OLTL: Discussion for the week of April 4

[Marley]

I decided to watch the bully storyline on YT after hearing so much about it and reading DC's article about how great FF was.

I thought FF was horrible as usual. JPL managed to not make any silly facial expression but that's the least he could do.

Of course compared to the kid that plays Jack, FF and JPL are Meryl Streep and Al Pacino.

I don't even think the kid that plays Shane was all that great.

Jack's little freaky minion did unintenionally crack me up with his ridiculous haircut, Jack worship and of course bad acting.

I think I need to watch the Vicki vs Echo confrontation for good acting.

[Llantano Incorporated]

I have been wondering, does anyone find themselves smiling throughout the entire show sometimes? Listen, I know the show is as deep as a plate, and I know the younger actors generally suck..but I simply -enjoy- the show, it has a frenetic energy in many episodes that reminds me of Gilmore Girls. I know that most folks appreciate character driven drama, but does anyone just -enjoy- this show like the guilty pleasure that it is? (AND NOT ITS MANY BETTER INCARNATIONS).Yesterday was a parade of shirtless hunks, sexual innuendo, funny dialogue, Dorian and David.... I don't know, i guess this was kind of a dumb question

[MontyB]

I do. The days of "character driven" anything on daytime TV are long gone. They just are. The audience is way too fickle and have low attention spans.

[DRW50]

I think viewers have longer attention spans if they get the chance.

There's a way of having a plot-driven show that actually has a plot. OLTL in the last few years has just had a lot of jumping up and down which goes nowhere, then they jump up and down again, and either say, "Pretend I wasn't just jumping up and down," or, "Look, I'm being ironic when I jump up and down."

The show does have a lot of entertaining stuff...I pan him a lot but I do think David can be funny, and Bo/Nora's wedding was great. Unfortunately at the moment most of their campy characters, like Aubrey and Tess, are unwatchable.

I also don't see why even if viewers have low attention spans that the show needs to spend year after year, for about three years now, telling viewers that rape is hot or no big deal.

[Cheap21]

Is Aubrey meant to be campy? I never get that vibe from her. She doesnt come across as if she's meant to be played for laughs like Rama or Tess are

[DRW50]

I think she is written to be campy - the stuff with Clint, the bedhopping between Joey and Cutter, the fake nice routine. Whether Terri plays her that way, I don't know, but since the story is so lightweight and nonsensical I assumed it was intended to be camp. I think they see her as their ideal Kim/Stacey hybrid and they were usually pretty campy, especially early on.

[Vee]

I don't see the show as merely a guilty pleasure, nor do I think the days of character driven storytelling are done. That's complete nonsense. What I think is that OLTL fluctuates wildly between camp, decent character material and absolute [!@#$%^&*] these days, often on a daily or minute by minute basis.

[DRW50]

I think it's been this way for a few years - I'd say since 2008 (I'm not saying the show was better before 2008, except maybe 2007...from what I've seen of the Higley years it was rough going and very self-serious).

What I do notice more and more over the last few years has been an increase in cheap sex. The camp in 2008 or 2009 wasn't for me, but it was relatively diverse. These days, you almost begin to wonder if they're going to sneak in a scene of Cutter and Ford doing Tess from both ends.

[Llantano Incorporated]

Vee, I think that may sum it up. I am never bored.

[AlexElizabeth]

That little weasel drives me NUTS.

[DeeeDee]

+1.

[DeeeDee]

He's hilarious.

[Vee]

I think the show has been deeply broken since the rapemance in 2008 on a fundamental level, and I think that has trickled down into virtually every storyline, with characters like Ford, Cutter, etc. They half-assed the biggest "redemption" on the show so they think they can do it with everyone. They don't know what to do with Todd, but they still want him to be "sexy and dangerous" yet allow people to feel for him, so they keep setting up people who are "worse" and they believe that allows them to do both - keep Todd a sociopath, but make him "not so bad" and allow them to sell him as a great family man who can do no wrong.

I think there have been some very, very good all-around stretches on OLTL since 2008, and I think the show is very capable of balancing serious character material with lighter fare, but the Todd sphere has always been a mess, even now when a potentially very interesting storyline is percolating. It all hinges on the idea that poor Todd is in trouble, what will become of him? And unless it turns out this man is not Todd, or they write Trevor St. John out anyway, it's going to be dishonest on at least one level. And now there are some good stories, good weeks - these past couple have been quite good - but it's tainted on a deeper level by stuff like the angle of the Ford/Tess storyline, the fact that Brody and Marty are bound to get the shaft, the Kelly/Joey debacle, and of course everything with Andrew Trischitta.

[Vizion]

I agree with this, though I'm not sure it has anything to do with the audience. Having said that, I *HATE* camp. I'm not sure who thought that being OTT, goofy and not grounded at all in reality was a good idea, but I can't stand it.

As far as GT's hair, I haven't seen it on the show but I've seen pics. I believe it either is, or is pretty close to, her natural hair color.

[Khan]

Not true. If the days of character-driven drama are "long gone," it's only b/c the genre itself is on the fast track toward total extinction. And it isn't the audience who is fickle and has low attention spans but the network execs who aren't trained to know good storytelling in the first place.