Panic room, Schmanic room.  I know I am not the only person finding this story ludicrous.  Message boards all over the Internet are buzzing about the gapingly huge holes in this story.  It would be funny if the subject matter itself weren’t so serious. 

Okay, I’m trying to sound morally superior.  I’ll tell the truth.  I find this story funny regardless of the fact that there is a pregnant woman, Carly, locked up in a “secret room.”  It’s just all so silly, I have to laugh. 

First of all, how could Liz not know there is a large amount of unaccounted for space in her very own living room?  That panic room is fairly big, even has a bathroom, with a shower, AND it’s at the back of the house on the ground floor.  Can’t she see about 8 X 12 feet of “mystery” space, at least, jutting out the back of her home into her backyard?  Liz is an artist, so she should not be spatially challenged in the least. 

Then there are all the times Ric mysteriously disappears into the room.  First he was disappearing in there to maniacally rub his hands together in anticipation of the evil to come and now he goes in there to taunt his captive, pregnant Carly.  That house doesn’t look all that big, so why hasn’t this become an issue?  Ric’s latest story, upon disappearing for the umpteenth time, was that he was out in the woods to clear his head.  Liz is making “Hmmmmm,” facial expressions, but I definitely think she should be asking more questions by now.  Ric gives her a gun because she could be in danger but he feels okay about disappearing into the woods and leaving her in the house all alone? 

“Paging Colonel Mustard!”  Someone needs to buy Liz a big, fat CLUE. 

Then we have Carly.  She’s isn’t fairing much better in the clue department as she sits in the panic room trying to plot and scheme her way out.  She hasn’t done half bad, which is to say she’s been kind of “half-assed” about it.  She’s made it out twice with Ric hot on her heels the first time.  She grabbed a fireplace poker, but tripped over some furniture as she was backing up, so back into the panic room she went.  The second time, she elbowed Ric in the face and knocked him down.  She had a good head start on him, but instead of heading straight for the front door, and freedom, she stops to call Sonny on the phone.  If that’s not bad enough, when Sonny answered the phone Carly said, “Sonny, it’s me.”  Of course, then she was interrupted by Ric and dragged back into the room.  Why weren’t her first words, “Ric’s got me?”  Did she think Sonny might be confused about what hysterical woman was calling him to clue him in on her whereabouts?  That was a serious, dumbass moment on Carly’s part.  Anyone that stupid probably needs to be locked up for her own safety anyway. 

One of the things I don’t understand is why Carly isn’t utilizing her very capable vocal abilities every chance she gets.  The room is soundproof, so I can understand why she isn’t in there screaming twenty-four hours a day, but otherwise, she seems to only start wailing when the door is open and she knows, from her handy-dandy television monitors, that no one but Ric is around to hear her. 

The night Ric kidnapped Carly, he left her bound and gagged in the panic room.  We saw her gagged with some cloth, but even though it was in her mouth, she was still screaming up a very loud storm.  Those kinds of gags always look silly because they do NOT stop a person from being able to scream.   

My point here is that Carly can still scream when she’s gagged like that and can be heard all over that house when the panic room door is opened. 

So when Sonny and Jason arrived at Ric’s house later to search for Carly, Liz answered the door and Ric was trapped, momentarily, in the panic room with Carly.  He waited until Sonny, Jason and Liz had moved out of the living room before he opened the panic room door and stepped out, leaving Carly gagged with that damned cloth again.  So why didn’t Carly scream when the door was opened and Sonny and Jason were in the house and would have heard her screaming?!?!?!? 

That was clearly another huge, dumbass moment for Carly and one that aggravated the hell out of me.  I don’t usually talk to the television, but I was yelling, “Scream, you dumb bitch!  Scream!”  She knew Sonny and Jason were in the house because she saw them on the monitors, so there is no excuse and that pretty much ended any “rooting for Carly” that I was going to do.  I’m not going to waste my time trying to dig a hole in the proverbial sand of that barren beach of a mind. 

