Serial Drama

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.

Whatever Happened to "Writing to a Person's Strengths"?

Poor Aiden Turner, you know? He gets some semblance of a storyline with a romance with one of the writers' (and my!*) favorite characters, which turns out to be the first romance of his that ever has, like, fans (unless there was a vocal contingent of Aidan/Erin fans that I didn't know about, which seems unlikely, but kind of hilarious). And then everything goes straight to hell, like most things AMC-related do, because the writing staff went back to the "Ryan and Greenlee are the best thing in the world, ever, better than rainbows and kittens and $50 bills falling from the sky" well and you know who wins against Ryan? No one. Not even Jesus, probably. So Aidan Devane never really stood a chance.

So it kind of seems like I am pouring salt on the wound by saying this, but...um, it seemed kind of, um...unwise for the writers to give him a big, emotional breakdown scene. He's good at a lot of things, like being foxy, and charming, but he's not as skillful at things like "conveying emotion" or "enunciating".

I'm just saying. It's my job to be honest, so I NEEDED to say it, but I feel bad doing it. I want to give him a hug.

*The Lifetime Movie Network recently aired one of Rebecca Budig's post-AMC works, The Perfect Child, co-starring Lifetime Movie hall of fame member Lochlyn Munro (look at his resume! That's a metric ton of cheese, right there), about a successful young woman who marries a single father and then crazy stuff starts to happen and there are murders and stalkings and the like. It was tremendously, tremendously awful and, you know, the fact that I was even watching the Lifetime Movie Network should tell you that I don't have very high standards. I am thinking that, if the rumors of her skedaddling as soon as her contract is up are true, Ms. Budig should seriously think twice.

Night Shift Episode 12: Truth and Consequences

PREVIOUSLY on General Hospital: Night Shift, Anna Devane!!!! Being written like Anna Devane!!!! Looking awesome!!!!

Also, the Robert/Anna/Robin family unit leaned on each other for support, Kyle and Eric bonded, Claire confessed to Saira that she slept with "Leo", white supremacists created chaos in the ER and Patrick told one of them to "get the hell out" of GH if he was unhappy with the staff treating him.

Robert is sleeping in his bed, with Anna sitting in an uncomfortable looking hospital chair across from his bed, wrapped in a blanket with a fetching pair of glasses on, intently doing something on her laptop. Robert stirs and tells her that he thought it was 1985, but that she looks too old. She sasses back that she looks better than he does. He wonders if she's looking at porn, but she's actually looking up experimental treatments that they've done in Indonesia, South Africa and the Netherlands. Robert's eyes light up as he realizes that she's hacking into the World Health Organization website. Hee! He's impressed that she's stealing secrets from the government in an ICU room, but she says she's done way crazier things and is good at getting into places others don't bother trying. He agrees. She tells him, quite seriously, "We're going to beat this".

So, here's the thing, and I think I have mentioned it before: I cry very, very easily. I couldn't watch the ending of The Little Mermaid for many years because I got so upset at the end when Ariel leaves her father to be on land, and all you have to do is say "Hey, Boo" and I am prone to just bursting into tears.  I think I have something in my eyes right now. The point of this story is that I cried through most of this episode and the tears started at the precise moment that Anna told Robert that they'd beat his sickness. That was like 46 seconds in. I had to rewatch the episode, like, five times to actually understand all of the scenes.

Farewell To a True Daytime Legend

The incomparable Eileen Herlie, who has amazing credits to her name and played the amazing Myrtle Fargate since 1976, passed away this week at the age of 90. I have long been convinced that Myrtle was the greatest character in Pine Valley, and everything I have heard or read about Eileen Herlie has been uniformly awesome. Her castmates loved her, and she sparkled with anybody she shared the screen with. She will truly be missed.

What are your favorite Myrtle scenes, clips, and friendships? Discuss her fabulosity in the comments!

This Show Is Breath Taking. Interpret That How You Wish

General Hospital continues to innately know how to entertain their viewers. It's a gift, you know? Some shows have to, like, try hard with their "cast integration" and "well thought out storylines", but...doesn't it make you better at something if you can be awesome at it without even trying?! Everything on the show right now is just so great.

Take, for example, the revelation that Sonny has a son...with Kate's cousin! Scandalous, am I right? Let's look at all of the elements that make this story awesome:

• Sonny really doesn't have enough kids on canvas. And, you know, one of his sons is in a coma, so I think he needed a replacement son. Just imagine the feuds that will happen between Michael and Dante when Michael wakes up. Get your popcorn popped, because that is going to be fabulous!
• Two brand new characters! Eeeee!!! There was simply no room on this show for Emily Quartermaine, or Georgie Jones, but who needs them, anyway, right? Olivia and Dante may not have the same "legacy" or whatever, but they'll totally rule
• More Sonny! He totally doesn't get the attention that he deserves on this show

And how about Vincent Pastore?!

It's great that he's taking time out of his busy reality tv show hopping schedule to pop by Port Charles. And now he'll learn about what the mob is REALLY like and the way The Sopranos just glossed over the actual mafia business. Plus, more Max and Milo, and Jason! My Magic 8 Ball says...this is going to kick ass!

...okay, none of that, at all, is in the same hemisphere as being true, but I figured that if I maybe buttered up the powers-that-be, they'd be placated and ease up a little on driving the audience crazy. But who am I kidding, right?

Fact: when I heard that Sonny's child is Dante Angelo Falconeri, I noticed how similar DAF is to DIAF, a phrase I believe Bob Guza says to his viewers every day.

