Wow, it’s been an age since I wrote on AMC. So much has happened since I last wrote about the denizens of Pine Valley. Indeed, the unthinkable happened.
Leo died.
I knew it was coming. I had braced myself for this eventuality but watching my poor Leo fall down a waterfall and disappear from the show forever was heart-rending. What is it with the soaps lately? Why must they persist in killing off my favourite characters? If these keeps us, there’ll be no-one interesting left to watch anymore.
Who can I blame for this latest TV tragedy? Was it the incompetent Pine Valley Police Department/FBI which is running neck and neck with the Salem Police Department as worst PD ever?
After all, they are the ones who let Leo’s psycho mother escape. Again. One would think that they’d step up security a little after Vanessa’s other 33 escapes but no. With Agent Chris “My braincells are as immobile as my shiny forehead” Stamp in charge, is it any wonder that Vanessa escaped yet again?
What else would you expect from a security team headed up by Pleatherface Chris? On hearing of Vanessa’s escape, he decided to blow off the call and spend time in bed with Erica instead. What an amazing sense of civil duty that man possesses.
Perhaps it is Greenlee who I should blame. After all, she was the one who decided she would play toreador and wave a red flag in front of Vanessa’s face by not only taunting Vanessa that she and Leo were heading to Paris and Vanessa would never get to see him again, but telling her exactly when they were leaving for Paris so Vanessa would be able to escape in time to stop them.
Na, it’s more fun to blame Chris. Incompetent jackass.
Vanessa escaped very easily (like always does) and immediately headed towards Greenlee’s apartment where she took her hostage (like she always does). This time around, Vanessa took Greenlee to a very high cliff and threatened to throw her off. Oh dear, mothers-in-law can be a bitch but this is ridiculous.
It was up to Leo and Trey to rescue her. Trey drew ever closer to redemption when he confronted his fear of heights to grab Greenlee from a ledge and Leo cut the apron strings in a big way as he fought with his mother.
The railings broke and they fell. Vanessa went under, dragged down by the sheer weight of her total insanity while Leo clung desperately on to a branch. And then he slipped and was gone, just like that.
How I bawled. This is a rare event. You have to understand that soapies almost never make me cry. Well, sometimes they make me cry with laughter but I mean proper sad tears. So for a soapie to get me all weepy like this is a pretty good indication of just how terrible Leo’s death was.
The body was never found of course. But seeing as how Josh Duhamel is catching cheaters in Las Vegas and not standing in the unemployment line, I’m not holding my breath for the return of my beloved Leo any time soon.
After watching her husband sink into the rapids, Greenlee lost consciousness and was taken to hospital. Her room was a private one with a very nice view of the Nile. She claimed that Leo wasn’t really dead because her amazing love connection could still feel him or something. Everyone tried to very gently point out how impossible this was, conveniently that about half the people in the room had come back from the dead themselves.
The cops brought in the only remains they’d found at the falls – Leo’s distinctive brown leather jacket. Oh show, stop making me cry again. It could not have been more poignant had they brought in the leather pants of lust themselves.
Then some random woman came into the hospital room and claimed she knew that Leo was still alive. I immediately predicted she was a third rate version of Celeste and was right – she turned out to be a hack psychic.
After almost being fooled by this woman, Greenlee disappeared from her hospital room. I immediately predicted she had returned to the falls to fling herself from up high and join Leo. I was right again.
Screw the fake psychic, Greenlee! Hire me because clearly I am way better at ESP. I’m getting vibes right now…I sense gambling…neon lights…Leo is still alive…he’s currently got amnesia and is in…Vegas.
If you would like any more of my psychic consultations, please contact me at 086-NOTACON. Normal cellphone rates apply.
Luckily David managed to catch her before she jumped and convinced her that having a memorial service would be a healthier way of dealing with her grief than jumping off a cliff.
The memorial service was a small but touching affair which basically consisted of his friends and family talking about how damn awesome he was and how much he would be missed. No arguments there.
Just like
Dixie’s funeral a while back, there was a super flashback montage set to music. Unlike Dixie’s funeral, which featured Eva Cassidy, the music sucked. This is because instead of getting a proper singer to sing a proper song, they had Bianca sing some trite rubbish. And though I love Bianca in almost all respects, singing is not one of them. She sounds like a chipmunk.
