Live Blogging the BnB - 8/20/08 (Spoiler Alert)

WOW I love the explosive chemistry between Marcus and Owen.  It’s the best thing that’s happened on this show in a while.  Marcus, defending his mother… Owen, hoping to defile her.  The two men at war.

Update 1:  Ridge believes he’s wrong about Donna.  Drags the Forrester Sibs along with him to forgive her.  Soon, he’ll find out he’s right.  Love that.

Update 2:  Ruh roh, Bridget’s wearing glasses… must mean she’s smart.  I hate it when soaps do something so silly.  Women can’t be smart without a lab coat and a pair of wire rims?

Update 3:  Damn you, Marcus, you almost make me want to root for your mother… and then she speaks.  Good going there, Donna.  Tell Owen everything.

The spoilers suggest that Pam is the guilty party and that Owen will be free and clear of trying harming Eric.  Too bad.  It would be interesting if Pam was falsely accused and the family later learns that Owen WAS the guilty party.  Otherwise?  Nothing he’s done so far makes sense.

Hey, whatever happened to those tight sweaters WH’s Thorne use to wear?  Marcus and Owen are sporting a little too much fabric, these days. 

LOVE the Forrester sibs.

Good work so far, writers.

Guiding Light: Redeeming “G”

Kill me.  KILL ME NOW!  This blog could be closed out in just 10 short words: The man is an unrepentant killer.  There is no redemption!

How insulting is the idea that somehow, Daisy and Grady will be happy together if they could only ‘just make up’ for what they’ve done to Tammy (uh, yeah, that would be mowing her down with a two ton vehicle - causing her death)?  How insulting is it that we’re to believe that they’ll drag the rest of the Peapack-Springfield into their light-hearted post-murder merry making?  Their ‘pure love’ will show the town of Peapack-Springfield that anything is possible.  I’ll concede the point, eventually the town will probably cave in and forgive ’G’.  Why?  Because they’re fictional and have no choice.  The writers will force G ladden happiness on them.

For many of us with free will, this storyline is crap from start to finish. I didn’t like Tammy, not even a little, and I can’t stand this storyline.  Cyrus thinks that having G fix Cassie’s doorknob is a good idea?  Stupid, utterly utterly stupid.  That Cassie didn’t throw Cyrus out immediately?  Stupid   Whatever the writers wanted the viewers to take away from the scene, I was left wondering why Cassie didn’t call Josh back, or ask Jeffrey to fix the lock, why couldn’t she call a locksmith?  Accept the friendship of a man who wants you to forgive and embrace the man who killed your daughter?  This just a day after the man escaped prosecution because his girlfriend, her niece, lied on the stand to protect him.  Cassie’s wound is pretty fresh and Cyrus thinks having Grady in Cassie’s home is a good idea?

If this storyline was about learning to forgive and how it benefits the person who releases the anger and hatred I could almost tolerate it.  It’s not.  It’s about a half-baked romance between two mixed up people whose constant clinging to the role of ‘outsider’ is starting to grate on fans.  Daisy is an outsider only because she chooses to be.  For every person who has disappointed her, she has another three or four who are willing to walk through fire as proof of their love for her.  Grady is an outsider because he chose to accept money to terrorize women and accepted a  murder for hire assignment meant for Jonathan.  I just can’t take one more scene in which they paint themselves as the world’s greatest victims.

This storyline is testing the sanity of three groups:  The characters - who are looking pretty bat crap crazy, the viewers - who are looking pretty fatigued and tired of the insanity in the writing, and the writers (see ‘the characters’).

The only thing worse than Daisy and G’s relationship and redemption is the Rafe/Daisy/G triangle coming up.  Fellow GL viewers, we must have shared some pretty mucked up past life karma to be stuck with the show’s downward spiral, right now.

The devil (in high heels) made him do it

I was torn between the above title and this one: “The Storyline We’re Still Waiting For”  (about Nick and Jackie Marone, that is).

Well played, BnB writers, well played!  I can’t imagine that there’s one Bridge Forrester fan out there who isn’t fuming right now, wondering if it’s wrong to want to a ficitional character to be castrated!  Nick Marone 0s certainly a deserving target, if it’s not.  The evidence, you ask?  If you’re not a BnB viewer, the man is talking about a one night stand he had with his wife’s aunt - one he’s been lying about since it happened:

How does the jerk wad follow that up?  With THIS (Thanks, TVMegasite, for the transcript):

Katie: I don’t care if it’s wrong. I can’t regret the fact that I’m having your baby.

Nick: Well, if it’s wrong, then I’m guilty, too.

Katie: You really mean that?

Nick: (Sighs) I’d be lying if I didn’t say this confused me at first. (Clears throat) you know, I–

Nick: It should have felt wrong to me, and it didn’T. And I should have feared all the complications that we now face, and I didn’T. I was wondering why. (Laughs) why? You know, when you were on that island sick, and I was there with you… (sighs) my prayer was that before you died, you’d know how I felt.

Can someone tell me how Katie, pimping a Bridget-Nick reunion to Nick, drinking scotch and putting a puzzle together, turned into a deep and abiding love between these two?  They’ve gone from a sibling-like relationship to soul mates in about two hours worth of scenes.  That’s moving incredibly fast, even for the BnB.  Hold on to your last meal, readers, you may lose it if you continue read on:

Nick: So now we’re there. And I hope that you can feel that I love you.

