January 27, 2004

Hello.  Thanks in advance for checking out my column and thanks to Katrina for giving me a place for periodic rants rather than just bending her ear in e-mails every couple of weeks.

As a means of introduction, I've been watching the three current ABC soaps for decades, but my main focus tends to be General Hospital, which is the show I've watched the longest.  I've always been told that I have pretty extreme views on the show and I guess this column will tell the tale.  I just think what I think and usually say what I think.  I don't much believe in filters or kid gloves, so it's possible or even likely I'll offend all of you at some point, so I guess we can all just make peace with that right away.

I've watched a lot of columnists get raked out for speaking their minds.  I was a long time fan of Sage's, here on Eye on Soaps, and he used to print letters from people who vehemently disagreed with his strong views, sometimes in a very cruel and vicious fashion.  I'm also a fan of Coggie over at Soap Town USA and here at EOS.  She has also published some of the letters she has received in her column and I had to seriously wonder if I want those kinds of people writing to bitch me out for voicing my opinion when it doesn't agree with theirs.  I have continually found it to be amazing when people feel a profound need to not just voice their opinion, but to aggressively win people over to it.  Please don't think that's what I'm doing in my column.  I'm going to be very free with my opinion (my column and all), but whether or not people agree with me isn't of much interest to me, personally.  That's why my e-mail program has a delete function.  As I said before, I'm likely to piss off most of you at some point or another and if calling it like I see it and speaking my opinion is going to be what causes someone not to like me as a columnist, then so be it.  If someone wants a columnist who is going to do little more than kiss the ass of the fan bases, then this isn't the place for you to be.  If you're looking for a fight, you won't get it either.  I state my opinion and people can take it or leave it.  I don't go into combat to convince anyone to think as I do.  This trend of bashing columnists who don't echo the popular or personal opinions of another does make me wonder how many really wonderful writers choose not to take up the challenge of publicly voicing their opinions just because some asshole might take them to task for it.  Sad, because I don't think we would ever have too many wonderful columnists in the net world.

So with that out of the way, get something hot to drink and let's go on to the show.

I don't tend to remain true to any particular character, knowing eventually they will be leaving the show or turned into something I don't particularly want to see.  Couples will break up and turn on one another (I submit ZEm for proof) and are not to be trusted to be there for me.  My passion is for the show itself and so when I judge what happened that day on my TV screen, it's always about whether or not it supports my enjoyment of the show.  I might love a character one day and despise them the next.  I'm proudly fickle, based entirely on what I'm seeing at the time.  In my world, you really are only as good as your last act.

I have aggressively disliked the focus on the so called "fab four" over the past way too many years and like most fans, prefer a composite show involving many different stories and characters.  While the show has gotten better at that in the past 6 months of so,  they sadly are not pulling in the characters beyond the fab four that interest ME.  Like so many, I want to see more of Bobbie, Mac, Alan, Monica, Tracy, Alexis and what JenJen calls the ROTC (Rest Of The Cast).  Sadly, it would appear that they have gone the way of the Palmer Cortland, Ruth Martin, Dr Larry, Andrew Carpenter brigade.  They will be hauled out for the occasional wedding or when they are able to spruce up a Sonny and Carly moment.

Having gotten past that for the time being, I'll stop whining about what we don't have and get involved with snarking about what we do have.

I never particularly liked Carly in either of her incarnations, haven't liked Sonny in a good, long time, have gotten insulin shock from Courtney since she first came on the show and liked Jason for about 25 minutes right after he took his womp on the head compliments of drunken AJ.  That pretty much leaves me assed out for the time being and quite some time before now as far as having a predominance of scenes I like on the show.  I'm patient. I can wait.  This too is cyclic.

