Sandman

I hear Chloe's relationship with Phillip wasn't all it was cracked up to be! Sami and Brady going head-to-head would probably end in their literally clonking their skulls together, and the resulting hollow chiming would be heard around town more clearly than the tolling of St. Clare's bells. Also: I don't think Elvis's hair can be entirely blamed on THE SEX with Abigail, either. He, like his namesake, has had his greasy pompadour moments.

If I have to watch Andy and Sam together, I'd much rather it be as friends. When he's not trying to glare and sulk her into bed, Sam's actually tolerable, even occasionally slightly charming. I wish the show would let them acknowledge they're not good as lovers, and move on. I figured Nick's chatting up Essie with his sweetly lame lines was going to lead somewhere bust-related (and I don't mean his taking her bra off, either ::rimshot::) Because Nick's never not being good police. Aw! I totally want Frosty and Oliver to be besties, now. She brings out his compassionate side, and he makes her seem almost like a person. And "Chris picking up drugs while we watched Duncan be an ass" is the whole backstory here. I'll admit I thought the writers worked up some tension over Chris trying to play both sides of busting Jamie, but I seriously doubt this show can pull off a "good cop goes bad" story over the longer term. Rookie Blue ain't The Shield, kids.

Julie's an awful person. There she is, ranting and raving about what a sweet person Nick was, and how much he loved Gabi. Nothing about what a vengeful, selfish, destructive nutcase Nick actually was ever penetrated her vain, empty skull. In a town full of self-righteous dingbats, Julie Williams might actually win the "Do You Even HEAR Yourself?" prize. I couldn't stand listening to her turning herself into the victim. She finally admitted that she blames herself for not helping Nick while he was alive, but I no longer care. Sorry: too little, too late, you self-absorbed cow. And speaking of the Goodbye Gabi Reunion Tour, could Guy Wilson have looked less involved? Freddie Smith actually looked like Sonny had finally come around to caring about Gabi, bubblehead that she is, but Guy Wilson's "sad face" is so unconvincing it's almost funny. He has all the emotional depth of a plate of chia seeds. We are all missing the story and relevant motivations because they've never been present. Victor's salty truthtelling was the highlight of the week. I actually enjoyed the confrontation scenes between Marlena and Sami, because, like it or not, Marlena's kind of right. But so is Sami: if Sami has become the kind of person who can't or doesn't experience remorse, that's bad for her. On the other hand, expecting Sami to feel much sympathy (at least in that moment) for someone who repeated threatened and hurt her child seems unrealistic. Marlena's never learned that pushing Sami is not the way to get her to come around to your point of view. I don't understand why the writers are choosing to deal with the "ramifications" (other than catatonic boredom, I mean) of Melanie's kidnapping and Gabi's complicity now - Andrew, Melanie, Chad, Nick, and now Gabi are gone. Sonny's "secret" was forgiven and forgotten after a two-minute conversation. And Will's comment that "so much made sense now" is the worst kind of lampshade hanging: Gabi's alternating bitchery at and devotion to Sonny didn't make any kind of sense, writers, and you bloody well know it. Come on, now: Chad's hair was catastrophic well before he started THE SEX with Abigail. Edited because Freddie is not Freddy.

Brady's soul would make a meagre meal, indeed. I agree that there's a major failure in the writing if we're meant to understand that Gabi had no other choice than murder, even though Nick was reduced to a one-dimensional (or less) caricature of a villain. Even if Gabi's self-justifications are meant to be seen as paper-thin, the writing isn't really selling it. The fact that Gabi wasn't nearly as cornered as we're meant to think, however, doesn't make Julie any less a self-centred harpy.

The storyline has the potential to be realistic and even compelling, I suppose, but I'm not sure the writers can be trusted to avoid the soapiest treatment of it. I like Travis Milne well enough, and he did well in the "coming down" scenes, as you say, but I'm not looking forward to the story at all.

Heh. Does that mean you want Paige to be recast as a Page Boy? That would certainly be new! If Nicole is at near-Kristen levels of whining and begging, I don't want to watch it. I also don't want to watch Julie and her histrionic orchestra. (What the hell does "our justice" mean, anyway? Cram it, Julie.)

I wasn't aware that he could make any other kinds.

Maybe Eve became a registered Republican after her reform? I actually think that the broken relationship between Sami and Marlena is as close as the show has come in yeeeeeeeeaaaaars to protraying a realistically screwed up family dynamic. I'm disappointed that everything for Sami seems to come back to her mother's relationship with John (but I can see how she might find that traumatic). Sami has tried to have a different sort of relationship with her own children, with varying degrees of success -- and not insignificant but unintended repetitions of her mother's mistakes with her. I do think Marlena is too close to her own tangle of disappointed hopes, failings, guilt and recriminations to respond with any real insight into their dynamic. Does that make her a hypocrite? Maybe; or maybe it just means there's a reason why therapists don't see family members in any professional capacity. In any event, it's a more realistic story, for all its frustrations, than the norm for this show -- by which I mean things like amnesia via head-bonk, recidivist rapists marrying their true-love-slash-targets, and long-form studies of the moral and ethical implications of sex-dart poison delivery systems. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm not giggling like a maniac at the "It was for SCIENCE!" outbursts. Because I am. Obviously.

