All My Shadows

Catching up on some episodes...Janine is flipping insane! Loved what she did with the booze at the Vic. I really hate Kat now, so anything that grinds her gears is good in my book. I hated her shrewish behavior over Roxy and Alfie. Carol's hair She looked like Annie Sugden from Emmerdale. I hadn't watched in months, so this was my first time hearing the stuff about Ian that Jane told to Christian. Did it really happen like that? Because if so, Ian's an ass.

Ooooh okay, I'm starting to remember now. Isn't it 24 episodes in the second-half though? Since they said the season would be 48 episodes long. And yes, it was wrong for me to blame the goddess that is Linda. I don't understand why TEENick and ABC Family do this. It undermines any momentum built up in the string of episodes. Just as I'm getting into things, boom, we're stuck with a "summer finale" or "fall finale" or "winter finale" or whatever. Just give me a good, solid 20-30 episode season stretching from September to May, and I'm good. I finally saw the second Riley two-parter from the 4-eps-a-week string. It was...I can't even lie, it sucked pretty bad. The dialogue is absolutely atrocious and so heavy-handed ("You don't hit a homophobic, Riley! When you hit a homophobic, they only become more homophobic!!" and "If I ever hear one more homophobic thing from you..." are the winners, by far). I used to like AK as Riley, but he can't handle this at all...at all. I like the guy who plays Zane, and he's able to work through the crappy dialogue, but Zane's gotten quite annoying. Who was that cute guy who bid on him in the auction? Why is he wasting time with Riley when Degrassi/Toronto obviously has other cute gay guys to go after? The only part of the whole hour that I didn't get annoyed by was the scene where Riley was about to come out to his mom and bitch just bulldozed the whole thing with perhaps the single most harmful thing a parent can say to his or her closeted child: "I just want grandkids." It's not about what you want, so pop off. I liked the understated way Riley reacted to that, though. Not a rage-filled cry-fest, but a small death deep inside. That was well done. Wesley, I don't like him and I don't like how we're supposed to root for guys like him. "He's smart, he's nice blah blah blah." He has the spine of a jellyfish, and I think most people consider that an undesirable trait. He's unlucky with the ladies not because he's not conventionally attractive (which, if he got a freaking tan and did something to that hair, he wouldn't be so bad at all) but because he has no confidence, and as long as he's crapping his pants every time someone like Anya looks at him for more than two seconds, he won't ever have any. If you like the girl enough to beg your "friends" for help on how to "mack," then you need to scare up the courage to do it your own way. And if she doesn't respond, move on. Sheesh.

I was actually talking about torrents. I found season three (as taped off of SOAPnet) at some site...forgot which one. I still have it seeding on my other computer, but that one's currently out of commission. When I get it back, I'll still have it up because I'm not even touching those eps until I've finished watching my S1 and S2 DVDs. Speaking of which, I finally got to Land of the Free this morning. WOW. It was like every deliciously cheesy 70s B movie about gangs that you can find. Even the music sounded like something out of The Warriors. Karen and Sid basically screamed the entire episode, the bikers themselves were laughable ("Not ripe enough."), and I still don't quite understand all of the hooping and hollering over them merely driving circles around everyone at the beach. The physical violence was one thing, but at one point, Val is screaming and all they're doing is donuts. My favorite part was at the very beginning when the one biker drives through the volleyball net and promptly falls off his bike

How many episodes were there in this half of the season? Because I don't understand this ish one bit. So after next week, S10 is done? Or is there more in the spring? Because cutting the season up into three chunks is so unnecessary, Linda. I tuned out a few episodes before the end of the summer soap set-up, not because I was disinterested but because I was just no longer able to watch. And I guess the MTV episodes weren't getting the ratings because they're not airing this little run of episodes.

That's exactly it, Amello. It just reeks of "Well, he's not a hunk, so obviously we can't put him in any serious storylines. Or serious scenes. Or give him anything serious to say. We have to call attention to his girth as often as possible because if we don't, the fans will be confused. And he must be sexually-frustrated." Judd Apatow would be proud. And those three are all Marquess creations? Sheesh. Cheryl hasn't been on too much yet for me to fully form an opinion on her, so we'll see. Brendan...ugh. A cartoon. What really was the deal behind Matt and Darren leaving the show? I haven't really found anything other than they just wanted to break more into behind the scenes work and presenting. For some strange reason, I've always had this baseless notion that they were disenchanted with how soapy/dramatic the show had become as opposed to what I've always figured were lighter and more comedic earlier years. But I could be totally wrong on that.

