Come back here tonight to play along while we all sit on the edge of our seats to find out if this year's ceremony will be laughable, extremely laughable, or too embarrassing to feel comfortable laughing at.
But there's one thing we know we can count on with Tyra Banks hosting: there will be smize-ing.
Before I launch into watching the show and hammering out my real-time stream-of-consciousness reactions, I will give Y&R the same treatment I gave to DAYS last week. My history with the show: there was one summer at my grandmother's house that watched a few weeks' worth of episode. This was sometime in the mid-80s. I couldn't tell you much about storylines, but I vaguely recall a Nina/Danny/Cricket triangle. And some breaking up and reuniting between Victor and Nikki (are they still doing that dance?). I think there was an Ashley and a Lauren and a Paul. When I was that age, I was only allowed to watch 2 total hours of television per week, and I stuck with Y&R for a few months because it offered a loophole: CBS came in loud and clear on my radio. So I listened to it. Like it was some other century! Well, technically it was. It was some other millennium. I got radio fatigue after a while, though, since of course the show wasn't meant to just be heard and it was really tough to keep track of who was who and what was going on. The point is that it's been nearly 30 years since I followed the show at all, so I am jumping in mostly blind here. I'm frightened!
A man is angrily bursting into a room. He's drunk and someone is helping him to another room.
He's feeling guilty about something and wants to tell the police. A younger lady pops into the frame and wonders aloud what he means to confess to.
Oh! Cricket and Paul! Right? I know these characters!
They're talking to Dixie Martin, Cliff Warner, and Kelly Cramer!
It's old home week! (I have no idea who any of them are playing.) Cricket looks like someone took a mallet to her face. Dixie... oh, Kelly! I think her name is Kelly here. Kelly pretends that she lied about somebody named Phyllis being guilty of...something. She pretends that she lied to hang on to Jack. Cricket doesn't believe her, which is good because her lying is laughably bad. "Is somebody threatening you?" asks Paul. Kelly's eyes dart from side to side. Cliff Warner looks suspiciously over at... Victor! Who is poking at a smartphone in a nearby armchair, as you do.
Credits! Original song still intact! I dig it.
A blonde has a flashback to talking to some other girl about who killed... Austin, I think? And then another flashback to another girl yelling at her for sleeping with her husband. Blonde seems popular!
Okay so that other girl is at a cafe complaining to some dude that Abby slept with her husband. Oh! Okay, so Blonde is Abby. Got it. She opens her powder and someone spelled out "I know what you did" on the mirror! (I just watched Pretty Little Liars so got a little disoriented when there was no "-A." at the end of that.)
Cricket keeps talking about prosecuting people. I guess she's an attorney now? District Attorney or something? Anyway, Kelly is sticking to her story and getting slightly less awful at lying, as Victor looks on smarmily.
Drunk Guy's wife cheated on him, I guess? And he maintains that he's going to jail. Neil! His name is Neil!
Continue reading "The Young & the Restless: Since the Radio" »
Well folks, I decided to watch Days of Our Lives today. So before I start live-blogging it (which really will just be recap since it's not like I'm posting in real time, but I don't know what else to call it), this is my relationship with the show: I have watched two episodes of it. Ever. Those two episodes were when Marlena was possessed by the devil. Or some other demon? I don't know but it was freakin' awesome. My point, though, is that I really am coming in knowing absolutely nothing. Running in soap circles means I know a few of the couples and a few of the names but truly not many. So bear with me, as I will probably get some names wrong or not know names at all or accidentally call them by names of characters they played on other shows or just identify them by the actors' names or just be all "this other middle aged white dude" about it. I don't know what I'm doing here. So this should be fun.
Ready?
Okay!
A blonde is flashing back to catching a young dude in bed with BLAIR DAIMLER, let's call her (no, let's not, I do know she's Eve on here but I had to get that out of my system) (any of you who ever read my OLTL posts know full well that Blair was my favorite character on that show, so let's all just face the fact that I'm biased in her direction here, especially if she's a bitch).
Apparently it was bad news for this blonde. I think this blonde is married to Scott Reeves. In real life, not on the show. I don't think he's on this show. Although he might be.
