Serial Drama

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.

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue

All My Children is laying it on pretty thick, no? And, of course, by "it" I mean "Remember that time that Ryan was awesome? Are...are you sure you don't remember? Because it happened. He totally was. He was awesome and good and righteous and he gives blood and he helps elderly ladies cross the street and he never abuses the 10 Items or Less line in the grocery store and he saves lives. Lives of puppies and kittens and babies. It happened. Here, let me tell you again about the kind of man he is. Spoiler alert: he's the good kind".

Ryan: You know what my daughter said? She said now that Zach is gone, it's just me that's left to take care of the bad guys. And since you're definitely a bad guy, you and me are going to spend a lot of time together if you ever pull out of this.  

Right now, I am picturing Ryan photoshopping his head onto Superman's body and laughing about it. The laughter soon turns to tears when I realize that it's highly likely Brian Frons is passing time the exact same way...

Hyperbole and Other Llanview-esque Mistakes

"Girls like that don't stay single for long."  In case you missed it, this line was uttered by Ford about Starr.  I'm not joking.  Check your DVR, check it out online, check the script.  To be clear, teenage girls with small children, famous rapist ex-con fathers who are prone to violence against the men in their daughters' lives, and babydaddies imprisoned for murder.  Girls like that.  Don't stay single for long.  I mean, you better make your move fast because she is a catch.

And!  The word "amniocentesis" has 300 letters in it when typed by Ford.

Oh, good news!  You can totally walk into whatever private hospital room you want to and just hang out, in case you were wondering.  Luckily Brody knew that so he could "be there" for Natalie.

Okay, I'm being unfair.  Friday's One Life to Live was actually a pretty classic soapy episode.  Two simultaneous paternity tests (one potential father being a possibility for both) by two twins, a cliffhanger ending with the appearance of an abusive father, a major character turning himself into the police for murder, a gone-crazy psychiatrist getting some inside information on someone she's vowed revenge upon, and a big already-grown-up paternity reveal.  And as much bad press as she gets for hamming it up, the big red bow for me was Kim Zimmer proving why she is royalty in this game by delivering a pure old-school soap opera performance.

This May Be Even More Embarrassing Than Having Starred on Passions

Oh, Days of Our Lives.  Why would you revisit the dark days of mid-2008? 

Whiny, Grumpy Arianna:  I'm sorry, I have cramps, alright?  And I'm tired.  I'm tired.
Gabi:  Hey, what are you doing back there?
Ari:  Lookin' for this.

Gabi:  Midol.
Ari:  Yeah.  I gotta tell you, running between work and the hospital, I don't have time to go to the drugstore, so what do I do?  Keep a box of this, right here for emergencies.  It relieves the cramps, ::lowers voice, as if the discussion up until now has been fit for consumption by the pub's patrons:: relieves the bloating, and I'll be back to normal before we know it.
Gabi:  I can't wait.  I would like my sister back!

Stereotypes about women on their periods AND a mid-soap clunky infomercial?  But my birthday's more than a week away!

While I am bitching, the headline of the Spectator Stefano held yesterday, about the "Reunited DiMera's," made me twitchy.  Ratings are up -- they can't afford a proofreader?  To anyone out there who still thinks an apostrophe ever makes anything plural:  Why do you hate America?

That said, this show has otherwise been quite good lately.  I find almost nothing worth mocking, and blogging just to say how much I like something goes against most everything I believe in, so I've been quiet.  To any Days watchers left in our readership:  What do you think of the Salem goings-on of late?

Screencap courtesy of Sheryl's Days of Our Lives Screencaps.

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue (aka My Dog Is Smarter Than This Show)

Now, granted, my dog is exceptionally gifted, but I do think it's a problem if even a very bright Labrador is routinely sharper than your [inexplicably] critically acclaimed, "Best Writing in Daytime and No That Wasn't a Vote Tabulation Error, We Double-Checked Because SERIOUSLY," daytime drama.  

