STUPIDITY SELLS 

The soap opera to watch for me lately has been been ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Ever since Daniel turned into Theodore Daniel Colson, DA and Lt. Gov. shoe-in by day, closeted gay man and killer by night, I can’t get enough. 

This sudden turn of events has revitalized Bo, the Commissioner, from the walking dead back into the stalwart Clint Eastwood hero, and transformed Rex, the scam artist sleaze into a junior detective and – dare I say – a future Bo Buchanan. It has also regressed two strong, independent, smart career women – Nora and Evangeline, two of my least favorites for their self-involved arrogance – into incompetent, obtuse idiots. 

What’s not to love? 

Besides death and long-lost twins, nothing beats a good old-fashioned dumb ass beaten with a big old dumb-ass stick. Last week, Nora got beaten practically to death as she brought the punishment on herself. 

Bo wanted to arrest Daniel as soon as he legally could, but in private. Due to circumstances beyond his knowledge or control, the governor decided to speed up Daniel’s Lt. Gov. inauguration an hour earlier, so Bo wound up right in the middle of a very public proceeding with half the town in the audience. 

To Bo’s credit, he still wanted very much to take Daniel aside in private and read the killer his rights then. But instead of listening to her inner voice, which had clearly warned her in advance that something was amiss with Daniel, or even her professional voice, which would at least allow Bo to escort Daniel to a private place, with her present, Nora butted in, loudly demanding that Bo tell her and the entire world at large why he would arrest her husband and for what crimes against humanity. 

As a testament to the honorable man I’d almost forgotten existed during his zombie years, post-Nora’s indiscretion with that jackass Sam, Bo still tried to keep his voice down and pull Daniel, with Nora, aside for the truly embarrassing part of his arrest. Yet Nora pressed boldly forward, demanding her public humiliation. 

My patience rewarded, Nora received her comeuppance. Her husband killed Paul to cover up his being gay and carrying on with a much younger man, Riley’s friend Mark, then killed Jennifer to cover up her realization that he’d set her up to be Paul’s killer. I’ll wait for the rest of the consequences of her obstinacy to flood in, in the weeks to come. With a fucking smile on my face. 

The scene abruptly changes to Evangeline. Talk about a non-sequitur. Her assistant announces Daniel’s public arrest and, as if putting on her make-up, Evangeline puts on her full of compassion for her bestest lawyer friend Nora face, calls John, expecting him to pick up and fill her in on the latest details, then marches over to the police department, expecting her trophy boyfriend to drop his work on the case to hold her hand and make her feel better for feeling bad (thus, showing off how compassionate she, too, can be) about Nora. 

Like Evangeline was important. 

John does eventually spot her amidst the mayhem, pulls her into his office for an update and then stares incredulously as Ms. Perfect lays into him and Bo for not timing the arrest as compassionately as she would have them do. She puts John on the spot for arresting Daniel in front of Nora so publicly, without warning. Why didn’t you do this in private? Evangeline admonished John. It wasn’t up to me, John defended, his dick practically deflating. Instead of comforting John, or even providing him with useful advice pertinent to the case (I mean, really, why the hell is this bitch there if not to make her PRESENCE known?), Evangeline tears him apart on her personal witness stand, as she does with everybody. No other female character is as adept at such emotional larceny. 

Juxtapose – as THE POWERS THAT BE [TPTB] intended of course – their scene with the following, as Natalie quietly enters John’s office, gives him a warm pat on the shoulders and the file he required, encouraging him for doing the right thing, boosting his male ego. Earlier, she kicked media ass by shooing the infernal buzzards away when he could do nothing but mouth empty threats. 

Over at GENERAL HOSPITAL (or, as I am not so fond of calling the show, THE SHADOW OF SONNY’S ASSHOLE), TPTB are killing me slowly with stupidity in the “incidents” over the once-complex, vibrant characters. 

Maybe I need to pay more attention and bone up on my LAW & ORDER, but will someone explain how a non-issue with Sonny confessing to murder became a juried court case when he – off camera – recanted? Deeper still, why would my spare time mean so little to the writers in wasting hours last week over a trivial blip of a trial meant solely to feature Ric’s surprising show of compassion for his estranged half-brother Sonny and nephew Michael? 

Alicia Leigh Willis (Courtney) recently admitted to a few fans at a New York fan event that she and her cast mates really do not like filming courtroom scenes. Most of us fans do not like watching them on GH, because they’re used as flimsy plot devices leading nowhere except the glorification of Sonny as a loving, doting, sacrificial father, to salvage the mob resume. 

It’s the same for hospital, hotel, park and disaster scenes (a hurricane’s coming this summer, I hear). If Sonny’s not the reset button, he will be, or it’s just filler until his holy highness fills up the screen again with more incomprehensible nonsense. 

I could point out any number of inconsequential scenes that had me either giving the TV dirty looks or just questioning my sanity for continuing to watch this piece of shit every week day. 

Freshest in my mind is the one where Courtney and Jax stage a public fight at Metro Court’s dining room for Carly to see. Carly had meddled in their affair by making it appear to Jax that Courtney and Jason were meeting at a hotel room for a secret affair (the scene of Jennifer Bransford’s Carly moaning, groaning and ramming a sofa against the wall with her body – to replicate humping – while Jason called her behavior insane, completely won me over to the second recast, however; who’d have believed this GH newcomer capable of such slapstick?). Off-camera, where all interesting connections happen, Jax and Courtney had agreed to stage this fight, using an unwitting Rachel, to frighten Carly into confessing her sin of meddling. So there’s Courtney brandishing a knife in front of witnesses, just as she wished death on her former husband A.J. in front of a witness on a plane. 

