Nick At Nite Orders 80-Episode Telenovela with JFP and Josh Griffith

[Wales2004]

I'm waiting on something which means idle time so I came across this but I'm unsure what its endeavor is/was:

Robert Adamson is taking on an established character on Y&R so the history of Noah is in place. I've watched him play two original characters on Lincoln Heights and Hollywood Heights respectively. Now I know the quality of a serial drama should be much better than that of an adaptation of a telenovela but 75 episodes in and I don't get who Phil is other than a guy who engages in criminal activity and has a dimwit girlfriend. Lincoln Heights had almost half the episodes and I learned a lot more about Charles in a handful of those than I've learned about Phil in 75. I don't know how Phil's criminal career started or why he chose that path. I don't know why he doesn't want to stop other than he wants fast cash without having to work hard but does he really need the cash that bad? Since Adrianna is stupid then she sheds no light on him at all. If the endeavor is to portray a character without depth who has a few moments of decency then goal accomplished.

Lisa made no progress because she's right back to being the witch she was when the show started. They gave her a reason for her treatment of Melissa but that went by the wayside when she reverted to Melissa being a problem and Phil getting the unmerited support.

And I just realized that Tyler says the same things pretty much every episode and Chloe is either claiming to be a victim or claiming she wouldn't do something like that. They didn't even write her to be delusional because she has no layers either. JW at least tried to bring some depth to Tyler via his expressions of Tyler's feelings for Chloe. There's never been a moment where Chloe shown why it can only be Eddie for her. The writing sucks for that character especially since they made her the primary villain. She might as well have been a robot programmed to get Eddie at all costs.

This time next week I'll be soap drama free because even if they managed to get another season of this, I wouldn't watch and I definitely cannot go back to GH even when I know it's about to end.

[Wales2004]

I was thinking that I would not have anything to say until Wednesday or the final episode despite the voyage into the absurd (like Eddie hanging up the phone just because the girl who supposedly only had a truck shows up--all she had to do was ask him a question and he hangs up like a scared child and he hides after hearing the detective his father sent to find him....really...), but then Alimi Ballard shows up playing a dumb detective replacing the other dumb detective and I was disappointed. I know it's a job but to go from a decent series to....

Whenever they decided that it was a brilliant idea to have Eddie "die" to further their infatuation with cartoon villain Chloe and evil parrot Tyler that pipe kept getting passed around and around resulting in a whole other level of crazy.

Chloe's heavy handed dialogue would be totally soapy but she never loved Eddie, Loren didn't steal her life she screwed it up herself and not that it matters---but she did kill Eddie's mother. I love how they had her stumbling around Friday trying to remember what happened until she nearly passed out. Same night and she's all dressed up conveniently at the only restaurant in town and she clearly remembers that Dylan pushed her but files a police report against Eddie because she hates Loren. The whole Max ultimatum must be meant for her to dig her heels in so that her getting busted will be some big reward because as stupid as it might be of me, I cannot imagine they end with her and Tyler in Fresno and Eddie in jail. I don't even know why they thought loading up on this nonsense would make a good ending.

Jake/Traci/Kelly yawn. Traci got one moment where she called Kelly out on her betrayal but I must've missed something there or not.

What are they doing with Ellie? Wasn't it enough that they had her cast blame on Nora (who is annoying with all the stupid advice she keeps giving Max)?

Was that farm girl kissing Eddie supposed to be a cliff hanger.....because it couldn't be more obvious that he's going to push away and have to explain to her nothing's going to happen only to probably have her show embarrassment.?

Adam and Melissa...yuck!!! I didn't even waste my eyes on that bit of gross t.v.

The pacing in these couple of episodes has been so awful that they've glossed over what should have been a legitimate issue with Loren and Kelly. I guess they didn't have enough episodes to to write that....oh wait they had 80.

This is what you get when you give some people too many episodes with which to work.

[Wales2004]

If a telenovela is a mini soap opera then what is this adaptation of a telenovela? They found a way to mess up the concept.