I had to watch about two weeks' worth of GH episodes while doing chores today.  [Insert obvious joke about the real chore being watching this show.]  So I thought perhaps I had misheard when, in the midst of sorting through paystubs from 2003 (oh, filing system, you are so cute sitting empty in my drawer), I heard Claudia say something so stupid that surely I must have mis-heard.  So I rewound, but nope, she actually did say:

Claudia to Sonny:  Maybe you could take me somewhere.  Show me off a little bit.  We are in Puerto Rico – the city of excitement and fun, lights.

Ah yes, Puerto Rico, City of Lights.  I think I heard that on travel commercial once!  It's like how France is the City of Caribbean Sea Views and Chicago is the Windy Country.

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue

I should know better than to expect the writing on General Hospital to be anything other than loosely connected, poorly conceived plot points, but sometimes I still find myself shocked by just how asinine this show can be.

Let me get this straight: Jerry claims to care for his brother more than anything in the world. Jerry has a secret that could potentially ruin his brother's (who he cares for more than anything in the world)life and marriage. Jerry, in order to spare his brother (who he cares for more than anything in the world) pain and disaster...shares the very secret that could ruin his life?

Jerry:Carly was always ambivalent at best about me. In all fairness, I put her through hell at the Metro Court. If she should find out that I was partly to blame for Michael getting shot, it might alter her feelings towards you. After all, motherly love isn't entirely rational. So, hear me, Jax. What happened to Michael isn't your fault. It's Claudia Zacchara's. It's mine. And most of all, that idiot Ian Devlin, who is very lucky to be dead at this point. You're the one person in the world that I most care about, Jax. Now that you know the truth, maybe you can find a way to avert disaster.

That is the very definition of illogical. It is also the very definition of "shlock".

I will give the writers this, though: Jerry is probably the most consistently written character on canvas. He joined the show in a ludicrous storyand he left the show in a ludicrous story (leaving aside the dumbness of burdening Jax with this secret...how did he have the time to film these DVDs and hide them all over Sonny's?). That kind of character continuity is pretty much unheard of these days!

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue: Ironically, It Hurts My Heart

We have had few Day's Dumbest Dialogue entries lately.  That seems bizarre, since other than Young and the Restless (which I don't even get to watch), our shows are, on the whole, dumb, and are unfortunately on daily.  But somehow either the individual passages of dialogue aren't the problem, or it's all so bad that nothing sticks out as especially awful.  So leave it to General Hospital to get me riled up enough for the first Day's Dumbest Dialogue of 2009.  Milo and Max's lecture to Diane about heart health raised my blood pressure and, on account of its stupidity, stressed me out about the state of this show.  Probably not what they were going for?

Milo:  Now, most people think of it as a guy thing, but what they fail to realize is that heart disease is the number one killer of women.
Diane:  Milo, I know this!  In fact, it was I last February who reached out to Alexis Davis to educate her –
Milo:  So you know it’s just as important for women to control risk factors.  Stress?  Forget about it.  It’s the worst.
Max:  Yeah, yeah – Diane’s got a lot of stress.
Diane:  Oh, do I?

Milo:  You have to counteract it with exercise and healthy eating.
Max:  Diane’s got an important job.  She can’t spend all day in the kitchen.
Milo:  Well there’s plenty of good stuff that doesn’t take any time at all:  Campbell’s Healthy Request Soups, Swanson Chunk Chicken, Prego Heart Smart.
Diane:  I took a basket of those very items to Alexis.
Milo:  All due respect, Ms. Miller, we’re talking about you.  Your heart, your health.  It’s never too soon to start monitoring both.
Max:  Milo does have good points.  I mean --
Diane:  Which sound suspiciously rehearsed.
Milo:  Oh would you look at that, I’ve got a jar of Prego right here with me.
Diane:  You have GOT to be kidding.

