What has happened since I last wrote about this show way back when we learned what women did not want? Why, drama, romance, idiocy and recasts, as you’d expect from any soapie. Characters have left, new characters have been introduced, and old characters have magically changed appearance. Here’s a handy summary of all the comings and goings:
Off To Primetime/Obscurity (Goings)Hayley and Mateo: After enduring a fake Mateo for a few months, real Mateo returned for about five seconds. Long enough for him and Hayley to head to Los Angeles to terrorise innocent Angelenos. The pointy finger of righteousness was unfortunately left behind in the care of Mama Santos so she can go all judgmental bitch on people when she feels like it (which is often). Hayley was last seen getting into catfights with bitchy Clay Aiken of American Idol “fame”.
Jake: After asking Mia to marry him, Jake realised what a terrifying prospect a lifetime with her was. No, actually she just got to involved in her job and this drove him into the arms of Hot Dr Allison. After Hot Dr Allison’s special medicine, he realised he didn’t love Mia and buggered off to Africa. He left her a note. Classy. Basically, he was a cheating asshole supremo but he and Dr Allison were so smoking together, I didn’t care.
Trey: His days of sleazy lawyership, redemptive journeys and inappropriate sibling chemistry with Kendall (a grossed-out Greenlee claimed it was all too David Lynch for her) were numbered when he took in a troubled young stereotype named Reggie. He acted as a foster parent to young Reggie until the kid helped a hood break into his apartment. Reggie got caught and Trey used his lawyerly rattiness to get him off scott-free by confessing to how he burned down Erica’s uglyass house those many months ago. Trey was carted off to jail but left a redeemed man. Damn. Rather a present bastard than an absent hero. He was last seen impersonating yet another sleazy lawyer on the show Shark.
Frank: He hasn’t appeared for months so I think he fell down one of those unseen manholes that claim so many random soapie characters. He had a thing going on for a while with Simone until her daddy revealed his dark secret: he had once acted on Passions. Simone was so shocked that she broke it off with him immediately. He was so saddened, he faded away without a word. He was last seen hanging with Phoebe Buffay on the show The Comeback.
(Yes, I do have an uncanny yet rather sad ability to recognise random ex- and current soapie actors on various programmes I catch glimpses of.)
Welcome To The PV, Bitch! (Comings)There are a billion new characters on this damn show for reasons unknown.
In an effort to add a bit of diversity to the Whitesville known as Pine Valley, the show has introduced a number of non-white characters. Unfortunately, it all went a bit wrong.
Reggie: He’s a black teenage delinquent from the streets who’s tough on the outside but actually has a heart of gold. He’s in danger of falling into drugs and violence unless he can get some guidance from a rich white guy. First this was Trey, now Jack randomly took him in. When not bolstering the diversity quota of the show by acting all street punkish, Reggie enjoys drooling over the women of Fusion. Good taste, that boy.
Henry: He’s a hard-working Asian who’s brilliant at science and wants to be a doctor. His family owns a Chinese restaurant and his mother is a strict Dragon Lady who has his future mapped out to a T and doesn’t want him throwing away his life by dating white girls. But wait! He does like music. Oh you stereotype-breaking show, you.
Dr Janelle: She gets the best deal out of the brand new characters of colour but only barely. She’s a black inner-city doctor whose hobbies include lecturing uppity white folks about the reality of life on the streets. She’s gotten better since then and dated Trey for approximately five seconds before he was sent to the slammer. She apparently likes really big pizza. Man, I could go for some really big pizza now.
Carlos: God, I hate him. This brainless himbo is a maintenance man working at Fusion. The last maintenance man on this show was Pleatherface Chris so that’s one strike against him. Carlos has less charisma than a can of Mr Min. He is supposed to be the hottest thing ever but his physical appeal is ruined by his constant duh-face and clunky dialogue in which it is clear the English language is as familiar to him as a tampon. We are supposed to believe he is smart and reads Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Luis Borgia. I suspect all he has ever read are the Spanish language equivalents of children’s books (Mo el Mono and El el Elefante).