After I posted my rant motivated by seeing Alimi Ballard in a not even close to David (though I won't be surprised if in the last few minutes of the last episode he decides Chloe is guilty of filing a false police report and vehicular homicide to make the writers look clever), it dawned on me that Elle is a part of their plan to look like super genius writers. She was calling for Yvette and in a twist of the most brilliantly clever writing ever it will be revealed that she and Yvette set Don up. They both conspired to seduce him in order to threaten him with sexual harassment charges to extort money from him. Don will still look sleazey but now he'll be a victim of wicked women. One of those super detectives Zander (from Buffy) or Clavo (from CSI Miami) will figure it out in several minutes by Thursday's episode. Clavo will decide that Don did in fact set Phil up and Ellie will be arrested for murder or whatever as it doesn't really matter as long as she's accused of something and in a cell next to Chloe.

The back loaded episodes make sense to them because they expected buzz and this was a great chance for those writers to be praised by critics for their awesome drama and intensity. Only they forgot to make the beginning of the show captivating and the only mild interest they got from critics was in James Franco which they milked as much as they could.

[Wales2004]

Today's episode = 34:47 of wasted video. Plus they had James Franco listed as a special guest star so unless they accidentally cut out seven minutes from their online video, he wasn't on and someone made a huge error.

There was absolutely no story advancement and suddenly Jake's invisible mother lives with him and Traci. They couldn't have hired a woman to make a quick appearance or left that useless bit of information out of their dialogue?

Oh and who would have known that hiding out in Fresno is similar to leaving the country? If I ever need to go on the run, I will just drive down to Fresno where all the criminals hide because they apparently have no police nor any contact with the outside world.

[Wales2004]

I saw the missing seven minutes today and James Franco was indeed on the show. He made a phone call from prison to Tyler to offer him a movie role but Tyler had already left for Fresno.

This whole Eddie is dead and now in hiding (but not really since he's now in Fresno) seems like a completely different storyline. It kind of has the feel of a two hour movie where random things happen to grab your attention and give you a false sense that something is happening when it's not and in the last few seconds two people get together--the end. It's not good cohesive storytelling, it's just a bunch of drama for the sake of drama as though to fulfill the requirement of a soap opera. It also feels quite rushed as if they had very little time but they had 80 episodes. Why wait until episode 78 to give Chloe a modicum of a conscience? She could have had layers ages ago but it's pointless now.

If someone killed my mother and later accused me of attempted murder, I don't think I would barter with them. I would fight the charges and try to make sure he/she paid for killing my mother. Hopefully the plan is to get her to tell the truth and then go after her for murder anyway. If nothing else, they should at least show her getting arrested.

Kelly must be meant to be pathological because she does/says things and the writers seem to liker her so much that they have her immediately apologize as if that always fixes things. They are seemingly ready to hand her Jake on a silver platter by having Traci pregnant in Monday's episode and no longer pregnant in today's. Tomorrow Jake can boo hoo with her over and either by the end of the episode or on Friday's, she can hand that property over to Kelly. Good riddance to him and his ugly salmon pants (that wardrobe budget was really tight).

They needed a new girl crushing on Eddie because his spending three weeks with her to end the show made more sense than his spending time with his now true love Loren? Maybe he'll just mouth ILY to Loren through the bars on his jail cell after he runs to her and probably gets arrested. I love how only two or three days passed on the show since his "death" but they pretend it's been weeks. Viewers aren't blind, they see those characters in the same clothes for six straight episodes meaning one day. This is the first show that I've seen where people do a multitude of things in one single night.

Two more episodes and this thread will finally vanish as it probably should have ages ago.

[VirginiaHamilton]

Was it you, Wales, that said that they spent too much time focusing on a whole lot of nothing only to spend the last week cramming the big stuff in? If so, you were right on the money because the awkward pacing is what is dragging this show down.

[Wales2004]

Part of being a good writer has to be knowing that even if you feel you have the best idea ever but insufficient time to tell the story effectively, leaving it out. The whole dead fugitive Eddie plot is so unnecessary. They had already set up Eddie having to deal with fans and record executives not liking his music and the potential impact on his career and on him--especially in light of Loren's potential success but instead of developing that, they think New Kids on the Farm was too genius to let go. There was almost no depth to the grieving and I am still amazed when I come across people posting how they have cried over this show and Eddie's pain and Loren's pain. Imagine them and a real gut wrenching movie.

