Soaps By Remote

With this glowing purple ring, I thee wed

As much as I’m reluctant to praise AMC which sucks on so many levels – though the promise of an Erica-Ryan hook-up is the kind of comedy gold viewers have been sarcastically predicting for years, thanks for throwing us a bone, AMC – I really enjoyed the Jake-Amanda wedding.  

Not just because I like the couple, but also because of how it was put together.  

Almost all soap weddings take place in one of two ways: months or years of couple angst finally overcome and followed by a big wedding prepared in what seems like less than 24 hours; or JP/Vegas marriage of convenience/drunkenness/animosity etc.
 
Jake and Amanda’s wedding didn’t break those rules in terms of time, but it turned the haste into an asset – and not even an unrealistic one.  

Having decided to get married – they might be in the midst of an angsty situation, but I loved the way she just said “yes” instead of um-ing and ah-ing before getting there – they did two things so right.  They (a) went straight out and got, dun, dun, a marriage licence (how practical of them); and (b) got Tad ordained on the internet in order to marry them in the living room in slightly dressy normal clothes.  

In this day and age, that’s what you do if you’re not going for the all out a year in the planning affair that most soap weddings usually look like.  You get a friend or family member ordained on the internet (diversion: remember the quaint old days when Northern Exposure’s Chris had to get ordained by responding to an ad in a magazine?), and have a simple ceremony.

There was no improbably big gown or huge floral arrangement, they didn’t have time to go out and buy rings, and it was all the sweeter for it.

Of course, this is a soap, so they still managed to have David show up – out of nowhere admittedly – so Opal could bash him over the head with the bouquet and they could wind up with this set of witnesses:


And it is a calm before the soap storm type of wedding, but such a cute one.  Not overdone, not ridiculous, just fun.  Loved it.


Though, wow, that Marissa is annoying, isn’t she?  Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given her sister, and mother.

Let Them Wear Cake

I associate The Young and the Restless with many positive things, but ‘fun’ isn’t generally the first word that comes to mind.  Except for this past week.  This past week was the very definition of great soapy fun.

With everything associated with Billy and Chloe’s wedding and the culmination (finally) of the Katherine/Marge identity story, I had a smile on my face.  I mean, come on, there was a cake fight!

They built up this great combination of elements.  A highly reluctant and even more charming groom.  A deluded but snarky bride.  The mother of the groom getting along with absolutely no one else, and vice versa.  The groom’s bratty niece/friend and smiling assassin of a brother/best man hanging about.  And the culmination of a lengthy DNA quest to undo months and years worth of story, but in a good way.

First there was the rehearsal dinner with zingers back and forth all over the place and the possibility of a food and/or fist fight breaking out at any moment if not for the room-silencing ability of the only comparatively sane person in the bunch, Ashley.  Of course, even she isn’t that sane given she’s pregnant by the Moustache.  But at least she actually stayed for the wedding.

Then we have the groom getting schtonkered and sleeping with the unwillingly lassoed, rapidly unravelling bridesmaid the night before the wedding, said bridesmaid being so hung over she looked like she was about to vomit on the bride and had to run out the of wedding, and Nikki showing up in a Pepto Bismol suit in the middle of the ceremony waving DNA results around.

With more than half the guests more interested in the DNA results than the wedding, the priest twisting the commitment knife as far as he possibly could, and the groom trying his best not to run away mid-ceremony, it was all kind of hilarious in the best soapy way.  And that was before this happened:

Kay throwing cake in now non-daughter Jill’s face and getting it right back was definitely fun.  And I’m pleased that they undid making them mother and daughter because I never fully understood why they made them mother and daughter in the first place.  Having the other key family and “family" members caught up in the fight, so it wasn’t just one on one, was also a positive.  I’m going to be interested to see how Jill copes have now isolated herself from almost everyone.

And then, of course, it’s all topped off with the return of the groom’s wife-cousin-non-wife-non-cousin, who really should have been granted substantially better lighting for her return so that she didn’t inadvertently look closer to Jill’s age than Billy’s.  Actually, I mainly think it’s Mac’s hair cut, which is quite aging.

