Oct 20, 2004

My galpal, Carol, did a column last week called "Head Writer," in which she systematically went through and fixed all three shows.  That is my favorite kind of column to read or to write, so I'm going to party onto her lead and do my own stepping up to the:

I'm going to submit my suggestions in spoiler format.  Please note:  (I can' t believe I actually have to print this, but just to cover my butt)  These spoilers are not real.  They are what spoilers were be if I were writing the shows.

Everyone in Pine Valley tells at least one other person in Pine Valley that they are going to kill Paul Cramer.  Then they do.  All of them.

Kendall finds what's left of Paul Cramer's body.  He has been stabbed numerous times, shot by many different caliber of guns, poisoned, hanged, bludgeoned, hacked at with a hatchet, stung by a few hundred bees, run over by a large, heavy vehicle, bitten by wild dogs and set on fire.

When Jack searches Paul Cramer's room for clues to who killed him, he finds a letter detailing the baby switch.  Jack has the handwriting analyzed and it is determined to be authentic. 

Paul Cramer's death is ruled "accidental."

Jack questions Babe, who breaks under even the most subtle pressure and admits everything.

Jack calls Kendall and asks her to bring Bianca to the Chandler mansion.  As Babe blubbers and cries, Jack informs a stunned audience of JR, Kendall, Adam and Bianca what has happened.

Horrified and furious, Bianca screams Babe's uterus right out of her body, stomps on it until it looks like a pound of 70/30 ground beef, demands her damned baby (she actually says "damned baby") and peels out in Kendall's car, destined first to the police station to press all appropriate charges, then to Logans to charge up every baby item in stock to Erica's charge card.

Without missing a beat, Adam and JR, in unison, kick Babe out of the mansion, then initiate a huge custody battle for Ace Buchanan.

Jack stops by the hospital to pick up some smelling salts, then goes over to tell Erica that she is, indeed, a grammy.

A town hall meeting is called and the entire population of Pine Valley tells Krystal to just shut the complete hell up.

Krystal tell Babe it's time to check drivers licenses in some other town and they get the hell back to Lubbock, never to be seen again.

Tad and David shake themselves like wet dogs with the iggidities and feel more "themselves" than they have in months.

Zach admits that he is, indeed, Alexander Cambias and that Ethan is his son.  They take over Enchantment, Chandler Enterprises and Fusion, cutting Miranda in on her fair share.

They welcome Bianca and Miranda to their family and vow to cleanse the Cambias name. 

Zach installs Bobby Warner to run Chandler Enterprises and when he is fine toothing the books, he finds a critical error that makes it appear that Adam has been embezzling from the company for years.

Zach tells Adam he won't press charges provided Adam never crosses the threshold of the business again.

Adam and JR are both penniless and forced to take jobs as shampoo boys at the Glamorama, which deeply hinders their ability to fight for custody of Ace.

Tad stops by for Mom to give him a trim and makes a few cracks about them having his old job.

Kendall stops off at a bar on the edge of town and is surprised to find herself seated next to none other than Trey Kenyon.  She brings him up to date on the PV haps and ends up bringing him home with her. 

Trey is hired on as house counsel for Pine Valley Hospital.

Kendall, Trey and Bianca all move into Myrtle's Boarding House together as one, big, happy family.

Lena returns from Europe and she and Bianca raise Miranda together.

Reggie and Danielle eventually marry and become the new Joe and Ruth Martin of Pine Valley.

Lily gets a job working with mentally challenged children who do not ever where red.

Greenlee and Ryan go on a three year long world tour.

Everyone in Llanview tells at least one other person in Llanview that they are going to kill Paul Cramer.  Then they do.  All of them.

Kevin and Kelly are forced to work together when it is revealed that their baby actually is Adam Chandler, III.  The Chandlers come out with guns blazing and it takes all of the power of the Cramers and the Buchanans to fight the battle for Ace.

In the end, the Chandlers run out of money and influence while the Buchanans still have plenty of both.  The Buchanan lawyer tells Kevin and Kelly that they will be more likely to win custody if they are together. 

