Wednesday, March 30, 2011

We'll always have Paris! The Bold and the Beautiful


B&B is on a creative high these days, in part by fully embracing its identity. It plays adults (and senior adults) more than kids. It does bit of socially relevant stuff. It centers on the never ending drama of Brooke Logan and her Ridge. It knows that camp, vague incestuousness, vague perversity, and constant partner switching is its RECIPE...and it's doing it just fine. This week, the luminous Heather Tom's Katie is in the midst of (I think) a re-awakening triangle with ex-lover Nick (who is also the ex-husband of her sister and her niece) and Bill Spencer Jr. (my fave, Don Diamont). Ridge and Brooke--a "destiny/westiny" couple according to her son Rick--had an ultimate over-the-top moment in Paris (see image at top)...and then seconds later Brooke undermined her reunion with husband Ridge by having a flirtatious Skype session with his drop-dead-gorgeous son Thomas. We won't even mention the fact that my favorite, Amber, is in a three-way-who's-the-daddy tale (and I don't think she realizes her baby is going to be African American!). The show is firing on all cylinders.






Why are its ratings not good? Why are its demos so awful? Oh well...even if B&B is not long for the world, we'll always have Paris!



Doppelgangers: Without comment


On Y&R, we recently saw Daniel Goddard's "Cane" gunned down. He died in one of the most gruesome daytime deaths in a long time...and in his wife's arms. Lest there be any doubt, we saw his cold cold body on a morgue slab for some time, and we've seen (I think) his ghost. In the scope of soap deaths, Cane is dead-dead. No? (Hard to tell. After B&B had an open-casket funeral for Taylor Hayes...who also died on screen...we later learned her body had been replaced by a wax doll, and that she'd been saved by her sheikh benefactor, Prince Omar).



Well, yesterday we saw this smirking guy, looking at Lily from an elevator. It can't be Cane, as Cane would have stared at her with a look of love or longing or pain...or he would have run to be with her. We're supposed to think it's Lily's delusion/hallucination, but I'm inclined to believe (as are many others), that this is a double hired by Cane's daddy (the sublime Tristan Rogers as "Colin") to create the impression of Lily's incompetence. If he can get Lily ruled an unfit mother, then as the blood relative of her twins, he may be able to abscond somehow with her twins.

Some folks on Twitter (e.g., @kate4lane) have taken to calling this new guy "Bane". Twitter user @unlimitedjason further says this stands for "Bullshit Cane". Sigh and double sigh. While I'm thrilled to see Mr. Goddard have a chance to essay a darker character, does Y&R need another doppelganger? Twitter user @jdracoules suggests that Y&R may now be in the running with Dark Shadows for the biggest number of dual roles in daytime. The wordle at the top of this page is presented without further comment.

Thanks also to Twitter users @_PhilParis, @Scott_Novick, @Robansuefarm, @berry198 for making sure my list of doppelgangers was complete.