Serial Drama

Passions: Why Survivor 4: St. Lisa's Was Scrapped

When Ryan told us that among the old Passions musings taking up space on his hard drive was a post that combined several of our favorite things -- reality TV, making fun of soaps, and press release parodies -- we couldn't wait to read it.  Enjoy!  (For those who require some initiation, skip to the end for some background from Ryan.)

WHY SURVIVOR 4: ST. LISA’S WAS SCRAPPED

ABS News Service, Saturday, April 20, 2002

It's a little-known fact that Survivor 4: Marquesas was actually a hastily thrown together last minute replacement for the intended fourth edition of the series, which was to be called Survivor 4: St. Lisa's.

"We didn't even make it through the first week before we decided to scrap it," said creator Mark Burnett. "I have never seen a bunch of such clueless, inept people in my life!"

Trouble began brewing even before the contestants reached the island.  Miguel Lopez-Fitzgerald was upset that he wasn't on the same tribe as fellow contestant Charity Standish.  A similar situation occurred with Miguel's sister, Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald, who shrieked to the high heavens that she needed to be on the same tribe as Ethan Crane. Meanwhile, contestant TC Russell was incensed that his daughter Whitney was on the same tribe as Chad Harris.  "He's a no-good punk who needs to stay away from my daughters!" he bellowed as the crew restrained him.

Once they reached their camps, there was immediate conflict within the Ptui tribe.  Rebecca Hotchkiss and Ivy Crane refused to lift a finger to help build the tribe's shelter, saying only common people did manual labor.  Both women were also outraged that the crew refused to fetch them mai tais or call room service for them.  When it was explained to them that the concept of Survivor was to rough it in the wilderness with no modern conveniences, both women bellowed, "Do you know who I am?  I am Mrs. Julian Crane!" in unison.

Matters only got worse once the shelter was built. Ivy, Rebecca, and Theresa each insisted that they were the real Mrs. Julian Crane and therefore were entitled to the entire shelter.  Although they had done all the work in building it, their fellow tribemates decided to camp elsewhere to avoid the screaming.

Things weren't any better over at the Kabong tribe. Dr. Eve Russell started shrieking about the evils of singing when her fellow tribemates decided to break into a round of "Kumbaya" around the campfire.  "The woman was some sort of fundamentalist wacko!  She actually thought that singing would lead to drugs and prostitution!  You would think that would make her an easy target for first person voted off the tribe, but amazingly everyone agreed, apologized, and stopped singing.  There was no conflict at all," said Burnett.

But the real trouble came the next day with the reward challenge.  It was a simple relay race in which contestants were required to untie an oar, race back, and tag the next contestant, who had to untie another oar and race back.  The third contestant had to break open a batch of coconuts until they found one with a key.  They had to hand that off to the fourth contestant, who would race down to the beach with the key and the oars to give them to the remaining four contestants, who were to row out to a buoy, grab the team flag, row back to shore and place it at the final platform. "They never even finished the race!" exclaimed Burnett.

The trouble started right at the starting gate.  Pilar Lopez-Fitzgerald refused to budge.  "Dios Mio, I have a bad feeling about this race," she said.  "Mark my words, no good can come of it!"

Passions Nostalgia: How Many Morons Does it Take To Open an Envelope?

Are you still in mourning over Passions' curtain call last week?  Are you struggling with how you will cope with yet another hole in your soap-viewing schedule?  Or do you just want to feel better about the fact that you sit through the dreck masquerading as All My Children and General Hospital these days?  Then read on, as Ryan Mason recaps a classically crappy episode of the now-late Passions.

Oh man. You can see firsthand in this one just what I mean about things happen in theory on this show, but nothing ever actually happens.