They remarry and soon after, are able to obtain custody of Ace.  They then move to that Buchanan Black Hole, London, and are never seen again.

Paul Cramer's death is ruled "accidental."

The whole "Todd Manning does not exist" snafu proves to be more trouble to resolve than expected.  Evidently, Todd did TOO good of a job erasing all traces of Todd Manning's existence and he is forced to resort back to his life as Walker Laurence.  As a result, Blair does end up marrying Walker.

Although everyone in town and their grandmas abroad know that he's Todd Manning, he can't be held accountable for anything Todd ever did because legally, he is an entirely different person. 

In a twist of irony, Blair and Todd learn that an estranged uncle of Mitch and Walker's is looking for an heir before he dies.  Todd journeys to faraway Transylvania to meet with Walker's odd uncle, who lives in a creepy castle and is dying of some dread something.  He is escorted up flights of ornate, carpeted stairs and holds counsel with the frail old man, who looks just like Roger Howarth at age 90.

The old man questions Walker's identity.  Todd pushes, Old Man pushes back.  They strike a chord in one another and soon are regaling one another with tales of their own misdeeds.

In the end, the Todd/Walker inherits the old man's fortune, but not before telling the old man the truth about who he is and what happened to his nephews, Mitchell and Walker.  The man is so cheered by Todd, that he doesn't care that they aren't related.

Two weeks later, Todd returns home to Blair, who is jubilant that their fortune has grown even more.  To celebrate, they go out to dinner and on the way to their car, are mugged by Antonio's Angel's Square friend, Eddie, who has turned to a life of crime after being ignored by everyone in town.

When Blair refuses to give up her wedding rings, she is bonked on the head with a tire iron and is knocked out.  Todd quickly subdues Eddie and hurries Blair to the hospital.

She is in a coma for several days and wakes up unaltered, except that for about three days out of the week, she believes she is Banooshka, Ape Woman of the Conga. 

It's a hoot.  Really.

Cris comes back from the dead and kills every last one of the Santi Family.  All of them.  Even those by marriage.  He's pretty mad about something, but we never get to find out because after the bloodbath, he turns a gun on himself and also dies.

*shrug*

It happens.

Frustrated by the lack of respect she gets in Llanview, Lindsay sells the art gallery and moves to Pine Valley, where she meets handsome Dr David Hayward and the two of them first have a passionately sizzling red hot affair that leads to marriage.

Viki just goes on being Viki, but Todd and Clint conspire to not tell her Jessica (Santi, you see) is dead, but instead tell her Jessica is in (where?) London.  They're afraid the grief would cause her to get all altered again.

Troy McIver is healed and returns to town.  Unable to practice medicine again because of that whole insanity thing, he instead buys that stupid theater Rex was going to turn into a disco and makes it in to a male strip club.  He and John are the main attraction.

Distraught over her inability to convert her bigoted father out of his gay hatred, Marcie joins the Peace Corps and is shipped to Zimbabwe.  Michael, being a doctor and all, joins her to led his healing hands to those in need.

Buh-bye.

The Love House burns to the ground in a final act of vandalism.  The ground is salted and zoned so that no one may ever, ever build on it again.

Roxy is romanced by Bo after Nigel reveals he is actually gay.  Bo runs for mayor and is elected, making Roxy the first lady of Llanview.

RJ leaves town for a couple of weeks and returns with a whole passel of black people because let's face it, all the white folks in Llanview are either crazy or keyed up tighter than my grandma's butt and Cris has killed off all of the Latinos.  RJ & Co. turn Ultra Violet into a wonderful jazz club and Evangeline is sufficiently impressed as to make another play for RJ, who tells her to step off.

He's already got a woman:  Nora.

The one thing that has to happen on this show is, I'm sorry, complex, tortured and misunderstood or not, the reset button has to be hit as to who're the good guys and who're the bad guys.  Of course, on a soap, everyone has broken major laws and since I have no interest in putting the entire town in jail, let's limit it to the people who commit crimes on an ongoing basis.  Not those who have done the wrong thing for the right reasons, blah, blah, blah.