Katie: (Sniffles)

Katie: (Sighs)

Nick: I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.

Katie: You haven’T. You haven’T. I-I think you just said that you love me, and I– I love you, too. You must know that. That’s why this baby is so precious, is so important to me, because–because it’s yours. It’s ours. It’s the one thing I have that we share, and– only we can’T.

Nick: But we have to. This baby’s not going away. You know that.

Katie: (Sighs) but what about everything else–

Nick: No, no, no, no. No “buts” about it. Listen to me. This child was conceived in the most magical moment. And this baby is gonna be amazing. This child is gonna be so special and bring so much joy into the world, because of love, because it was conceived in the deepest, most honest form of love, and that’s what he’ll know.

Katie: I hear what you’re saying, and I know it’s true, and to hear those words coming out of your mouth– they bring me so much joy. I never in my wildest dreams ever thought that I would hear you say those things to me. I feel like I’m dreaming. But I know I’m not. I know I’m gonna have to wake up. This is just all so confusing. I-I don’t know what I’m allowed to feel. I don’t know if I’m allowed to be happy or excited. Help me, nick. Help me. Because a part of me hates myself for this.

And then there’s this:

Katie: You’ve pledged your life to bridget.

Nick: I have.

Katie: And she deserves all of you.

Nick: She deserves to have the best of me, and if I can’t give her that–

Katie: You’re happy with her. I know. I’ve seen you together.

Nick: We are.

Katie: (Sighs) this is just so complicated.

The reason it would be hard for Bridget to have the ‘best’ of Nick is that there is no ‘BEST” of Nick.  There’s bad… worse… and what a freakin’ waste of human DNA (even fictional DNA)

The writers are still skimming the surface with this guy.  All of his emotions are shallow. He wants to be Ridge Forrester and possess all Ridge has (including his family’s company, the woman he loves, his children).  He’s just met Katie, and suddenly he’s deeply in love with her, to the point of denying Bridget - a woman he’s known and ‘loved’ for years.  The mother of his first child.  He mourned his dead child (Nicole) - in his words, but never mentioned her while in bed with the dead child’s grandmother shortly after Nicole was buried.  He loved Taylor more than he’d loved before, or so he led her to believe, and was back to chasing Brooke and leading a double life when it was revealed that hers was the donor of the egg used to conceive his child with Taylor.

Easy to see how the man made it to the top of the Manwhore list.  When does it END!?!?!?

If the BnB ever returns to what made daytime great there has to be some focus on the way the Marone family uses sex as a way of life.  Jackie explained that ‘pride’ made her turn to prostitution to raise her child, instead of working or going on welfare.  If Jackie was a woman with no skills and without an education, that might have made sense.  There has to be more to it.   I’m not sure if the devil in high heels is Jackie, whose DNA flows through the pants-dropper’s veins, or if it’s about Nick spewing of the insta-love-and-destiny bullcrap as a way of excusing his actions.  SHE! did it.  SHE! made him fall in love - that’s why he continues to betray the women who’ve loved him and given him their full hearts. 

LOSER!

Whatever it is this mother-son have in common, it’s hurtful and painful to the people around them.  They’ve spent more time justifying their sexually inappropriate behaviors (too numerous to name for non BnB viewers) than trying to understand them.  The superficiality is killing both characters, Nick more quickly than Jackie, obviously.

Sooner or later, writers will have to explain to fans what the point is of keeping Nick around.  Nick will surely drop trou for the next Logan-Forrester woman he spends five minutes alone with - it’s his nature.  What else is there for him to do?  The character has never fit in on canvas and every time the show was redirected (characters’ histories changed, couples’ histories changed, the show’s focus changed) to shoehorn him in, it resulted in a disaster in the ratings. 

I’d only thought I lost my patience with this character, before.  I KNOW I have now.  He’s on an endless loop of one night stands, and impregnating the show’s cast.   There’s nothing left to see here, writers.  Nothing left to see.  <sigh>

If loving effed up characters is wrong

…I don’t wanna be right.  There are some characters so crazy and/or so outrageous that I can’t help loving them. Of course, I wonder about that dark dark place my imagination retires to if I find such a sense of affinity with these characters, but EH!

I’d worry about it more - if I had the time. Right now, I’m too busy watching:

1. Days Of Our Lives. Thank YOU ‘John Black’… I mean it. NuBlack has kept me strangely fascinated. I literally stare at the guy when he’s on screen. I’m waiting for the punchline, for his portrayer to step out of character and scream ‘GOTCHA’!!! I couldn’t figure out why that raspy whispery whacked out voice he uses these days is so familiar. I’ve finally figured it out. Fans of the Jim Carrey film, ‘Me, Myself, and Irene’ REJOICE! “Hank” has made his way to daytime TV:

As much as I love the ‘pre-memory- loss’ John Black, post-memory- loss John Black is funny and I don’t care whether he means to be or not. I can’t say that I’ll miss him when he goes, but I will continue to get a good chuckle out of him while he’s around.

