Serial Drama

A Ghostly (?) Visit I'm Not Even A Little Conflicted About

Presented without comment, unless "OH MY GOD, JOSH DUHAMEL, YOU GUYS! LEO! LEO! I don't even care how they bring him back. I don't. I don't care if it's Greenlee having a vision of what could have been--I'd relish that, actually. I don't care if it's David having a vision of what could have been--I'd also relish that, a lot! I don't care if he's another angel welcoming someone else into heaven, which is a distinct possibility since this is ABC Daytime and they love killing people off. I don't care if Leo is alive with amnesia and living in New Hampshire. I don't even care if Josh Duhamel and Leo's famous leather pants just stroll through the background of every scene in an episode without any explanation. I DON'T CARE, IT'S LEO!" counts as a comment. It might count as a comment; it definitely counts as mental illness. Anyway: LEO!

Josh Duhamel back to All My Children for a cameo!

In a classy show of gratitude for the show that helped to jump start his career, Josh Duhamel has agreed to perform a cameo on the soon-to-be shuttered All My Children.

Duhamel will reprise his role as con artist Leo du Pres on the ABC soap, which is set to air its final episode in September. The film actor, who went on to star in NBC’s Las Vegas before appearing in flicks like Transformers and Life as We Know It, will appear in an August episode (or two?) of AMC.

LEO!

The Bold and the Beautiful: Week In Review

Jumping into the middle of the Liam/Hope/Oliver triangle right now on The Bold and the Beautiful is a little hard to to because it seems so truly bizarre. Those of us who watch soaps are pretty used to its tropes and the beats of a triangle, but here we are in a situation where Hope is essentially dating both Oliver and Liam and trying to decide between them, and both of them are completely okay with it. To be fair, Liam is pulling a little harder for his side put this poor little cutie Oliver... I mean, what does he stand to gain from this? Is there something in it for him other than the heart of this girl? He just sits around in rooms with her while she talks about her feelings for Liam and waits for phone calls from him and actually has the nerve to use him as a sounding board. And yes, it's pathetic of him to sit around and take it, but if she had a little more decency it seems like she would just cut the poor kid loose. Is he more nefarious than he seems? I do realize he has a darker past but he seems to be on the level with this one, and it just feels off.

While I say that Liam is pulling a little harder for his side, I guess that's a stretch considering he basically just accepted getting dumped by text message and has already made out with someone else without even speaking to Hope about what's going on. But it sure is haunting him in hilarious ways!

These articulate, heartbreaking texts are literally hurling around the air assaulting him! (Scott Clifton continues to be a trooper.) He should totally sit around being confused about them rather than going to talk to Hope for clarification!

Whoa.

Well, folks, I'm at a loss for words. Wait, here's a few. By now many of you have probably heard the rather enormous news that Roger Howarth (i.e., the original Todd) is returning to One Life to Live. Wow. I admit I did not anticipate that this would ever really happen. I thought we were all just supposed to be in a massive state of anxiety right now since we keep being told that cancellation is imminent! And hey, it may still be. Bringing Howarth back and somehow explaining the Todd we've known for several years would be a pretty monster farewell story, but I'm not going to muck around in the worst case scenario here.

I don't really even know how I feel about this. I think Roger Howarth and Trevor St. John are both highly talented actors (and I might add I have a lot of respect for their non-soap work in particular), but also that they both can have a tendency to telegraph their own boredom or frustration in their acting. This could very well light a fire under both of them, and of course I'm dying to see how they're going to play this. I hate the character Todd right now, of course, but he was once a fascinating character study. Never a great, swell fellow. But fascinating as a fictional individual. We don't even know at this point if he is coming back as The Original Todd Manning, so I shouldn't go too crazy with speculation. But they definitely have my attention.

If he's really Todd, I sure hope he's had a bird to confide in during his time away.

What's everyone else thinking? Am I the only dope that's shocked here?

Poor Little Bobby Ford Feels Like Crap

Cry me a mothertrucking river.

