Soaps By Remote

Out of Date Days Tidbit #24

Okay, not sure if it’s actually #24, but you’ll have seen a few popping up in the side-bar as I do the massive Days catch-up. I’m now only a month behind, I swear. At the end of the catch-up there will be some more substantive comments, but as a few things occur to me I’m just going to throw them out here even though they’re now weeks old.

So, the Sami-EJ hook-up. Leaving aside all the massive issues with the story corner they backed themselves into, there’s no denying that Alison Sweeney and James Scott have great chemistry. So was it just me that was really disappointed by their love scenes?

I can put aside a hell of a lot of story baggage for a good love scene, and I expected this to rock. Yet, just, no. It all felt really mechanical and anatomy of a paint by numbers love scene to me. Kiss there,

now turn that way.

It seems like they had chemistry in everything but the actual getting down to business. Shirtless James Scott notwithstanding, of course.

Just me? Probably.

Either way, just didn’t do it for me. Though the timing and Lucas coming home was some pretty fabulous soapy goodness.

Perhaps, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with getting Mr Scott out of his clothes again, they should give it another go and see if they can get it right.

I think he agrees.

And in case I may be distracting you here, I'm actually serious about the scenes not quite working for me. But the pictures are still pretty, and hotter than I found the actual scenes.

One Life to Live – 2.5 Weeks in Review

See, this is the power of the umbrella story.

A lie is exposed – that Jared is Charlie’s son instead of a Buchanan – and it impacts across three-quarters of the canvas in a glorious domino effect.

A family company gets taken over, a guy dies, a number of other lies – but not all of them – are exposed, a new marriage ends, several relationships of all kinds fall apart, a hilarious new marriage comes about, and family conflict is sky high.

And for the part of the canvas not so involved in that side of things, though there is cross-over, there’s the rise of the next story in two interlocking parts. Tina and her jewels, and Marty’s return, the latter of which plays into the other main story going on, Starr’s pregnancy.

More on that later, but first back to the reveal of the lies of Banks Snr and Jnr. There were some histrionics in the whole wash up - Clint trying to strangle Dorian, Jessica breaking down over Nash - but it was the quieter aftermath that I think really worked.

In fact, in the early scenes at the hospital I have to say that I think both Bree Williamson and John Brotherton were rather overwrought in their performances. I know the characters were meant to be overwrought, but there’s a difference between that and being overdone with the trauma. It was just a bit over the top for me, and distracting. I’m not sure that such high drama is Bortherton’s thing, he should stick to the lighter stuff which he does really well, and I suspect that Williamson was having an off day, because in everything since she’s been really great. Jessica being in turn lost and angry but not crazy overwrought has worked much much better than the throwing herself around and crying and screaming of that first day or so.

Daytime Emmys Fashion - The Polls

poll by twiigs.com

poll by twiigs.com

Daytime Emmys Fashion - Part Three

We'€™ll call part three the complete mixed bag.

Kind of the good, the bad and the meh of the long and the short.

Let'€™s start with the short. While Laura Wright's white mini-dress was too casual, some of those who went short did better. Kirsten Storms' black strapless cocktail dress cute and sophisticated (and her companions didn't come off too badly either).

Lesli Kay'€™s animal print is something I usually wouldn'€™t like, but she kind of makes it work.

Kent Masters King'€™s peach dress was very summer lunch and the gladiator sandals pretty much ruined any potential it might have had.

Daytime Emmys Fashion – Part Two

Yellow is a notoriously difficult colour to pull off, but three actresses with completely different colouring gave it a go. In Rachel Melvin’s case I actually like the dress, and it goes well enough with her colouring, but there are two significant problems. First, to put it as delicately as possible, she’s not really filling the dress out very much is she? Leaving things a little deflated? Second, to put it not delicately at all, her hair, as usual, is an odd mess and very distracting.

Then there’s Claire Coffee who, if anything, looks too sunny. Dress and hair matching isn’t usually a good thing (see our friends in black in the previous post), and well, now that I notice it, she’s not really filling out this dress particularly well either.

Finally we have Best Actress Jeanne Cooper, who I think overdid the bling (but she’s probably entitled), but otherwise I love her yellow-tinged caftan/kimono. I think she looks great.

The other thing she’s got going for her that to a degree her yellow compatriots don’t, is that it’s flattering. Flattering was the word of the evening for me, because it’s where so many fell down. Using the examples above, if you’re not so well endowed, don’t pick a dress that highlights that fact. If you’re of a certain age, don’t pick a dress that highlights the fact that, perfectly reasonably, you no longer have a waif-like waist.

Two of the major offenders in the latter category were Leann Hunley, who choose a swirly number that makes her look like a pink tree-trunk from the armpits down…

…and Melody Thomas Scott whose dress was at the top of the diva rankings, but completely unflattering and not helped at all by her make-up.

Daytime Emmys Fashion – Part One

Oh dear.

Well, let me be generous and start with some positives. There was a lot of great colour. And, um, well…

Look, I think there were many actresses with great intentions to do something interesting or different or colourful or whatever, but unfortunately many, many of them didn’t work. At all. Or it they did they were wrecked by the hair and make-up.

But let me start with those that definitely worked.

Michelle Stafford can do nothing wrong – her dress was my favourite last year too – keeping it simple and delicate. Plus, you know, flattering.