2. Is it wrong to root for the bitch goddesses of daytime? I so, why does it feel so good? I love the YnR’s Chloe! Not since the golden era of Sheila Carter has a sociopath made daytime worth watching again. I’m actually tuning in to the YnR, lately, because of her! By ‘tuning in to the YnR’, I mean watching on the days I know Chloe will be on. The look on Lily’s face, when she found out that Cane wasn’t excluded as the father of Chloe’s child made the lie almost worth the excruciating pain I feel whenever Lily is on. It’s not just that Chloe lies with such ease, it’s that she enjoys it so much and that she’s not repetant. Gotta’ love a manipulating schemer who torments the town’s priss and doesn’t lose a night’s sleep over it. I consider Chloe the writers’ gift, to me… ok, maybe not just to ME, but sometimes it feels like such a gift.

3. One Life to Live - Tess Brennan. Still lovin’ OLTL but the writers really have to get on the stick with the Tess story. Tess is the ‘Amped’ version of the YnR’s Chloe. Faking a baby’s daddy (as Chloe has done), taking a life, making French Toast…MEH… it’s all the same for Miss Tess. The problem is that with the heavy focus on Mendorra, the creepy faux friendship with Marty and Todd, Bo/Rex’s time travel, and the painstakingly boring teen pregnancy storyline with Starr and Cole, and there won’t be much of charismatic Tess’ storyline to care about. The writers have made the mistake, in my opinion, of waiting too long to tie this storyline together.

They’ve become bored with Tess it seems, as evidenced by the carelessness of the plot. It’s almost incomprehensible that the good townfolk of Llanview haven’t figured things out, yet. I liked Tess the first time around, the one who was too clever to leave so many easily deciphered clues. Tess’ revenge now feels like ‘filler’, to cover the down time in the above-mentioned storylines. Then again, maybe it’s the feeling the writers want us to have - to move beyond the revenge storyline and to have us root for Jess’ return so that she can ‘forgive’ Nat and Jared and all will become one big happy family. Great, but where’s the fun in that? For those of us who’ve missed Tess, I’ve got three words for the writers: Ain’t.Gonna.Happen. We want DRAMA… and for whatever reason, the writers have been coming up short on getting it to us.

4. Guiding Light - Alan “I see dead people’ Spaulding. While I first thought Alan’s visions were fake, and that he was using Gus’ memory to manipulate those around him, I suddenly like the idea that Alan believes in his visions. Even more? how incredibly self-serving is it that Alan believes that Gus is guiding him to pimp the wealthy women of Springfield into helping him reclaim his company? Did anyone else cringe when Alan threatened Bill Lewis with his league of wealthy women believers? EGADS!

Sure, Gus - who wanted as little to do with Alan as possible, now wants Alan to take his ‘visions’ and use them to return to power at Spaulding Enterprises (Maximus my arse). Nah, Gus wouldn’t mind that Alan used his memory to keep himself out of prison. No siree. It wouldn’t have bothered Gus at all that Alan manipulated a teen-aged girl who is as dumb as a box of hair into lying on the witness stand. Nope! Alan is such a miserable bastard. Thank the soapgods that he’s BACK.

Warm, fuzzy, platitude spewing Alan was giving me hives.
5. All My Children - Adam Chandler. In almost ANY battle between Tad Martin and any other soul, it’s Tad all the way for me. That is, except when it comes to Adam. I despise the Carey women, sometimes I love to hate them, but mostly, I cannot tolerate them. And yet Adam Chandler, the resident heartless, soulless psychotic goon that he is, makes me like Krystal. There’s something about them, when they’re together, that makes me want to cheer them on.

I’d believed, when they first got together, that Krystal would take Adam for all he was worth and end up with half of his fortune. Instead the writers ruined what could have been an incredibly hot villainous couple and turned Crystal into Tad’s fawning stepford wife. With Adam, Krystal is always on that border between fun and exciting, and terribly naughty. I’ve always said that I’d never forgive Adam every time he crossed the line: having Dixie institutionalized, his treatment of Stuart, the way he’s driven his children away, his manipulation of JR, secretly impregnating Liza, and making me enjoy Krystal scenes. I forgive him every time. Now he has me rooting AGAINST Tad and hoping Krystal leaves him to be with Adam again. OY!

Guiding Light leading daytime’s echo chamber

Ellen Wheeler wants to Save Daytime (Thanks LizDC at the Official GL board for posting the link.  There are so many issues with this article, but this line in particular caught my eye:

The stereotypical soap viewer is the older housewife, but the shows have historically picked up a lot of fans on college campuses. With its face-lift, Guiding Light is banking on pulling in a whole new generation of viewers. “I do think if you were flipping through the channels you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, this is a soap opera, I’m not going to stop,’ ” says Wheeler. “You wouldn’t know what it was.”

Here’s the problem… most of us STILL don’t seem to know what GL is.  The show bears little to no resemblance to the GL of even a decade ago.  It has little resemblance to a reality show. It feels more as if the show is a documentary about insane people blowing around some small town pretending they’re soap characters.  I miss daytime.  The REAL daytime.  I began watching daytime with my grandmother - anyone I’ve every spoken to about watching soaps began watching with one of those ’stereotypically older viewers’ that daytime now laments and discounts.

