ALL MY CHILDREN, ALL DAY LONG

Oddly, my day was structured so I wound up seeing the first half of AMC before going to work and the second half was on Soapnet when I came back from work. This had the odd effect of making it seem like my shift was some kind of hallucination taking place between commercials; a bad trip that lasted 8 hours. How does AMC hold up to such fragmentation? Well, Carmen's interplay with Adam was fun and Jesse is the man, even in a story as shrugworthy as Richie/Annie. (With Annie killing Richie, that's one down and hopefully one more to go...) On the negative side, the scenes with Cassie and Dre dealing with a drunken NuColby were awful, like scenes put on by your talentless classmates in undergrad drama class. I think Cassie is a bit better than the other newbies. If the writers are smart they'd give her more to do with momma Angie since Debbi Morgan always brings the best out in her fellow performers.

I saw the first segment of THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL as well and Brandon Beemer is back in the soap world, gorgeous as ever. Plus he already has his face and name in the opening credits -- way to go, Brandon, or more likely, Brandon's agent! Despite my initial hopes I am not getting a gay vibe from Brandon's character Owen, more like a skeezy (but hot) straight guy vibe. Still, that's good because it means women in THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL will now have someone to lust after who isn't a) vaguely related to them or b) Jack Wagner.

Saw the merest fragment of the opening to ONE LIFE TO LIVE, but I saw just enough to get excited at the prospect of McBain and Blair as a couple. Hmmmm...are we in for a couple switcheroo with John/Blair/Todd/Marty all switching partners? To go off on a tangent, I have to say again how perfect Susan Haskell would have been as Martha Byrne's replacement as Lily on AS THE WORLD TURNS. Watching Noelle Beck as Lily, you never believe this woman to be vulnerable. She looks hard as nails; if she can't get Holden, you bet she wouldn't give a fig! Susan Haskell is wonderfully fragile but still possessed of an approachability that I don't feel with Noelle Beck. Time to put on my Pollyanna cap now: if Susan was able to be lured back to OLTL after her character was poorly recast, surely the same can apply to Martha Byrne.