Speaking of “dumbass moments” and being clueless in general, the writers are having a huge boner of a dumbass moment with this whole story.  If putting this cumbersome “secret room” in the living room wasn’t lame enough, they’ve also created a room that can only be opened by a remote control and a button on a bookcase.  This remote control feature wasn’t one that Ric came up with; it came with the house.  If the previous owner of that house was so paranoid that he had to build a panic room, fine, that’s his business, but I can’t believe someone with such concerns for their own safety would build a room dependant on electricity opening the door because one of the first things an intruder might do is cut the power.  So, duh, either you wouldn’t be able to get in or you wouldn’t be able to get out. 

I think we all know there should be a way to open the door manually from the inside or from the outside and there should also be some sort of manual lock in the room.  In other words, Carly would be able to lock Ric out.  Not that locking him out would be a good idea since he’s her food source, but at least it’s one thing about the situation that she could control.  It also means Carly should have a manual, non-electric way to open the door and get out. 

Another panic room inconsistency was made obvious the day Liz was putting books on the built in shelves in the living room.  One of the books pushed the aforementioned “button on the bookcase” that opens the door/wall of the panic room.  She didn’t see it open because she got up, answered the phone, then went straight out the front door without looking back to see the secret that lurks in her living room gaping wide open at her.  I assume a person would use that button to get in if they didn’t have time to find their remote control.  Fine.  But then how do you close the door once you’re in there?  Do you push the button twice, triggering the door to open, then triggering it to close and try rushing in there before the wall closes on you?  Maybe. 

Now here’s this particular inconsistency:  If you have no remote, you pushed the button twice and slipped into the room before the door closed, then how the hell do you get out if there’s no way to open it from the inside? 

Or here’s a better question:  Why the hell didn’t the writers think of this crap before they put this story on our televisions? 

I would like to buy a round of clues for the writers at “General Hospital,” but I don’t even begin to have the money that would take.  I don’t think science has developed the technology to perform brain transplants yet anyway, so my money, if I had any, would be donated in vain. 

Now that I’m thinking about that button in the bookcase, does Ric even know it’s there?  I think he does.  I can kind of remember the real estate agent mentioning it.  If so, then why doesn’t Ric disable that button?  What if Liz goes to put a book up and triggers it again?  He’s already come home once to find the panic room door open.  And didn’t the real estate agent say something about the electricity and water supply in the panic room not being connected to the other systems in the house?  If that’s so, then how could Carly short out the electricity in the whole house from the panic room if the electrical systems in the panic room……. 

…..Aw, hell this is giving me a headache. 

One thing I’m waiting for is Liz to greet Ric one day and start feeling him up, triggering the remote control in his pocket.  That would be hilarious.  (Are you happy to see me, or is that a remote control?) 

If anyone is wondering whether or not Ric is officially “sick” now, then I think it’s safe to say he is.  Not just because he has kidnapped his brother’s pregnant wife in order to steal her baby five long months from now, when she’s due, but because he has left her access to view all the comings and goings in his home on those surveillance monitors (and by “comings,” I mean that literally since Ric and Liz only seem to screw on the couch).  That kind of gives her an upper hand because she gets to see, and hear, everything that is said in the living room and she also knows when Ric is approaching the door of the secret room.  Ric, on the other hand, has no idea what Carly’s doing in there.  She could be standing right by the door with a pipe from the bathroom in her hand, ready to bash his brains in. 

If I were Ric, I would have just given Carly a load of food, water and vitamins, unhooked the monitors and said, “See ya in five months.”  (Really, I would have waited until she only had a couple of weeks to go, or even better, I would have just taken the baby after it was born and just not dealt with Carly at all.)  The fact that Ric feels a need to let her watch him and Liz all the time, as well as visiting her every chance he gets, tells me that he might be more “into” Carly than he is Liz. 

Ric is definitely one sick puppy to do any of this and he is probably the most clueless of all.  Well, maybe not the most clueless.  Carly did pick up a metal T.V. tray and throw it through the front of one of those monitors, disabling some of her ability to see outside of her prison AND electrocuting herself in the process.  I’m sure she’s not dead, but that would certainly be an interesting twist to a ridiculous story:  Carly dying by her own, clueless hand.  And not by any interesting means like in the dining room with a knife or in the conservatory with a candlestick, but in the panic room with a T.V. tray.