B&B: Week of August 04, 2008

[MTSRocks]

B&B has become one big showboat these days, and it's not pretty to watch.

[Cat]

I am still dumbfounded by the InvisaBoink on Catalina. Seriously, Kickle are B&B's newest supercouple? I know I'm repeating myself, but there is NOTHING even vaguely sexy or romantic about this whole set-up. In one corner, we have the Cryptkeeper, with a hairstyle he clearly stole from KKL. In the other, we have a chick with a weeping scar from her breastplate to her naughty bits. Stop me if this is getting too steamy for you guys.

[MTSRocks]

^LOL, no please don't stop you're telling it like it is!

It's funny that B&B and OLTL started off so strong, and now they're both almost damn near unwatchable, choppy, and mediocre (with B&B being in the worser shape). Now, with six months left in the year Y&R, and arguably ATWT has improved. Nothing about these shows seem organic these days.

[Ann_SS]

Agreed. When Alden did that lecture at MIT a couple of years, she snidely commented on B&B being a gift from Bill Bell to his son and that the show was different. She is trying to "fix" B&B, to make it into the average run of the mill soap. As a result, she is setting the show on the path of destruction like she did Y&R. We, B&B fans, know what we are getting with this show and stuck around anyway. If we wanted to watch a depressing tedious show, we would watch anything else. I expect family drama, outrageousness with comedy thrown in from B&B. Also, what has happened to weaving several storylines through each episode? What a mess.

[y&r_fan]

Alden may not be the world's best writer, but this show has done a complete 180 for the better in the past year. 2004-2007 (between when Jack Smith left and when Kay Alden joined) was the worst period in the show's history. Here's why:

*Almost every storyline was about Brooke (and they managed to somehow weave her into the ones that weren't about her as well).

*It was soooooooooo repetitive (how many times did Brooke leave Ridge for Nick and vice versa?).

*Bell kept introducing promising new characters and then dropping them three weeks later.

*Donna and Storm were reintroduced, but had virtually no individual personalities until Alden joined.

*Storylines were dropped before they even began.

*If you weren't Stephanie, Brooke, Ridge, Taylor or Nick, you were lucky to ever get a storyline.

*Constantine.

*Bell couldn't leave a couple alone for five minutes without breaking them up. Thorne and Darla were the exception, until he decided to kill Darla off in order to give Winsor Harmon his annual 15 minutes of storyline.

*Bell had no idea how to write for younger characters. Thomas and Phoebe had completely age inappropriate dialogue and storylines, and Caitlin, Gaby, Jimmy, Shane and Harry were sent packing when he couldn't figure out what to do with them.

*The characters of Brooke, Nick, Bridget and Taylor were assassinated almost beyond repair (I fear it may be too late for Bridget ).

[SOAPSFOREVER]

At least under Bell (minus Alden) the show was fun to watch. Yeah, Brad focused on Brooke too much, but there was plenty of comedy, also. It was fun, light-hearted, over-the-top fare that separated B&B from the rest of the soap pack. Alden's way too serious from this show. Her structure for the show is also very predictable and very tedious. Having characters cry and emote every episode is lazy, repetitive plotting. Alden was given a very special gift when Bill Bell handed Y&R over to her. She didn't live up to his expectation of her, or the fans' expectations. I don't hold out much hope for her on B&B, given her "true" feelings about the show, which she expressed in the MIT interview (I wonder if Brad Bell has heard the interview, and her remarks about his show. He might rethink making her co-head. One could only hope.)

[nicknack]

Oh please, at least B&B was still watchable back then, something that can't be said for what is going on now. It's not even amusing or frustrating bad, it's just bad.

Kay Alden might not be the worst writer, but she is clearly the worst thing to happen to B&B since the show started. And yes that includes BabyBell's selfwank periods.

[y&r_fan]

That's debatable.

If the Pam/Donna rivalry implemented by Alden during the strike wasn't comedy, I don't know what is.

It was ridiculous, sappy, unrealistic trash reminiscent of Days of our Lives. Nowadays, I watch B&B because I enjoy it. Back then I watched out of habit and out of hope that one day things might change for the better. And in August 2007, they did.

Perish the thought that the characters should emote. As for crying, that was what Brooke did practically every day under Bell's solo reign.

From what I've read of the MIT interview, she described B&B (at the time) perfectly!

Again, debatable.

Personally, I don't want the show to be any kind of bad. But then again, that's just me.

Wow. I never thought I'd hear anyone say that. Alden is far from perfect, but she is way better than Bell, who I happen to think is the worst writer in daytime. Hell, even Lynn Marie Latham would be a better option than Bell!

[y&r_fan]

Okay, I just saw Friday's episode, with Ronn Moss trying to emote, and... umm... wow. Bell, if you're reading this, PLEASE NEVER SUBJECT ME TO THAT AGAIN.

[boldfan01]

But it's not the kind of comedy that B&B has done well in the past. The Pam/Donna rivalry was a dark comedy that made you wonder how far Pam would go to get Donna out of Eric's life. It's not the kind of comedy that the late Darlene Conley did so well with the likes of Schae Harrison, Dan McVicar or Phyllis Diller. And even if you say comedy is comedy, how many of Pam and Donna's more recent scenes have been comedic? The only one I can think of was Pam replacing Donna's shrimp and salsa with hot tamales, and even that was just a brief chuckle and not the campy comedy B&B always did to balance out its more dramatic moments.

There were a lot of moments in the last year that had promise, but then fell flat. For instance, how about Brooke's rape, that started out as a story that could have enveloped everyone on the show, but then lost all momentum when Brooke recovered nearly overnight, after just a couple of off-camera therapy sessions, and fell back in love with Ridge? Similarly, reintroducing the Logans seemed like a good idea given the diminished role of the Spectras that got capped by Darlene Conley's death, but now they've taken over the show to the point where even John McCook has said he probably wouldn't have a front burner story were he not connected to a Logan. And the stories over the last year have just furthered weakened the viability of Nick, between his sudden realization that he loved Brooke (during the Jack maternity story) and his 180 degree turn around shortly after back to Bridget and then to Katie. Are those changes for the better?

That's debatable. Personally, I have a hard time believing LML could do well on B&B given that she couldn't even get Brooke's name right when she had Brooke cross over to Y&R for the Cane/Amber story. The only times she watched B&B were probably the episodes she skimmed in preparing for her Y&R gig, so how well could she understand the characters or what makes the show work?

[Cat]

I liked Kay Alden when she first came on the show. I liked how she reinvigorated the Logans as the ying to the Forresters' yang. I even wrote to Bill Bell expressing as much.

The key thing here is BALANCE, however. All Katie All The Time is *not* working.

The obsessive focus on Ridge & Nick as the only two Alpha Males on the show? Is *not* working.

Ignoring talented and beloved vets/characters like Felicia, Stephanie, Thorne, etc? Is *not* working.

Ignoring the fashion, the camp, the humour in favor of 5 consecutive death/medical stories in the past 6 months? Is *not* working.

I have always wanted B&B to evolve and with Brad Bell, I always felt the show repeated the same recycled SLs over and over. No character growth, no evolution, just a series of meaningless musical beds. What Alden has done, though, is not evolution either. It is a completely different soap. It's a B&B spin-off called "The Logans of LA." Which I might not ordinarily mind watching otherwise... I just need to touch base with what attracted me to B&B in the first place -- the fashion, the Forresters, their rivals, the naughtiness, the romance, the boardroom treachery. As a viewer, I need some roots, some grounding here.

[Sylph]

It was dreadful unending boredom under him. Only... It was lighter and that is the only thing that saves it.

For years now the show has been a foetid swamp of repetitive and unimaginative storytelling that will end up killing this show much in a way Guza has killed GH.

Get over Kay Alden. She sucks. And this time you have the proof right in front of you.

[SOAPSFOREVER]

[Sylph]

Someone should give Brad Bell a call and let him know about the MIT interview.

[boldfan01]

And that's the one area where B&B is vulnerable. Creatively, Brad Bell doesn't have to worry about interference from CBS like their other soaps do. But when ratings are down, CBS can translate that to money out of B&B's pocket, so it makes one wonder why nothing has changed with the current ratings slide.

I didn't mind when they first gave Pam an edge by making her a bit loony, since it was an improvement over the Pam who harbored resentment over being stuck caring for mom all those years while big sister Stephanie lived the glamorous life in L.A. and mooned over Eric herself. And there seemed to be a rapport between Alley Mills and Jennifer Gareis that made their scenes work together. But now, Pam and Donna's scenes have just gotten repetitive like so much else, and the tiny chuckles don't even really lighten up the show much.

And it turns the actors off, too, and that translates back to what's on screen. John McCook made a tongue in cheek comment recently about how Eric's being a coma has made him a prop for others to use in scenes to create their Emmy reels as they emote by his bedside. But when you think of it, there's a bigger truth in that, since how challenging is it for him as an actor to just lie there and not do anything, or to have his only dialog in weeks being a few short lines telling Ridge to let him go? I haven't read anything about how Heather Tom feels, but the angst of the Katie-crisis-of-the-moment has to be tedious for her, I would think.