Sept 18, 2006

Warning, profanity ahead.  In the past couple of weeks, I’ve grown so bored and weary of verbalizing my anger, disgust, and disappointment with the storylines on AMC, that on message boards I’ve resorted to using graphics to highlight my feelings.  If I run across a sarcastic image, I immediately put it in my Photobucket album to use when the mood hits.  I feel like it’s the only way to keep my sanity.  Some recently used sentiments (the last one I made myself):

Okay, I’ll freely admit it.  I’m doing the same thing here in my column that I’ve been doing on the message boards.  I just don’t know how else to express myself these days.  This past week was utterly dismal, both what I saw on the screen and the changes behind the scenes (if you want to know about the latter, go to Sage’s Place for the latest news.  Have your antacids close at hand.).  If I want to see such amateur plots, I’ll go read some bad fanfic.  I can joke about bad fanfic because I write it.  I’m allowed to be mediocre because I don’t get paid lots of money by a major television network to come up with my material.

Colby drinking heavily with her friends and then losing her virginity, which she later regrets.  Nothing wrong with that premise.  Why it was just A YEAR AGO that it happened to Dani.  What came of it?  A dismissive remark a couple of weeks ago as she was talking to the Fusion gals.  Then there was teenaged Lily being stalked by a sexual predator.  Nothing wrong with that premise either.  Why it was just A YEAR AGO that it happened to Dani.  What came of it?  A flip remark this week as she was talking to the Fusion gals.   

Look, I really don’t harbor a lot of anger towards the way the Dani storyline fizzled out last year only to become the butt of throwaway jokes this year.  I like Dani well enough, but don’t have a lot of emotional investment in her.  What does anger me is that they are trotting out the same stories this year, and I have no reason to believe that it will be treated any better.  Based on what I’ve seen so far, why should I believe that Colby will actually learn something from her mistakes?  How do I know that as soon as they find her and patch her up, she’s not going to continue being the same brat as always?  Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath. 

I do care more about Lily and her victimization, and some of the hospital scenes associated with it were very good.  I especially liked the Lily/Erica scenes.  But then it was ruined by the scenes at the police station.  I’ve already been subjected to Derek behaving like an ass with the Madden storyline, do I have to have more of it?  Why can’t AMC have someone like Robert Scorpio or Bo Buchanan – men who wanted to uphold the law, but also cared about the truth?  Men who were genuinely conflicted when certain cases weren’t black and white.  Derek kept making noises at Jonathan like he sympathized with him, but he had to be hard because that was what was required of him.  Bullshit.  Derek is a vulture that enjoys turning up the heat and doesn’t seem to care what’s real and what isn’t.  He spewed this crap when Michael Cambias was killed, and he’s doing it again.  I didn’t much care about Jonathan.  He’s a Lavery, so he’ll come out golden.  I was pissed when Derek turned his two faces to Annie.  Robert or Bo would have done their damndest to try and help her out.  Derek just seemed to be licking his chops.   

Scattered observations: 

This week was the first time I saw the kid who plays Little A really smiling and laughing.  I’m not surprised it was during his scene with Stuart/David Canary. 

The past couple of weeks I’ve seen characters drinking wine out of huge wine glasses.  It doesn’t take much wine to go straight to my head, so I was getting dizzy watching them. 

Myrtle proved once again that she’s got it going on even more than Erica, by dazzling Palmer and Zach even as she put them in their place.  Although Erica’s not doing half bad herself.  Jeff practically had hearts flying out of his eyes as he observed her. 

Over on GH, I find myself wanting to rant about Ric and what is going on with him now versus what has been going on with him for years.  It would involve getting into the whole debate about flawed characters and whether they should be growing and learning from their mistakes or if they shouldn’t change because their flaws are what makes them interesting.  I guess what it boils down to, like with Kendall or Skye or AJ or Todd, etc, is that when I like a flawed character, it hurts to see them self-destructing and to hear other characters disparage them.  So I want them to learn and grow.  And yet, would they be as interesting?  Would I care as much?  It gets even more complicated with Ric, because what would his evolution entail?  If he and Sonny came to terms with each other and formed a brotherly bond, would he become yet another Sonny apologist?  He’s supposedly on the side of the law now, but because that is in opposition to Sonny, which is considered Very Bad in the GH universe, he is made to look slimy in the vein of Durant and Baldwin.   

I don’t know, all this makes my head hurt.  On the one hand I want Ric to keep his damn hands off Sam, start to show some genuine grief for his wife’s condition, and quit acting like it’s him and Molly against the world – a world which includes even Alexis and Kristina as possible threats.  On the other hand, I want Sonny and Carly and Sam to shut the hell up when they keep calling him trash and attributing skeevy motives to him all the time as if he’s a one-dimensional mustache twirler.  Head.  Hurting.  Ugh.  I will admit, despite all my ranting, that I did think it was funny when Sonny smiled for the cameras with Ric, and then Ric later said that Sonny couldn’t have made him look worse if he had handed him a briefcase full of cash right there. 

Scattered observations: 

Seeing Monica in one of the commercial break announcements reminded me that she is conspicuously absent from the latest Quartermaine brouhaha. 

The Luke and Lulu scenes continue to be sublime.  I loved his dig at Elizabeth when she showed surprise that he was still there.  “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” 

Thanks for reading.  Cheers! 

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