Soaps By Remote

Farewell 2008

It’s been rather difficult approaching 2008’s Best and Worst post.  

Mainly because there’s a lot that I haven’t watched this past year.  It’s a bit of a challenge categorising things I haven’t actually watched.  

So, I’m not doing a Best and Worst, I’m just doing a quick fire summary of the shows, and then moving on to catching up on the last month’s worth of OLTL and starting in on Y&R.

I saw 2008 in soaps as follows:

Days: BORING and completely unwatchable in the second half of the year.

GH: Boring, but scattered with some great, funny, lovely, occasionally sexy moments.  Making it even more frustrating than Days, because you can’t completely ignore it.

OLTL: Uneven, but never boring, and at times quite brilliant.

Y&R: Apparently so on the upsurge that I must absolutely make time to watch in the new year.

AMC: 90% appalling, but still capable of delivering a lovely tribute episode to a much loved actress/character in Eileen Herlie/Myrtle, a fantastic reunion of much loved characters in Angie and Jesse and someone who looks hot even with a beard and a crappy storyline in Thorsten Kaye.

B&B: I gather there were bears.  Now a prime time show with quite reasonable ratings in my home country.

ATWT:  Still have never watched it.

GL:  On location and in the ratings basement.

Passions: Gone to soap heaven, or perhaps pergatory.

Night Shift:  Some parts were so fabulous that it made the whole show fabulous even though in reality it was a little uneven.  True soap winner of the year.

And because I can't completely ignore Bests and Worsts:

- the Annual Jane Eliot Ageing Gracefully Yet Spectacularly Award this year is a tie between Days' Renee Jones and AMC's Debbi Morgan, both of whom look gorgeous and years younger than their actual years; and

- the Worst Wardrobe Award goes to Days' Kate Roberts, this year finally nudging out Carly Corinthos-Multiple-Names.

A Soap Opera Thanksgiving 2008

It’s Turkey time again!  Well, for you.  For me it’s the beginning of Christmas party schmooze and aching feet season.

For those of you who are new(ish) to the site, although I’m not American and there is no Thanksgiving here where I live, there is Thanksgiving here on this blog.  You can go back and read my Thanksgiving lists from 2006 and 2007, and feel free to get knocked over by the irony of last year’s list in particular (both in its positivity and negativity).

So, what I am thankful for over the past soap year?

 -         Night Shift.  The whole of season two, but especially, especially, the Scorpios

-         That Days has been renewed, even with all the restrictions that come with that

-         That Y&R has improved so much that I’m trying to find room for it in my viewing schedule again

-         That I found OLTL.  Although it hasn’t been delivering as consistently as it was, and has had one particular story that could most flatteringly be described as massively problematic, it’s still more compelling to me than either GH or Days at the moment

-         That AMC killed off Babe.  Just because

-         Daytime Confidential’s podcasts, which always have me laughing while I’m trying to get some serious exercise done

-         GH having found – mainly through accident, rather than design, I suspect – a sense of humour again.  Sure, the show is still mainly dark black and frustrating, but the comedic (but not stupid) duos of Maxie & Spinelli and Alexis & Diane have provided some much needed and sustained levity

-         Kirsten Storms and Maxie Jones. Last year it was just about the transformation of Maxie, but now it’s just about how great she’s (been allowed to) become

What are you thankful for this soapy Thanksgiving?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Night Shift, Season 2, Episode 13 (2)

Not so many tears this time around, which was good because I didn’t need to go out crying from a series that wound up delivering so much good soap .  I much preferred to go out smiling, as I did here.

This episode was really two separate shows in one.  The first show was the five odd minutes with the aftermath of the bombing and the well-built tension between the bomb defusing and Saira reviving.

Unfortunately I think it was then let down a bit by the complete sapping of that tension in favour of a startlingly quick wrap-up of the bomb/suit against Patrick plot and a sweep straight into the second show of the evening: the wrap up.

I didn’t have any problem with the wrap-up itself, just the transition to it.

Some of the tying up of loose ends was a bit neat/predictable, but I would much rather they tied them up than left them hanging.

First, Kyle and Claire, finished off as expected in all respects, but sweet nevertheless.