Speaking of hair, it was a wedding, so we have to take a moment out for the outfits.  Esther got stuck with a giant floral tribute on her chest – which wasn’t as bad as it could be – Chloe’s otherwise cute outfit was ruined by that headband.  Her hair looked so much nicer when she was getting ready and didn’t have that thing in it.  And it should be noted that Colleen’s dress was no longer than the bottom of that photo.

But the real fashion focus for the event comes in Chloe’s apparent instinct for other things.  She may not know Sharon is sleeping with Billy, but she’s clearly got a sixth sense about something, because why else would she provide Sharon with a bridesmaid’s dress straight from the wardrobe of Carly Corinthos Jacks?

I’m long on the record with not liking Sharon, but even she does not deserve that monstrosity.  (Further proof that Ashley’s not all that sane: she called that dress elegant.  Ah, no.)

Can’t wait for this week.

Ending the Year on a High

Am I permitted to begin another post with a complaint about how much General Hospital frustrates me?  Well, it’s the end of the year and I see no need to deviate from the theme now.  

Today’s frustration is on the positive side.  You know, the “they clearly remember how to do this soap thing well, so why don’t they do it all the time?” kind.

The Christmas episode, Robin and Patrick’s wedding, even Sonny and Carly’s visit to Michael, were all so nicely done.   I don’t expect to see anything like it for at least another six months.

First, Christmas.  The Santa visit was neither here nor there, but what really counted was the families.  They remembered that the Quartermaines, the Scorpios and the Spencers – though where was Bobbie? - are the real families here, and having them spend Christmas together was sweet.  Using Maxie and Spinelli flitting between them, delivering “presents” from the past was a nice little link.  Even Max, Diane and Bernie was a great little diversion from mob life.

True, it’s disappointing that there was no Christmas at the hospital, but let’s face it, who would read the Christmas story?  Hell, who would even be able to dress up as an elf?  Having decimated all of that over the last couple of years, I’d rather they focus on the families like they did, than throw something together half-heartedly at the 10th floor nurse’s station.

Before getting on to the wedding, I do have to say that as much as I really don’t care about the mob stuff – I fast-forwarded through most of it aside from Ric and Claudia hooking up (yay), and catching word that the Russians are now just leaving town (of course they are, will we get the Yakuza as the next “threat”?) – it was really nice to see Carly and Sonny visiting Michael in the hospital.  Both because he shouldn’t just be forgotten, and whatever else I really do feel Carly as a mother most of the time, but also that it was Dylan Cash and not a wig on a stick. It made the whole thing so much more real and meaningful. That and how big both he and the actor who plays Morgan are getting.  

Then we have Robin and Patrick’s wedding.  Sure, not everyone who should have been there was there, but I’ll give them a pass on that because at least for the first wedding a few weeks back pretty much everyone was, and again no one was there this time that shouldn’t have been.

That aside, what this felt like to me was the paying of proper respect to Robin.  Robin is a unique character on soaps.  A character we have seen grow up on screen with the same actress since she was seven years old.  (I don’t think that exists elsewhere – though there are a couple of shows I don’t watch, of course – with, to my knowledge, only OLTL’s Starr being on the same path.)

A character who may have sometimes been written into that same shrewish corner GH has liked to write smart women into for many years now, but one who, overall, has been treated with a great deal of respect.  She’s had three substantial relationships, and has never been put on that typical soap wedding-go-round.  This is her first marriage, it counts, and it was so pleasing to see it treated as such.

The vows were sweet without being saccharine, the Scorpio family scenes were perfect, the flashbacks were charming and appropriate, the dress was beautiful, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.  I especially loved the wide-eyed “oh my, it’s real” looks from Robin and Patrick when they were pronounced married.  I couldn’t have wanted much more.

It’s kind of nice (and surprising) to leave the year on a positive.  So, Happy New Year everyone. May 2009 be a much better soap year.