I love me some Barbara Knox. Such a fun, bubbly personality. She's almost like a slightly tamer Eileen Fulton, and geez, can you imagine those two working together? It always makes me a little sad when UK soap vets kinda allude to how much the shows have changed. She's obviously still having a ball doing Corrie, but that face/tone when she talked about the increase in weekly episodes speaks a lot. Just like I want all US soaps to go back to 30 minutes, I wouldn't mind it if the UK soaps all went back to two episodes a week. Of course, it's always a question of whether TPTB would trim the shows in the right way. That huge article on Corrie coming to the States is great! Doris Speed, bless her heart. I wonder how the show fared in those markets.

All of this talk of Stephaniedeladean dying is making me sad. I just don't get how/why people accept it when shows are almost entirely unrecognizable from what they were just four years earlier. I don't have the history most of you guys have with Oaks, but Steph is one of my faves. And Duncan? Please don't tell me they really want him to happen. He's gross. And not because he's fat.

It is sad, and that's why I was looking forward to this. 'Oaks is really blowing it, though. And yeah, definitely. Once the shock dies down, Ste will either let Brendan's abuse "turn me off blokes f'ever" or just disappear. What's coming up with the Jasmine/Jason/Bart thing? Or do I want to know...

The Ste/Brendan stuff is turning into a big joke. I can't believe there are commenters claiming that Ste's enduring the abuse because "in his heart, he knows he loves Brendan." Get outta here with that bullshit. It's just, YET AGAIN, another "gay story" happening at breakneck speed because overzealous fans don't know how to sit and watch a story unfold over weeks or months. The only parts of their "relationship" we've seen is kissing/sex and Brendan beating the hell out of Ste. How on Earth can you root for that? And WTF, Ste, who up until this point on the show, has been involved with only females, gets drunk, kisses a guy, and all of a sudden he's claiming to be gay or bi? There's no time to think about it? He just accepts it. Okay. I know they fit in that line about him and a mate in juvie, but if I understood all of that right, he never even did anything with that guy, just felt a little closer to him than a friend would. I guess my main issue with stuff like this is that I think that the audience should always *know* the character enough to know what he or she is thinking and why he or she is doing what he or she is doing. Slipping in this whole notion of Ste having fleeting feelings towards men essentially changes every relationship he's ever had on the show. I'm glad they brought up the idea of whether or not his sexuality issues contributed to his troubles with Amy. Imagine if they did it write it so that his issues were indeed the cause. It would basically crap on all of the work the writers of that storyline put into making it plausible and character-driven. But let's not worry about that. Two hot guys are making out on our televisions, we should be completely satisfied with that. If we're high-maintenance enough to want an actual story, we have to write it ourselves.

Got really behind because I couldn't get the episodes (computer troubles...ugh), but I've been catching up. Loved Blossom and Alan! I'd love it if either one or both came back in a more regular capacity. Thursday's episode was really good. Carol's finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She hit rock bottom with the near-suicide, got her world rocked, and now things are starting to look up. Her and Bianca were great together at the end. I'm loving this thing with Janine, Ryan, and the Slag sisters. Ryan wore the hell out of those shorts Kat and Alfie are starting to bug, and I almost want to say "especially" one or the other, but it's really both of them. Extremely obnoxious. I do have a question about these houses in Albert Square. Why is that on most days, the living rooms look so tiny, yet when there's a "party" going on, there are dozens of people freely moving about? It was the same way for Billie's fateful party.

Dude, from the second they set it up to all go after Katherine at the party, I knew this was gonna be a kick ass episode. It did not disappoint! Caroline was on fire all hour AGAIN. Loving her more than I ever thought I would. Bonnie/Jeremy, I can roll with that. Jyler's still my OTP for the show, though. Katherine...can't decide if I love to hate her or just hate her. I love all of the other characters so much that it's easy to just hate her. I'm glad she's not dead, though, because we need to keep this up for seasons to come. Poor Matt/Casey/Cash. I'm glad Tyler ended up killing one of the random drunk girls instead.

