Shut Up, and Let Me See Your Jazz Hands

And you guys go completely off the rails again. AMC, why do you hurt me like this? What have I done that so displeased you?

Come on now. Stop making Kendall crazy. OK, I take that back, that's not what I mean, Kendall being crazy is often hugely entertaining. Stop making Kendall crazy and dumb. What is wrong with you? This is Erica Kane's daughter! She should be able to see emotional manipulation like Madden's from a mile away! He is not that good.

Yes, her freaking out about everybody telling her what to do is completely and scarily in character. Her being willing to bend the law to breaking to do what's best for someone she loves is, too. But her letting Madden go all Svengali on her isn't. Bitches.

Although you guys get so many points for what you're doing with Ryan and Erica. Him figuring out her murder plot, and then her confiding in him...So much love. Because, fine, I'll cop, Ryan/Erica is my if-Jack-died OTP (only if, though, because Jackson/Erica = OTP times eleventy-million).

Also, Erica, Ryan, Dixie, and Zack teaming up to destroy Madden utterly = WIN. If you actually make them all work together, the awesomeness might kill me.

Or, y'know, you could just make Kendall sane again, and then her vengeance would know no bounds. And neither would the awesomeness.

Dude, cognitive dissonance like woah.

On AMC, there's this guy who's supposed to be some kind of executive producer or something. And Erica says she's seen some of his executive decisions in action and he's all "Who do you think got Kelly to audition for Reg?".

Aagh, stop it. Kelly was big because she was Hayley on AMC. Therefore you can't mention Kelly Ripa, TV personality, on AMC. It's weird, don't do it.

I like carefree JR.

Dude, Janet is totally running around town, kidnapping people and locking them in a box.

I love Zach. I love Zach/Kendall. I hope they end that relationship with him dead. For at least five years. No! It's because I do love him that I want him dead.

I don't want him to be more of the same for Kendall. I don't want him to be another guy that leaves her, or another guy that betrays her trust. I want him to stay a good guy; I want him to keep his promises. So, one of them has to die. And don't pretend it'd be Kendall; she's a Kane.

Oh my god! I should never read spoilers, ever-ever!

When will I learn?

I read the thing about the secret child and was all "Baby stolen at birth! Kendall secretly had a twin! Has to be! Because if they try to give her two forgotten pregnancies, they're totally getting stabbed!".

But then came the creepy dream sequence and oh god, I know where they're going with this. (Talking about AMC, btw.)

Also re: All My Children, I discovered an annoying fact. Oklahoma is not one, but two days behind the rest of the country.

See, while I was home, I was watching on Soapnet and then I went back to the dorm and started watching the local affiliate.

Which is two days behind Soapnet.

I love Kendall when she's all happy and in love. She's so damn cute.

Jesus. Amanda really needs to stop it with the faux-hip lingo. "Haters". "My grill". Just...no.

God, Jamie really is dedicated to his little sting. Actually kissing his possibly-psychotic ex, who once planned to drug him into marrying her.

Babe/JR = OTP. Although mmm, Babe/JR/Jamie. They're stepbrothers! It's not incest! It's really freaking hot, is what it is.

Random note: I kind of want to 'ship Babe/Jamie, because their portrayers (Alexa Havins and Justin Bruening) are married in real life.

OMG, Jamie is a genius! He's totally his father's son. And, well, his mother's, too; lord knows Brooke's no dummy. But he's all sneaky and clever and quick-thinking and sleuthy like Tad. And also kind of a cad (again, like Tad).

So, he's pretending to care about Amanda to find out if she's faking her blackouts to either a) get him back or b) provide an alibi for her mayhem, or, alternatively, if the blackout's are real and she's the one creating the town-wide mayhem while she's out of it. And Babe and Krystal got drugged on New Year's Eve, and Amanda hates Babe. So he's searching her purse for evidence and she catches him.

But he is prepared! He's all "I trust you! I wasn't searching your bag! I was putting a surprise in there for you!". And she opens the purse and finds a pair of earrings and a note! That was all "Happy New Year, Amanda! Love, Jamie"!

He is a brilliant man-child.

Bianca! Myrtle! Both! Best day.

Which is only made better by watching Jamie defending Babe (an actually innocent Babe, for a wonder!) to a wrought-up JR clad only in black boxer-briefs (JR, not Jamie).

OT3, people. Other OT3. Greenlee/Ryan/Kendall is still my favorite soap OT3. JR/Babe/Jamie can be my second favorite.

Followed by Sonny/Carly/Jason. Even though I don't watch GH these days (they recast my Carly! WTF, people?). Mainstream magazines refer to Sonny and Jason as "daytime's most devoted supercouple"! Mostly in jest, yeah, but only mostly. And Sonny/Carly is this whole self-destructive soulmates thing. And Jason/Carly is my platonic-OTP-that-wasn't-always-platonic (Carly was with Jason until she and Sonny had the hot hatesex because Sonny thought she wasn't good enough for his best friend).

Oh god, I'm not ready for Trey 2.0.

