Serial Drama

Secrets And Lies And The Perfect Surprise

At the very end of today's General Hospital, there were four seconds so perfect and wonderful and exciting that I applauded and made a horrendous sort of sound that was a cross between a squeal and a dog whistle*. And even though I am a born pessimist and almost immediately started to imagine a host of ways in which this could go wrong**, I really appreciated it in the moment. Truly. I'm still kvelling, a little bit***.

And oh, how I needed that. Because the 57 minutes that came before it were filled with at least three hundred thousand (I'm rounding down) moments that were rage-inducing and eyebrow raising and awful and they all revolved around Spinelli and Maxie and OH MY GOD, I HATE SO MANY THINGS.

There is very little more infuriating than watching a character who is completely and wholly guilty of [SOMETHING] being accused of [SOMETHING] and denying doing [SOMETHING] in the most strident, horrified and persecuted manner possible. "How DARE you accuse me of something that facts point to me doing for reasons that would clearly benefit you?! How dare you even VERBALIZE such a horrible and offensive and, sure, not so unbelievable on the surface BUT UNBELIEVABLE UNDER THE SURFACE, THE SURFACE OF MY EMOTIONS idea? You DISGUST ME!"

So this?

Lulu: This nutcase is lying, right?
Spinelli, ANGRILY: Yes, yes. Lulu, Brad is fabricating this story AS USUAL.
Brad: Go to hell, Spinelli.
Olivia, who is just...ugh, shut up, Olivia: You are in a church!
Spinelli: Yes, it is SHAMEFUL to be perpetuating such a horrible lie in a house of god. SHAMEFUL.

I did a full Harbaugh. 

(I will never--ever!--get sick of that moment. He is a ridiculous man prone to fits of anger so immature and ridiculous that part of me thinks he needs medication and the other part of me wants to befriend him)

Soap Crazy Is Catching

I know it would be safe to assume that General Hospital, with its grim and unappealing blend of dull and awful, finally broke my brain and caused me to storm away from the soap opera genre and my soap opera blog with a loud and defiant "Mallory OUT!" and microphone drop. But it's not outrage or integrity that's leading to my infrequent posting--it's a complete and utter physically inability to think about this show. I feel like I have a mild form of brain damage that you'd see on, ironically, a soap opera.

Hear me out: I watch General Hospital every day. Sometimes I even watch it twice a day, which is bonkers, because I cannot remember anything that happened earlier in the hour. Like, I'll watch and I will feel repulsion at what I'm watching, but when those sixty minutes are over, I'm like "Was GH on today? Did my DVR not record it? Oh, it did, let me watch!" and it's a horrible, weird cycle that I have absolutely no memory of.

So I apologize for my neglect and to make it up to you, I have a list of random notes I jotted down while watching today's episode, that are basically half-baked thoughts to prove to myself that I did inded sit through this show. Let the sound of all of you hastily exiting your browser windows be the soundtrack for the rest of this post...

• Nothing in the world sounded more unnatural to my ears than Silas telling Rafe "I'm cool with that".
• Sam wearing red was, perhaps, the most shocking moment in recent memory. I melodramatically gasped to my empty living room!
• The plaintive music that plays whenever Michael and Kiki see each other, which is often because they won't stay away from each other and also because of contrivance, makes me want to throw things.
• Everything about Taylor and Rafe and their ridiculous plan to get TJ and Molly back is sad and terrible. Literally, everything: the recast Taylor looks easily ten years older than the rest of the teen scene. Rafe makes a single facial expression in all of his scenes, regardless of whether he's supposed to be sad or happy or hungry or anything.
  
  
  
  
  And Operation: Main Squeeze is the dumbest name I have ever heard for a teenage shenanigan, and I am speaking as someone who assigned code names to every person she knew and every situation she was a part of throughout middle school.
• I am SO SURE that Carlos would spend more than a minute and a half longing for Sabrina.
  
  
  He definitely seems like the kind of man who would indulge an immature perpetual middle schooler and carry a torch for her indefinitely because of her great qualities, like...all of those qualities so great they need not be named.
• All of us could brainstorm for less than ten seconds and still come up with half a dozen different examples of the classic "I love you"/"Thank you" conversation that has been the basis for sitcom episode A-plots over the years. It's probably the most cliched five word conversation in television history and yet no amount of overuse could make me love this moment any less:

Sabrina: I love you, Patrick. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you and Emma.
Patrick: Thank you, I'll call you in a little bit.

