Soaps By Remote

I Don't

So it turns out I needed a week off from soaps. And last week was it. So I’m a week behind on GH and two weeks behind on Days, but I’m now soap-refreshed again.

I reach this conclusion because while standing in the shower this morning my mind started drifting in a soapy direction without prompting. Other than the prompting of actually using soap, of course.

What occurred to me during this diversion was this question: where are the marriages?

Perhaps the biggest of all soap traditions is that a couple battles through trials and tribulations to finally get together and get married. Usually followed rapidly by a child and equally rapidly by a divorce. And often a second marriage.

I am not saying that that’s necessarily a good thing, especially when it results in multiple marriages for the same couple in a manner that fast comes to look like (a) laziness; (b) a series of ratings stunts; or (c) all of the above.

It becomes ridiculous pretty quickly. How many times were All My Children’s Tad and Dixie married? Three between 1989 and 2002. And adult children with bad hair notwithstanding, realistically Dixie isn’t even 40 yet six years after the last divorce (and she’s less likely to be dead-by-pancakes by the minute).

With the annoying exception of the four times married Carly and Sonny, General Hospital has generally steered away from the multiple same couple marriage roundabout over the years. But even with that rider, it seems unusual to look around the show’s whole gigantic canvas and find that there are currently only two married couples in Port Charles: Jax and Carly and the currently separated Luke and Tracy.

I don’t think I’m missing anyone am I?

Doesn’t that seem bizarre? Perhaps it’s having two of the most married people in town in Jax (5 marriage plus 1 with pseudo-wife Brenda) and Carly (7 marriages) married to each other that’s keeping the marriage rate down.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem, but I find it interesting that with all the other soap traditions GH has eschewed in recent years (romance, heroes who are actually heroes, respecting its primarily female audience), one of them seems to be marriage.

Over at Days this issue is more about just dodging clarifying certain marital relationships. Steve and Kayla, for example. They act and talk as if they are married but there’s no way they can be, is there? He died over 15 years ago in a manner that was questioned by no one but the privy-to-the-coffin-swap audience, but which must have had a death certificate attached. Therefore, no longer married. And yet the writers have not taken the opportunity to address this with a third wedding for the super couple. One can only ask whether that will happen post-Ava. Similar issues apply to John and Marlena (though they’ve been married enough already).

Beyond that, Days is brimming with actually married couples in comparison to GH: Bo and Hope, Maggie and the soon to no longer be off-screen Mickey (I smell a divorce coming on), the mostly off-screen Doug and Julie, the currently-of-convenience EJ and Sami, the sailing away Shawn and Belle (if they hadn’t sailed, their marriage would have), technically Chloe and the off-screen Brady, and Lexie and Abe.

In fact Days has a really good mix of the type of marriages I would hope for in watching a soap. The young and doomed to several more goes around. The older solid, earned their long term happiness marriages. The overcome their trials and tribulations and now having fun middle-aged marriages. The sparky marriage of convenience.

So why is GH so different right now? Is it just an anomaly? An outcome of killing off marriage maniac Courtney? Or is it a particular decision? GH has always been wary about marrying off a few characters in particular. Brenda, who got so close but never actually had a genuine marriage in her whole run on the show – her annulled marriage of really poor disguise with Jason was her only valid ceremony. Jason himself. He lived with Robin for some time, Sam for longer, but the only person other than Brenda that he actually married was Courtney and that was retconned as invalid pretty damn quickly. Is there another show on which someone like Robin Scorpio, who has been on the show since age 7 and had three major loves, would have never been engaged, let alone married?

But even with that heritage, the current dearth of marriages in Port Charles does seem to stick out. And doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future. Can you honestly see weddings in the immediate future of Sonny and Kate, Jason and Elizabeth, Robin and Patrick, or Lucky and Sam? I can’t. Can you see the ground laid for a sparkling marriage of convenience turning to something more like Alexis’s marriages to Jax and then Ric? I can’t. Can you see any of our young ingénues entering into an ill-fated first union? They’re too busy keeping Lulu available for everyone, it doesn’t seem like Maxie’s style, and they killed everyone else off, so I can’t see it there either.

