October 11, 2006 All My Bratty, Smart-assed Incorrigible Children
I have been mothering non-stop for a total of 35 years now and I can tell you with expert assurance that if these were All MY Children, they'd be lining up for ass-whoopin's right about now.
That's coming from a nonspanking mom, too.
Of course, the front-burner story is this one:
You know, I didn't understand it on GH with Carly and I don't understand it here either. Sure, these gals are pretty and all, but what is with the obsession thing where men just can't control their actions around certain women? How do these repulsive women get to be the secret elixir that turns mens' minds to oatmeal and their penises into heat seeking missiles?
Babe has been in town for what? Something like three years now? (Three long, excruciating, eye-bleeding years?) Already she has won the heart off screen of JR, to the point that he married her within minutes. She slept with Jamie without bothering to confess that she was married to a man she was supposedly over the moon in love with at the time, then became pregnant, unsure of whether JR or Jamie was the father. She kept Jamie on the line until her marriage fell apart around a pile of her own lies, not the least of which were that she was still married to someone else and the baby she was representing as her own was really Bianca's and that their baby was actually being raised by another set of millionaires in far off Llanview, that coming AFTER the lie in which she told JR that his baby had DIED. After JR presumably dumped her, she took up with Jamie, yet another love of her life, and paddled through that until deciding to do the honorable thing and leave him so he could pursue his medical career, after which she went BACK to JR and began to believe her own press about loving him until they were married again, when he tried to KILL her. Still, the Chandler millions (did you know that Alexa Havins, who plays Babe, was raised in "Chandler," Arizona?) sang their siren song, disguised as "what's best for Little A" and she stuck around until someone hotter came along and she just couldn't stop herself from spreading those same pretty legs that parted like oil and water for Jamie on that beach, all the while wondering why JR is so closed off and distant. I'm not saying JR is a saint because God knows better than anyone that he's NOT, but after finding out his mother's alive, getting lied to and jerked around for years by Babe and almost killing a good friend and her baby due to bad timing and worse aim, you have to figure the guy is going to be hiding inside himself a bit. One cannot expect to be on top of their game the same year they kick a major alcohol habit. Based on his behavior, I'd say he stalled out working his way through all twelve of those steps, but hey, since he's got Babe to excuse asshole thing he says and does, why bother? If you don't hold a grudge for a guy trying to drop a house on you, sending you to a cockroach-like death, he has to figure it's all smooth sailing from here on out. It helps to set the bar pretty high, then anything you do afterward is "at least not as bad as the time I tried to drop a house on you."
The promos say, "I have to choose, my marriage or my lover... I want them both." Maybe she should run the writers through a few showings of "Paint Your Wagon" and hope for the best.
Proving the old adage that people criticize in others what they hate in themselves (Well, everyone except for me... I criticize in others what I hate in others. There has to be an exception to prove the rule, right?), Babe flew into quite a tizzy when Colby the Wonder Brat started lying out her face to save her own butt. In fact, Babe few into quite a tizzy when Colby started telling the truth to save her own butt (that she overheard Babe confess to her affair). There's just no pleasing some people.
Apparently, Adam is not too starry-eyed by the idea of adding another pater to his familius to kick the snot out of Sean. As I looked at the new Sean, it crossed my mind that I never knew Jonathan Bennett (ex-JR in his awkward stage) had a younger brother. It's good to know that the funds that previously paid for Vincent Irizarry's contract are being put to good use combing the high school drama departments helping out poor, disenfranchised but starry-eyed junior thespians who are dying to act but have no prayer of earning a drama scholarship. Where, oh where, would AMC be without the likes of Colby, Sean and Sydney? I'm thinking in the same grassy, fragrant field it would be in without Megan McTavish as a head writer, who keeps driving the show into steaming piles of horseshit. (Interesting... "horseshit" is actually in my MS Word dictionary. I'm glad to know I evidently spelled it correctly) I swear, no one can be this unfortunate in choosing stories. The suck has got to be premeditated to be this thorough.
For a character that the show claims they are eager to keep, AMC sure doesn't know what the heck to do with Aidan. He no longer has any family ties in town. He never sees his BFF, Ryan. He was going full steam ahead with Erin, only to hit an oddly premature snap on that relationship and now he seems rushed into a pairing with Di. Are they really pushing him into any little hole they can find, trying to get him to fit?
I can't imagine a greater "source of all evil" touching so many different stories. Not that I ever really cared for the character to start with, but it seems that while she was away, Dixie perfected her "it's all about me" skills to the extreme. Oblivious to the interests or needs of others, she forges ahead with her own agenda, demeaning and attacking anyone who doesn't do the same on her behalf. Kendall's marriage, JR's mental status, Tad's pain and now, Annie/Kate's well being are all secondary to what Dixie wants. Erica is an amateur narcissist in comparison.
Charging fresh out of the "Terry is a bad guy and he's after me" story into a "Dixie is a bad guy and she's after us" story, Annie has been foisted onto both Ryan and the viewers as Poor Pitiful Victim. Personally, if you blow a hole in me because you hallucinated I was someone else, I tend to steer a wide berth. Gunshot holes are old hat to Ryan and he figures that's just Annie's way of saying hello. I am grateful he is there to run interference between Annie and Kate versus Tad and Dixie, who, with Dixie's bloodhound nose dragging them headlong into the family, are bound to knock things around in a big way. When I watched today's episode, it was quite telling to see how shaken Dixie was when Ryan and Tad suggested that she would scare Kate. It was so foreign for her to consider the needs of someone else that she looked like she was going to blow a circuit for a second. I swear, she did a Max Headroom bob around as her brain wrapped around the idea of for one second thinking about another person. I thought her head was going to explode like that guy in "Scanners."
I could do with a bit more of this. It's pretty sad when my favorite couple on the show (second only to Zach and Myrtle, who I'd really love to see knock one out), is just as jacked up as everyone else. There really isn't anyone to root for any more. I miss feeling a little tug in the pit of my uterus over the chemistry in a couple, thinking, "Oh yeah, this is hot!" I think I last felt it when Zach and Kendall were first connecting and then a little twinge on what we saw between Simone and Ethan. That accounts for a very long dry spell on the uterine nudge. I felt a very brief moment between Erica and Jeff, of all people I can understand why Erica feels distanced from Jack. I'd feel distanced from my husband if John James was in the room. Well, maybe for a little bit. He Jeffs well since both Jeff Colby and Jeff Martin have rung my bell a bit. He's about all on this show that HAS impressed me as of late. Time to bring in the big guns and hope for the best!
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