Cold as ice! Which is a Drake trait, because Emma, possibly having read soap opera spoilers that told her that her mother will be returning from the dead in a matter of days and it's in her best interest to shake up her own storyline a little bit, hit Sabrina where it hurt: right in her mental image of her, Patrick and Emma as the happiest little family in all of Port Charles.

Sabrina: I'm sorry your mommy can't be here for you right now, but you know what? She's looking down on you from heaven and send you all of her love and she always will be.
Emma: I want her here, though!
Sabrina: I'm here!
Emma, pausing for a moment to really twist the knife: ...it's not the same.

I don't know if I'm punchy/mean, but oh how I laughed.

Our Latest Soap Opera Digest Column & A Blogger's (Temporary?) Goodbye

Our thoughts on General Hospital and One Life to Live were featured in the September 30th issue of Soap Opera Digest.

My Take
by Louise Schwarz

As of this moment, we still have no idea when (and if?) ONE LIFE TO LIVE will be returning to our computer screens. While I dab the corners of my eyes with tissues about that uneasy status, it seems like the perfect time to pick out a few superlatives for The Season That Was!

Let’s go back to the very beginning, when the return of Victor Lord, Jr. was The Most Anti-Climactic Back From The Dead Story In History. While the reveal of Victor tied to a bed by Alison Perkins was a fantastic last moment for the original run of OLTL, his return to town barely even raised an eyebrow. A couple of characters half-gasped, while some others just mildly annoyed by his undead status. Dani was the only one who had a big reaction, but even she accepted it and moved on quickly. While it’s perfectly understandable that to the citizens of Llanview, a once-dead man just sauntering into the room isn’t actually that rare, it really undermines the dramatic stakes when everyone essentially shrugs it off. And nobody ever even pressed the issue! “I’m alive because REASONS and I can’t tell you,” was pretty much the end of that. Really?

The revival’s Best New Character (And Actor) was definitely Jeffrey King, played with charisma and depth by the excellent Corbin Bleu. Admittedly I was on the fence when they announced his casting because I’d been so nervous the show would be far too youth-centered for my aging tastes, but this was no empty-headed pretty boy. Jeffrey had many terrific scenes absolutely holding his own with none other than Queen Victoria and, of course, was eventually revealed to have some nefarious purposes of his own.

The Pairing I’d Most Like To Scrub From My Memory was, of course, Jack and his teacher. I’m sure his teacher had a name, but as she had no discerning personality it seemed a waste of brain space to learn it. Here was an adult woman so taken by Jack Manning on sight that without a word, she scooped him up and had sex with him only to learn she’s his professor. But did that stop her from continuing that extremely inappropriate and incredibly squicky “relationship?” It did not. I never had any idea what I was supposed to be watching because the whole storyline felt like an idea someone jotted down without bothering to fill in any of the details. The gross, gross details.

My pick for Best Recast is definitely Rob Gorrie as Matthew Buchanan, while Matthew’s parents Bo and Nora scored for Best Stable Couple Keeping Everything Else Grounded. Jerry verDorn locked up the I’ll Scream If He’s Not Nominated For An Emmy category, and Dorian continues to win for Best Wigs and Millinery.

Did we think I could finish this column without mentioning Todd and Blair’s Most Scorching Love Scene? And how about a Hottest Lady In Lingerie for Natalie!

Here’s hoping this is not a final list and that there will be many more lists to come in future seasons!

My Take, Too
by Mallory Harlen 

Oh, baby: the baby storylines on GENERAL HOSPITAL are suddenly firing on all cylinders (I’m sorry. It took everything in me to resist that lame joke, but I am just not strong enough. I feel badly about it, though, so I won’t refer to sitting through the beginnings of these stories as a “labor” of love or anything like that. I have some standards). While much of Maxie’s surrogacy left me cold and Britt’s pregnancy was mostly boring, scenes featuring the amazing comic relief of Dr. Obrecht notwithstanding, they’ve fallen into place pretty dramatically and have become absolute must-watches.

The Grief That Keeps On Grieving

The Michael "Sonny" Corinthos Tour of Angst and Anger continued today and there was angst and anger aplenty. To refresh your memory, because he lives in a constant state of enraged hysteria and it's getting increasingly difficult to keep track of what has caused him to scream loudly and scrunch his face up like a particularly expressive emoji ("My girlfriend's been murdered. Grrrr!" "The newspaper came late this morning. ARGH!"), this particular downward spiral was caused by Connie's murder, because Connie was obviously the great love of his life (I mean, he loved her so much he wasn't intent on banging her cousin like, minutes before she died!) and now she's dead and that just makes Sonny so sad and also rage-y and suicidal.