As I said, I don’t necessarily think that this is a bad thing, but I do wonder how this state of affairs (and affairs, and lack of affairs) has come about.

Does the lack of marriages mean that the show values them more? That is, fewer couples wind up getting married so they really have to earn their marriages, rather than weddings at the drop of the hat followed by divorces with equal speed and second weddings that then have less value. It might well be, especially looking at the recent exceptions that prove the rule, Sonny and Carly’s multiple and increasingly stupid marriages, and Lucky and Elizabeth’s divorce followed by hugely misguided (for the writers and the characters) second marriage and ultra-rapid divorce. But the flipside is that a lot of couples miss out on that ultimate, in traditional soap terms, pay-off. Again, Brenda never actually married either of the other axis’ of the Best Soap Triangle Ever, and Alexis may have married both Jax and Ric, but she never actually married Ned.

On the Days side, a super couple must get married at least twice and then nothing will ultimately put them asunder. To the point, until the reinvention of Bo and Hope last year, of utter predictability and boredom.

Until that recent upsurge with Days ceasing to write in a marriage=death manner – perhaps Hogan Sheffer’s best legacy – I would have automatically come down on the GH side of the equation, but now I’m not so sure. On any number of levels I would certainly like to see GH try and write a long term marriage which is interesting but largely happy in the manner of Bo and Hope. Though I just don’t see where that’s going to come from right now in Port Charles given there are currently only two possible candidates and one of them features the most married characters in town and the other features characters in their 60s so it's surprisingly that they’re written for at all.

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Anniversaries

I wanted to take a break from what can only be described as a shit-tastic week at work (didn't think it was possible in an Easter-shortened week so laden with chocolate, but it is) to say Happy Birthday to General Hospital and The Young and the Restless.

No matter the recent state of both shows - no comparison between them, obviously, but still the word that comes to mind for both is "decline" - it's an outstanding achievement to be reaching the respective ages of those shows.

At 45 GH is CONSIDERABLY older than I am, but I can confess to having watched it or at least kept in touch with it for almost 30 of those 45 years.* I remember Richard Dean Anderson as Jeff Weber with his constant turtlenecks and the Ice Princess and when Jason Quartermaine Morgan was born.

At 35 Y&R is A TINY FRACTION younger than I am, and while I claim it's a show I have only watched periodically and half-heartedly, when a question arises about mid 80s Y&R I often find I can answer the query. So I have probably at least kept in touch with the show for more than half its life. I remember when Brad was a pool boy wearing cut-offs and when Phil Morris pretended to be white in order to get in with his girlfriend's parents.

So, Happy Birthday shows. Onward and - please, PLEASE - upward from here.

Normal programming will return when I have consumed enough wine to overcome this week. And then some more to overcome the fact my mother is coming to stay with me this weekend.

* Thanks at least partly to Australia's screwy programming choices which allowed me to watch fabulous late 70s/early 80s GH in the mid to late 80s. As the years pass I appreciate that even more, I promise you.

Love and Ugliness

The second half of the General Hospital Week can also be summed up easily:

1. Jax absolutely and totally rocks.

2. The person who has been writing for Jax the last few weeks rocks even more.

3. Wow, the wardrobe department was having a bad week.

4. Let's all just pretend that idea of a tragic story where Jason the hitman may lose the ability to use his killer hands never happened, shall we? Good - if transitionally hilarious - idea.

Caps courtesy Laurie and Clarissa.

Ahhhhs and Eye-Rolls

I think Monday and Tuesday’s General Hospital can be summed up very easily:

1. The Dumbest Near Death Experience Ever

2. Even in surviving explosions and covering up murders Marianna renders all around her boring. However get Ric out of her orbit and suddenly even rescuing Carly from The Dumbest Near Death Experience Ever becomes appealing.