But the Kendall/Zach is making me quite happy.

JR, you're so...damaged. You're lucky you're so fucking pretty.

Oh my god, you know what'd be the best thing ever? If Trey 2.0 was the child of Erica...and TAD. Seriously, people, that child would be a rock star. Or, you know, a supermodel supersleuth.

Although they seem to be leaning toward "narcissistic evil genius", which is an actually kinda plausible combination of Erica and Tad's worst traits.

Sadly, Jamie will not be getting a new brother this year. Instead, Erica's going to end up having had her eggs secretly harvested by her creepy stalker, the shady fertility doc, which he then, of course, fertilized with his own sperm and implanted in his barren wife, to give us the idiotic Trey 2.0.

My idea's better.

I find Julia grating and obnoxious.. Also, she reminds me strangely of a Mary Sue. She pops into town, with a tragic past, rescuing main characters right and left, becoming bosom buddies with others...

And oh my GOD, JR is the playin'est player to ever play. It's impossible to tell what's really going on with that boy. Is he deceiving Babe? Or is he tricking himself into thinking he's deceiving Babe when he really is falling back in love with her? I don't know!

I don't care what you bitches say, soap operas rock.

The soap is a genre that embraces what it is, dammit. People coming back from the dead! Stolen babies! Amnesia! Dead babies! Interrupted weddings! Switched babies! Marriages of convenience! Babies being stolen and sekritly switched for other, dead babies!

Yeah, there really are that many baby stories.

Also, something like one out of every twenty criminals is ever punished.

And yeah, you can complain about their dialogue, but they put out an hour of television, five days a week, 52 weeks a year. Only soaps do that.

Soap stars are fucking rock stars, people. I respect Susan Lucci more than any other actress ever, because she's a fucking original cast member on All My Children. You know how many original cast members AMC has left? Two. And Joe Martin hardly gets any screentime. Susan Lucci has been playing a frontburner character for 35 years.

Rock. Star.

And a lot of people bitch about soaps' seemingly fragile grasp of continuity, but how do you not love a show that writes a character off and then brings them back a decade or more later, blithely assuming that their fanbase will know exactly who they are and why everyone hates them?

Anyway, I love soaps as a genre. I stumbled onto them accidentally, flipping through the channels one summer day at my Grandmas'. I found One Life to Live, during Colin's murder trial (specifically, Nora's testimony). Then came General Hospital, where I fell desperately in love with Tamara Braun's Carly.

GH was my favorite for a long time, just because they had so damn many charismatically screwed up characters. Carly and Sonny and their desperately fucked-up true love. Jason and his brain-damaged loyalty. Skye and her daddy issues. Spoiled Gia, gentle Elizabeth, the whole crazy Cassadine clan. Oh! Kristina, how much did I love Kristina and her insecurities and her love for her sister's ex? And how much do I love her now, as SGA's Lt. Cadman?

And then I started watching Port Charles, around the Tainted Love arc. Come on! Soap opera! With vampires! Who could resist that? And then they got angels and a crazy Shadow-knock off and, at the very end, werewolves. Best. Soap. Ever.

I desperately hearted the whole fucked-up Alison/Livvie/Caleb/Rafe foursome, and the creepy, tangled double wedding was the perfect finale.

And finally, All My Children. Oh, Kendall. She is, and has always been, my favorite. Don't get me wrong, I totally loved Bianca and Maggie, as they were blatantly MFEO. And yay, they ran off to Paris, where they will help each other over their issues and grow comfortable with their newly mutual love and raise Miranda and possibly have a gorgeous Parisian wedding (AMC would totally go there once same-sex marriage was legal across the board; they had daytime's first legal abortion and daytime's first out lesbian and daytime's first girl/girl kiss and daytime's first gay core character...they're not afraid of controversy, is what I'm saying). Seriously, I've been waiting for those two to get it together forever (I was never really fond of Lena, which is why it makes me so sad that all the fic I can find is Bianca/Lena; sure they were canon, but so were Bianca/Frankie and eventually, kind of, Bianca/Maggie).

Anyway, Kendall. Kendall, who's so blatantly broken and so angry and self-destructive and at the same time, she's so loyal and loving and sarcastic. She faked a marriage and a pregnancy that made her (once again) town pariah, and then was willing to take a murder rap, all to protect her little sister. And she got herself pregnant for her suicidally grief-stricken best friend which, admittedly, has blown up in her face (and, yet again, made her town pariah). I love her madly, as much as I used to love Carly, before they recast her and made her crazy.

I also love Kendall's husband-of-convenience, Zach Slater (who I used to love as Eve's Scottish husband Ian on Port Charles). And I love the indestructible Erica Kane. And dastardly doctor David (and his UST-y rivalry with P.I. Tad "the Cad", who I also love). And JR. And Adam. And Lily. And Jackson. And Brooke. And (when she's not stealing Bianca's baby) Babe. And Aiden. And Simone. And Ethan. And (when he's not being a giant, giant, death-faking ASS) Ryan.

All My Children is the show where I settled in. It's my soap.