If you check in here often, you probably knew this was coming, and I'm happy to deliver. Well, "happy" isn't the word, really, because I am still seething today. I am not seething only because of today's episode but also because I made the foolish choice of exploring various pages and message boards to see what the general viewer consensus is and I've learned that I am clearly insane and watching a different show from much of the viewing public. Apparently there is an alternate-universe One Life to Live out there that also has a character named Ford who has recently found out he has a biological son, but in this alternative universe, he didn't get this biological son by sexually exploiting a mentally ill woman, he did it during a run-of-the-mill one night stand and he is, in fact, a really decent guy who needs to rescue his son Ryder from a handful of evil people -- and this handful of evil people has a ringleader named Brody. Brody is super-evil! He has the nerve to hate this innocent Ford who has truly turned from a player into a wonderful man all for the sake of his new li'l boy! That bastard Brody! 

See, on the One Life to Live I've been watching, Ford did sexually exploit a mentally ill woman and, doing so, neglected to use any sort of protection and impregnated her. He then blocked the mother of his newborn son from getting the professional help she so desperately needed and planned to live in a home with her alter (a woman who has attempted to, in fact, blow people up in the past) having regular access to said infant and wants to completely restrict the child's mother's family from having any contact at all with the child. This includes the child's sister. Any bonding that this baby did with his mother or his mother's side of the family in the weeks after his birth has been deliberately cut off by Ford, and he planned to continue this arrangement indefinitely. Possibly forever.

Sorry, Charlie. (No, Really, I Am.)

Disappointing but unsurprising casting news today at One Life to Live. Looks like Brian Kerwin (Charlie) is on his way out.

 

Unsurprising because you really do not give the Queen of Llanview a husband and then have him carry on sexually behind her back with one of her worst enemies and get away with it. Poor Charlie's been little more than a total sad sack ever since the death of his son Jared, and these latest shenanigans were sort of the writing on the wall. I'd say they had written themselves into a corner with the character, but really? Our leading men have all been much more pathetic and behaved much worse than Charlie has and we're somehow still being asked to swoon.

As of this writing, there is no news other than the announcement itself (I will come back and fill in more after we get a little more info!), so who knows if it was his choice or if he's been dropped from the show. If it's the latter, it's truly baffling as he's a respected and award-winning actor in television, film, and theatre, and has pretty consistently gotten himself Daytime Emmy nominations (or at least pre-noms) for this show even in years that barely feature Charlie in any substantive way. He's really always been quite a "get" for OLTL, regardless of how they've written and treated the character.

Are you as sad to see him go as I am? But is anyone truly surprised? And what will this mean for Viki's love life?

Someone Needs To Do Some MyFace De-Friending

Poor Shane, getting bullied online.

And once again, One Life to Live's Art Department slays me. I hereby cyber-announce that I want to buy them all a beer.

That is all.

Oh and I have a headache. We really need more new actors? I'm exhausted.

Showdown at the Buchanan Stables

First of all, I love soaps. The fact that the standard conventions will just never die gets funnier and funnier as years go by. Today, in standard soap fashion, Gigi and Rex were speaking too loudly in a public area about the babydaddy issue with Natalie and almost got busted by Jessica. When they managed to escape unscathed, they had a discussion three feet away from the original conversation about how with Marty in Crazytown, the two of them are the only ones who know the truth, and they need to be careful about what they say and who they say it around -- at which point normal people would end the conversation, considering both of the participants know damn well what they're talking about. But not in soap conversation. "The only people that know. That Natalie's baby. Is Brody's. And not John's. Are you and me." Which Rex responded to with a facial expression that looked like he might've just tasted a little vomit.

Then Cutter showed up and gave Aubrey a hard time about being cutesy with the mark (Joey), and I was wondering why this guy was acting like they'd never done this before. To which Aubrey immediately responded, "Why are you acting like we've never done this before?" Oh, you soapy tropey people, how I love you!

Oh and HOLY CRAP VIMAL'S WIFE IS HOT. I mean, the dude's adorable in a nervous, nerdy kind of way, but Shenaz Treasurywala is an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous actress (with Buchanan twin hair, I might add).

This woman married a man who "forgot" which twin's paternity test he was supposed to switch, and fixed that predicament by flipping a coin. I rather love that she's all Lady MacBethian so far.

A New Manning Kid?

Apparently this is old news for everyone who's better at combing the internet for dirt than I am (which isn't very good), but Carmen Lo Porto (Jack) has been let go.

