Episode 136 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 136:

Given the keys to Jack's kingdom, would Phyllis pillage and plunder?

I must give Michelle Stafford kudos. Her great strength is her ability to shift from playful/michievous to sexy to sweet/innocent/loving on a dime. So it was all very sweet what happened with Jack and Phyllis on Friday. (Peter Bergman was good, too, but Phyllis really stole the scene for me.) My eyes were tear-soaked, as I'm sure most people's were.

All that notwithstanding, though, I found myself thinking somehow it would have been more fun if Jack had been forced to do or die, and to perhaps have tried to weasel out of things. This episode of mine is just one possible way of doing it.

Will Mac end up on the pill?

I mostly made up this headline because it matched the "Pill Age" title for the whole episode. But while I'm on the subject: I do find it annoying that for all the show tries to show the ill consequences of bad behavior, it could also be doing a lot to show how good behavior helps a lot. Condom use would be best, of course, since it helps inhibit spread of AIDS as well, but at least having someone bring up the issue of the pill for all these sexually active teens would be as worthwhile as any other PSA.

WIll the Jabot board find Jack's recent actions hard to swallow?

I don't know what I meant to say here, exactly. But I really don't like the whole Jabot/Newman squabbling very much. It all seems so superficially written. Of course it's hard when two people are interested in each other across "houses"; the old Romeo and Juliett plot again. [See Episode 127 (The Tragedy of Billy and Mac), from a couple years back, before the Great AWO Drought.]

So what's superficial? Well, this whole group belief that neither person could be really in love is superficial. And the whole idea that a whole board of directors of a major corporation would overtly direct someone to obtain corporate secrets from another corporation without someone raising the fact that it is illegal is superficial and unbelievable. But mostly, it's just too quick and easy plotwise. I'd rather have seen Jack give up the information to his company slowly, in a way so that he didn't realize he was doing it and was more indignant about Phyllis feeling betrayed. As it played out, he was just stupid and definitely deserves what Phyllis is giving him, rather than it being ambiguous. The best plots are hatched slowly and are more ambiguous.

Will Trisha's visit to Michael lead to pillow talk?

Am I the only one on Friday who felt that Michael was mostly listening to Trisha's story about the drug with thoughts about how he could apply it to his own situation. As if he needed to. It would be really funny to find that Cricket wanted this relationship with Michael more than Michael himself. Maybe even better if she went after him and he wasn't interested, at least for a while. Though I think it's ultimately going to be quite hot when these two finally get together after having danced around each other for so many years. Cricket is a goodie-two-shoes character who's going to have trouble admitting she likes Michael, but when she finally does, there's going to be a flood of loose emotions.

Oh, and by the way, Y&R has shown an intermittent propensity when its writers come up with a good plot idea to recycle the idea to death rather than use it sparingnly, so we get a whole bunch of plots going the same direction at once and no matter how good the idea, it gets boring quickly. So I couldn't help making the whole town go date-rape happy here. It's the Y&R way.

That's all for Episode 136's morals. Don't miss Episode 137 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.