3. Ahhhhh. I should not obtain catharsis by violence, I should not obtain catharsis by violence, I should not – stuff it, that was just beautiful.

4. “Can I just say you picked a perfect time to be wonderful?”

Yes, yes you both did. I can very easily forgive Robin’s short-term baby lie when it delivers (a) an actual vocalised realisation of the hypocrisy and out-of-character nature of the lie complete with historical references; and (b) a series of utterly, utterly charming scenes. Love them.

Caps courtesy Laurie.

Structurally Unsound

How many times a week do I find myself wishing for more hours in the day? Thinking that if only there were a few extra minutes here or there I could get everything done and still have time for mindless lying around? Clearly I simply have not been utilising my existing time well enough. Obviously, if I just put some more effort into it, I could get so much more out of my day.

Just look at the citizens of Port Charles.

In two minutes and forty-six seconds...

...or two minutes and fifty-five seconds, depending on whether you ask the end of Thursday’s episode or the beginning of Friday’s...

...Spinelli and Maxie packed up all their stuff and left the building with the mysterious ticking sound to be apparently well out of harm’s way, without mentioning the ticking sound to anyone else.

...Carly spoke to Michael on the phone, made her way from her home somewhere in suburban Port Chuck to the now ubiquitous dockside cannery building, had a heartfelt reunion with her previously missing son, had a lengthy discussion with him as to how and why he ran away, was appropriately horrified to discover that he’d left someone for dead and not done so much as make an anonymous call to 911, and got blown up.

...Marianna and Randy went from Kelly’s to the docks – not that far, admittedly – had some kind of set to, and she either killed him or rendered him unconscious, she then spoke with Ric on the phone, waited for him to show up, hovered over Randy’s inert body, and then got blown up. Fortunately for the audience most of this took place off screen.

...Ric had a glass of wine and a tete-a-tete with Claudia, spoke to Marianna on the phone, made his way from his home somewhere in suburban Port Chuck to the docks, met Marianna, discovered Randy’s inert body, and then got blown up.

...Claudia had a glass of wine and tete-a-tete with Ric, made her way from Ric’s home somewhere in suburban Pork Chuck to her family compound in a whole different town, called Sonny to make a deal on a completely separate matter, made her way from her family compound in that whole different town to the Port Charles docks, became the target of an assassination attempt, and got blown up.

...Sonny mainly made up with Kate, spoke to Claudia on the phone, had Johnny pulled out of the abandoned asylum, gathered his goons, made his way to the docks, met with Claudia, and got blown up.

...Trevor eavesdropped on Claudia’s phone conversation, made his way from the Zacchara compound in a whole other town to the Port Chuck docks, organised an assassination attempt, and got blown up.

Even allowing a little leeway for simultaneously running stories, that’s a hell of an effort. Especially given that they all actually made it to the docks in time for the countdown from fifty-seven seconds.

So, really they all achieved the above in less than two minutes so that there was enough time to “create” “tension” with a “big” “countdown”.

Tense, isn’t it?

You’re anxious, aren’t you?

Wondering how these bombs have been left to sit around for a week or so with no one looking for them even though they’d found several others?

Anxious to see that a miracle happens and only Ric, Johnny and maybe Claudia survive?

Had enough now? Want more fabulous CGI? Here you go…

So, what have we learned from this experience?

1. I clearly am not practising my teleporting and multi-tasking skills enough. I’ve got to put more effort into it.

2. This was a monumental case of hackery on the part of, in particular, the directors, editors and continuity people on Thursday and Friday.

3. Blowing shit up when the audience wants virtually everyone in peril to die doesn’t make for much suspense or drama even when the timeline ain’t shot all to hell.

Caps courtesy LiznJase.

More Days Casting

When I read the news that Kevin "Mac" Dobson has been cast as Mickey Horton on Days at Daytime Confidential, my thought process went like this:

1. Cool

2. About time

3. This show is so going to soap heaven next year.

However, in the meantime I will return to: cool.

