I know I haven’t updated the non-Days parts of this blog in a while (hell, even my Days commentary has taken a bit of a backseat lately...
until now that is) but rest assured, the Soap Dish is very much alive and kicking and not deader than one of Marlena’s victims.
I’ll be updating the Passions and AMC parts of the blog sometime in the near future (if I don’t, feel free to find me and kick my ass for breach of contract) but until then, here’s a very special episodic edition of the Soap Dish.
The subject? The episode of AMC that was broadcast on Wednesday cricket day. The reason? It had fantasy sequences, fabulous outfits, chick banter, cheesiness, a simplistic Spice Girls message of girl power and didn’t take itself seriously at all. It was all sorts of mockworthy as well as great fun in you’re into the camp. The perfect bonus recap fodder.
Let’s take a closer look then at What Women Want.
Previously on AMC, Kendall, Greenlee teamed up and bought a “Instant Cosmetics Company” cake mix. They suckered Liza into funding them and Mia and Simone into being their business partners.
Inge Liza pushed
Tokkie Mia out a window but she landed on her teeth and survived. A new terrifying batch of teens emerged from the primeval darkness, including a boring robot with an overbearing daddy, and
Lilly Kane.
The episode was suspiciously credit-less at first and began with these ladies all strutting their stuff in cool white outfits as wind machines worked overtime and Christina Aguilera urged us all to be Dirrrty. Who would want to get dirrrty in those lovely white dresses? That’d be hell to wash.
"Skip washing powder gets your clothes whiter than white"There were shots of all the girls trying to get the letters U, F, O, I, S, N to form a word like some unholy game of Scrabble. Maybe they should try an anagram generator. A title saying “What Women Want” appeared but Mel Gibson was strangely absent. Perhaps he’s too busy swapping anti-Semitic jokes with Borat to make an appearance.
I vote to replace the ordinary credits with these ones.
The episode itself began with a brainstorming session consisting of Kendall, Greenlee, Liza, Simone, Mia, Maggie, Joni and Laurie. Joni’s the one played by Amanda Seyfried and who’s the complete opposite of her character in Veronica Mars while Laurie’s just forgettable. Or at least she would be if she wasn’t stinking up the joint with her plotline every single day.
The ladies were trying to come up with a marketing concept for their insta-cosmetics company. “What do we women want? Hmmm, let’s each tell each other our dreams and try to figure it out from there,” they said.
They were not helped by young Petey, the sole representative of the male sex hanging around. That kid’s an evil genius – if they’d paid him, he’s probably have come up with the marketing coup of the century.
Beefcake pizza guy who looks like Alessandro Nesta came in and the girls drooled over him like he was the pizza and they were the toppings. Pizza Guy did not mind being objectified but instead decided to stick around and watch all these hot chicks discuss their innermost fantasies. Oh god, this sounds like it’s about to turn into a Red Shoes Diary episode.
Never fear, for the ladies’ fantasies did not involve nudity and laughably fake dry-humping. They were just as tacky as any late night soft porn movie though. Each woman had the others try to guess what their fantasy was and after being proven completely wrong, would confess what her true fantasy was.
Got that? Good. Onto the fantasies.
First up was Maggie’s. The other ladies guessed that her dream was to be a doctor just like her uncle David, only presumably without the multiple felonies. You’d think they’d at least imagine her doctor life way more exciting with like hot Grey’s Anatomy sex sessions or Scrubs wacky hi-jinks.
But no, Maggie declared that they were wrong and her real fantasy was way more exciting and involved her racklicious female best friend and tight blue latex outfits. No really, I swear it’s not a Red Shoes Diary fantasy despite what it sounds like.
Maggie’s fantasy begins with Bianca in dire danger from bloodthirsty gangsters looking to “show her what she’s missing”. Gawd Maggie, your fantasy involves your best friend getting
gang raped? What the hell would Freud think of
that.
But no, just as the rapists are about to pounce, Maggie and Anna walk by wearing matching trenchcoats. Maggie realises the danger and zaps herself into a white wig and tight blue latex outfit. She’s Super Hooker! Using her superpowers, she fights off the gang rapists and saves the girl. After being thanked profusely by Bianca (I’m sure there’s a lot more thanking going on in that fantasy which was left out in the public retelling to the ladies), she walks off arm in arm with Anna and Bianca.
"And this is the street corner where I turn my tricks."Well, that was…odd. The other chicks did not laugh uproariously at this weird half-Smallville, half-homoerotic, all-stupid fantasy which makes them nicer people than me.
Not to be outdone, next up was Laurie with her dreams and desires. After the crazy superhero fantasy, Laurie’s could not help be boring because she is a robot with only two command protocols- a) listen to daddy and b) complain to boyfriend about daddy.
The other girls guessed her dream was to make sexytime with equally robotic recast JR. That’s giving her far too much credit. No, in reality her dream is for JR to climb up to her window and take her away from her domineering father, all while Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet plays in the background. I think Domo Arigato Mr Roboto would be a more appropriate tune.
Otherwise Zzzzzzzz. That’s all the time I’m willing to spend on Laurie.
Next up was Joni, who’s such a goody-goody, everyone thought her fantasy was to become a nun. Joni pointed out her church doesn’t even have nuns (what church is that?
The Mormon church, right? Crazy polygamist girl) and that she’s not the goody-goody everyone thinks she is.
She actually harbours fantasies of being a pop tart and dressing in skimpy clothes while lipsynching to crappy pop tunes and doing suggestive dance moves. Young lady! The church would not approve!