The new whitebreads include:
Michael: He is wealthy, charming, well-dressed and seemingly the perfect man. So naturally he is secretly a bastard. He has charmed Kendall by doing such romantic things as flying her to expensive restaurants in his helicopter. His pet name for her is Swamp Girl because only the obscenely wealthy can get away from using “swamp girl” as a term of endearment. His hobbies include sleeping with beautiful women before taking over their cosmetics companies.
Boyd: He is a genius pharmacist who’s supposed to be straight despite coming across as very, very gay. That’s alright, so do most of the characters on this show nowadays. His hair is a carefully maintained wonder of sculpted tufts hairgelled to military rigidity and hypnotic blonde highlights. He has a thing for Kendall proving that Kendallism is an attraction that transcends sexuality. He is very loyal to both Kane daughters, making me immediately like him.
Lena: She is a sneaky Pole who works for Enchantment but is secretly working for (and bonking) Michael Cambias as a spy type person. Lousy Eastern Europeans. This is what communism leads to. She flirts with anyone she thinks can further her agenda. Boyd and Bianca have a bet going on whether she’s gay or straight. I suspect she’s an All-Rounder myself. She calls herself “friendly” which I believe is a Polish euphemism for “kinda slutty”.
Lysistrata: She is a mad hippie posing as a therapist. She is what Courtney from Survivor would be if anyone was crazy enough to pay her to psychoanalyse them for fifty minute sessions. She has a hammock in her office and encourages her patients to engage in slight violence. She also has a thing for leather and riding things. I mean she’s a biker, you dirty-minded person you.
Bore…er, I mean Laurie: She is the latest in a long line of teen characters I wish would get Ebola. She has a drunken father but hey, I’d drink to if I had to be around this yawning chasm of boredom every day. She and JR are robots in love but because her father forbade her to see him, she could not date him because that would break the second law of robotics.
Joni: She is not a dead hellraising teenager who slept with Harry Hamlin. Nor is she in any way a Polygamist Mormon or a Mean Girl. She is a goody-goody know-it-all who is obsessed with church yet still manages be more enjoyable to watch than freakin’ Laurie. Everyone hates her now for some reason for telling JR his girlfriend was macking on Jamie. No hate for the two cheating asses, I notice.
Kenny: He’s a nice lawyer guy who keeps helping Simone every time she gets arrested. Which lately is pretty much a weekly event. He’s helping her pro-bono but I think he wants to be paid pro-boner if you know what I mean.
Hot Dr Allison: She is a very forward doctor who had hot sex (and I do mean hot, especially for soapiedom which is usually set to like cheesy Kenny G type music and shot through a Vaseline-d lens.) with Jake. I thought she was totally going to disappear when Jake left town but she’s made a couple of appearances since then, usually to be bitchslapped by Mia.
Edmund’s Goatee: This disturbing creature has taken over half of Edmund’s face. It makes him look like a freakin’ mad scientist.
Damn, You Look Really Different. Did You Get A Haircut? (Recasts)JR: With each recast, this character gets worse and worse. New JR bears a good physical resemblance to his father Adam but is even whinier and more immature than previous JR. He is what the kids nowadays call “emo”, in a constant state of anger and self-pity.
Jamie: One recast I am thankful for. Previous Jamie was a wretched child actor but this one grew into a high-schooler overnight. He is “friendly”, as they say in Poland, which means he loves the ladies just like dear old dad Tad. He is way less emo and far more fun than his brooding idiot of a brother.
Reggie: Yes, that’s right. They recast the dude after like a week. Just as well too because the first one looked like he was going to pop a forehead vein whenever he was on. Plus he looked thirty. The new one actually looks like a teen and is a decent actor to boot. Seriously, I even saw him on The Wire.