I didn't like Emily when she was Amber Tamblyn because she whined and bitched and stomped her foot all the time and petulent children are just not my bag.  I haven't liked her as Natalia Livingston because she is a self-centered snitty bitch who thinks she can somehow compete with Tracy.  Cheerleaders are my bag either, not to mention that she looks like she's going to cry most of the time or had discovered some new and altogether fierce form of constipation.  The dumbest shit in the world is the idea that she looks like Constance or whatever that froo froo ancestor's name was when she's not even related to the Quartermaines.  Yes, I know that it's the same actress in the flashbacks when they're reading that sappy diary.  I'm talking about the actual photos.  Next we'll hear that Paige was a bastard daughter of Edward Quartermaine (as if he needs another one... if that guy had paid out child support on all his kids, he'd never have been a millionaire).  Zander and Emily were an unexpected surprise as a couple with that bad-boy, good-girl flavor of Luke and Laura, but that went out the window as soon as her breast cancer story started becoming more about her crotch than her breast.  Using Zander's affections to cruise her through a terminal illness only to dump him like yesterday's slop jar as soon as she was healed pretty well sealed it for me and since then, I've been hoping she'd get lost in the catacombs under Wyndemere and not find her way out again until she understands concepts like loyalty and fidelity.  As for Nikolas, I was laughing like mad when he said, with a straight face, mind you, that Stefan forced him to get that ugly tattoo.  Um...    yeah.

Speaking of Zander, there's a guy who got the wrong end of the stick almost every time he turned around.  In the classic "sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug" fashion, he's been the bug pretty much ever since he slept with Liz.  Now he's going to go out in what is no doubt going to be with a whimper instead of a roar.  Avast, Sir ZanMan... we barely knew ye.

A column on GH can scarcely be written this week without discussion of  *what happened.*  There are, of course, two what happeneds:  one being the double infidelities of Carly and Sonny, a powder keg giving off sparks if ever there was one and the other being Courtney turning cop shooter.  The Head Writers have gloated over these things, puffing up their feathery chests and boasting about how it will blow the top off everything and nothing will ever be the same again.  I am eternally amazed at the lengths the fans of these people will go to justify the actions of the characters.  Of course, we can talk about how it's only a soap and has little bearing on the real world, but c'mon.  It has to make some sense somewhere down the line. 

If anything, the past month of events has solidified for me what a tremendous, bleeding, hemorrhoidal horse's ass Sonny is.  I was laughing out loud at the people on message boards defending him for shooting Carly in the head as she pushed out their baby.  "Oh, I'm sorry.  I was aiming for the guy in front of you catching the baby.  I haven't been around guns nearly enough to think the bullet might go through him and into your nog.  Duh."  Shoot first and ask questions later, I guess.

It's very telling that even getting shot in the head while she was giving birth after being held captive for weeks on end not that long before isn't nearly enough of an excuse for Carly to be acting a little strangely.  She begged and begged for help, telling anyone who would listen that Sonny had shot her in her sex brain (as Dayna put it, making me laugh out loud) and that she didn't WANT to be compulsively and frenetically obsessing on Alcazar.  Going so far as to check herself into a mental institution should have been the first clue that she thought she needed HELP.  Best friend Jason refused to do more than condemn and sneer and bray, "But what about SONNY???  What about your FAMILY??" as she tearfully begged for his help as well.  I'm quite sure it was Sonny and her family she had in mind when she went willingly into the snake pit to try and get her sex brain fixed. 

Then Sonny goes all dark and machismo and Latino broody when he sees her giving Alcazar what amounted to a little peck, which falls extremely hard in the brain after seeing the tongue wrestling he gave Brenda on the island and again in the rain (which Brenda, it appears, seldom has the sense to come out of) "telling her good-bye" (hmm... I guess Carly can't tell Lorenzon goodbye, but Sonny can tell Brenda goodbye AND use tongue to do it!).  I can't imagine what happens in that twisted brain of his to make his passionate kisses with Brenda perfectly acceptable and Carly's peck with Lorenzo grounds for making her persona non gratis.  Oh, I forgot.  Sonny is the king of the double standard and what's good for the gander is stuff the goose had best not be trying. 

But then, it was only a matter of time before he found a reason to dump Carly considering that a dark haired, dark eyed white girl had recently come to town and had not yet been introduced to Sonny's wily penis.  The powers that be are cracking me up by saying, "Oh no! Kelly Monaco's looks had NOTHING whatsoEVER to do with putting her opposite Maurice Benard!" 

Well, yeah!  I can see exactly what they're talking about.  None of these women look the least bit alike!  What a tremendous coinkydink that so many people think they do!  Guess that term "idiots in charge" isn't born lightly.  They must think we're "idiots in deference."

