AMC's Babe Carey: Where the Writers Went Wrong

Disclaimer: Those people who absolutely adore Babe Carey on All My Children and defend her every action probably won't want to read this entry. Not that I'll be completely bashing Babe, but I'm certainly not defending her actions either.

I've been thinking a lot about Babe Carey lately. Mainly because on one of the message boards I used to go to, people have started to defend her every move without remorse or thought. However, I don't find her to be all that appealing, and with this blog entry, I hope to detail why exactly I feel this way.

First of all, the first episode she appears in, she sleeps with Jamie Martin. This, in itself, isn't a horrible thing. It's kind of labeling her as the new town tramp, and I could have lived with that. However, the reason she slept with Jamie is that she was scared to meet her new husband's (red flag #1) parents. Even this is not so bad. However, then we find out that her husband is none other than JR Chandler, who happens to be Jamie's stepbrother. There's red flag #2.

OK, so that certainly doesn't make her the town saint, but I still didn't mind her. She did have some redeeming qualities, especially her friendship with Bianca. She didn't judge Binks at all, even after Bianca came out to her. They even ended up being pregnant at about the same time. (Bianca was raped, Babe got pregnant and some SORASing occurred in utero.)

This is when it all started to fall apart. At this point came the baby switch plotline that also involved OLTL. Now, this story idea wasn't all that bad. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the storyline in the beginning. What happened was Babe and Bianca got run off the road during a storm and ended up both giving birth at the same time. Bianca ended up passing out due to blood loss, and Babe called her former husband (who she had been married to when she married JR... I forgot to mention that before), Paul, to help her and Bianca. It turns out that Paul's sister Kelly was desperate for a baby to hang on to Kevin. So, Paul hatches this plan to steal Babe's baby to give it to Kelly. However, things go awry when the Chandlers catch up to the faked helicopter crash. Adam was so adamant about getting Babe's baby that Paul was forced to say that Bianca's baby was Babe's. This led to intensely emotional scenes in which Bianca is told that her baby died. (I cried like a baby during those scenes.)

Anyway, this baby switch things happens and Babe doesn't believe that she'd given birth to a girl. She was certain she had a boy, but everyone convinces her to go with the flow and not worry about it. Eventually a DNA test is done on the baby to determine if it really is Bianca's, and Krystal (Babe's mom) switches the labels to protect Babe. This is nothing new for a soap. DNA switches are about as common as people coming back from the dead. Plus, it's just a plot point to keep the baby switch story going.

Babe eventually figures out that her baby was the one that actually "died" in the helicopter crash. And this is where the writers really took Babe down a path of no redemption. If I were writing the show, I would have had her give Miranda back to Bianca, and tell JR that it was their baby that died. Then they could have bonded more over their grief. Does Babe do this? Of course not. Instead, she keeps Miranda (whom they're calling Bess) because JR has fallen in love with the baby. Never mind that Bianca is supposedly Babe's best friend and is still grieving the loss of her child. Babe even goes as far as to make Bianca godmother to Bess. Like that's going to make up for keeping a baby from her mother.

Then Babe found out that her son was actually alive and living as a Buchanan in Llanview. She proceeds to get Jamie wrapped up in a plan to kidnap Ace and take him on the run. She also writes a letter to JR saying that Bess isn't their child and their son actually died in the crash. It's at this point that Babe finally gives Miranda back to Bianca, who is understandably ticked about this whole turn of events.

Again, if I had written the story, and left everything alone up until this point, I would have had Babe figure out her son was alive, but instead of not telling JR, I would have had her plot out a way to get her son back with JR's help. That way their toxic marriage may have had a chance to become more a marriage of love than what it now is.

Of course, she didn't do that. JR eventually caught up with her, and there was a huge custody battle for Little Adam. From then on, she basically stayed with JR, even though she led Jamie on a bit as well.

