Members Khan Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 Yeah, what happened to that? Has ES been back in the States (and around her children) long enough to lose her diction? I'm sure many will say they've no idea what I'm talking about, but if I hear her talk today, and then compare it to a clip from, say, 1978, there's a real difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 I mentioned Ben because I've wondered if she saw Viki as lightening up during that stage in her life and as she got older and dealt with all the DID revelations... maybe Viki's tight speech was something she decided to loosen up. Or maybe she became self-conscious about it when people made fun of it, or maybe she even got a note, I don't know. I think's it's refreshing to hear her great diction and frankly it tickles me especially when she gets all riled up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 Right! To me, a soap is kind of like Double Dutch, you have to just jump in and take it from there. I'm going through the mental Rolodex trying to remember an instance where exposition aided me as a viewer and I can't come up with anything. For me, my lapses have been lengthy so I have no recollection of entire storylines from the last ten years that you guys mention. Any viewer who watches just a couple days a week can keep up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khan Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 More than likely, the brain-dead morons @ ABC told her to tone it down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vee Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 Yeah, that clip of Viki turning on Tina in a very public setting and busting out the clipped voice is scary as hell and it indicates just how deep Erika goes with that character, that she's been modulating and re-calibrating Viki's persona for years. I suspect a lot of is deliberate on her part and due to the careful thought she's put into the last several DID stories (the good ones, anyway), because I doubt JFP or later regimes gave it much thought. I think Viki did loosen up a lot upon learning the whole sordid truth about Victor Lord, a man who she was taught to emulate and worship until well into adult life. But as she proved last week, she can still bring the imperious terror. I think it was right for Viki to loosen up with men like Ben and Charlie, even though I hated the Ben story in execution and I never liked him. What I liked was her utilizing her integrated personality to become a more free, open person, as illustrated in the early days of that story, and that's something she did again, and to much better effect IMO, with Charlie in a superior story. Of course, that's all over now. Viki thought she could start all over, free of baggage, with Charlie, and what she got for her hopes and dreams is the first man who has left her for another woman - a scheming criminal who destroyed two of her marriages - in her entire history on the show. This to me could and should cue a change in Viki's character back to something colder and more imperious and ready to wield power, at least for awhile until new love softens her. I'd like to see more of that. I can think of a whole murder trial storyline with her and Mitch Laurence I'd still like to see. I'm not saying turn her into Clint, who is a whole other kettle of fish, and I do think at times they've gone a little overboard with him, but I do think you could plumb Viki's depths again. What the Clint example proves in general, though, I think, is that the way to keep these senior characters viable is to continue exploring them and taking them through personal journeys regardless of age or gray hair. Viki is no exception. Recent audiences are used to Viki being safe and a character of comfort, but that is not all she is or was, and not just because of her alters. Wait - I've been in the Lorraine Broderick thread this whole time? What the hell, people? All I saw was a lot of Viki talk and I had multiple windows open. Sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 LOL, my bad Vee, we were on the subject of dialogue and I used AMC's sister show as an example. But I absolutely love your post and encourage you to copy and paste it where it might live more abundantly. We're on the same page as far as your take on ES's recalibration of Viki and her speech, and I strongly agree with what you're saying about the further exploration of these vets in their dotage to continue to make them viable. It's disheartening when you hear that RS has been told that they've run out of story for Dorian and she's lost her luminescene. What utter bullshit. I find that incredibly insulting, especially when it's not like they're cranking out innovative storyline after storyline for the rest of the cast. But back to LB. If you guys want to continue this vein of discussion we should mosey on over to the OLTL weekly thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khan Posted April 10, 2011 Members Share Posted April 10, 2011 So can I. Unfortunately, the big twist in mine is that Viki's rape, Natalie's conception, and even Jessica's history of sexual abuse are all post-hypnotic suggestions implanted by Mitch himself (don't ask me to explain away the tapes w/ Jess's abuser, though). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted April 11, 2011 Members Share Posted April 11, 2011 Kiddie doppelganger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khan Posted April 11, 2011 Members Share Posted April 11, 2011 ^ LOL! Actually, it'd be more like, "Yes, that really was Jessica in those tapes - but no, she wasn't really molested." She did call herself "Tess," but I argue she might've been instructed to say that while she was on-camera, and what really went down - what Clint and Viki thought they saw on those tapes - was actually careful, clever editing on the part of Mitch and Jessica's "abuser." All done to f**k w/ the Buchanans even more then he'd already had. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vee Posted April 11, 2011 Members Share Posted April 11, 2011 I'd only retcon the DID/molestation. I used to think that was impossible but after the idiocy done with Rex in the last couple years, I think it can be done. I didn't always. What would happen is, Viki would visit Mitch and discover that he had engineered Jessica's "false memory syndrome," right down to the memories, the manipulated videotape, and the various witnesses. Why? Because as we have seen onscreen, Mitch has been obsessed with Victor Lord and the Lord legacy for years. He lusts after Jessica, and once, in 2003, believed himself to be Victor and her to be Viki. So he attempted to engineer a multiple-personality schism in Jessica by creating a false suppressed memory in her that mirrors Viki's own real experience from her childhood. He wanted to literally make her into Viki, right down to the repressed memories and the multiple personalities. But what Jessica has is not truly DID, just a fragmented, disassociative state, and this is why she has never been properly integrated. Unfortunately, at the same time Mitch tells Viki that her daughter was never truly a DID case, Jessica has finally well and truly lost her mind, brutally murdering Robert Ford after her wedding to Brody. Stark raving mad, she is carted off to St. Anne's for several years. In response, Viki has a special hour-long episode - all Erika Slezak, not unlike what is coming up in the next couple weeks - in which she and her now-integrated alters discuss the pros and cons of doing the unthinkable and murdering Mitch in cold blood. Drawing on the Jean and Tori sides of herself, Viki comes to the conclusion that she can and will kill Mitch and get away with it, and that's what she does. In the ensuing weeks, she breaks him out of maximum security, lures him to the Lord cabin on Llantano Mountain, kills him, and burns it down. A cover story is created about Mitch going on a rampage and getting himself killed, and Viki gets off scot-free...for about nine months, before the pieces begin coming together. Anyway. Never gonna happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted April 11, 2011 Members Share Posted April 11, 2011 That sounds great. I'm not as creative as you are - I'm at the point where I just can't stand seeing her, I feel repulsed at this monstrosity destroying the last shreds of the potentially fascinating character Jessica was when Erin Torpey played the role, especially the mid-90s. She is, along with Ben Reade on GL, the most destroyed character I have ever seen on any soap. I just want her to go the hell away and never ever come back. The only reason she exists now is to try to glorify sexual abuse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khan Posted April 11, 2011 Members Share Posted April 11, 2011 I so wanna be on Vee's writing team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Clear Drama Posted April 11, 2011 Members Share Posted April 11, 2011 Not sure how legit it is. I've followed them since 09' and they can be hit or miss but I know that part about JR is true. The rest, excluding CS, the rest I know it's mismatched s/ls and it's just Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members All My Shadows Posted April 12, 2011 Members Share Posted April 12, 2011 Who is "them," and how do you know that's true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Clear Drama Posted April 12, 2011 Members Share Posted April 12, 2011 SoapTownUSA. I'll PM you that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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