Speaking of delicate, Susan Lucci is obviously too delicate for all this sunshine, so there’s no photo of her where she’s not hiding under an umbrella, but even hiding under there she looks great.

That Grecian draping was extremely popular, which made it boring pretty quick. If inoffensive.

See Tamara Braun – only someone that skinny could wear a dress with a band around the hips and not look chunky.

And Adrienne Franz in a great colour but kind of blah dress.

Moving away, temporarily, from the inoffensive, let’s stop by Best Supporting Actress Gina Tognoni. Now, I see what she was going for here. Something interesting and structured and a bit different.

All well and good, if rather uncomfortable looking. But then you get to the close-up and discover there’s a giant red band – in a colour slightly different to that of the dress – wrapped around her hips!

What the hell is that? I mean, I didn’t really so much like the dress itself, but at least I admired the attempt until that happened. Does it have an in-built cushion in the back to make sure she’s comfortable sitting through all the hours of the show? Is it slightly loose on that hip so she can keep her lipstick in there instead of bringing a clutch? And also, why is her hair auditioning for a Robert Palmer video?

Really, I don’t want to be mean, but I cannot help it.

Especially not when it comes to asking what on god’s green earth possessed the otherwise lovely Melissa Archer to wear a vivid blue trash bag-Austrian blind combination dress?

Surely that would have been laughed out of town at even the 1986 Awards, let alone 2008…

Give and Take

I am back.

I’ve actually been back for a few days but thanks to some massive storms in New York on Saturday night my journey home took about twice as long as was planned (typical that I’m in the city for the heat wave and it then decides to break the night I’m leaving and delay my flight by 8 hours). I do now have a close personal relationship with the bloody mary station in the British Airways lounge at JFK terminal 7 though.

Anyway, I have been recovering from that journey by catching up on the backlog of One Life to Live – ratings continue to go up, justifiable praise continues to spread far and wide, I notice – eagerly anticipating the awful Emmy fashions to come, and wondering at the current Jekyll and Hyde mentality of GH/Night Shift.

The View From New York

I know that it’s an annoyance to many of you that SoapNet is less Soap and more crap recently.

Highly promoted crap as it turns out.

I just thought I’d share with you this not so little gem, which greets me whenever I leave my hotel:

Yes, that’s right, a wrap-around Times Square billboard promoting an already canceled Canadian show, and, by extension, everything that’s wrong with the network’s attitude and programming…

Post-sweeps lull, what post-sweeps lull?

I’m not sure if it’s just a hang-over due to the real writing team coming back mid-way through sweeps and wanting to catch-up, but I really can’t accuse OLTL of slowing down in the post-sweeps period.

I mean in the last two days we’ve had the following events/reveals:

- Jared is not a Buchanan
- Jared is sleeping with Natalie
- Charlie is Jared’s father
- Charlie is not Rex’s father
- Rex has a inkling that his wife is lying, and a little bird pushing him further towards that conclusion
- Dorian has taken over BE
- Nash falling to his death
- Charlie being rendered drunk to the point of serious alcohol poisoning and Viki finding him
- Ramsey holding a mystery woman in his Penthouse while she recovers from something with the possibility it could be either of the two returning characters though I presume it’s Marty with the Mendorran jewels being a Tina-related red herring

And tomorrow we have the promise of Viki being clued in to the full Jared/Charlie reveal, and next week the return of both Marty and Tina.

That’s a pretty sustained pace.

And yet, even with all that, they’re still managing to throw in more flashbacks to two days ago than I would like.

I haven’t felt this “I really can’t wait for tomorrow” about a soap in ages.

That said, this is likely my last post before heading off to New York later in the week to rejoice in the weak dollar while buying shoes for work. I'll return well in advance of the Emmy fashions (because who cares about the awards themselves?), or if there's any interesting news while I'm away, or if I happen to manage the rest of my Days catch-up while spending 20 hours each direction on a plane.

Parents and (sometimes fake) Children

OLTL Short Week and a Day in Review

First, hearty congratulations to the OLTL team for building its ratings two weeks in a row and being the only soap last week to do so. In a week when a number of other shows were hitting all time lows. In a week when it also equaled GH as ABC’s most watched show. Onward and upward OLTL, onward and upward. Not only because it deserves it, but also because if it knocks GH off its demographic perch maybe they’ll get around to firing Guza, finally.

General comments and questions first, starting at the end-ish and working backwards.

Long-time readers will know that I am not at all fond of anything Court-related on soaps because it’s usually so awful and skewed in one direction or another. This week’s custody hearing scenes were better than a lot, though. The main reason was having the judge do all the questioning without allowing for any lawyerly grandstanding. The second was condensing everyone’s testimony without allowing for any witnessy grandstanding. The third was having everyone tell the truth, or, in Todd’s case, his delusional version of the truth. Not letting it drag was also pleasing. All of which is not to say that I’m now clamouring to watch soap court cases. I would still prefer that they were an extremely rare occurrence, but when they do have to occur, this is a good model for going about it.

I did have two questions though. First, why wasn’t Blair called as a witness in the first place? If the four teens were being called, why on earth wasn’t Blair? Second, and more importantly, how on earth did it take so long for anyone, let alone Blair, to suggest that Blair should take custody of Sam? Surely, whatever Blair’s history with the child, that was the most obvious solution? It shouldn’t have take so long for that to happen.