Some time after that (I don't remember quite how long, though) Babe did something (probably involving another man) that made JR angry, and he ended up plotting to kill her. Unfortunately, he ended up putting Kendall under a pile of rubble instead. Naturally JR was arrested and ended up going on trial for attempted murder. Now, if I had written the storyline, I would have had Babe not say anything and let JR do his time in prison. However, Babe decided to lie and say that JR wasn't trying to kill her so he could avoid a prison sentence. This is where I started hating Babe. (Yeah, yeah, I know it was Dixie's idea for Babe to lie to get JR off of murder charges, but still. She could have let him rot in prison.)

Babe continues to use the excuse that he almost killed her to win fights about their trust issues. That's valid and all, but she'd done her share of damage to JR's trust when she continued to make googly eyes at other men. At this point, it was specifically Josh (Erica's unabortion--I'd go into detail, but that's another blog entry entirely).

The final straw, for me, was when Babe slept with Josh after JR didn't pay enough attention to her. JR had a good reason for this. His sister was presumed dead in a yacht crash. (She wasn't dead however.) JR was basically torn up by this and couldn't allow himself to feel any emotion. However, Babe doesn't understand this and goes to Josh for comfort. They end up at Fusion having sex on the office floor and the roof of the building in a kiddie pool, forever tainting my view of kiddie pools in general. JR ends up finding her on the roof, naked in a kiddie pool, and she offers a lame excuse that she was hot in the office and decided to go up to the roof to cool down.

If I had been writing the show, this wouldn't have even happened, because one of my changes above would have taken effect and taken this storyline in what I would hope to be a completely different direction.

JR goes on a bender after Babe finally admits that she boinked Josh, and ends up throwing himself out a fourth floor window at the Valley Inn. Babe is distraught that JR was nearly dead, and I figured this might be a turning point for her.

And it is, for a while. They come to a tentative truce, and are happily in love for a bit.

Then along comes the Satin Slayer story, and Dixie ends up eating poisoned pancakes that were meant for Babe. This pushes JR over the edge yet again, especially after finding out during Dixie's dying breath that Krystal is carrying Tad's baby instead of Adam's. JR proceeds to use this to blackmail Babe into giving him custody of Little Adam.

Babe is torn on what to do, but doesn't have much time to contemplate her decision before she's attacked by the serial killer. She's presumed dead, but really she's been spared by Josh and others and is recuperating in the sub-basement of Zach's casino. It is at this point where she seriously considers kidnapping Little Adam and running away with Josh. And it is at this point where I hate Babe yet again, because she's done this before, yet hasn't learned anything from the last time.

All this brings us to the present, where everyone knows that Babe is alive. And we're now at the point where I think the writers really screwed up in their intentions with Babe. I don't think I'd hate her so much if more people in town hated her for the chaos she brought to town with her. We have Tad basically gushing that she's alive. (He also helped her instead of his own stepson when she ran off with Little Adam the first time.) We have Bianca forgiving her for keeping Miranda from Bianca for nearly a year. Bianca also asks her for a chance to be friends again. That's what irritates me most, by the way. It should be Babe begging for forgiveness from Bianca and asking for another chance. We also have Kendall setting aside her hatred of Babe for the time being. There's Josh, who's so over the moon about Babe that she's all he thinks about. JR has turned over a new leaf to keep Babe as his wife. Colby now loves Babe, when before Babe "died" it was Colby's sole purpose to get the Careys out of the Chandler mansion. Basically everyone, except for Erica, is singing Babe's praises, even though she's hurt just about everyone in town in some way or another.

This is the point where the writers really made Babe completely unredeemable in my eyes. If she was the town pariah at this point, I wouldn't have as big an issue with her. But she's become the town saint, even though she hasn't done anything to deserve that reputation.

So, this is why I can't stand the character of Babe. She could have been written so much better, and probably have been less hated by me in the process. But because everyone sings her praises even after all the things she's done to make everyone's life a living hell, I can't stand her.

