Serial Drama

Days of Our Lives Week in Review

This week was a bit mixed for me.  I like most of what's going on (though not enough to break out the Awesomeness Rating Scale), but the Touch the Sky Airlines stories and basically everything involving the younger characters are tempting my TiVo's fast-forward button, which hasn't seen action during Days in months.  But enough with an introduction, because I need to talk about how fabulous Anna is.

Anna is one of the best returning characters in recent years, and Leann Hunley is thoroughly entertaining, but like Promising Ingénue I must question what the hair stylists were going for here:

It's like the wig Stockard Channing wears during the Sandra Dee number in Grease.  But Tamaranna is still awesome, which was amplified by the flashback reminder of how longstanding Leann Hunley's fabulousness is:

This, and she got paid to make out with Josh Jackson, people.  Life is so unfair.  (By the way, did she intentionally perfectly duplicate that scene?  The eyebrow cocking is even identical!)

She had one of my favorite lines of the week, upon arriving on the almost-deserted tropical island:

Anna:  This damn heat.  What I wouldn't give for a mai-tai and a cabana boy.

You are a woman after my own heart, Tamaranna DiMera.

Night Shift Episode 2: Skin Deep

Previously on Night Shift, stuff happened in Port Charles in stories centered around a hospital, with only minimal mob involvement.  Record numbers of shock- and confusion-induced coronaries were reported nationwide among General Hospital viewers.  However, Jason Morgan is in jail awaiting trial on a murder charge in one version of General Hospital, but out and being heroic in the hospital in the other version of General Hospital, because apparently some level of mob entanglement is essential.  But most importantly, Jason Thompson was hotly naked in a shower.  A fake shower, sure, and not totally naked, I imagine, but Jason Thompson was hotly naked in a shower, for our purposes.  (Which are lust and the suspension of reality.)

Promising Ingénue brilliantly kicked off the Night Shift recaps last week, so I have very little to add.  There are just two things that really irked me, which are true of this week's episode too, so I thought I'd get them out of the way from the get-go:

1.  Jason Basically Being Two Different People:  Okay, I know Night Shift and General Hospital are two separate shows (most tellingly because the first is actually centered around a hospital), but they share most of the same characters. Therefore I cannot get past the fact that on GH at 3pm Jason is in state prison, and on NS at 11pm he’s out, rescuing old ladies who make terrifying clown needlepoints and then (spoiler!) serving out probation as a janitor. There’s no explanation for it! It’s not even a “businessman by day, Chippendale’s dancer by night”-like story, it’s just . . . stupid! Dumb! Idiotic! If they had to shoehorn Jason into this new show, they had plenty of notice and time to plan, so why didn’t they make his story blend like they did everybody else’s? You don’t see Robin staffing the ER on Night Shift but in a coma on GH, or Patrick hotly diagnosing people on Night Shift but hotly working as an auto mechanic on GH. Because they are the same characters. Ugh.  I am majorly bugged by this.  Also, I am SO SURE that if a known hitman got put on probation, they would assign him to a hospital.  So stupid and contrived.  But whatever.  The "is he in prison or out" thing is way more bothersome.

2.  The Weirdness and Randomness of Billy Dee Williams' Character:  Somehow GH got Billy Dee to agree to appear on this thing.  The man played Lando Calrissian!  And he made malt liquor seem like something one might actually want to drink.  He exudes charm and charisma. So they make him a janitor? Why not make him a doctor, someone senior who’s on Robin and Patrick’s side and can take on the human equivalent of an HMO plan, Dr. Ford? Also, I don’t know whether this is just because Billy Dee has been called a sex symbol for so long that I can’t think of him in any other way, or if in fact his delivery is overtly sexual, but everything he says sounds dirty! Whether he’s talking about elevator buttons, labor strikes, or floor mopping. I can't decide whether it is hilarious or creepy.  Strike that, it's definitely hilarious, I just can't decide if it's also creepy.

Other stuff bugged me this week; these were just the spillover annoyances.  Anyway, with my biased cards out on the table, on with the recap.

ConFusion, Indeed

When I'm bored during AMC (so...3/4 of each episode, pretty much...if I'm being generous), I've passed the time by wondering what it would be like to work at Fusion. Because it seems like the girls who work there do hardly any work and get to come and go as they please, which is a job I could surely get behind.

+ Kendall would be my boss and would almost certainly give me haircare advice

- Psychotic Greenlee (As opposed to the beloved "normal, if way bitchy" Greenlee) would be the other boss

+ I'd almost certainly get paid a pretty penny for my work AND, as a bonus, I wouldn't need any sort of experience with cosmetics or business. I wouldn't even need my GED!

- Being targeted by a serial killer would probably suck

+ Mandatory company slumber parties complete with kicky Fusion Green t-shirts and matching green sweatpants

- I'd have to work with Babe

- The company seems to be on the verge of bankruptcy on a weekly basis

+ The company has its own bar

- Since there is no chemist working for the company, I'd have to take part in bizarre makeup and perfume concocting projects using only a pot and ordinary items found in my kitchen cabinet

90210: Season 1, Episode 3

We must begin with a retraction. Reader 'Snarkgirl' has alerted us over at Blog Headquarters that our previous post included a time snafu- when discussing the trials and tribulations of the U.S. Postal Service as it relates to delivering the Walsh mail, we put Minnesota two hours behind California instead of two hours ahead. This was an egregious, and Lancer is embarassed that he has let his readership down; as such, he has banned himself from The Green Room for one week and hopes against hope that you all forgive him. Luckily, though, his TV privileges remain intact, so on we go!