Numb35rs

I’ll save any semi in depth comments I have for a mid or end of week wrap, but I cannot let Monday’s episode of General Hospital pass without comment about how bad it was.

Not bad in the usual “my lord GH is stuffing everything up and lives in a moral toilet” kind of way, but bad in a “clearly writing this day was a major struggle” kind of way. And the dual cause and/or effect of that (chicken, meet egg: sort yourselves out) was completely obvious.

First, there were 35 flipping characters on on Monday. That may be a new non-major event record. Or potentially an all-time record.

35. Lucky, Sam, Devlin, Jerry, Jax, Ric, Marianna, Mike, Randy, Elizabeth, Jason, Spinelli, Nikolas, Emily, Alexis, Patrick, Robin, Nadine, Epiphany, Casius, Leyla, Sonny, Kate, Milo, Max, Johnny, Trevor, Trevor’s goon, Michael, strange cabin in the woods baby-sitter, Lulu, Scott, Logan, Monica and Andy.

That is utterly ridiculous.

Second, with that many characters on, at least 4/5ths of the episode was exposition.

In fact, exactly three things actually happened: Marianna got the most obvious job ever, Lucky found out Jason and Elizabeth’s secret parts 542 and 543, and Nikolas went in for surgery. That was it.

I don't care what else is going on with the show sucking, or the strike ending, that is bad writing and bad producing (again, chicken, I'd like to introduce you to egg).

Of Hot Doctors And Dead (Grand)Fathers

Starting with the small stuff and getting more detailed...

If I were Kayla I would have slapped hovering, antsy Steve by now.

What’s going on with the Max, pages, grant thing? Please tell me we’re not going down some math prodigy path.

Also, isn’t Nick in genetics, rather than sustainable energy?

Dr Lexie “Can’t Diagnose Death” Carver perhaps shouldn’t be so huffy when Dr House Jonas shows up to help.

As much as I love them, and I’m unashamed to say that I do, the Stephanie/Max “no, no, she can’t call him Grandpa” tightrope walk continues to amuse and stick out like a sore thumb, especially in the grave-side scenes.

I do like that even with Bo being sick, they’re not forgetting about Shawn Snr and his death is continuing to impact on various lives. I also like the continued remembrance of Isabella.

I also like the twist that Ava has mistaken Hope for Kayla, but I hope that actually starts to play out soon – which I imagine there will be room for with them both hovering at the hospital – rather than continuing to be foreshadowed but going nowhere.

Shawn and Belle: vows renewed, literal sailing off into the sunset groundwork laid. Hurry up and get well, Bo. That said, the manner in which all three members of the largest triangle of the second half of last year have elected to completely forget about the lying and cheating is kind of hilarious, and a bit annoying even to me, who doesn’t care about any of them.

I like the internship advertising rivalry set up. Jobs for the girls! Hi-jinx! Tony and Anna! Bringing Kate in and giving her a job again. This has comedic promise at the very least. Not to mention that anything that has people at work on this show pleases me. However, Morgan should never again be allowed near this curls and ruffles combination.

Is it just me or does John hiring Rolf as his butler sound a hell of a lot like the Seinfeld plot? Actually, I kind of liked the scenes between John, Marlena and Rolf on Wednesday. So snarky. So much more enjoyable when they’re not on every day. Oh and Marlena, he asked you to answer the door, not perform a quadruple somersault with pike off the 10 metre platform. The response is to tell him to piss off or to open the door, not a ten minute triple take at his audacity. “There’s a difference between valuing your opinion and doing everything you say.”

I’m supposed to be highly amused by the Sami-EJ, American-English, getting to know each flirting, aren’t I? I know, but I just can’t get there. Maybe in isolation, if they were just getting to know each other, I could have found the clichéd tomato/tomato discussion funny. Instead I’m too distracted by the unintentional humour involved in US-born EJ, with at least one American parent, being threatened with deportation because his visa has run out. It is just so contrived. And that contrivance taints the rest of what is already a tainted relationship. Plus even Alison Sweeney can’t say “the government is going to throw you out of the country” with a straight face. Oh, and Sami and EJ’s job discussion does make me wonder who exactly is supporting Sami at the moment? Neither she nor the now incarcerated Lucas have had a job in forever, nor EJ of the frozen assets for some time. This occurred to me from time to time before Lucas went to jail, but with that lack of employment being actively discussed now, I had to ask the question aloud.