It makes him have whiny outbursts.

Sonny: You don't underSTAND!

Sonny: He begged me not to kill AJ. And because I'm his father, I didn't. But this is what I gotta do...[uncomfortable pause] ["I gotta do this, but when? When?!"]...now.
Olivia: To use the gun on yourself? No, Sonny. Look at me. Look at me!
Sonny, in a crabby tone one would expect of an overtired toddler: Whaaat?

And prone to violent hyperbole.

Sonny: AJ should be wiped OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH!!!!

I should note that Sonny then became ALL CAPS ENRAGED at the very mention of AJ's name later in this (painfully long and painfully loud. Dear god, can you imagine the amount of throat lozenges Lisa LoCicero must have needed after filming these scenes?! The screeching!) conversation, as though he hadn't been the person to bring him up in the first place.

Sonny: I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT AJ!!!!!! I'm tired. I'm tired! I don't want to do this anymore.

The Corpse Bride

We knew this would happen: that Sonny would be all ANGRY and then all SAD and then all sad and angry AT THE SAME TIME. We've lived through Sonny grieving before and it was sort of paint by numbers last week.

Of course, Sonny WOULD make Connie's murder all about him and he WOULD go off the deep end and have everyone all worried about how an innocent (and stupid--I'm sorry, I can't get past how dumb all of these people are for staying with Sonny and staying in town after suffering so many different violent attacks. I know that this is just the way Port Charles is and the way the soap opera genre is in general and I am usually much better at suspending my disbelief but this is just making me CRAZY. You were shot multiple times and yet you think life with Sonny Corinthos is worth the danger? Sonny CORINTHOS?! WHAT?!) woman's death is impacting HIM. ALSO, remember how he was all about Olivia just before Connie's murder? I remember that. He pretty clearly doesn't.

And he WOULD tease us all by pretending to contemplate commiting suicide.

Sonny: I'm gonna be with you now, Connie!

Ugh, you drama queen. Why dangle that delicious possibility in my face when we all know it's not going to happen?! Is it just to make me mad? Don't try to make me feel terrible just because you are grieving.

But the ghost marriage? That I did not see coming.

Connie: What are you waiting for? Make me your wife.

 

Connie: How does it feel to finally be married?
Sonny: It feels right.
Connie: Remember that feeling. Keep it with you.
Sonny: Don't go. Stay.
Connie: I'll always be with you, Sonny. In your heart and in your memories.
Sonny: Connie, I want more.
Connie: I wish I had more to give. I love you, Sonny. Goodbye.

That...was weird and gross, but at the same time, I have to give it begrudging props for surprising me. I mean, it surprised me in an "Ew...why is this...oh, dear" way, but it was surprising nonetheless. So the next time Sonny is grieving and depressed, all bets are off. He may marry an actual piece of barware (that story could serve as a sobering very special episode on so many levels).

He Can Talk English (And Well!) After All!

For the past few weeks, I have had a series of weird anxiety dreams which, as far as I can tell, have no real cause except for my being a weird and anxious person. Some of them are run of the mill anxiety dreams: I have someone waiting for me and I'm not ready and as I try to get ready, I seem to be moving in slow motion, or I have to take a math Regents and wouldn't you know it, I haven't been to math class all year and I don't even have my graphing calculator with me! And some of them are seriously disturbing: the other night, I dreamed that I drafted Tony Romo (in an early round!) for my fantasy football team; needless to say, I woke up in a cold sweat. Horrifying.

Then I was dream-worried that Kelly Thiebaud hated me, because of my relentless meanness. This dream sort of has the ring of truth to it--it's entirely possible that if she (or any soap actor or really any person, period) read this blog that the takeaway would be that I am a mean person. But I haven't been so critical of Thiebaud specifically--I like her! I think she's hilarious. It's not like she's, say...Bradford Anderson, whose character I've wanted written off the show since, oh, 2007 or so. In that case, I'd totally get the dream-hatred.

But--and maybe this is too little, too late--I will say that Bradford Anderson has positively been killing it this week. So good. Just so, so good. And as much as it makes me happy to be able to say that, it also makes me annoyed all over at the various writing staffs who have written Spinelli to just be the most irksome, horrible character in daytime. When you have an actor who can do THIS, why do you waste so much time on shtick and terribleness? 

SO GOOD.

I'm finally caught up on GH, so more thoughts to come this week! Enjoy the Labor Day holiday, for those of you who have the three day weekend, and for those of you who don't, um...enjoy the return of all things pumpkin!