Those S.O.V’s were daytime’s best kept secret - their most reliable recruiting tool.  I loved almost all daytime storylines, and didn’t care if there were hormonal teens or hot young adults on air.  I loved the family interactions interspersed with outrageous behavior (which did not include: demonic possession, time travel, cloned dead wives, space travel, alien life forms, witches, living dolls, or much of any of the other much which has creeped into daytime storytelling.  If daytime fans wanted that, Dark Shadows would still be on air.)

Outrageous behavior,  in the early days, was ’stealing’ a husband or wife, or DAYS’ Julie stealing from department stores.  It’s hard to believe how the definition of outrageous has changed.

The interviewer goes on to add:

The actors generally approve of the reality-style shooting, which leads to a fresher kind of acting. “It’s less like shooting a play,” says Murray Bartlett, who plays Cyrus the Australian jewel thief. “Now you can lose yourself in the environment. It feels more intimate, and you can hopefully be more subtle.”

Could someone reconcile the writer’s (not the actor’s) comment with this:

Carolyn: Can you give me an example of what you’re talking about?

Actor: Getting changed in the backseat of a car without the windows tinted on a busy street while trying to run lines with the actor in the car with you, because you don’t have any other time to rehearse. Holding your own lights. Stuff that’s just laughable. And they want a good product from this? The system is there for a reason, so people are taken advantage of and exploited. We all need to have our jobs respected…  Read the full transcript HERE

How is it that the soap press can tell what a complete disaster filming in Peapack is but the author of this article sells the ‘new’ GL as inventive?  The author can’t be a fan of daytime.  I know daytime is considered fluff but I wish those outside the genre would ask some seriously tough quesions of soaps Executive Producers and Writers.  Doing a puff piece on it is a waste of time and leaves fans feeling even MORE frustrated.

Where is the discussion about RPG (Gus) and BE (Harley) and the others (like Laura Wright, ex-Cassie) who have jumped ship because of low morale after the Wheeler team took over?  Where are the comments about the actors who are afraid of speaking up out of fear or retaliation? Why haven’t there been any comments that the ratings keep sinking, and fast, even for the new format? 

Everything about daytime is superficial now.  That includes the articles written about daytime.  GL’s Bartlett may indeed enjoy the new filming setting, at least until the fall chill and winter months set in.  I’m waiting to see what the show does then.  If the soap press, who is presumably closer to the actors and actually talks to more of them, is to be believed, all is not well in the city and state of Peapack, New Jersey. 

The interviewer talked with Wheeler about the storylines she didn’t like and got rid of but you didn’t ask her about the GL history she knows, loves, and what has she done to try to build on what once worked, what she’d like to do to return to the style and level of writing that kept fans tuned in.  If Wheeler’s done so and I’ve missed it, someone let me know!  What I also find interesting is that daytime execs use to ‘blame OJ’ (or the OJ trial) for the decline of soap ratings.  Mechling’s article goes all the way back to the 1992 introduction of MTV’s ‘Real World’. 

Well hells bells, COPS was introduced in 1989, Springer took the air in 1991, what other ‘reality’ show dealing with human relationships can we blame?  Enough with the excuses.  The problem for daytime, in my opinion, is that writers and producers have spent more time focusing on gimmicks.  They’ve decided that the familial relationships developed with longtime favorite characters were ‘too old-fashioned’.  They’ve killed off both. 

Daytime is notorious for following bad leads (both inside and outside of the genre) - Marlena’s possession on DOOL and then the introduction of ‘Passions’ has turned into a host of ’supernatural’ storylines across daytime for some time and has only recently seemingly ended.  Siblings and parents share lovers more intimately and often than ever before.  Misattributed paternities are the norm, not the exception, and with such, there’s no longer a stigma on dating someone who was once your father or brother (Ridge and Bridget, BnB). 

Oh.Snap!  Great!  Now I’m wondering why I’m still watching daytime.  I have to go and consider the point… I’ll see you next blog… maybe…

Why the BnB remains my favorite soap

There are three things you can count on with The Bold and The Beautiful:

1.  Anyone close to death (their own or that of someone they care about)  will also be incredibly horny and will feel the ‘need’ to have sex before death occurs.  It’s post the death-that-never-happen sex that usually produces a child.  Fans are still waiting to find out where Taylor’s post-death-that-never-happened child is.  She seems to be the only person who has escaped the happening.  Or has she?

2.  If there’s a dying and/or vulnerable woman, Nick Marone is going to boink her for all he’s worth - which is not much.  It’s what he does. 

• Felicia Forrester?  Cancer patient.
• Brooke Logan?  Suicidal
• Taylor Hayes?  Recovering from alcohol addiction
• Bridget Forrester?  Broken heart
• Katie Logan?  Dying heart transplant patient.

3.  This show manages to mangle and mash the concepts of God, character’s sexual behavior, and ‘heavenly blessings’ more than any other soap in the history of daytime.  I don’t know what guilt complexes the writers have about the show they bring to air, but I could probably own Trump towers if I had a dollar for each time a character referenced God or some blessed miracle event.  God, in the soap world,  blesses them with someone else’s husband/wife, supports their betrayals of spouses and children, kills off inconvenient babies in utero, and supports the creation of ’love children’ with a spouse’s family member.  Daytime’s most salacious daytime show is also its most “religious”, and frankly, that creeps me out.

