Serial Drama

These Plot Twists Aren't Remotely Twisty (And These Plots Are Barely Even Plots)

Well I, for one, have never been more floored by a soap moment than I was towards the end of today's General Hospital when we heard this shocking medical bombshell:

Patrick to a dumbfounded Jason. Granted, there's no way of knowing how Jason actually felt, since he has exactly one facial expression, but the dramatic score leads me to believe he felt dumbfounded and heartbroken and maybe even a little hungry: Your condition isn't going away...it's getting worse [...] Your condition is inoperable.

I should point out that when I say "floored", I don't mean "surprised"; I mean "floored" like "I am currently on the floor, in the fetal position, sobbing that we are going to have to sit through ANOTHER story about Jason being on the verge of death, even though that story has been told literally dozens of times and dozens is actually rounding down, substantially and even though there is no chance in hell that Jason will be in serious jeopardy, because then what would the show be about? Doctors? As if! Also, can we talk about how this story's screentime will completely and totally dwarf the screentime that Robin got in her poor, marginalized little possible deathbed storyline? Sob, snort, etc.".

My heavy sigh could not be any heavier.

...OR COULD IT?!

The Upside and the Downside

Let's just get the downside out of the way first because it's too depressing to end with it.

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record on this topic but, really, what am I supposed to do when EVERY FREAKING EPISODE is a broken record, rehashing the same crap and the same storyline over and over and over, ad nauseam. But oh my lord why are women fighting for the love of Liam Spencer, the waffling-est, most spineless douche in town? (And that's saying a lot in a town where Ridge Forrester lives.) 

So today we got yet another interrupted wedding in which Hope was shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that she doesn't get to marry her stepsister's husband the day after he dumped her stepsister, because said stepsister refuses to sign the annulment papers. Liam, on the other hand, hadn't had the balls to tell his "beloved" that this might even be an issue. Why? Because Brooke said not to. So he just sort of stood around like the spineless sad sack he is during this whole revelation.

Oh no! How on Earth could this have gone wrong??!!

So Hope ran off to go confront Steffy herself, and Liam started to run after her because for moment he had his own thought and his own agency. That... lasted approximately three and a half seconds.

Ridge, as everyone else has done every time Liam has almost had a thought and action of his own, went ahead and stopped him and explained to him what he really thinks, which is that Hope needs to confront Steffy.

Liam, as he has done every time anyone has told him anything, did what he was told because having his own thought, idea, and plan of action for three and a half seconds was really scary, y'all.

The Tired and the Overplayed

I'm throwing out my white flag here, B&B. I give up, I give in. 

First of all, I wasn't quite sure I got all the words right, but something very close to this line of dialogue was actually spoken today:

Steffy: Hope's a station wagon. I'm a 1200cc twin-pipe crotch-rocket ready to burn rubber on that heart o' yours. How can you say no to that?

Oh my sweet mercy! How can you say no to that? Easily! It's terrifying! Who says that?!

I just cannot with this show anymore. I mean of course Steffy's not signing the annulment papers, it wouldn't be soapy if she did. It's just that they keep teasing other storylines, pretending like this shit is over or at least no longer the main event. But it is. And I've given up all hope that we'll ever see the end of it. Now all the soap buzz is that Hope/Liam/Steffy is going to be the hot triangle of the next generation ala Taylor/Ridge/Brooke because last week got good ratings. What? Didn't we all tune in last week to watch this effing triangle end?! And while Taylor/Ridge/Brooke was played out for a decade too long, it worked back in the day because both pairings had some real heat. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I can't find any appeal in either of these pairings. Not even a little bit. Liam changes his mind every five seconds and makes lifetime commitments on the turn of a dime, and both women think he shouldn't do that....except that Hope thinks it's okay to do if she benefits, and Steffy thinks it's okay to do if she benefits. And their freaking families are pathetically over-invested and I just want everyone involved to shut up about it, like, forever. This storyline has headlined the show non-stop since August and it's time to let it go. I'm never going to like every story going on a soap, but we stick with soaps anyway because they have more than one story! And I don't mean once a week. I mean every single solitary episode. It's time to hit the reset button. With all due respect to Scott Clifton who is a terrific actor, there's nothing about this that I want to watch. I can't be the only one.

