Nov 10, 2006

GH - Week 11/6-10 etc - Laura Gets Fucked, and other stories

Laura: ...Man, fuck that red disco dress, Luke, fuck it! Look at me! Would you just fucking look at me! It's amazing what basement fire sale ratings and a huge sucking vacuum of fans leaving town like the Jews across the desert can do to improve my negotiation ability! Finally, I have the hair and the clothes I always wanted! Let's see Jill wear this black leather shit! She'll be drummed out of the Pat Benatar lookalike contest down at the drag club! The vastly superior male Pat Benatars will beat the shit out of her! "Open up the trenchcoat" my ass! I can rock this, Luke! I can rock this! This is so life-affirming! Fuck the drugs, Luke, you should've put me in these clothes four years ago!
Luke: You look like Sting in
Dune, angel. And if I may say, your personal Captain Ahab always wanted to spear that particular whale too. I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Laura: I don't care for your jargon.
Luke: Neither does anyone. I'm so old. Can I still drink myself to death, angel?
Laura: No. Laura demands strong-ass dick.

Seriously though: I'm sorry, but as beautiful as she looks up there (when I first wrote this bit about two weeks ago) , Laura is getting fucked on this return. Hard, long, possibly with a porcupine.

It's bad enough that I have broken my no-fastforwarding role to speed through the pointless hours of GH and watch only the portions that include Laura and the Spencers, because honestly it is that fucking bad otherwise. It's bad enough that Laura is only two or three days a week tops. But SRSLY that Luke and Tracy conversation the other day, in which Tracy spat out the Guza party line that Laura was a weak housewife who dragged Luke down and should've stayed with Scott, and Luke reacted with middling ambiguity and wistful desire that he wish he knew of Tracy's supposed longstanding affection for him years ago, was the last motherfucking straw.

You know what? I like Luke/Tracy. I do. Tony Geary and Jane Elliot are excellent together and she makes him interesting again. It's a worthy alternate pairing to Luke/Laura for me. Because honestly? I was never a big L&L forever shipper. I used to ship Luke/Alexis and I would love a good new pairing for Laura. I didn't think they earned that insta-fuckin-reunion in 2002 at all. Luke was still a fucking drunk railyard hobo prick who refused to acknowledge her first son, and Laura could've done a lot better. He's been unworthy of her for years. Guza and Geary took it way too fucking far when Guza took over in the '90s. While I understand the value and importance of Luke's dark side and his rogue nature, and the initial Cassadine return storyline and rape revisitation were fucking brilliant, they ultimately went over the line. Because, see, no, Tony, I'm sorry; I don't believe Luke views his sister as nothing but a whore. And no, Tony, I'm sorry, but I don't believe Luke saw hookers regularly while married to Laura. Tony Geary is a brilliant actor and rumored to be a brilliant script doctor, he deserves all the credit he can get for keeping a lot of integrity for a lot of characters, but he is also at least partially responsible for Luke turning into nothing but a fucking joke over the last seven or eight years. Luke should not be the fucking drunk town mascot sitting on a park bench counseling closeted Lucas Jones to go visit his favorite hookers down on the docks. Luke should not come and go constantly and still pretend he gives a fuck for his daughter. The "adventure follies" where Luke does something completely unrelated to anything, anywhere, ever and it's fun because it's Luke have gotten old.

Now, any new pairing for Luke has to address his total immaturity, jackassery and inability to take responsibility for who and what he has become, which is, in a word, pathetic. Luke and Tracy as a couple once seemed like they were poised to do that, and I applauded it. The chemistry was there, the acting was there, even the writing was occasionally there. But then he had Coleman or whoever the fuck it was fuck her in his stead, and then it just turned into another series of demeaning gag routines, and once again a promising new couple was ruined in exchange for more of the same. But, see, apparently Guza still thinks this is gold! Because he skewed the whole set of scenes with Luke and Tracy the other day totally in favor of Luke/Tracy, relegating Laura to the role of "deluded idiot housewife who never really understood Luke." I guess that's why Laura left Scott for him and lived it up globetrotting, because she hated the adventure, right? Right. Sure. What a crock of horseshit. And yet, they've been trying to sell this line for years. I tolerated it before because they couldn't really put it against anything to try to actively disprove it. But now, lo and behold, Luke and Tracy. Look how much better Luke/Tracy are, guys, OMG! Look how Tracy understands him! I will say this: The Luke/Tracy conversation was, taken on its own, very, very well written and performed. The actors were excellent. And, if it was about anybody other than fucking Luke and Laura I would not be really angry about it. But it was, and I am. It was skewed horseshit and people need to know it. I may be tired of Luke and Laura a lot of the time but they deserve their respect and their proper acknowledgement. They aren't getting it. But that's not the only reason I have to be really, really angry.