And still, for as much as I hate it, I love the soap too.

Overall, daytime writers and producers continue using the old soap titles, but produce shows that  have nothing to do with the shows we remember from the soap’s glory days. 

Daytime execs swap out beloved legacy characters in a heartbeat for younger, cheaper-to-pay, fashion models who are using the genre as a ’stepping stone’.  Legacy characters, as the ultimate insult to fans, are sometimes used to introduce the newbies, before disappearing. Not The Bold and The Beautiful - for as much as BnB fans may hate the actions of some of their favorite legacy characters, at least they see them!

This show began with its core four (Susan Flannery’s Stephanie Douglas Forrester, Katherine Kelly Lang’s Brooke Logan (Forrester, Ronn Moss’s Ridge Forrester, John McCook’s Eric Forrester).  The core four continue to remain the show’s main attraction.

A for the rest of daytime, I barely recognize most of it.   Whatever happened to the old adage that you have to spend money to make it?  Fans are tired of stunt casting and stunt reappearances of beloved favorite legacy characters for short periods of time, often during sweeps (a la Genie Francis’ Laura Spencer, who’ll make another brief appearance soon). 

Spend the money on the sets - if one more person in Springfield/Peapack moves into Olivia’s hotel, I’m out of the GL fanbase.  I can’t take the dark walls and the ’sameness’ of the rooms.  Learn a lesson from the YnR, which still has so many rich sets.  Why can’t soaps filmed in the same location share sets (remodeling them as needed whenever they’re used)?  Trade off?  Do SOMETHING people!

Spend the money on the actors and legacy characters we care about (Where the hell is Scott Bryce’s Craig Montgomery, ATWT?).

Spend the money and hire writers who aren’t bored, and stuck repeating their last best storylines, making daytime far too repetitve. 

Stop with the misogyny, the subtle racism, the homophobia. 

Stop killing off the characters we grew up loving, and giving us characters our children don’t want to watch.

Stop turning our favorite characters (even the remaining legacy characters) into morons when you want to introduce new characters — even the BnB is guilty of this problem, turning Brooke Logan into a fool for worthless men like Nick Marone, and Deacon Sharpe before him.

We don’t want stunts, explosions, possessions, and other storylines too hokey for even the Sci Fi channel to take seriously.  We want emotional investment and big payoffs, events that leave us talking long after the episode has aired.

Stop telling us how great your storylines are, either off screen through the soap mags, or onscreen by using the characters.  Write storylines we like and we’ll tell YOU that, by tuning in.  Every time you promise something great, and let us down, we stop believing you the next time you make an empty promise.

The Bold and The Beautiful doesn’t get it right, every time, but seeing familiar faces and having characters who are more often, than not, consistent,  is almost enough for me.

Live blogging the BnB - 8/8/08

What’s left to say?  Nick and Katie have me losing my lunch.

I’m feeling sorry for Ridge - and I’d rather see Stephanie pull the plug on ‘hornybear’ (thanks to the OB poster who gave Eric the nickname.

Update1:  It’s REALLY easy for your husband to tell you that your marriage is safe and the two of you can get through anything, when HE alone knows what you have to get through… Why couldn’t Nick just tell Bridget that he slept with her aunt and got her pregnant?  What a coward.

Update2:  Ridge unplugging Eric’s respirator would have made more sense, if the writers hadn’t wasted so much of this show focusing on Nick and his Aunt/mistress.  Now?  It just feels as if it’s coming out of nowhere.

EH!  RM did a magnificent job, and I loved the flashback clips.

Oakdale, 62268

Fine. I’ll admit it.  I LOVE:  Tori and Dean.  (Loved Spelling’s “So noTORIous” as well).  I was never a 90210 fan, and can’t say that I made it through a full episode in the entire time the show was on the air.  In fact, if you totaled every scene I’ve ever watched, it still wouldn’t get you to a full episode. It was while watching “T&D: Home Sweet Hollywood” that the question hit me.  Has NUKE become the daytime equivalent of ’Donna Martin’?  What I  know of Donna was that she wanted to maintain her virginity until she was married.  Was she successful in keeping her pledge to maintain her virginity?  I have no idea, maybe a 90210 fan can email and let me know.

While I posited in an earlier blog (ATWT writers vs. THEMSELVES) that the writers are treating Nuke as a mix between a throwback to old-fashioned courtship and a slow build into a ‘controversial’ relationship (as with Jessica and Duncan before them), there is a third possibility.  If Nuke has become the daytime equivalent of “Donna Martin’, they have also become the show’s moral center - and I’ll leave it to you to decide if it was intentionally or unintentionally brilliant on the writers’ part.  Nuke is the one couple that seems to have realized that there are lines which should never be crossed - like, say, pursuing your spouse’s best friend for the sake of a sexual relationship.  At least they haven’t crossed that line YET, not even with one another. 

So if the Donna Martin comparison holds, are the writers waiting for the wedding night for Nuke to finally get together?  Oh cruel irony. 