Yeah, of all the things Nicole has made poor choices about, I'm not sure Jennifer's being loon-bait (and her near-cretinous inability to see crazy when it's coming directly her way) is something Nicole can realistically be blamed for.

Funny; it looked to me like the baby playing Ari G. clearly thought so, too; she was alternately staring at NuBen and looking back and forth between her My Two Dads and Ben like she was thinking "Well, are you getting in on the kissing, or what? Also: what's the deal with your big secret, anyhow?" Okay, maybe not so much with that last part. I was actually so surprised when Jennifer hugged Eric that I thought I must have missed the part where they have a long, deep friendship. They ... don't, do they? I still think Nicole should be pissed at Eric for ever thinking she could have abused him. She's yet another Salem woman going to pieces over an unworthy man. Like there's a difference?

Not entirely sure that would get the job done; maybe the bullets should be silver, just to be on the safe side. I care that Paige is being punked, but only because Paige seems to be sharp enough to notice when she's being messed with, unlike half of the population of town twice her age.

Oliver has come a long, long way from being the Training Officer Whose Name I Can't Be Bothered To Remember; he might be my favourite character. He makes a sensible sergeant, except for letting Andy off the hook too easily. If she was fudging reports, or not telling her superior everything he needed to know about her gormless rookie's progress (or entire lack thereof), there ought to be disciplinary consequences for her. Really, Sam? Really? Andy's the best you've ever seen? You need to get out more, detective. I honestly like Andy most of the time, but what actual training did she provide Dumb Duncan, especially knowing he has all the judgment that God gave a lemon? I felt a bit bad for the kid while he was paralyzed with fear, but I still don't care enough about him as a character to keep me from hoping he gets tossed on his butt. The Chris-on-drugs story? Will be excruciatingly bad. I hate it already. But I could watch Nick being weirded out by Chloe all day long.

Wait -- Tragic Coincidences ISN'T a trauma surgeon? What the ... what?

If Peggy were to adopt a Howard Stark disguise, she might look a little like the person in the MOXIE ad, I think.

Dominic Cooper might actually be enough to keep me away. The man redlines my smarmanometre every. Time. (I realize this probably puts me in a tiny minority.) Edited because "minority" and "majority" aren't the same, derp!

Not me; I'm already at least as annoyed by NuBen as I was by the previous iteration. But then I'm rapidly losing my patience for this show as a whole.

Didn't HO'S say that he met Nick because he was in Thad's unit? I thought I heard Topher say that he knew (or served with?) Thad. It's an extensive list. But then, I don't really understand how the military works, so maybe I shouldn't judge the show. About that. I had the impression Dr. Alien Drew was being put through med school by the military, but is not yet a graduate of a med school, but I could be wrong.

There's no doubt in my mind that this show is full of unexploded (and probably unintended, certainly unacknowledged) ethical time-bombs, Sexy the Shrink's personal relationships with Tragic Coincidences and Lil' Angry Onion Ragosa among them. But I thought it was inappropriate for Ragosa to ask the shrink (behind TC's back) for an informal assessment; really, what he was asking for was for her to validate his low opinion ("He's a nutjob, right? Give me something I can use.") Sexy and TC are current (future?) bed partners, aren't they? Does Ragosa have an idea of this? And all things considered, probably not the kind of innovation they were aiming for.

Yeah, Ragosa said they'd call in the hospital's own neurosurgeon (presumably on call), but Dr. Army Stu insisted on Super Neuro Dr. Without Borders, the best in the biz (and a personal friend of the patient)!

Except if TC were made Chief of Everyone's Business, So There! then he and Ragosa would have nothing to tussle over, and it's clearly the highlight of the night for both of them. I'm sure someone somewhere is writing angsty Dr. Army Stu/Ragosa fanfic as we speak. Also: "Dr. Army Stu" is my new favourite.

I don't think "Awesome war medic working as ER doc-slash-part-time ninja" works, either, but that might be me. Wow, do I want to this to happen! And I think we should expect every episode from now on to end with revealing a new layer of Ragosa manpain. He's like a little angry onion.

Not that I don't want you to have a win-win, but I seriously doubt anything about this situation will lead to Julie's feeling humbled. I think the idea that she Let. THAT. MURDERER! see Nick's body will just add screechy fuel to Julie's already high-pitched fire. Hope I'm more inclined to forgive, even if her comment that Nick "didn't deserve to die" only made me think she hadn't been paying attention. I'm guessing that Gabi said "it got physical" before Nick left for New York because admitting that he nearly raped her might have led to an admission about hitting him with a rock, which would have led to ... Nick was blackmailing Gabi about Andrew and Melanie, after all; that's just not all he was blackmailing her about.

Dragonback?

Wait, Anthony (?), the kid with the multiple personalities, was abusing his mother? I did not get that at all. That one of the alters was a ragewad doesn't prove anything, I don't think. Certainly not that his mother wasn't abusing him. I figured that someone else was abusing both of them. More importantly, I don't believe it was medically necessary for Sexy the Shrink to provoke Anthony into violence in hopes of calling up another personality. I think there's probably a rule or six against TC's operating on the patient he hopes will die to save his friend. Just sayin'.

You know, if Sami wore this on a sandwich board around town, I'd probably be okay with it. And what's more, we don't care. I expect I have a little more patience (so to speak) for Marlena than you do, but I like where this is going.