Serial Drama

The Long and the Repetitive

It's remarkable that a show with only eighteen minutes of content each day can feel so endless. I generally watch on the CBS website so I can see the little progress bar at the bottom of the picture and on the days that are exclusively Hope/Liam/Steffy-oriented, that thing practically slows to a dead halt. A commercial will come on and I will celebrate the end, only to notice there are still two segments to go. Yesterday was one of those days. Yet another episode about how Steffy, Liam, and Hope are all tedious and annoying people, but for some reason I doubt that was the intention on any front. I'm pretty sure we're supposed to see this as a super-exciting triangle about which there will be internet fan wars for decades to come. Count me out, please!

First, we had Liam doing his usual thing, which was touching and hugging and giving flirtatious and warm glances to the woman he is allegedly not with right now, and confiding in her about incredibly inappropriate information about someone he knows to be her romantic rival. (That's sort of all we need to know to understand that [a] he does not really love or respect either woman and [b]he is a total douchebag and in no way worth a triangle. Right? RIGHT?)

And Steffy launched into some of her trademark manipulation and Liam once again fell for all of it hook, line, and sinker. (Y'all, one day I dream that a man will be so in love with me that all he'll ever need to be totally convinced he's wrong about me is one conversation with someone with a known agenda! Men whose minds can be changed about major life issues in one conversation every single day of the week are super-dreamy, right?)

Steffy: Liam, I've said this a billion times. You know, she's a Logan, and they all have issues. She complicated your life before, and she's doing it again. I hate seeing this happen to you. I really do. [Because as we'll all recall, Liam's life with Steffy was super low-maintenance and complication-free! --Ed.]

"Golly gee, she has a point! I did have an argument with my girlfriend, I guess her whole family must be insane!"

Generally Happy

When I see General Hospital, or any soap opera, for that matter, being discussed in the mainstream press, it makes me anxious. And when I see General Hospital in a headline alongside the world "cancelled" when I am quickly skimming the news, it makes me gasp a most melodramatic gasp, complete with widened eyes and a hand over heard maneuver that would do the terrifying Kate Howard/Connie Falconeri proud.

But then I remembered that reading comprehension is a thing, and paid attention to what I was looking at, which was a headline touting the news that The Revolution was cancelled and General Hospital was not. And I sighed a sigh of relief (...while rolling my eyes again, some more, at Brian Frons and his decision to cancel two legendary daytime dramas to make room for a bargain basement version of a TLC reality show that barely made it past the eight week mark. A dramatic middle finger may have been involved) because I simply cannot imagine my life without this show. You know, without this show's storylines, and without this show's beloved characters, and without this show's immense helpfulness in expanding my vocabulary of words and phrases that include expletives. I would be...empty.

Am I jumping the gun in celebrating, because the show still doesn't have a time slot this fall? YES. Considering ABC Daytime's history of stupidity, is there a chance that things will go haywire? YES. Do I care? NO. And is that the same response I had to Maggie's statement today?

Maggie: I haven't seen you in weeks!

YES, it is. "NO!" I said. "Why won't you stay gone?"

Hope Floats

No really, she does!

Oh, the poor dear.

And why is Hope floating?

Well, as Bill felt the need to explain in charade form, she is the "picture" of mental instability. (This from a man who thinks his son should stay married to a woman who, as an adult, had a complete nervous breakdown because her father didn't remarry her mother a week after his divorce from her former stepmother.)

You see, this all started with a pool party. Caroline, who seems to function as a reminder that in New York, we do not have beaches or pools or fun or even daylight. Nobody in New York City would ever take a day off to relax and just have fun (and why would we? There's NOTHING TO DO HERE but work! How could we have fun?! We're always trying to catch a subway! Where would we even go?! The only thing there is to do here is eat pizza!).

But since she's learned that L.A. offers sunlight and happiness, she's sold and she's staying.

With a dog who randomly showed up. Did I miss a beat when I blinked? Is this her dog?

Mm-hm, yeah, she really looks like she's never done this before. How will she ever assimilate to these Californians and their laid-back, fun-having ways?! I worry so much for her cultural adjustment!

Little does she know what danger lurks beneath all this daytime relaxation.

The Chronicles of Ridiculous

On almost every single conceivable level, this Kate/Connie D.I.D. storyline is an embarrassment; like, I'm embarrassed to be watching it. A compelling D.I.D. story can be told and HAS been told by these very powers-that-be, but this particular story has been so sloppily cobbled together and seems to be written and directed with the mantra "No ludicrous is too ludicrous!" and all of my memories of Kate Howard as played by Megan Ward, who I loved dearly, are completely tarnished, so most of me wants to groan the groaniest of groans every time Kate/Connie's heavily made up face appears onscreen. But then this happens and then this:

Kate/Connie: Jason Freaking Morgan. Who does he think he is coming in he-ah, asking all those questions. Why don't you sit behind your desk, did you see the gun over there in the corner? PLEASE. I should have just told him. I shoulda just looked into his pretty little eyes and said 'Kate Howard ain't he-ah no more. I'm Connie Falconeri and I don't take crap from nobody!'

and I find myself wishing I could spend an entire hour watching Kelly Sullivan make insane faces and break out one of the craziest Brooklyn accents ever put on film. It is simultaneously the worst thing on television and the best thing on television and the fact that Sonny is so wholly unaware of anything strange going on ("Hey, your voice is different and you literally just jolted! What color tie do you think I should wear tonight?") makes everything both better and worse. I am both entertained and filled with shame. My General Hospital viewing life is one big conundrum.