Here’s another cruel irony.  While daytime has heavily courted, and failed to attract, the ever elusive ‘younger viewer’, it’s failed to pay attention to the cultural shift that’s taken place in the lives of ‘younger viewers’.  Shows like MTV’s “Next”, “Parental Control”, “Date My Mom”, and “Engaged and Underage” (among others) don’t have the skittish and dichotomized view of sexuality that daytime writers do.  The parents of straight and gay youth help find someone who will love and respect their children.  Youthful viewers see images of diversity (racial, sexual, religious) that daytime writers have yet to offer them.  Everyone is treated as ‘the same’.   Imagine that. 

ATWT writers are seemingly between a rock and a hard place. They’ve chosen what is still an “unconventional” storyline in a far too conventional medium.  Actors who’ve been involved in  unconventional storylines in the past  (namely, cross cultural love stories) have spoken openly about the audience’s initially negative reactions to those storylines, much of which has dissipated. The question is whether ATWT writers are willing to fully commit to the Nuke storyline or if they’re going to continue to stall it..

While ATWT’s writers have taken gay characters farther than any network show in daytime history, they still haven’t taken the couple as far as most other couples their age.  I have a hard time believing that fans will find a romantic love story between these two young men more controversial than some of it’s more recent storylines (mentioned below).

ATWT writers?

1 - You’re never going to attract younger viewers who are more culturally fluid and savvy than you give them credit for.  What you’re doing is groundbreaking work for daytime.  It’s old news for them.  My own son is a mid 20-something who has friends who are from all walks of life, of all religious backgrounds, differ in their political philosophies, and whose sexual orientations are never even a question because no one cares.  (BTW, I’ve received pretty negative feedback about referring to Luke and Noah as ’young’ in the above mentioned blog… that depends of your perspective.  They’re younger than my kid - and yes, I still think of HIM as a ‘kid’.  C’mon folks).

2 - Old veteran viewer beeyotches like me are FAR more open-minded than you give us credit for.  We’re not bigoted control freaks who are afraid of young people in love. Well, we are afraid of Parker and Liberty, who  are more ’in lust’ than love, and given how hormonal and reckless they are, uh, YIKES! 

The ATWT writers have  painstakingly shown us that Noah and Luke are kids with better morals than either set of parents who spawned and raised them - but where does that leave the couple?  Will they remain the male equivalents of The-virginal-Donna-Martin?   Will writers allow Nuke to become a full fledged couple and create network daytime’s first gay love scenes?  Will NUKE stay together long enough to create a family of their own?  If time tells all, she’s pretty quiet on this score. 

If daytime wants to pull itself into the future it’s time to let go of the squeamishness about race and sexuality.  (Read PGPClassic’s though provoking, July 15th blog entry,  ”The Color of Race”).  Come on, daytime, we’re all bigger than that.

Brad Snyder - off the manwhore list!

Image from Soaps.com

Last, but not least: I friggin’ love Brad Snyder for stepping up to the ‘Real Man’ plate, and joining the moral center spotlight with NUKE this week. Don’t worry.  I get it.  This isn’t “Little House on the Prairie”, but I can’t help loving the balance the show’s provided with Brad becoming an active parent.  We have the drug addicted porn star turned nurse, Emily the former prostitute dating her son’s brother, some sort of drug poisoning that has everyone stripping to the birthday suit, Meg seeing the ghost of a murdered girl, Lily revenge dating to get back at her cheating husband, Vienna leaving Henry, Bonnie representing an obviously guilty criminal, and Brad the good father.  I needed the respite from the endless parade of muck!  It’s been my only warm fuzzy of this past week (that and watching Janet flip her hypocritical bean about being ‘lied to’ as Liberty’s parent).

Thanks for nuthin’ - GL writers/BnB’s Katie and Nick

Thanks for NUTHIN’, Guiding Light writers!

Daytime writers kill off another baby. Lovely.  Yes, fetal death is a part of real life AND reel life, but daytime makes a practice of killing off babies fans have grown attached to and want to see survive.  It’s almost too predictable.  If you impregnate your daughter-in-law who already has children with your son (Beth and Alan), if you impregnate your mother-in-law (BnB’s Brooke and Deacon), if you become pregnate from a one night stand with a psychologically or morally unstable person while married (GH’s Jason and Elizabeth) that kid is definitely going to live!  Two people in love have the same chance as a snowball in hell.  It’s not to say that it won’t happen, but don’t count on it.  Daytime seems to have killed off far more child that it’s let live, and Max/Clayton is just the latest casualty in daytime writers war on long term planning and moving their shows into the future.

Where does this leave the writers, now that they’ve killed off Ava and Remy’s child?  What drama is there now that they’ve disposed of the ‘inconvenient’ little one?  What about the bad blood between Little Max/Clayton’s two dads?  What’s left for them to fight about now that Max is gone?  Everything they fight about now will seem small and petty and more about their egos than anything to do with the dead child -and while Remy and Bill are more than capable of pettiness, I’m not up for watching it happen when the writers prolong this storyline over ‘nothing’.

Bill Lewis is not a classic ‘villain’, but he’s not a good guy, either. Bill’s anti-hero status would have made the storyline even MORE interesting. It’s too easy to root for the good guy over a villain, but how about fans being torn between good guy (Remy) and an anti-hero (Bill)?

Would Remy truly have more claim just because he’s the biological father? SHOULD he have more claim? It’s just possible that Remy loves the child because of Ava and becuase he thinks he should ‘win’ Max/Clayton as a way of forcing a family with Ava. Would that make him a good guy, still?

