's hard to tell.

Commercials. Y'all. My dog smells so bad. I hate the idea of kicking her off the couch but it's really nasty. Where did the dog-walker take her today? A pig pen? I think he may have.

Cruelty to the Middle-Aged: A Wedding Album

I mean my God, people! We may all give Hunter Tylo a hard time for her plastic surgery, but she's got life in her yet and she's still got a plenty hot bod. May I ask why this was necessary??

Oh no! A SHINY WHITE PANTSUIT?! To get MARRIED in?! What did she ever do to deserve this? She's not a freakin' senior citizen!

That is just not cool. I mean we get the point. This is not the couple that's "destiny" or whatever (side note: y'all, if I ever get married and in his vows my groom refers to me as "steady and strong" and "a haven of safety," please run up and give me a wedgie in my sexy flared pantsuit so that I'll run from the room in shame and, subsequently, the wedding and the marriage altogether), but this was just cruel. 

Bad Idea Jeans (I'm Understating Things Substantially)

I'm sorry, what?

Abby: I pretend to cheat on you with Ethan, let Kristina catch us.

Let's make a list explaining to Abby all of the reasons that this is beyond stupid. Remember to use small words because, you know...effing dumbass, etc.

1. Every single All aspect of it is parts is terrible = bad.

2. Even MICHAEL made this face when you broached the subject.

 
MICHAEL. Who has not made a good decision since he got out of Pentonville. Even HE thought it was dumb. And then promptly went along with it! So it's actually DOUBLE PROOF that this is a terrible idea!

Is this seriously a thing? Or is it a joke? Maybe I'll go with joke because, when you think about it, "So, a con artist, a stripper, and her emotionally stunted teenage boyfriend walk into a coffee shop" really does sound like the setup for a some sort of hilarious zinger and because imagining that a writing staff thought that this, alongside the offensively terrible Spinelli story, would actually entertain human people is too depressing for me to even think about.

Finally An End To Our Long National Three-Day Nightmare

Because surely the more optimistic of us out here were thinking on Friday's One Life to Live when Jessica told Ford (while she was still tied to the chair he'd bound her to against her will) that she was going to apologize to him, she was doing some sort of fake-out so she could calm him down and she could get herself out of that motel room and off to the cops to report her abduction. It certainly couldn't have been that she actually felt she owed him an apology for anything at all. But we had to wait three days to find out, ostensibly since the Fourth of July yielded a "classic episode" (fair enough, as it was the awesome Slezakiversary episode), but really so that the optimistic among us could get three whole days living in a fantasy world in which Jessica would never actually apologize to Ford for anything, ever.

Alas, that is all it was. A fantasy world. Jessica apologized for not having given Ford any reason to trust her, for letting out her alter so he could fall in love with her, and for not being able to deal with problems the way normal people do (okay, that's a fair one). Poor Ford; Jessica's inability to handle the world left him no choice but to sexually violate her twice, bar her from getting the psychiatric care she badly needed, and to abduct and tie her up and gag her. Ford is really the victim here. 

Speaking of victims, this storyline got short shrift today by another storyline in which some young Floridian character I've never seen before was found "not guilty" of various counts of manslaughter and child abuse and murder, but was found "guilty" of doing a bunch of lying. This feels funny, since lying to the police is totally legal on soap operas, but on the other hand, almost everybody gets away with murder and attempted murder -- so it both fits and it doesn't fit. It does seem strange that they'd be introducing this new storyline and new characters only six months before the series ends, especially since it seems like it would be a front-burner storyline. I don't see any twenty-something men with washboard abs, though, so it must not be part of our show... oh! That was a news report on the Casey Anthony trial.

Sucks So Good: True Blood 4.2, "You Smell Like Dinner"

PREVIOUSLY on True Blood: the fourth season got off to a pretty great start. Based on the premiere and this latest episode, I think we're in for twelve weeks of serious awesome.

After the jump, thoughts on "You Smell Like Dinner"!

(And to all Serial Drama readers: I hope you are all having a bloody good July 4th weekend (see what I did there? Bloody? Because vampires? Sometimes, I make myself cringe...)!)

A Genuinely Fond Farewell

On the one hand: YAY! Nikolas Cassadine got a well-written (probably because it was penned by Tyler Christopher and Jonathan Jackson and not the actual writing staff), superbly performed farewell that didn't include death or destruction.

On the other hand: the powers-that-be at General Hospital consider Spinelli more integral to this show and Port Charles than NIKOLAS FREAKING CASSADINE, WHAT THE HELL, I HATE THINGS AND PEOPLE.

As surprising as it might be for longtime readers or anybody who has spent a significant amount of time going through the Serial Drama archives, since most of what I've written about Nikolas in recent years can be summed up with "What a dick! /Boring!/ Does Tyler Christopher feel like his life would literally be in danger if he put any effort into his performance? Like, are there assassins lurking just off stage ready to strike at the first sign of engagement?", but I will always have a soft spot for Nikolas, as played by TC (I never really took to Coltin Scott's version). When Nikolas and the Cassadines (that sounds like a hilariously bad pop group, no?) came to Port Charles, my middle school mind nearly exploded from awesomeness. That whole time period is probably my favorite era of GH ever, and I remember loving everything about Nikolas, including how unbearably pretty TC/TB was.

Nearly everything that has happened to and with Nikolas since, well...let's move on.