November 28, 2007
Run to the bedroom! In the suitcase on the left, you'll find my
favorite axe. Would you like to watch TV or get between the sheets or contemplate this violent feeling. Would you like something to eat? Would you like to learn to fly? Would you like to see me try? ... Why are you running away?
"One of My Turns" written by Roger Waters. It should be renamed "The Nikolas Song"
OH OH OH my GOD, my EYES!!
And here, I thought I was going to open this column with something that made sense, but as I am watching GH, more specifically Emily's Funeral, I happened to glance up at the screen as the camera panned over Lulu's hair and what the complete hell is going on at GH? Did the hairdressers go on strike to support the writers? Lulu's hair looks like ass...literally. It looks like a big ol' blonde ass up on her head with a skinny girl's sparkle belt on it. Someone pass me the mental floss so I can stop seeing it!
Wasn't I talking about Nikolas before Lulu's ass hair got in the way? No, was only thinking about him and hadn't gotten around to writing about him.
I touched on this idea in my last column, gave it a good healthy grope, in fact, but things have happened in between that make me want to talk about it some more and hey...my site. While I do realize that, because I have been watching soaps for a bazillion years, there is going to be some major turn where we find out that Nikolas did not really kill Emily and he'll sob with relief and blow a snot bubble or twelve and all will be well again, BUT the fact is that our writers made good and sure that we knew Nikolas was completely batshit before Emily died just to give us that sniggling possibility that his brain broke and he choked the Emily right out of her.
Another interjection...about injections: Does this Juvederm woman who, were she physically capable, would frown as she tells us that parentheses have a place, but not on our face, freak anyone else but me? Her face is why I would never want any kind of injecty stuff to get rid of my wrinkles. I swear to God, she can't move it. Her face is totally frozen in this Joker-esque, rictus smile and her face has not even one "expression line." It's like a Barbie head. When it starts talking, I feel like one of the manikins in the mall suddenly came to life and started yakking about grammatical elements on skin.
Crazy Nikolas...I have digressed yet again. It didn't help that I just had to watch a scene between Carly and Lulu's butt hair. Where was I?
I have lost track of all of the people Nikolas has beaten on in the past few months. Jerry, Johnny, Jason, a bit of Emily, Logan... One minute, he's being the perfect Russian prince (Aren't they Russians? I know they are headquartered in Greece, but they certainly aren't Greek) and the next, he's gone all Hulk and is consumed with rage.
Sometime between the first time he beat the complete shit out of Logan and the time he shivved Jerry in the alley, someone (and I'm not saying who but they are pretty dead now) should have marched him straight into one of those gigantic Cassadine wings at GH and forced him to have every test in the book run on him to see what was causing him to suddenly start (to use the excusing nomenclature of our time) "acting out." Sure, he's had quite a history of violence (both with his family - both sides - and with himself) and killing people isn't at all unheard of in any of those three camps (Cassadine, Spencer or Nikolas), but let's face it, the most recent beatings are a little past Nikolas' typical expressions of homicidal rage. Emily repeatedly chanting, "But Nikolas, that's NOT who you ARE" doesn't make it any different than what it is.
HAHAHA. Truly, I am never going to get through this column if they don't stop showing pharmaceutical commercials. Now we have an Enablex commercial where a couple of balloons (The weak one is yellow, of course. All bladder control icons are yellow.) are tooling around Europe and kabam! Yellow breaks and presumably, its little yellow cheeks glow pink with shame and it wishes it had some Depends.
I know it's more fun if I stay on topic, but listen, you have to love it when the commercials are as interesting as the show. But now the show is interesting too! Elizabeth just came home from the funeral and found Jason waiting in her house, in her chair. Did he just break in? Does he have a key to Laura's house? Yesterday, he said, "Nice place," so I take it that was his first time there. Now he just lets himself in?
