Serial Drama

General Hospital Week in Review: Polls-Only Edition. This Is What I've Been Reduced To.

Mallory covered this week's highlights -- er, biggest happenings -- brilliantly already, and I had a pretty packed weekend (dyed my hair, bathed the dog, did laundry, cleaned the refrigerator, reorganized my handbag -- you know, the usual glamorous routine), so while the concept in general has been reinstated, there will be no traditional Week in Review this time out.  So instead:  Fun with polls!  And random bits of celebrity and other sort-of-pop-culture related news!  Please read on and pretend this post is borne out of something other than laziness!

They've recast Michael Corinthos.  Soon, that collection of pillows will be a real live boy (it already is more of one than Spinelli).  Having Michael wake up and aging him to his late teens could be a great move, opening up a new teen scene, changing the Sonny/Carly dynamic, making life difficult for Claudia, and more.  This could be great.  Plus, it would be almost impossible for Michael to be more annoying than he was before, so you'd almost have to make a concerted effort to screw this up.

poll by twiigs.com

Those scenes with Sonny and Claudia discussing Mob Summit 2009?  In which Sonny basically said Claudia's only purpose would be sex-fantasy material for the men?  Gross.  And so emblematic of why this show is completely screwed up.

poll by twiigs.com

General Hospital Week in Review

Dear Serial Drama reader who found us with this Google search Friday:

i would like to know what happened on general hospital this week

No, you wouldn't. 

Keep on keepin' on, and maybe start watching Y&R,
Becca

P.S.  However, since we're all about reader service, I will reinstate the Week in Review to help you out.  Please provide the address to which I can send my therapist's bills.

Johnny seems to almost openly loathe Lulu at this point.

So he's getting close to my position on that particular issue.

But fear not, Lulu has competition for most annoying possible spawn of Luke Spencer.  ("Possible" because I'm holding out hope for a baby-swap explanation for this Lulu creature, and because if that isn't what they're hinting at with Ethan then I have been totally misinterpreting the 2x4-to-the-face-like subtlety of this story thus far.)

1) The accent.  I don't know if it's real or fake, but it's annoying.  And I have been known to say things like that I would date absolutely any man with an Australian accent unless he had an extensive and violent criminal record or a strong affinity for Mel Gibson.  2) The actor, while cute, reminds me of Chad Brannon, but in a cheap knock-off kind of way.  3) The hair.  I find it obnoxious.  I didn't think such a thing was possible, but it totally is.

But what I find most annoying -- GALLING, in fact -- is that these writers felt that Luke needed a son-like figure in his life.  Right, because who else could possibly fill that role?  Oh, I don't know, maybe Lucky Spencer, one of the most famous soap kids in history?  If he hadn't been written alternately as a doofus and jackass for the better part of the last five years, before finally coming around recently only to be relegated to Occasional Transporter of Darling Children,

then maybe Lucky Spencer could have a good storyline with his dad instead of being invisible while a possibly fake Australian dude with exceedingly white teeth alternately worships and flirts with the great and powerful Luke.

General Hospital Week in Review

Yes, the Week in Review is back.  I didn't think it was fair to continue to punish a perfectly useful blogging device just because the subject of said device is a horrible, miserable, depressing excuse for a soap opera.  And plus, with Robin and Patrick having a baby and Laura's brief return, General Hospital has decided to harsh my "I hate this entire show and everything about it and it sucks and is fat and ugly and mean and I want it to die" buzz a bit, so I needed something else to keep me going.

As you can tell, my positive attitude and generosity of spirit have returned along with the Week in Review.  Rejoice.

At the risk of oversharing, I feel the need to share a bit of background on a particular issue.  Here's the deal:  I do not especially want to have children.  If I meet the right guy and he wants to, I might, but I don't have that biological imperative thing going that many women do.  I don't hate kids, but I don't crave being around them, you know?  Mostly I think they're kind of perpetually sticky, and also sometimes dirty and stinky.  They also don't have a lot of use for personal space boundaries, which is a biiiig thing with me.  A few months ago while standing in line, a small girl mistook my legs for those of her mother and threw herself around me.  I nearly had a stroke, and then wondered whether dry cleaning my pants would be an overreaction.  Oooh, and the ones who fly around department stores on their little wheelie shoes?  I have been tempted to stick out a well-shod foot to teach them a lesson.  Judge me if you must, but you know those shoes -- and the parents who allow their rampant, indoor use -- are evil. 