Dear all soapies ever. Don’t have your actors sing. Ever. There has been literally one time where I have not wanted to pour bleach in my ears when a soap character has decided to ‘sing’. So stop it.
Still, the music is my one gripe with the entire way Leo’s death was handled. Otherwise, the speeches and monologues managed to encapsulate exactly why Leo was such a great character and how awful it is he’d gone, while the acting was all top-notch.
You see,
this is how you write
an affecting character death,
Days. Though had a piñata been involved, it certainly would have relieved the tension somewhat.
Sigh. Goodbye, sweet Leo. I will miss your crazy schemes. I will miss your leather pants. I will miss your obsession with France. I will miss your dashing ways. I will miss your scenes with…well, practically everybody but especially David, Bianca and Greenlee.
And I will miss you, Leo.
Somewhere in the distance, a vioin playsAhem. So moving on from my unusually sentimental reactions, plenty of other stuff has happened in the past few weeks.
There are new credits which are prettier have marginally better music than before. The characters’ names are scrawled over their photos so you can tell exactly which males have girly handwriting.
(You know whose picture is still in the new credits? Leo’s. Sigh.)
What else? Oh yes, Maria has been trying to integrate into Pine Valley life. The scenes where her family found out she was still alive was so powerful. Her hobbit son looked like he wanted to go play on his Playstation while Faux Mateo looked like he was thinking what to make for dinner. What a tour de force performance from him.
Maria soon found experiencing the horrors of her immediate family. “Maybe this amnesia business wasn’t such a bad thing after all if
these are the people I’d forgotten,” her gritted teeth and plastered-on smile seemed to say as the Santoses imposed their overbearing selves upon her.
Mateo tried to bond with his long-lost sister by asking her if she remembered the good times she’d had with him. Well no, you dumbass, she has amnesia. Not remembering is the point.
Mama Santos was just as pushy as Mateo and was thrilled to tears when Maria revealed that she could still understand and speak Spanish. Well duh, Mama Santos, of course she can still speak Spanish. Amnesia doesn’t cause you to forget to speak your damn home language.
Though I couldn’t help but wonder just what Maria’s amnesia entailed when she decided to start working at the hospital as a lowly grunt rather than the brain surgeon she once was.
Would the amnesia cause you to forget your entire background in neurological medicine? Or would you just automatically know stuff like the definition of vasculitis? And if you just automatically know stuff, would you not wonder how the hell you know so much stuff about nerves and brains and *bleep!* or would you just explain it away by thinking, “Well, maybe I just watch a lot of House.”?
These are the questions that trouble me.
Edmund has better luck in getting through to Maria, mostly because he’s not an annoying Santos. Aidan found himself losing out when Maria decided she’d much rather mack on Edmund than Aidan. Less chance of splinters, I suppose.
What of Edmund’s wife, Brooke? A good old-fashioned Hispanic slap from Mama Santos and the fact that she’d been married to Edmund for all of two minutes convinced her to annul the marriage.
She also bought a whip from www.playthemartyr.com and used it for some major self-flagellation. Tad tried to convince her that everyone made mistakes and she should not see herself as the devil because of what she did but it was too late: she’d already ordered the hair shirt and couldn’t get a refund.
But don’t feel too much pity for Brooke (no seriously, don’t. She’s got enough of it for herself under the guise of guilt) because she’s already got herself some non-Edmund nookie. She and Adam (driven from Liza by her constant refrain of “You can’t blame
me for that, the tumour made me do it,”) got it on.
It was pretty damn sexy too. And considering I’m one of those young, foolish, shallow types who is normally icked out by anyone over a certain age having sex, that’s a lot coming from me.
What’s not sexy is how Trey and Kendall did turn out to be brother and sister like I predicted many moons ago (seriously, call my hotline now. Rates are low). This means my dreams of Trey and Kendall getting together are shattered, though more recently I’ve been leaning towards the idea of Kendall not being tied down to any one man but having a revolving harem of willing and able guys.
Still, they are great as siblings. They pretty much know how shitty a person the other one is yet somehow still love, support and protect each other. It’s truly heartwarming I tell you. They’re also hella fun and cute together as evidenced by their quest for the Proteus diamonds where Kendall had to dress up in a wetsuit and teased Trey about being scared of everything ever.
And now thinking about the diamonds has reminded me of Leo again. Excuse me. I think I need a moment alone.