Our Column in the 10/14 Issue of Soap Opera Digest

The newest issue of Soap Opera Digest is on newsstands now, and it features our latest My Take/My Take, Too column. This month, Mallory tries optimism on for size and praises The Young and the Restless for bringing the Abbotts and Chancellors back to her TV screen, while Becca details several of the many, many ways in which General Hospital invents new ways to be stupid.  Somehow Becca had more trouble than Mallory did limiting her word count to 500.  Imagine that!

This issue also features an adorable set of castmates interviewing each other. Carolyn Hennesy and Bradford Anderson's interview is brilliant, and we wonder why they aren't the show's head writers.  (Um, GH writers, if you're reading this, do not interpret this as encouragement for a Diane/Spinelli pairing.  We know you're drawn to wrongness, but please try to control yourselves.  Also, PS: Please stop sucking.)

Night Shift Episode 11: Love/Hate

My DVR missed the "previously"s!  However will I catch up?  Oh, right, we've chronicled practically every word these characters have said for nearly two seasons now.

I'll wing it:  Robert has cancer, Robin is pregnant, "Leo" is dating Saira but had a one night stand with his brother Kyle's BFF Claire, Kyle is totally falling for his patient Eric even though a similar situation really didn't work out well for Claire, and Billy Dee and Epiphany were booooring.

Robin is scurrying around her apartment, yelling out a variety of updates and directions to her dad as she heads out to work.  She realizes that Robert's not responding, though, and goes into her bedroom where she finds him collapsed and unresponsive on the floor. 

Claire is moping in the locker room when Kyle arrives.  She really wants Kyle to forgive her for sleeping with "Leo," an incident that Kyle describes as "a freaking tragedy."  I get that Kyle is upset, but that reaction is a bit OTT.  And his anger is a little puzzling; Claire is his roommate, not his girlfriend.  He can be disgusted, or whatever, but please, this is a little drama queen-ish. 

The ER is a mob scene, with Jagger in the middle of it.  There was a fight between a group of white supremecists and protestors, which had almost turned into a riot.  Patrick hotly barks orders for everyone to shut up and for Epiphany to set up triage.  Patrick is able to hotly bark orders, of course, because he is -- hee! -- the chief of staff of a major hospital.  Saira asks Jagger to arrest the racist jerks, but Jagger informs her that actually, he's there to protect them.  Ut-oh, sucks to be you, Jagger.  Now take off your shirt.

Primetime Suds: In Which Gossip Girl Has Some Competition for the Title of Best Show Ever

This week, primetime brought us Fashion Week craziness

the anticlimactic end of an era

the return of the Oceanside Wellness Centre

and the dirty, sexy Darling family.

Our thoughts on all of this after the jump!

Yeah, "Eden" Is Not the Word I Am Thinking Of

I was totally on this streak where I was completely optimistic about The Young and the Restless. I mean, between Billy Miller as Billy Abbott*, the genius decision to make Chloe Esther's daughter, Noah FINALLY being aged from the perpetually toddler brained live action Keane child that he was for so long and Melody Thomas Scott's firm commitment to make every scene she's in, even in the background, an Emmy reel scene, the show has a lot of bright spots. Things were good! I was even managing to be zen and ignore my seething hatred of all things Victor and focusing on the positives instead. I know! That's totally progress for me. I even wrote my next Soap Opera Digest column about the show's upswing.

And then...things...stopped being that way. This will teach me to commit positive feelings to paper! Never again!!!

I just...can't be zen, and I can't focus on the positive and I can't even pay attention to most of what is going on because all I can think about lately is Eden and how mind blowingly, epically terrible she is. Even when she's not onscreen, I keep thinking about her acting tics and her complete inability to convey basic human emotions.

It's bad enough that they brought on another family member for Michael, and it's lame that they decided to go in such an irritating, unlikeable direction with her, but HOLY HELL. I thought she might have won a contest, but the IMDB tells me that she was on Zoey 101, which isn't exactly a legitimate show, but that experience proves that she's spoken English on camera before, so I am not sure why "conversing" and "walking" and "modulating her voice" seem so foreign to her now. She is just awful.

Also, she's only seventeen, so I am completely going to hell for complaining about her. I am hell bound and not even in the fun way. That's just great. Thanks for nothing, Y&R.

*Can we just say awesome? Because he is. So, so awesome. I am not just saying that because I am a card-carrying member of the Billy Miller Fans/Borderline Stalkers Association; he's pretty great thus far. He's as charming as he was as Richie on All My Children but without the malice and borderline dementia that Richie had. And, truly, anything that brings more Abbotts to Genoa City is good with me. 

My Soaps are Even Making Me Hate TiVo. TiVo! Oh, the Humanity.

TiVo/TiFaux show descriptions have been a near-constant source of amusement to me over the years. "Extreme Home Makeover:  A family's run-down home is replaced with an energy-efficient mansion."  Hey, I've seen that one!  (It's like describing a Three's Company episode as the one in which, to quote Chandler Bing, "there's some kind of misunderstanding!")  But now, embittered soap viewer that I am, I have grown to hate these TiVo summaries. 

General Hospital:

Gloria Monty's class soap deals with the love and intrigue surrounding the Quartermaine family in the fictional upstate New York town of Port Charles.

Is TiVo trying to send me on a crying jag?!  Even the mental image of Gloria Monty's ghost whispering mean things in Bob Guza's ear cannot pull me out of the spiraling depression into which this formerly accurate description sends me. 

So as long as I'm wallowing, here's the one for Days of Our Lives:

Life in the Midwestern town of Salem involves elements of romance, adventure, mystery comedy and drama.

Unless "elements of" means "the occasional glimpse of -- if we're lucky in a good month and we are awake enough to observe them despite the apparent attempt by showrunners to bore us into a coma --" then . . . no.