Serial Drama

Since When Is This Show Un-Fast-Forwardable?!

That's not to say that the show is without its flaws (see below for a list, and by no means an exhaustive one, of flaws with this episode, an episode I happened to enjoy quite a lot. I...am a mean-spirited complainer of a person, I realize), but I do have to take a second to marvel at how easy it is to sit through an episode of General Hospital in which Sonny and Jason don't make appearances. Right? Normally by the time the credits roll, I've already began to wish away the next 58 minutes of my life, but on days like this, the only time I fast-forward is to get through the commercials and back to the show as quickly as possible. It's a world gone mad!

Well...not totally mad. It's a world gone very slightly crooked. Because as much as I liked today's show (the things I type that I never imagined typing!), I still have quibbles.

Just Joy.

That's all.

That's how to end a Friday.

The X and the Y

I gave GH the regular recap-as-it-goes treatment yesterday, so I felt it was only fair to subject treat B&B to the same delight.

Standard opening shots of the city. Steffy is packing stuff and her hair is still too light. Brooke walks into Steffy's office and glares at her. This doesn't faze Steffy and, although I loathe Steffy's embarrassing preoccupation with Liam, she's pretty hilarious responding to Brooke with such amusement.

Hope and Liam are making out on the private jet and the male-model/pilot --

-- says they'll be ready to take off as soon as Steffy, their other passenger, arrives. Hope seems trashed, though she's not.

The team in Aspen is setting up for Aspen Fashion Week (is that a real thing ever?). None of these people are played by actual actors (I have to assume) so it's pretty torturous to watch. AspenOliver gets a call from Bill about "getting the job done." 

Credits. Short version.

So apparently Bill's genius plan is to have the press attack Hope like never before. Bill complains to Justin, smugly (as if he could do it any other way).

Hope and Liam get all saccharine with each other some more on the jet. Hope is sure that it's going to be a great trip, and Liam promises that Steffy won't be a problem for them. (Note to Liam: don't actually kiss her if you don't want her to be a problem.)

Discomfort, Squared

Well y'all, I've made it up to the opening credits of today's General Hospital and it's clear to me that the only way to keep my sanity and sort through my feelings on it is going to be to just recap it as we go. To catch us up: Ewen's trying to figure out why Kate didn't show up to commit herself, Sonny's barging in on Johnny and Konnie in bed together (after a hilarious moan from Konnie that Sonny heard from downstairs, a moan so silly that I'm continuing to cross my fingers that this whole thing was staged and Johnny is not really that gross now -- I mean I know he's a mobster, but does he have to be a super-gross mobster in such an appealing package?), Michael is referring to Franco's rape of Sam as "all that craziness with Franco" because that is a respectful way to speak to a rape victim about what happened to her, Alexis is trying to chat with Jason (good luck), and Liz is lurking.

Credits. Commercials.

So... where was I? I kind of got distracted by "Johnny" and "appealing package" in the same sentence. 

Oh, Konnie looks kind of freaked out while Johnny smugs it up to Sonny who is... kind of under-reacting?

Michael and Carly cute it up at each other or something, and then Carly goes over to smite Sam for having kept the Robin secret from Jason for like a day and a half. Sam gets hilarious.

Sam: Okay, fine, I lied to Jason, you told him the truth, you're the best friend ever.

Ha! Love it. Carly feigns indignation that she was just making conversation and doesn't understand why she got so defensive.

Alexis and Jason talk about Sam having chatted with John McBain. SCANDAL!

John McBain is smirking it up with Max over at Casa Sonny, and Michael speaks for all of us when he finds the awesomely destroyed birthday cake. "Holy crap."

Death By Chocolate?

There are some days that I find myself so uninspired by the events on General Hospital that I have literally--literally!--nothing to say. Nothing. No things. I try! I do. I sit and look at a blank TypePad screen and I attempt to write, like, "And then Spinelli..." but I am so profoundly uninterested by whatever it is Spinell is doing or has done that I can't even muster up the energy to straight up recap it.

(There are also some days and some storylines in particular (like, say, F****o being Jason's t**n--I can't actually type those words out. My fingers won't let that sentence be a real thing) that I can say plenty of things about but those things are semi-intelligible and outraged, not pithy and hilarious, but posting it would be proof that my detractors are right and I DO need to take a walk, get some therapy, etc.)

And then there are times that I watch twenty seconds of this show and am overwhelmed with things that I want to say in ALL CAPS and italics and with lots of interrobangs.

Theme for the Day

I guess I really cannot resist just posting lone screencaps that speak volumes and volumes today. Because:

Trapped MirrorKate! That was some of the funniest shit I have ever seen. I am just so happy right now.

Because I Couldn't NOT...

It's not as if they could repeatedly show this image on yesterday's episode and I could, as a living human with a sense of wonder and awe, actually resist posting a screencap. And so without commetary:

Enjoy.

