Serial Drama

Why Don't I Watch The Bold and the Beautiful?

I realize I have no room in my life for a new soap (what with having to use part of my three-day weekend to catch up on a month's worth of Days and a week's worth of GH), but after reading the plot summary below, I think I might need to wedge an additional 22 minutes a day into my TV-watching calendar.

I've seen exactly two episodes of The Bold and Beautiful -- as part of SOAPNet's marathon last year of the Emmy-nominated best shows (the others being Guiding Light, OLTL, and Y&R).  I liked it, thought I wasn't motivated to add it to my TiVo.  However, then I read this.  Dear readers, late last week Norma Arnold from The Wonder Years attempted to perpetrate an intentional bear attack on her mortal enemy!  And the show is using an ACTUAL BEAR.  How ridiculously awesome is that?!

Watch out, she's off her meds again. Pam Douglas, the hilarious, bipolar baddie played by Alley Mills on The Bold and the Beautiful, is about to take her villainy one step too far. On August 28–29, she follows her archenemy, Donna (Jennifer Gareis), up to the Forresters' mountain cabin, where Donna makes the mistake of mocking Pam's famous lemon bars and telling her she's off her rocker. Deeply hurt and outraged, Pam knocks her out, ties her up, douses her with honey and leaves her to be killed by a bear.

Someone who watches this show, please tell me it was as hilarious as it sounds.  Villainy, archenemies, lemon bars, and orchestrated wild animal attacks!  Glorious!

(This is totally the type of thing, BTW, that if one of my shows did I would freak the hell out and rant endlessly about the stupidity of it.  But since it's not one of my shows, it's fantastic.)

Edited to add clips! Thanks to reader Mar for tracking these down.  The amazing campiness is yours for the viewing, after the jump.

Soap I Don't Watch #4: One Life To Live

I thought it was pretty hilarious that the show doing a week-long musical prom storyline was nominated as Best Drama at the Daytime Emmys.  But then I thought hey, maybe it was really good a few months ago, and has only recently declined.  That kind of unevenness happens all the time on soaps.  Especially  on Days of Our Lives.  Now, having watched the episode that got OLTL its Best Drama nomination, I have to ask:  Huh?  Why?  How was this one of the four best soap episodes last year?  What a sad commentary on the genre!

In fairness, I suppose this One Life to Live episode was slightly better than the Young and the Restless one that somehow won tied for Best Drama.  (Though from Mallory, I know that is damning with faint praise.)  And I imagine it would have been better if I didn't know that the dude in the casket whose funeral consumed the whole show was, in fact, not dead.  I don't know.  Overall, I'd say it didn't wow me, but it contained fewer clichés and annoying performances than Y&R, so it's not the basement-dweller of the bunch.  Of the Soaps I Don't Watch, I'd rank them:

1. Guiding Light (by a mile)
2. The Bold and the Beautiful
3. One Life to Live
4. The Young and the Restless

At some point soon I'll do a poll to get your rankings, since many of you actually watch these shows and therefore won't be just talking out of your ass like I am.  Not that I'm not totally comfortable with the ass-talking, mind you.  Speaking of, here is the highly refined pro and con list for One Life to Live:

Soap I Don't Watch #3: The Young and the Restless

My uneducated peek at the "best" daytime has to offer continues with the third show from SoapNet's Daytime Emmy Dramarama marathon, The Young and the Restless.  I knew almost nothing about this show until I met Promising Ingénue, other than that it had been at the top of the ratings for eons.  PI had such a low opinion of the writing that I thought either 1) millions of Americans must be wrong to watch it so faithfully, or 2) she might be a bit soft in the head.  I think you can guess towards which option I was leaning.  But after watching this episode, I think she might be right!  She was definitely right about Peter Bergman, who is downright dreamy.  Also dreamy, and super intellectual (always what we strive for around here), is the pro and con format I used for the Guiding Light and The Bold and the Beautiful reviews.  Shall we see how Y&R fares using it? 

Actually, I'll spare you the suspense.  This is the first of the Soaps I Don't Watch so far that I am totally perplexed as to how it got nominated for Best Drama (at least based on this episode).  And it won?!  (Well, tied?)  Bizarre.  Maybe all the naysayers are right and the genre really is circling the drain.  On that happy note, on to my hypercritical look at daytime's best and most popular, a show about the youthful and/or energetic among us (if we were all better looking and more dramatic)...

(Apologies in advance for the lack of screencaps; technical difficulties abounded.)

Soap I Don't Watch #2: The Bold and the Beautiful

So it turns out at least a few of our readers watch the first Soap I Don't Watch, Guiding Light.  And shockingly, since just days before I had thought it was imaginary, I liked the show.  Apparently it is seconds away from cancellation, which is a bummer, but it may free up several really good actors to be picked up by shows I actually do watch, so that's good news.  For me.  Which is really how all things must be viewed; by their impact on my life. 

Anyway, next up in the SoapNet Daytime Emmy Dramarama marathon is little show about people, some of whom are bold, and others of whom are beautiful.  I actually remember this show debuting in the 80s, and I was rather pleasantly surprised to see that a bunch of the original actors, whom I watched back in the day at the Soap Opera Digest awards and other high-brow events, are still on the show.  I think this soap might actually respect its veterans instead of casting them aside for 19-year-olds.  I will need some time to adjust to such a phenomenon.  Here are some other things I noticed about this show (two episodes of it, because of that wacky half-hour format it has), continuing with the scientifically proven "pro and con" format.

Soap I Don't Watch #1: Guiding Light

For the most part, SoapNet is one of the best inventions of modern times. (The list is something like 1. cotton gin, 2. TiVo, 3. internal combustion engine, 4. SoapNet/Bobbi Brown cosmetics (tie).)  Being able to watch soaps at night or on the weekends is great. I have TiVo, so I’m fine with recording them during the day to watch later, but there is a weird satisfaction in sitting at home at night and being like "Oh, Grey's Anatomy, so you say Izzie and George -- f'ing Izzie and George! -- are a couple now, huh?  Really?  Well, I'd rather click this little button right here and surf on over to another 'hospital' show that has one-tenth the medical accuracy, 'heroes' shooting at cops, and a wisecracking ghost in a track suit, so what do you think about that, you shark-jumping bitches?!"

Anyway, occasionally SoapNet does boneheaded stuff like pulling reruns of great soaps that haven’t been available to anyone for two decades in order to air recently canceled or inexplicably not-yet-canceled nighttime soaps that nobody cares enough to really watch during their first airings.  But then all is forgiven, because every one in a while, they have a super-fantastic idea. Previous examples include the Bo and Hope marathon, the Luke and Laura marathon, the Sami Brady marathon . . . pretty much marathons. I am emphatically pro-soapy-marathon.

So this year as a prelude to the Daytime Emmys, SoapNet whipped up some marathon magic in the form of an episode of each of the four shows nominated for Best Drama -- the Daytime Emmy Dramarama.

And since I 1) have the aforementioned marathon love, 2) only watch two soaps and really have no idea what else is out there, and 3) enjoy fictional people more than real ones, I decided to watch. And I thought, what would our readers like more than to hear my random musings about soaps that I know nothing about but that in all likelihood are near and dear to their hearts and therefore worthy of much better coverage than I could ever provide? I know, right? I’m always thinking of you guys. Anyway, here is the first in a series called Soaps I Don’t Watch.