ANYWAY, none of this is relevant, really, because before they develop into children, babies are adorable (unlike Robin Scherbatsky, I do not have a baby phobia).  I realize this is a controversial position, much like that puppies are cute, but I'm going to stick with it.  So I did not expect to be especially moved by the birth of Emma Grace Scorpio Drake because 1) she is fictional, and 2) she is a TV baby so she's going to be at the extra-cute end of the baby attractiveness spectrum.  And she was as precious as I expected.

That is a cute-ass baby, folks.

What I did not count on, however, and what has caused my knees to turn into a gelatinous goo on at least two occasions now, is this:  Patrick Drake is, in the regular course of the storyline, required to hold Emma.  And so it happened that these images:

...have caused me to call into question many of my existing theories about children.  My god, they truly do have the power to make even already exceedingly hot men hotter!  And I have never been one to buy into that cliché about men holding babies being sexy.  I rebuke that cliché!  But somehow, in spite of myself . . . gooey.  Gooey knees!  My ovaries might even have twitched.  But I don't want to sound like an overly emotional woman, so let me break this down logically:

[Jason Thompson's hotness]
+
[adorableness of baby playing Emma]
+
[Jason Thompson hotly holding adorable baby playing Emma]
=
[Jason Thompson's hotness]^{10 (or maybe infinity)}

Who said math isn't sexy?

Not one to stop at just hotly reproducing, Patrick did other things hotly last week.  He:

Serial Drama Second Anniversary Celebration: Most Commented-On Posts

It's Serial Drama's second anniversary!  Woot!  We're so thrilled that you still tolerate us hanging around, let alone that you take time out of your days to both read our rants and comment to tell us you agree or think we are morons.  We can't thank you enough for commiserating with us, linking to our posts and generally being great. Even the comments calling us morons are wonderful in their own way.

To emphasize just how important you guys are to us, we decided to celebrate our blogiversary by finding the posts over the last year that received the most reader comments.  After the jump are the top 23.

Why 23?  Well, we started off with ten, but that left out a couple of our favorites, then we went to 12 (one for every month, duh), but some posts had even numbers of comments so when we tried to cut it off there, or at 15 or 20 it didn't work and . . . well, suffice it to say there was math including possibly a square root involved so things went all topsy-turvy and you end up having to wade through 23 summaries of posts you have in all likelihood already read.  Sounds super fun, right?  It did to us.  Though we were drunk.  And narcissistic.

Anyway, what got people talking in our second year?  Well, in two words:  General Hospital.  Damn, you crazy kids are ANGRY.  And we love it!  Here, in descending order (starting with the most popular post not just in the last year but in the history of the site), with Night Shift recap posts removed (many of those have been really popular, especially this season, so thanks for reading!), are the top 23 most commented-on posts of Serial Drama's second year.

Catching up on Days . . . and Naps

So I just caught up on the last month of Days, and, well, traditional sentences fail me.  I feel the need to express myself through the use of Internet Art. 

I know what you're thinking, but yes, this occasion truly did call for a word cloud. 

Why is this show soooo boring?  What is the excuse for wasting a likable cast and strong history?   Why does a show that dominated the supercouple genre now have virtually no likable couples?  How was even the return of Stefano not that exciting?  Can they really expect one good thing -- Hope and Bo's vow renewal -- to make up for weeks of endless repetitive boredom?  Also, what is wrong with Chris Matthews' hair, and is it just me or was he drunk throughout most of MSNBC's DNC coverage? 

Er, sorry, sometimes I get my TV-related questions intermingled.

Back to the truly puzzling:  Days of Our Barely-Awake Lives.  Let's quickly review the current couples and potential couples, and how I don't really care about any of them.  That should be fun for the whole family!

