April 24, 2006

Thank you so much, Kate Brown, for the pornographic inference you put in your commentary about Jamie and JR cornering Di in the conference room.  It certainly did not help my frame of mind that the scene initially played out in just such a manner as to feed the imagination.  It’s one of those times where I curse the line that must be drawn in daytime TV. 

I thought the sequence where Dixie and Tad see each other for the first time, with the music and the montage, was pretty cool.  I like flashbacks, I’m such a sucker for them.  I could have done without the extreme closeups of them looking into the camera, that was a little too freaky-looking, but otherwise it was done well.  The thing I liked the most about the big reveal was the set up.  Tad just walked in, and there she was.  She didn’t reveal herself a la Ryan at his memorial or other similar back-from-the-dead ‘tadas!’  All the skulking about, all the near misses – the law of averages demanded that she literally be stumbled upon at some point.   

The thing that I just really didn’t like about the whole thing was Tad’s behavior.  See, I expected him to be angry and upset, he has a legitimate reason to be.  But the thing with Tad is that he took it too far.  It seems like half the time he reacts appropriately to a situation, and then half the time he crosses the line into full-blown self-righteous hypocrisy.  Even Krystal was listing off plausible reasons why Dixie stayed away before calling her a stone cold bitch.  Tad was even more furious with Di, and his actions towards her were even more egregious.  He had a legitimate reason to be angry, yet didn’t garner any sympathy from me, because he’s spewing garbage that a man in his position has absolutely no business spewing.  Forgetting all the lies and secrets from the past for a moment, let’s examine the stinking pile he is currently sitting on.  He’s keeping Erica’s secret, to the detriment of many people, because she swore him to secrecy and hey, it isn’t his secret to tell.  Yet Di is apparently expected to spill her guts, with no regard to the fact that she made a promise and it wasn’t her secret to tell.  Whether Di was right or wrong in this situation, Tad has no business being judgmental.  Hurt, angry, betrayed – yes.  Judgmental…nope.  Just walk out the door, Tad.  Just walk out the door. 

I did not enjoy David going to find JR to tell him that Dixie was alive.  I would have liked it more if they ran into each other, and JR said something to set him off and he decided to lash out.  Or if David had been seeking Di out to needle her about it.  But the way it played out was just silly and pointless.  I don’t like pathetic David, and Dixie makes him so pathetic.  It’s not love.  It’s not even dysfunctional love.  It’s pathetic.  It was similar behavior five years ago that initially made me not want David with Anna.  Having watched the show only a few months, the only David I saw was Neutered Lovesick Puppy David.   

Babe is one of those people that seem to toggle back and forth between shrewd and cunning, and dumb as a box of rocks.  She had the smarts to figure out that the best way to show JR’s hand was to pretend to be in bed with Bianca.  Yet she was dumb enough to let the whole annulment fiasco with Paul Cramer drag on forever.  She’s cunning enough to come up with a plan to lure JR into her web so she can get Little A, yet delusional enough to think that appealing to Janet Dillon’s sympathies would stop her from toying with JR.  Babe’s always been an optimistic, can-do type of person, but going to Janet and saying “pretty please with a cherry on top” really stretches the limits.  

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not usually into the mushy stuff.  I make exceptions in certain situations.  The JR and Babe in France stuff would have been more nauseating if they weren’t juxtaposed with the scenes back home of Dixie and Adam, et al.  The fact that their happiness is about to go down in flames makes the scenes more poignant, and therefore more tolerable.  I’m such a romantic!   

I have to crack up at JR.  Once again he has pulled some specialized talent seemingly out of nowhere.  First, a couple of years ago, he suddenly has this heretofore unknown musical talent – enough to sing some songs at a fundraiser in Florida.  Now he can draw a flawless portrait of Babe, after admitting that he blew off most of his lessons with Stuart.  I’m impressed!  Seriously though, wouldn’t it have been funny if JR turned the tablet around and it was a stick figure? 

Great scenes this week with Greg and Erica.  He is playing the manipulative, delusional, megalomaniacal snake to the hilt.  He also finally drew attention to the pink polka-dotted elephant in the room, by telling Erica precisely what he thought of her and her decision to abort.  I still can’t help but wonder if that was a factor in his lie to Julia.  She had an abortion.  I also have to wonder if he really does have the hots for Erica, or if he has used that as a method of manipulation.  For months he was using it to disarm her, by playing on her ego.  Now he is using it to creep her out, because he knows she’s been victimized by men in the past. 