Sonny is finally prosecuted and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Jason escapes prosecution because the feds had nothing on him and Sonny was too honorable to roll over on him.  He takes over the territory, but does it in a true Tony Soprano way.  He's a badass to the extreme and uses lingo like "comare" and "capo di tutti capi" and "gavone."  He changes his name to Jase Morgono and embraces his Italian heritage.

Sam completely gets into the role and plays mob wife to the teets.

Lois takes some band, any band, on tour and isn't heard from for quite some time.  They basically take the same tour as Miguel.  Brooke goes to live with Ned at the Quartermaine Mansion and oh my!  The hijinks!

The Bureau of Social Services proudly announces that Diego had been adopted by an elderly Mormon couple and will be moving to Utah immediately.

Jax leaves town and won't tell anyone where he's going, which pisses Courtney off in a big way.  Later, she forgives him when she learns that he left to rescue his brother, Jerry, from a prison in the former Yugoslavia.  Jax paid the traffic fines for which Jerry had been jailed and upon returning to Port Charles (no one currently at the PCPD holds a grudge against him, legal or otherwise), he runs into an old college buddy, Lorenzo Alcazar.

It's Jerry who tells Lorenzo that Sophia did not die as Lorenzo thought all these years.  She was badly scarred, but otherwise recovered and lives on an island off the coast of Britain under the name "Lady Nimue."  Lorenzo is reunited with Sophia and pays to have her face remade to look like Carly's.  They live happily every after and he gets a teaching position at Port Charles University while Jerry has a raging affair with Skye Quartermaine.

Emily ties.  Tragic, actually.  Cesar Faison kills her just because and is then elected New York state senator.

After all this time, Frisco Jones returns to Port Charles and has to deal with the consequences of abandoning his family.  He and Felicia do NOT hit it off well (she's back with Mac), but he and Bobbie do!

Dillon and Georgie happily reunite but never, ever have sex.

Heather dies.  Faison again.

Tracy falls in love hard with Faison, who is mesmerized by her twisted little mind.

Ric desperately misses actual litigation and gives up his post as District Attorney in favor of private practice.  This also frees up more time for at home time with Alexis and Kristina.

The DA position is filled by John Durant, who has no interest in being a federal prosecutor now that Sonny is behind bars and wants more time to spend with Carly, Michael and Morgan.

Carly tells Michael to sit his narrow ass down in the chair and to not DARE MOVE until the therapist arrives and if he EVER speaks to her like that again, he will RUE the day he was born.

Elizabeth strikes up a friendship with Justus Ward, which leads to romance.

Luke re-opens the Haunted Star and runs it with recently returned partner, Roy DiLucca.  Before her death, Heather and Laura had a skirmish in which Laura fell backward and hit her head on a fireplace hearth.  When she regained consciousness, she was back to her old self and doing well with no memory of having killed Rick or gone crazy.  Meh.  Everyone pretty much figured it was best to leave it that way.

Roy's daughter, Hannah, is still working on a case in Alaska.

Mike still wipes tables.  That's his penance for proving himself an idiot almost every time he opens his mouth.

Lucky meets and falls in love with beautiful Susanna Cassadine, granddaughter of Tony Cassadine, who was raised in Malibu Beach, is a Doctor of Sexology and owns her own chain of intimate apparel boutiques.

While on their honeymoon cruise, the luxury liner on which Susanna and Lucky are traveling sinks, forcing them to grab pieces of floating wood and float to a nearby island.

As it turns out, the island is really inhabited by all of the Noppers (NEm stoppers), who weren't really killed at all, but were spirited away by Nikolas because he was ashamed of the amassing body count.  Additionally, all of the senior Cassadines have been living in luxury here to avoid prosecution for their crimes. 

Lucky's cell phone still works and he phones Nikolas (wicked roaming charge) and tells him to get him the hell outta there.  The Noppers are given the option to leave or stay and they all agree they are much happier right there, thank you very much.

Nikolas pays a guy in Tempe, Arizona $500 to cybernetically erase all evidence of the criminal activity by the Cassadines and they all return to Spoon Island to live out their Gothic, interesting and altogether handsome lives. 

Now that I'd watch.