Some other blonde is flashing back to a friendly moment with Lucky Spencer Actor #3, Greg Vaughan, my second-favorite Lucky.
Dylan McKay's dad is talking to Kelly Taylor's ex-fiance and I can't really what they're talking about because Dylan McKay's dad has truly bizarre speech patterns. I wonder how many times this version of Dylan McKay's dad has come back from the dead. Just once on BH90210, I think. Sky's the limit on daytime, though.
Hey, it's Natalie Vega! (Notice how I am just going to pick my favorite last name for all the women, since all soap women have had like forty last names.)
Temporary Maxie Jones is coming to visit Eve. I think her name is Theresa? Lord this is going to confuse me. You know those two-hander plays where two actors play thirty-seven characters and you have to play mental olympics to keep up? That's what this is already feeling like.
Blonde is confronting.... JJ? To ask him why he did it. "It," I presume, being Eve. Which, have you seen her? Why is an explanation necessary? There's some brunette individual listening in, in plain sight since this is a soap and that's how we do.
Opening credits! Y'all, I could not be more psyched that they've kept their classic opening! That's so awesome! Did they ever try to do something cheesy-contemporary at any point and then go back?
Other blonde is monologue-ing to herself about how she doesn't have feelings for Eric, who I suppose is Greg Vaughan's character? Anyway, she's flashing back.... or having a fantasy. She's making out with some dark-haired guy who I think has been on this show forever.
Continue reading "Days of our Lives: Second Time in Salem" »
Time for a new soap! I know I'm way late to the party, but I was dragging my heels due to the $10 season fee and the fact that it's online only. I hate watching TV on my computer. Sheepish confession: I only just found out I can just plug an HDMI cord into my TV and everything that's on my computer screen is all of a sudden on my TV. This has changed everything. Now I can watch not only web soaps, but all the Australian women's prison shows I want!
What this all amounts to is: welcome to Beacon Hill coverage! I'm sure anyone discussing it online has long since said all they need to say about it, so I'm going to keep it short and sweet so that once the second season starts, I'll be caught up and ready to go in a more timely manner. There are twelve episodes in the first season and I've seen eleven of them, so we'll just dive in to those and then I'll cover the finale in another post. Mind you, when I say "episodes," I really mean "scenes." Because they are short. I believe the longest episode was eleven minutes and the shortest was just six minutes. All told, the entirety of the season was still less than two hours total. Some episodes were just one conversation. The jury's still out for me on whether I can appreciate this format, since my tardiness meant that I could binge-watch as many episodes as I wanted to in a row. Having to wait a week before getting another 7-minute episode might not win me over.
Going into it, I knew the show was a political and personal drama that starred Alicia Minshew and Sarah Joy Brown as ex-lovers. I'm going to duck after typing this, but: that first bit of casting was an impediment to my interest. Alicia Minshew had her moments as Kendall Hart on AMC, but I never loved her the way a lot of people did. She seemed to have two default modes, and once the second one (the "vulnerably blinking back tears while trying to appear strong" mode) had been overused, I lost interest. She's also another one of those soap actresses that really struggles with gesture. (I had zero qualms about Sarah Joy Brown. I don't always love the material given to her, but she's always engaging to me.)
After this show, though? I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't know if it's the role or the format or just that she's grown as an actress, but the things that grated for me before are really not rearing their respective heads here. Is Sarah Joy Brown more convincing in their romantic scenes? Yes. You can tell it's new for Minshew to play lust for a woman and she's stretching a bit, but I think she's so close to being there that it's hardly distracting. A massive highlight was Sara's (Sara is Minshew's character, just to clarify) morning wine chat with her mother (played by Crystal Chappell). Not a lot is said in that scene (although the lack of intercutting scenes lets us linger a lot more with these people than we get to in the lightning-fast cuts of regular televised daytime soaps these days), but Minshew's performance gives us years of history in her complicated and painful but very loving, strained relationship with her mother.
