Dearest readers, I love soaps. I have always loved soaps. The first time I ever watched soap operas was way, way back in 1973 when I spent the night at a friend's house one summer, and her mom was watching The Young and the Restless. Oh, my goodness! Those hairstyles! Those fashions! The angst and romance! I was hooked.
But I was out of luck because at my house, my Mama didn't watch soaps and said she had better things to do. That is until Ryan's Hope debuted in 1975, and that one hooked her! She had Irish roots and Maeve, Mary, and Paddy caught her eye, and we started watching from the very first episode, which aired in prime ime to launch the soap! Really! People were excited about soaps! When a new one debuted, it was hot news! Oh, how I wish that were still the case. (For fun, I tweeted links to both of these old soaps yesterday -- so go click and watch the glory of 1970s soaps!)
The point is, I have been in love with daytime drama since I was twelve. It's never changed. I have always loved soaps. I took a pop culture class in college and did a research paper on soaps. I still love soaps. I will always love soaps.
But through the years, there have been seasons of falling out of love with daytime dramas. This is not such a season. General Hospital was so good this week, it justified me sticking with it for 37 years just to get to the payoff that happened over the past five days. I am wildly in love with GH right now, and if you are not, you will probably hate my column this week because it's just going to be one giant love letter.
Where do I start? The baby stealing? The porn/murder confession video at the HalloWedding? Sonny holding a gun at Ava while Michael aims one at Sonny? Liz sketching "Jake" and then moving him into her house?
No, no -- let's start with something truly annoying -- the fact that all of this edge-of-your-seat drama took place on a week of elections where the news and/or the president and/or your local mayor broke into GH every day all week. Are you freaking kidding me? I was screaming at the TV like a mental patient. I watched some of this week's episodes live, some on DVR, some on my iPad, some on pay-per-view -- I had to go to five locations, trying to track down scenes I lost but couldn't bear to miss. It did not disappoint.
Readers, I just suspended my disbelief for the week and never gave it another thought. My husband, on the other hand, who pretends he does not watch GH, was extremely perplexed! He kept asking things like "How come Shawn, who was like a Navy SEAL, and Jordan who's an undercover agent, aren't dropping Heather? You know they could, but they are just standing there!" I think I actually saw veins bulging from his neck. He also noted that while Heather was marching Carly up the stairs in her heels, she could have just fallen backwards and knocked Heather down the stairs. He was getting pretty wound up for someone who doesn't even watch the show, right?
That's the thing about soaps, people can mock them, pretend not to watch them, treat them like they are the lowest level of entertainment, and yet -- I dare you to sit in a room with this week's GH and not get sucked in -- it was magnetic. A man can sit in the room with his wife watching soaps, pretending to be aloof to its lures, and the next thing you know, he's invested and has strong opinions about the storyline.
This was a perfect week for that sort of Soap Evangelism. If you want to get someone to join the church of GH, this is the week to invite them over for a viewing party. Let's make GH the daytime version of Scandal this week. Or, more on point, How NOT to Get Away With Murder.
This week, both the writing and the acting were magnificent! I laughed, I cried, I was invested and involved, I was frustrated, and finally I was satisfied -- it was like pop culture sex!
Of all the great performances this week, I think I would have to hand the acting trophy to Chad Duell. If he doesn't package up all of his scenes this week and send them off to the Emmy committee, it will be criminal. Close your eyes and think about a betrayal you have experienced. Think about someone who broke your trust, hurt you, and schemed about you behind your back, and how broken and empty it made you feel, and then re-watch all the Michael Corinthos scenes this week and see if he didn't completely capture those feelings of hurt and rage and brokenness in his eyes. I cried just looking at his eyes when he realized the two people he trusted most had been lying to him for months -- his scenes were breathtaking.
Not far behind were a trio of divas -- Laura Wright, Maura West, and Michelle Stafford -- those women are amazing performers! Their scenes were riveting and powerful.
I'm going to start with Michelle Stafford. Readers, let me just confess, I adore her. If you don't follow her on Twitter, you really should. Something I really love about Michelle Stafford is that she's as big a fan as we are. She loves GH, and she is having so much fun with Nina.
Nina right now is a villain. She's unhinged and irrational -- she literally forced Ava to give birth and stole her baby! She's demented! But seriously, don't you feel a little bit sorry for her? When you see her holding Ava's baby and think about her own baby that she lost, the marriage she lost, the 20 years of her life she lost -- even as I type this, my eyes are filling up with tears! Wouldn't that make any woman go crazy? Wouldn't that send any of us to the shrink for a fistful of pills to restore our sanity?
But Nina hasn't bothered to get the pills. She is just embracing the raw emotion and swimming in crazy, and it's electrifying to watch. As a viewer, I get giddy when I see her come on-screen because I know whatever Nina is going to do is going to be fun to watch. Unlike a typical villain, she's not evil -- she is instead suffering from an untreated mental illness and is easily redeemed with a visit to Dr. Collins and a bottle of Prozac.
Heaven help me, but I also love the twisted pairing of Nina and Franco. Two completely unhinged people who connect in their brokenness and are better together than they are apart. I can tell you right now, they are destined to become my favorite supercouple because there is nothing I love more on soaps than two broken people who collide and find acceptance and understanding together.
Sonny and Carly found that kind of acceptance together and have danced in and out of love and madness for years. Watching Carly get blindsided at her wedding made me pity her, even though she probably deserved it because she's been a sneaky, cheat-y liar, but I felt so much sympathy for her in spite of her sins. I've lived a few years, and at some point in my life, I've been all those things, and I know how easy it is to convince yourself of justifications for whatever thing you're doing that your heart wants to do even when from the outside it seems despicable to everyone else.
Carly cheated on her fiancée with her ex, but even knowing in her heart that she shouldn't marry Franco, she felt she had to keep him quiet about secrets that could blow up her entire family. Of course, that's exactly what happened anyway. Nothing she did to protect Sonny and Michael worked, and the pain she tried to avoid still showed up at her doorstep.
As she tried to explain it to Michael, you could feel her heart shattering inside her body as her son rejected all of her explanations and rationalizations. Not only did her son discover she had been lying to him about A.J's murder, but the things she did to protect her son's heart will probably land her in jail, if she doesn't die first at the hand of her former serial killer fiancé.
Now to Maura West... Ava is a selfish and despicable character. She killed Connie. She accidentally shot Olivia while trying to assassinate Franco. How on earth could I feel any sympathy for such a creature? I dunno, but I do. Maura West is a beauty. Any time I have seen her on anything, I find myself mesmerized by her old-style Hollywood glamour. But this week, she let herself be ugly and raw and even had old-school Genie Francis-like mascara streaks trailing down her face.
Now I believed she was in pain. I believed she was paralyzed. I believed her desperation when trying to reason with Nina's totally over-the-top craziness. Those scenes where she had just given birth and was dragging herself along the floor, trying to get to the door to find her baby, were hard to watch. And before she touched the handle, I just knew that Sonny would be standing there when she opened the door, but was hoping I was wrong.
A little side plot I liked was Silas coming to her rescue this week and seeing the two of them connecting on a genuine level where you could finally see the remnants of a love long gone.
While I'm going on and on about magnificent soap divas, I would be remiss not to mention the stellar Robin Mattson and her unhinged portrayal of Heather Webber. Readers, my Mama passed away two years ago, and I miss her all the time, but this week, watching GH, I said to the sky, "Mama! Heather escaped again!" because of all the GH things that drove my Mama mad (when I forced her to watch GH with me in the 80s), the worst was Heather's ability to always escape any facility in which they tried to hold her. I can hear my mother's frustrated voice saying, "Oh my goodness, how did she get out again?!" It made me laugh.
Can you imagine how much fun Robin must have playing Heather? There are no limits and no bounds. She can be as zany as she wants. There is really nothing an actor could do in that role to have the director say, "You know, I don't think Heather would do that." Of course Heather would do that! The sky is the limit! Franco better hope that Shawn doesn't figure out how to break down that metal door, because when Heather does escape, and you know she will, Franco will be back at the top of her "People I want to kill" list.
Now on to something less dire -- readers, I love "Jake," and the fact that he is moving in with Elizabeth sets my heart a-patter. It would be the cherry on top if Jake and Liz hooked up and she got pregnant, would it not? Now that Michael has no one he can trust -- his entire immediate family has betrayed him -- please, oh soap writers, let him run into Jake on the docks and strike up a friendship. Jake can't remember who he is, and Michael doesn't want to remember who he is -- it would be the sweetest to see their two souls connect without even knowing they are already eternally bound.
Since Billy Miller has arrived, they are taking Jason's reintroduction to Port Charles slowly, and while part of me is anxious to get to it, the other part of me is thrilled that we are getting to watch this new Jake/Jason become his own character. Billy Miller has a lightness and charm that old Jason didn't possess, and frankly, I hope the new Jake/Jason never turns into stoic old Jason.
Wow. I am already four pages deep in this column and feel there is still so much more to cover, but your eyes are probably tired, and you've clicked away to look at an ad for how to get your college degree in three months,or buying razors by subscription service or something by now, so I will wrap it up. I can hardly wait for Monday, and I envy my fellow GH columnist, Liz Masters, a bit because I just know that more juicy things will happen next week, and it won't be my turn to write!
What will happen tomorrow, dear readers? Will Anna put the Duke mask back on Faison and send him to jail in Duke's place? Will Lucy take a bubble bath with Sigmund and plot how to get Scotty back, since he now knows that Bobbie is a liar-lips-fibber-face? Will Felicia make the Floating Rib the official bar of Port Charles when she is elected mayor? Will Max go to work as a paralegal for Diane because he's tired of taking bullets for Sonny? Will Nathan and Dante start a twelve-step support group for cops with jacked-up families? Will Fluke show up to find Luke is out of his straitjacket, clear-headed and ready for an epic Patty Duke-style face-off with his doppelgänger? Will I make it through November sweeps without another "ABC Special Report" interrupting my show?
Only tomorrow knows, dear readers, and I will tune in tomorrow as long as there are tomorrows!
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