And Kyle and Leo wound up in an equally predicable, but no less sweet place.  It’s just a pity that they had to completely cut Leo’s personality to shreds at the beginning of the series to wind up bringing him around back to human again with both Saira and his brother.  I’m still of the view that the whole series would have been much better had they not made this character “Leo Julian” and instead started with someone new.

I think they short-changed the Toussaint has a son story throughout this.  Obviously I didn’t even remotely watch the whole first season, but this was groundwork that was laid then, yes?  So why the story got all of about three minutes in this series, with most of it in the last episode, I’m not sure.  And I didn’t care much about it because I’d been given nothing to work with.

For Jagger and Robert I appreciated that they gave them out of town stories, if only to save me from having to ask, futilely, why they’re not in certain upcoming stories or attending a certain wedding during the Day Shift.  Well, I’ll probably still ask that, but not in a “but they’re in town, they should be here!” kind of way.  And they left the doors wide open in both their various relationships to have them come back should pigs start flying backwards through an icy hell and regular GH starts being run by smart people again.

I also loved where Anna and Robert wound up.  I loved that they got their relationship back, but that they didn’t send them off together in some mushy way that wouldn’t have felt right, and would have only given the Day Shift the ammunition with which to decimate their relationship again by having Anna come back straight away and say it all failed because Robert was an ass.

They got Patrick nicely, and reasonably, out of a job he never should have had in the first place, gave him and Robin a bed for the first time in years, and left them argument-free and sweet as always.  All in time for the Day Shift to wreak whatever hell they have planned for their wedding and the birth of their child.

So, let’s leave this series that was imperfect but exceeded all expectations with some happy pictures from the finale.  Well done, Night Shift, well done.

Caps courtesy LiznJase.

Night Shift Season 2, Episode 13 (1)

I’d say they had me at the opening credits but, let’s face it, they had me well before that.

Referring to history doesn’t have to be as literal as this, but god it’s fun when it is.

Recreating the first time Robin and Robert met, down to the dress, the sandwiches and the funky stairs in that apartment was genius.  

And putting Anna in her wedding dress from their first wedding – thankfully not the pink monstrosity from their second – with the bouffant hair she wore for so long.  

Bringing back Sean and Tiffany, and adding Luke and Mac to the gang of Robert’s intervention of the sub-conscious.  Mentioning Holly.  Throwing in the right mixture of comedy and drama and easy friendship that always made this group work so well and always had me as a fan.

And then, on top, having Robin sit on his bed and talk to him and have me in even more tears than last week. Have to pause the show so I can recover enough to watch the next bit and not miss anything tears.

I couldn't have asked for anything more, especially as Robert woke up in the end.  I figured he would, but if he had have died I can't say I would have been disappointed with this as a send off.  It was the right mixture of nostalgia, fun and genuine emotion. 

As usual, Luke got all the best lines:
Robert: “I’m not dead yet.”
Luke: “You might as well be, you’re starting to rot from the inside.  They had to gut you like a fish.”

Luke: “You remember my hair in 1985?”
Anna: “God, do you remember mine?”

Speaking of hair in 1985:

The rest of the episode was pretty damn good too.  I think they picked the right tone for the finale with no patient of the week, but rather a building of other stories (although the Toussaint stuff was out of place, mainly because there needed to be more of it to actually constitute a story).

Patrick’s concern for Robin and the baby at the threat was better this week, what I felt was lacking last week.  And his lack of confidence and not wanting to operate was just at the right level.  Depressed and matter-of-fact, but not all woe-is-me martyrdom.

I wasn’t surprised by Claire’s resignation, and that was a good thing.  A sign that they’d built up her ambivalence to her career, on top of the disaster of her personal life, throughout the series.  Her scenes with Leo – suddenly a human – and Eric, were both great.

While Antonio Sabato should never try to cry onscreen, the Jagger-Saira hook-up proved even more what I’d thought previously; they should have gone with that pairing through the series instead of the horrible Saira-Leo thing.

Also, glad to see Jagger working so hard to protect the hospital.

No wonder a dumpster got blown up.

I’m looking forward to next week, I’m glad Robert’s awake, and I’ll leave you with this from head writer Sri Rao from his interview with Nelson Branco – which, having watched this week in particular, should come as no surprise:

“I grew up on General Hospital. It is the show I’ve watched the most in my life. I started watching at eight years old, and religiously tuned in for 15 years. In recent years, I’ve drifted in and out, but I always kept tabs on it.