Erica is one of those people, like Tad, where sometimes you can really root for them and sympathize with them, but then they pull crap that makes you say, “forget it, you’re on your own.”.  On the one hand, you can see why she wants to keep her secret.  But in order to keep it, she’s letting it destroy her family.  Didn’t she want to keep it in the first place so it wouldn’t…destroy her family?  Kendall has disappeared and Ryan may lose Hisson because of the secret.  Erica is tearing down Jackson, her husband, the man who loves her, because he is trying to help her daughter.  The bastard!  She refuses to let him in on her secret, when not that long ago she was furious with him for keeping Bianca’s baby a secret.  A hard and fast soap rule should be that when keeping a secret starts to cause just as many problems as revealing it would, it’s time to start rethinking strategy.   

On a related note, the Poke Fun at the Soap Genre line of the week goes to Dixie, when she told Adam, “You know what this town is like. Nobody can keep their mouth shut.”  That was so excellent.  Honorable mention goes to Erica declaring to Greg, who is having another heart episode, “Such a lot of drama!” 

When the doctors cut the bad out of Jonathan, they must have performed the operation during an earthquake.  They seriously hacked up his brain.  Why would he think that going out on a date with Amanda, she would behave the same as Lily?   

Blah blah, Kendall unfairly bitching out Zach.  Blah blah, Erica unfairly bitching out Zach.  Blah blah, Ryan unfairly bitching….no wait.  Ryan and Zach are teaming up together.  *buying ticket for the hand basket to hell* 

Josh the Miracle Child reassuring the couple about their Josh the Miracle Child totally warmed the cockles of my heart.  By ‘warmed,’ I mean ‘stabbed with my pen,’ because I just wanted it all to go away. 

I have a question:  Not having watched GH regularly in the past year, I’m a bit confused.  Didn’t Bennie die?  Did he come back from the dead?  Why are they calling him Bernie?  Is this a twin brother?  Is this one of those inside jokes, where they decided to do a dramatic soap twist, but with a minor character? 

Robin purses her lips so much I think Gucci is taking notes for their next line of handbags.  It’ll be called the Robinhead, and will be made from 100% chapped hide. 

Do you think Robert will gross out at the idea that his daughter responded to his accusation of frigidity by throwing herself at the playboy doctor she’s been trading barbs with for months?  Or maybe Robert will say, “It’s about damn time, she needed it badly.” 

Things with Robert aren’t always as they seem.  Things with Luke are never as they seem.  When Robert told the person on the other end of the line to chill the beer, you gotta wonder if he and Luke are really at odds.   

It is liberating to be able to fast-forward through storylines I don’t care about.  I don’t do this with All My Children, because I want to feel like I can have an informed opinion on everything that happens on the show.  I don’t have that same commitment to GH, so FF city!  The first three days I FF through anything not Robert-related.  I simply didn’t have time.  I did have more time to watch Thursday and Friday, but still FF through some of it.   

Most of the time I think Dillon and Georgie are cute as two bugs in a sunbeam-drenched rug.  But when she starts acting pissy because Dillon found out that she’s been writing letters to a jailed stalker, and later he’s forced to apologize for getting upset - FF!!  Lucky and Elizabeth whining at each other and everyone else - FF!  Carly grimacing as she contemplates John’s paternity juxtaposed with Jax’s hotness and large bank account – FF! Pretty much 90% of the scenes with Sonny in it I FF this week.  The only scenes I didn’t were when he was chatting with Ric.  I amused myself while FF through the copious Jason/Sonny scenes by imagining the Godfather music in my head. 

If I had some spare time, I tried not to FF through Alexis, because I lurve Alexis.  It cracks me up that Kristina is becoming OCD like her mom.  I still miss the curly bop twins, though.  I’m partial, because my own little girl is a curly bop. 

I suppose I should appreciate Corben Bernsen’s slimy take on John Durant.  He does it so well, and his interactions with Alexis should be amusing.  I guess I’m just still pissed off that they decided to make a federal prosecutor a complete pig.  It’s already been done – remember Scotty Baldwin?  But if they made a law enforcer a good person, that would theoretically shine the spotlight on Sonny as being a bad person, and we can’t have that.  On second thought, I’m not really looking forward to the John and Alexis scenes.  As witty as their barbs will assuredly be, it will still result in Alexis getting whacked on the back of the head with a two by four on a regular basis.

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

Want more Dax?  Check out her website: