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Are they over now? I was never sure when whatever ATWT had in mind for sweeps actually happened. More new things were introduced than were old things resolved. The most interesting story going on was Tom/Margo/Emily. Finally things were moving along after dragging on for months of Emily's smirking and Tom's density. Then the story just dropped - thud! I do not understand taking your best story and calling a hiatus in the middle of sweeps. The Lucinda/James marriage is simply ridiculous. I can see that Jimmy may want to marry Lucy for her cash but the motivation for Lucy marrying Jimmy is ludicrous. It makes no sense. These two have been locked in a vendetta (which also never made sense) forever. The character of Lucinda has been so false for so long that even the actress is fed up with it. The Camille/Ben/Brad triangle is, in a word, tedious. Enough already! Camille has already slept with two other men while supposedly in love with Ben. I know some viewers like her with Brad but I see no chemistry whatsoever there. Brad, who has possibilities, is being wasted in this triangle. (I'd really love to see him in a more mature relationship with Barbara.) The Holden/Lily/Hope story is maddening. Enough of the disembodied hands! As much as I like Holden and Lily, I am afraid that this story line is just another excuse for Lily's victimization and hysteria. My tolerance for Lily as victim reached the breaking point long ago. If a mother says this is not her baby how can she just be ignored? Will someone please give Hope a DNA test? Let's get on with it. However, Lily and Holden have voiced the only rational thinking on the Lucy/James liaison. OK, I like something! The Eddie/Georgia/Katie story is both fresh and fun. Georgia is a gem. She is so cleverly and even pleasantly conniving. Sometimes she reminds me of Aunt Lucinda. And let's not forget who her mother is! Her relationship with Eddie has been coherently developed. Eddie is much better as a male ingenue than a third wheel threat to Margo and Tom's marriage and has a lot of screen presence with both these lovely young women. The Carly/Hal/John/Lisa/Barbara story gets mixed reviews. Finally Hal has recovered from his male mid-life-crisis-induced coma! That was a welcome relief. I enjoyed seeing the old Hal back, telling Carly off and dumping her. It looks as if he is getting back with Barbara. Although I have always liked the two of them together I do wish that the writers would add something fresh to this relationship. How about some depth? I think it would be interesting if in exploring what went wrong with their previous marriages that these two would discover what makes a good relationship. Funny, we hardly ever see that story on the soaps. The John/Lisa part of the story is incredulous. Within the space of no more than ten days John went from desperately wanting Barbara back to declaring his undying love to Lisa. I did a double take when I saw that one. Since when is Lisa the love of John's life? They have been adversaries forever. The cruel hoax he pulled at their engagement party should have been enough to keep a woman as savvy as Lisa on guard for the rest of her life. John and Lisa are rapidly becoming as unrecognizable as Lucinda. Carly has become almost a caricature of herself. I enjoy her antics as much as anyone but that is all we see anymore - antics. She is totally selfish and does nothing but scheme to get her way. There seems to be no bounds to what she will attempt. Is there buried beneath all this posturing a human, feeling character? We have not seen that side of Carly in quite some time. The Jack/Julia story bothers me almost as much as James/Lucinda. Jack's character has unfolded quite a bit during the past month and has become much less affable. His continued animosity towards Brad makes him appear to be a self-righteous prig. He claimed he wanted to give Julia the kind of life she has dreamed about and I thought surely he was going to ask her to marry him. But no, he wants her to move in with him. Big deal! And Julia seems to think this is simply marvelous. I think it is a cop-out and eventually Jack is going to go another round with Carly. Julia's "Gaslight" experience has been overwritten and overacted. This, of course, is not the fault of the actress. These episodes have continued unabated for weeks on end and we are no closer to finding out if she is truly delusional, if she has been drugged (as Lily was in Malta), or if there really is a person out to drive her insane. This could have been done in a more sinister, more understated, certainly less hysterical manner. Julia is fast rivaling Lily as the Hysteria Princess. Finally I just want to say that gimmicks such as the farce in the faux Caribbean (or the sinking of the Valetta) do not a sweeps make. At least not for me. There were some funny, distracting moments but I much prefer consistent unfolding drama on a soap. Every time I write here I refer to Y & R and I am again going to do that. Their sweeps contained not one gimmick. What they did do was feature their core cast in dramatic denouements to well established stories. It was compelling (something ATWT has not been able to accomplish since Diego was shot) and I watched every day. Ms. B. would do well to take a page out of their writer's manual. She needs to be true to her characters and stop trying to turn them into something they are not. She needs to find her focus and feature the actors who have made this soap great. I am continually disappointed at the back-burner status of Kim, Bob, Emma, Susan, Andy and Cal. And most of all she needs to try her hand at originality. What I see her doing is taking the standard soap story lines/ploys and pushing them as far as she can, sometimes to be point of absurdity.
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