Kenny: I think they recast him. I’m not sure. He’s pretty forgettable. He looked slightly different so I’ll say yes.
Phew, that took long enough. But what actually happened on the show proper? I present the last few months in a couple of minutes:
The Tumour…I Mean Psychiatrist Made Me Do It!Liza pushed Mia out the window and couldn’t blame it on the tumour for once. Mia forgave her after about five seconds of anger. She did not hit her with her cane. Damn. Liza miraculously stopped being an insufferable bitch and blaming Adam for everything from globalisation to global warming.
Adam and Liza went to marriage counselling where crazy Lysistrata encouraged Liza to hit him with a foam bat. They went to a horror movie together where the most horrifying sight was that of JR and Laurie making out with each other. Liza then decided the best way of patching up her marriage would be making out with Tad. Surprisingly, this did not go down well with Adam. Go figure.
Thankfully, Liza appears to have finally gotten a clue and realised that not only is the problems in their marriage not entirely Adam’s fault, but that they are completely wrong for each other in every way and will end up throwing themselves off chandeliers if they don’t break up. Only took her seven years. She’s a quick learner.
Sol Kerzner’s Extended Travel BrochureWith the sudden de-bitchifying of Liza and the departure of Mateo, I felt myself without a hate object for a brief period. Edmund nobly stepped in to take up that role. He locked Maria in the castle when she refused to stop seeing Aidan and get her damn memory back. Maria was so touched by this display of scary possessiveness that she hotfooted it out of town with Aidan.
Aidan was being chased by a Brit villain called Julian and a deranged swan called Morgan, so he and Maria hid out in a brochure for Sol Kerzner’s Paradise Island resort in Bermuda. This was an actual location shoot. I know this because of the thousand shots of all the pretty scenery and the resort itself. There was a long-drawn out chase through the resort that took like half an episode, various shots of Maria and Aidan enjoying themselves in the resort, and even one puzzling one of Maria swimming through the aquarium.
After Sol Kerzner’s mass brainwashing was complete, Aidan and Maria returned to Pine Valley. Edmund stopped acting quite so assy towards her but he grew a disgusting goatee to cement his role as Sudden Asshole Edmund.
Anna And The WhaleAnna got pregnant but alas, the baby’s heart was two sizes too small. Fitting considering how small and Grinch-like David’s own heart is. Anna went off to Zurich to try and get the world’s best neonatal surgeon on the case. David let her, perhaps forgetting that Switzerland was where his last lady love ended up a Dixie-shaped splat in the road. Shoulda gone to Seattle Grace.
Luckily, Anna returned to PV unharmed though she had grown so huge, I could only assume she was pregnant with a whale. When the time came for her to give birth, a world-famous neonatal specialist was brought in to perform heart surgery on the kid in utero. Unfortunately, he was suddenly hit by a stroke…a stroke of contrivance that is, which meant it was up to David to (as usual) perform life-saving heart surgery.
David picked that exact moment to lose his cocky Messiah complex and have a crisis of confidence. Great timing there, Heyward. He managed to successfully perform the surgery and the whale was born death-free. Yay! They named her Leora after Leo (though Leona may have been a better name) but unfortunately the kid’s heart is still suffering from Grinchitis. Now David is afraid to put a pacemaker in the kid’s chest and gets worried if Anna even goes to the park with the kid (not the park! The killer butterflies might fly away with Leora’s heart).
Putting the “Fusion” into “Complete And Utter Confusion”The Fusion girls suck. Or rather, their company sucks. They themselves do not suck (well, Mia does kinda, but I’ve mellowed on her lately). The very special What Women Want Fusion episode was a sign of things to come – incompetence and idiocy. They actually cooked up deadly mouth-fusing lipstick in Kendall’s kitchen. I think that’s taking the company name a little too seriously.
They decided Mia would be the perfect face of their cosmetics product. Of the four of them, they choose Mia? I mean, she’s pretty in an overly toothy way but the other three ladies are much better-looking.
They got in trouble for plastering Mia’s face all over town (stop scaring the horses!) and almost lost their leased building when Kendall neglected her duties as Sneaky Petey’s nanny, pissing off their landlord Palmer in the process. They also threw a party which was the hit of the PV sexworkers’ social calendar.
The many hookers who attended the party were friends of Simone from when she was thrown in jail. One of the times she was thrown in jail at least because Simone seems to end up in jail more often than Britney flashes her crotch. Simone has also become a raging sluuu….I mean the friendliest person in town, losing her mind over every single male within a five kilometre radius. No wonder her and the hookers got on so well.
Mia drove Jake into the arms of another woman and when he left town went on a slap rampage, slapping every woman within arm’s length like some sort of angry Sims character. She now appears to be going after Edmund’s Goatee. Careful, Mia. I don’t trust that Goatee one bit. It looks smarmy to me.
This Show Is Kinda Gay (In My Fevered Imagination)Kendall briefly went out with Aidan, who became less wooden and cute in the process. After he went off with Maria, she briefly flirted with JR, who exhibited absolutely no chemistry with her whatsoever. Is that even possible? She then hooked up with Boyd for a spell before Michael swept her off her feet with his very big…wallet. Little does she know that he’s secretly boffing Lena and trying to do the same thing to Erica.
See, his overly convoluted secret plan is for Lena to seduce Boyd so he will fall in love with Kendall and spontaneously tell Kendall the recipe for his
secret Gaulish potion, perhaps in some sort of radical new kind of love poem. Michael is seducing Kendall so she will randomly tell him what Boyd told her and voila, the magic potion recipe will be his.
Oh, and Micheal and Lena are trying to seduce Erica and Bianca respectively for…I don’t know, some other nefarious purpose I didn’t quite catch because my brain melted as they were explaining it. Where did they get this plan? The DiMera Guide To Needlessly Complicated Plots?
Greenlee mourned Leo’s death for a while and not even her kicky 60s hair and clothes period could bring her out of her depression. Lysistrata did however by splashing her with water and ordering her to jump out the window. I never thought I’d miss the down-home wisdom of Dr Phil.
She got a
stalker secret admirer who sent her emails and told her how wonderful she was. After investigating, she thought it was some random woman but it turns out that it was Carlos the dim maintenance man. Please, like Carlos can even operate a calculator, never mind send love poetry over the Internet. He is a poor substitute for the dearly departed Leo, much like that three year-old chocolate bar collecting dust in the vending machine is a poor substitute for Ferrero Roche.
Clearly both Michael and Carlos are completely wrong for the tagteam of Kendall and Greenlee, especially since it is clear that these two lovely ladies are secretly in love with each other. In the tradition of the best love/hate relationships, they started off hating each other but have gradually grown closer and closer despite their antagonism.
There was the barfight where they went from mocking each other to gallantly defending each other’s honour against a horny sleaze. They worked as one to bring down the sleaze in a physical smackdown worthy of Jerry Springer’s greatest hits. Later on, Greenlee’s mistrust of Michael led her to confront him about his lying to Kendall like she was jealous lover. Kendall even gave Greenlee a Valentine’s Day rose when she found herself alone on the day. It’s love, I tell you.
This Show Is Kinda Gay (But Maggie Claims She’s Not)After far too many months of sexual ambiguity and a distinct lack of interest in boys (I mean Tim? Pffft.) from Maggie, Bianca finally got sick of mixed signals and asked Maggie outright whether she was into the ladyfolk. Maggie was all “Noooo, I like boys [so just ignore the signals I’ve been sending you, and how we went to prom together, and that time I wanted us to go skinny dipping, and that crazy fantasy I had where I saved you from mad rapists while wearing tight blue lycra]!”
