Pratt Falls – Episode 8 LMAO!

Apparently Chuckie Pratt wanted to show Carruthers his victory dance because he thinks his May Sweeps idea is genius.

NOT!

Episode 8 Super secret AMC meeting about the May Sweeps Murder Mystery.

Be afraid… be very afraid!

Also,

Pratt Falls – Episode 7

The pirate-shirted hack continues to share his maniacal plans with JHC.

LMAO!

Episode 7: High level discussions continue at the AMC offices.

Favorite line: “Chuck, I have to ask. As a child were you ever caught sacrificing small puppies to the Prince of Darkness?”

An All My Children LOL Moment of the Week

This is probably the best moment from All My Children this week. Check out this clip, 2:16 in as Erica speaks about the insanity regarding her family.

Seems like Erica is voicing the complaints many fans have had about Pratt’s writing for the last several weeks. Bravo Susan Lucci for such a well-played scene, as Cameron Mathison tries to hold back his laughter throughout.

An All My Children Evaluation

Let’s play report card right now for All My Children. It’s time to evaluate the current storylines and/or characters on screen. But first, the Head Writer, Charles Pratt Jr. deserves an evaluation.

Apprehension is the first word that came to mind when news broke that Charles Pratt Jr. would be taking the helm as Head Writer for All My Children. It’s no secret that the show has been in a writing turmoil since the the babyswitch storyline reached its climax and wrapped up. Ever since then viewers of AMC have been subjected to one outlandish story after another (hello, Josh the unabortion…) and in turn one new head writer after another. Last year, it was reported that Charles Pratt Jr, would be taking his pen to AMC. Again, it’s no secret that apprehension broke out among the faithful viewers, leaving many to wonder if AMC would turn into some hybrid form of the shows he’d already written for. Shows such as Melrose Place, Desperate Housewives and General Hospital, whom he co-wrote with Robert Guza Jr. Some chose to give him a chance and see what he could do, while others chose to tread carefully, not wanting to put all their faith in him.

At first, his writing showed promise, given the tornado that hit Pine Valley in October, but it seems as though everything else slowly whirlpooled down the drain as the months progressed. One of the most glaring miscues, aside from the hyped-up first lesbian wedding on daytime (which only lasted a day, barely…) was the dismantling of Aidan and Greenlee in order to make way for the second-time around pairing of Ryan and Greenlee (Rylee). Apparently, Mr. Pratt did not get the memo that Rylee was not a huge hit the first time around, because this second go-round didn’t work and ultimately had Rebecca Budig opting out of the contract and leaving the show after just a one year return.

Currently, the storylines playing out on AMC have this tendency of good days and bad days, but there hasn’t been a steady progression in story itself. It has been said Mr. Pratt likes to leave the audience guessing or the characters guessing what they’ll be doing next, but that method doesn’t seem to work. These characters are meant to be predictable in a way and not give the viewers whiplash with their actions. For example, on General Hospital, when Carly gets upset about something, viewers will almost assume she will run to Jason for consoling, because that is what her character does. It’s predictable. On AMC lately, it’s as though some characters’ actions leave the viewers going “Huh?”. One character whose actions have left viewers doing that is Kendall Hart-Slater.

Lately, it seems as though Kendall cannot make up her mind on what she wants. One day she wants to work things out with Zach, but the next day or within the same episode, she’s with Ryan. It’s confusing trying to figure out who she wants to be with. And if that wasn’t bad, her sleeping with Ryan and saying that it’s because they’re mourning the loss of dear friend, Greenlee really takes the cake. Kendall would never do that, regardless of how hurt she was at the time over Zach’s actions. A month hadn’t passed and those two were already bedding each other, out of anger towards others. Spoilers for the next two weeks report that Zach and Kendall will finally separate, but the actions after the fact don’t make for good story down the road. One can only wonder what Alicia Minshew, Thorsten Kaye and Cameron Mathison are thinking as they receive their scripts.