The envelope in question contains the results of the DNA test that will prove if John is really Grace’s son. Of course, in reality he’s not, and the tests show this, but Ivy is blackmailing Eve to lie and say he is or she’ll expose Eve’s SECRETS. It wound up taking TWO FREAKING WEEKS to open that damned envelope, because Kay decided to set a small fire outside to stop Zombie Charity from making love to Miguel, and it wound up getting out of control and burning down the entire Lopez-Fitzgerald home.  I think Eve had managed to get the envelope opened about a quarter of the way more when word broke of the fire and everyone raced over there, and then we had to deal with all that before we got back to the envelope. This also illustrates another Passions hallmark—the Catholic Church has the Stations of the Cross; Passions has the Stations of Stupidity. All the characters will be standing around one location waiting for something to not happen, like they are here in the Bennett living room, then something else will happen, like the fire, and everyone will shuffle over there to mill about and gape and talk to themselves. Lather, rinse, repeat. You could also look upon it as a never-ending Progressive Dinner with no actual progress involved (a Regressive Dinner, perhaps?).

The big deal with Zombie Charity potentially making love to Miguel is that it turns out she’s a succubus and if she has sex with him it will kill him. It happens.

In Honor of Its Final Episode, a Recap From When People Still Watched Passions

Friends, today is a sad day in soapland . . . for the seven people still watching Passions.  (Or more accurately, for the three of those viewers who still actually enjoy the show.)  The last episode will appear today on public access in Winnetka, or Direct TV, or wherever the hell it has allegedly been airing.  Our guest blogger Ryan celebrates the end of an era -- a short, horribly written and often poorly acted, cheese-filled era, but an era nonetheless -- with a recap from way back at the beginning of this century.  We would have called this a Vintage Suds entry, but feared that calling something from 2001 vintage would make us sound dumber than that Blayne kid on Project Runway who thought the Beatles were popular in the 1930s, so we decided against it. 

I used to post a lot on various message boards about Passions, and still have some of my posts that also came to me via email saved. I’ve selected a few to share here, with a bit of present-day explanation and clarification leading each one off.

Right around the time when I wrote this one, I had discovered sites like Television Without Pity and Reality News Online that did full-length humorous recaps of TV episodes, so I decided to try my hand at it with Passions just for the hell of it.  Just as in theirs, some of the stuff in here didn’t actually happen but was thrown in for humorous effect (well, hopefully).

I loved the actress who played Norma, Marianne Muellerleile, but the character wore out her welcome because they kept bringing her back to do the same damned thing over and over—bellow and shriek and try to kill Tabitha. Starting around the time of the Rome/Vendetta storyline, though, thankfully they gave her more variety, and the character was more tolerable again.

This is when Theresa was pregnant with Little Ethan but because she thought it was Julian’s, she was planning to have an abortion before Ethan could find out she was pregnant, even though Ivy's already pieced it together. Theresa got on my last nerve for the first few years, as you can tell here. I didn’t start liking her until around the time she and Fox got together, possibly because for the first time she didn’t make everything all about EEEEEETHANNNN-nuh! and FAY-tuh! Lindsay Korman/Hartley also, at this time, wildly overacted with her facial expressions when Theresa thought one of her SECRETS was about to be blown. I think in time she toned down the ridiculous overenunciating too; she definitely grew a lot as an actress during her time there.

Ah, Miguel. I don’t know if Jesse Metcalfe was (understandably) bored to bits with the material, and I won’t presume to make any speculations about him in real life, but I swear he managed to give every line he droned the subtext of “pissy closet case.” Also, this is during the time period in which Kay cast a spell that imprisoned the real Charity in a block of ice and created her Zombie double that was supposed to help Kay land Miguel. It happens. And despite the huge brouhaha that Passions normally makes about EEEEVIL not being allowed in a church (Kay wasn’t the year before this when Hecuba had her soul; Tabitha just recently wasn’t until she renounced her powers), Zombie Charity was in church with no incident here. Another crackerjack job from the people in Passions continuity!

