DOOL Weekly Recap - Let Our Plane Have Sex With You

"Look, Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again. There's just no stopping in a white zone."
"Oh, really, Vernon? Why pretend? We both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion."

Ohhhh good times. I have been preoccupied all week long with job-hunting and doing a special week of GL and Y&R recaps - and Darn was going to be my counterpart by doing the same for OLTL and AMC, but you know, he failed - and so the sole DOOL entry this week is a weekly wrap-up! And what a week it was! It was actually a lot of fun. Anna DiMera (a.k.a. A Pimp Named Hunley) played Mata Hari to the DiMeras and quarreled with Fauxman, Kristian Alfonso displayed more life and vigor than she has in years, Steve got mad crazy on the dance floor, Nick and Chelsea had bad sex and Chelsea responded by treating him like an ancient relative with an incontinence problem, and those crazy kids on Touch The Sky Airlines continued to fuck around and make complete fools of themselves while dragging The Chels down with them. The airline shenanigans were so cheesy and ridiculous that they have become the focus of the entry, a focus I will begin to run completely into the ground starting now, with the first of several classic clips from Airplane!


"Elaine, you're a member of this crew. Can you face some unpleasant facts?"
"No."


I don't even know where to start with these kids, really. Seriously. Chelsea and Nick went upstairs to do it to it last week and this week, Chelsea looks at him like she saw him jerking off to beastiality porn. Chelsea: It's not even that serious. Now mind you, Nick is just a tad intense about it. And apparently deaf, dumb and blind regarding her body language. "Joo wuff me, Chelsee? Ah wuff yuuu. We gon build a castle inna sky madea wainbows wheh we get mawwied and have six keedz wight awaaaayyy!" Cool it, Nick. I love you, I love your personality, I love your (or rather Blake Berris') propensity to wander around in the Los Angeles sunlight with Julia Stiles with your shirt off and your board shorts hanging perilously, perilously low (big shoutout to Dreamcaps) , but after that scene Nick could make anybody a commitmentphobe. Commitment-o-phobe? Which? I don't know. But he could, is what I'm saying. It certainly doesn't help that this "NuStephanie" a.k.a. "another lame excuse for Ken Corday to cast non-actor celebrities in lame, pathetic attempts to court media attention or the fickle gaze of preteen viewers," is a complete fucking idiot. Do you remember Shayna Rose being cruel or bitchy to or about the Fallonator? I sure as shit don't! Now Stephanie can't stop riding Nick! Big-ass bouffant hairdo like a John Waters movie, fake-ass tan, and all she does is ride Chelsea's ass about becoming a brainless whore like her so Chelsea too can know the bliss of getting the brains bronco-dicked out of you by a lantern-jawed Nazi superman who is, like, part of the Russian mob garment trade. I know that's what I aspire to every summer! I would give up plasma to have Shayna Rose back. I know a lot of people didn't like her but I thought she had a unique look and style, and was a damn sight more Steve and Kayla's baby girl than this hollowed-out bitch whose sole focus in life is making Chelsea trade down for a Ken doll. I can't wait for Captain Nazi there to get her in some life-threatening situation with the DiMeras.

I won't even talk about the scenes onboard the Fuck The Sky With Our Huge Throbbing Plane jet, with randy passenger after randy passenger trying to get freaky with the girls, and of course, Stephanie starts fucking her way down the aisle. Did they have to give them those turquoise outfits straight out of the old Britney Spears Toxic video? And sorry, Jett looks like he is playing big-boy dress-up in his co-pilot uniform. I have to say, though, this whole idiotic summer story is growing on me, and why? Because while Nick is indeed getting fucked, it at least is giving him, Chelsea, and Max beaucoup screen time, and Marcus Patrick, well, while Jett is no brain trust, he at least seems to have some core of decency unlike his Aryan partner or Stephanie, and it doesn't hurt that he is also blazing hot. Plus, how can you totally hate a story where they go to so much trouble to make a cheesy fake plastic and cardboard Las Vegas skyline? The idea of a cheesy summer story - I mean, listen, there have been so many cheesy summer stories on daytime. In concept this is far from the most offensive, the whole luxury plane thing in Vegas with criminal contraband thing is so goofy it becomes enjoyable. In acting and focus, it's a mess. You've got good actors and characters like the aforementioned, who really help you enjoy the goofy story in some respects because they're there, but you've also got bad acting and bad characterization in two characters we should care about - Jeremy and Stephanie - who are just loathsome now. Plus, we're asked to care about Jett, which is one thing and entirely possible, but we're also asked to be titillated by the possibility of him and Chelsea while the very popular Nick wanes on the sidelines getting insulted, abandoned and fucked with by Kate. But don't worry about Nick, audience! Have fun with Jett and Chelsea right now! Sorry, ain't having it.


"Striker, listen, and you listen close: flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes."

Meanwhile...

The Vengabus is coming! Dah dah dah dah dah daaahhhh dah! We - like - to party! We like to - we like to party!

Ohhh SNAP! It's the highlight of the week! It's crazy dancing Steve! Crazy aging Splash clubkid Steve! Stephen Nichols, I love you. Is there nothing you can't do? Forget for a moment that I've taken issue with what I feel is the slapdash, OTT feel of this whole latest DiMera/Brady reunion tour. Steve as the double-triple-whatever agent freaking out the DiMeras and infiltrating their inner sanctum while Team Brady carries out their plan was some priceless shit. His John Travolta/Dave Chappelle fingers-to-face moves were what did it for me. "It's too real for you, Bart, ya cain't take it! Ya cain't take it, it's too real!" I'm happy to see SN happy, and frankly, high-minded concerns of strong storyline aside, this shit is just hilarious without being juvenile, as Reilly humor was.

Tony preps the reach-around.

So Steve drugs the DiMera date night, and Tony and Anna all get it. More hilarity. Thaao Penghlis (Your Ongoing Sexual Problem) is obviously so happy to be getting meaty material that does not involve him conspiring with Al Qaeda, getting attacked by a hockey-masked serial killer or dragging the exhumed corpse of his father around and talking to it. He and (A Pimp Named) Leeann Hunley clearly still love each other to bits and they just dazzled in their scenes. When Tony unwisely (as Steve hilariously notes) tells Anna that he wishes he could be the man he used to be, you remember who he used to be before the Reilly era and understand. And Anna is so phony and such a cocktail party schmoozer, and Leeann Hunley gives her just the right amount of artifice and nouveau riche put-on without making it a burlesque the way so many more recent soap gold diggers, like Judith Chapman on Y&R or Judi Evans (as Bonnie) or even, in her own way though I adore her, Ilene Kristen on OLTL, do today. But those are also all fine actresses who probably have the shoddy writing to blame at least partly. Either way, Hunley's Anna just seems to have that air of social climbing falsity effortlessly without having to spell it out in neon; you can see her trying to put off the vibe of the aristocrat around people like the Bradys, people closer to her own roots, and you can see how she become alienated from them and Roman while obviously having come from them. She even has chemistry with Josh Taylor's faux Roman, who clearly is having a good time with her too.



"All right, I'll need three men up at the tower, you, Neubauer! You, Macias!"
"Me, John, big tree!"

It's not just Thaao Penghlis and Leeann Hunley - everybody's having a good time, and that's clear when we reach the subject of Kristian Alfonso and Hope. In the recent past I've given KA a lot of shit. She's emaciated, her voice has dropped like a hundred octaves, her cheekbones could rip Bo's face off, she is humorless and going through the motions, etc etc. Not so long ago, Hope was looking kinda:

Sorry.

...Um, but now, all of a sudden, Hope's not lookin' so scary anymore. She's actually a whole lot of fun. Kristian Alfonso is clearly really, really happy. Know how I know? Cause she's screwing around. She seems physically incapable of not being constantly flirty and cute with Peter Reckell/Bo in all their "serious planning" scenes - she's having a laugh. And because she's having so much fun, you can believe Hope and Bo are still really, truly, deliriously in love again. And all of a sudden I find myself becoming a bit of a Bope fan, because she is having a ball. The earpiece thingy scene? Cute. The bet about Roman and Anna? Cute. She's just great lately and I guess we have to credit Hogan Sheffer. And OMFG is their new baby not the cutest fucking thing? She is one chill baby. Just, thumb in her mouth, don't give a fuck, taking it easy. Anna comes in raising a ruckus? Whatever. Ciara hear you. Ciara don't care. I love her. Love. her.

Ciara considers 1-2-Stepping Anna's ass.

Sooooo thaz it. I ain't going over the little bit of ShellePhelleHelle (are they seriously moving her towards JKJ's Phillip? C'mon, I am not a big Shelle person or anything but this is just arbitrary at this point, they just reunited her and Shawn) or Sami and her twin behbehs just yet, I'm sure there's way more of those stories to come this week. Once I am clear of the last of my Y&R/GL obligations from this past week, I will be taking some time to regroup but will try to do bi-weekly or more entries for DOOL and later, OLTL. Hopefully someone will pick up the slack. I'm also going to do a few more special one-offs like this week of episodes in the future, and will also hopefully be covering a certain two nighttime soaps, one shortlived, one about to begin. More on that when this is all done.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines."