I think OLTL has been doing a pretty spectacular job this sweeps period.
Now, before you start pointing at me and ostracising me in the cyber playground as a “Tarty” fan, that’s definitely not what I mean. And I’ll get on to that in a moment.
What I mean is that although all the individual threads have flaws – some huge, some just minor contrivances – they have done a great job of bringing all these various stories to a head in sweeps, having them cascade into each other in way that impacts large parts of the canvas, and which sets up new stories. And they’ve done it in a way that keeps me anxious to watch day after day to see what happens next.
On top of that they’ve balanced it out with characters whose story threads that culminated a few weeks ago appearing only occasionally – Rex and Gigi, for example - appropriately back-burned, in a way that feels relatively balanced.
Really, the only over-arching flaw is that they dragged out both the major false imprisonment stories too long in order to have them culminate at the same time Starr gave birth. And so even that drag-out was to a good ends.
It doesn’t surprise me that ratings have gone up.
First you have the contrasting of the three births, one comedic, one (temporarily) uplifting, and one sad, which was a nice piece of structuring. Starr giving birth seemed pretty realistic too, not happening instantaneously, having all the family around, and having some great female bonding scenes. I loved all the scenes with Blair, Starr and Marcie, both before during and after the birth. I even liked the scenes between Marcie and Todd at the hospital before everything went south.
And sure, it took no small amount of contrivance to allow Bess to switch the babies – and how no one but Tess recognises them as two different babies I have no idea – but I am willing to forgive it for the set-up of the story. One might say that a baby switch is a boring soap cliché, but I also think it can be a great soapy classic, and this has all the elements set up for it to be a great story. The switch impacts of a large slice of the canvas - the Buchanans, the Lord/Mannings, the Cramers, the McBains - but effectively no one is totally in the wrong. There’s no hoarding kidnapper here. I think it has the potential to be really interesting. (Much better, for example, than whatever it appears Days has planned for Nicole and Sami.)
Then we have the Todd-Marty story. Working from the end first, I was really, really pleased to see them treating it immediately and without fudging that she had been raped again. There was no under-cutting of the language, and having her sit there in the hospital asking to get tested for STDs and taking the morning after pill like a rape victim was certainly a good development. I had been very fearful she would end up pregnant. Not to mention that I loved the scenes between Nora and Marty.
Of course that doesn’t provide justification for them doing the story, or at least not for them taking it so far - given I found it psychologically interesting before they turned it into a full blown romance – in the first place. I think it would have been far more interesting for Todd to have his change of heart etc about the baby without sleeping with her. That step was not remotely necessary. And I thought it was oddly handled too. They’d spent so much time recently just playing up the actors’ chemistry and showing it as a romance than when, before they slept together, he suddenly kept seeing her in the college rape outfit was downright creepy. Which was good on the one hand – it was appropriate for this scenario to be portrayed as creepy – but horrible on the other hand because he slept with her despite that.
It would have been better if he been haunted by those images for some time, and changed his mind about the baby through that, rather than the way it happened.
I see the potential here for Todd to go through a transformation, and he’s certainly showed a greater degree of self-awareness since John broke into that room than I’ve seen in the last six months, but it’s only going to work or be interesting if he changes and no one is willing to go anywhere near believing him. Which seems to be where they’re going. I hope. As to whether he’s actually redeemable in the end, well that remains to be seen and at the moment I lean towards “no”.
Needless to say, through all this, Susan Haskell has totally rocked. Her portrayals of indignation and hatred and self-hatred and confusion and just despair but with underlying strength, and wavering across all of them felt very real.
I am also pleased that Marty hasn’t got her memory back. Because leaving her without it, or with it only coming back in fits and starts, gives more story potential.
As for everything else, I think Tina’s departure is too hasty although I enjoyed the scenes between her and Cain. I don’t care at all about the Montez saga, and was annoyed during the two days over the last three weeks when it interrupted everything else. That said, if they are going to stay, I’m glad at least they set up the potential for Vanessa to be evil, because that would be more interesting than her just being slutty. And if A Martinez comes back having suddenly lost the accent that makes his character sound dumb, I’ll be much more interested in watching. Which means I’ll be about 2% interested in watching.
Speaking of being more interested in watching, Jess might be the goody-two-shoes of the alter triplets, but Bree Williamson is far more watchable as Jess than she is all goggle-eyed as Tess. And I do like the fact she’s being sent off the to funny farm instead of just being “she’s back everything’s fine”. The inevitable loony bin chemistry test of Jessica and Brody could be interesting too.
Not quite sure what to make of John quitting the police force, however that whole debacle (including another of the contrivances, the length of time it took John to break out of jail followed by no one noticing), did result in my favourite line of the last three weeks. It was mainly the delivery but Bo’s “Looks like the media found their angle: John McBain is Batman!” had me pausing the show and laughing for quite some time.
So, all in all, throw in some flawed or downright bad stories, mix them up with a few contrivances, bring it all to the boil in a three week period and suddenly, remarkably, you have a great sweeps period.