Jamie would see her from the shadows and immediately fall head-over-heels with this fiery singer. She would then dump him after he takes her virginity to marry and have two kids with a no-good golddigger who wastes all her money and frequently cheats on her. OK, I may have made that last part up.
With the teens done, it was time for the twenty-ish set to reveal their fantasies. Mia, who was proposed to by Jake recently (did I forget to mention that in the previouslies? Well, she was) was assumed to have fantasies of 50s domestic bliss and canned laughter. Think June Cleaver only with giant teeth. June Beaver.
Everyone knows Mia’s innermost fantasies involve pushing Liza out of a window as payback. But Mia decided she would not reveal these thoughts and instead gave some weepy fantasy about meeting her son all grown up, and him telling her how much good her putting him up for adoption had done.
Oh come on! What sort of weepy dreck is this? I want the superhero and pop tart fantasies back. At least they were fun in a dumb way.
After she’d revealed this, Liza gave her a nice big hug because Mia’s all about forgiveness and not pushing her out the window. Fair is fair, Mia. You have to push Liza out the window to truly begin healing your relationship.
The girls then assumed Simone’s fantasy was to go on Halle Berry on everyone after winning the Pulitzer prize and crying like a fool at the awards ceremony. Could’ve been worse, Simone. They could’ve imagined you going all Bjork and wear a giant swan dress to the ceremony.
As Simone told of her fantasy, the lights all went out except for a spotlight on her. As the others lay frozen, she walked away from the room. How very theatrical. Maybe Simone’s fantasy involves doing a Broadway play?
No, turns out her fantasy involves her comatose brother waking up. Take him to Harmony. Then all he’ll need is a declaration of love and he’ll wake up fine.
Everything had taken such a downer turn at this point that I was ecstatic to see Petey make fun of the ladies for their inability to find out what women want. He claimed that he knew what women want and he would tell them. I’m just surprised the kid gave it to them pro bono. I would have expected him to charge at least a fifty for it.
Petey’s fantasy featured him as a boy genius leader of some crime-fighting surfer chicks. Said surfer chicks were played by Kendall, Maggie and Simone, all wearing bikinis. Hey, I think I really like this fantasy. The Surfer babes talked about waxing their boards and used all sorts of gnarly surfer lingo.
I smell a spin-off in the making. If Aaron Spelling were still alive, he’d be all over this thing. Hey, I’d watch it.
No really, I swear this isn't an episode of Red Shoe DiariesEven better than the soon-to-be hit show about three beautiful crime-fighting surfers was when Petey walked away from his desk and started dancing crazy. OMG random dancing! Awesome! Best fantasy ever! For a megalomaniacal pre-teen, that kid is a damn good mover too.
Seriously, you had to have seen it to appreciate its awesomeness. Mere words on paper cannot convey the bizarre thrill I got out of watching Petey bust a move right out of the blue. I hope that from now on, there’s a random dance sequence in every episode.
Back in realityville, the chicks were not obsessed with Petey’s Charlie’s Interpretive Dance Angels fantasy. Philistines. That’s art is what that is. And Petey remains my favourite soapie child ever.
Next up was a joint fantasy for Kendall and Greenlee. The other women said their dream was obviously to usurp Erica and take her place, in all its big-haired, shoulder-padded, overly-made-up glory. That is so wrong. Don’t they know that taking Erica’s place would mean having to kiss Chris?
Greenlee declined to reveal any dreams. She grinched that dreams sucked and always got crushed and that everyone should abandon their dreams and curl up in a ball and die. Something like that. You get the feeling she’s still not over Leo?
Kendall’s was also surprisingly non-juicy for a character of such melodrama. Her dream had her holding a baby and being all motherly and *bleep!*. She then hears a car and rushed to the door to see the man she loves. Brad Pitt.
Just kidding! It’s really Hugh Jackman. More kidding! It’s Brandon Walker. OK, for real, it’s dearly-departed Ryan, only with his face not shown because the actor’s long gone. They could have used stock footage of his floating head a la Days.
Fight fight fight! None of the women could agree on which fantasy to base the company on. I vote the surfer chick crimefighters personally but I’ll doubt they’ll listen to me. Liza, having a psychic vibe their quest was almost over, sent Petey with random pizza guy to buy them some champagne.
Woman, you sent the kid with someone you met a couple of hours ago to buy booze?! Hey, I know what you can name the company – Child Predator Inc! But I guess you can trust the pizza guy, right? Giving someone extra pepperoni is a sure sign someone’s not a child abductor.
After the pizza guy returned with champagne and the newest addition to his child-smuggling ring, Liza revealed her idea. Women don’t only want one thing but instead want a variety of different things. It took her a whole episode to figure
that out? With sharp minds like her in charge, I figure the company will be going under in three months time.
After a life-affirming chick moment (“blah blah Vagina Monologues blah blah I am woman hear me roar blah blag girl power”), Liza said that the company would be called Fusion. More like Confusion. These fools can’t even figure out one simple concept like “every women has different wants and needs”.
"We took a whole *bleep!* night to figure out a nursery school idea that we're all different and special. Yeah, this company is so screwed."Just before the episode went to credits, we got to see Liza’s fantasy. A women-run company with its employees all wearing stylish white and being all business-like. Then the Spice Girls came out and Liza started dancing to Wannabe. Well, not really. But that’s what should have happened.
Moral of the story? Keep your embarrassing fantasies to yourself when you’re in public.