The Soapegist 12/21

[Ben]

Well, that's disappointing, but not surprising. These characters are total tools for not questioning Mitch's psychology, especially when they have a resident psychiatrist, who should be able to give some general insight into Mitch's sociopathic tendencies; it would give John/Natalie/Jess/Vicki etc a better handle on the guy.

And those moustache twirling super villains (or panto villains at we call them) have definitely gone out of fashion; they're just no longer relevant. ETA: I guess they're easier to write, as TPTB don't have to put a lot of thought into the characters motivations, especially when "Evil" is enough - not!

[DRW50]

Yes. They went into great detail on his last return about his parents and his background. I don't think it worked. Mitch has always worked best as a one-dimensional villain. He's there to stir things up. I don't think pseudo-intellectual analysis works all that well with a lot of villains, especially on soaps -- it ends up with nonsense like Franco on GH.

I still don't think he's taking the fall for a bad story so much as his return was probably planned to only have a limited run.

I think someone like Stacy is more along the lines of taking a fall for a bad story.

[Ben]

Ah, so they did, but it didn't work. I can see how he works one-dimensional, and I guess, when it's only short term, that route suits the character. But if he was long term, surely the character couldn't live off that?

Interesting... But I don't really agree. I'm not a fan of: Why is he doing it? Because he can, type villains. I've always got to have some explanation, or I find them unrelatable. Of course, it doesn't need to be intellectual, but the motivations have to be clear. And this brings us right back to Mitch...

[marceline]

I agree that Mitch's return was supposed to be limited. I just don't think it was supposed to be this limited.

And Stacy is just calling it a day on a situation that was bad from jump street.

[tina m]

I'm really not feeling Mitch's return this time around anyway. Seems way too contrived. Let's hope they don't pull another 'Who Killed Mitch' storyline out of the bag. They already tried that a few years ago.

[Khan]

You're right about that, lol. Allowing him to elude the authorities (yet again!) a la DAYS' Stefano DiMera just makes him look even more like a cartoon - and I'm REALLY tired of the cops on soaps looking like complete morons. Yet, we've tried "Dead Mitch" not once but twice, and obviously, neither time "stuck". Talk about a conundrum! How do you make a villain whom you've already killed off twice go away and STAY away? (See, this is why I was against bringing back Mitch for the Jessica/Natalie baby switch in the first place; I could see this problem happening.)

[You're Soaking in it]

I like Mitch's return in the sense of how Jessica, Natalie, Viki, and perhaps Dorian, respond to it. Not to mention Clint's dramatic response to Mitch's proclaimations of fatherhood over Jessica. THAT is really worth seeing several times over (and something we altogether missed back when it was first revealed). Also, I think the build-up to his back-from-the-dead reveal was paced and plotted very well. However, I think TPTB know that Mitch is such an over-the-top character, that he has to be administered in a small dose - and let the drama he leaves behind be what plays out in the story.

But you know what would REALLY make his "resurrection" worth all the effort? (Are you reading this, OLTL PTB?) Having the person who brought him to Llanview in the first place - Tina Lord Roberts - return to help take him down permanently. Not only would that put a nice wrap to Mitch's story, but would also repair the damage done to Tina's character from her last return. It would be a huge waste of opportunity if they didn't do that...

[Khan]

Yes, but define "take him down permanently." Because, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't get any more permanent than getting killed while trying to rape Dorian's daughter.

[You're Soaking in it]

I realize you're just using my comment to decry ever resurrecting Mitch in the first place. (Hey, thanks!) But how should I define "permanently" in a way that's beyond question? I know: Tina can saw his head and limbs off, put all the sections through a woodchipper, then put all the chum in an incinerator, then gather the ashes and contain the smoke, funnel it all into an airtight container, then place the container in a rocket and launch it on a collision course with the sun.

Now is that permanent enough for you?

[Khan]

LOL! Touche (and thank you for the dressing-down). But, you know, even the scenario you've just suggested has a loop-hole. After all, who's to say Mitch can't...regenerate?

Look, I realize I come off as a bit of an asshat on this issue, but, yeah, I don't think they should have resurrected Mitch in the first place; and now that they have, nothing will ever assure me that he will leave and stay gone. Nothing. Not even if they behead him on screen, and his final words are, "DON'T WORRY, I DON'T HAVE A TWIN (AND EVEN IF I DO, I'M STILL THE REAL MITCH)!". I mean, even then, I'll know he's lying (or that the next HW won't care).

Hey, don't blame me. Blame Chris Whitesell and Lorraine Broderick for thinking this (bringing back Mitch, despite him being long dead-and-buried) this was the move to make.

[You're Soaking in it]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to dress you down, Khan. I just didn't know how else to respond to someone asking for me to define "permanently."

What I really mean by "permanently," is that I hope Tina (yes, I still want for it to be Tina) gets to send him off however the send-off may be... and that it's the last of his character's appearance. He's done. And chances are, due to... let's just call it "time constraints" .... there won't be an opportunity for yet another Mitch return.

Obviously we disagree about Mitch's 2002 return. I thought it was a great choice (by the way: if we're going to nitpick that, let's nitpick AMC's Jesse Hubbard, too), and I think Broderick (sorry, can't credit Whitesell for anything good) had a better fix on Mitch than Malone / Griffith did. It was upon their entrance that Mitch went absolutely kookoo-for-cocoapuffs-wild-eyed-chest-beating-jumping-up-and-down crazy. I give the show credit for toning him down a bit now, though I do see Roscoe still having a tendancy to go overboard a bit with his delivery...

