Dandesun

Everything about Melanie screams 80s to me. I don't know what it is but she is seriously like every character from an 80s teen, high school book... John Hughes movies... 80s sitcom... my junior high school... all of the above. Is it the hair? Is it the way she walks? This is bizarre because I cannot pinpoint anything about her that is specifically that way but every time she's on I feel like I'm in some strange time warp. It's disconcerting. That being said, Melanie and Theresa bonding over their mutual love of some band... I liked it and here's why. They don't normally give soap characters interests like that. Soap characters only have a specific interest in music if that's what their character is all about OR if a special guest bad/performer is going to be on the show and then everyone in town is a huge huge fan of theirs. I mean, obviously, they're going to realize that they're bitter enemies after their bonding and they'll probably never mention that group again but I actually liked that. (Especially how Theresa was a local groupie in LA -- I have no shame in admitting how much I adore 'I'm With the Band' by Pamela DeBarres and her celebrated groupie history and Theresa's commentary reminded me of Pamela's love of The Byrds and how they were local so she could obsess in person -- as opposed to long distance with The Beatles.) Can the Eve/JJ bomb drop already? I just want to move on from that shit.

Well, I have to admit, when I saw someone suggest Pedro Pascal for the role that got me uber excited. Truth be told, Cumberbatch will fit the role very very well and I think he'll do a hell of a job. I suppose the only downside is that it is kind of a predictable choice but that's really not fair. The predictable choices for Marvel have still been pretty damn awesome.

You're going to make me go look for those blooper reels, aren't you? (My favorite was Bo with some of his line readings that wound up breaking Howarth... and then he kept going with it. "What's the matter? Doesn't everyone talk like this? GET UP, MAHONEY!!") But, yeah, Robin sing-songing about Kelly killing the baby was a delight. It's frustrating because that's the sort of thing that can and should be held against someone forever, family or no, so Blair holding a grudge was fine with me... it certainly didn't keep her from stepping up for Kelly when it was needed (although, typically, Blair was the last to do so and I was also fine with that.) But when they really stacked the deck in Kelly's favor by having her whine about how she had lost a baby so she and Blair were even... to Blair's face. I rather wish Blair had flat out punched her because, no, that's not how it works. Not at all.

It's never fun when one person's alleged well being trumps over everything else. I always loved Natalie and Jessica's relationship so I really hated it when they decided to go the DID route and make Princess Jessica's fragility take over their interactions. But then, I really hated the whole DID thing with her period. One of Higley's worst decisions ever.

Some of the most enraging things would come out of Viki's mouth when the writers wanted the audience to think a certain way. The problem with the Jess/Nat thing was that I felt, a lot of the time, that Jessica took the right precautions. She did go to St. Anne's willingly, she did her best to make it possible for her family to put her away in order to protect them and her from the alters and it was probably the only thing I actually liked about Jessica's DID. It always infuriated me that Viki was allowed to wander free no matter how many times she splintered. Jessica tried to fix that (I totally fanwanked that as being a result of Viki being so 'protected' by the family that she couldn't possibly be expected to be locked away while she was splintered and the damage that resulted) and I loathed and detested their using Ford and then Cutter as a means of keeping her out. Cutter, at least, was painted as a pure opportunist. I wasn't expected to root for him in that situation. Ford, however, was disgusting from the moment he started interacting with Teen!Jess right until the end and having Viki beg his filthy ass to put Tess away and his refusing her because it meant he got fucking money from Ryder's trust... none of that will ever be okay for me. I hated pretty much every aspect of Jessica's DID. I hated its inception, the retconned reasons behind it, the crutch that DID and Jessica or Viki splitting into alters resulted in. And most especially, I hated people's reactions to it. I still hold a grudge for the stuff when Viki's DID back in the 90s had everyone bending over backwards to excuse her while Dorian got shit on from every angle. I'm not saying that Dorian was the hero of that tale but no one seemed to acknowledge what Viki's alters did to her... which reared its head again with Jessica and Natalie.

There was a game going on in the early 2000's... one of the stage managers started it, I think. Anyway, he'd come up with a word of the day and the game was for the actors to try to fit it into their dialog. It was acknowledged that Erika and Roger were the best at it. And there was one word... I think it was 'parcheesi' and Roger used it in rehearsals for Live Week when he was telling Tea what an amazing life he had (this right after Blair figured out he had told her Jack was dead and left him) -- something about being the President of the Parcheesi Club or something but had heard that Erika had already used it so ditched it for the actual shooting... Anyway, apparently, ES was quite good at fitting that sort of thing into her dialog.