When Things Got Real Special In Llanview (or Outer Space, or the Wild West...)

Time for another One Life to Live poll as we all adjust to life without Llanview (and trust me, a poll on how we're all coping is impending) as many of us wait for a few OLTL-ers to visit General Hospital in what will likely be a fruitless attempt to pretend our show isn't gone.

This time our trip down memory lane will take us the "special" episodes or storylines, where there was more than just a big sweeps event, there was actually something different from our typical reality. Sometimes our characters had crazy dreams that took them into alternate worlds where everyone turned into everyone else or where a surreal episode of another soap took place around them. Other times they traveled through space and time or to bizarre cities inside Llantano Mountain. Sometimes the gang broke out into song and dance, and sometimes they visited their lost loved ones in Heaven, Hell, or some strange version of Purgatory. And other times the storylines moved along as usual but something exciting was going on behind the scenes.

As usual, I just threw out the first ones that came to mind and surely forgot a few major temporary paradigm shifts, so be sure to pick "Other" and write-in your picks in the comments section! You can only submit once, but in that submission you can vote for as many of your favorites as you want. Then take to the comments to talk about how crazy-awesome your favorite crazy-special episode or storyline was.

The Attack of the Overactors

I'm not sure why, exactly, the General Hospital actors have decided to go for broke in terms of over-the-top drama, but go for broke they have--lately it's been all "Eyes bugging out of heads" and "Sneers that require the movement of, literally, every single facial muscle" and "WAAAAAAILS! of EMOOOTION". It's entirely possible that they feel like they need to do something, anything in order to breathe life into a job that requires them to repeat the same lines of dialogue for months at a time. It's also entirely possible, and maybe even probable, that some of these people are just not very good at their jobs. But my favorite theory is that everybody has been watching Bruce Weitz intently and jealously, as he tossed chairs and primal screamed and contorted his face like he was Claymation, biding their time until they had the chance to inject such crazy into routine conversation.

They took their chances this week and ran with them!

Sonny: NO, I could NOT talk to you earlier. Look....it doesn't matter, it was BAD...[...]timing..Okay, tell your guy to stay om him. LISTEN TO ME [Licks lips for an extended period of time]--don't worry about THAT, because I got a PRETTY GOOD IDEA how to deal with him.

Shawn: Move on with your life.
Carly: That's what I'm trying to do!
Shawn: Then sign the divorce papers and move on with your life once and for all.
Carly: [Contorts her face into a sneer so terrifying that her next line of dialogue may well have been "I want to disembowel you and dance on your grave"]

Steve: [Physically attacks a vending machine while screaming unintelligibly]

Steve, winded like he ran a marathon and RAGEY: UGH. I did EVERYTHING I could to SAVE him and give him his LIFE BACK. But you know, after a point, it's OUT OF MY HANDS. At least that's what I TELL myself.

Trauma Recovery 101

TRAUMA RECOVERY 101

Course Syllabus

Instructor: St. Jason Morgan
Date/Time: Weekdays, 3pm-4pm EST
Credits: ALL OF THE CREDITS. ALL OF THEM. FOR CRAP'S SAKE, DIDN'T YOU SEE WHO THE INSTRUCTOR IS?!

