The WrecK Center: GL! - Monday - None Of Us Goes Our Way Alone Until Next Month When They Cancel The Show, Split Us Up & Put Us In The Foster Homes

Seriously, who the fuck are these people?! Bert don't know. Bert don't care.

So. Uh. Guiding Light...has changed since I used to keep up with it. Very few Bauers. The long, boring reign of Danny/Michelle and the Santoses (Santi? No, let's not invoke that) has ended. Phillip, still dead. Is he dead still? I don't know. Laura Wright has gone to Port Charles and been replaced by this drag queen. Harley has even more children. And, there appear to be like 18 people on contract, maybe, and most of them I don't know a fucking thing about, and there are like five sets. Cause GL is struggling on life support and is ON A BUDGET Y'ALL. Gotta make cuts, gotta be frugal. Everybody go build some houses for homeless people; it will be good practice. O'Leary, you squeegee my car! There's a ten-spot in it for you. You there, Keifer, we need someone to cover the phones for an hour. Eight bucks. No, we can't afford to show you all in the credits anymore, it's just these hands. Yeah, hands, hands and voices and candlelight, like Hands Across America. Hands Across Your TV Screen Without Having To Pay You Residuals For The Use Of Your Image Or Likeness. "None of us goes our way alone" my ass.

No. No. I'm being really mean. No, listen, I actually really, really admire the heart and gumption GL has displayed lately, what with the, uh, the random house-building, the special episodes showing the old characters, the reintroduction of the classic poem into the (character-less) opener, the callback to "Reverend Rutledge." That's really something, that shows effort, that they're trying, at least. Sure, most of their characters are unfamiliar to me or suck, as do most of the stories, but every time I checked on the show last year I was impressed by at least the daily writing and acting, and the sheer heart of their efforts in the face of, you know, going on welfare. Which is why I opted to cover GL for the week, to pay tribute to that heart. Unfortunately, having "heart" does not make your show terribly good. Actors good, yes, dialogue people, pretty good, stories...um. Well. Let's just say Carjack's lesbian daughters fighting over on ATWT were more interesting.

There was some good, okay? There was. That Ashlee girl. I fucking hate when people spell it like that, bugs the shit out of me. Caitlin Van Zandt, great actress. And she's not Marcie. She's not Kathy Brier, at all. Not a Marcie. Not Broadway. She's just real, and realistic and funny. Actually witty, as opposed to, you know, Marcie, who I used to love but is now this hysterical, always-'on' harpy. So I liked Ashlee a lot. She has promise. Her scenes with NuSusanDaisyWhoever were good, except for the fact that they were squeeing over the little ass I call "Pubeface Ortega." More on him shortly.

Dinah, don't just stare at it, eat it.

But first, OH MY FUCKING GOD. Mallet. NuMallet. WTF. I know a lot of people love him and all, love him with Gina Tognoni's Dinah, and I think she's great actually especially since I hated her in OLTL in her last few years and was thrilled when Heather Tom took over. And yeah I agree this guy is really quite a good actor, okay, but all I can think of when looking into the MERCILESS VOID that is his eeeyeeessss is Officer Jeffrey Dahmer. I mean, you gotta admit, this Mallet is a little, um, intense. And not just today, like all the time. So that's unfortunately what I've taken to calling him, Dahmer. But that aside, I was all set to praise GL for keeping a good tough cop frontburner while OLTL fucks them up or GH belittles them. Then I found out, oh, gee, Jesse Hubbard from AMC shot Dinah in the head because he has a past with Mallet. Did he shoot her (aiming for Mallet) because Mallet put him away? No, apparently Mallet worked for him as a fucking CONTRACT KILLER. In his off years from the fucking police department! Money was tight, budget was lean, Mallet had to make ends meet! Nice, GL. Nice. God. So, yeah, creepy as shit. On his way back to the hospital, Mallet then killed some hobos and made reservations at Dorsia. Oh wait, I think I'll have to run that gag into the ground later in the week. Save it.

So I see Gus and Harley have fallen victim to the Raquel Dion Secret Underprivileged Slampiece & Child Curse, named as it is in memory of one of the lamest iterations of that story on AMC some years ago, featuring Mateo Santos' useless secret token minority wife Raquel and their idiot child Max. Here instead we have Gus's boring former girlfriend Natalia and their unbelievably obnoxious son, "Rafe." Rafe has diabetes, you guys, OMG! Did you, did you know? Do you have any idea what that means? Diabetes! This shit is serious! Everybody stop! This is an unbelievably sensitive issue, Harley, any wrong word could set him off into a spiral of depression and rage and tears! Jesus fucking Christ. It would be one thing if this kid, "Pubeface Ortega," I call him, was somewhat attractive or a remarkably good actor, but he's neither, and all he did was act surly and bitch at Harley. "You had a child too young, Harley? Zat mean you ate her? Stabbed her and threw her in the dumpster? What, you, you wanna cook me diabetic-safe meals? What the fuck, Harley? What the fuck? Go get me a McRib and a Yoohoo and shut the fuck up! Your inability to accept nontraditional family makes me sick!" What an ass. And we're supposed to be all for his HOT TEEN SUMMER ROMANCE with SusanDaisyTheGirlFormerlyKnownAsBrittanySnow. Girl, he is the fug. Run, don't walk. We're gonna have to deal with months of them making out all quasi-incestuous in the Aitoro/Cooper household while one of Harley's eight thousand children who I can't keep track of, thanks Paul Rauch, walks in on them every other day. The one redeeming grace of Natalia/Pubeface is the screentime for the unspeakably hot dude playing Remy Boudreau, Lawrence St. Victor. I - I just - I just - I can't even talk about it. Damn, is all I'll say. Damn.

Why did they recast Dylan Lewis? Morgan Englund is still hot as shit. I'm not - okay, listen. I am not saying Brian Gaskill is a coke fiend now. I would not say that. I'm saying, every time I've seen him in a role since Port Charles, the character he plays always acts like a fuckin' insane coke fiend. Okay? And that's his Dylan: Hyped-up coke fiend. Ready to go. "Time to get Daisy, Harley! Oooh, you feel that? You feel that? God, it's hot! It's hot, you don't, you don't feel that? I'm sweating, where's the AC? You got some gum, I need, I some gum! Mmmm, your shirt whispers when you move. Whispers secrets."

The girl playing Marina is still way too fucking young and freshfaced to be playing a fucking detective. She's always reminded me of a kewpie doll. The saving grace there is, she's actually got a lot of chemistry with the obnoxious Australian guy. They were kind of hot. Kind of. Her, and, uh, "Cyrus." Whatev.

More tomorrow. So far no Invader Zim, which is always good for me. I can't wait to take the piss out of Josh, though. And now, as it will be all week, your classic GL moment of the day, only the first part of several over at YouTube. from "classicGL." This is only part of an episode and the first four in a series of clips he/she entitled "In The Interests Of The Child." I always liked what I saw of this old stuff with Jackie, Elizabeth and Justin and Alan. Was this the Dobsons? The Little Phillip story, from what I've read and seen of it, reminds me of the nature of a lot of their byzantine wifeswapping stories. I've loved killer queen Chris Bernau since my days as a Dark Shadows fanboy. I can't believe they never brought either woman back, I like Cindy Pickett a lot.