And now I'm off to another wedding, my brother's, which will probably contain fewer flashbacks, but hopefully be as sweet.

Caps courtesy Laurie and LiznJase.

Preview

In a preview of what's coming next:  I love Robin's dress

I Don't

So it turns out I needed a week off from soaps. And last week was it. So I’m a week behind on GH and two weeks behind on Days, but I’m now soap-refreshed again.

I reach this conclusion because while standing in the shower this morning my mind started drifting in a soapy direction without prompting. Other than the prompting of actually using soap, of course.

What occurred to me during this diversion was this question: where are the marriages?

Perhaps the biggest of all soap traditions is that a couple battles through trials and tribulations to finally get together and get married. Usually followed rapidly by a child and equally rapidly by a divorce. And often a second marriage.

I am not saying that that’s necessarily a good thing, especially when it results in multiple marriages for the same couple in a manner that fast comes to look like (a) laziness; (b) a series of ratings stunts; or (c) all of the above.

It becomes ridiculous pretty quickly. How many times were All My Children’s Tad and Dixie married? Three between 1989 and 2002. And adult children with bad hair notwithstanding, realistically Dixie isn’t even 40 yet six years after the last divorce (and she’s less likely to be dead-by-pancakes by the minute).

With the annoying exception of the four times married Carly and Sonny, General Hospital has generally steered away from the multiple same couple marriage roundabout over the years. But even with that rider, it seems unusual to look around the show’s whole gigantic canvas and find that there are currently only two married couples in Port Charles: Jax and Carly and the currently separated Luke and Tracy.

I don’t think I’m missing anyone am I?

Doesn’t that seem bizarre? Perhaps it’s having two of the most married people in town in Jax (5 marriage plus 1 with pseudo-wife Brenda) and Carly (7 marriages) married to each other that’s keeping the marriage rate down.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem, but I find it interesting that with all the other soap traditions GH has eschewed in recent years (romance, heroes who are actually heroes, respecting its primarily female audience), one of them seems to be marriage.

Over at Days this issue is more about just dodging clarifying certain marital relationships. Steve and Kayla, for example. They act and talk as if they are married but there’s no way they can be, is there? He died over 15 years ago in a manner that was questioned by no one but the privy-to-the-coffin-swap audience, but which must have had a death certificate attached. Therefore, no longer married. And yet the writers have not taken the opportunity to address this with a third wedding for the super couple. One can only ask whether that will happen post-Ava. Similar issues apply to John and Marlena (though they’ve been married enough already).

Beyond that, Days is brimming with actually married couples in comparison to GH: Bo and Hope, Maggie and the soon to no longer be off-screen Mickey (I smell a divorce coming on), the mostly off-screen Doug and Julie, the currently-of-convenience EJ and Sami, the sailing away Shawn and Belle (if they hadn’t sailed, their marriage would have), technically Chloe and the off-screen Brady, and Lexie and Abe.

In fact Days has a really good mix of the type of marriages I would hope for in watching a soap. The young and doomed to several more goes around. The older solid, earned their long term happiness marriages. The overcome their trials and tribulations and now having fun middle-aged marriages. The sparky marriage of convenience.

So why is GH so different right now? Is it just an anomaly? An outcome of killing off marriage maniac Courtney? Or is it a particular decision? GH has always been wary about marrying off a few characters in particular. Brenda, who got so close but never actually had a genuine marriage in her whole run on the show – her annulled marriage of really poor disguise with Jason was her only valid ceremony. Jason himself. He lived with Robin for some time, Sam for longer, but the only person other than Brenda that he actually married was Courtney and that was retconned as invalid pretty damn quickly. Is there another show on which someone like Robin Scorpio, who has been on the show since age 7 and had three major loves, would have never been engaged, let alone married?