Keeping with the ridiculous theme, there was some...uh, strangeness with Ewen today and now I'm wondering (actually, I'm not wondering, because that would imply that I am interested on some level and I'm the opposite of that) if he is a Jacks relative. Or someone sinister obsessed with the Jacks family.

Ewen: I've cornered the market on Australians around here.
Elizabeth: Well, unless Jax comes back.
Ewen: Jasper Jacks?
Elizabeth: Yeah! Do you know him?
Ewen: Australia may the be smallest continent, but I haven't met him.
Elizabeth: It sounded like you knew him.

EWEN: Uh, I, uh, I...I've heard the name before, you know, in conversation. Just Australians talking about other Australians, you know? Aussies be gossipy!
ELIZABETH: Oh.
EWEN: I've heard, you know, that he's a financier. A corporate raider, if you will. A corporate raider buys companies, with money--
ELIZABETH: Yeah, I know what a corporate raider is...
EWEN: Well, did you know that Jax has a brother named Jerry, who held people hostage in some, like, totally random hotel a few years ago? I, uh, heard that that happened.
ELIZABETH: Yeah! It was this hotel, and I was here.
EWEN: REALLY? I had no idea that it was this hotel. That was conveniently left out of the story I heard about this whole thing! Aussies be bad reporters!
ELIZABETH: Jax was totally depressed when he found out that his brother was a psycho, and it broke his mother's heart.
EWEN: His mother, known in some circles as Lady Jane?
ELIZABETH: ...
EWEN: Or so I've heard.
ELIZABETH: You know a lot about the Jacks family.
EWEN: Only what I've read during my countless hours spent researching this family in painstaking detail.
ELIZABETH: ...
EWEN: Am I being weird? Let me hastily change the subject! Aussies be bad at diversions!

Nominee for Prop of the Year

It may seem silly that a prop on a soap opera could make a grown woman so filled with glee, but....

That is amazing. Oh Yes They D.I.D. With our Lord-Buchanan girls! Y'all. I die. And for some reason yesterday's Kate/Connie scenes actually managed to mildly entertain me. Is it all because of an awesome prop? Yes, yes it very well may be all because of an aweesome prop.

Also, there's a Port Charles History Museum? Can you even imagine what's in that thing? A replica of the weather machine, perhaps? The cryogenic chamber that kept Stavros alive? Duke's wedding kilt?

What do you guys hope against hope is in that museum? Let's make a list!

Ancient History vs. Recent History

You know, it's a funny thing about us soap viewers. Most of us will let you rewrite history a bit if it doesn't drastically negate what we actually saw a screen many years ago -- especially if the storyline that the rewrite yields is worth watching. (e.g., "Oh, did Viki actually give birth to twins even though we saw otherwise? Well, do we like this new girl Natalie and is the drama any good? If so, fine with us!") We have less patience with adjustments in recent history than ancient history, and even less patience when it's an adjustment to a recent storyline that we already hated that yields something even worse.

So let's talk about what went down yesterday with Sonny and Olivia. Look, full disclosure: I actually do not hate Olivia. (Mallory may disown me from Serial Drama for this but, hey, I gotta be me!) And I really liked Olivia and Johnny as a pairing. Here's the two things I can't tolerate about Olivia: first, that she gives Sonny the time of day after correctly barring him from their son's life because Sonny is a thug and a criminal and after Sonny tried really hard to murder that son. This show is chock-full of Sonny apologists and I can actually buy why in some cases. Not hers. She should loathe him forever. Second, that we had to endure basically eight months of her constant breakups and reunions with Johnny that were based not on the fact that he's involved with organized crime, but the fact that he and Sonny have a dangerous rivalry that neither is willing to drop. How many times did we suffer through these repetitive scenes of Olivia begging Johnny to let his anti-Sonny vendetta go, or crying to Sonny that their mutual hatred will end up killing them? Repeatedly, over and over, ad nauseam, that's how many.

But now?

We are apparently to pretend that this never happened, and that Olivia is totally cool with asking Sonny to take Johnny down. Sure, she threw in some lip service about how she'd prefer he not resort to violence, but she also made it clear that he should do whatever it takes. Johnny, the man she was in love with just over a year ago. Johnny, who by the way was also in love with her just over a year ago and is now acting like they have zero history at all. I understand why it's useful for a mobster (who runs the tiniest "mob" in history) to have a doctor at his mercy, but not this one. I don't buy that Johnny would do that to Olivia, and I don't buy that Olivia's response would be to light three hundred matches on the pile of fuel that is Sonny and Johnny's feud. At this point Olivia's character is so ill-defined that I'm convinced her character bible only has two words in it: 1. Bensonhurst. 2. Pasta.