As long as his visit is finite, I think it makes for good story.

[Khan]

Sorry, I came across as kind of a s**t. That was so not my intention. Honest.

So do I! I think that's an AWESOME idea, actually. It brings Mitch's saga full circle, and (if done well) redeems Andrea Evans and Tina for that miserable return.

Yes, let's. I never said it was the smartest decision, only that it inadvertently carried some benefits (namely, the last, remaining semblance of the AMC I knew and loved as a lad).

No question, M/G botched what *I* thought was a miserable story to begin with. To this day, I don't know what purpose bringing back Victor Lord just to kill him off again served (if they were, in fact, responsible for that decision), other than to explain why Mitch would impregnate Viki in the first place. (He needed "the heart of a Lord," right? And since Jessica wasn't really...wait, but no one ever said she wasn't really Viki's daughter, so...oh, for Heaven's sake, my headache's back!)

[DRW50]

I never understood the Mitch/Victor connection either. Was Mitch supposed to have been working for Victor from the time he raped Viki? Or did Mitch find Victor later on and Victor worked with him to get Natalie's heart?

I just hated a lot of the ugliness in his return. The early tormenting of Natalie and then the way way out there stuff when M/G returned. I was not a huge fan of the forced campfest with Tomlin, but to see OLTL lurch right back to being all about women being violated and terrorized (which had been most of the show during JFP's run), I never knew why this had to happen again. And it was a huge black mark for Jessica as a character. It was one thing to say Viki had been pregnant with twins and didn't remember having Natalie, because by soap standards, this still wasn't the worst pregnancy. To then say Viki had been drugged and raped in her own living room, and had had Mitch's child of rape, that Clint and Viki had Mitch's child -- it was the real beginning of a very long process of making Jessica into a weak, pathetic figure who was defined by the horrors of her conception and early life.

There is only so much you can do to a soap family before they break for good. Malone just seemed to have some need to keep tinkering with the Lords, adding more atrocities, until finally, he created this long line of trauma which has never really stopped suffocating the characters. Then Higley added on, and Carlivarti, and it never ends. (like this post)

I haven't seen most of Mitch's first run but wasn't he just a shameless out and out villain and huckster? I think that may have worked best.

As for AMC, I actually thought bringing Jesse back was a decent idea, as the Hubbards were a big part of AMC's success in the 80s and Debbi and Darnell proved they still had chemistry when they were on Loving/The City. AMC needed a revival of their black characters, and they had so much history which could be mined in Frankie, and in Cassandra. The return story was, by soap standards, not too bad. I think the letdown was Pratt, who just gave Jesse horrible, horrible material. I hope something can be done to fix it.

[Khan]

OLTL never really explained Mitch and Victor's connection, only that Victor was dying (again) of a heart condition, and that Mitch was helping him by providing Natalie's heart in exchange for his fortune. (Why Victor would want to remain alive at the expense of his empire - an empire, btw, which had been divided up already among his heirs - is absolutely beyond my comprehension.) When Mitch first arrived in town w/ Tina, we presume that he, along with everyone else, believed Victor to be dead. However, it's possible that he learned otherwise either before he returned to Llanview as the cult leader or sometime after. Who knows? Perhaps, he knew Victor wasn't really dead even when he and Tina supposedly met! It's something to think about, anyway.

Again, though, here's my problem: if this was all about harvesting organs for dear old granddad, why did Mitch need to impregnate Viki? Wasn't Nat, who was also Viki's child, enough?

See, this is where I suspect this WAS actually Broderick/Whitesell's, or just Whitesell's, story, and that Malone & Griffith were responsible only for the denouement. Because, according to Ilene Kristen (Roxy), the outcome was supposed to have been a simple baby-switch: Nat was to be Clint and Viki's, Jess was to be Roxy and Walter's, and Mitch, in cahoots w/ Allison Perkins, switched the two just to f**k with the Buchanans some more. Therefore, by my conjecture, in order to ensure Victor had a suitable donor, Mitch marries Nat (years after he had stolen from her home and replaced w/ Jess), then allows her to be "sacrificed" for his greater good. There. Done. Why, then, did we have this crap where Victor forces Viki to choose which daughter to sacrifice (and why did Viki hesitate, instead of either sacrificing herself, or just telling the s.o.b. to stuff it)? I love baby-switch stories, but this one was complicated to the point of rendering it absurd.

Oh, I think Jess was destroyed long before this twist. Her sleeping w/ Will Rappaport, IMO, took care of that.

DeeeDee: "Pretty much." (Good Lord, though, did he and Andrea Evans have sexual chemistry. Those two were the very definition of "sex.")

Yeah, but I felt it'd have been much easier to explain that Jesse's "death" had something to do w/ the baby-selling ring he brought down before getting shot. What Esensten & Brown came up with seemed a bit revisionist to me.

[DRW50]

I hated most of her stories when JFP took over. That was also the first of her mental illness stories. I think there was still a chance for her if the stories improved. Like the early feuding with Natalie. The revelation of her being a product of Mitch raping Viki, then the Tess stuff, and dead Nash and the dead baby, it has just built up so much and I barely see a character anymore, only endless tragedy.