I wish I were kidding that this scene actually occurred on national television.  I wish the writers knew what "heavy-handed" meant and that it is a bad thing.  I wish that they had left well enough alone, since Maxie attending the Campbell's heart-health benefit actually does make sense and is not eyeroll-inducing.  I also wish we could get through a sweeps crisis without Jason ending up as the hero, that there was a single couple on this show that intrigued me, that I had Megan Ward's hair, and that the return to trendiness of light-wash denim was an ongoing hallucination or practical joke.  But now I've drifted away from the topic at hand, which is:  Today on a soap opera I watched a five-minute scene about processed tomato products.  Please study that sentence closely and tell me how anything in it is acceptable on any TV-viewing level, at all.  Thank you in advance for your help. 

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue

I adore John Aniston.  I think he is the quintessential soap villain.  He IS Victor Kiriakis.  I know it's super creepy and weird when people refer to actors by their characters' names, but come on, if you saw the dapper Mr. Aniston at the mall -- buying shoes or sipping an Orange Julius or seeing his daughter's dog movie -- you would totally squeal "Victor!!!" before you even knew what what was happening.  This man fully embodies his character and can sell virtually any dialogue.  He managed to make it through the entire James E. Reilly era without rolling his eyes onscreen or substituting expletives for the crap that passed for lines back then.  But today, I learned that there is shitty writing that even John Aniston cannot salvage.

Victor:  Now wait a minute Phillip.  I've got something to say to you that's very important.  You too, Brady.  Something that's going to affect you both very profoundly.  Now you two are more than just employees to me because you happen to be my descendants as well.  Which makes me deeply disappointed and saddened you would put your fragile egos against the greater good of Titan.
Phillip:  Are you done yet?
Victor:  No, I'm not done.  I haven't even gotten to the point.  Which is that you can take your outrage and your self-righteous wrath and shove it.  Now, if that's ambiguous to either one of you, let me put it in the very direct words of my personal hero, the great Donald Trump.  ::puts on strong New York accent::  You're fiyahed.  Both of ya.

I realize this was all supposed to be part of Victor's Parent-Trap-esque manipulation of Brady and Phillip, but there are still at least a dozen things wrong with that conversation, including:

1. The only person to whom Donald Trump is a personal hero is Donald Trump.  And maybe Omarosa, if there is a camera nearby.  Certainly NOT Victor Kiriakis, who would sooner let Trump turn all of Athens into a casino complex than idolize that obnoxious, fame-whoring asshole. 
2. "Shove it?"  No.  I'm sorry, Victor Kirakis does not say "shove it."  I was already predicting a Victor-has-a-brain-tumor storyline after he said "Throw the bitch out on her ass" last week, but if that's not forthcoming and this is just these lazy writers' version of Kiriakis badassedness, I may have to curl up into the fetal position until 2009.
3. "Now you two are more than just employees to me because you happen to be my descendants as well."  NOBODY, fictional or real, talks like this.  It is too ridiculous for even Damien Spinelli.  There are people getting paid actual American dollars to write this crap?
4. The fake accent.  Let's never speak of it again.

This show is becoming more annnoying and ridiculous than this year's peep-toe boots trend.  And I didn't think I would ever say that about anything.

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue

I know that it's sophomoric and lazy to base a majority of my All My Children related commentary on the fact that Babe was (was! Because she's DEAD!) a whore. I know! I'm better than that.

But the writers make it so easy for me!

J.R.: When you have Babe in your heart, you can't handle it. It handles you.

How can you POSSIBLY interpret that statement as anything other than an STD and/or Satanic possession allusion? You CAN'T.

Well, Since It Worked So Well The Last Time...

When Lily and Colleen were giggling like...well, "braindead airheads" is kind of implied, but when they were laughing like loons about Lily's foray into online dating, did anybody else yell at the TV "Remember what happened LAST TIME you online dated, you MORON? You hooked up with a PERVERT and got CHLAMYDIA and then the pervert tried to set your best friend on FIRE and FAILED, more's the pity, and you're sitting here all 'Tee hee! I'm Fallout Girl!' as if that's remotely clever and as if you're a middle school girl all excited about her first school dance and not a grown ADULT who, by the way, has a very tortured history with meeting people on the internet? And for that matter, why can't you be single for a couple of weeks? And also, why are you still friends with Colleen? WHAT THE HELL?"

Just me? Oh. Okay.