When ABC approached me, I was surprised, because this gig wasn’t something I sought out. I never considered writing for daytime TV, but when they called, it was perfect. It really was a dream come true. As a fan, it’s like being given the keys to the candy store. I think every fan head-writes a soap in their head at one point or another. And I actually got to do it. It was a huge thrill. And a lot of fun.”

We can tell, and we’re kind of thrilled.  Now, if only there were a few more writers out there like that who were actually allowed to write the soaps, there might be life left in this genre yet.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure he wrote that line on GH Day Shift last week when Robin mentioned her Catholic Grandmother Philomena.

Caps courtesy LiznJase.

Night Shift Season 2, Episodes 10, 11 and 12

Gold.  Gold I tell you! Weepy, teary gold.

This Scorpio family fan could not be happier.  Which sounds kind of wrong given that we’re talking about them playing out a major illness – and playing it in an uncomfortable, unglamorous way – but I can’t really put it any other way.

Watching all the Robert and Anna scenes in episodes 11 and 12, and then folding in the scenes with Robin, was just about as good as it gets.

The family chemistry between Tristan Rogers, Finola Hughes and Kimberly McCullough has always been fabulous – I would say that’s what you get for playing a family on and off for well over 20 years, but they had it right from the start – and yet has been so screwed over since Rogers and Hughes started making return visits to GH that it was sadly easy to ignore in recent times.  Anna became a buffoon, Robert a dead-beat dad, they shard virtually no scenes, and referred to each other with a ridiculous level of antagonism.  And Robin was stuck in the middle of all of this.

So I’m thrilled that Night Shift actually gets them, as I’d really hoped they would.  

As I’ve said around here before, I am a huge fan of Robert and Anna in any form of their pairing.  As a couple, as sparring partners, but most significantly as friends.  Through pretty much everything except maybe right at the very beginning, they’ve been shown as close friends.  It caused problems in their other relationships but was never contrived solely for the purposes of causing problems in those other relationships. Sure, they always needled and got frustrated and angry with each other, but underneath was that bond.  So I love, love, love that the NS crew remembered that and went back to it instead of that unnecessary (and plain wrong) antagonism.

And when Robert broke down in front of Anna and she climbed on to the bed to just hold him I dissolved completely.  

Once again, I can’t praise enough how much I really appreciate the fact that Robert is being shown as genuinely sick.  Not soap sick.  Genuinely struggling and ugly and uncomfortable.  The writers and Tristan Rogers – who for a long time really only needed to rely on charisma – have just been doing a spectacular job.  All of them have.

I’m now reaching the point where I’m so sad it will all be going away again in two episodes.

Night Shift Season 2, Episodes 7, 8 and 9

I will admit up front that the Scorpio family has always been one of my absolute favourites – I don’t know if it’s the Australian connection or not – but I suspect that even if that weren’t the case I would still be in love with the team at Night Shift and how they’ve been writing for them over recent weeks.

I have plenty of other issues with NS episodes 7-9, but the writing for Robert, Robin, Mac and Patrick, and the performances from their respective portrayers over those episodes had me laughing and crying and gleefully spotting accurate historical references in turn and all at once.  

More generally they’ve had me enjoying a soap in a way I’d almost forgotten was possible.

First they had Mac show up prior to his brother’s surgery and hang out with him, and keep hanging out supporting his surrogate daughter during the surgery, and then sleeping in a chair waiting for Robert to wake up.  That felt so real.  

I hardly expect realism all the time from soaps.  I hardly expect realism from the Scorpios, because aside from Robin from her mid-teens on, they’re hardly a typical family.  But boy can they deliver on realism when given the chance.  And NS has given them the chance.  From the little things like all of them waiting for Robert to wake up and Robin and Patrick sleeping on the fold-out couch having given Robert the bedroom to recuperate, to the much bigger moments.

Also on Mac, John J. York’s Australian accent may be sucky and variable, but the writers at least get how we speak, because “You know, I miss you all the time you wanker” sounded so authentic I had to press pause because I enjoyed it a bit too much.

Next they had those lovely scenes between Robin and Robert before the surgery which had me tearing up, I’m not afraid to admit. And tell me this doesn’t take you back 20+ years in the best possible way:

Given that this is a show about a hospital, the way they’ve shown Robert as being actually sick has also been great.  And real.  He’s not just unconscious or made up to look a bit wan, he’s actually in pain and struggling, and suffering necessary hospital humiliation. And all that works even more because Robert is such an active character.  Perhaps it hits close to home for me because my Dad was recently in hospital and I saw him going through similar things and rendered so comparatively helpless, so I can relate to this, but I think it works regardless of that personal experience. 

Then, of course, they moved on to some humour – a Scorpio staple.  Whether it’s Robert having the nurse evacuate the apartment, or  “How’d you get so short?” or basic sight gags, it balanced out well the necessary heaviness of the previous couple of episodes.

Finally, they flipped everything back, after the focus on Robert’s illness, with just a simple scene between Robert and Jagger with Robert expressing his feelings about the fact his daughter is also ill. Which pushed me straight back over the over the edge into tears.

Plus they mentioned that the Port Chuck Hotel burned down years ago.  Which is just bonus points after everything else.  As is the fact that despite the fact that under the normal rules of gestation Robin would have given birth about this week, at least now she looks close to appropriately pregnant.

The clan Scorpio has definitely made this show for me, and make up for the other failings easily.  However I also have to compliment the scenes in the support group with the real parents of autism sufferers.  Those worked really well, mainly because it felt real and not stilted or shoved in.  If I hadn’t know they were not actors, I wouldn’t have guessed.

As for the rest, well, whatever.  The Claire-Leo hook-up was certainly soapy, if nothing else, and I liked Claire’s reaction to discovering that Leo wasn’t as single as she had thought when she slept with him.  None of the other medical stories, nor the 4 kidney idiot rip-off story, grabbed me.  But nor did I hate any of them particularly.

So after the praise and the meh, I’ll just end on the moral of these three episodes: never, under any circumstances, put Antonio Sabato Jnr in a suit.  Doing so apparently renders him incapable of speaking, let alone “acting”, even to his usual mediocre but serviceable and very pretty standard.  In their defence, however, it appears that even the director noticed this and almost immediately put him back in a t-shirt even though technically Jagger was still “working” at the hospital.

Looking forward to the next episode and the upcoming appearance of Anna.

This is so much fun

Ah, Night Shift, you really are giving Guza & Company the finger in the most delightful way, aren’t you?

I have a proper post about recent episodes coming up shortly, but I just wanted to comment on the ongoing casting news in the larger context first.

Sure, NS Season 2 isn’t perfect and I have some issues with it – many of which could be fixed in the blink of an eye with the return of Original Recipe Leo, or at least Original Recipe Leo’s Personality – but really it’s done a good, enjoyable job of being fun soap mixed up with medical and personal drama.

One may recall that before the show started I was cautiously optimistic due to the promised presence of Robin and Patrick front and centre, the Hospital, Jagger, Robert, new writers and producers, and no mob.  Obviously the show has delivered all of that which puts it streets ahead of regular GH without even having to break a sweat.

But on top of that and the diverse cast, and the existence of a sense of humour, and the symbolic putting of the horrid Season 1 in a box by killing off Dr Ford in the opening minutes of the first episode, they’ve gone and pushed it right on over the top by including such generally unheard of things such as (a) proper use of history; (b) actual use of vets; and (c) placing characters in stories they should be in.

Therefore Monica, you know, the doctor, appears at the Hospital.  Who’d have thunk it was possible?

And in an even more stunning development, when Robert is in the hospital battling cancer he does/will in fact get visits from such people as his brother, his ex-wife, his best friend, and, in a gloriously fun development, his close friends Sean and Tiffany who left town 15 odd years ago.  I’m pretty sure Jack Wagner couldn’t make a cameo, but in the absence of that you couldn’t get any closer to getting the whole gang back together. 

And this from the spin-off of the show that couldn’t even manage a single scene between Laura and Robert the last time they were both in town and conscious at the same time.

I really am starting to get a sense of the Night Shift crew gleefully and deliberately flipping off the Day Shift crew and all their notions of training an audience and romance during wartime and the only vets allowed on air are Luke (part-time) and Sonny.  And even if they’re not actually doing that, they’re providing me with plenty of ammunition to do it on their behalf.

I don’t expect all of this to last, and don’t even advocate everyone from the 80s coming back to the main show in the long term in an all-out nostalgia-fest because things do have to evolve and be refreshed – not that swapping 70% of the current characters and 90% of the current stories for the 80s gang wouldn’t be outright refreshing right now – but this is fun.  And, I suspect, will be more than a poignant too. 

What more could one want from a soap?

Frankly, all they need now is for Bobbie to show up – in the Hospital(!) - and have an awkward conversation or two with Tiff about their children and I might actually have to shell out for the Season 2 DVDs.

Night Shift Season 2, Episodes 4, 5 and 6

I have been watching Night Shift as it airs, but for better and/or worse I didn’t have enough to say about episodes 4 and 5 to justify a post on their own. Plus I got distracted by various other things. That said, episode 6 started to deliver something more.

Over the various episodes the parallels going on have no longer been limited to just those between the patient of the week and the doctor(s) of the week.

In addition we now have pushy, inappropriate workplace semi-boyfriends. For a show that delivers Robin and Patrick in a workplace relationship which features public displays of affection – and elevator sex – but yet doesn’t feel wholly inappropriate, both Toussaint and Leo pushing and/or harassing women they’re barely in relationships with into broadcasting budding romances to the elevators of the world, with or without underwear, just annoys the hell out of me.

Speaking of one of those relationships, did they seriously have to dress Epiphany in a non-work outfit that strongly resembled a badly cut pair of scrubs? Yes, they did:

Speaking of the other, Saira’s going back and forth on Leo, treating him first like the pratt he is and then saying he’s “come around” when in fact he’s a frickin’ Neanderthal who has shown her not an ounce of respect also annoys me. That said, they are writing him as if he has 20 different personalities, so I don’t blame her for some confusion.

The idea of the Leo/Saira/Jagger triangle I am torn about. On the one hand I like that they built the Saira/Jagger element over time instead of throwing it up instantly. On the other hand I hate Leo and wish they’d played the Saira/Jagger element a lot earlier.

Night Shift Season 2, Episode 3

Best episode so far.

For several reasons.

First, there was far less of Leo and Saira, and if they hadn’t gone back to them and their clichéd anti-chemistry vortex at the end, the episode would have been even better.

Second, there were some nice scenes between Robin and Jagger, and Epiphany and Toussaint. Just quiet little scenes, but often its when they’re not trying so hard that things work best.

Next, of course, charming scenes between Robin and Patrick. Whether it’s bantering over the name of their daughter(!) to be, or dealing with her father’s illness, they’re just so easy together when they’re allowed to be without stupid, repetitive arguments.

As for Matilda, that might originally be French, but really, these days, it’s an Australian name, which they should have pointed out the appropriateness of given that Robin is half Australian. That said, the poor girl is going to wind up with some combination of Scorpio and Drake as a surname, so maybe they should go with something animalistic. Sparrow Drake Scorpio? Turtle Scorpio Drake? Joking. Joking.

Then, of course, we have the return of Robert Scorpio.

Ah. Robert in a giant muddled flashback, wonderful. Reference checking Sean, Luke, Faison, DVX, Anna. I don’t care if it’s just the writers showing off some knowledge of history to no particular ends. In fact, I’m kind of thrilled that the writers are showing off knowledge of history to no particular ends. It’s entirely refreshing.

Robert raiding the supply closet for makeshift explosives and trying to escape through ducts with a broken arm were pretty classic. And Kyle improvising spy dialogue was also amusing.

“He’s got enough morphine in him to knock out a small horse. I’m surprised he can get out of bed, let alone put a sentence together.”
“So you think he’s just high?”
“I hope so. Either that or he’s got one hell of a tolerance.”

I’m not quite sure how Robert having a seizure immediately gave him back his medium term memory, but it’s nice to have him back. And it was nice to let him have a proper, if brief, conversation with Robin pre-surgery. His interaction with Robin having discovered she was pregnant was of course in stark contrast to the way regular GH has Anna reacting. (I’m guessing they’re going to skip the grand opportunity of having Robert and Anna in town together by having Anna cross over to Night Shift, aren’t they? Okay, I take that bit back. And say yay! But I do not the next bit: So disappointing what they’ve done with those two – one of my all time favourite soap couples whether as friends, as partners or as an actual couple – when they’ve actually had the opportunity to interact over the last few years. Plus I’m getting Mac’s not going to show up either.)

