Soaps By Remote

Blogiversary

Today this blog is 3 years old.

Happy birthday blog.

Honestly, it feels like longer. 

I originally started the blog because I had started to get back into the soaps after a hiatus and didn't have time (and, in many cases, the fan-girl sensibility) to hang out on boards and chat about all the nutty goings on on the shows. That's still the case.  In fact the starting of the blog ironically coincided with me taking on a major new role at work that involved a lot more work and travel.  Which does interfere with soap watching from time to time, but also makes me appreciate coming home to curl up on the couch with the soaps and blog away.

There were a few other soap blogs around in July 2006, but absolutely nothing compared to the number there are now, which is such a cool thing.  I love this soap blog/site community that's grown up in the last few years and continues to grow and feed itself and build a soap community within the soap community.  It's supportive of the genre, it's generally pretty smart, and it keeps me in touch with what's going on on all the shows I might not be watching so that if there's something good I'm missing out on, I know to check it out.

Or, as with the moment, it gives me the hint that steering clear, even when I'm tempted, is still the best way to go. 

See, General Hospital has been doing a few things that make me think that perhaps it could be on an upswing.  More Alexis, getting back into great casting with Michael and Kristina, having Michael get back involved with the Quartermaines, ending the post-partum story with Robin, Martha Byrne, not actually killing Ric or turning him into a serial killer even if his send-off was virtually non-existent, remembering to throw in things like little uncomfortable scenes between Jason, Elizabeth, Lucky and Jake.  All of that sounds good.  But just as I know all of that from the blog-o-verse, I also know that there's still mob crap, not one but two pregnant women falling down the stairs, Sonny impregnating someone else, some rewritten history giving Luke another kid, Emily having a long-lost badly acting twin, and that Dante is about to maybe, finally, make an appearance.  But, more importantly than all of those negatives, and despite the potential of all of the good stuff above, it seems that everyone still watching is bored to tears.  And it was boredom that had me cease watching in the first place.

So I won't be tuning back in right now.  Thanks soap blogoverse.

On with year four.

Happy Holidays

Season's Greetings to all of you - whichever season you are (or aren't) celebrating.

Having finally completed what I think is the busiest pre-Christmas social season I've ever had - I even hit the never before reached "no more alcohol" threshold some time over the weekend - I'm now about to embark on that other tradition of the season: driving a lot as I go from one family meal to the next.  I'm kind of looking forward to it even if I am as stuffed an the proverbial turkey already.

Have a great time with your own friends and family over the next few days, stay safe, and I'll be back with some actual soap-related posts before the year is out.

Twittering

I'm trying out a new thing, using Twitter to post random soap thoughts between more substantive (in size if not content) entries.

Follow over there ----->

or at Twitter...

or not at all.

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…

Hair-o-Meter

For catch-up purposes, I’m introducing a new rating system around here: the Hair-o-Meter

How good or bad an element of the story, or its execution, or an episode is will be judged according to the follow scales.

For GH:

So fantastic it might be 1994, or 1981: Kate’s wonder-bob

Pretty good, but I’ve seen better, on the same show: Tracy’s new cut

Meh, neither great nor awful: Sam, pre-peroxide attack

Painful to watch: Maxie’s ill-advised hair extensions

So awful it might be summer 2005: Michael’s imitation of Jason’s hair-blight

The scale for Days is:

Really quite wonderful: Hope’s stylish yet interesting cut

Defying all expectations but not perfect: Marlena’s glossy locks

Meh; in need of a trim and tone down, but not horrid: Sami’s over-long, over-blonde hair

What were they thinking? Kate’s multi-coloured concoction

Ack! Colleen’s “hair”

In the coming days comments will be accompanied by the appropriate icon so you can identify where I think the relevant item sits on the scale. You are welcome, of course, to nominate your own designations.

Eliminate that Story!

Wish list time.

Doesn’t matter your show or shows, doesn’t matter which couples you love or hate, this one is for you. Soap staple stories that need to be retired for a good long while to give us all, including the writers who are stuck in rehash mode, a break.

more at twiigs.com...

That was one evil dog

There are many things about the GH chain of posts on the TWoP blog that are funny - the references to the hair, the capsule/footnotes review, the silly pleasure I get from not being the only one who can spout 25 year-old stories off the top of my head, my explaining the significance of the rotweiller to my computer screen - but the main one is that I'm now kicking myself for not including Felicia and Colton in the worst couples poll, which I had originally been inclned to do but then I got distracted and forgot. Dammit.

