OLTL 11/25/08
All the Cool Kids Are Going to St. Anne’s
Cristian was awakened in his Artist’s Loft today by Slinky Latina oozing her way over to him in her nightie. What was this woman’s career in Colombia…pole dancer? The most interesting aspect of this scene is Cristian’s nipples; apparently he did a lot of working out during his five minutes in that Colombian prison. He quickly put his shirt on (scene interest level: plummeting) as the Amazing Latin Girl with No Accent and No Personality came in, asking wassup fer Turkey Day. (Couldn’t she at least have pretended a lack of familiarity with thees strange gringo custom of eating the pavo weeth the estuffing?) Langston invited Amazing Latin Girl over to La Oil-of-Olay, to spend it with her and her boyfriend. She had to remind the new girl who her boyfriend was. “You know, the cute Latin guy that you’re going to try and wrench from my loving arms if you’re anything like that skank you flew into town with.”
To get the rest of the boring stories out of the way, Sarah is watching The Only Remaining Black Person in Town making food for T-Day. Then Tina comes over, on her grand tour out of Llanview. She can add dog-torturer to her other accomplishments as she hands Sarah one of Davida Vickers’s puppies, which is apparently still in the larva stage. It looks like a gerbil doing an amoeba imitation. Isn’t that thing supposed to stay with its mother for another six weeks? But at least it’s in keeping with everything Tina knows about mothering. The sad music is playing, so Tina is really leaving. Sarah seems awfully broken up for someone who spent five minutes with Tina in the past 14 years, and most of that screaming from a raft heading toward a waterfall…and not even one of those good Argentina waterfalls, either. Tina tried to say something subtexty and meaningful, comparing herself to puppies that pee, but the writers don’t seem to have anything good up their sleeves. Funny how everything drops when the second-stringers come on.
But there’s good times with today’s A plots, featuring Brody (already in St. Anne’s) and the Many Faces of Jessica (on her way to St. Anne’s). They must be taking Addie and Lindsey’s old rooms. I wonder which one of Jessica’s alters will want to jump Brody’s bones. The line forms here, sister.
Brody and Rex just had a very nice bonding moment, and now we turn around to see Shane there (wearing the medal on his t-shirt that Brody gave him). Please alert the tear ducts; possible waterworks ahead. I was admiring how commandingly written the Brody-Shane scene was (including Shane’s calling him “Dad,” and them trying to ignore it — was there any moment this subtle in the Tina Chronicles?…I’m just sayin’), when all of a sudden Brody’s Iraqi Delusion Boy shows up in Brody’s line of vision. Oops. Wes, the Day Player with No Personality (two in one day…lucky us) shows up to prevent Brody from spiralling out to bonkerville. And now Wes is saying something to Brody, but it just sounds like the adults from the Charlie Brown specials to me…wah wah wah wah wah wahhhhh. Next.
In a case of worlds colliding, Nora (A-list) just dropped in on Cristian (Chest 10, Acting 3). She’s here to tell Slinky Nightie Latina that the charges against her have been dropped…because she’s being deported. Oh, snap! Yay! Outta here, Oozer! (Yeah, like we’re getting off that easy…which is probably a line that’ll be coming out of her overly-fluent mouth to Cristian soon.) Sure enough, Nora (who clearly is relegated to Bearer of News on this show…hmph!) just told La Muchacha Smolderama that it could take at least three or four Nielsen Ratings periods before she has to go to her homeland…where she will be killed by that evil killer…unless some American with citizenship and good pectorals will marry her.
Jessica is dragging out her time pre-institution by playing thankless scenes with babies who are giving her nothing to work with…dumb ol’ babies…harumph. But there is no denying that the little newborn is really cute. Yeah, Jessica…STARR sure gives birth to cute babies! And now Jessica, evidently channeling an alter who is a specialist in baby names, has decided to name Starrcy’s baby Chloe. Whatever, dude.
The Thing that Wouldn’t Leave, aka Tina, has made a little Stella Dallas visit to the hospital, where she emoted from afar as Jessie and family hugged it out. Then Tina shows up at the Lord Family Mausoleum where, inexplicably, she has been whelping her damn dog. Good choice, Tina. Now the evil spirit of Victor Lord can turn those puppies into Cujo, Cerberus, and the Daring Dobermans. Now Tina is having a “scene” with Daddy’s coffin. The production staff is so uninspired with this claptrap that they don’t even seem to be lighting her. I have this friend who keeps trying to convince someone how good One Life to Live is, and every time they tune in together, it’s some awful Mendorra scene or something equally perverse. I’m sure that person just caught the Tina-Dog-Coffin soliloquy.
Okay, I have to say something about today’s “last-act montage.” Remember how touching yesterday’s was? Well, friends, we’ve landed in the Bizarro Universe today. I can only surmise that the creative staff of this show are painfully aware of what a horrible, horrible catastrophe everything involving Tina has been this go-round, and they wanted to let us know they feel our pain. We were given a grand retrospective (of the endless ten weeks or so) of Tina’s current sentence, accompanied by a song that has been haled as one of the very worst, most hackneyed pop tunes of all time: “I’ve Never Been to Me.” You guys, I used to recite lines from this song in my nightclub act, just when I wanted people to laugh. It is the Plan Nine from Outer Space of pop music. And it was Tina’s swan song. There is something wildly, spastically wrong-right about that.
But if NORA had been playing the tomb scene with the dog, we would’ve needed a better song. And it would’ve been a good scene. And I bet they would’ve lit her.