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“…and so it’s still crappy, so I’ll just watch something else.”
I haven’t watched “General Hospital” for months now, since Holly got caught with the vaccine for the virus (or whatever it was). Before that storyline got started, I hadn’t watched for a couple of months, at least since it’d become clear that Sonny and Emily were going to be a couple. I still consider myself to be a “GH fan.” I’ve watched the show, more on than off, for 25 years, so I’ve earned the right to call myself a fan of the show, even when I don’t happen to be watching it. I’m still here on the sidelines waiting to hear that the show’s producer, Jill Farren Phelps, has gone or that head writer Bob “Elton John” Guza has moved along to spread his sexist poison and story-less stories elsewhere. While I’m waiting for them to get the hell away from my show, I occasionally hear of some interesting, stunt casting and am tempted to tune in and see what’s going on. For instance, when Rick Springfield returned as Dr. Noah Drake, I had to watch. I was a huge, screaming fan of Rick Springfield’s back in the day. The first, real concert I ever went to was a Rick Springfield concert. I still have such wonderful memories of Rick Springfield, I can’t help but type his full name over and over again in this paragraph. Rick Springfield, Rick Springfield, Rick Springfield… **sigh** (“Mrs. Rick Springfield”) **double sigh** Where was I? Oh, yes. I tuned back into peek at Rick Springfield. He’s older, apparently had some work done, but basically, I was pretty happy to see him. I actually didn’t think the writers butchered the history of Noah Drake, even though I was a little disappointed to find that he’d become a raging alcoholic. It is a soap opera after all and somebody’s got to be an alcoholic, so I guess it might as well be him. It’s something real that actually happens to real people, so it was a nice change of pace from the ridiculous gangster stuff. The character of Patrick Drake is a different story. I don’t like him at all. To put it bluntly, he’s an asshole. In real life I wouldn’t be able to tolerate being around someone like him and, also in real life, I actually haven’t tolerated being around men like him. Yes, I am the one who actually goes to the Human Resources department and says, “Do something about this asshole.” From that I gather that he wouldn’t like me, either, because I would have gotten his ass fired by now. As anyone watching the show knows, we’ve seen way more Asshole and too little Springfield, so the big, “Return of Noah” wasn’t enough to draw me back in and keep me watching. Then, there came the news that Robert AND Holly were going to come back for a brief time this past winter. I made sure to watch, beginning with that first show when Robert appeared at the end, with the words “And so it begins…” at the bottom of the screen. Cool. I was excited. I watched for that whole month, right up to when the “…and so it ends” words appeared. By the time it ended, I had pretty well had enough of GH, I’m sad to say. To be blunt again, there was way too much bullshit for me to endure. I needed some sort of bullshit recovery time, “Bullshit Rehab,” if you will. There’s really no place to go to for Bullshit Rehab. You mainly just have to stop watching GH. Yes, you have to go Cold Bullshit and just stop watching the show completely. It’s the only way, so that’s what I did. I’ve even stopped taping it and THAT is a huge step for me in living Bullshit-Free. Mainly, I’m surprised at how one month of solid GH viewing had such an adverse effect on me. It’s like the show just piled on everything I hated into one, condensed month of disappointment. For starters, there was too much Sonny and Emily. In theory, they seem like they could be so soapy and right, especially when you allow for the older Emily as portrayed by Natalia Livingston. In practice, they suck ass. They are skeevy and skanky beyond words. I can’t explain it, but what ever they are, they are horrible and I can’t bear to watch. So that was one thing that put me off the show. Another thing was the Alexis and Sam story. Sam being mad at Alexis about how Sam’s dead baby’s stem cells saved Kristina was so absolutely ridiculous that I couldn’t bear to watch that either. It was flat out stupid. I hate when GH, or any other show, starts playing to me like they think I’m an idiot and I’ll just lap up anything they put in the bowl. Then, the foreshadowing was beating me over the head that Sam was going to be Alexis’ daughter. I kept telling myself that the show wouldn’t possibly do that, then the soap magazines broke with the scoop that, yes, Sam would be Alexis’ kid. Seeing how Sonny has slept with both of them and fathered children with both of them, that is beyond disgusting, so even more skankiness and skeeviness for GH viewers was obviously on the way. Great. Also, it suddenly either makes Sam about 10 years younger or it suddenly makes Alexis 10 years older. While in a way, that kind of general fucking up of ages and sequence of events and history in general is a hallmark of daytime soap storytelling, GH doesn’t do it correctly. The way they mess up history is always insulting, clueless and unnecessary. There’s no campiness or fun to any of it, just more Bullshit to recover from, which brings us to... Holly and the Vaccine story. That was pretty much the last straw for me. I have always been a Holly fan. I remember when the show would dress the lovely 20-something Emma Samms in the clothing of a matronly 50 year old and have her ask visitors at Robert Scorpio’s house if they’d like some hot tea, only she’d pronounce it as “Hote Tay.” It became a game for me and my mother, to see if Holly would offer some Hote Tay on that day’s show to whoever came to visit. Even though she became a bit of a dud during the matronly days of Hote Tay, Holly was mostly a very dynamic character. She was a con woman. She was not a cold blooded killer so desperate for money that she’d sit back and let people die so she could get richer. I call Bullshit. Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit… **sigh** So while I did enjoy seeing Emma Samms as Holly, interacting once again with Robert Scorpio and Luke Spencer, it wasn’t enough. I’ve heard that Anna has been back, but I’m afraid to find out what they’ve changed about her character that would piss me off. I know there’s something. If the writers haven’t come up with it yet, then they’ll bring her back so they can fuck her up then. I figure that’s why they’ve had Robert come back again, because they didn’t mess him up enough yet. Now there is the ultimate rumor that Genie Francis may return as Laura. That tempts me to watch again (because I probably would) and it worries me at the same time because while I’d be watching Genie, I’m not sure if that would really be Laura anymore. Laura was destroyed and she was destroyed by the current producer and head writer, so what’s going to change now? I don’t feel any safety for the character of Laura in their hateful, spiteful hands. I’m still a GH fan, but I can’t keep diving into the Bullshit then wondering what stinks when I get out of the pool. I can only go into a little detail about the rest of the junk from that one, solid month of viewing that I mostly fast forwarded through; just a skim over the surface. I don’t like Laura Wright as Carly. I think she’s all wrong for the part (LOL, “Wright is Wrong”), seems too old and there’s something weird about her face, like she’s always trying to hold marbles in her mouth, between her upper gum and top lip. It’s like, if she relaxes too much as she speaks, the marbles will fall out. Or maybe it’s more like her nose itches and so she moves it up and down trying to scratch her nose with, well, her nose. Or maybe it’s both, she’s trying to wriggle her nose around to scratch itself AND she’s trying to hold some marbles in between her upper lip and gum? If you can actually picture what I’m talking about, then that tells you right there that this woman is messed up. The whole George/Dillon marriage comes across to me like the story is really that poor Georgie has married a gay man and, oh no, whatever will she do when she finds out?!?!? But that’s not what the story is, is it? What the hell is their point anymore? They’re like a little, thread of steak stuck between my teeth. I know when I took a bite of that steak that I liked it and wanted to eat it, but now it is three hours later and that one, little thread just won’t go away and is now making my life a living hell! That is what Georgie and Dillon are like for me now. Sad, huh? Then I just love how Liz is always being set up to look like she might get a real story of her own. It’s just not going to happen. If the writers gave a flip about Liz, she’d have a story all the time. Once again, I call Bullshit and I can’t stand to watch Liz be pathetic in the meantime. The one good thing that happened during my final month of regular, GH viewing was that Courtney died. FINALLY. What a relief that was! It should have happened at least 2 years ago. I hope she’s really dead and won’t be dragged back onto the show in 20 years letting people die over vaccine or some shit like that. I want Courtney to really be dead. Oh! Speaking of good things, this past April I celebrated the one year anniversary of Tamara Braun’s departure from GH. It has been a blissfully peaceful year without her. I really enjoyed the first lady to play Carly after her, Jennifer Bransford, she was exciting and pretty good in the part, I thought. Laura Wright, as I’ve mentioned, isn’t right in the part to me, but I think Laura Wright is basically a good actress and I would have preferred to have seen a part created for her instead. All that being said, Jill Farren Phelps herself could plop a blonde wig on that spiky, overly-dyed head of hers and play Carly, and I’d still love her more than Tamara in that role. Anyone who can play Carly without screeching like a rabid banshee on fire is tops in my book. As it is, I’ll just have to be satisfied that Laura doesn’t stomp like she’s trying to punch a hole in the earth and kick someone in Japan and she doesn’t wave her arms around like she’s trying to fling them away from her own body. Thinking of Laura Wright in the mindset of “she’s not Tamara” suddenly makes her look pretty damn good in the part of Carly, so maybe I need to just shut up and count my blessings. That pretty much sums up my GH impressions for 2006 so far. I know there’s not much to it, but I don’t feel like there’s been much to the show, either. I need to find some new daytime program to watch, so I’ve decided I’m going to go on a search for something new. I work during the day now, so I really only need to end up with one or two things to tape. I miss having something freshly recorded each day. Since my writing about GH will become just a once-in-a-blue-moon event for me (at least for the foreseeable future), I’ve decided to make my search for a new show the subject of a new column. I don’t really know what to call the new column yet, so any suggestions are welcome. My criteria, loosely, is that the show be daytime programming in most markets, airing Monday through Friday. This of course includes other soap operas as well as shows like “Oprah” and “Dr. Phil.” Network shows, syndicated shows, cable shows are all included as long as they are considered to be “daytime” and “weekday/Monday-Friday” shows. If anyone reading this has a good suggestion for what I should watch and write a review of, then please e-mail me and let me know. I plan to pick a daytime show each week, tape it for at least one week (Monday through Friday), watch it and write a review about it. There may be comparisons to GH here and there since that is the void I’m trying to fill and I have no idea how long this column will go on or if it will morph into something else or what, so bear with me. I think I will start with “The Bold and the Beautiful” to review. There’s no particular reason I’m starting with that, it just popped into my head just now. This could be fun. It’s different and right now, anything different is good. “And so it begins…” Hote Tay, anyone? ;-)
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