Apparently, the sex with Courtney has completely addled Jax’s brain, because he stopped trying to caution the blonde bimbo with proper appearances. Remember, he did so right after someone else smothered A.J. to death and Courtney went off verbally for anyone to hear in the hospital corridor how she could’ve killed him herself, Jax stepping in to remind her that this thoughtless blathering landed her in trouble with the law in the first place. 

Ric and Reese fucked in the truest pornographic sense. I’m surprised they didn’t show his tongue slipping between her panties as his thumbs slid up her asshole while she fingered her clit. 

They showed quite enough for nighttime during daytime, embarrassing me while I breathed a sigh of relief that my three-year-old son was in bed in his room, sound asleep (I don’t dare watch daytime drama with him around, or even my visiting mother for God’s sakes). But the worst of their crimes? This sudden REEK banging offended my storytelling sensibilities. 

Couldn’t the writers have developed a relationship between the former DA and the federal agent first, in stages beyond G-man shop talk? How about given Ric a chance to work on his marriage with Alexis first, before suddenly giving him cold feet at even trying (he would’ve tried with Elizabeth)? The Ric Lansing viewers have come to know and yes, many of us, love, despite his horrifically shady past as a kidnapper and sick motherfucker, would’ve backed Alexis all the way, not sided with the half-brother motherfucker who wouldn’t give him the time of day ever. 

I’d have much rather watched Ric be a husband and a father with Alexis, and a brother with Sonny, than whip out his hard-on for the next drunken opportunity, just so – gasp! – he and Reese would harbor this growing, darkening secret between them and from Alexis and, more importantly to TPTB, Sonny. 

Besides the impact on Sonny when this betrayal gives Maurice Benard another opportunity to channel Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone, it’s IMHO a blatant screen-test for TPTB’s latest soap darling, Kari Wuhrer’s Reese. 

I love me some Kari, but not even the small of her backside will sway me blindly to her side when I feel I’m being manipulated, overwhelmed and bombarded with the Reese campaign. Not when my favorite veterans continue to be misused, neglected and whored for THE SHADOW OF SONNY’S AN ASSHOLE. 

A new story arc having nothing to do with Sonny whatsoever should have me cheering, especially since it involves a return to the Claire Labine-penned masterpiece, “B.J.’s Heart.” 

For the viewers unfamiliar with the 1990s, Emmy-award-winning story, “B.J.’s Heart” was a piece of soap operatic history, the last vestige of the soul of melodrama encompassing families, community, peril and triumph. Tony and Bobbie’s daughter B.J. died in a school van accident, leaving the little girl braindead, hooked up to machines. At the same time, Frisco and Felicia’s daughter Maxie succumbed to a heart infection, and would have to find another heart. B.J.’s heart turned out to be a match, and Tony gave it up for Maxie, in a poignant good-bye that parents still tear up over to this day, where he tells his dead daughter, “daddy loves you,” and lets her go to heaven. Maxie survived because of B.J.’s heart. 

Today, the co-head writers Charles Pratt Jr. and Bob Guza Jr., with the enabling power of executive producer Jill Farren Phelps and ABC Daytime president B.S. Frons, have decided to resurrect Labine’s story and adapt it to their own (sick, self-serving) updated version. 

Therein, the controversy. 

*TPTB’s plan all along was to fire Robyn Richards, the original Maxie we saw struggle with the heart infection in the first place and grow up before our eyes, and recast her. They hired former DAYS OF OUR LIVES teen idol Kirsten Storms to jump easily into the recast role, flirt with Brook Lynn’s boyfriend Diego then collapse at Dillon’s birthday party, instantly hoping to grab the audience’s attention and concern, and banking on the majority’s short attention span and passing fancy for the next best thing. 

Shortly after Kristina Wagner (Felicia) spoke glowingly of the impending story arc, she and TPTB came to a mutual agreement that it’s better if she left GH (so she could continue her education as she wanted; she had asked if it was possible for a contract term to play out the story arc, to compensate for postponing her coursework, but they couldn’t), and so a former AW soap actress, Sandra Ferguson, will take Felicia’s place, mid-story. 

In a third casting hit, new actress, Marrisa Carrera, will play the role of B.J., not Brighton Hereford. According to online buzz, TPTB thought about Jack Wagner, the original Frisco, but since he was on B&B as Nick, they nixed that idea, leaving Maxie’s biological father out of the story arc and focusing on John J. York’s Mac, her stepfather instead. 

The story arc itself will play out like this: Maxie will flatline in her hospital bed, go to heaven to talk with B.J. Maxie talks about her guilt in giving up B.J.’s heart for another one. B.J. gives Maxie permission to do whatever it takes to live. Maxie recovers, receives a perfect match in another donor, probably a family member. The donor will shock the audience, but is the first person long-time fans should think of. Rumors on this donor ranged from Felicia and Frisco, to Tony (Brad Maule relocated to Texas, to continue his artwork, teach acting, and sometimes moonlight as an actor in L.A.). 

Not only will Maxie lose B.J.’s heart, but fans who were won over with a wonderful human interest story that honored the genre of soaps will lose the last remains of such brilliance in soap storytelling. The current regime will decimate whatever’s left with mostly GH newbies and only for a three-month term during the summer, solely to attract the summer-vacationing teen set as additional viewers, only to drop the whole debacle come fall season. 

Reset to Sonny Corinthos, his trifling with Carly and the other whores.

There’s stupid and then, there’s GH.