Finally, the topic of the week. I’d seen the reaction to the introduction of Dr Jonas vis a vis Chelsea around the web from some admitted Chelsea/Nick fans before I watched the episodes, and I’ll admit that I was prepared to be forced to say there goes that “Chick” loving Tripp and marypickford blowing it all out of proportion. Well, I apologise for the pre-emptive doubting, ladies. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

Now, I do like Nick and Chelsea, but I’m far from fanatic about them, largely, I think, because their relationship has been so badly executed over the last year or so – with the odd oasis – that I find myself not nearly so invested in them as I might have been. But even saying that, this was a painful week to watch. It started out fine on Monday when Chelsea was being all pouty and pissy with everyone because of Bo’s situation. When Chelsea gets pissy it annoys me, because she gets really pissy, but it’s also great because it becomes another sign they haven’t white-washed her character. However, when they contrast that with her becoming immediately perky around cute strangers who are waaaay too old for her, I do have to call foul.

Tossing her straight at another character, so obviously, and without any resolution in her relationship with Nick is utterly stupid, not least because they did it before and it didn’t work then either. (Though at least the new guy can act.) It almost makes me say “go for it Morgan”. I do like the new guy so far, stupid surf-speak aside, and he is cute, but it does make me, like many others, wonder exactly why it’s not Chelsea’s mother in this situation. Ah well.

Up, Down, and Around

Inconsistent.

General Hospital was all over the place this week.

First, the pacing was hinky and really annoyed me. They have a lot of stories running at the moment, and that’s fine – great, even, because they’re not all mob related and there’s a lot of hospital time going on - but they need to remember to prioritise on a given day. Even with their hammy CGI bridge stunt they couldn’t keep the suspense on going Monday and Tuesday because they would leave what seemed like hours between each of the scenes. And the same applied for all the other stories, and for most of the rest of the week. They really need to learn to drop one story per day, I think.

Which isn’t to say I don’t want them trying to keep as many story balls in the air as they have now, I really do because so much more of the canvas is being used. They just need to realise that we don’t need to see every single story every day. And that with so much going on with other things they can let stuff lie for a moment or two. In that respect I do think they’ve handled the hit-and-run story well this week, in that there have been a couple of references to it, so you know it’s coming back, but the principals involved had other things to be concerned with. Now if only they could have worked Monica into a few of the hospital scenes to show they haven't forgotten her again, that would have been nice. But we can’t have everything. Especially not with this show.

Anyway, that annoyance aside, there were definitely things to like about this week.

First up, Robin and Patrick. Oh so many shades of grey. Shades of grey are a very good thing in a drama, and this story is now delivering nicely. They’re both so conflicted, and have every right to be, and needless to say Kimberly McCullough and Jason Thompson have been doing a great job at conveying that.

This wasn’t what either one of them planned and now he doesn’t have any idea what he wants, and she is trying to protect herself as best she can. Which means, of course, that they’re hurting each other both deliberately and unintentionally. I can only hope they continue to treat this story so well going forward.

Second in this week’s love list: Jax.

Days Month in Review

Can’t say things didn’t happen in Days in February…

Colleen died
Shawn died
Kim dyed
Bo got sick and lied

Bo crashed and got shocked
Marlena got clocked
Anna and Tony rocked
John’s hair remained shocked
The crashing plane got tick-tocked

There were flashbacks that made it easier to fast-forward
And flashbacks we adored

EJ got degrees in baby-sitting and law, in roughly the same amount of time
Shawn and Belle reunited for no reason at all, and suddenly everything was fine
Lucas went to jail for something he actually did but first had to say goodbye seventy-five times
The dialogue was often as bad as these attempts at rhymes

Quitting the bad rhyming, the other points I noticed about this last month in Days:

John was snarky and it was good, though based on his post-plane crash recovery he may well now actually be the Terminator. My vote for best couple of sweeps: John and Claire. That’s a fact.