Both men could have come to some realization about who they were and what Max meant to each of them.

• Would either win or would a third party surprise them both?
• Would one sacrifice his rights to make sure Max wasn’t tugged and pulled in a court case?
• What happens if they realize that Ava loves them both and wants neither of them including the baby?
• Would the losing father ‘gaslight’ the father who did win custody, to try to get ‘his’ son back?
• Would Bill have continued his marriage of convenience to Ava, slowly finding a way to ‘pay her back’ by causing her to lose custody of Max and maybe her freedom? (locked in a mental ward?  set up for a prison sentence?)

Dinah testifying against her brother in a custody case could have set off a corporate battle between them that weakened both, allowing Alan to swoop take over again. Alan regains his fortune and reverts back to type, going after the Lewises, because of Bill.

Alan and Beth (maybe with a return from Phillip) take on Josh, Billy, Bill, and Vanessa.

All from one little custody case, featuring one little baby who was connected to more than half of the families in Springfield. 

Even if Max/Clayton stayed off screen until the next big storyline he’s needed, it’s not like it hasn’t happened to tons of other Springfield children, including Bill Lewis, who is now a central character on the show.  Good going there!

Thanks for NUTHIN’ Katie and Nick

You know, when you get your wife’s aunt pregnant, it’s pretty much common practice to be more upset about betraying your wife than your aunt (by marriage)/mistress is - I’m just sayin’.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.  It would seem reasonable to be upset.  If your name is Nick Marone, not so much.  You tend to believe that your aunt/mistress’ child is a gift from above and the product of a truly beautiful night of love and passion, made as she lay dying from a heart transplant rejection.  I know, I know, it happens in even the best of families.

If there was to be any hope for Nick, he and Katie needed to trade places in their dialogue after the pregnancy reveal.  Katie is sickened that she’s betrayed Bridget.  She wishes she could forget that evening, she sees everything that happened in such a negative light.  Nick’s response?  He’s confused.  Why is she so upset?  In fact:

Nick: I see. So are you saying that you wish that it never would have happened?

Katie: Yes.

Nick: Well, I guess I feel differently about that day.

W.T. F.  Does this guy get warm fuzzies when he thinks about what happened?  I’m convinced that Nick is either a sociopath - with a mind warped by peeping in on his mother’s sessions with her Johns, or he’s redefined the word ‘insensitive’, or he’s just damned crazy.  He goes on to try to legitimize the betrayal of the woman who loves him heart and soul by saying:

Nick: Let me remind you of a few things. First off, bridget and i were not engaged.

Take THAT, Bridget!  Sure.  She was living with him, sleeping with him, helping him  raise HIS son with HER mother.  How dare she expect fidelity from him!  How dare she expect him to tell her he’d slept with her aunt before they married!  That Bridget… she’s so difficult and so demanded.  She wants, like, the truth - she’s just that twisted.

The only thing that doesn’t ring true is that it’s Katie spewing this dialogue and not Nick.  Bridget forgave him for running out on her the day after she buried their child.  She forgave him for marrying her mother.  She forgave him for using her while he was still married to her mother.  She forgave him for stealing her father’s company.  There’s a theme running here.  Bridget really should figure out that there’s no point in going back for more with that man. He’ll give it to you when you do.  He’ll give it to your mother, your aunt, your sister, your sister-in-law, strangers on the street… yeah.. not good.

As much as I hate the Nick/Katie pairing, Heather Tom put her Emmy face and completely rocked her scenes.  I didn’t think I could stand to watch the show, knowing what was coming, but Heather Tom’s performance made it all worth it.   If ever I wanted to be sympathetic to Katie, THIS was the day.  In the end, however, I just couldn’t feel it for her.  Anything that resembled human emotion left the moment she stopped speaking and Nick spent more of his time worrying about her and the ‘love’ they shared that created yet another child, with yet another of his wife’s famliy members. That’s when Katie should have realized what kind of man Nick really is.   You can never count on the writers to let any woman on this show call Nick out for anything he does and while that’s true of all males on the BnB, Nick Marone tends to put women through a special kind of hell.

They smile, accept it, and beg him for more.  At some point, the guy HAS to be held accountable.

Thanks to TVMegasite and Restless-Passions for the transcripts.

… would have worked in this universe, IF

Bold and Beautiful - Katie Logan is now pregnant by Nick Marone, who is married to her niece Bridget - mother of his first child (Nicole, deceased).  Yes, the same Nick who has a child, for now, with Bridget’s mother/Katie’s sister, Brooke - and had sex with Brooke she was suicidal over the witnessed “death” of her lifelong love, Ridge Forrester. 

Nick had sex with Katie while she was a dying heart transplant patient.  Katie, who encouraged Bridget to get back together with Nick, then decided she too was in love with him.  Confused yet?  OR is that look on your face one of utter revulsion?  This storyline would have worked in this universe, IF it weren’t for the fact that it’s a complete rewrite of the Logan family history. 

