Serial Drama

The Boring and the Disappointed

Well, at least yesterday's episode of The Bold & the Beautiful cleared up a few things. Ridge and Brooke still aren't married. Eric and Stephanie still aren't married (soon to be rectified in honor of the show's 25th anniversary). Phyllis Diller still comes as a package deal with wacky music.

And most importantly, if you're idiot enough to think your first time is going to be amazing and phenomenal and beautiful and you hype it up so damn much that you drape your house in white gauzey fabric and candles, YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED.

I'm trying to find anything to latch onto here, y'all. I kind of hit a wall after Brad Bell as much as promised us that the fact that 95% of the show revolves around Hope, Liam, and Steffy is a permanent state, because he thinks he's struck ratings and creative gold. 

How can he think that's creative gold when we get such terrific scenes between Eric and Stephanie, played by seasoned actors who play so much more than just one simple note? Even the writing gets better when it's for those two.

Eric: You know what I want from you? I want your criticism, your derisiveness. And your sweetness. I want your cancer. I want your dying if that's what it comes to. Come on! All you have to do is like me enough to say yes. Let's get married.

Oh, No, He Did NOT

I cannot BELIEVE that I am actually going to type the following words, because they combine to form a sentence that will knock you out with its offensiveness and ridiculousness and sheer why?!edness--literally, it will knock you out, mostly because it will lead you forcefully smash your head against the nearest hard surface. Either way, unconsciousness is in your future. And hopefully it will bring with it a nice case of light memory loss, causing you to repress this bit of knowledge because of the aforementioned offensiveness and ridiculousness and sheer why?!edness.

Robert Scorpio is ditching his daughter's funeral to chase after Ethan Lovett, who he now believes to be his son.

I mean, WHAT, and WHY, and EXPLETIVE AFTER EXPELTIVE AFTER EXPLETIVE.

First of all, Robert would NEVER. He would just NEVER.

Secondly, Ethan is the worst. When Robert was excitedly (SERIOUSLY, HE WAS EXCITED AND CHIPPER) telling Anna and Mac about the slight change to his mourning schedule, the sane participants in the conversation kept sneering and I knew that while most of it was out of disgust for Robert going completely loco, at least thirty percent of it was disdain for Ethan and his status as a complete failure of a human being. To have Robert skip out on his child's funeral to chase after this marble-mouthed, greasy-haired loser who can't make it through an unintelligible sentence without smiling or guffawing inappropriately, is just...it's not even kicking viewers when we are down. It is forcibly holding us down and then running us over with heavy machinery.

Anna: You cannot leave until after Robin's funeral. You can't. Mac?
Robert: Mac's going to be here. Besides, he was always more of a father to Robin than I was.
Mac: Come on, Robin loved you, Robert.
Robert: I know that, but it wasn't enough. You were there when Stone died, when she was discovered to be HIV positive. You took her into a new life. She became a doctor, she got married, she had a child...
Anna: I know. We can never repay Mac for everything he did. We really can't.
Mac: I wanted to do it. All right? I loved Robin. You know that.
Anna: I know, I just think it's very important that we're all here to mourn her together. Could you not please just wait until after the funeral to go chasing off after your brand new son?
Robert: The odds are--they ran out for Robin. The same thing might happen to Ethan. If I could save him, perhaps in some small way...it could make up for failing my daughter.
Anna: Okay, what about failing me? I need you next to me for our child's funeral.
Robert: Mac will be here.

I hissed. I literally hissed with hatred.

But ohmigod, it gets worse. It gets EVEN WORSE. This is the last thing Robert said before he left Anna and Mac. And he said it CHIPPERLY.

Robert: Hey, you look after yourself, bro.

Couldn't you just vomit from the hatred you feel right now?

This sorry excuse for writing for a legacy character turned my stomach to the point that I was barely even able to get joy out of Carly's complete self-absorption and pathological immaturity.

Todd, who just confessed that his daughter is in the hospital and his young granddaughter is dead: Didn't you say there's someone in the hospital that you're not allowed to see?
Carly: Yeah, my best friend. I've been banned from his room out of just...meanness. Jealousy. Petty power play.

Under normal circumstances, that would have delighted me with its insanity and I would have imagined a crazy conversation between these two, with Carly completely devolving into a seventh grade girl the more she talked. But I couldn't even really enjoy it, because I heard the phrase "best friend" and then panicked. "OH MY GOD, what if Robert one day calls Ethan his best friend? I WILL KILL MYSELF!"

Did They Think My Heart Wasn't Broken Enough?

Mercy.

I mean between Maxie today and Todd and Blair and then Robert's anguish, I just... thank goodness we have some comic relief.