Days of Our Lives Month and a Half in Review

Yeesh, what a difference six weeks makes.  I was in such a good Days place, I even busted out the Awesome Alert Scale.  But since then, it's all kind of...fizzled.  There have been a few highlights, and the daily dialogue isn't bad, but I just don't understand where the show is going.  As far as I can tell, the big points of focus right now are:

• Chelsea and Daniel's "romance"
• Max
• Chloe/Phillip/Morgan
• Lexie and Abe
• Midol

Oh, sorry, that last one was only a focus of one episode.  More on that later.  But really, has there been an episode in weeks that hasn't primarily revolved around one of the first three?  And is there any reason I should be interested?  Chelsea and Daniel -- repulsive.  Max -- seriously?  Who decided he was a lead character?  And can we take a vote or something?  And Chloe and Morgan -- I don't want to talk smack about anything that puts the very handsome Jay Kenneth Johnson on my screen, particularly in various stages of undress, but this triangle could not be less interesting if it involved actual geometry.

I continue to be thoroughly entertained by the new John Black.  It's gotten to the point where all he needs to do is refer to his house as "my mansion" and I giggle.  Let alone when he says something truly funny and I lose all pretense of jaded soap fan/critic.

John:  Alone at last.
Hope:  What do we have here?
John:  I believe that's an old photo album belonging to my half-brother.
Hope:  To look at this you'd think the DiMeras were just your average happy family.  Nothing but smiling faces.
John:  Still, I'll bet it brings back some memories for you also.
Hope:  There's nothing I care to remember about Stefano DiMera.
John:  And I can't remember.  Which is kind of a nice thing about having amnesia, only along with all the bad stuff I've lost all the good stuff too.
Hope:  I know.  Your life with Marlena, the kids, your career.
John:  Nah, I was thinking about something else.
Hope:  Such as?
John:  The time you and I had spine-shattering sex on a submarine.

The rest of the conversation is not worth transcribing, even with John's awesomely smug description of the many "notches on [his] bedpost" despite his supposed devotion to Marlena.  Wait, that's not true, it's worth transcribing, but I was still laughing from "spine-shattering sex on a submarine" so I couldn't focus.  And I wasn't even watching when the submarine sex happened!  It's funny just as a stand-alone line, especially Drake Hogestyn's delivery.  His delivery of almost every line he says cracks me up -- and it's meant to!  I don't even know how to adjust to that after all these years. 

The Young and the Restless Week in Review

A few things happened in Genoa City this recently: Victor and his pregnant child bride made their union legal. Lily turned 21. Michael learned the truth about his father. Sounds pretty good, huh?

I'll ask you guys: what did you think of The Young and the Restless this week?

Nikki: I found it utterly painful. It just...it hurts to watch it. Can boredom actually kill you? Because I feel my brain swelling just thinking about it. David Chow, for God's sake. I'm better than this. America is better than this.

Neil: I thought it was sort of boring-
Victor: Youdidnotthinkitwasboring,youthoughtitwasthoroughlyenjoyable
Neil: I thought it was thoroughly enjoyable

Lily: I, like, totally need a drink right now

Michael: I, like, totally need five more of these

Katherine: This show will be cancelled in a year!

Well, that's a little drastic, but I kind of see her point...

If you just read a short recap of the week's events, you'd probably bet that the week was pretty entertaining over all. I hope for your sake that you wouldn't wager much, because, in true Y&R fashion, none of them were properly compelling. I don't know how you take a creepy and ill-advised wedding, a 21st birthday and the discovery of a secret that's been a couple of years in the making and make them boring, but I guess when there's a will, there's a way, and Maria Arena Bell has a will. I just wish the will weren't an all-encompassing desire to sap the world of entertainment.

Before I start, I'd like to give an overdue shoutout to Tammin Sursok. Yes, that Tammin Sursok. I know, right? Well, I like to give credit where credit is due, and she looked absolutely STUNNING at the Daytime Emmys last week. If I had seen her, I probably would have called her one of my favorite looks of the evening. Gorgeous! The color, the dress, the hair. Even the Fivehead is under control. Loved it.

But SOAPNet felt it more important for me to see Regis Philbin yammer on about something, and watch not one, but two segments about some imaginary Vanessa Hudgens ripoff. Those bastards will not stop until they take away everything I hold dear.

In Case You Missed General Hospital This Week

Here's a [paraphrased] recap of some of this week's events, to catch you up.  On all the boring boringness that bored every sane viewer into a bored state of boring boredom.

