OLTL Experiment: Day Seven

Tuesday 6 May

This episode was loaded down with a combination of (a) classic soap tricks, for better or worse; (b) speeding up strike stories to get rid of them, I assume; and (c) exposition that was both helpful and a stepping off point for the next stage of the stories.

So, not as good as the frisson of the last couple of episodes, but still enjoyable particularly from my perspective trying to work out what’s going on. Or obtaining confirmation that what I think is going on is indeed the case. Plus, no Starr and Cole who have been on in every other episode I’ve watched, and I never regard the same characters being on every day as a good sign. They did get a few mentions though.

Their mentions were in the Antonio-Talia-John-Ramsey story, as were most of the classic soap tricks. In the way that every scene/act break ended with an out that was obviously going to be overturned in the next scene. Ramsey knocking on the hotel room door saying “I know you’re in there” becoming “I know you’re in there Sahid and McBain”. John showing up at the door with an ice bucket to rescue them, Antonio having foreshadowed his impending arrival earlier. Antonio saying it was over, implying the relationship but meaning the lie, neither of which would actually happen.

It was in this story that the strike clean-up was also most obvious as the get Ramsey story was accelerated. Talia and John discussed Starr and Cole and bantered generally, and Talia was concerned at Ramsey being occasionally nice when it came to Jamie despite otherwise being a pig. Ramsey proceeded to be sympathetic about Jamie when talking to Antonio in the very next scene before Antonio sped up the plan instantaneously by throwing the drug money he appropriated on Ramsey’s desk and confessing. And noting that Ramsey covered for him.

One thing that did become obvious in this episode with the story thread above and the one I’ll get to in a moment is that they’re writing umbrella stories. The get rid of Ramsey story involving Antonio, John, Talia and Ramsey links across to the Starr/Cole story and the impact of that with Todd, Blair etc. Then we’ve got Natalie and Jared and their story impacting on Viki and Charlie and that linking to Rex and Gigi and Adriana and the Buchanans etc. To me cast integration and good use of history are hallmarks of good soap, and while I can’t talk too much to the latter in this show to date, in the former it’s certainly meeting the criteria.

In the wedding story we started out with some more heavy-handedness in relation to Boxey’s father, but thankfully that was rapidly overcome by actually dealing with the story as opposed to dropping anvils. First we have Gigi admitting to Viki that she cares about Rex, and Rex confessing to Charlie that he’s having Gigi-related cold feet. We have Brody growing a curiosity and Adriana admitting she’s brought him to town to keep Gigi away from Rex. We have Brody advising Adriana that Rex is Boxey’s father. Duh. And finally the classic trick of Adriana paying him to stay in town and lie anyway. All of these things nicely setting up the upcoming wedding.

All of that was then linked to Jared and Natalie back in Texas, where Natalie wants to know how everyone is going to feel when they find out she slept with her Uncle. She needs to move to Salem where no one would bat an eye. They continued to discuss how to tell people that ostensible uncle and niece are sleeping together, which led to several more expositional confessions from Jared including, most significantly, that Charlie is his father – leading to the line “Rex’s father is your father, my brother is your brother?” - and not Rex’s. That essentially Charlie is lying to Viki and Rex and everyone about everything.

After some debate about what to tell whom, Natalie thinks everyone needs to know the truth, Jared thinks they don’t because everyone’s happy so long as they’re in the dark. Natalie calls Viki anyway, and no one believes for a second she’s actually going to tell the truth because in soap and in life there’s no way anyone does that over the phone.

And we end with Rex and Gigi coming face to face.

So I would describe this as a useful episode rather than a good one, but still interesting. As opposed to the utter boredom GH and Days have been delivering.

Oh, and Nips and Tux was the name of this episode. The tuxes they were trying on and there were enough women naked in bed that I guess nipples were a possibility if unlikely to be actually seen on daytime TV. Oh, they mean another type of “nips”? Okay. I’m just not sure what other type.