The last few weeks have brought mixed fortunes for the families of Harmony. Some have enjoyed miraculous events and great things happen to them. Others have had hell itself break loose upon them. That last part was literal by the way, as if this show would have it any other way.
The Lopez-Fitzgeralds had themselves a happy new year indeed. Luis got Sheridan back from the dead and Ethan finally chose Theresa to marry like it was obvious back when he broke off his wedding to Gwen to be with Theresa.
Despite their happiness, bad things lie in store for the chirpy lovebirds. Dark secrets and vindictive villains threaten to tear the two couples apart forever.
Theresa, who’s been absolutely adorably gorgeous lately, has the Bitches in Black to contend with. Gwen and Rebecca have decided to enact an evil scheme to destroy everything Ethan believes in, exact cruel revenge on Theresa and Pilar, and get their hands on the Crane fortune. All the while justifying this by calling Theresa and her mother golddiggers who were after Ethan all along.
The Bitches in Black are so named not just because they’re looking fierce in their black threads of wickedness but also because they are pots to Theresa’s kettle. No, that’s not even right because Theresa is not a kettle in this instance, she is a lovely ceramic tea-service.
Their efforts are helped immensely by the fact that Rebecca got a brain for Christmas – a nice squishy pink one that allowed her to not only figure out that Ivy had had an affair with Sam but also that Ethan was Sam’s son. All on her own too.
Now Rebecca has gathered everyone together for the big, humiliating paternity-revealing ceremony which has everyone intrigued and worried. These words were actually uttered by Ivy as she and Julian waited for Rebecca, because Ivy is an idiot;
Julian: Could it be that Rebecca has found out your big secret?
Ivy: There’s no way Rebecca could have found out my secret…if I had a secret…which I totally don’t.
With such great secret-keeping abilities as hers, it’s a wonder Rebecca took as long to figure it out as she did. Must’ve been the new brain that did it.
Unfortunately the brain was a pre-owned model and doesn’t function as optimally as one would hope. Rebecca still has her moments of stupidity. Instead of just going to tell Julian what she knew about Ethan so he could have a DNA test done, she fixated on getting the evidence straight from Theresa’s computer. Which wasn’t really dumb, just unnecessary.
What was dumb was the way she spent minutes on end gloating to herself about what she was going to do to Theresa before actually opening the laptop, when she was supposed to be quick so no-one would catch her. She also didn’t realise that you don’t need a screwdriver to take out a disk of an A drive.
Perhaps it was Gwen who gave her the brain to use, and that’s why Gwen has suddenly lost all rationality and sense. At the start it seemed that Gwen was being very logical about the whole Ethan asking Theresa to marry him thing, saying that he had made his choice and all she wanted was for him to be happy.
Then suddenly out of the blue, she completely changed and turned into a mini version of her mother. Whatever Rebecca said, Gwen lapped it up eagerly and was all hot for revenge in a matter of moments. It was like Rebecca had hypnotised Gwen to do anything she said.
You can lead a Gwen to water and you can damn sure make her drink it as well.
Suddenly Evil Gwen is cool to watch though. She can really rock the bitchface and those glares she gives to Theresa cause ice to form over my TV. The scene where she put the pearl necklace around Theresa’s neck was very mafia, like some kiss-of-death.
Luis meanwhile is having a great time trying to get it on with Sheridan. I say trying because Dr Eve “The vapours require hospitalisation” Russell recommended there be no sex as Sheridan recovers from her near death experience.
I can see how a NDE might need recovery time, but as far as I can see Sheridan’s fine. So she’s a little faint, big deal. She’s not going to lapse into a coma if she finally rogers Luis silly. So Eve should take her Victorian hospital quackery and shove it so Luis and Sheridan can get to the good bits.
Even this postponement of intimacy cannot dampen Luis and Sheridan’s happiness. Luis is making up for the waiting period by doing things like taking Sheridan on a horse-drawn sleigh ride and generally being impossibly romantic.
The only thing that can spoil their happiness is Eve’s hypnotherapy tape wherein Sheridan confesses to killing Luis’ father as a child. No worries, it’s locked up safe, right? The only way the truth could possibly come out was if an idiot doctor said the following words out loud as she walked through the hospital corridor:
“It would be a disaster if anyone were to ever find out the truth about Sheridan killing Luis’ father. It would tear them apart forever. I must make sure no-one ever knows about that tape in which Sheridan confesses to killing Luis’ father.”
Don’t worry, Eve. No-one knows about the tape except for you, whatever hospital staff just overheard you talking out loud, and that mysterious figure (on loan from All My Children perhaps which seems to have a surplus of them) who stole the tape from your office and sent it to Alistair Crane through a hole in the time-space continuum so he can blackmail you into breaking up Luis and Sheridan.
Oops. I’d listen to Alistair if I were you. You have to be scared of a guy who can make playing with a snowglobe and slicing into a cake seem so menacing.
The Bennetts have had some odd things happen to them of late. The first happened on New Year’s Eve when they had some unexpected guests at their party – a murder of crows swarming through their home and ploughing through glass and into vases.
As you can imagine, this was not very healthy for the ravens and there were some particularly heart-rending shots of little stuffed bird bodies lying spreadeagled on the floor.
Quoth the raven nevermoreTurns out Hecuba was behind this Hitchcockian affair, and she was not finished with the Bennetts. That was just a warm-up to the big show. The next thing she did was to cause the walls to bleed.
This caused great distress for the Bennetts, especially when Reese piped up that historically, bleeding walls were a sign of evil things to come rather than the sign of puppies and love you’d expect it to be.
Even worse, a bloody message appeared on the wall in front of Charity: “You are all doomed!”. She told her family about this and no-one believed her story that the bloody wall spelled out death.
Of course they it didn’t. It spelled out “You are all doomed”, you illiterate! Someone’s taken the time and effort to convey these sinister messages and the least you could do is convey them properly, Charity.
Disturbed by all of this, Charity took a nap. As she slept, Hecuba sent her spectral minions through the wall to get Charity. As the spectral minions stood there around floating Charity like some alien abduction, Hecuba revealed the ace in her sleeve and opened Charity’s closet.
Let the probing experiments begin
Geez, Charity! Clean out your closet already!Some people have skeletons in their closet. Charity’s contains hell itself. Mere metres from her bed, a portal to hell was open and the souls of the damned screamed in an agonised cacophony. Charity didn’t wake up. She must be a very heavy sleeper.
Timmy and Tabitha heard the agonised cacophony of hellions next door because the tearing wails of the damned is kinda hard to miss, unless you’re Charity and deaf as well as illiterate. This demonstration of Hecuba’s awesome power disturbed them greatly.
They’d been having such a lovely day as well. Tabitha had got a copy of her book’s front cover and instead of freaking out, was having all sorts of fantasies about living like Jackie Collins and being surrounded by himbos. Finally her name was in print.
It really is too. Turns out
Hidden Passions is a book tie-in with the show, so anyone in the real world can read about Ivy’s hands stroking Sam’s bulging…muscles if they’re so inclined.
So do I get royalties for shilling the book right there? I'm expecting someone at my door with a nice cheque right about now. Tabitha? HarperCollins?
Anyone?