Serial Drama

The 2011 Daytime Emmys Live Blogging Extravaganza!

Daytime's biggest night is here (pause for a second and reflect upon just how sad that sentence is!) and the three of us are here to comment in our usual hypercritical, foul-mouthed, and--hopefully!--hilarious way on what we're sure will be two hours of epic WTFery.

Click Play below to get the Live Blog started! And don't forget to leave comments here with your own hypercritical, foul-mouthed and hilarious observations.

UPDATE: After the jump, re-live the Emmys telecast, now with bonus screencaps!

Emmy Season Is Here!

In just a little over a month, we will be (possibly) cheering the Emmy voters for bestowing awards on worthy winners, (probably) cursing the same Emmy voters for their steadfast disinterest in, you know, acting, (definitely) angrily sitting through upwards of ten musical numbers and (certainly) marveling at Ronn Moss's formal scarf.

Yes, the Daytime Emmys and the accompanying Serial Drama Live Blogging Extravaganza are just around the corner!  The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (I accidentally typed "and Scientific", I think because I have Jesse St. James on the brain. Why is Jonathan Groff not on television every week?) got the party started by announcing the nominees which were, as ever, a mixed bag.

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES

ALL MY CHILDREN
THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
GENERAL HOSPITAL
THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS

Alicia Minshew, ALL MY CHILDREN
Debbi Morgan, ALL MY CHILDREN
Colleen Zenk, AS THE WORLD TURNS
Susan Flannery, THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Laura Wright, GENERAL HOSPITAL
Michelle Stafford, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR

Ricky Paull Goldin, ALL MY CHILDREN
Michael Park, AS THE WORLD TURNS
James Scott, DAYS OF OUR LIVES
Maurice Benard, GENERAL HOSPITAL
Christian LeBlanc, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Melissa Claire Egan, ALL MY CHILDREN
Julie Pinson, AS THE WORLD TURNS
Heather Tom, THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Nancy Lee Grahn, GENERAL HOSPITAL
Bree Williamson, ONE LIFE TO LIVE
Tricia Cast, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR

Jonathan Jackson, GENERAL HOSPITAL
Jason Thompson, GENERAL HOSPITAL
Brian Kerwin, ONE LIFE TO LIVE
Doug Davidson, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
Billy Miller, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

OUTSTANDING YOUNGER ACTRESS

Brittany Allen, ALL MY CHILDREN
Lexi Ainsworth, GENERAL HOSPITAL
Emily O'Brien, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS

OUTSTANDING YOUNGER ACTOR

Scott Clifton, THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Chandler Massey, DAYS OF OUR LIVES
Chad Duell, GENERAL HOSPITAL

Um.

All Good Things Must Come to an End, or at Least a Semi-End (Yes, Semi-End is a Word Now)

I feel like I should go to confession:  “Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned; it’s been a year since my last regular blog posts.”  But I’m not Catholic, and even if I were, let’s be real, I would not remember to go to confession.  (I don't have houseplants because I can never remember to water them, even though I'd see them on a daily basis.)  And if I did go, I would have so many things to confess, I would get tripped up trying to prioritize them -- Worst first, to get it out of the way?  Or cushion the blow with a few throw-away sins (Do those exist?  I hope so!)? –- and figuring out what to wear that I’d have to design some kind of spreadsheet to keep me on track and confession alone would become essentially a part-time job…

Perhaps the above paragraph provides useful context for my non-shocking announcement that follows.

Some longtime Serial Drama followers, particularly those with an ability to read, may have noticed that my posts are few and far between lately; by which I mean I’ve posted about a dozen times in two years.  I keep thinking that soon I’ll have time to watch the shows and post, but invariably each month in a panic I watch the shows to write our Soap Opera Digest column and then freak out about making that deadline while a bunch of them from my day job linger as well. 

So, after four and half years on Serial Drama and four with Soap Opera Digest, I’m happily bowing out.  Or more specifically, I’m leaving my half of our SOD column in the capable hands of the lovely and hilarious Louise Schwartz.  And I’m playing professor and going all emeritus-style on the blog, hoping to pop in occasionally with a disjointed gripe or two about kids today while wearing a tweed sportcoat with leather elbow patches*, but turning over official co-blogger status to Louise as well.  (* This statement is simply an attempt at humor.  I would never, ever wear such a thing.)

Five years ago I was just a budding blogger who watched and hated General Hospital and watched and puzzled over Days of Our Lives’ boringness, and today I leave you…well, I still live hate GH.  Nobody said progress had to be forward moving, people!  Except the dictionary, and I think we can all agree that it is horribly biased.  (For an example, please look up "inept" and see if you see a photo of anyone involved in running ABC Daytime.)