I forgot about this yesterday but it represents a moment for me where my reaction is something like.......I don't even know what. For whatever reason they made sure that any time Phil mentioned Ellie sneaking around Don's house he just referred to her as a woman. When the lawyer said they would need a description of the woman, they didn't bother to show Phil providing one. Later in another one of their gratuitous scenes where the usually dumb when it comes to bad people Nora shows up at Lisa's in search of Adrianna (since there was no way Adrianna would go to school even though Loren did not hesitate and further there was no way to actually call Adrianna), Nora ends up telling Lisa about evil Ellie and how she was sure Ellie was the suspect. Yet when Max told her Chloe killed his wife she was discouraging him about proof. So now in her mind Ellie is the killer and all she needed to be sure it was Ellie who was snooping around Don's was for Lisa to tell her that the woman was "African-American." Sure it was Ellie but that kind of thing irks me because that's not even a description but sure I know.....it's the ultimate description when you're talking about crime. Had I been watching this with someone else, it would have been a moment to simply laugh.

I hope they post today's episode early so I can see what makes this Brent Boyd's favorite episode and what I think. Ellie's probably getting busted in it and there's all kinds of awesome with Eddie bartering with eedjit #1 while eedjit #2 repeats himself for the umpteenth time.

[Wales2004]

So I've now seen Brent Boyd's favorite episode of the 80 and I can understand why it's his favorite because it does contain some good scenes but still....

It is really a shame that all of the episodes for their finale week could not have been as good. The problem with this episode is the fact that since the time that Loren's father was first mentioned and better yet, since they identified him as the mystery texter, they waited until the second to the last show to have him show up. Ironically, the actor who played him also played Charles' (Robert Adamson) absentee father in Lincoln Heights.

So either they are not going to cram everything that they had the past three days to air into the last episode or they are going to leave some things hanging. No Phil must mean they catch Ellie tomorrow or they leave this hanging. It doesn't seem as if Chloe is going to jail. Instead they try to make viewers feel sorry for her because she could not get Eddie to break up with Loren in exchange for her telling the truth. Actually that was quite dumb since he was using letting her off the hook for his mother's death as a bargaining chip but they somehow give her the upper hand and the consolation prize for the Loren and Eddie fans is that he chose Loren over his freedom. I guess that will make up for Eddie ending up in jail at the end of the show instead of ending up with Loren. If that turns out to be the case they can keep dreaming of a second season on the basis that their story was incomplete.

After Eddie rejects her generous offer they include one of their out of nowhere scenes with Chloe sitting in the park fingering her rock and then she's suddenly back in her mother's house offering to start over in New York with Tyler. James Franco's character was in prison yesterday but today he's in his office making another call to Tyler. Tyler looks at a resting Chloe one last time before leaving--I guess he's going to take that movie role and prove that bad guys finish first but he deserves sympathy for finally concluding that Chloe doesn't love him. I got the feeling that Chloe and Tyler are the main love story because they got all the scenes together and the only consequence for Chloe's crime is life in Fresno.

I guess they were also enamored of the breakup of Jake and Traci's marriage since it's pure emotion. The problem for me is that it's another illusion of an emotional story. They were seemingly happy except he's a workaholic who did not put her first. She goes to Chicago to see her sick father and comes back paranoid about Jake and Kelly for no real obvious reason even if Kelly was moving in on her husband. In one swoop their marriage was in trouble and the rest of the time was spent on delaying her inevitable departure back to Chicago including her insta-pregnancy on Monday. Their false positive pregnancy didn't add any more drama to their storyline and they wasted four days of this week on them when they could have wrapped up Phil and Ellie, Loren and Eddie, and actually hauled Chloe off to jail.

[Wales2004]

So I developed soap DID and decided after seeing this finale promo

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WxXgmzQHAag" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

that maybe Eddie is set free after several minutes in that jail cell and they make like a Lifetime movie and unite Eddie and Loren "for good" in the last few seconds.