The Hallmarks of Passions

In honor of Passions' last week on the air, our guest blogger Ryan Mason is continuing his nostalgic look back.  Today he tackles the hallmarks of this temporarily sort-of classic daytime drama.  As you read them, try not to get yourself worked up by remembering that this show replaced Another World.  Not that I do that and break stuff, or anything.  ~ Becca

Passions definitely had its own little tics and trademarks and Alice in Wonderland-like rules of logic. Here are some of the key hallmarks:

ENDLESS DAYS. One day in Harmony could last for eons, and then just suddenly pop to the current time at will—in other words, New Year’s Eve could stretch into February, at which point it would suddenly become Valentine’s Day. The carnival that kicked off the show lasted for nearly a month, for example, and seemed twice as long. Then there was the never-ending party in early 2001 at the Crane mansion to celebrate Theresa and Ethan’s engagement—not only did it last for over a month, but to add insult to injury, every single episode featured Gwen and Rebecca huddled in the corner having this exact same exchange like some sort of demented cross between Statler & Waldorf and a cuckoo clock:

GWEN: Mother, are you sure this is a good idea?
REBECCA: TRUST me! Emailing Ivy’s letter proving that Ethan is Sam Bennett’s son to the tabloids from Theresa’s computer was a stroke of genius!

All in all, your typical Harmony year might consist of about 10-15 days, each jam-packed with nonaction.

BUTTINSKY BIT PLAYERS. A Passions staple, these are the people who would pop up from out of nowhere, convinced they knew everything about you and your innermost thoughts, and proceed to offer “Who asked for it?” oracular insights into your life. They seemed to be especially prevalent on airplanes, where the passenger in the seat next to you would invariably chirp “I can tell just by looking at you that you’re pining away for your TRUE LOVE!!!!111!!!” when all you’d done was ask them to pass the peanuts.

The very first Buttinsky Bit Players were the Parisian flowermongers in the first episode who provided this sterling bit of commentary from out of the clear blue sky after Sheridan walked away from their stand:

FLOWERMONGER #1:  There she goes. Every day. Same time.
FLOWERMONGER #2:  I wonder who she is. And where she goes.
FLOWERMONGER #1:  She looks like a princess.
FLOWERMONGER #2:  If she is, she is a very sad princess!

Oh, lady, you don’t know the half of it.

And on it went. My personal favorite was the jeweler who refused to sell Ethan an engagement ring for Gwen because she just didn’t feel he was buying it for the right reasons, even though she had known him for all of ten seconds. Because, as we all know, jewelers are wont to throw a sale worth thousands of dollars out the window if they have even the slightest concern about the buyer’s motives.

RECAP MASQUERADING AS DIALOGUE. Even on the best of days, as my Top 25 WTF? Lines of Dialogue entry demonstrated, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything on Passions even vaguely resembling normal human speech, but the worst was when characters were routinely given entire paragraphs of recap to spew. For example, here was Rebecca at the top of one episode:

Top 25 Passions WTF? Lines of Dialogue, or, Lines You Won't Hear on As the World Turns

Part of what made classic Passions like crack was the fear of missing the latest “I-must-be-hallucinating; I-couldn’t-possibly-have-just-heard-that” howler of a line of dialogue if you missed an episode. I’ve assembled twenty-five of the most prime examples. Enjoy!

25. SHERIDAN: I feel a connection to this footprint!

24. TC: But Eve, you’re a woman of science!

23. PILAR: At first, Grace thought it must be Noah who was in danger, but the Angel Girl said no.

22. IVY: I'm going to find that bloody bird statue if it's the last thing I do!

21. LUIS: It’s not my hand that hurts…it’s my heart!

20. EVE: I can’t believe you, Liz, my own sister, would say such a thing!

19. JESSICA: It's so brave of Miguel to go back in the closet!

18. ETHAN: Just wait till you see me chomp on that noodle!

17. LIZ: I’ve carried this suitcase with me everywhere I’ve gone for the past twenty years!

16. ETHAN: Not only was that plane carrying passengers and luggage, but my hopes and dreams as well!

15. SHERIDAN: Our noodle broke!

14. LIZ: This should make TC drop his inhibitions…and his pants!

13. BETH: Thank God for the lesbians!

12. SAM: I don't mean to alarm you, but I found TC outside choking a statue.

11. THERESA: Ethan is the air that I breathe and I'll die without him!

10. LIZ: They booed Mama!

9. CHARITY: It was you!  You were the panther!  You're the evil that's trying to destroy me and Miguel and all of Harmony!