Aside from that likelihood that the rest of his family won't show up to visit, I have no problem with the tumour diagnosis, by the way. One thing Night Shift (even series 1) has hands down over Day Shift, is that it’s about the hospital and I’d much rather Robert have a proper reason for being there than being sentenced to community service as a janitor or some such.

Other relatively minor points that I enjoyed more than I should just because I’m so used to the opposite on regular GH:

1. Jagger and Robert being portrayed as loving and doting, if flawed, fathers.

2. A “pregnant” patient appearing on the show and having no interaction whatsoever with Robin.

3. Robin did not try to scrub in on an inappropriate surgery as she usually would, and even admitted she would have been useless trying to operate on her father.

Though, of course they did have Leo the cardiologist treating an OB/Psych patient, and Jagger the vacationing FBI agent able to observe surgery as and when he pleased. So we can’t have everything.

Also, they really,really don’t know when to quit with the glaringly obvious patient/doctor parallels. When they have the patients as bickering roommates and the doctors as bickering roommates and then have them all bickering in the same room, there’s really a problem.

Oh, and fianlly, the editing was much better this week than the previous two weeks and that helped too. As I suspected and noted last week, they do much better telling a story over one night instead of trying to squeeze a week-long story into one episode.

So, the show is hardly perfect, but there was further improvement this week and I rather enjoyed it. And, unlike last year, all signs point to me making it beyond episode 3 of this season.

Night Shift – Season 2, Episode 2

This episode was a bit meh for me. Largely because there were things I liked and things I didn’t like and they kind of balanced each other out to wind up with meh.

The things I am liking – and naturally they are going to get shorter shrift than the things I am not liking – are the general interactions between the main cast. Patrick and Robin are having conflicts and a proper relationship. What they’ve set up with Claire and Kyle works really well, and I like the friendship between Robin and Saira (even if I have some problems with their scene this week, noted below). I also like the childish banter between the doctors Julian, precisely because it is so childish.

Also, Epiphany is ten times more likeable than on regular GH and the fact she gets to smile a bit shows just how Sonia Eddy can light up a scene. Though the stuff with Jagger was way too much.

Further, the kid playing Stone is cute.

Now, on to the things I don’t like, followed by the nitpicks.

The main thing I don’t like is the new Leo and everything that surrounds him. His battering attempts at “flirting” with Saira are really, really annoying. The whole set up of their relationship is clichéd in the extreme and there’s not enough chemistry between them to overcome that cliché. That Saira was suddenly revealing a crush on Leo to Robin was utterly unearned because up until that point he had been nothing but an asshat to her.

Then, they took a brief diversion into Easily Relates to Kids Leo, aka some semblance of what the character was like pre-personality transplant. But that only came off as existing to add a further layer of cliché to the Leo-Saira “relationship” (if they were doing the cliché right, she would have been the only one to see it).

Finally we divert into Issues Leo, who is no more attractive than any other kind and, frankly, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense anyway.

Poor Woe is Adopted Me Leo is of course symptomatic of the other main issue I have with the show, the hammer to the forehead patient-of-the-week/doctor’s personal lives analogies. I realise that they’re being “inspired” by Grey’s Anatomy on this front, but GA tells these stories with all the subtlety of a hammer over the anvil, and Night Shift doesn’t even have a 10th of that low level of subtlety.

Oh, and yeah, having a character referring to someone watching too much Grey’s Anatomy does not excuse the writers for watching too much Grey’s Anatomy. Oddly enough, I do, however, appreciate Claire’s anti mob comments about living down near the docks.

The next issue on my agenda is one that bridges the divide between “hate” and “nitpick”: the editing.

The squashing of the days together so they’re defined only by different coloured scrubs doesn’t quite work, especially not when Ms Irritable Bowel Syndrome was apparently in hospital for several days after being diagnosed and prescribed. I suspect this may have something to do with the transition from daytime, where there’s much more time to deal with things. They don’t quite seem to know how to make transitions when an episode takes place over a week instead of over a couple of hours.

Questions/nitpicks:

Where exactly are Jagger and Stone staying at Robin’s? In the closet baby’s room?

Why is Patrick, as the newly minted Chief of Staff, working the night shift?

So, all in all, meh. But, next week: Robert!