Taylor and Brot, although may have seemed like a good idea on paper, isn’t all that tantilizing on screen. Taylor (and Beth Ehlers) seems to have more chemistry with Tad (and Michael E. Knight). It’s understandable in a way that the writers were trying to show some sort of love story/coming back together between Taylor and Brot, but these days, there’s no sizzle, nothing to draw in viewers. Perhaps these two are better as friends. Also, Brot (and JR Martinez) had better screen presence with Colby (and Brianne Moncrief). It could be the fact that the two actors are closer to age in real life, as opposed to the age difference between Ehlers and Martinez.

Frankie and Randi — snooze…

Adam and Erica — intriguing. It’s good to see Erica having her hands in two stories right now. She has been consistent in her involvement regarding Kendall and Zach. But it’s also interesting seeing her in cahoots with Adam Chandler.

Jake and Amanda — Disliked it at first, but surprisingly have grown to like at the present moment. It is unsure where or when it happened or even how, but these two work right now and it’s better than seeing Jake Martin troll around town and having a casual drink every where he goes.

Pete and Colby — still a work in progress and there isn’t any clear direction on these two. It’s clear Pete will not give up on Colby, but will Colby ever give in to Pete?

David and Krystal — Can we end the Babe mentions now? No one cares about Babe, no one care when she died and no one will ever care. There is no need to invoke her name everyday. She wasn’t a saint and never brought anything good to Pine Valley. David, when acting human like last week before operating on Ian is good. But when he reverts back to his “twisting the imaginary moustache” and constantly proclaiming revenge on the Chandlers, it gets really old, fast. Krystal… well, at least she isn’t crying 24/7, but her blind love for David isn’t very enthralling to watch. And that is all that can be said on that for now.

Much credit goes to the actors who day in and day out put their efforts into acting out the writing that is handed to them.

Now, this isn’t to say everyday feels like a whirlpool where everything is simply spinning around and there isn’t much improvement.. but these days, AMC seems to be on a step forward, step back pattern. Good day with writing, giving viewers an entertaining episode, only for the next day to have subpar writing and leaving viewers wondering what happened and where the continuity went.

Overall grade for AMC as of today — C+/B- (yes, that’s being generous.)

This is just an evaluation of the show for now… Check back for another report card in the coming months, where hopefully there has been some progression and less whiplash.

The Wedding of the Century…

(disclaimer – the contents of this particular blog are the opinions of the writer only. The views expressed in this blog are in NO WAY a reflection of the opinions of anyone else who writes articles on Soap Suds and Duds)

So, Bianca and Reese marry. They barely know each other, have a child together, Reese is in lust with Bianca’s brother-in-law, they’ve betrayed Bianca’s much-loved sister, and still, they marry…

They have the maturity level of two horny teenagers riding a hormonal wave of lust rather than two adult women making a loving and happy home for their children. You know, their newborn child and older daughter Miranda. Especially Miranda. Remember her? Bianca doesn’t. She’s become remarkably, incredibly selfish. They’re both self-centered, whiny brats, concerned about no one but themselves and their groundbreaking wedding. Not to mention that Bianca’s first born tends to be forgotten. A lot. Like, never mentioned when talking about their other child. As if she never existed…

Miranda’s been hanging out in the Martin attic, apparently…

And still they marry…

Is it just me or does anyone else find it incredibly ironic that the wedding takes place on Friday the 13^th?

Anyway, following the wedding, things quickly fall apart for the happy couple. Or should I say things quickly fall apart for the moderately-okay-with-themselves-where-they-currently-are-in-their-lives couple. Ryan lets out a secret that sends Bianca into hiding at her mother’s with the kids in tow, then she just plain splits town on February 24^th after apparently serving Reese with annulment papers, or after Reese gets annulment papers, or possibly before. Just know that Bianca heads back to Paris and Reese gets annulment papers but possibly not exactly in that order. Okay?

So, the first same-sex marriage in the history of daytime television quickly becomes the shortest same-sex marriage in the history of daytime television…

Well done, All My Children and Mr. Charles Pratt. Well done, indeed.

With Bianca’s departure comes the exit of Eden Riegel, the Daytime Emmy-award winning actor. Rumor has it she returns a couple months down the road to bring the storyline to a conclusion, with all parties saying that things work out well for Bianca and Reese.

Oh, rly?

If Bianca returns to Pine Valley and takes Reese back after Reese threatens to ruin the lives of both Kendall and Ryan, continues to sniff after Zach, conspires with Adam Chandler and basically makes herself a menace, then Bianca is the stupidest waste of oxygen on this big blue marble that’s hurtling through space.

But then again, this is the woman who forgave Babe for stealing her child for the better part of a year…

Wedding of the century, indeed…

Good thing it’s very early in the century, huh?

P.S. Thanks to my pals Phyl and Donna for their help and contributions to this therapeutic little piece…

An INCREDIBLE WTF? moment from All My Children, 11/25/08)

Okay, so… on Monday’s AMC, Annie jumped off the balcony at the apartment she and Ryan shared in happier days, when they were the perfect little family with daughter Emma. *snore* Now, I’m assuming it was a pretty long drop, since the sound of her scream as she plummeted to the ground was a little longer than “Heeeeey! And I’m down!”, it was more like a “Aiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”, similar to those missile sounds you used to make when you were playing war with those little green military men back in your childhood. Plus, I would imagine that a guy like Ryan, who is apparently independently wealthy and has the means to afford a penthouse apartment, would have one. So, I would guess she took a pretty good plummet of at least 8-10 stories.

Well, imagine my shock when Greenlee looked over the balcony and said, I kid you not: “She made it.”

Um, WTF? She MADE IT?!?! She threw herself off a balcony in a high-rise apartment and MADE IT?!?!?

REALLY?!?!?

WTF?!?!?!?!??!?!?

I am beyond speechless… Seriously… I can’t… Wow…

Just…. wow….

While I, and I am sure many other AMC viewers, watch in complete awe at the sheer idiocy of such an incredibly poorly written piece of drivel, Ryan tells Greenlee to stay put, he’s going to go get Annie.

Now, normally in this situation, Ryan would have had to get Annie with a sponge or something similar to wipe up the slimey spot she just left on the sidewalk because it’s not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end, but he returns moments later, limping and holding his leg. Apparently, Annie found a getaway car and fled the scene, clipping Ryan in the process…

WHAT. THE. F*CK?!?!?

Wow, so, not only did Annie land lightly from her leap, but she almost hit Ryan with the car she DROVE. AWAY. IN!!!

Oh, now that’s believable.

She’s very flexible… and rubbery… She’s Gumby, dammit! (But she’s very bad at the whole killing Ryan thing, though, first by not shooting him with the gun she had pointed at his oh-so-broad chest, then by managing to only clip him with 2 tons of steel…)

The next we see Annie, she’s instantaneously arrived at Wildwind to have a Thanksgiving dinner in her twisted mind… So, at least the Cambias transporter is working well. Must be that new shipment of Dilithium Crystals…

It is here we see that Annie not only survived the fall and drove away in a car… SHE DOESN’T HAVE A SCRATCH ON HER!!! She has arrived at Wildwind and is planning some grand dinner. SHE. DOESN’T. HAVE. A. SCRATCH. ON. HER!

SHE’S NOT EVEN THE SLIGHTEST BIT DISHEVELED!!!!

Oh, my GOD, how stupid is Charles Pratt?!?!? Are you kidding me?!?!?! WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Seriously, I don’t think there is enough WTF’s and “?”s and “!”s to properly describe how absolutely ridiculous and ludicrous and completely outrageously stupid this is. This is television writing at it’s absolute WORST! This makes Hello, Larry look like Shakespeare!