Granted, I wouldn't mind coming home from a bummer event like my best friend's funeral and finding a Jason waiting for me. But wait! Liz isn't the only one to get human prezzies today! Nikolas came home (thank God he was able to get shed of that schmuck, Lucky, who wanted to come home with him) and heard this tinkling little voice say, "Nick-a-liss!" and it's Emily! She's still got on her pretty clothes, too! She's not wearing her new rope necklace either!
So here we are on a precipice, prepared to fly into uncharted soap territory.
I don't think *this,* whatever *this* is, has ever been done on ABC soaps.
We've had dead people come back because we only thought they were dead. We've had clones and we've had identical twins and we've had ghosts and we've had manifestations of conscience and we've had guardian angels. Guza [GH Head Writer, Robert Guza] has something planned, but no one who is telling knows what it is. He tells us that she is not a ghost and she is not a manifestation of Nikolas' guilt. She's real, she's corporeal. She does not remember anything that happened after she came into the room where she died and she is genuinely taken aback when Nikolas tells her she's dead. Where can it go from there? We know by spoilers that Nikolas starts to get irritated as hell when people begin showing up to "comfort" him and he just wants to hang out with the Emily Doppelganger. While the initial reaction to this might be "Well, duh!" I have to say that my reaction, should I suddenly start seeing a dead person who I could touch and talk to and reason with and kiss on, would be first and foremost to find out if anyone else could see her. "Here, Emily, my little pumpkin, you sit right there in that chair...LUCKY? Are you still here??? Lucky! Come here!" Then if Lucky does the "adoing!" thing, he'll know he's not crazy. If Lucky acts as though no dead people are sitting in the arm chair, get rid of him and go back to canuzzling the Emily Lucky can't see, no harm, no foul. To paraphrase Stephen Stills, if you can't be with the Emily you love, love the Emily you're with!
If he's truly got a seeable, touchable, cuddly Emily there in his marvelously spooky castle, he needs to put on a T-shirt that says, "Luckiest guy on earth" and call it a day.
If this is a further manifestation of the tumor he has (if that's what it is) that makes him beat on people, then he needs to hole up in Castle Grayskull, have groceries delivered and let people talk about how poor Prince Nikolas just went crazy after the love of his life died. (Pshaw, they won't remember he was crazy before she died - the story is much better if her death made him crazy) Then he can wear the puffy pirate shirt and have his happily ever after with Emily and everyone else can have a story to tell in hushed tones behind the backs of their hands. We all win!
Now that I'm thinking along those lines, I am in a serious state of hoping that it's not going to turn out that seeing Emily is the result of pressure from his tumor or whatever and that he's going to have to face the choice of having surgery to have it removed so he can live, but having the Emily visions go away or leaving in the tumor intact so he can keep seeing Emily, but die. While that might be a good story and yes, I really think it could be and it would fit well into Guza's assertion that this will be the most romantic story they've ever told, it would just be too, too sad!! I don't even LIKE Emily and Nikolas, together OR separate, and that would be just too sad to watch!
I have to admit that I am also fairly mesmerized by the roll out from the writers' strike, should there be any at all. We're hitting the point where the material that was already taped when the writers went on strike is running out and before long, the scripts will have to be written by the higher executives if the strike has not ended.
I have a better idea.
I think we should pull a "Blue in the Face." Let's take "situations" and let the actors ad lib the scenes. Give the actors a set, co-actors for the scene and tell them all together, "OK, Johnny has shown up at Carly's house to talk to her about his father, Jax eventually walks in and is pissed that he's there, but Carly stands up for Johnny. It's a 4 minute scene and we'll count you down for the last 60 seconds...ready...GO!"
We've been told that the basic story arcs are written to span a year or so, so as long as that isn't compromised in any way, I say let'er rip! The theory is that no one really knows the character better than the actor who plays the part, so let's see what they bring to the table when they are given the opportunity to really explore who they are when they are at work!
There's no way they could do irreparable damage anyway. It's been proven over and over that soaps can, like the phoenix, rise up reborn out of the ashes of its own destruction. If you don't believe me, just ask One Life to Live.
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