Bt Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman In their drive to create more and more entertaining soap opera, writers sometimes devise situations that are fanciful and, to put it bluntly, hard to believe. After all, soap viewers will buy anything, right? Wrong. Recently, three soaps have come up with situations which Marlena … [Read more...]
General Hospital’s Amazing 50th Anniversary Celebration Ends With a Few Troubling Story Choices
March 15, 2014 by 7 Comments
By Ed Martin As a long-time viewer of General Hospital I have been thrilled with much of what I have seen on the show during the last two years. I can’t say that it’s been all good – the return of Caleb the Vampire and Lucy Coe’s obsession with destroying him was one of the most tedious storylines I have ever seen on any soap opera, and it … [Read more...]
B&B: Brooke is Now Suddenly on the Outside
March 9, 2014 by 5 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman For more than 25 years, the main story of The Bold and the Beautiful has been the story of the love life of Brooke Logan Forrester (fascinatingly played by Katherine Kelly Lang) . She’s been married to all the Forresters -- Eric, Thorne and Ridge --and is the mother of five children. … [Read more...]
Y&R: Nikki Newman’s Great Strength
March 1, 2014 by 2 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman One of the great things about daytime soap opera is how strong the women characters generally are. They have to be that way to survive the problems continually thrown at them in their everyday lives. At the same time, they must be vulnerable to the vagaries of romance. The head may know … [Read more...]
Y&R Tries Some Suspense for Sweeps
February 22, 2014 by 3 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman We’ve written several times that the biggest challenge to changing The Young and the Restless is it’s static writing template, which has been in effect back to the days of co- creator/headwriter Bill Bell. The show is all about slow storytelling, dragging the storylines out and instead … [Read more...]
General Hospital: Robin’s Reason to Leave Is Unbelievable
February 9, 2014 by 13 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman One of the bad things about General Hospital is that it grows so unbelievable at times. For example, how many would-be killer psychos can one town have at a time? Right now, we have four: Heather, Dr. Obrecht, Franco and Ava. But unbelievably, the unbelievability gets worse: there … [Read more...]
All Hail Friday Cliffhangers!
February 1, 2014 by 5 Comments
By Marlena Delacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman One of the most important and unique of all daytime soap opera conventions is the Friday cliffhanger. On Friday, at the end of a week’s worth of episodes, either a secret is exposed or something significant happens which creates big suspense, compelling the audience to want to tune in to … [Read more...]
B&B and GH: Real Love and Lackluster Crime in the Afternoon
January 26, 2014 by 3 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman For ages we’ve complained about the absence of romance -- real love -- in the afternoon. Someone must have been listening because this week The Bold and the Beautiful gave us a mega dose of love scenes concluding in a real beauty: the carefully orchestrated “first time’ for Wyatt Fuller … [Read more...]
Is Bold and Beautiful Best Soap?
January 12, 2014 by 7 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman With only four daytime soaps left, it seems fruitless to name a Best Soap. It’s all a matter of personal preference anyway. If you like your soaps slow and full of character, you like The Young and the Restless. If you like your plots fast and full of surprises, General Hospital is … [Read more...]
The Young and the Restless: Still the One
January 5, 2014 by 6 Comments
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman For the last month or so, The Young and the Restless has been carrying promotional spots celebrating the soap’s 25th anniversary as number one in the ratings. It is quite an achievement. How did Y&R do it? By being consistently different from other soaps, particularly in its very … [Read more...]