(Side note:  "Fun" fact discovered in the course of blog "research" this week, which says really all you need to know about our world today and why we are doomed:  Jason Morgan's Wikipedia entry is longer than Nelson Mandela's.)

Jax:  Where were you?  Are you feeling okay?
Carly:  Morgan and I just went to get ice cream.
Jax:  Pregnant women crave ice cream!
Carly:  Relax, Jax.  I told you, I'm not pregnant.  Why don't you hang out while I change clothes?
Jax:  Do you need help up the stairs?
Carly:  No.
Jax:  Are you sure?  Pregnant women need help up the stairs!
Carly:  I'm okay, thanks.
Jax:  Are you going to change into another shirt because your current one is too tight around your fetus-protecting midsection?
Carly:  Uh, no.  I was outside in New York in June; I'm sweaty. 
Jax:  Pregnant women sweat!
Carly:  Yeah.  So...changing.
Jax:  Pregnant women go through lots of changes!
Carly:  You're giving me a headache.
Jax:  Pregnant women get headaches!
Carly:  You're stressing me out; I'm feeling nauseated.
Jax:  Pregnant women get nauseated!
Carly:  Right.  So, anyway, I'm going upstairs.  I think I'll take a bath, too.
Jax:  Pregnant women take baths!  Should we consider a water birth?!
Carly:  Sure.
Jax:  So you're saying you are pregnant!
Carly:  No.
Jax:  Pregnant women are often in denial at first!
Carly:  Oh my god, kill me now.
Jax:  Pregnant women are sometimes depressed!

Carly: I'm pregnant, and it could be Sonny's or another guy's who is superior in pretty much every way to Sonny, but I told Sonny it's Jason's.
1998: You two-timing bitch!

General Hospital Week in Review

Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I had predicted that General Hospital would win the best drama series Emmy, pretty much since the nominations came out.  (You can never go wrong underestimating the taste and intellect of award show voters!)  That may be why I haven't gone completely postal about it.  I'm having a reasonable person's reaction, by pretending it didn't happen.  Wait, that's not true, the reasonable person doesn't even watch the Daytime Emmys.  So, I guess I'm having as reasonable a reaction as I can to something as inexplicable as this terrible show being named the best in daytime.  That being said, this Week in Review is going to focus (mostly) on the things that didn't suck last week.  (I know what you're thinking -- cool, quick read!)  There were no serious felonies or misogynistic moments, so it was better than many weeks.  And sure, there was at least one partial character assassination (Alexis -- she and Jerry are getting a separate post, y'all), but nothing that made me get super ragey or yelly.  There will be lots of that coming up, though, so I need to rest up.

Lest you think I've gone soft, or started smoking the truly good stuff that Emmy voters obviously do, I have not forgotten that this show often seems like the only thing it is excellent at is being terrible.  I cannot improve on Mallory's summary of the last year's GH abominations when the nominations were first announced, so I'm going to be lazy and just quote her:

But that show seems downright brilliant compared to General Hospital, which I have come to conclude is not meant to be entertainment but, rather, serves merely as a vehicle for the powers-that-be to give the finger to their actors, their audience, people who have heard of General Hospital, people who work at hospitals and the person who invented the television. Because the fact that this EFFING SHOW was rewarded with a chance to be called Outstanding Daytime Drama in a year that brought us the firing of Stuart Damon and his subsequent humiliation via tracksuits, the intelligence insulting reveal that James Craig is Jerry Jacks, two ridiculous trials that showed us exactly how little the writers care about logic or the real world, ongoing blatant disrespect of Genie Francis, the rape of a character being played as him breaking his marriage vows in a hilarious way, the out of nowhere obsession Robin had with having a child, the violent murder of Emily Quartermaine, Emily's happy ghost, obvious rewrites of stories that weren't good to start with, the violent murder of Georgie Jones, a shitty spinoff and Steve Burton's hair, amongst other atrocities, is so unspeakably wrong that I don't even know how to process it.

Denial is how I'm processing the win, clearly.  Denial.

Lucky and Sam are adorable together.  If you had told me a year ago that I'd be typing that, I would have looked at you like you thought General Hospital was the best soap on the air.  But it's true, and their Mexican adventure was easily the highlight of the week.

"Lucky, it's called cleavage, and it's the best weapon we've got."  Words to live by, girlfriend.  (Aw, and that reminds me, Sam's delight at Lucky calling her his girlfriend was cute.)

They're even cute camping.  Camping!  I don't think I've found camping adorable since The Parent Trap, and I'm pretty sure that was only because it was mixed with gaslighting the bitchy potential stepmom.

Plus, Sam was in full makeup and wore gigantic 4" wood-heeled sandals throughout the camping scenes!  So soapy.

Now that they're back in Port Charles, I just hope Sam and Lucky remain entertaining.  Almost nobody else does, but you know, hope springs eternal.

There was one off moment:

Sam: ...I think it must be the jet lag.
Lucky:  No no no -- we didn't change time zones.

Really?  Between Mexico and New York?  Yes, you did.

This is the kind of thing I don't get.  It's summer.  Does GH not have at least one intern?  Who can operate that really tricky technology known as Google?  College students will do literally anything for money, and they'll even do most of it for free!  I don't understand.  Is there no quality control at all on the writing of this show?  Can Awesome Writer not be assigned to proofreading?   S/he gets little else to do.

Oh, right, positive.  I'm supposed to be positive.  Um...Maxie wore a cute outfit!

General Hospital Couple of Weeks in Review

Every time I see the beginning of a preview for a new Adam Sandler movie, I think, well, at least it won't be worse than [insert name of second most recent Sandler movie here].  And nothing could be worse than The Waterboy.  But then, somehow, the latest Sandler movie almost always is worse than the last.  It's downright vexing.  Every once in a while a Punch Drunk Love will come along and surprise me, but that's rare.  Mostly it's more like my most recent experience, sitting in a theater with the bad taste of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry still fresh in my mouth six months after being subjected to it on cable, shocked that this Zohan travesty appears to be even worse, adding the tangy twist of racism to the already heavy flavor of homophobia left over from the last movie. 

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this:  Every week of General Hospital is like a new Adam Sandler movie.  Except without the possibility of one good stomach-hurting laugh (yes, there is usually one), and with a much higher likelihood of bloody assaults and homicides.  (I am totally fine with endless non-bloody assaults involving, say, Bob Barker.  But realistic bloodiness I can only tolerate in small doses, which GH usually exceeds in the first week of any given year).  I stick around every week, in truth, only because I'm paid to.  Occasionally I get rewarded with Awesome Writer throwing us a Punch Drunk Love-esque bone in the form of a scene that is actually engaging, but for the most part, at the end of a Friday episode, it's just me looking at my TV screen with the same expression I have at the end of 90% of Sandler's movies.

That was the extended version of my now-standard introduction to these Week in Reviews.  The condensed version is:  This show sucks.

Reminder:  these two are brother and sister.

These two adult roommates, who gaze at each other and participate in touchy-feeliness that includes but is not limited to neck rubs, are brother and sister.  I'm just...saying.  Also, in true sibling tradition, the sister is paying someone to seduce her brother away from his girlfriend.

 

Claudia: I will pay you ten thousand dollars to seduce my brother John.  I'll give you twenty thousand dollars if you can get Lulu to catch you in the act.

I hate this show so much.  They have exactly ONE tolerable female character in this age group, and they are making her a hooker. (Actually, am I misremembering, or will this now be the second time Maxie has agreed to sleep with a guy in exchange for money from someone else?  It's not only misogyny, it's redundant misogyny; it's everything that General Hospital is all about.)  I was totally outraged and all puffed up to blog about it, but then she wore a really fabulous dress and it calmed me down.

Plus, Lulu -- who I officially hate now, daughter of Luke and Laura or not -- looks horrible right next to her.  I love a catty juxtaposition.

Maxie's dress could not be cuter if it were a puppy in a toilet paper commercial.  Lulu's t-shirt appears to have a pixelated tie-dyed pattern accented by a sequined fruit basket on one boob.  I know none of the words in that last sentence appear to go together, but there they are.  And I know Lulu is supposed to have bad taste in clothes (Giselle mocking her fashion sense was amusing), but you can show that without offending one of my most important senses with that level of ugliness.