In actuality, there has actually been some forward movement in my life.  For those who are interested – and I realize that’s a minority of you! – I can provide some reasons for my absence.  Over the last year and a half or so, I:

Serial Drama's Best and Worst of 2010

"So, just to be clear: this is going to be another Best AND Worst list?"

"Yes."

"Not just a Best list? Or a Worst list?"

"No, Best AND Worst. It's our tradition!"

"Right. It's just that...there are a lot of worsts. And not many bests."

"Come on, there were bests."

"Name one."

"Alice Horton's funeral was great. And so was Palmer Cortlandt's memorial! And, hey, the moment where Sonny shot Dante was seriously good."

"Oh, wow. Death and attempted cop murder. Those sure are some best-y bests."

There's no way to sugarcoat it: 2010 was a pretty dreary year for soaps. There were some good moments, sure. And there were some things that we really hated as they happened but, looking back, turned out to be not so bad at all, comparatively. And then...there was the rest. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Best Story: Robin, Patrick and Lisa Star In a Rip-Off Of Homage To Fatal Attraction, General Hospital

 

 

When Lisa Niles and her never-ending supply of "This one time, in college? Patrick and I drank a lot of [ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE] and watched a lot of [SPORTING EVENT] and then [SEXUAL ACT] and it was craaaaaaazy" stories came to Port Charles, she might as well have introduced herself to her new co-workers with "Hi, I'm Lisa, and I'm going to sleep with Patrick". That's how clearly this story was telegraphed. We all knew Patrick was going to cheat on Robin; it was only a question of "When?" and "Then what?" and also "Why?" To answer the first question: while Robin was in Africa working on AIDS research, which is probably the single douchiest excuse for infidelity, ever. To answer the second question: Then Lisa went CUH-RAZY and for a few glorious weeks, it was awesome. And to answer the last question: to give Jason Thompson and Kimberly McCullough material for their Emmy reels. Even when the story bordered on camp, Thompson and McCullough managed to ground it in realism with some of the most honest, gut-wrenching performances we saw this year. We dare you to watch Patrick's confession and not be moved. WE DARE YOU! They did such good work (and continue to do such good work even though the writing has definitely taken a turn for the lazy) and Brianna Brown played the hell out of the one note she was given. It even incorporated a surprisingly well-handled return of Stone Cates, so it was our choice for Story Of The Year, no question.

Worst Story: Teen Jess, One Life to Live

At first it seemed like it could have some potential for those of us who've been watching since the first time Jess was seventeen, at least as a cute and brief side story -- but alas, Jessica's amnesia storyline started in the ickiest of possible ways (her biological father tried to rape her) and only got worse from there. They never bothered to explain her illness (was it just a loss of memory, but she was perfectly healthy? was she deeply ill and convinced she was a teenager? was this yet another personality -- because this one certainly didn't resemble the one we knew at that age?) and most everyone seemed content to let her traipse around town unsupervised and behave as if she were indeed a teenager, including letting her go back to high school while she stalked her art teacher/ex-boyfriend. While she was being handled as if she were legitimately seventeen, Brody nonetheless tried to get her to... what? Fall in love with him? Remember that she loved him? Had she actually not regained her memory but still fell for Brody, would he have dated her, and therefore essentially dated a seventeen-year-old? And why in the world didn't she notice how hot that soldier boy is? So much was unclear,and it ended with a possible-impregnation by the slimiest guy in town, Robert Ford. While it was certainly rewarding that at the end of that night we got to see an unconscious and bloodied Ford, nothing was worth having to tolerate Teen Jess for months on end.

Best START To A Story: Sonny Shoots Dante, General Hospital

We knew it was coming, thanks to explicit promos that aired round-the-clock and a helpful chyron that spoiled the shocking storyline twist, but still: when a ruthless Sonny shot a brave, unarmed Dante in the chest and a horrified Olivia wailed "You just shot your own son!", we got goosebumps. The immediate aftermath gave us some top-notch acting and some righteous Sonny hatred that warmed our hearts and souls. The fallout...was terrible. Instead of genuine remorse or growth, we had Sonny petulantly defending himself with "I didn't KNOW he was my son". Because, right, you didn't KNOW, so that totally makes shooting an unarmed cop in the chest okay. Commendable even! Instead of all of Port Charles turning on Sonny, we had throngs of defenders. And Dante, in one of the most poorly written moments of a poorly written year, covered for dear old dad. There are no words. Only curse words.

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column

The October 19th issue of Soap Opera Digest featured our latest column and our thoughts on All My Children, Days of Our Lives and General Hospital. Mallory takes on all of AMC's recent casting changes and makes a public plea for the return of David Canary, while Becca wonders if she's on crazy pills because she's not at all enjoying some of the popular stories on Days and GH.