Summary: In this course, we will discuss how to help a loved one through a trauma. This semester's course will focus on the aftermath of one's wife getting maybe-raped by a psychopath/conceptual artist, since it's something most people have experience with and there are some easy tools to help one handle wifey's "emotions" (for an understanding of the term, please refer to the recommended prerequisite course EMOTIONS 101, taught by Professor Sonny Corinthos). We'll cover how simple the recovery process is when the wife learns she is pregnant and gets a quickie paternity test. We'll cover a few things, like how you should really have a chat with the OB-GYN first to make sure she delivers the paternity news in the proper order. Wifey is fragile when having "emotions," so the OB-GYN should not launch right into the good news that the baby doesn't share DNA with the maybe-rapist-psychopath/conceptual artist. It's better for the OB-GYN to get a few other things out of the way first, so wifey can have a chance to settle in to her "emotions." Have the doctor talk about the chromosomal disorders that have been ruled out: no cystic fibrosis, Down Syndrome, MS, or hemophilia. As the doctor drones on about the baby's development and wifey is nervously asking about the paternity, make sure to almost pop a blood vessel and make it clear that you might literally explode if the result is bad news. Wifey will feel more supported if she knows you are more upset about this than she is. Do make sure that when the doctor does finally get around to confirming you as the biological father, she does a dramatic pause before doing so. With all this in place, you can guarantee that wifey's and your love song might start underscoring your joyous moment. At this moment, wifey should obviously have recovered from her mayberape trauma, but just in case she hasn't realized that she should be totally over possibly being raped and most certainly being violated in some manner by a man who was just trying to mess with you, explain it to her simply: "You do not have to think about that night... ever again." Presto-change-o! She's over the rape! Once you have completed this course, you might want to head over to the Women's Studies department or possibly the Take Back the Night rally that those hysterical girls keep putting on every year in the quad and make sure they understand that rape trauma is only a legitimate and lasting trauma if the rape results in a child. If the rape victim (or mayberape victim, as the case may be, depending on how bleak-minded your writers are when trying to come up with an exciting mystery) immediately becomes pregnant and you are the father, it's all over! She'll never think about the rape! EVER AGAIN! In fact, why am I even teaching this course? This is a one-afternoon lecture! For which you should get ALL OF THE COURSE CREDITS IN THE WORLD.

These People Are Just...Terrible At Their Jobs

Because I am an eternal pessimist, I knew--I just knew with absolute certainty, almost like a psychic vision, although such things happen with such regrettable certainty when it comes to General Hospital that it's less "psychic vision" and more "painful life experience"--that Robin's exit storyline would be torpedoed by a spectacular lack of caring on the part of the powers-that-be and that the best we could hope for was a handful of phenomenally performed scenes between Robin and her loved ones sandwiched in between Cassandra and Ethan talking vacantly and Olivia being obnoxious in the guise of "keeping it real".

But I didn't think that asking for two full minutes between Robin and her Uncle Mac was a greedy and excessive wish. Apparently, though, it was. All this relationship merited was 46 seconds of screentime. Yes, I timed it, because I am an overly invested freak, but REALLY, 46 SECONDS. That is a slap in the damn face to anyone who loves the Scorpio family, and General Hospital history and the adjective "soapy".

Patrick: No, stop it. We are not putting our life on hold. You did that already when, for weeks, you didn't tell me that your viral load is unstable because you didn't feel --
Mac: Or anyone else, for that matter.
Robin: Uncle Mac.
Mac: What is going on?
Robin: I just -- I-I had a scare.
Mac: About your viral load?
Robin: Yes.
Mac: What happened?
Robin: I'm on a new protocol now, and we have every reason to believe that it's going to work.
Mac: The night I found you on the bridge, the anniversary of stone's death -- you knew, right? You didn't say anything.
Robin: I know. I'm sorry. I -- you know, after everything I went through with Stone, I just got panicked.
Mac: "Went through." Robin, exactly -- "went through." That's what people do when they love each other. I would have been there. I should have been.
Robin: I know, it's -- it's my fault. I'm sorry. It's okay.

That's IT. Any scene between Robin and Mac at this point should have me sobbing to the point of wheezing, not sitting there impatiently waiting for followup scenes that never came.