Persona: En hinna vid Ingmar Bergman


So it's rumored they begged Genie to come back. "Genie, come back, we need you, it's this anniversary, we'll suck your dick!" But here we are, right, and I'm trying to watch GH again for the first time in months on behalf of Laura Spencer and Genie Francis - because I'll tell you motherfuckers right now it wasn't because of Luke and motherfucking Laura - and what do I see, five days a week, jampacked into the whole hour, with barely any time for the sweeps superstar? Why, it's Jason and motherfucking Sam on the run, for what seems like the rest of eternity. Why are they on the run? What are they doing? Who are they running from? I have no idea. I don't fucking care. All I know is that they're on virtually the entire hour, almost every day, dressed like identical fucking matching Nazi leather queens (as opposed to hot-ass leather girls like Laura above) , toting toy guns and bitching about Ric and Lorenzo or something. And apparently this and the Sonny/Carly/Jax video monotone that I also FF through are so very fucking important that we can only have a fraction of the Luke and Laura this show knows it needs. You know, when you promote the hell out of the new young doctors and nurses, when your new promotional logo is that of a doctor's white lab coat, when you got big ratings out of the returns of Rick Springfield and Kimberly McCullough, and when you're banking on Laura Spencer to save your November, maybe it's time to begin to come to terms with the fact that the mob scene is fucking dead. Hospital logo, popular hospital characters, Luke and Laura, mobsters, which one of these things is not like the other? You sit there and watch this shit and Jason and Sam and Sonny and all their whole crew just smell dead by comparison to me. It's just dead. Kill it. Let it go.

Yet, they haven't let it go yet. The fact that they only put Genie fucking Francis, who they hope will save ABCD's sweeps singlehandedly, on three out of five days a week for maybe three or four weeks is incredible and unacceptable. The fact that they've done this with the story, and made sure to keep things like Luke/Tracy on the backburner and in the ready position for when Laura hits the road, is really disgusting and really unforgivably stupid. There was surely a better way to keep the Luke/Tracy stuff burning without having to run scenes like that that make at least one writer's feelings crystal clear to the audience. The plain facts are, you are never going to get 90% of the audience, if not more than that, to believe that Luke is "over" Laura and their love, has moved on, and is deeply interested in something with Tracy and "wishes he had known" of her interest years ago when he was with Laura. You are never going to get them to believe that Tracy Quartermaine and Luke's marriage to her are anything but an afterthought for him at this point. It can't work. And yet they wrote and shot and aired it anyway. Because all they can see is next month, post-Laura. It will cost them. And I will be paid in full, motherfuckers! Paid in full.

...What was I talking about?


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was seriously the best rant I've ever read. Except, unfortunately, I don't the idiots who run this show WILL ever pay, because I don't think you can make someone pay who's indifferent. They don't care about ratings. They don't care about anything but their own agenda, assuming they even know what it is. Preach it!

Anonymous said...

Rock on, jase-bot, rock on. Excellent, excellent rant, and I totally agree with it, even though I enjoy TG's performances. I was so fucking sickened by him substituting Coleman for the hotel room sex, and even more sickened how he treated Lulu, his best pal Robert, Anna, Dr. Robin, and Dillon during the May "caper" (and I use that word loosely), tying them up, ready to take off with Holly.

Even worse was when he slipped both Tracy and Robert a mickey, and put them together in the same bed, so that they could wake up later, screaming. It would serve Luke right, if Tracy and Robert actually got together and Robert treated Tracy with the respect he used to give to his love interests.

Anonymous said...

Yes, she was. Storyline was dropped. I know, I know, what a fucking surprise, with these hacks.

In September, for one day, we saw Anna on the docks, and Lo offered her a deal... she finds out where Skye is and tells him, and he'll give Anna everything she wants, all his contacts, whatever.

Monday, October 9th (I remember because Robert was shown), Robin threatens to call Anna and tell her that Robert was beaten up (by Lo's goons). Robert tells her not to, that Anna's out of the city, on a mission. No wonder you missed it.

Anonymous said...

Word word word!