My Take
By Mallory Harlen

Even though I temper it with criticism, I do have to give credit where credit is due, and lately that credit is directed at ALL MY CHILDREN. Perhaps the powers-that-be tuned in to their own show and, like the audience, found themselves asleep before the opening credits. Or maybe they read an episode synopsis and thought to themselves, horrified, "This exact thing has been happening for weeks on end! How do I make it stop?" How they came to the conclusion that something needs to give isn't important; I'm just grateful that they are making some changes. And, naturally, because I'm the helpful sort, I have some advice for them while they're making these changes.

Celebrating Four Years of Semi-Professional Complaining

We are in surprisingly fantastic moods this morning. It's Friday, it's October (the official month of all things pumpkin) and it's our blogiversary!

When we started Serial Drama four years ago--on Blogger, and with anonymous nicknames!--we envisioned a place where we'd complain about soaps to each other and assumed that it would remain mostly unvisited, except for the occasional hit from people who had Googled "Why does Hunter Tylo's face look like burning?". 

But to our surprise and delight, our experiment in soap bitchiness has thrived. Since 2006, we've written 1,450 posts, received a completely unexpected and awesome column in Soap Opera Digest, gained a fabulous new blogger and have been consistently amazed by our readers, who are smart, loyal and all-around fantastic. We can't thank you enough for reading, commenting, linking to, Facebooking and emailing us. Even when the emails are kind of mean--nay, especially when the emails are kind of mean.

So what happened over the course of the last twelve months? Let's take a look back at Serial Drama's fourth year.

There was some major casting drama. Eric Braeden let his contract negotiations play out very publicly and very crankily. Chad Duell suddenly replaced Drew Garrett as Michael Corinthos, while Christina Bennett Lind, Stephen Nichols and Billy Warlock also got in on the recast action. Some boldfaced names made their returns to soaps, from Jonathan Jackson and Vanessa Marcil to Rebecca Budig and, um, David Hasselhoff. Kish was written off of One Life to Live and thousands of hearts broke in the process. And David Canary chose to leave All My Children, which continues to be unbearably sad, although Adam Chandler leaving Pine Valley alive was more than we dared to hope for!

And there were other some sad losses. As The World Turns came to an end after 54 years, and the soap world lost James Mitchell and Frances Reid, who were the recipients of beautiful memorial episodes.

There were also the usual soapy shenanigans: Weddings, vow renewals and non-weddings, doppelgangers, soapy smackdowns, scene stealers and Sonny shooting his own son in the chest (but it's totally okay because he didn't know he was his son). Sonny, Victor, Todd and Ryan gave us even more reasons to hate them, and Bob Guza said a lot of things that we hate.

All My Children celebrated a birthday of its own, marking their 40th anniversary with a pretty fantastic episode and a spot in The New York Times Arts & Leisure Weekend (as always, Mallory is incapable of talking about this without stressing how tiny Susan Lucci and Rebecca Budig are. And now non-aging Debbi Morgan is. If we didn't love her, we'd have to hate her). As a present, they received the gift of common sense and finally (FINALLY) showed Charles Pratt the door.

The Daytime Emmys...well, they happened.

The vampire craze hit our corner of the internet with our coverage of True Blood.

One Life to Live did a few musical episodes and ABC Daytime discovered this thing called "the internet", giving us a series of webisodes wondering what would happen if some of our favorite characters met.

This was also the year of James Franco, which we are still having trouble coming to terms with. Remember how it started off with giddy glee ("OHMIGOD WHAT OHMIGOD! James Franco on GH? OHMIGOD") and then morphed into unintentional hilarity? Then there was an hour of television so warped and terrible that it resulted in the brutal end of a decade-long crush. What can't GH ruin?!

And it still blows our mind a little that Heather and Jessica of Go Fug Yourself mentioned us in Marie Claire!

All in all, it was a crazy year here, on-screen and off, and we are excited for four more years and more!

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column

In case you missed the September 28th issue of Soap Opera Digest, read on. This month, Becca picks apart the storyline problems Days of Our Lives and General Hospital have been having, while Mallory remains nervous about the big returns of Brenda Barrett and Kendall Hart Slater to their respective shows. 

My Take
By Becca Thomas

I have repeatedly extolled the virtues of a slow-burn storyline – particularly if it involves total opposites who fall for each other against all odds, because who doesn’t love that? – but there is slow burn, and then there is how-has-this-tiny-flame-not-extinguished-itself-by-now-and-if-it’s-still-going-is-it-because-of-a-gas-leak-and-is-that-what-has-affected-the-writers’-brains-burn. The latter is, unfortunately, par for the course lately on DAYS OF OUR LIVES.