There was an upside to those scenes. Sonny got to have a funny! I do so wish they'd give Maurice Benard more comic material than the usual self-pity or moral indignation he's usually stuck playing, because he's good at the little tiny hilarious nuances. When Olivia (or whoever she is at this point) asked him if Johnny and Carly bothered him...

"It's annoying and I don't get it." (I agree with Sonny and that makes me feel dirty.) And he made a strained face that was meant to be amusing and it worked!

The Quick and the Sincere

And by that title, I mean my demeanor in the one brief question I must ask about today's episode of The Bold & the Beautiful:

Are Steffy and her fresh new hair extensions really going to bite Liam's ear and say, "Cha cha cha" seductively (perhaps I should put "seductively" in quotes) every time she sees him now? And is this supposed to be hot? Am I supposed to feel sexual tension or, like, maybe even turned on by this? Am I supposed to feel anything other than unbearably and squeamishly embarrassed for everyone involved, from the characters to the actors to the writers to the director to the lighting guys to the editors to every single viewer?

Memory Lane Is My Favorite Neighborhood In Port Charles

Thousands (do thousands of people still watch this show? For honesty's sake, I'd like to revise that, but "tens" just doesn't have the same flair) of General Hospital fans spent years railing against the show's complete unwillingness to even mention, let alone honor, its history. I'd like to speak on behalf of myself and the other eight people still watching this show and profess my thanks to the writers for blessing us with a sterling recap of Heather Webber's misdeeds and craziness!

Steve: Anyway, my father, being the stand-up guy he is, wanted my mother to get an abortion, but she didn't.
Olivia: Thank god.
Steve: Instead, she had me, and, uh -- sold me to another couple.
Olivia: Are you serious right now?
Steve: Apparently the going rate was 10,000 bucks.
Olivia: That is truly horrible. I don't know what to say.
Steve: That's not the worst part of the story. Heather, my mother, eventually changed her mind.
Olivia: Of course she did. She wanted you back.
Steve: She concocted this -- this whole plan to drive my adopted mother insane -- and this was where it gets wacky -- by slipping her some LSD.
Olivia: Wait, so -- so what happened? Did it work?
Steve: Not exactly. She wound up drinking the spiked tea herself and completely broke down mentally.

This condensed version of a particularly fantastic era in GH history also meant that we got to see one of my favorite recurring soap opera elements in action: when a character is confronted with a situation that can only be described as well...soapy. It's fascinating to me to see how the character reacts to the weirdness that their life has taken. They sometimes, like real life human beings would, find it to be absurd. And they are sometimes so resigned to the ridiculousness of their lives that they can't even be bothered to give a half-hearted shrug.

Olivia Falconeri is one of the former soap characters, reacting to Steve's story with a variety of facial expressions that I can only describe as being wildly over-the-top and more appropriate for a silent film (she also, because she is terrible, interrupted her boyfriend's story to make things all about herself and her own out of wedlock pregnancy. She's so happy that Steve is finally opening up to her that she just has to talk about herself!). She burned off about three hundred calories just by wiggling her eyebrows to denote surprise and horror.

Speaking of surprise and horror: THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION TOOK PLACE WHILE THEY WERE NAKED, POST-SEXING. Sorry for the semi-hysterical caps lock, but WHAT?! WHO DOES THAT AND WHY AND ALSO, ACK! THE GRUESOME TWOSOME HAS TURNED ME INTO CATHY! BASTARDS!

On Mysteries and Meltdowns

Because I fell behind on General Hospital in recent days, thanks to an incredibly busy week and an utter lack of interest in all most all of the goings on in Port Charles, I found myself in the unenviable position of marathoning the show this weekend and while I didn't actually find myself concerned about my mental and physical health like I did during Guza-era marathons, I was worried about falling asleep and having to start the entire marathon again and again. This week, following the big Robin reveal, has been...dull. Boring. Snooze.

I figured, though, that I could slog through the "Johnny and Anthony blah" and "Johnny and Steve and Olivia blah blah" and "Kate and Connie wha?" and the "What the hell kind of hospital just turns over decades old medical records to a woman merely claiming to be married to the subject of the records? Taking a book out of your local library without your library card requires multiple proofs of identity, but apparently birth records just require a 'So, I know a guy...'" because the show's screeching silver lining--Carly Jacks and her borderline psychotic temper tantrums--was due for a meltdown of epic proportions. Considering that she basically levitated with hatred and plotted to wipe out an entire city when Sonny went to see Brenda in Rome, I thought she'd react to the news that Jason was staying with Sam despite her lies in a fashion that I can only describe as "all caps nutzoid". And yet...feh.

Carly: You and Sam are still together?
Jason: Don't sound so disappointed.
Carly: I just want you to be happy. She's clingy and insecure. She wouldn't let me in to see you, Jason. She wanted to control everything about your recovery, what you could and couldn't know, and when you could know it.

How regrettably normal! And we all know that Laura Wright can do more than this!

I mean, it says a lot about her prior freakouts that THAT is considered subdued.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow's return of Heather Webber leads the show to take a turn for the exciting!