With her sexuality allegedly cleared up, Maggie took science classes at the university where her lab partner was Henry Chin. Other students warned her away from him because he’s the bad boy of Organic Chemistry [cue rock music]. They both accused each other of racism for reasons I wasn’t entirely clear on before deciding to make out a lot. Henry’s mother doesn’t really like her but this could be because she sometimes dresses like a Chinese Revolutionary Drummer Boy.
Maggie’s bad influence appears to have made Henry start cheating in tests. It’s exactly as exciting as it sounds.
This Show Is Kinda Gay (The Next Part Really Is Though)Bianca returned from whatever the hell she was doing in between the occasional cameo appearance (I’d like to think she was hooking up with lots of hot chicks and generally being totally friendly) and found herself heading up Enchantment’s youth division. Accelerated soapie careers, gotta love ‘em.
She found herself working with the sultry Lena and of course fell hard because she’s got a thing for mysterious women with secrets. Lena is all too happy to flirt and sink her claws into the innocent Bianca, perhaps not realising that the last con artist chick who did that ended up getting shot in the chest. Boyd is also trying to get into Lena’s pants. More likely he’s trying to find out who designed her pants because he thinks they’re faaaabulous.
So now Bianca is all smiles and hopefulness and flirtiness which is both cute and strange because she’s the world’s most victimised lesbian and always suffering unending misery. But Lena is working with the eeevil Cambias empire so Bianca’s dreams will be likely soon be crushed underfoot as is the natural order of things.
Erica Kane Attemps To Bring Sexyback, Fails MiserablyErica has two men in love with her because she wouldn’t be Erica Kane if she didn’t attract men like a skunk attracts stink. She was preparing to marry Chris but found that she preferred Jackson’s slightly orange face to Chris’s red and shiny face.
She found herself accidentally falling on Jack’s penis a lot and Chris, bloody brilliant FBI agent that he was managed to come to the complete wrong conclusion that Erica was in fact sleeping with Michael. This despite the fact that he kept walking in on Jack and Erica talking passionately to each other and looking guilty. US Intelligence Agents, ladies and gentlemen. Give ‘em a hand.
Chris confronted Erica who was so incensed he would dare suggest she was having an affair (as if!), she threw his ring in his face and stormed off. Hooray! Erica is now torn between marionette-faced, overly macho Chris and sweet Jack. But she apparently resents Jack for helping her ex take away Bianca from her, the result of which was she was unable to teach her about the importance of good heels and thus prevent her from contracting the dreaded Gay.
To add to Chris’ problems (of which there can never be too many, that meatheaded bastard), Jack is having him investigated by putting Aidan on the case. It’s crappy Guido special agent vs crappy Brit special agent! Who will succeed?
This Is Why Teenagers Should Be Seen And Not HeardThe teens, o god, the teens! Teen robots JR and Laurie were in love. JR was into Laurie and gave her MP3 players to try get into her
pants heart. She refused because this went against all her command protocols set by her drunken father, Doug. For weeks and weeks, they repeated the following scene over and over:
JR: 0110001001100101001000000111011101101001011101
0001101000001000000110110101100101001000000110110
00110000101110101011100100110100101100101
Laurie: 0110010001100001011001000110010001111001001000000
1110011011000010111100101110011001000000110100100
10000001100011011000010110111001110100
(Translation:
JR: Be with me, Laurie.
Laurie: I can’t, my father won’t let me.)
Meanwhile Joni and Jamie also could not date because of Joni is actually a do-gooder insect named Joni-my Cricket and has very high standards of moral behaviour. This led Jamie to making out with Laurie instead which Joni saw and told JR about. JR got angry….well, angrier since he’s pissed off 24/7. He recently ran off and boarded a trawler ship bound for less soapy waters. Thank you, Jamie for being a manwhore and Joni for being a snitch. Now if either of them can get rid of Laurie, that’d be great.
Joni also magically became a bad girl for about five seconds and was arrested after breaking into the school. She did not spend time with any happy hookers sadly, but did spend her jail term with Simone which isn’t all that different.