The plane crash itself was both endless and kind of fantastic, though I’ll admit that in doing the rapid catch-up I was more absorbed by what happened after the plane hit the ground because that moved the stories forward, than by the actual plane emergency. I thought most of it was well done, though I did have to note the following on the more snarky front:

- charming how the adults on the plane cuddled while leaving the child to sit all alone

- charming also how, once they found all the tents and flipping bed linen in the crashed plane, the virile and uninjured went off to have varying degrees of sex in the protected tents while the injured were left to suffer it out in the semi-exposed fuselage. While everyone back home prayed for them. And then they talked about the sex, or lack thereof, and talked, and talked, and it was bad

- Chloe’s over-breathing drove me nuts

- the way they all ended up resembling extras in a Star Wars movie was simultaneously amusing and distracting

- the configuration of the plane changed mid-scene

- Marlena’s overkill jewellery survived the crash nicely

- Victor and Caroline’s husband-isn’t-quite-dead-yet flirting with anvils hurt my head

Before they got to the crash though, the two most annoying parts of the wrap up of the Ireland story were, first, Marlena continually repeating that no one would believe what she was going to tell them next as if she’s never taken part in this show before. This is the woman with the recently dead robotic husband squiring her around; she can hardly think her companions will never believe that said husband is related to half of them. Second was them wrapping up that whole story without including Sami or EJ at all. Made no sense.

Moving on to Shawn’s death and funeral, the way they all stood around without actually telling Caroline that Shawn was dead until they rolled the body in started out feeling wrong, and ended up being a quite skilled trick of mass avoidance. Another quite skilled trick of mass avoidance: managing to have Stephanie grieve for her grandfather and Max grieve for his father while never mentioning or even alluding to the fact that those two are the same person.

As has been mentioned by many others, Days does give good funeral. Even if half the Brady family could act with their whole faces and the other half couldn’t. It was also nice that Abe was included as part of the family – he’s earned it over the years – though the fact that Ali Sweeney’s parts of the wake were clearly shot separately was kind of distracting, as was Stephanie’s mysterious absence. I’m also glad that Caroline told Victor it would be inappropriate for her to show up at her husband’s funeral on Victor’s arm, because that was exactly the note I had made about him not waiting for the body to get cold (pun intended) before hitting on her before she called him on that very point. For that piece of wisdom, I’m not sure why she’s suddenly embracing EJ though, and I cheered a little when Kim told him she was shunning him not for the sins of his family but for his own damn sins.

For the record, it was Sami’s hug of Roman while Chloe was singing at the end of the service that got me all teared up.

The big events aside, my other favourite things from the month in Days were:

- Max and Stephanie

- Johnson family chemistry shining through post-crash

- Isabella getting several mentions

- “I’m not jealous, I just think it was inappropriate for you to be flirting with Marlena’s brain damaged husband.”

- Bo’s death warmed over make-up

- “Promise me you’ll never use that metaphor again.”

- “Tony takes the term dictation to a whole new level.”

Moving forward, so far I’m pulled in to the Nutso Ava story, especially given that she seems to be focused on not only Kayla but other members of the family as well. Though I’ll be thrilled if Steve’s broken ribs heal quickly so the flailing and gasping goes away.

As for the debate over Stefano’s money, I’m not so sure. If we could not see John and Marlena every single day, I’d be pleased, and I’m not sure why John cares about the money anyway. Isn’t he a multi-billionaire? Plus, they’ve lost major points with me from day one having started about dividing up the estate of a guy who is still alive based on unexecuted Wills and making crap up. I’m a lawyer, I can’t help it. Further proof that EJ’s law degree on a can of racing car motor oil taught him absolutely nothing.

What’s your take on Days in February?

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Caps courtesy Days2.