I couldn't stand Ben until I saw Mark Derwin in an interview. He was funny as hell because it was at the time of Niki defenestrating Ben and his reaction to the clip was kind of hilarious. Plus, he admitted how much fun it was to try to throw a pro like ES... but she was more than a match for him in that category. (The behind the scenes stories about her and Roger and the 'Word of the Day' game... yeah, that lady could handle anything.) Ben was always so ragey and jaw-clenchy. As for Natalie's arrival... sigh... okay, I'll be frank. I wasn't a fan. I really hated how Natalie blamed Jessica for 'stealing her life' while she somehow totally excused Allison who was the one who actually did it! I just rolled my eyes thinking 'Yeah, Jessica Buchanan: Infant Life-Switching Mastermind!' It wasn't until Roxy showed up and was absolutely vile to Natalie that I started to feel sympathy towards her... that and she started giving the side-eye to the actual people responsible for her growing up in the skids of Atlantic City (read: not Jessica). And I'll state my unpopular opinion of: never saw what the big freaking deal was with Natalie showing up in a red dress for Asa's 'funeral' (he wasn't dead.) It didn't read triumphant at all to me... so much as a desperate 'look at me and fuck all of you for something that wasn't any of your fault!' That being said, I'm sorry we didn't get a little more of Natalie with Asa. I would have liked to have seen that relationship develop but I imagine Phil Carey's health was an issue in those years.

Oh, sometimes it just gets hard. I've been moving for the last month so I'm REALLY behind on writing. But I'm now out of the apartment so I can actually concentrate on fun stuff again!

I think as long as Ron gets one Joey who LOVES the result, he'll fell justified.

Is it even a matter of redeeming qualities? It seems there's actually no character there at all. Aside from her parental and love interests shifting is there anything to Kiki as a character? Has she ever expressed an interest in doing anything? She's just there with no real reason to be so. Jordan, Nathan, Britt, Sabrina... all of the various newbies that Ron has brought forth all have actual jobs at least. You can certainly argue as to whether they are successful or not but they have an existence (or had at any rate regarding some of them) outside of who their parents may or may not be or who they are or are not fucking. Kiki doesn't have anything like that... hell, she seems to have never expressed an interest in doing anything outside of Michael, Morgan and propping Franco. It's no surprise she's so unliked... there's no actual purpose to her.

I honestly have no idea what is being referred to when Carly says that Michael is the 'best' of her and Sonny. What is the best of them? They're both loathsome and have been for years. At this point in time, I would be hard pressed to find one redeeming feature for either of them. That wasn't always the case. It is now.

For a long time, Rogue was one of my all-time absolute favorite characters in X-Men (don't get me started on her in the last 15 years, it makes me sad) and I'm just going to go on record as saying that Goth!Rogue in XME was a great choice. For one thing, she wasn't Emo Rogue or anything. She was still sassy and fiery, she just didn't fit in and making her part of a counter culture like the Goths (and also seeing that encouraged by Mystique and Destiny because they knew her powers would be dangerous was a clever twist) made sense to me. There were things in XME that took me back to actual X-Men comics. Like Rogue and Kitty being roommates (they couldn't get into the whole Illyana thing so I'm fine with that) because in the books they were closest in age. Also, Rogue took on the Morlock style of dress very quickly and really liked it when the team was forced into hiding in the sewers with Callisto and the Morlocks. At that time, they dressed rather like New York street punks and Rogue's outfit was little more than a black body suit, a torn tanktop, ankle boots and then a bunch of studded leather belts and wristbands. In that sense, making her more Goth was fine by me. But, really, Rogue was Rogue in XME (which was a delightful turn after the movies) she was more than ready to get in people's face about things, she stuck up for her friends, she took Mystique to task, she leapt before looking a lot of times. I really liked XME Rogue, it felt good to do so because I'm a fan of feisty Rogue. That's why I loved her in the first place.

Right in the midst of it, I think. The whole thing is weird... I remember Colin kidnapping Nora and taking her back to his place and there was this whole episode that I quite liked about Bo and the cops coming into the place and it's just creepy as hell because Colin was so obsessed with Nora and wanted to make her his and all that. (This was at a time when Nora would get called a 'goddess of love' by one of her paramours... Troy? Colin? Sam? I don't even remember but I do recall being put off by it. I love Nora but what I always loved about her was that she was so quirky and strange in her way. She wasn't a goddess of love by any stretch... it took some of that unique shine off of her when the writers would go overboard that way.) I remember Bo seeing the bedroom with rose petals and sheets torn asunder and he just had this sick look on his face and said 'What did he do to her? What did he do to her?!' This was also at a time where it seemed that Bo and Nora were irrevocably split (I think he was with Lanie the Boring at the time) so it was particularly nice to see Bo on the edge of losing it over Nora. Meanwhile, the kids... Jess, Will? Cris? Jen? I don't know anymore? had stumbled across Colin somewhere and, believing they were in a stupid horror movie, covered his body up with leaves and ran. I don't know if one or several of them thought someone among their group was responsible for killing him. THEN there was the scene of Dead!Colin sitting up from said pile of leaves (which gave me infinite amounts of joy with the thought of Zombie!Colin lurking here and about.) The bones of the tale had potential, the obsession, the dark and stormy autumn night that it all went down (it probably was Halloween), the crazy stalker house of luv... but I still have no idea how the kids entered into it. Was Colin blackmailing Jen? Or am I confusing that with a fanfic I was reading at the time? I don't even know anymore.

People have gotten together in far worse ways. They are actually really cute and funny together. I get what happened. It wasn't perfect but that's life.