But even with that heritage, the current dearth of marriages in Port Charles does seem to stick out. And doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future. Can you honestly see weddings in the immediate future of Sonny and Kate, Jason and Elizabeth, Robin and Patrick, or Lucky and Sam? I can’t. Can you see the ground laid for a sparkling marriage of convenience turning to something more like Alexis’s marriages to Jax and then Ric? I can’t. Can you see any of our young ingénues entering into an ill-fated first union? They’re too busy keeping Lulu available for everyone, it doesn’t seem like Maxie’s style, and they killed everyone else off, so I can’t see it there either.

As I said, I don’t necessarily think that this is a bad thing, but I do wonder how this state of affairs (and affairs, and lack of affairs) has come about.

Does the lack of marriages mean that the show values them more? That is, fewer couples wind up getting married so they really have to earn their marriages, rather than weddings at the drop of the hat followed by divorces with equal speed and second weddings that then have less value. It might well be, especially looking at the recent exceptions that prove the rule, Sonny and Carly’s multiple and increasingly stupid marriages, and Lucky and Elizabeth’s divorce followed by hugely misguided (for the writers and the characters) second marriage and ultra-rapid divorce. But the flipside is that a lot of couples miss out on that ultimate, in traditional soap terms, pay-off. Again, Brenda never actually married either of the other axis’ of the Best Soap Triangle Ever, and Alexis may have married both Jax and Ric, but she never actually married Ned.

On the Days side, a super couple must get married at least twice and then nothing will ultimately put them asunder. To the point, until the reinvention of Bo and Hope last year, of utter predictability and boredom.

Until that recent upsurge with Days ceasing to write in a marriage=death manner – perhaps Hogan Sheffer’s best legacy – I would have automatically come down on the GH side of the equation, but now I’m not so sure. On any number of levels I would certainly like to see GH try and write a long term marriage which is interesting but largely happy in the manner of Bo and Hope. Though I just don’t see where that’s going to come from right now in Port Charles given there are currently only two possible candidates and one of them features the most married characters in town and the other features characters in their 60s so it's surprisingly that they’re written for at all.

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It’s a Nice Day for a Black Wedding

Say whatever else you will about her, Sami can definitely choose a wedding dress:

Of course, nothing so complimentary could be said of blanket-wearing Hope, Kayla of the camp military or Kate of the WTF?

Caps courtesy Days2 and NBC.

Sami Roberts (Updated)

The next in our series of wedding posts is, of course, Samantha Gene Brady Reed Walker (hey, she did actually manage to get married a couple of times before) who has finally, finally, added Roberts to her name.

This wedding was so heavily promoted and product-placed that I actually never had a second of doubt that the actual marriage part of the wedding would take place this time around. Which also makes the identification of the dress designer much easier. Sami’s dress was by Monique Lhuillier. I’m not sure about Chelsea’s bridesmaid dress, but it might well have been as well.

Say what you will about Sami, she can certainly wear a wedding dress.

Official photos from NBC, caps from the lovely Sheryl.

Carly Jacks

Now that everyone has dealt with the fact that they did indeed kill off Alan Quartermaine (in a manner of speaking), and that there was obviously no reason for it, the most common search queries that bring people to this site have returned to their normal balance. That is:

1. “Julie Pinson pregnant”. Answer: still don’t know, but increasingly don’t think so given she’d probably be roughly the size of a house by now if she had been pregnant when I first raised the question.

And

2. “[insert name of soap character here] wedding dress”. Answer: a brand new category!

Around here we do nothing if not aim to please our random web surfing audience and so while I cannot promise to always be complimentary – you didn’t want anyway that did you? – from now (ok, the week before last) on, the soap wedding dresses I see will get a post if I can find some pretty (or ugly) pictures.

So, we will begin with the April 2007 wedding in which Caroline “Carly” Benson (Roberts) (Spencer) Quartermaine Corinthos Corinthos Corinthos Alcazar Corinthos added Jacks to her name in a strapless gown that was actually quite classy and provided her with more breast support than her usual wardrobe. Thankfully.

Carly had no bridesmaids because she unsurprisingly has no female friends, and I won’t further assail you with photos of her best person’s helmet hair.