New Year's Resolutions: Another Opportunity for GH to Fail

As we hit the middle of the year, we thought we would check into see how the residents of Port Charles, Salem, Pine Valley, and Genoa City were doing with the resolutions they made as we said goodbye to 2006 and hello to 2007.  To refresh your memories, or for those new readers, the characters and showrunners of our "favorite" soaps were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedules and provide us with their new year's resolutions.  All the shows we cover got in on the action:  Days of Our Lives and General Hospital, plus All My Children and The Young and the Restless.

We'll do these show-by-show, because it would be unfair to load up a single post with that much failure.  (Oops, spoiler!)  Up first is General Hospital, which took the opportunity of a new year to just tell the same stories all over again, which as you might imagine made it a bit difficult for many of the characters to be successful with their resolutions.  It also helps render the show virtually unwatchable much of the time, but that's off-topic.  On to the resolutions!

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue

I don't like Jason, but man, it was hard not to side with him as Sam -- who stood by and let his son be kidnapped -- listed off the myriad ways in which Jason had screwed her over.  "You were wrong" blah blah blah times forty, and even though most of the things were accurate, hello, you let his infant son get stolen by a crazy person basically because you are cripplingly insecure and jealous.  But then the writers had to cap off her self-righteous rant with this:

Sam: You can't love me and support me and believe in me.  You won't put me first.  And I won't accept anything less.

Haaaaaaa!  No really, it ended there.  Cut to commercial.  There was no "anymore" or "other than all the times when I have accepted way, way less."

People/things Sam has accepted Jason putting first, or at least ahead of her (since I'm unwilling to concede she's even been second most of the time):

• Sonny
• his "job," killing people for money
• Sonny
• Carly
• Sonny
• Emily

Sorry, but when it comes to portraying Sam McCall as a strong, independent woman who won't put up with anyone's crap, you are about 14 baby-napping days late and a million mafia/blood-money dollars short.

How Can I Put This, Without Saying "Sucks"?

In general, I try to stay spoiler-free.  I mean, obviously I know about big character comings and goings if they're mentioned in Soap Opera Digest or assault me via ABC's incessant emails, but for the most part I try to watch soaps the way I used to back in the pre-internet dark ages.  Then today, I was innocently browsing MSNBC.com, and came across this article.  Warning:  It contains info about a Days character being killed off, in possibly the most ridiculous way possible since Cassie was fake-killed and put in the pinata.  I don't even care about the character in question, but this kind of stupidity I cannot abide.

I am very worried about the Days writing team.  Are they getting enough sleep?  Are their diets balanced?  Are they working out, staying healthy?  Do they have all their necessary medications?  Are they taking time to remember their spirits Oprah-style, or watch So You Think You Can Dance, or whatever else centers them?  Is James E. Reilly stalking them, threatening to expose their personal foibles unless they incorporate some Reilly-esque plot development every week?  They're on the verge of total awesomeness but now risk slipping back into the abyss, and I'm concerned. 

Seriously, I Hate Him More Than Gauchos

So, Jeremy "Horton" reached new levels of assitude yesterday.  He's ruining my Days of Our Lives awesomeness buzz.  In one conversation he -- who, as a reminder, is not a character on Saved By the Bell or Beverly Hills, 90210 in the early 1990s -- used the following words:

• homeboy
• bro
• legit

And, oh yeah, he basically TRIED TO DROWN HIS GIRLFRIEND.  And then he told her he loved her for the first time.  Squee!

I think my hatred of Jeremy "Horton" (about which I have not been shy) has surpassed even my loathing of GH's Sonny Corinthos (especially since suddenly various characters are calling out Sonny on his "career" and personality flaws).  I get that the writers intended for him to be a bad guy, so kudos on that, but did they intend for him to be watchable?  Because the list of things I would rather watch on TV than Jeremy "Horton" includes but is not limited to:

• bowling
• news coverage of devastating natural disasters
• that unspeakably horrible Dawson's Creek episode in which Joey gets mugged but ultimately ends up singing a duet of The Carpenters' "Close to You" with the mugger in the hospital right before he dies and then she tells his kid his daddy was a hero and tips his widow in cash (not that I watched Dawson's Creek, of course, or that I am still waiting for Josh Jackson to call me)
• golf
• the last three seasons of The Real World
• Nancy Grace
• that Danny Bonaduce reality show

What were the writers going for here? 

Our July Soap Opera Digest Column

Our editors asked us to weigh in on the Emmy results, and you know what they say, be careful what you wish for!  Becca rants about Jill Farren Phelps' continuing dumb comments about why Genie Francis isn't back on General Hospital.  Mallory discusses the evening's biggest surprises, and sticks with her opinion that The Young and the Restless shouldn't have been nominated, much less won, for Best Drama.  And there are other highly educated and important opinions thrown in there too, of course, including about pretty dresses.

(For those who want more in-detail Emmy posts, see our red carpet arrivals live-blogging, our ceremony live-blogging, and our best and worst dressed awards.)

The Day's Dumbest Dialogue

Seriously, John? Seriously?

I know your brain is probably COMPLETELY fucked up from years of brainwashing, but when you're gathered around a table at the Brady pub with Hope ("died" during the Cruise of Deception storyline, brainwashed), Roman ("died" in the mid-80s, "died" in 1997, "died" in 2004), Marlena ("died" in the late 80s, "died" in 2004, possessed by the devil), and Kayla (whose husband was "killed" and brainwashed) and you say

Is anybody listening here? The man is dead. He's been dead for years.

it makes me want to bash my head against the wall. Or maybe yours, since you obviously have no brain cells for me to damage with my act of violence.

Incidentally, why is it that any time this show needs a SHOCKING TWIST, they turn to Tony? Seriously! If you keep using the same twist, that makes it not a twist anymore. It's...untwisty.

Also: do I need to start referring to the greatest moment of all time as ANDRE ON A HORSE? I wonder.