Now, granted someone did say they saw two tiny scratches on her knuckle. But I don’t think that was from the fall, I think it was from setting the table… you know, chipped china and all…

Humorously, David arrives home from a day of playing God at Pine Valley Hospital and interrupts Annie’s twisted little daydream of a Thanksgiving where she and Ryan are happy, Greenlee is with Aidan and apologetic for ever thinking she wanted Ryan (oh, would that it were), and life is all rainbows and butterflies.

Um, this was the Thanksgiving fantasy episode we were promised? Are you kidding?

Annie got away from Wildwind and David by apparently knocking him the sh*t out, which was actually very funny, but what happened previously rendered this completely unimportant.

This was utterly ridiculous and made idiots out of every viewer who watched. Charles Pratt’s writing is not only horribly bad, it’s ridiculously unbelievable.

Pratt owes everyone who watched this preposterous plot a HUGE apology. Sadly, he can’t give us back our lost brain cells.

I mean, seriously…. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?

W.T.F?!?!?!?!?

Sorry that this one is so scattershot, but this was so absurd and ludicrous, I can’t adequately describe how WTF-ish it is…

P.S. Thanks to Phyl and Rhap for adding a couple lines to this rant. Gumby and the scratches… all theirs.

Great WTF? Moments in All My Children History

We start here, but, rest assured, there will be more:

The Satin Slayer – not that the serial killer storyline isn’t a great device for trimming down a bloated cast, but come on… Alex Cambias, Senior… who died… and was cremated… was actually still alive and was the lunatic murderer? Please. He plunged chemicals into the necks of unsuspecting women all over Fusion just to get back at his son, Zach Slater, who had nothing to do with Fusion save the fact that his wife, Kendall Hart, was co-owner of Fusion and was married to Zach instead of to Alex’s Man-Crush, Ryan Lavery? Really? And they had to kill one of the most beloved characters in daytime television history in Dixie Cooney-Martin to accomplish this lame-o storyline? Not only that, they killed her with pancakes? Pancakes?! Peanut butter-banana pancakes?!?!?

Um, WTF?

The Idiots in Char- er, the production and writing staff at AMC decided this would be a great idea for a retched storyline. Kill off an idolized and much beloved character to give the sinking (stinking?) plot a lift. Well, it gave it a lift, alright, sending loyal viewers into a frenzy and causing them to bolt the show in droves. Tad and Dixie fans were outraged, long-time viewers furious. And recently, Producer Julie Hanan-Carruthers admitted she made a mistake when ex-headwriter Megan McTavish came to her with this moronic idea and she let her actually write it!

So, death by pancake it shall be.

Then they proceeded to toss a red herring at us and let us mistakenly believe that Babe Carey-Chandler-Chandler had become a victim of this heinous killer (oh, would that it were). At this time, when Babe lay in a make-shift hospital bed in the basement of the Seasons Casino, because I understand many casino basements are quite sterile, the much-beloved town lesbian Bianca Montgomery comes to a realization. You know, she thinks, it wasn’t all that bad that Babe took my child and raised her for 9+ months, letting me think my baby was dead and that this incredible bond I had with Babe’s child was just one of those things. (Babe actually thought the way to make this all better, without revealing the fact that Baby Chandler was actually Miranda, was to make Bianca the Godmother to her own child. Yep, that’s good enough for me!) So she rushes to Babe’s side and forgives her. Forgives her for stealing her child! Are you kidding me?!? Too bad that while Bianca was there forgiving Babe for this slight indiscretion, she couldn’t have poked around in the corners of the basement and looked for the pod that contained the real Bianca, because the sane viewers who were still watching AMC at that time really missed her. (I could really get into the whole forgiving of Babe and not giving Maggie the time of day thing here, but that’s another story for another day)

Anyway, back to the Satin Slayer (which, I still can help but laugh whenever I say that… seriously, if you were a maniacal spree killer, wouldn’t you be furious if the press anointed you the Satin Slayer? “What?!?! They’re calling me the Satin Slayer?!? I sound like a weenie!!”). So, dead and buried (and cremated) Alex Cambias, Sr., comes back from the dead and buried (and cremated) to exact his revenge on Alex Cambias, Jr. (aka Zach Slater), for faking his death, lo, those many years ago… Alex, Senior, thinks Ryan Lavery is more of a man than Alex, Junior, and is literally a god in human form (and, apparently, so did Megan McTavish, because she shoved this information down our throats on a repeated basis), so to get back at his son, he started killing random women… Yeah, I think he had a shot at that insanity defense even before he got gunned down. You know what, Senior? You love Ryan so d*mn much, why don’t you marry him?

While the entire town is on the hunt for the Satin Slayer (*giggle*), resident Transgender Rock Star Zarf/Zoe goes to the cemetery to visit Babe’s grave (Zarf/Zoe hasn’t been let in on the secret that Babe’s still alive and kicking over in the Seasons basement) and gets beaten to a literal pulp by, presumably, the Satin Slayer (*snicker*). During said beating, Zarf/Zoe looks up at his/her attacker and says “You!” as if he/she knows who is delivering such a vicious beating. Well, the interesting thing here is, Zarf/Zoe didn’t know who Alex Cambias, Sr., is or was. So how did he/she recognize that it was Alex Cambias, Sr., laying such a beat-down on him/her?

Really… WTF?

This storyline was riddled with holes and implausible moments. I mean, okay, I get coming back from the dead, a favorite plot device for bringing back beloved characters and the actors who portray them, but most of these haven’t been cremated! And Alex Cambias, Sr., wasn’t on the AMC canvas in recent months- or years, if you want to really pick nits- let alone a beloved character. Let’s face it, other than to explain what Ryan had been doing while gone from Pine Valley and siring both evil Michael Cambias and gorgeous Zach Slater, what importance did Alex Cambias, Sr., himself ever add to AMC? (well, other than Ryan’s God-complex and Miranda’s inheritance)

And when Alex, Sr., was on AMC, he was a benevolent man who was mortified by son Michael’s actions and regretted until his dying breath what Michael had done to Bianca, Erica and the entire town of Pine Valley. So, now he comes back to terrorize the very same city? Because his other son, who never even lived there until a couple years ago, pretended to be dead? Just… out of the blue (and after years of being dead) he’s become a murdering sociopath?

Really?

WTF?

I can just imagine what happened in the warroom when this storyline was introduced.

Headwriter: Okay, we’re going to do a serial killer storyline because I think it’s time.
Writer 1: Who are you killing off?
Headwriter: Oh, just a couple of dead weight characters.
Writer 2: Oh, okay.
Headwriter: Yeah… Oh, and the much beloved Dixie… and the beloved Simone… yeah, and Erin Lavery…
Writer 1: What?!
Writer 2: I think I’m going to call in sick the day you write that one.
Writer 1: Who’s the killer?
Headwriter: Well, I don’t want to waste any of my pets- er, anyone valuable on the show, so I’m going to bring back a character that no one will expect.
Writer 2: Why?
Headwriter: Because it’ll be a big surprise!
Writer 1: So, who is it? Oh, I know, Petey Cortland!
Headwriter: Nope.
Writer 2: Greenlee!
Headwriter: Oh, no, I’ve got plans for that character! BIG plans! Everyone will hate her when I’m finished with her!
Writer 1: So, who is it?
Writer 2: Yeah, who’s the killer?
Headwriter: They’re going to be called the Satin Slayer-
Writer 1: What? Are you kidding?
Writer 2: That’s the stupidest name ever!
Headwriter: Stop laughing!
Writer 2: Tell us, we promise to stop laughing.
Headwriter: It’s… Alex Cambias, Senior!
Writer 1: *blink* Who?
Writer 2: Wasn’t he cremated about 4 years ago?
Headwriter: Back from the dead!
Writer 2: Wait, he was cremated! You know, reduced to ashes and put in a little can?
Headwriter: Yeah, and Erica had an abortion once, but that changed, too, didn’t it? What’s your point?
Writer 1: WTF?

Yeah… Seriously… WTF?