Brad's Big Chill

With Brad's corpse looming nearby, Genoa City's Finest (GCF) assembled to mourn, echoing the gathering of friends out of the film, The Big Chill. As Victor picked at appetizers, Sharon stole a ceramic elephant from Brad's house and placed it in her purse, and Brad's ex-wives (all three of them plus ex-lover Lauren) compared notes and made flippant remarks about Brad as a husband and a lover, we half expected the Rolling Stones' "You can't always get what you want" to start playing. Although, unlike in the Big Chill, GCF were not once 60s radicals (did they even know what the 60s were?), and the producers would never foot the bill to pay the royalties for a Stones' song.

Scene and not Heard.
Isn't the hired help supposed to be seen and not heard? Could someone then please tell us why Esther is sporting civilian clothing, with her uniform nowhere to be seen, and is speaking when not spoken to? This has upset the balance of the universe, thereby unleashing a wrath like none other: Esther with her own story line. We are starting the campaign now to get Esther back in her uniform and into the kitchen making tea and tofu sandwiches where she belongs.

Anyway....more about me....
Sharon's perpetual state of self-absorption results in hardcore neglect for her paraplegic mother who lives alone and of modest means (despite her daughter's obvious inherited wealth from having been married to both a Newman and an Abbott). Why is her mother never at any important family events? Where is she at Christmas, birthdays, or when Noah almost died of hypothermia? Did Sharon even call her to let her know? Why doesn't Sharon invite her out for a coffee at Crimson Lights? Is she embarrassed? What about a dinner at the Athletic Club? Are these facilities not wheelchair accessible? Although, in all fairness, Sharon does seem to make time for her mother when she is in crisis and needs someone to listen to her. As her mother is the only person in GC that Sharon hasn't slept with, she is the most logical choice for a confidante. Even when her mother is admitted to hospital after a "collapse" from "exhaustion", Sharon's plea to her to get better is glaringly self-focused: " Mom, you have to take better care of yourself....I need you." A great opener for Sharon to begin talking about herself, which she proceeds to do with abandon. That's why we love you Sharon. You're so unabashedly #$%^& up.


Dialogue to be remembered.
When Billy walks into Chloe's hospital room freshly and tackily decorated for a quickie wedding by Esther's bigamist fiancee, Roger:

"Holy 99 cent store batman...what's going on here?"

Indeed.

Questions of the month.
1.Has Eden had her voice box removed ? Is she using an electromechanical device to help her speak that we cannot see?
2.How much is Sharon worth? How much did she get out of her divorce with Nick? Did she not get the house at the ranch? And with Jack...why is this never mentioned? Is this why she feels the need to shoplift?
3. What caused Adam's rash? And more importantly, where is it?
4. Is it just us, or is Daniel looking more and more like a 70s porn star?
5. Can preemies born at 7 1/2 months be manhandled by any sap who happens to walk into the hospital and then be released within only a couple of days of being born, as was the case of Cordelia?
6. How precious was it to hear Jack giving parenting advice and urging Billy to "step up to the plate" when he has nothing to do with either of his two children?
7. What is it with the women of Genoa City tricking men onto thinking that they are the fathers of their children? Dru did so with Neil, when Malcolm was in fact Lily's father; Ashley stole Victor's sperm and impregnated herself (does it get anymore unflattering?); Phyllis drugged, raped and later tricked Danny Romalati into thinking Daniel was his son; and now Big Daddy Cane was duped into thinking that Cordelia was his when in fact she was his brother's (come to think of it, isn't this the second time Cane has been tricked into marrying someone? First Amber, and then Chloe. Definitely making Aussie bar tenders look bad...)

Brad Carlton Takes Body Hugging T-Shirts to the Grave

Well it looks like our dear friend Bradley Carlton has left this mortal coil and gone on to bigger and better things (not a difficult feat when one lives in Genoa City). No more shall we see his hulking mass hover over whatever poor woman he would happen to be harassing at the moment; no more shall we see his shiny, botoxed forehead light up whatever room he would enter; no more shall we be privy to his avid consumption of the urine-soaked nuts at the GCAC bar; no more shall we witness that look of permanent smugness and condescension; no more shall we debate who has more charisma, he or a block of wood; no more shall he wonder whether his leather coat required the pelt of one or two cows...

And thus: In Memoriam

Brad Carlton.
Opportunist. Sexist. Vainglorious. Cloying. Self-obsessed.
Yeah, good luck with that in the afterlife.

When dying is inconvenient.
When Nikki finds out her sister is dying of cancer, Paul asks her if there is anything he can do for her. Her answer? Have sex with her of which he, unsurprisingly, obliges. In a requisite post-coital moment, Nikki confesses to Paul that she wishes her dying sister, Casey, lived in Genoa City so she "didn't have to leave" to go see her.

Call us crazy, but who thinks about sex when they just find out that a loved one is terminally ill? And secondly, shouldn't Nikki in fact be "wishing" that her sister didn't have cancer at all, instead of "wishing" she didn't have to leave town to go visit her on the deathbed?

Questions of the week.
1. How does a friendship recover after one party accuses the other of murder as was the case with Amber and Kevin?
2. Does something seem amiss when Nikki Newman remarks that there have been "tons of hits" on the Restless Style website. Does she even know what the "information super highway" known as the "internet" is? The only hit she could possibly know of this kind that her ex-husband David had out on her life.
3. When Mrs. C regains her memory, will she be able to remember how many face lifts she's had?
4. Noah and Eden? Really? Could the denizens of Genoa City possibly have names that could be any more Christian? Where are the Mohammeds, the Rajwinders and the Parveens? If they do indeed exist, would they be allowed a membership at the Genoa City Athletic Club?