8. KAY: No! Siren can’t make love to Miguel! She’s a mermaid! And the mermaid’s curse specifies that once a mermaid makes love to a mortal, he can never be with another woman ever again!

7. WHITNEY: Repent now before God smites you, Theresa!  Get out of here before God sends his fiery messenger to take you to hell!

6. PILAR: What would Jesus do, Theresa? Would Jesus take the Crane money? Would He?

5. KAY: Oh my God, Zombie Charity! Not only are you a lying slut, but now you’re a succubus as well!

4. PILAR: How can this be? We saw your corpse after the tsunami when your coffin washed into my living room!

3. EVIL CHARITY: I’m picking mushrooms to destroy goodness!

2. PILAR: Those storm clouds came out of nowhere. Like the trouble in Sam and Grace’s marriage.

And the all-time WTF? champ:

1. TABITHA: I wonder what kind of hell my special potpourri will unleash on Sheridan?

Passions: A Look Back

Hi! I just wanted to say that I love Serial Drama and follow it religiously. We had talked about the idea of my writing some guest entries on Passions once it neared its final episode since I was an absolute Passions fanatic for most of its run. So over the next couple weeks, I’ll be sharing several Passions-themed entries with you: retrospectives, recaps of select episodes I did back in the day, and more! Let’s start with a general overview and look back at the show.

Passions debuted on NBC on July 5, 1999. I didn’t start watching it then, but had read and heard from friends that it was laughably awful. The first episode I saw was later that year when I was home sick from work and from what I can remember, revolved around everyone being at some sort of high school dance where Theresa locked Gwen in a broom closet while Tabitha and Timmy sat in a corner and provided running commentary. I started watching regularly at the end of the year, when, from what I remember, a fake Martin Fitzgerald fell to his death through a skylight at some New Year’s Eve gala, but EVEN THOUGH SOMEONE HAD JUST DIED ABOUT TEN FEET AWAY FROM THEM, Kay was more upset that Miguel was with Charity and Gwen was hounding Theresa to produce this so-called “boyfriend” she kept talking about (who didn’t exist because Theresa, of course, was really in love with, as she inimitably and overenunciatedly pronounced it, “EEEEEEEEEEthannnnn-nuh” because, as she reminded us at the drop of a hat, it was “FAY-tuh”); meanwhile, Tabitha and Timmy parked themselves in the corner and provided running commentary. The whole thing just seemed so sublimely, almost surreally godawful that I started setting my VCR.

(Now, I finally did see the first few months when the Sci-Fi Channel reran the show briefly in 2006 before yanking them with no warning when we were ONLY ABOUT TWO MONTHS AWAY FROM ME HAVING CAUGHT UP TO WHERE I CAME IN. Er, not that I’m bitter or anything. Anyway…oh. Oh my. Sheridan’s riotous fear of dying just like her “dear friend” Princess Diana, including getting into a car wreck in the exact same tunnel and then chirping to the random British voiceover in her out of body experience, “Diana? Diana, is that you?” The Little Angel Moppet running amok singsonging “GRAAAAAAAAAACE… GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE…” while Grace ran around like a nincompoop screeching, “LITTLE GIRL! LITTLE GIRL!” Kay and Jessica shrieking about beepers (hello, 1999!) and bust exercises? The never-ending carnival? I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. And hey—did you know that Sheridan was more like a big sister to Ethan than an aunt?)

The beauty of Passions back in those days was that it was this intoxicating, improbable mix where anything could, and did, happen, yet at the same time nothing actually happened, but overall it seemed to be glacially progressing toward a mythical “something” happening. For example: