I'M GOING TO HELL

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS managed to engage me at the midpoint -- and lost me by the commercial break, causing me to switch to ALL MY CHILDREN. Y&R had a short but promising scene between Kay, Amber and Jill that could have kept me watching if the scene hadn't switched to Lily's birthday party, wherein an angelic child sang a birthday song of her own composition to Lily so Y&R wouldn't have to pay the rights to the Happy Birthday To You song. ( I know about this from an episode of the late, lamented SPORTS NIGHT!) Guys, unless there's some drama going on, a birthday party for someone you don't know or care about is boring.

Not to say AMC was all that today, but at least Angie and Jesse were in it. I liked seeing Jesse bust that pimp; more of Jesse cleaning up Pine Valley, please. I am sick of Opal going on about her Tarot cards, though. The Death card actually does not mean physical death. It refers to a way of life changing or an old way of doing things ending. Therefore, Opal snarling that death is at Richie's door is just nonsense.

ONE LIFE TO LIVE and DAYS OF OUR LIVES continue to fight each other for my attention, and I had to stay with OLTL for Nash's funeral. From looking at the show only, it appears that Jessica will forgive Nash and Natalie (and we will all cry) but then you see the previews and commercials and BOOM! HERE COMES TESS WITH A VENGEANCE! This is good for longterm viewers who remember that it was Tess and Nash who were the best couple on OLTL before Tess was integrated into Jess, but troubling for new viewers (like the Unemployed Boyfriend) who see it as a melodramatic twist to a realistically painful storyline. I say jury's out for now, but part of me likes seeing Natalie get punished a bit...I still remember how awful she was to Jess when she was played by Erin Torpey and Brandon Routh was her boyfriend!

I'm going to hell for saying this, but the autistic kid story on DOOL is just not very good. It has the air of a PSA about it. I know this story is personal for the head writer, but it's a dead end for Abe, Lexie and their son Theo. Look at how AMC's autistic character, Lily, could not be paired with anyone, so they created a twin character, Ava, that was not autistic so they could hook her up with everyone and it was such a mess that both characters were written out (with Ava just vanishing since she was so unpopular.) This is autistic Theo's future: no story, no romance, nothing except preaching about autism. And DOOL's viewers don't like being preached at; SOAP OPERA WEEKLY pointed out that the week the Brady pub went green, the ratings fell. Of course autism is an important topic but I don't think an escapist soap like DOOL is the right place to explore the subject.

In fact, wouldn't a medically based show like GENERAL HOSPITAL or spinoff NIGHT SHIFT be able to tell a better story about autism? What if Carly's baby turned out to be autistic? How would this sometimes unlikable woman react? Would she be furious that one son is in a coma while another has a disability? Who would Carly want to be a father to this child -- mobster Sonny or businessman Jax? See, an autistic story on GH could actually open up a whole bunch of different stories while the autistic story on DOOL is a non-starter, formulated only because ..."we had been looking for something substantial for Abe and Lexie, anyway." (Head Writer Dena Higley, SOAP OPERA DIGEST, 7/1/08, p.10)