I can't remember the name of the chick in the screencap above, but that's Sara's girlfriend back in New York. It looks like they live together, and she's big-time out-of-sight, out-of-mind for Sara once Sara gets to Boston to see her family and do her story. (Oh yeah, she's a journalist, sent back home to cover her estranged grandfather's stroke -- notable since he's a U.S. congressperson of some sort -- Senate or House? I think Senate.)
Basically dear old Gramps didn't care for his granddaughter lezzing out so somehow he decided to get Kate (Brown's character) away from Sara by offering her some sort of exciting political gig. I got a little lost in some of this, because they very clearly state that Kate is a bleeding-heart liberal and also imply Gramps is uber-conservative, and they only refer to "The Party." So I don't know how they're in the same party, but I can only guess that Gramps is center or left-of-center on issues outside of his granddaughter being gay? I have no idea. That part really confused the crap out of me. At any rate, in the present day Kate is a state rep (Beacon Hill being her district), and rumors are that if Gramps steps down, he'll appoint her to his position.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the confusion regarding party affiliation is deliberate so as not to alienate any viewers? Although let's get real, it's a soap with a lesbian romance as the central driving force, the demographic is not exactly going to a Tea Party meeting after binge-viewing.
The biggest television night of the year is here! Okay. The most important television broadcast is... oh hell, I don't know. They're having a small party and handing out some statues and streaming it online and calling it the Daytime Emmys. I have volunteered to take the hit and subject myself to it so you don't have to, or so you'll watch knowing at least one other human is out there dealing with it. "Extravaganza" can be interpreted as ironically as you please.
Sadly, Mallory will have to sit this year out but I'm sure she'll be somewhere feeling really jealous of the rest of us gluttons for punishment. And as some of you know, I haven't been watching any of the daytime soaps this year but since these awards are for the 2013 season, I'll actually sort of know what's going on. Well, 5% of the time since the rest will presumably be about talk shows and children's television.
So come join me back here at 8pm Eastern time tonight and we'll go through this together!
This time I'm just doing it the old-fashioned way, so you'll have to keep refreshing the screen to get the new comments (instead of the rolling live feed we've sometimes had).
6:18pm Hey y'all! So the red carpet is already streaming so it'll be slow-going at this point because I'm not all that interested in this part. But I'll check in from time to time between now and the main event, so if you're watching, start sounding off in the comments below!
What fresh hell is this? Who are these ladies doing the red carpet interviews? The very first thing I saw was them telling an actor he needed to get away or else they were going to RAPE HIM. No, they really said that. It's out there in the world. So I see we're setting the tone for the night: classy!
6:24pm "Oh my god how great are dads??"
We're channeling Proust here, people.
In case anyone needs the link to the live-stream: http://www.daytimeemmys.net/
I missed the beginning. Did they say anything about who these "professional reporters" are? Is this part of a test run for an unpaid internship, I hope?
6:31pm They want to nominate Heather Tom's boobies for an award. Because classy.
Kim Matula just used more gestures in answering four questions on the red carpet than she has in her entire tenure as Hope Logan on B&B. I'm just saying.
Kristen Alderson's dress is radioactive. My eyes hurt!
That photo doesn't really do the blinding-ness justice. But it's bright, is my point.
6:43pm So basically the gist is that these women are going to tell everyone how thin they look and how amazing that is. Feminism is alive and well, people. I feel like I'm at a bad sorority party. I don't mind that they're crass potty-mouths (in fact, that's my default state) but not when it's so utterly vapid and insincere. I half expect them to start greeting grown women with, "Hey slut, oh god, I hate you, look how hot that dress is, bitch! I die."
6:51pm Well, they basically had no idea who Jason Thompson is. Only one of the best actors in daytime by a country mile, but they just filled a few seconds with random blathering that had nothing to do with him.
My feed just died. Temporarily? I don't know. But I'm not complaining.
7:00pm Zack Conroy remains adorable. B&B viewers, do they still give him absolutely nothing to do these days?
I got restless during some buffering.
This broadcast had devolved my sense of humor into that of a four-year-old.
Also, Finola Hughes is a goddess.
(Continued...)
Continue reading "The 2014 Daytime Emmys Live-Blogging Extravaganza" »