I started tuning in for the Ste storyline, but I'm interested in some of the other stuff going on as well. Dang, I was shocked to see how much of the characters from late '06 are no longer on the show. That's one thing that's always turned me off of watching this show (and the Aussie soaps) on a more regular basis. I couldn't deal with such a high turnover of characters. But anyway, I'm liking how the Ste/Brendan storyline is playing out right now. It's far removed from anything "romantic," so I don't know what those fans are thinking. Like Amello said, there's a sexual thing in there, but there's no romance there. Not yet, at least. I haven't seen a whole lot of Ste's storylines, but he's a fairly likable character now, so we'll see how this goes. That tacky ass mustache Brendan's sporting has got to go. Jacqui looks good! Mercedes looks...better than she did four years ago! Who were the couple sitting at home with the ice cream? I liked them.

Yeah, Simon being on the list was enough to make me gasp, but then seeing Sian on there was enough to make me apathetic about the whole thing. Nothing against her, but how could she possibly measure up against characters like Jim, Liz, Sally, Kevin, Deirdre, and even Carla or David? She's been on for barely a year and a half and her only story has been sidelined like crazy. I totally see Sean and Michelle running the Rovers, but the last episode I saw had Carla trying to talk Michelle into joining her in business. I decided to stop watching once Graeme woke up because...well, I don't need to see him without a shirt on and because I don't want to see him and Tina making baseless accusations against David. I liked that we were seeing Ashley a lot but knowing why really doesn't give me an incentive to watch for him. And where the hell are Rita, Norris, Mary, and Emily?

What about the Grimshaws? I think Eileen could run a fine establishment with Jason pitching in at the bar sometimes.

The new Vic looks nice! I wonder if the green is supposed to be a homage to when the whole thing was green in the early 90s. I caught up on this week's M/T episodes. The R&R stuff was hilarious! Janine vs. the Slaters was comic gold, as was drunk Billy. I love Kim. She fits in well with every character they put her with, and I'm loving the atmosphere she brings to her scenes. The actress keeps looking familiar to me, but I'm too lazy to IMDb her. Drunk Billy was adorable, with all of his "What, I'm not cute enough for you!? I'm Billy Mitchell!!" huffing and puffing. Carol rejecting him is kinda funny considering what happens next week. Oh, and good on Roxy for spiking boring Syed's drink. She should have spiked it with a haircut. When does Blossom return? I don't think I've ever seen any clips of her at all.

*faints in the presence of greatness*

Ugh. I used to love The View, but not so much anymore. When it was an actual daytime talk show and not trying to be like a 24-hour news net politics show, it was fun, entertaining, sometimes heated, but always interesting. Now, the only time Whoopi is vaguely engaged in the conversation is when she can talk about the latest political happenings or when one her so-called BFFs (ex: someone she co-starred with in a movie twenty years ago) is a guest or is in the news. Joy grates, Sherri is dumb as [!@#$%^&*] on a cracker, and Bitsy is an idiot. Barbara's on autopilot.

I finally found the song Damon and Vicki danced to on The Vampire Diaries and now it won't leave me alone. That good, though, because it's pretty good.

They have the first eleven done now. So far, so good, IMO. For those who don't feel like going look for it: 50. Tony Gordon (2007-2009, 2010) 49. Minnie Caldwell (1960-1976) 48. Rosie Webster (1990-present) 47. Liz McDonald (1989-present) 46. Peter Barlow (1965-1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1986, 2000-present) 45. Shelley Unwin (2001-2006) 44. Eddie Yeats (1974-1975, 1976-1980, 1981-1983, 1987) 43. David Platt (1990-present) 42. Albert Tatlock (1960-1984) 41. Jim McDonald (1989-2000, 2003, 2005, 2007-2008, 2009, 2010) 40. Kevin Webster (1983-present)

I haven't seen today's episode yet, but I have to agree with the Billy love. He's sort of a lovable loser. Everything goes wrong for him, but he keeps on trying anyway, yet he isn't dramatic about all of the stuff he deals with. A good solid character. Max and Carol were TENSE in yesterday's episode. Carol's just devastating...so lost, so sad, so upset. I could have done without Bianca's big meltdown with Kim. It was pretty random when she just started crying because of what Liam of all people said. That could have been a little more subtle...Bianca simply hanging her head in shame and walking away would have been better, IMO. Kim's still my girl, though!

Hanson

Pauly

Vampires: The Turning

Touch My Body - Aretha Franklin (YouTube it!)