This column contains a super sized General Hospital “Extra” about Sonny & “his” Son, but first All My Children: 

Okay, now I have conflicts because I love KWAK and mean as snake venom Adam, too. Awkward! I was distracted early this week, was there any follow up with Colby and Frankie/Quentin? 

Tad confiding in Jesse is well done. I think I made it clear last week that this is a favorite of mine. I’m not happy we haven’t gotten to see Opal more involved. Maybe she could think Uncle Rob is after her romantically and have a separate but convergent comedic storyline along side what’s going on now? I know. I’m dreaming.

I really enjoyed Babe and JR’s talk and JR’s return to the mansion. Oh, speaking of which I did it again! Last week I wrote glowingly about JR’s having his kidney stolen when it was his bone marrow. I said the same thing on the podcast. I just keep thinking of that old urban legend and it seems so smart to me to see that playing out. Unique, really.

What the h…. I’m having a flash back to high school. Let’s pinky-swear to keep our gooey sexual secrets we share with our BFF away from our BF’s, M’kay? And Ryan, Oh, man, I can’t even fathom that I was slightly intrigued by what this memory loss might bring. Good for Annie telling him off. I don’t envy her having to explain this to Emma or having to go back to work with Kendal and Greenlee. She got the short end of this one, didn’t she? How nice would it be if she didn’t turn out to be the weak link and this actually turned out to be a story we could finally start to feel for Annie.

One Life to Live  

Dammit! I thought I would have grown out of the young lovers being kept apart thing tearing at my heart but I’ll be damned if I’m not getting pulled into this. The writing is brilliant. It is Todd having his worse nightmare and behaving the worse he has in years. (This is saying so much.) I absolutely didn’t think I would like this and in spite of that I am. Look at that Sean’s going to be Starr’s Full Time bodyguard. Very interesting! Why aren’t any of these kids in school? 

I’m disappointed we haven’t seen more from Talia’s moving in with Layla and Twinkie, I mean Sarah, sorry. That’s one of my pet names for those shee-shee-la-la girls like Flash. Twinkie: no substance, get it? What a surprise to have Antonio not fight the lawsuit for the tainted Santi <shivering and hearing horses whiney> fortune. Ramsey could not be deluded as much as necessary to think our Antonio would be desperate enough for money that he could be corrupted; could he?  

Wow. When did Clint become such a goodie-goodie? He’s always been more than up to the task of doing what he had to do but now he’s acting like Lindsay killed some body or something. In fact; I believe I have seen characters kill another and not be so morally shook up about it! Oh, so now Jared’s not so sure he made the RIGHT CHOICE in committing this felony? He’s quick, isn’t he? Bravo to him and Charlie getting the best of Dorian. That is not an easy feat although she took it on the chin recently when Roxie busted her out about the RED BOX secrets with Nora. Maybe Dorian is losing some of her venom? She is one of our classic soap pit vipers, I know, but I do so love the Cramer side of her! Where’s Addie? I miss her! Miles, too, now that I stop to think about it. 

Have I missed why Jessica is acting so weird vis a vie Nash’s business partners or is it his success she is acting guilty about. What did she do? Also, I don’t like that they shoved that Allison storyline at us and then backed off of it and now it’s like it never happened. Sweeps stunt? Probably but that seems to be beneath the quality for One Life to Live these days. As good as it is it shouldn’t have lower its standards to utitlize a cheap stunt return.

General Hospital Extra, Sonny & “his” Son 

A few weeks back in my column titled “I Hate the Start of Sweeps!” I was talking about the controversy of the Michael and the Gun storyline and stated; “I completely understand your concerns and I respect them very much. It's just that for 10 years, AJ's fans have watched as Carly's refusal to allow him to be a real father to his son was validated, vindicated. As his murder was passed off on a DAY PLAYER! Sonny is a mobster and Jason is his HIRED ASSASSIN. They kill people. AJ was too bad of a person (and he was, I am not blind to what they wrote him to do even though some of it was just so wrong) to be "allowed" his parental rights. It is only JUST that their arrogance and lack of empathy, their short sightedness believing that a mobster had more rights to raise a child than an alcoholic... it really CRIES OUT for Michael to take a walk on the dark side. He's been raised on video games and justification. The laws, the rules, morality itself meant nothing to his role models. It is poetic justice that Michael, Son of AJ, "no mercy" Corinthos goes down the criminal and maybe mental illness highway.” 