No one needs a squish name. Stop the madness! If you must refer to them as a couple just go Franco/Nina. Or 'Those Two Psychos.' Or 'Ron's New Favorite Project.' Squish names are unnecessary! They don't need one. No one does! Stand strong, brothers and sisters!

That may be but I think I could tell immediately that Ron was going to throw Howarth and Stafford together as soon as he possibly could. And it felt very slanted towards them from the start... they immediately "got" each other, they knew the secrets the other was hiding and agreed to keep a lid on it, it was made very clear that they were 'birds of a feather' and they even got the tinkly romance music when they were on the phone after he imploded the Hallowedding. It just strikes me, and has from jump, that this was the direction they're going to go. There simply wasn't a question about it. And I totally agree with you about Tarly. That shit was rancid and out of character from start to finish. I remain ever thankful for PP for ripping Todd Manning out of Ron's hands once and for all.

Sometimes I wonder why soaps even bother going through with the vanity that any of the characters have jobs.

You mean they're not already? Ron is the absolute KING of insta-everything. This 'budding romance' simply exists now. It's a fact... much like Carly/Todd were suddenly and instantly deeply in love; much like Franco/Carly were suddenly and instantly deeply in love, he fast tracks everything. He has a history of it which is why it's always a shock when he lets things develop... but usually that's because his attention has been diverted elsewhere. Nik/Britt? Insta. Sabrina/Patrick? Insta. There is no actual buildup and there's certainly no story that extends it. It just exists. Accept it or don't, doesn't matter to Ron at all.

Except that Carly's fucking thrilled that Sonny killed AJ. The whys and wherefores don't matter to her at all. AJ's dead and she would go to the mat to keep that quiet. Sure, they mewled a lot about 'feeling guilty' but I swear it came off as something each of them felt they were supposed to say in that circumstance. "We're human beings, we should express some guilt over this thing we're not actually guilty about in order to make us feel better about our own humanity. We are special and have human emotions! Yes we do!" But, really, Carly is delighted that AJ is out of the picture permanently. She just never quite realized that Michael would be so upset about it. I don't think she fully realizes just how badly she fucked up with this. I think she's going to bang her head against the brick wall that Michael is now, not understanding why he's so angry for a good long time. I mean, of course she covered for Sonny in this. AJ dying was a turn on for her. She's not mad about it all and thinks Michael will 'get over it' as soon as they 'sit down and talk about it.' She's a monstrous idiot.

If there's a way to do it, Jamey will figure it out. I have never understood why Giddens and Fairman were such fans of Sabrina. It made absolutely NO sense to me. Meanwhile, places like Serial Drama or DespairintheAfternoon couldn't give a shit about her at all and rather disliked her. I recall Fairman really pushing hard for Sabrina and Patrick. I have never understood it.

Alan and Monica always struck me as being pure bodice-ripper material. A lot of their scenes were sexually charged in an angry way and they were extremely over the top in the way that those books often were... crossing lines in a lot of places but also making it pretty obvious that, no matter what, they were still really really into each other.

I'm so far behind on everything... I'm in the process of moving so I have an excuse but I did see a Michael Fairman interview with Kassie DePaiva and Shawn Christian at Day of Days. I go back and forth on Fairman but I love that he just came right out and called Daniel slutty. Thank you! I feel that the term 'slut' is gender blind and should be used to describe men who bed hop like crazy... the way Daniel does. I've also noticed that, on soaps, the sluttiest characters are often the men (ie: Sonny on GH; Ford on OLTL etc etc) though they are never called out for it. I also found it funny that SC basically has no issues about saying that Daniel is no angel when the show runners seem to think otherwise. But that is just one interview... maybe he embraces the infallible Daniel in others. Still, in that one he was all about loving dysfunction and admitting that lots of women waltzed through Daniel's bedroom. Of course, you had Fairman there who is not remotely shy about saying so about Daniel. It's hard to deny it when the interviewer is calling it right the hell out.

They shouldn't have tried to play that out more than once. The first one was epic, no topping that ever.

I'm willing to go along with that purely because Marlena's entire body is made of SCIENCE! As for Eve... it does seem more existential than anything. Like it's been mentioned that she's going to BACK to her singing so it suggests that she was doing it as a means of making money for awhile there and she's been pinning a lot of hopes on RETURNING to this and now those hopes are dashed. So while the singing and 'having a career' -- which, let's face it, in Salem would be having a regular gig at a local club -- no big record deals or tours or anything like that -- are the crux of this, it struck me that Eve saw it as a means of making herself matter, of doing something for HER and for her daughter rather than whatever it is she's been doing. She had a job that had her on the road all of the time before she reappeared and this was supposed to change everything for them. So it's not just about singing... it's about everything Eve was putting on the ability to sing as well. I feel for her! I mean, Eve was clearly 1000x more passionate about singing than, say, Abigail is about... anything. Meanwhile, Abigail gets her whatever job back and Eve has her dreams dashed into a billion little pieces. I sympathize more with Eve and her non-existent career than Abigail's allegedly awesome job that I never saw her do or talk about... or do.

He would have done a very thorough search for her... on his private island.