Episode 80 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 80:

For Beater or Worse

Where do I begin to talk about all the little problems I wanted to grumble about today. This is obviously based on the strange round trip to New York that both parties managed to do from Genoa City in less than a day. That they pretended to use airplanes amazed me. That they didn't run into each other on the way over amazed me. I'd rather see them at least end up on the same plane knowingly and try to explain it off--or have one of them know about it and hide. But the idea that it came off so smoothly until the critical moment? Hmmm. Too absurd for my taste. So I decided to do it up with a little more fun action to show what could have been done. And hey--I even resisted using the matter transporter--I gave an explanation that works out more or less in real time using real physics; I demand extra credit for that.

As I write this, I've seen the show where Danny punches everyone out to get the manuscript but nothing after that. I do hope it's going to turn out that Phyllis shows up in court with a black eye and can say Danny did it. But somehow I bet he'll get away without anyone acknowledging the awful violent streak he has--and that's starting to really bug me. So I wanted to make sure he got his just desserts here in AWO.

Also, even if Danny doesn't get in trouble for punching people out, I do hope Michael can get the manuscript excluded. Maybe even for being stolen or some such thing. But really, I think it's admissibility is questionable because it wasn't offered under oath and its offerer isn't available to be cross-examined; Sasha had such tremendous motives to lie, and I'm amazed the judge hasn't ruled on that already. There's just no rational reason I can think of for any Judge to assume that this document is 100% true, or that if it contains lies, that they can be sorted out correctly.

In a way, this episode was an attempt to bypass all of the reliance the show is trying to have on technical accuracy, (which I'm mostly not buying and being slightly bored by) and return to the kind of humorous "crazy schemes" that made Phyllis a popular character originally. I liked it better when Phyllis took "big chances" long ago, like the octopus and the thing with the car... things that could never work, but that she more or less got away with. The thing here with the bomb threat, with the elevator buttons, etc. are attempts to play some of that.

I mostly don't buy Michael and Phyllis as a sexual thing and wish they'd de-focus that. Even to this day I feel they have little reason to like one another other than their mutual dislike of Cricket. And that seems contrived because Michael was talking at first like he felt he had come to grips with the thing between him and Cricket being his fault, not hers, so I don't even think he dislikes Cricket. But suddenly he turned around again (apparently to justify his romance with Phyllis), and he makes occasional remarks about "sometimes feeling his old self" (which I guess means it's ok for him to act devious sometimes but not others). I don't know. Just hits me as weak.

I also tire of how Paul just tolerates this whole thing between Cricket and Danny. We all know he's in line to become a chump, and it's completely unbelievable that this "great detective" can't detect this. Either Danny's going to win, and Cricket will want to spend time with the godchild, or he'll lose and Cricket will want to handle the appeal. Either way, Paul gets screwed and we get "treated" to another year's worth of court case until the next Sweeps Week. I'm not sure I can take it. So I had Paul push things along a little here.

And it was fun to give Wally a little plot of his own. I always like seeing these background characters in non-standard settings. I wish they did more of that on the show. Such as wasted opportunity to make those characters (and the show as a whole) seem less two-dimensional.

That's all for Episode 80's morals. Don't miss Episode 81 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.