December 12, 2005

Adam and Krystal, for the most part, are playing their deceptions for comedic value.  Notwithstanding Adam’s suave attempt to lure Krystal in with his ‘preferred stock,’ the two of them are hamming it up.  Not so with JR and Babe.  Most of the time I get sucked into their routine, only to see later that it was a big fake out.  Of course, I suspect that it isn’t all acting on their parts.  They themselves are getting sucked into their own illusion.  When Babe asked him how he felt about her falling back on love with him, he responded, “Uncomfortable and weird. I don't feel all warm and fuzzy and have that sincerity thing. I'm a cynic, detached. That's more me.”  With words like that, I had completely forgotten that he just got through paying off Del to work on Babe. 

I can’t believe the shirt is back.  First of all, isn’t it a cardinal rule that characters very rarely wear the same clothes twice?  It happens, sure, but very rarely.  Who, oh why, did this one have to be resurrected?  Especially since Krystal is now a wealthy woman, and can afford a whole new wardrobe.  But its back.  The white shirt with the faux black lace camisole stitched over top of it.  Gag.  It’s a good thing Officer Dayna only works the fashion police beat over in Port Charles.  She might have been forced to turn in her badge over this one. 

Babe singing, “Here comes the bride, all dressed in candlelight white!”  The scenes between her and Livia were a hoot.  I enjoy seeing characters interact who normally are not in each other’s sphere. 

JR and Kendall – what an ugly little scene that turned out to be.  It started out swimmingly – Kendall recounted her sins to him and he responded “That’s so Chandler!”  But as the scene progressed, the self-absorption that these two exhibited was sucking the life out of the room.  So it ended up in JR tossing her his frustrated, insensitive opinion, and her responding in the only way she knows how to respond these days – by inflicting the most amount of pain that is possible.  Since JR is well acquainted with that MO, he retaliated in kind by taking full advantage of Babe’s coup.   

But JR couldn’t have hurt Kendall nearly as bad as Greenlee.  She must have cast a spell on Babe so that Babe would choose a Fusion party to make her big reveal.  Greenlee will be ecstatic when she reads all about it in the newspapers.  Here’s to hoping that when she calms down from her snit, she’ll realize her colossal mistake and writhe in regret and guilt for the rest of her days. 

I really can’t get over Erica.  She is so single-minded.  I’m sure, to her, everything is completely logical.  A) Ryan has always been the town hero, and right now Kendall needs a hero.  B) Erica loves Ryan to bits, for whatever reason.  Any good deeds he may have done for her should have been cancelled out by how much he hurt her daughter, Kendall.  Maybe its misplaced longing for the one she should never have let get away – Chris Stamp.  C) Erica can’t stand Zach.  The fact that he has stood by her daughter and that her daughter loves Zach, is meaningless next to Erica’s ironclad first impression that Zach is a big ole meanie.  D) Ah, the icing on the cake from hell – Kendall is carrying Ryan’s baby.  Anything less than her ending up with that baby’s father would make things more complicated than Erica wants to deal with.  So there you have it, all wrapped up in a not-so-pretty bow.  Break out the champagne, folks.  Ryan is going to get shoved down Kendall’s throat, because her mother has it allllll figured out. 

Speaking of having it all figured out, Kendall seems to be taking after her mother.  She just really cannot get a bead on Zach.  Every so often she has an insight, but most of the time she lets her own emotions and insecurities get in the way of seeing that the man is ga ga over her.  When he said last week that he couldn’t take his eyes off her, he wasn’t just spouting flowery, meaningless words.  In Friday’s episode, he. could. not. take. his. eyes. off. her.  But I have to believe that a lot of this is the hormones talking, because she is all over the map.  One minute she is throwing his ring off the roof of Fusion because she doesn’t want to trust in love.  When he rescues her, she starts spouting about destiny and miracles.  Then she sees the divorce papers which she had insisted upon and had made in very clear and certain terms that she thought he was scum of the earth – yet she gets the idea that he wants to divorce her and he is the one jumping to Q and R when he’s supposed to go to D.   

So she decides that  he has walls up (which was true at one point, and then he knocked them down with his very open, honest and raw words of love), and that there is some sort of disconnect happening in his head.  The only disconnect Zach has is the belief that Kendall doesn’t love him back, and that he is not worthy to love her – and that is only because she has gone to great lengths to further that belief.  Kendall is the one with the mother of all disconnects.  She continues to insist that Zach doesn’t love her – maybe because he hasn’t gotten around to hiring a skywriter or a marching band to send the message.  Maybe he should have the words mowed into a frickin cornfield or shaved on his head. 

It used to be that punching someone out on television or in the movies was no big deal.  So I couldn’t help but roll my eyes with how much emphasis was placed on Zach being a naughty boy for doing such a thing.  He freaked Lily out and made her see red (I’m sure it wasn’t the red car in the background).  He earned Julia’s scorn, reminded Jonathan of his father, and had Ryan wanting to even the score till Julia talked him down (whew!) because violence is surely not the answer.  The only one who gave Zach a standing O, was Aidan.  Another Zaidan scene!  This one was even more satisfying because Zach offered his resources to someone for the upteenth time, and this time someone actually took him up on it.  My own reaction to the punch was with a shrug.  I’m not really into the action stuff.  What I found much more fascinating was Zach’s behavior leading up to the punch.  He was so angry, he was crawling out of his skin.  The fury was rolling off him in waves.  It was a sight to see. 

Josh is apparently planning to gaslight Amanda.  He seems to have taken his first steps by having her screw up her brand new job.  It occurs to me, though, that maybe that wasn’t his first frame job.  I’m just speculating wildly here because other than the three obvious suspects, who the heck else could it be?  Jonathan and Amanda are the ones currently under suspicion for the various crimes around town, so lets discount them for a moment.  Janet is the other obvious suspect – it seems unlikely that she is at home talking to Trevor for real.  My bet is that she is holed up at the Valley Inn.  Its possible she started the fire, thinking Babe was inside at the time, fueled by having overheard Amanda and Babe arguing upstairs.  But whoever strung Kendall up, obviously wasn’t mistaking her for someone else.  There could only be two other explanations for why Janet would target Kendall.  Janet could have heard the gossip that Jonathan started the fire, so she attacked Kendall to keep the suspicion firmly placed on Jonathan and away from her or Amanda.  That would actually be clever.  The other reason could be that she overheard the Thanksgiving fiasco as she was wandering the hotel, and decided to rid the town of such filth as Kendall.  That would be completely lame.  Besides, Janet and Erica were friends once, so I doubt she would kill Erica’s child out of some whackjob version of moral indignation.  

So if it isn’t Jonathan, Amanda or Janet, then it could possibly be Josh.  He is really the only common denominator.  Lets assume for a moment that he is a whackjob.  He clearly had the hots for Babe, and helped her throw over Jamie.  But instead of falling into his arms, she chose to fall into JR’s.  That’s got to bruise a normal guy’s ego.  A whackjob might get a little more bent out of shape.  So why not get his revenge on her by shoving her down some stairs and poisoning her soup -  framing it on the convenient little twerp, Amanda.  Its already obvious he gets a kick out of messing with people’s lives, from the way he manipulated Greenlee.  Its possible he thought Babe was the one in the bar, but he could also have plenty of motive to snuff out Greenlee and Kendall.  We don’t know for sure that the only secret he uncovered was Kendall’s.  It is entirely possible he found out the truth about himself.  Nothing has been spoilered, but there is plenty of speculation that Erica is his mother – that Greg harvested her egg for his wife.  If he did find out this tidbit of info, wouldn’t it put him over the edge?  Recall how this week he gushed over Erica’s devotion to her daughter, after eavesdropping on her telephone message.  The fire at the bar and the hammock incident could simply be an old-fashioned case of demented sibling rivalry.  Josh could be behind all of the misdeeds around town, and is taking full advantage of the two ready-made scapegoats. 

I would dearly love for David to get a storyline of his own, especially when we are given glimpses of the old David as we did this week.  His menacing behavior towards Amanda was truly delicious. 

Have to laugh at Kendall getting 18 messages from her mother.  It wasn’t that many years ago that Kendall fervently wished that her mother would dote on her.  She got what she wished for. 

If I didn’t feel such contempt for Jonathan, would I have made it through the pee pee reveal without laughing?  Hard to say, hard to say.  Kudos to the actors for making it through that scene intact.  Every time I see Jonboy in a scene, I think of the brilliant performance in that episode of Just Shoot Me, where Enrico Colontoni’s brother had been faking his mental impairment for years.  Two classic lines from that episode are him chanting in a sing songy voice, “Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot piieeeeeeee.”  And when an attractive girl came onto him, he wailed “My pants are tight!” 

Well, I’m going to go relive those Friday scenes in Zach’s office.  Except this time, in my head, he does whip out his magic wand.

Thanks for reading.  Cheers!