 

You know, I've heard a surprising number of people compare "Connie" to Rizzo from Grease which really was hilarious since I'd already been thinking Grease, but just not Rizzo (uh, who is obviously the best character in the play and the movie, especially in Stockard Channing form, and is way cooler than this chick). 

Faking-tough-and-sexy-Sandy at the end is more like it.

Anyway, apparently Connie is mad because Kate stuffed her away, thinking Connie was "too Brooklyn," which I have to assume means Connie was wearing ironic t-shirts and only eating at sustainable macrobiotic restaurants and riding a bike and trying to revive the No-Wave Movement and joining collectives? Maybe Kate just really liked gluten?

Welcome to Port Charles, Where Your Children Will Die and You'll Look to Hitmen for Moral Guidance

That's a mouthful, but it's really what you'd need to explain to anyone arriving in town for the first time, as Blair Cramer did on Friday. If you watched One Life to Live and ever read any of the Serial Drama posts on the show, you may have gathered that Blair is one of my favorite characters (you know, just a little). So I was looking forward to seeing her. I've missed her. And while it was great to see her, it really just made me miss Llanview even more than I already do (especially because she's only in six episodes anyway). But seriously? Watching Anna DeVane and Blair Cramer both cry for their children and grandchildren all in the course of one episode? Too much for my fragile heart. 

Of course the episode offered up more than just that. It's still the morning after the hospital benefit at the MetroCourt, and all the people who found the fights and the shootings and the attempted murders and the exploding labs a big turn-on were busy getting re-dressed after their sexcapades (I love that Sonny being shot can't even stop him from getting laid -- someone might want to mention this to Dante to illustrate how Sonny's big "sacrifice" was more like a "minor inconvenience"). And in the vein of "We're trying to actually make the sets and the background actors and the shot selections, like, a specific thing that we do on purpose now," we saw Kelly's from angles we'd never seen before. 

And it's daylight outside! Which we could see not only from the Kelly's windows, but the windows at Crimson and the windows in Johnny's apartment. Bright daylight. I'm so disoriented!

 

Kate and Sonny's scenes were just the worst. Those two are just... I'm trying to think of words that mean "gross" but aren't "gross" but Kate and Sonny are the grossest. And the six inches of makeup they put on Kate (that probably requires a trowel to remove) help nothing. Friday, Kate gave us such pearls of wisdom as:

Kate: Someone once said those who don't learn from their pasts are doomed to repeat them. 

 

Really, Kate? Someone once said that? Thanks for explaining! From what incredibly esoteric source did you get that? You must be very well-read because nobody has ever heard that before!

Weepville, Population: All Of Us

After one last enormous whimper, I thought I had pulled myself together enough to write about the continued aftermath of Robin's "death" (you will never take from me my quotation marks of delusion!)--for the better part of this week, I couldn't even hear the show over the sound of my sniffles, and when someone today said the name Robin, as in Gibb, I had to excuse myself, but I thought that today, I'd be able to write. Granted, I didn't think that I'd be able to write a lot, because it's so difficult to look at the computer screen through tears, but I thought I'd at least be able to do a few variations of "[ACTOR/ACTRESS'S NAME] was [SYNONYM FOR BRILLIANT] and it made me [SOME RIDICULOUS EXAMPLE OF ME BEING OVEREMOTIONAL]!" because, really, this cast is beyond amazing.

But this? THIS? It robbed me of words.

Robin: Hi!
Robert: Hi yourself. Who are you?
Robin: My name's Robin!

All I can type is the random gibberish that happened when I had to rest my head on my keyboard, which then short circuited from my tears. My whole face hurt, from the sadness and the sparks that flew...

The Final and the Obligatory

I'm way too emotionally exhausted to even think about addressing yesterday's General Hospital so I'm going to the emotionally safe place: The Bold & the Beautiful. Briefly. (To be fair, I was watching GH and Robin before B&B even existed, so it would be harder for B&B to evoke the same emotional response. Especially since it's a show centered around the virginity of a 20-year-old [or whatever she's supposed to be], her idiot boyfriend, and his cheesy wife.)

Months back, I was still naively writing hopeful posts whenever they'd air an episode not revolving around Hope, Liam, and Steffy -- thinking the show was shifting and actually introducing new storylines and getting other characters into the mix. Well, I'm hardened now, dammit! Because of course when other characters show up with other issues, they're only there to serve the jettison of an actor. The last couple of days may have felt like a minuscule amount of balance has been added to the show, but luckily we're no longer optimistic and know full well it all just happened because Brandon Beemer and Lesley-Anne Down have been taken off contract. And thus, Owen and Jackie were reunited just as randomly as they were broken up. This time, instead of Jackie magnanimously passing Owen off to Bridget (and giving Owen no choice in the matter), Bridget magnanimously passed him back to Jackie.