ETA, speaking of Grant Putnam's dog, this is my new favourite place.

So much time…

…wasted?

SoapHunks has posted their 100 Most Memorable Moments in Soap History list.

An interesting list. Otherwise known as I have watched way too many soaps over the years.

The first thing that struck me was that I have seen a hell of a lot of those memorable moments live.

I guess that’s aided by GH and Days, the shows I have obviously watched most over the years, getting the most coverage. But still, I’ve seen quite a number of others and now have reasonably definitive proof that by virtue of Y&R showing straight after Days here down under for decades, I watched a hell of a lot more of that show that I would have first thought.

A quick count leads me to believe that I saw about 34 of the 100 live (or as near live as you get down here, which is to say in the case of GH watching a first broadcast of early 80s GH seven or eight years later. Which was by no means a bad thing). Not via clip libraries or You Tube or internet nostalgia.

We’ll not even get into the ones I’ve seen by those means.

That’s a lot of time watching soaps. Especially as I took over a decade off watching Days, and chunky breaks from GH forced by both unavailability and inclination.

Perhaps having watched a third of the list live just means that I had good watching instincts.

Anyway, head on over there, because the list comes with clips! More time wasting ahead!

Soap Opera Thanksgiving 2007

It’s that time of the year again. The time when you eat too much turkey and do much shopping while down here I swelter in the early summer and recover from sweeps by getting a couple of pre-empted days off.

Last year I undertook a little exercise in giving thanks for the good things about soaps, and I see no reason not to turn that into an annual tradition.

So here are the things I’m thankful for in soaps now and in this year – they’re not quite as glowing as last year, I have to admit:

- the way they turned around both Maxie Jones and Chelsea Brady. A work of art in each case

- the General Hospital casting department (as opposed to the Night Shift casting department), again, and some more

- in an ass-backwards way, that Days is now doing a rape story that appears to mean something. As opposed to one they immediately regretted and have been trying to redact ever since. Not that I’m happy they’re doing a rape story at all, but at least this time they seem to be doing it right

- that The Young & the Restless and All My Children have sucked so hard in recent times that my viewing obligations have been much reduced

- that Lucky finally knows that he’s not Jake’s father and that they finally decided to do something with Lucky and Sam

- that whatever has happened since, Lucas stood by Sami unequivocally and married her when he discovered the truth about EJ and the babies. A minor soap miracle of the best and most satisfying kind

- that though they have questionable taste in men, GH is now populated with strong women characters who do not drive me insane: Alexis, Tracy, Kate, Robin, Diane

- GH’s first real time sweeps experiment. (Not such much on its second)

- 2007 edition Bo and Hope

- GH’s hot boy brigade: Logan, Patrick, Coop, Johnny, Lucky

- Nick and Chelsea, when they actually let them be together rather than fast forward their story mindlessly. Lulu and Logan, when they actually let them be together rather than fast forward their story mindlessly

- that the Night Shift story was so relatively detached from regular GH that I could stop watching and it had virtually no impact

Some of them are rather back-handed compliments, I agree, but such is the nature of things at the moment when Days is boring me quite a bit and GH is frustrating me even more.

What are you thankful for?

Peevey

One of my major soap pet peeves? The final scene reshoot.

The start of the episodes of both Days and GH on Monday did it, and combined to force me into print on the subject.

Phillip comes to visit Belle and Claire in hospital and offer to take them home and for ice cream and Belle calls him on it. Twice, delivered in a slightly different fashion and blocked completely differently. Once at the end of Friday, differently at the beginning of Monday.

Jason walks in on Sam, Lucky and Elizabeth fighting and announces that it's not Sam's truth to tell. Twice, delivered in a completely different fashion, blocked similarly but from a different POV, and with a bunch of different lines before he spat it out. Once at the end of Friday, differently at the beginning of Monday.

At least the scene on GH kept going to deliver the punchline, so to speak, while the Days scene ended in exactly the same place and therefore repeating it served no purpose whatsoever.

Anyway, that's my pet peeve for the day, now nicely aired so I can get on with the watching and/or fast-forwarding.