To put it in perspective, these are things that the General Hospital powers-that-be consider more compelling than Robin and Mac sharing an emotional, moving scene:

• Sonny and Kate arguing about I cannot even tell you what, because I could not hear any of their dialogue over the scenes of my laughter, because holy hell, that was some of the worst acting ever put on film. When an over-actor meets an actor criminally unprepared to film his scenes, it's like something out of my nightmares, or a particularly bad high school performance of Grease.
• Menopause humor! Isn't it hilarious that Alexis is going through menopause and didn't know it? And isn't even more hilarious and not at all gross that it led to a frank discussion of Sonny's sperm? HAHAHA, I hate my life.
• A character who has been on the show for about a minute taunting a character who has been around for a while, but who is so uninteresting and useless that I always think of him as being brand new, about the secret (and, I'm assuming, boring) events of their past that happened offscreen.

This effing show.

 

The Lost and the Frightened!

Am I crazy or has The Bold & the Beautiful had the occasional serious uptick in the quality of the scriptwriting lately? I'm not saying every episode has had spectacular dialogue, but there's usually a couple of them each week now. (Is this due to Michele Val Jean's new gig on the scriptwriting staff, or have there been other changes as well? I'm not as in-the-loop on the CBS behind-the-scenes stuff.)

Because seriously, yesterday? Those scenes between Liam and Bill were fabulous. I mean I finally started to understand the depths of these two characters in their confrontation about all of Bill's machinations.

Bill: Why don't you simplify everything? Call your wife and ask her to come back.

Liam: My god. Is this the only way you know how to have a conversation with me? Making demands? Criticizing before you even know what's going on? I'm done with that relationship, Dad. So we're either gonna have a new one, or we're not gonna have one.

Bill: I don't understand you. You're my flesh and blood. You're my son, and half the time I don't understand you.

Liam: Okay. Okay, you don't understand me. That's one true thing you've said.

Bill: You're angry at me. You hate my guts. Just bottom-line it for me. I'm better that way.

Liam: Hey, you came to me. You on a fact-finding mission, or you got something to say?

Bill: Oh, come on, you know why I'm here. I want to know what you intend to do.

Liam: Why? So you can hire somebody to stop me? [Ha! --Ed.]

Bill: You know what? (Exhales deeply) What do you want from me?

Liam: Less, Dad! Less of everything -- less manipulating, less lying, less bullying, less B.S., less acting like you are entitled to me -- because you're not -- less trying to "make a man" out of me, because men are not made the way magazines are made. And in any case, it's too late for that. And, and do not -- do not come knocking on my door demanding to know what I want from you. What the -- what the hell is that? If you have something you want, if you have something you have to say to me, then let's hear it. Otherwise, you can drive back to town in your shiny black car and come back when you find some humility. [Damn, boy, you tell 'im!  --Ed.]

Bill: I'm sorry.

Liam: You're not.

One Life to Love (or Really, THOUSANDS)

Time for another poll to ease the pain of our loss! I know this one's going to get me in big trouble because of some RIDICULOUS SUPER-AMAZING OBVIOUS couple that I didn't put in my list of fifty possibilities, but please keep in mind that this is just for fun and out of the literally thousands of possibilities, I decided to stop brainstorming at 50 and am not pretending that this is a list of the "top" 50 couples or anything. Because memory lane is fun, but my brain is tired. So use the comments to talk about why your favorite couples were your favorite couples or to write-in who your favorite unlisted couples were! (e.g., honestly my favorite pairing for Dorian was with Ray, but I didn't even list them because I didn't think of them as a "major" couple. But they were hot. And there are certainly major couples I completely forgot. I was trying to remember if the Gannon brothers ever had any really epic pairings, and it's kind of lame because even though I really loved Hank and Sheila, they weren't exactly a big story, were they? But if they were your favorite, write 'em in! Again, I stopped at fifty.)

Okay, that was enough disclaimers, right? Here goes! After the jump, register your votes (and you can vote for as many as you want) for your favorite Llanview pairings ever!