Since then the debate has heated up all over again. AJ’s fans such as myself simply can not stomach Sonny’s action or lack of it concerning the child he took by force away from a father who never had a chance to learn how to love him (in any way that he himself had never been loved). Sonny’s fans remind us that AJ wanted to send his son AWAY (to a private boarding school for a first class education) when that time came. Never mind that that’s what people of the Quartermaines social standing do with their children That the upper class has been doing that for EVER. All trailer trash Carly could hear was someone was going to take her kid away from her!  

(Oh, man this is so hard for me to talk about even now without the emotions threatening to turn me into a character bashing harpy on a rant and roll.)  

Some of the disgust I feel with Sonny right now I can honestly blame on timing and probably editing because it’s been WEEKS on my end since Michael shot Kate but on the show it’s been 2 days. The confusion is further pronounced when Kate’s recovery plays as if it had been several weeks but the kid has been MIA only days. The entire program seems to be paced to show us that some time has passed. All the other storylines are moving at warp speed if it’s only been two days! So, It looks like to us (Sonny’s detractors for a lack of something better to call myself because I am not exactly a “hater”)as if Sonny is sitting by Kate’s side talking about Easter Bonnets and bygone days from another ERA while his SON IS MISSING and he assumes that he has been kidnapped by a rival mob faction!  

While I am not sympathetic IN THE LEAST that Jason may never be able to murder again (gasp) because his hands have been damaged I was infuriated by Sonny’s attitude toward his servant, Jason. “Your no good to me.” Harsh. I thought he was your brother, dude? I mean he couldn’t be AJ’s brother because you had that job all sowed up. Ric couldn’t be your brother because you had Jason to fill that spot. Yet Sonny is so obsessed with the mess he made by schtumping Super Sex Barbie (a.k.a Claudia) that he can’t see past a Za-Crazy connection to the situation to see what Jason laid out in front of his face!

Michael had a gun. It had Bullets. He was on the docks at the same time Kate was shot; at the same location Kate was shot: Michael and his gun and his bullets were there as well. Security footage has Michael, running –alone-- away from the dock where Kate was shot and now Michael is missing. It does not take Mensa to connect those dots, Einstein. Yet there is Sonny in complete denial. As an AJ fan I’m wondering even with as much as Carly hated AJ and he hated her in return if the Quartermaines would be keeping her in the dark? If AJ would with hold the information that Michael left under his own steam not at the hands of a rival gang from her? I believe that he would. You know my take on the whole thing but this week In Perkie’s Observations  (and www.daytimeconfidential.com)

 Erica’s Evil Twin writes the most brilliant interpretation of Sonny’s motives I have read in a very long time: “Good thing I am comfortable saying the unpopular opinion (crossing fingers Jorpa joins in).

While I agree Sonny is being an "asshat" with the yelling - which I don’t particularly care for - I have to defend him on a few things.

Just like with every character I think you have to look at their actions based on their life experiences and evaluate things from there. I thought we got a glimpse into Sonny's mindset in one line that got thrown in to the convo without really being expanded upon...he said "if I really was a bad guy I would have sent Johnny back to you in pieces". In his world, which is really the only world he has ever known, he IS the good guy and I sort of think Claudia gets that to a certain extent because she too grew up in it. (And I will point out here something that NEVER seems to get mentioned, everyone says that Jason gets a bit of a pass because he wasn’t in his right mind when Sonny "hired" him, even though Jason BEGGED Sonny on multiple occasions to let him in and had several outs well after he became #2 and never took them. But if Jason lacked the mental capacity to fully understand what he was doing, how is that really any different than a 16 year old BOY joining the mob as a way to save himself and his mother from a violent home life? And how is it really any different than Jason letting a brilliant by childlike Spinelli get so involved in mob affairs.)

Okay so why on earth would Sonny think he is a good guy? First, the only people he seems to ever really kill come after him multiple times before he takes action. Yes he threatened those boys and I doubt that many people would approach things this way, but I never thought for a minute that he actually would kill a high school kid. I think he used his "reputation" and his threats to scare the kids into finding out who sold Michael the gun and to keep them from EVER doing something like this again. All the grounding in the world by their parents probably couldn’t accomplish what Sonny did with that one threat. I believe that Sonny uses his over the top rants to keep people in line so that he doesn’t need to resolve the issue WITH violence. I never thought he was going to kill Johnny at the B/W Ball - he was using him to flush out cr”AZ”y, and it was clear at least to me that even Johnny knew that Sonny wasn’t going to pull the trigger. I also don’t believe 24 hour deadline or not that he has no intention of killing Johnny and I think that Johnny senses it too, which is why he feels so free to expresses his irritation with the charade. We look at the situation and we say what a a-hat he is to lock up a guy that’s little more than a kid and then not feed him - Sonny looks at it and thinks hey, I am the good guy because any other mob boss would have sent a finger home in a box.

As for Michael, I think Jason is equally a jerk in the way that he presented the issue to Sonny. He basically said to him that if he wasn’t such a tyrant that Michael wouldn’t have shot Kate and run away. Now I am not nominating Sonny for father of the year, but isn’t it reasonable that he equated what Jason was saying to the idea that he and Zeke are somehow alike? And how disturbing would that be if that sentiment was being voiced by your best friend. Again, from HIS prospective, Sonny has got to be thinking yeah, I'm a bit over the top at times and I let Michael here more than he should, but I don’t hit him, I don’t lock him in the closet, I listen to him, I come whenever he calls me, I spend time playing with him, I take him cool places and he wants for nothing-- all of which is 150% better than how I had it with either Mike or Zeke. And where does Jason get off being so holier than thou?? Michael may have run away from Sonny, but I didn’t see him reaching out to Jason either and Jason certainly didn’t do any better with the kid in keeping him away from guns. The only person Michael trusts right now is his mother, and I think that’s part because Carly and Michael are close, part because he knows she isn’t a Kate fan, and part because he knows his mother never really thinks he does anything wrong. Really, what kid wouldn’t be afraid of facing their father after defying them so blatantly and with such horrific results? If Jason had framed it that way, I don’t think Sonny would have been so defensive and might have actually listened to what was being said.”

Wow. I can actually see EET’s point of view from that post. It’s not my VIEW but since I am notorious for my distaste with Sonny I thought sharing such a great post with you would bring a nice balance to my View from the Recliner’s Edge.

Here is a picture for you. A blast from the past as they say to remind us all why it is not a good thing that Lulu is back with Logan emotionally speaking.

 No, I don't like her with Johnny either. I had hopes for Milo, if you must know. He is gorgeous. He is on the fringes of the mob so he settles her pre requisite "must be a dangerous" requirement, as well. Seriously, I don't see anyone on canvas right now I do want her with.

I'm enjoying Sam/Ian/Lucky and I'm along for the ride whichever way the wind blows because as long as the characters are on the show: reconciliation is a two headed snake that will bite us on the ass  from both ends at once. They will forever be waving it in front of the fans faces like a red flag. IMO. 

If there was ONE THING I could change--and nothing else, I think it would be to feature well written storylines with bad guys who are the villain and good guys who are the hero instead of vice versa: bad guys are the heroes and good guys are the villains. I don't mind layers. Layers are wonderful but a good girl conflicted over  lust for a criminal is a far cry from her subjugating herself to his complete control while she does the STEPFORD WIFE all around town!

"He's a good man." she drones, perfect hair and teeth and tushy.

"He’s a wonderful father" she says her voice a perfect monotone as blood is splattered across her face from the "good man" disemboweling someone in front of the children (practically).  

"He's just misunderstood and moody" she says seriously as they cart away the bodies.  

"He's got a heart of gold" she deadpans as she turns her back on her family and becomes isolated and completely dependant on his every whimpering snarl to the point when she is left standing outside the motel where he is shagging his latest piece because she didn't stand up to his rigorous moral standards everyone must follow but him. 

"He loves his children." she says even as he drags her ass to court to take them away from her. And across town a Mother decimated by the loss of a father, a son and a daughter fills a flask with vodka and tries to carry on." 

Well, I’ve taken some liberties with actual storylines for creative purposes but you catch my drift. I didn’t mean for this to run so long so I’ll prepare to sign off. I’m looking forward to next week for all three shows. No, things are not great in every single storyline on every single show but each one is sporting some serious improvements from one year ago. From six months ago! This week coming up on my Daytime Confidential ABC Edition Karen, from WUBS will join Luke and me in announcing (and reading?) the winning entry to the daytimeconfidential.com’s SAVE THE QUARTERMAINES ~ SAVE PORT CHARLES writing contest. You’re not going to want to miss that. I read some of the most witty, emotional and historically relevant storyline ideas I could have dreamed of. So, hang in there soap fans. There is bound to be something you like coming up. Sooner or later!

The ABC Edition of Daytime Continental’s podcast.