I haven’t whined, at least not on a prolonged or detailed basis, about DAYS in a while, because it’s been pretty good. There’s been good cast interaction, including decent use of veterans, the daily dialogue has been pretty strong, and unlike GENERAL HOSPITAL, DAYS doesn’t make my shoe-throwing hand twitch. But over the last couple of months, all that goodness has come to a near halt as the pace of stories has become slow even by soap standards, which as any longtime viewer knows allow for even the simplest thing to drag out over months.

I had to catch up on several weeks’ worth of DAYS recently, and seeing that many episodes in a couple of sittings really drove home how little has been happening. I realize I am prone to shallow fashion critiques (at one point a couple of years back at least six months went by with me criticizing Carly on GENERAL HOSPITAL for nothing but her parade of hideous and ill-fitting tops, and there were certainly more substantive things I could have focused on, because it’s Carly for Pete’s sake), but this is a comment about clothes that is not shallow: Characters should not be wearing the same outfit for an entire week’s worth of episodes, let alone more. And this has happened a lot lately on DAYS. (On my more characteristically shallow note, some of the ensembles have been truly unfortunate, which of course makes the underlying writing offense that much more serious. Sami was recently in a color-blocked Lycra dress and cardigan for five days. I went through several bottles of wine just trying to relax my retinas.)

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column

Apologies for our lateness in bringing you our column in the August 10th issue of Soap Opera Digest. It's just that SOD is so small and it sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of the...um, let's just say "many" instead of giving an actual, embarrassing number. It sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of the many, larger magazines we subscribe to. This issue wound up inside Marie Claire! Anyway, read on for our thoughts on General Hospital and Days of Our Lives. --Mal and Bec.

My Take
By Mallory Harlen

GENERAL HOSPITAL's cast is one of the best in all of daytime, and my respect for all of the actors grows every day because I am so impressed that they manage to film their scenes without breaking the fourth wall and apologizing to the audience or holding up little "Help me!" signs. Can I be blunt? The show is a mess.

2010 has been a wretched year for Sonny Corinthos: In a move that was a poor knockoff of a much better story, he wound up injuring his daughter with a car bomb intended for his rival. He also participated in a cover-up that directly led to his teenage son being sent to prison and, you might remember, shot another of his sons in the chest. One of those stories could have been compelling, but THREE of them? That crossed the line from "soapy" into "this kind of off-the-wall ridiculousness is why people make fun of soap operas." And it's not like we got anything like character growth or introspection out of these various traumas: no, Sonny is still the same angry blowhard we all know and abhor, just with new messes of his own making to rant about on-screen every day, every week, every month.

Our Column in the 7/13 Issue of Soap Opera Digest

The latest issue of Soap Opera Digest is hitting newsstands now and in it is our latest My Take/My Take, Too column. This month, Mallory takes on All My Children and wonders what the deal is with repetitive dialogue (did you know that Tad thinks Damon's not so bad, and that everyone thinks Ryan is just the greatest?), unlikable characters, and Marissa in general. To the surprise of no one, she consulted a thesaurus numerous times to find synonyms for "boring". Becca, meanwhile, congratulates Days of Our Lives for the stellar send-off they gave Frances Reid and also talks about General Hospital. The words "congratulate" and "stellar" are notably absent in that section.

It's The Most Wond...Well, It's The Most Semi-Entertaining Time of the Year

It's that time again. The time where soap fans find themselves either celebrating the fact that their favorites walked away with an award and think to themselves proudly and, admit it, kind of smugly, "I totally knew that they were the best" or angrily voice their displeasure with the whims of the [insert insulting adjective here] Emmy voters who did not recognize their favorite's brilliance. The time where normally personable media personalities suddenly become wooden, cheesy awards show hosts and daytime actors and actresses visibly pledge their allegiance to Team Pretty or Team Fugly.

Yes. The Daytime Emmys are here, and we could not be more excited! Because as much as we try to present ourselves as cooler-than-thou and jaded, we are shamefully and hopelessly addicted to all kinds of awards shows, and the Emmys are no exception. Even if they are obviously wrong in the head, since they gave General Hospital the most nominations, but whatever: we're totally excited!

Next Sunday, June 27th at 9 PM on CBS, the Daytime Emmys are airing live, hosted by Regis Philbin (does this make anyone else nervous? We watch Regis and Kelly at the gym because Kelly is adorable and it makes the elliptical more tolerable, but Regis is...prone to saying things that raise the ol' eyebrow, if you know what we mean, and we think you do, but just in case you don't, we mean that he's crazy), honoring Dick Clark and granting the phenomenal Agnes Nixon a Lifetime Achievement Award. 

We will be marking this occasion with Emmy content all week, including your chance to vote for the actors and shows you think deserve to be winners on the big night, all leading up to the triumphant return of the Serial Drama Daytime Emmys Live Blogging Extravaganza. Join us here at next Sunday at 9 for our play-by-play commentary, snark and creative ways to say, "What would possess a person to wear such a thing?"

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