To close, I just want to reiterate that the writers really screwed up on the character of Babe Carey. The one thing they could have done is show how she's making amends for the things she's done, instead of having every other character tell us what a wonderful, walking miracle she is. It's at this point that I've become completely ambivalent about what happens to Babe, and would rather see her off my screen than have her constant presence in Pine Valley ruin my enjoyment of All My Children.

General Hospital February Sweeps

This is the third and final blog entry on my take of February sweeps. I saved General Hospital for last because of two things. The first is that I think it was the most spectacular sweeps of all the ABC soaps. The second is that this one will probably get me the most comments, since GH seems to be the most popular ABC soap.

General Hospital decided to do a different kind of storytelling for February, in that it was 24-style story. Each episode reflected an hour in real time (or at least as real as you can get with commercial breaks and such). As different as this was, it still felt like a soap opera, instead of a primetime show.

The main story going on was the hostage crisis at Metro Court. This is also the same site that held the Port Charles Hotel before it burned up. So, clearly, this site has some bad karma attached to it.

The whole reason for the hostage crisis was that Alcazar had put some delicate shipment in the extremely secure vault that Jax had installed in Metro Court. The person that was supposed to receive the shipment, the now-infamous Mr. Craig, became impatient and stormed the lobby during a fundraiser (because this is a soap and you have to have a lot of people someplace when something big happens) to get the briefcase. Naturally, things went wrong. Sam pushed the silent alarm which trapped Maxie and one of Craig's team in the vault for 12 hours.

During that 12 hours, Mr. Craig was very sadistic to the hostages in the lobby, which including Lulu, Alan, Liz, Sam, Emily, Nikolas, Sonny, Carly, Mateo, Max, Robin, and others. (I may be missing some, but I got the main players.) Craig ended up shooting Robin, which led Patrick to lead Emily and Carly through surgery over the phone. This led to one of the best one-liners from Carly. She told Robin, "Wake up you sanctimonious little twit. You aren't going to die on me and let it be my fault."

Of course, because just having hostages isn't enough, Mr. Craig wired the entire lobby with explosives, and rotated the device that set the explosives off among all his crew, so no one would know who had the device.

In the midst of all of this, Alan had a heart attack, which eventually led to his death. He did get to escape the hostage situation, though, and made it through emergency surgery.

Meanwhile, outside of the hotel, everyone in town was worried, because everyone had at least one family member in the lobby being held hostage.

It was all very dramatic, and one of the best stories I've seen on soaps in a long time.

The thing I loved most about this sweeps period is that just about every cast member was used to some extent at some point during the month. Sure, there were some cast members that could have been used more, Bobbie for example. And Jax was off saving his brother from the Russian mob, so he wasn't in town either.

Of course, the thing I hated most was that Alan was killed off. I absolutely hate the way ABC, in general, treats the characters that have been on the show for decades. While there is really no reason for them to kill Alan off, at least it propelled story a bit (unlike AMC's Dixie, but I've written about that already). Especially moving was the fact that Jason didn't have a chance to say goodbye to Alan before Alan died. This is going to cause Jason some turmoil for years to come, especially now that he knows that he is the father of Liz's baby.

Speaking of which, as in Amber's blog, I was thrilled that that secret finally came out. It was a long time coming, and it makes sense that it would come out when they're trapped in an elevator thinking that they might die. People say and do things differently in the face of death, or so I've heard. I don't have personal experience on that myself.

Less thrilling is the fact that only Liz and Jason know right now. That's supposed to be changing in the coming weeks, but it can't happen soon enough. We all know, though, that Lucky will be the last to find out.

The explosion of the Metro Court lobby is one of the most incredible things I've seen. There were some really great effects going on there. And the aftermath was amazing. It was just some incredible stuff.

Overall, this was a very thrilling sweeps, and the fallout for this story will propel other story for months to come. And that is how it should be.

What do you all think? What were your favorite parts? What didn't you like? Would you have changed anything about the story? I look forward to comments about this. Again, I love talking about my soaps, so feel free to chat away!

One Life to Live February Sweeps

Today's blog entry is going to be on sweeps month for One Life to Live. This is the second part, because it's sort of halfway between All My Children and General Hospital in terms of quality. At least it is in my opinion.

One Life to Live is kind of unique compared to the other ABC soaps in that it didn't have a major event or a climax to a story during sweeps. Sure, Spencer was killed in February, but that was kind of a launching point to the rest of that story. I like this approach to sweeps, because if a show can only get big ratings with events or stunts, it's not that great a show.

There were two major stories that were really going strong during sweeps. Spencer's murder and its aftermath, and the arson story.

I'll start with Spencer's murder. First of all, count me among the many that are thrilled that Spencer is finally off the canvas. Paul Satterfield was great in the role, but Spencer was way overexposed since his debut last summer. (I think it was only last summer when he first showed up.) Actually, surprisingly enough, I was starting to really enjoy Spencer when he was going completely insane. Although, when he went to Blair's room to "marry" her, he got too creepy, and clearly, someone else on the canvas thought so, too, because that was the point where he was stabbed nine times. Talk about a crime of passion!

Of course, the person found with the murder weapon was Rex, and while he was a minor suspect, there is no way that anyone could have convinced me that he was the one the killed Spencer. The thing that made this a good murder mystery was that at least half the cast would have had a motive for killing Spencer. We still don't know for sure who killed Spencer (well, I think I might from reading some spoilers, but I won't spoil it for those of you that might be spoiler-free).

As usual, at least on OLTL, Spencer had a will-reading from beyond the grave, and that introduced the new character of Miles. Miles is a man who was hospitalized for his entire life due to a massive tumor on his face, and Spencer, of course, helped him become normal looking again. Also, Miles inherited most of Spencer's vast fortune, which makes him a major player in town. What's more is that Miles's brother is Mitch Laurence, so that makes him affiliated with two of the most hated men in Llanview, which will make it interesting to see how he fits in everywhere.

The other big story that is starting to really move itself along is the arson story. During sweeps, the arsonist targeted Nora and Antonio.

Nora's house was burned to the ground, but luckily she and Matthew made it out safely and are now living at Asa's. There were some really nice scenes after Nora's house was destroyed between Nora and Matthew and Bo and Matthew, where they were talking about what it's like to lose something so important. It was very heartwarming in the midst of such drama.

Antonio had already lost at least one building to a fire, but during sweeps, his club, Capricorn, was targeted. While this moved the arson story along, it also propelled the Nash/Jessica/Antonio triangle. Nash and Jessica ended up trapped in the storage room of Capricorn when it was on fire, and they each declared their feelings toward each other. Of course, Antonio rescued them, and was the one that was most injured in the fire. Now that Jessica has admitted her feelings about Nash, what's going to happen? As of now, she's sticking with Antonio, but I'm not certain that will remain the case in the coming months.

Again, I'm going to protect the spoiler-free with regards to who the arsonist is. I don't know for sure, but there is a common thread among all of those that have been targeted (Vincent, Antonio, Nora). It may not be completely obvious, but if you think about it, you'll get what the connection is.

So, those were the two major stories starting to heat up (excuse the pun with regard to the arson story) during sweeps. There were other stories that pretty much held steady, including the Viki/Clint/Dorian triangle and the Cristian/Evangeline/Todd triangle. The latter of those was starting to gain momentum toward the end of sweeps when Todd received "proof" from Rex that his baby with Margaret is "dead." Really, it's Tommy, Marcie and Michael's adopted son. When Todd found this out, he had a mini-meltdown, and Evangeline ended up comforting him with a kiss. Cristian, being the jealous man he is, didn't like this very much, and now he and Evangeline are on the rocks. How will this play out? I'm not sure. Personally, I like Todd and Evangeline, but I am interested to see where it goes.

The other things I want to talk about with regard to sweeps is the outstanding Valentine's Day episode. This was a quasi-stand-alone episode that focused on three key stories.

The first part was a medieval fantasy with Todd, Blair, Evangeline, Cristian, Starr and Cole. Todd and Blair were king and queen; Starr was their daughter, a princess; Cole was a knight; Evangeline was a princess from a neighboring kingdom; Cristian was her bodyguard; and Dorian showed up as the king's servant. The basic jist of the story is that Blair betrayed Todd and was thrown in the dungeon, and Todd was going to marry Evangeline. Evangeline was in love with Cris, and Starr was in love with Cole, but those couples couldn't be together because princesses couldn't touch lower-class people. I'm totally taking all the humor out of this part of the episode, but it was hilarious. It was nice to see all the actors really have fun with the material they were acting out.

The second part of the episode focused on Natalie and John. This part took place as an archaeological mystery, where Natalie was an archaeologist (with Rex and Roxy as her team) and John was a pharoah that was brought back to life after being given his heart back (by Natalie, coincidentally). The story ended with the idea that John and Natalie's relationship might be doomed to failure, which is very much in line with how their story outside the fantasy was going.

The third part of the episode dealt with the Nash/Jessica/Antonio triangle, and was a variation on Wuthering Heights. This was the most dramatic of the three stories, yet it was still very closely related to their story outside the fantasy.

Seeing all the period costumes was great fun, and the actors all looked like they were having a trip playing out the stories, so it was a fun episode all around. For those of you that didn't get to see it, I hope you do at some point, either on Soapnet or perhaps clips of it are floating around the internet somewhere.

Overall, sweeps was a pretty good month for OLTL. Even without a major event or a major story coming to a conclusion, it was very enjoyable, and will keep me tuning in to see how the stories play out. Anyone that watches OLTL and would like to comment on things I've missed or just to talk about the show, feel free. Like I said in my last post, I love chatting about my soaps!

All My Children February Sweeps

I realize it's kind of late to do an analysis of sweeps month on the ABC soaps, since we're already a full week into March, but I needed some time for it all to sink in to make some sense out of it.

I'm doing this blog in three parts, because otherwise it would just get too long.

I'm starting with All My Children for a couple different reasons. First, it was, by far, the worst of the three ABC soaps. Second, All My Children has always been "my soap" so I feel especially compelled to analyze it first.

First of all, I can't help but start with the sweeps before the sweeps, as a certain exec at AMC called it. That is, Dixie's accidental death at the hands of the Satin Slayer. You all have no idea how upsetting that was for me and basically all the fans of All My Children. We've endured a rather hellish year of Dixie being a lurker and being written completely out of character. And just as she was starting to be Dixie again, she gets killed off, for what seems like some really poor decision behind the scenes. We were promised a reunion with Tad and both of them finding their daughter Kate in the near future. The reunion with Tad took the form of him asking her out on a date the morning she died. She found out about Kate after she died. She saw Kate and Tad in the park (as a ghost, no less) and realized who Kate was. Talk about disappointing!

The majority of sweeps month, though, focused on the climax of the Satin Slayer storyline. For those that may only tune in occasionally, AMC decided to do a serial killer story to pare down the cast a bit (which was getting rather large, in my opinion). It was discovered that Zach's father, the presumed-dead Alexander Cambius, Sr., was killing off the women of Fusion to teach Zach a lesson in obedience. This is all because Zach, ne Alex, Jr., faked his own death to get out from under his father's thumb. Senior had also laid the blame of Zach's mother, Amelia's, death on Zach, even though Senior was the one that pushed her off a balcony.

While parts of this story made sense, namely the killer being related to Zach because he was going after women important to Zach's wife Kendall, most of the story seemed to be pulled out of thin air. This is not surprising, since the soon-to-be-former-head-writer admitted to launching the Madden in a box torture story without knowing who buried Madden beforehand. The fact that the killer went after women that are only connected to Zach by the thinnest of threads made absolutely no sense at all. It would have made more sense if the killer would have went after Kendall or Spike (Kendall's baby with Ryan) at first to torture Zach. All in all, it was a very ill-conceived plot device.

Then, of course, we had the faux-death of Babe. Babe was saved from the grave by her sometimes-lover Josh, because he's hopelessly devoted to Babe. (Now I have the Olivia Newton-John song stuck in my head...) So, Josh kept Babe alive, but let her family, including husband JR and pregnant mother Krystal, grieve for Babe. Josh said it was to protect her from the serial killer, but we all know that it's to keep her away from JR. This whole plot stunk to high heaven, too. Especially for those of us who aren't Babe-lovers.

Beyond those three main stories, nothing else happened during sweeps month. To say it was a lackluster sweeps month is an understatement. The only thing that redeemed some of the stories was the acting, specifically by Thorsten Kaye, Alicia Minshew, and Ronald Guttman in the climax of the Satin Slayer story.

The one good thing that happened in sweeps month is that head writer Megan McTavish was fired. Don't get me wrong, I don't like when anyone is fired, but soaps are a business, and if you're putting out a lousy product, you don't deserve to be in charge anymore.

So, that's my analysis of All My Children. The other two soaps will be covered in the following days. Please comment if you feel I've missed something or agree with me or even disagree with me. I love discussions on my soaps.

Is Manny back on GH?

Yes, it's another soap post from me. I can't help it that most of the TV I watch happens to be from daytime. Hopefully this won't turn too many people away from my blog, though.

Anyway, the past two days have featured Ric going to the confessional because he actually feels guilty for what he's doing to Lucky. (To catch some people up, Ric planted drugs in Lucky's (a former drug addict) desk and "accidentally" let Liz find them to break up Liz and Lucky so he could go after Liz again.) The thing I noticed is that they're making a big show of panning the camera on the hand of the person closing the confessional window. This hand has a whole lot of tattoos on it, and the one character that I know from GH that had a lot of tattoos was Manny. Granted I wasn't watching religiously when he was on, but I heard things about him and I saw pictures of him.

OK, so I know, Manny is dead. Although that's not much of a barrier in the soap world, so it's possible that Manny is still alive and is pretending to be a priest. It could also be a relative that looks surprisingly like Manny, a la the Alcazar brothers. I'm not sure which it is, but it's got to be something like one of the above two things.

Lending credence to this thought is the fact in one of the more recent issues of Soap Opera Digest the head writer of GH was asked about Manny and he said that he was sad to lose the character, and he wanted to keep the actor on board. That just screams to me that the actor (and perhaps the character) are still around to create havoc in Port Charles. We'll see if I'm right. I think it's a very compelling argument, but it wouldn't surprise me if something was pulled out of left field to negate the facts of the matter. It's happened before on soaps.

Also, since this will probably be my last post before the holidays, I want to wish a happy celebration to everyone that reads this, no matter what you celebrate. Have fun and be safe!

ABC daytime execs make excellent decision

At work today I hopped onto Soap Opera Central to check on the message boards to see how excited I'd be to watch the episodes I've taped today and there was a news bulletin on the front page about an actress getting a four-year contract. I was shocked to see that Hillary B. Smith will be staying on One Life to Live for the next four years. And I'm very, very happy about this news, especially since last year around this time, the powers that be waited until the last possible minute to give her a one-year extension.

It's been deplorable how the people in charge at ABC daytime have been neglecting the veteran characters on their shows and basically unceremoniously getting rid of them for newer (and cheaper) characters. So, I have to take time to applaud them for giving Hillary a new contract. I also have to applaud the efforts of Hillary's fans, specifically those at the SOC site, for constantly barraging ABC with letters calling for Hillary to stay.

Needless to say, I'm very happy by this news. Nora is a core character on One Life to Live and I'm thrilled that she'll be sticking around for some time to come!