Considering the egos of some of these writers, I'm not so sure that they would have just let all that heavy handedness with Chloe (their masterpiece of a character) go to waste. Without Tyler she will either voluntarily tell the truth or the P.I."s information will make her feel compelled to tell the truth. They could somewhat redeem themselves by having the P..I. also miraculously find evidence exonerating Eddie (like those glasses Dylan left on the balcony). Their perfect scene could be Eddie exiting the jail with Loren as Chloe is entering in handcuffs for involuntary manslaughter and filing a false police report. It's only fitting that Loren walk off into the sunset or moonlit night with Eddie as Chloe stares with her mouth open, since they made such a big deal of having Chloe telling Loren she couldn't have Eddie.

On another note, Nickelodeon must be extremely grateful for Spongebob and the Australian and Canadian imports because their original programming seems to be virtually non-existent. The only new show they seem to have on the horizon is the 999th incarnation of Degrassi.

[VirginiaHamilton]

I hope Tyler walking out the door meant that he was done living for Chloe and has decided to find his own bliss.

[Wales2004]

So you don't think he belongs in a jail cell next to hers?

[Wales2004]

So my first guess about Chloe was right. They gave Tyler some dignity but you could tell if they were given more episodes that wretched cycle would have continued. The most ridiculous part was having Phil's dad relay the news that Ellie confessed to hitting Don over the head and leaving him to die. She was such a smart character and she just confessed without a shred of evidence against her. Totally ridiculous. Blink and you would have missed her yet they took time to give those come lately farm kids an ending scene because they just knew the viewers connected with them in a huge way. I hated the whole instant joy with the Sanders. Sure that witch Lisa would encourage her not so smart son to marry his dumber than dirt girlfriend....maybe that $2 million dollars inspired her in some way.....

I guess this was good by their standards. I cannot believe all the fangurls who said they bawled the entire episode.....that crying must be about something else.....and they still think Nick Canon can get them a second season. Since they're going to re-air the whole season, I am sure some of them will watch and encourage others to watch so the ratings can go through the roof. I am glad that they put the episodes online and saved me from those commercials and I could skip over scenes. I'm even grateful that they toned Kelly down a notch in this episode and didn't have her jump all over Jake like a dog in heat when she found out his wife left him.

This expresses my sentiments about the bang up job those brilliant writers did.

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CT_08gchS8k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Wales2004]

I am generally not this ambivalent about the bad writing and the celebration of mediocrity but I came across something I found annoying.

I thought it was bad that the internet was used to fuel fan base wars between opposing GH shippers and the writing was and has been used to take advantage of the feuds, but using twitter to toot your own horn when it's not even that great is right up there.

I guess a writer should be super proud of coming up with powerful lines for a long lost daddy reunion that highlights the damage done by daddy which include "when I see a shiny apple, I expect it to be poisoned." Even better is having hero twirl strand of ex-fiancee's hair while telling her she will never know what it's like to be in love.

When you use twitter to blind viewers with your greatness, they heap praise on you instead of asking why you spent around 80% of your shows building up a story about how the hero's mother was killed by his then fiancee, you make it an underlying factor in why hero becomes a fugitive, and you neglect to address it in your spectacular finale. Nor will they question why you take a few seconds to wrap up another "murder" case with an illogical and unbelievable off-screen confession that does not address how hitting a man over the head absolves Phil. Ellie didn't set up the gas leak nor did she plant Phil's watch at the scene. All she did was hit Don, who planned the leak and planted the watch over the head. He was going to have her killed and blame Phil and knocking him out makes her the real murderer? I cannot believe anyone finds this good writing outside of them hating or liking characters and ignoring all else. But pretending it's the best show you've ever seen has to be a complete stretch or an indication of quality deprivation.

[LondonScribe]

Glad you seemed to enjoy it, Wales2004. Lol

Well, at least these writers/producers aren't upping sticks and moving onto another show...

Oh, wait...

[Wales2004]

You made me smile. A line about how none of them are on twitter sharing how good the show is going to be might have made me laugh.

I am conditioned to watch bad t.v. so bad or mediocre writing isn't a big deal and there seems to be more of that than good writing. I take issue when someone tries to claim bad or mediocre is much better. I mean if the writing s that good then it should speak for itself and you should let the people who are floored by it compliment you.

James Franco played the most amusing character on the show and they tried to milk his appearances. Maybe his telenovela project (if it happens) will turn out well.