The poor Sonny and Carly fans are taking quite a beating on this one, seeming for so long to think that *their* couple had been kissed by the gods (complete with Bible verses to support their case) and somehow granted immunity from ever hitting the skids.

I recently saw this on the net, which I figure pretty well summed it up:

That's why I refuse to invest heavily in any couple, actor or character.  It's all transient anyway.  Sage used to always gently encourage people to just love the show rather than getting all wrapped up in one aspect of it and I have to agree that's about the only way to watch the show with any kind of objectivity, which is the only way to find the things to enjoy as opposed to seeing everything through the filter of how it affects the particular object of their affections.  (I still have to laugh at the people on message boards who talk about "Mo" and "Tams" as though they're playing pinochle with them on Friday nights.  I mean, whether they are in our homes 5 days a week via TV or not, they are strangers, regardless of how many fan events you attend or "insider" tips you get.)

So I guess my question is, what happens now?  Do the S&C people break apart into SamSon people and CarLo people and people who refuse to do anything other than wait for Sonny and Carly to get back together again?  Honestly, I think that's what will end up happening.  Meanwhile, if anyone should get custody of the boys, it's Leticia.  Why not just sign them over to her and make it legal, giving Sonny and Carly visitation rights?  Supervised visitation because I'm not sure either of them are mentally stable right about now.

Sonny "All the love has been burned out of me" Corinthos has declared that he intends to bang Sam regularly enough to put her up in a condo (that's some golden snatch, right there, my friends).  Carly has had part of her brain shot out and can't even find time to fix her hair, much less be a mom (although the montage was great, if only they'd omitted the stupid shooting and left the juxtapositioning to the lullaby and Sonny's rutting with Sam, sort of a sing-bang, rather than a clink-boom). 

I could almost take the SamSon sex scenes if not for two key points, one being that I'd already been flooded with a barrage of images of Kelly Monaco's tits by stupidly and naively typing her name into Google Image, whereupon one will be greeted by her breasts in a few hundred thousand pics, not to mention her oh-so-sweetly posed lesbian shots.  Eventually, don't you have to say, "OK, YOU'RE PRETTY, ALREADY!!"  Jeez.  The gratuitous shot on Tuesday where she took an hour and a half to button her shirt over her mammoth globes (likely to give the guys taping the scene enough time *cough* to complete their business) was just more of the same.  Kelly Monaco's tits are soon going to have to have their own place in the opening montage, giving cause to wonder what will happen if only one of them gets reduced to recurring status (lots of profile shots??).  If she's the New Brenda, I guess They (enough of their own entity to receive a capital letter) are the New Bobbie's Boobs.

The other thing that bothered me about the SamSonSex was all of the natter, natter, yippity, yappity fricking chit chat that went on afterwards, yammering about who could give what and where do we go from here and what wedding china should we pick out after we've gotten past the posturing that we don't care for one another and yadda yadda, freakin yadda.  Shut up already, eat some Cornflakes and smoke a cigarette!!  Sonny didn't have that many lines when he was talking Carly out of her coma!!

As much as it had to hurt for Carly to open the door onto Sam riding Sonny like a Brahma bull, it had to hurt his other mistress, Jason even more.  Jason is just getting shit on all the way around with his fantasy lover, Sonny, all hetted up over Sam, his ace-in-the-hole (pun intended or not intended, whatever you like) Carly already compelled to drink of Lorenzo's fountain every chance she gets and Courtney just so dumb that he can't bare to do her any more.  He might as well move into the house in the country with Leticia and adopt both of the boys because he's not getting ANY good play unless Robin comes back.

I was almost, for the first time since her arrival, ready to hold out some respect for Courtney following her light bulb moment regarding how dangerous it is to be a mob moll.  It seemed as though she was the only one who really "got it."  I have grown so tired of the fab four talking about Jason's "job" and how killing and racketeering and beating the shit out of people and stalking people is part of Jason's "job" as if he's talking about cleaning the fry pits being a part of his job at Burger King.  It being part of his job description in no way makes it right that he does it.  Jesus, the guy kills and extorts and assaults people on a regular basis and somehow, that's just...OK?  He's a real good guy because, tee hee, he's just so cute?  WTF?  He's a remorseless killer, for godsake, people!  So is Sonny, yet he's going to be the object of lust and affection across the nation? 