 

Word is that they're probably aging the character a bit (will they now actually make him appropriately aged in relation to Dani, his now-older sister who was born a few years after him?). I'm torn. I like the kids who grow up on the show and Jack's been fun comic relief for a while now, but at the same time he's not at an age that has much story potential (though do we really need more teen stories??). I also think Lo Porto's been adept at the one-liners but (argh I hate saying this about kids) does not really have the capability at this point to deliver goods that are much more substantial than that. (Am I officially a bad person now? Oh wait. Am I officially a worse person now?)

What do you guys think? Good move or premature? Any rumors out there about a replacement?

Attack of the Killer Twins

Woah.

The pregnant twins had tons of scenes together today!  I love me some Buchanan twins, especially when one of them is as big as a house.  How is she not on maternity leave yet?  Or did they pre-tape these scenes?

And speaking of pregnant twins and the people who want their blood, Marty has really gone off the deep end.  Am I the only one finding this hilarious?  She seems far more focused on Natalie than on anything having to do with her menace-to-society son Cole, and she keeps popping up in the screen to make snide comments about her to John, who (prince that he is) is eating up every second of it and not spending one second defending his girlfriend but is in fact just fueling Marty's crazypants fire (of course, starting the other day when he told her basically that he would've happily lied for Cole if it weren't for that Natalie!).

"Hey John, where's your little girlfriend and her party hat?  Hey John, why isn't she here poking at Cole's open wound?  Hey John, does your girlfriend ever wake up in the middle of the night beaming after having dreams about destroying my world?  Hey John, remember that kid I have who was born a girl and got a sex change and basically morphed into a young man with the personality of my two-time rapist?  I don't really remember his name, but I do remember who did something bad to him and that was Natalie Natalie NATALIE!"  (I'm pretty sure that's basically what she said, right?)  And all in the middle of the sentencing hearing for her homicidal son!  Marty is nothing if not a multi-tasker!  (Though in all sincerity, I'm thrilled to see Susan Haskell with some actual material even though it basically amounts to a full run under the Ross Rayburn Bus O' Character Destruction.)

Is There Ever NOT An Exception To Police Procedure?

Hats off, by the way, to Florencia Lozano today.  Today she rose above the typical Tea hysterics (I don't mean that as back-handed toward the actress, by the way, as I've said many times I think she plays those to the hilt and they are what is usually called for) and made some refreshing choices during Tea's confrontation of Greg and really almost actually made me feel something in response to this storyline, which I've found predictable and dull thus far. Way to go, Flo!  (And her work later in the episode was bogged down by the presence of that Todd character, naturally, but that seems to be an inevitability.  And Todd has, I guess, made his final choice about which members of his family he's going to give a crap about.  'Cause that other daughter?  Eh, she's fine.)

But it was nice of the police escorts to make their standard exception of stopping to let their prisoner get confronted by someone.  This was a special circumstance!  (I've never seen anything else on a soap, of course, but... okay.)

It was also nice of One Life to Live to follow up on the Evans family subplot, which they dropped six freaking days ago with no explanation. Today we got the deeply satisfying explanation that, despite last week hearing Greg say the words "I killed her," Destiny's mother (Charlene) in fact died because she tripped and fell.  Oopsie!  Oh and Greg got rid of the body so no one would suspect him of murder.  And so sixteen years later he became an accomplice to murder so that no one would find out, and his parents think he should be given special consideration from the law as a little "thanks" for the fact that he, you know, didn't kill Tea.  Man, if only I could get a reward every time I didn't kill someone.  (Anyone else remain confused as to which part of this Greg and Shaun's parents did and did not know?  They seemed to immediately know it was the "secret" worth helping a serial killer in exchange for his silence, but if they didn't know about the cover-up part, it seems they'd wonder whether it was worth it.  And... I only care about the Evans [grand]parents because I love those actors, right?  I guess we're not really supposed to be too concerned with their non-contract side of things.)

By the way, did we ever get any sort of an explanation for the second and third opinions Tea allegedly got regarding her fake tumor?

Natalie continued not being a real person today by having a prolonged conversation with this:

 

And didn't bat an eye.  Granted, they were talking about how he might be the father of both her and her sister's babies, so it's not exactly your standard everyday exchange.  And she obviously noticed once, even though it took tequila.  But damn that boy's still pretty.