Those of us who’ve been around daytime for far too long remember the intense loyalty the Logan women once had for one another.  Remember Donna, before the writers decided that her best assets were easily displayed in tacky lingerie?  Donna was a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve.  She gave up a young man she deeply cared for, Rocco, just because she thought her younger sister, Katie, had a CRUSH on the guy.  The Logan women are now exchanging bedsheets, and betraying one another over worthless men (namely the SAME worthless man - Nick Marone).  It would be lovely if Beth Logan regained her senses and whipped the women in her family back into shape… the problem is that she finds this all very sweet and heartbreaking.  Oy.

On the ligheter side?  Marcus and Steffy just keep getting better!  An old-fashioned courtship instead of a ‘nice to meet you, let’s get naked’ insta-love story for the ages.

Guiding Light - What a motherload of irony!  Bill, Jr. tells Dinah that she knows NOTHING about love because she’s never loved anyone and never will.  He tops that verbal slap with the soul killing comment that every relationship she’s ever had has failed (you know, unlike his string of failed relationships which have culminated in a fight for the custody of a child that isn’t his).  Dinah’s righteous anger would have worked in this uinverse, IF it weren’t for the fact that we watched as she deceived Mallet and ended a great relationship with him to worm her way into the treatment clinic Bill, Sr. was recuperating at in order to help her brother work out his scheme to become a bigger, better sleaze bag and power broker. 

Yeah, not exactly feeling sympathy for Dinah, but I did come close when Bill decided to trash his sister’s sacrifice..  What I am hoping is that Bill’s attack causes Dinah to rethink her willingness to act as a handmaiden to her ambitious snot of a  little brother.  Maybe it’s time for Dinah to benefit from all of the hard work she’s put into making him king of the hill.   It’s time to dethrone the king.  Long live the QUEEN!

I’m also adding Olivia back to the top of my ‘Dames with STONES’ list!  It’s the list for dames with broad shoulders and bad attitudes.  The ‘Barbara Stanwyck’ list, if you will.  If Stanwyck’s name is unfamiliar to you, it’s only because I’m old and you’re not. 

Did you sit a little closer to the screen when she told Bill, Jr that she would NOT let him hurt her daughter ever again?  First, you probably wanted to make sure you heard her right - STONES! Bill hurt AVA?  Love that!  Second, you probably sat closer because you knew you’d give Olivia a hug when she said it, if you could.  WOW!  Despite the fact that she knew her daughter used artificial insemination (or thought the pregnancy was the result of insemination) to trap the guy into marriage, and that she pushed the marriage for all it was worth, Olivia’s attitude works for me!  It works in this universe and any other universe the writers could conceive of!  When she talks, her former lover/son-in-law had better listen.  Rarely does Olivia issue an empty threat.

Days of Our Lives - When Bo told Phillip that he was disappointed in him because Phillip was lying when he said that he didn’t lie to family, two things struck me.  The scene would have worked in this universe, IF it weren’t for the fact that I had to work so hard to figure out what Bo was talking about.  Yeah! Yeah!  You got it right?  They’re brothers.  It’s been so long since the writers even dealt with that issue that I’d forgotten all about their familial connection.  Second?  Phillip lies so much, how could someone as smart as Bo have believed him?  Sheesh!

What DOES work in THIS soap universe is the pairing between DOOL’s EJ and Nicole.  What great birds of a feather they are!  Can you imagine the gates of hell these two will open when they finally work it all out and get together?  I’m all for a couple making each partner in the pairing a better person.  In daytime, I’m also for a couple kicking ass and taking name, and two characters without conscience (or severely weakened consciences) could really spice things up on DAYS.

One Life To Live -  Last, and least… I thought it was just the lack of realistic context for the Cole and Starr  teen pregnancy storyline that was bad.  It’s so much more than that.  This storyline might have had a chance of working in this universe, IF the writing for it and the acting weren’t so BAD!  I don’t think either actor was prepared to carry off this storyline.  It feels as if they’re reading the script aloud, and what a script it is.   Starr to Cole: ‘But we’ll get past this, we’re Starr and Cole’ (not an exact quote)… WTF?  Is that like ‘Sonny and Cher’, ‘Donny and Marie’, ‘Peanut Butter and Jelly’ W.T.F?  Are the writers trying to turn this teen-pregnancy -storyline-gone-dull into an epic love story between 16 year olds?  The surest way to get the elusive 18-24 year olds to tune out is to keep this plot alive.  I’ve been tempted to build an altar in Ron Carlivati’s honor, he’s that good, but this storyline (and yes, I’ve said it before) is a HUGE miss.

Even watching David Vickers talk with David Vickers (the dog) about burning down Carlotta’s diner wasn’t enough to erase the ache of having witnessed the painfully dull scenes between ‘Starr and Cole’.   Speaking of Vickers and Vickers, just knowing that Bo believes that David HAS to be born leads me to believe that he is going to come out of his current ordeal finding himself closer to David, for as long as David will be around, this time.  What will it mean for Clint, if that happens?  I can’t wait for Bo to come back to find out.

I love OLTL’s new time travel storyline - and who knew it was even possible to say that?  I love it for it’s potential:  What Bo and Rex find out about Buchanan history, what they find out about themselves, their ability to impact the future, Rex’s realization of his feelings about Gigi, Shane, and Brody… so much more. 

I love the Mendora storyline.  It’s old fashioned, fantastic storytelling.  I truly liked Talia and Antonio before.  I love them now.  BRAVO/A to the writers for a throwback storyline that feels fresh and new.