Likewise, I'm tired of people making excuses for Sonny's bad behavior and reckless endangerment of glassware.  "You're more forgiving than Sonny."  "Sonny just feels things so deeply."  "Sonny has been through a lot." 

Have I mentioned that they regularly KILL PEOPLE?

Courtney started to get a clue, but then quickly, her eyes glazed over and she went back into chanting the programmed responses justifying what Sonny and Jason do, then went and did it herself.  Not only did she get away with plowing into Liz while she was hepped up on goofballs out of her mind, but she plugs a bullet into a cop's back because the cop was doing his job.  He was actually trying to bust Sonny and Jason, who are, mind you, the bad guys and she shot the complete hell out of him.  Amazingly, I don't even care about that any more, because if Carly was shot in her sex brain, Brian's common sense brain must be holed up in his back because it sure as hell got blown to kingdom come since he's protecting her for shooting him and redirecting the accountability for the crime to an innocent man (well, innocent of THIS crime, anyway)!  Does it get any more twisted than this?  All because he wuvs her. 

Then we had Carly acting like a complete ninny, saying, "Didn't you shoot Coleman?" ("Didn't that break you in to firearm discharge?") and working her tiny ass off to justify to Courtney why it was perfectly fine to shoot Brian, the on duty cop, for doing his job.  I mean, what else could Courtney do by try and kill the guy?  I dunno, shout out?  Startle him?  Make her presence known?)  Lord knows we don't want the bad guys to be held legally accountable or the good guys to go unpunished, so now we can imagine that Courtney is going to get away with this crime as well.  I swear, the girl is a walking rap sheet.

Who *I* care about is Zander, who has been reduced to hiding under Maxi's bed, cringing in fear, this coming after Liz and Ric railroaded him out of any rights to his baby and convincing him it was all his idea AND being cuckolded by Nikolas in his own house while the cuckolder was wearing a really, really bad pirate suit.  Talk about the stuff bad dreams are made of.  It's just not been a good few months for Zander, who was left bereft of an umbrella befitting the shitstorm that would become his life.

The one awesome part of the week was watching Faith cope, with every increasing grace, to life on a mental ward.  Can that girl adapt or what?  More and more, Cynthia Preston impresses me with her acting skills and natural charm.  I *loved* the scene when she pretended to be crazy, talking to Lily animatedly.  You just have to love her.  At least she doesn't pretend to be anything other than what she is.

What she *is* is Helena Jr and I would love to see the two of them hook up.  Despite running through Dumb Pirate Guy, I've found Helena to be written (NEVER portrayed - Constance Towers is always top notch) as a bit weak this time around, just not having the punch that Helena usually carries.  Tracy as well has seemed far to subdued.  What has happened to my bad girls?   No way should they be taking crap from the likes of Sam and Embrat!  Whoever wrote their wonderful biting, snappy lines must have taken a long bathroom break or something.

Speaking of breaks, it will be good to see Luke back in town again.  I enjoy Luke quite a bit, even though he too is a fairly ruthless killer when it suits him to be so.  Again, like with Faith, he doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is.  His return brings many questions to the forefront.  Will the revelations of Christmas Eve carry over in any noticeable way?  Can we hope that he'll see more of his family this time around and maybe be a dad, in his own fashion, to LuLu?  Can he possibly give Lucky more to do than stumble around in a cop's uniform, getting tossed about by the likes of Zander?  Can he and Skye at last creep closer to romance?  (Talk about a guy who's had all of the love burned out of him.  Luke makes Sonny look like a wannabe in this category)  Will Tony Geary be able to keep up the ongoing presence of Luke in the face of a Fab Four happy writing team or will he fade away into recurring?  Will the (albeit a couple of days only) return of Orphie bring a light into his eyes for a bit?  If his return this winter is anything like the one in the summer, we can expect some brilliant changes to pop up here and there.  Geary has a way of snapping things into clearer focus and bringing the writing to a better place.

With that, I will again thank you for taking the time to read my words and to express my delight at being welcomed by Katrina to the ranks of the greatest soap (and off topic) columnists on the planet. 

Til next time. 

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