The Forced and the Tiresome

When I'm watching B&B, I frequently have to remind myself that these Spencer men are supposed to be great heartthrobby catches. And when I remember that, I realize that I'm just not living in the same paradigm B&B is asking me to and so it is inevitable that I'm going to spend many of my viewing hours frustrated, lost, disoriented, and baffled. Or, you know, with bile rising in my throat every time a Spencer dude appears on screen. Which means a lot of bile for ole Weezie here because they are daily fixtures, especially Liam. Liam is currently in a committed relationship with one woman and spending much of his free time talking about the problems he's having in said committed relationship with another woman who refuses to let go of him (and at this point, who can blame her? He's given her zero indication that he's done with her). Oh and yesterday we got the, "Oh in the good old days when Liam and Steffy were together they had such great times! He never laughs with Hope!" treatment, equipped with goofy facial expressions just in case we hadn't gotten the anvilicious point yet that Steffy is now the one Liam is thinking of as low-maintenance (ha!).

 

Oh that Steffy, she's so laid-back and fun and never has any issues! He should really go back to the way it was before, when he was "happily" married to Steffy and constantly sitting around playing sappy montages of Hope in his mind. Or, you know, in his margarita. Cha cha cha, y'all!

I have a sinking feeling we're in for years (and possibly decades) of this idiot bouncing back and forth between these two supremely irritating young women. If only he were somehow written as someone worth fighting for.

This Scenery Is Delicious

It's true that most of what unfolded, story-wise, on General Hospital today was the opposite of compelling. "Oh, yes! It's the one where we find out if Sonny, the central character on this show whose various misdeeds are swept under rugs and hidden with posters saying 'Yeah, but he LOVES his kids! Especially Michael and Dante, but also the other one! Two! I mean two!', is going to go to prison for a crime he did not commit. Wait, it's also the one where Sam and John McBain have a variation of the same conversation they've been having for two weeks? All of this AND more about the exotic dancer attacks that not even the actors involved can feign interest in*?! This is way too much entertainment for one hour!'**

But it's equally true, if not more true, that I had absolutely no problems rewatching this episode today solely for the CAH-RAZY facial expressions that marched in the epic parade of overacting.

Well, contorted eyebrows and fearsome snarls are one way to inject entertainment into a storyline whose conclusion we all saw coming the day it began...

The other way to entertain? Turn Sonny's emotional stuntedness and ridiculous immaturity from subtext to text.

Sonny: When are you going to realize you're dating a moron?

Sonny: He set me up like he always does and he failed like he always does, because. He. Is. A. Loser.

If he had said the above with an L-for-loser hand gesture, I would have declared this blog a Sonny Appreciation Society for six whole hours.

*Really, though, it's Ronnie, right? And Lulu is going to be the one to piece it together (possibly while undercover as something totally salacious like a stripper or a fetish model or something because he might be gone, but the Guza looms large in this town) and Ronnie will get one long, Bond-villain like monologue where the Brooklyn accent is multiplied tenfold and his fake black hair gleams in the light? Because really, the not at all suspicious face he made when Lulu mused that Padilla's husband is innocent was just so...it was so.

"Nothing to see here, Lulu, how about them Yankees, you can't prosecute me, I'm above the law, what, nothing, am I yelling? It's really hot in here. BROOKLYN!"

**Normally I would consider Heather Webber too be too much entertainment for even ten hours, because she is an unhinged treasure, but the presence of Steven dragged the fun way, way down.

Trial of the Century! Or, You Know, the Day.

Whichever comes first.

So first we got Jesse Vasquez, D.A., otherwise known as the man who totally ruined Andrea Zuckerman as a character on Beverly Hills, 90210. Well, okay, to be fair it might have been more that they wrote a "challenges of raising a baby when you're still just kids yourselves!" storyline for actors who looked to be in their forties at the time, but whatever. Jesse sucked and he was rude to Dylan McKay, love of my life.

There won't be forgiveness anytime soon, Vasquez! Think again!

But I digress. (Which is totally unlike me!)

Speaking of Sonny's super-exciting trial in which they'll probably totally prove that Sonny's guilty and send him to prison for the rest of his life (Right? We're all dying to see if that happens, right? Oh, the suspense!), just a quick note to the GH directing team: there are a number of GH-only viewers bristling at the introduction of the OLTL crossover characters. Eventually they'll be integrated into the show enough that they'll be taken as any other new character -- on their own merits, some will hate them and some will love them. But a hint? If you want the character of Starr Manning to win any viewers over, stop letting her make this face.

It's odd that a simple facial expression can make a character wholly unsympathetic but I assure you, it can! The perma-snarl is not doing the eldest Manning child any favors.

Fortunately they really sped through the trial since it's not really the point, as we all know Sonny didn't do it (our first clue being the fact that he was accused of it), and they did so to get to what is clearly the main event: