Episode 81 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 81:

Nuts and Bolts

Once again, it's almost hard to know where to start. So many little things have been nagging at me the past few days with this trial wrap-up.

First, I think it's just an unfair trick for the writers to say that they knew Michael should have gotten his ducks in a row and had Peter file charges before he acted on the `theft'. If script writers for a soap opera can know things like this, than can't the sharpest legal mind in Genoa City know this? Well, not if the writers write him dumb, I guess. But it's inconsistent character portrayal, so I didn't buy it.

And then we're hit with this stuff about coincidences of speech? I about died laughing over that. It really, to further abuse a really tired expression, crossed the line. I mean, come on, in a show where people are constantly using stock phrases--interchangeably as to the character speaking--you can't make it a plot device to say someone was using a phrase no one else would use. We routinely observe strange expressions pop out of nowhere and then get used independently by several characters whose only common link is the `same writer'. And as such, this falls into the area of `a device that's inappropriate for use in plot' because you can't tell the `accidental script coincidences' from the `plot'. Sort of like writing a black-and-white movie in which the end is entirely determined by someone's shirt color--as if we could tell.

I tried to make sure to pepper parts of this episode with standard phrases from the show to illustrate my point. I hope my dear readers will find some of their favorite ``Y&R Drinking Game'' phrases there. If you don't know about the Y&R Drinking Game, I think you can find it at Mary Spencer's Y&R web page. (Oh, and--I'm not a drinker myself, but if you are, please don't drive after playing!)

I was also being bothered on the show by Michael's continually saying to Phyllis, "Stick to the script." It seems to me that one isn't supposed to script a witness's testimony, and moreover, he had not actually scripted it. So it seemed a strange choice of words.

And finally we come down to the thing of Cricket going to the Judge and chit-chatting about what Phyllis might or might not be going to do. That was completely inappropriate. I couldn't believe he didn't just toss them out angrily for that. But then when they topped it with an even stranger call from Michael to Cricket saying it was in his client's interest ... well, I thought sure Michael had something up his sleeve. How sad to find he didn't. So I thought something up for him here.

In case you can't tell, I had about four different stories I wanted to write here and they were all inconsistent in details. The dream sequence helped me include one without having to actually do it. (I suppose that's why they do dream sequences on the show, too.) And I did my best to weave in elements of the others so that you don't have to hear weeks of me repeating the same story in various different ways.

This trial went on way too long and though I'm very unhappy with the outcome, I am happy that it's just plain over. I usually like court cases the best, but this one was irritatingly tedious, perhaps because I just didn't believe the basis for many of the judge's rulings. Most of them seemed realistic (if unfortunate for Phyllis), but the one that didn't seem realistic was his willingness to accept the manuscript. I basically think anything offered to a sensationalist publisher for $50,000 has to be a tiny bit suspect. And that the judge didn't seem worried about that made the rest of the case unbelievable.

Well, that's it for now. Time for me to bolt!

That's all for Episode 81's morals. Don't miss Episode 82 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.