Torchwood Casting

[shipperx]

Holy cow, Torchwood has cast "All My Children"'s WhoreX5 

(I know that fandom term for her sounds horrid... but you really would have needed to have seen the storyline and the process by which the nickname came about on forums because it got really old listing all of her various and sundry crimes-against-the-audiences-sensibilities that usually degenerated into spitting rage fests about "BABY STEALER!!!")  Man, there were celebrations when this girl left the show.  (Bigger celebrations when they killed off the character who was then dubbed 'the Whorpse.' )
 
[ Note to soap writers:  It's really difficult to garner sympathy for a character who steals her best friend's child, claims it as her own, and takes it to it's own memorial service before oh-so-kindly appointing the grieving biological parent as godmother... to her own freaking stolen child! ] *ahem.*  

Wretched and widely hated character.  Nothing particularly wrong with the actress though.  She was pretty unobjectionable and had her moments -- though with a tendency to over-cry  (and she was really friendly to her femslash fans... of which there were many...until her character stole her lesbian best friend's child).  It wasn't the actress' fault that they wrote her character as a walking twat that stole babies (the use of the plural is accurate as she also posed as a nanny and kidnapped a State Senator's child... and lied to her her husband that their child was dead [even though it wasn't] on Christmas(!) so she could run off with it and live with his brother.  And later faked her own death to kidnap her child from the custodial father.  You see how baby stealing got to be a theme with her...) 

[Good grief rewatching that, the rationalization, the blameshifting, and the projecting onto J.R. reminds me again of why that character was so freaking hated]

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

And this in a nutshell is why I stay away from soap fandom. ;-)
They make the Buffy fandom look incredibly sane in comparison.

I remember that storyline. But wasn't it the Mom who switched the babies...and Babe didn't find out about it until much later? In fact, I think JR found out before Babe did? It's been a long time.
(Babe was really out of it.)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh. While searching YouTube for the Babe/Bianca confrontation it was a blast from the past to remember just how incredibly convoluted this story was. (this is gonna be long and twisty)

Babe was married to a character over on OLTL. She met rich boy JR and married him... neglecting to divorce the OLTL guy before doing so... so she started her soaplife as a bigamist. Then, on her honeymoon, she met JR's 'brother' Jaime at a 4th of July picnic and promptly sexed him up before returning to her honeymoon. Then she discovered she was pregnant and her and her mom had a secret DNA test because of Whose the Daddy issues.

Somewhere in all this, OLTL guy started to blackmail Babe regarding her bigamy and Babe slept with OLTL guy to prevent her being exposed as a bigamist. Babe having "whose the daddy"/I slept with your brother on our honeymoon issues got exposed, but she had explained that she'd done DNA tests and she was 100% certain JR was the Daddy. Since she was quite preggers at the time, JR played along and 'forgave' but was secretly planning to divorce her after the baby was born and then sue for sole custody.

The week of New Year's, Babe and Bianca were trapped in the requisite 'mountain cabin' where most soap babies are birthed. Bianca gave birth first and passed out. Babe managed to contact the EMT's, then went into labor herself. The EMT who arrived was... OLTL guy... who over on OLTL was being blackmailed by Kelly Cramer who had baby-adoption rabies, because she was faking a pregnancy at that time. OLTL-guy needed a baby stat, and, pissed with his rich bigamist wife, he decided to take Babe's. So he did. Drugging both Babe and Bianca, he stole Babe and JR's baby, flew it to Llanview, and gave it to Kelly Cramer. Then he returned, crashed the lifeflight helicopter, and placed one of the incubators in the river so that baby would be 'lost'/drowned.

Back in Pine Valley, JR, Krystal, Jack, Erica, Kendal, etc were ready to shit a brick over Babe and Bianca's disappearance. JR and Adam were the first to come across the crashed helicopter and OLTL guy and they put the fear of his life and lawsuits into OLTL guy, causing him to re-think his "steal my bigamist wife's baby" thing. So, although it was Babe and JR's baby that he gave to Kelly, OLTL guy told JR that it was Bianca's baby that 'drowned' and that the baby girl in the other incubator was JR and Babe's child. Babe and Bianca both had blood poisoning by this time and were out of their gourds.

When they arrived at Pine Vally hospital, the dead baby/live baby thing was revealed to Krystal... who, because she had played a part in the DNA test hinky-dinks was aware that Babe and JR's baby was a boy not a girl. She immediately realized that the baby's must've been swapped and that Babe's had 'died', but... she decided to keep her mouth shut. Babe hovered near death for a while but when she began to improve they showed her her 'baby'... and she was immediately freaked too. Because... it was supposed to be a boy. Krystal rationalized that there must have been some 'mistake.' Babe fell pretty easily in denial.

Then (I'm vague on the timing of this bit) at some point Babe's bigamy got exposed. (It may have had something to do with OLTL-guy being murdered over on OLTL, or it may have been OLTL-guy hitting up JR for extortion money). Shit hit fan. Marital fury ensued...again. But if JR and Babe weren't married, it meant that OLTL guy was legally 'Bess's' dad which might cause JR trouble gaining custory, so he faked forgiving her (again) and asked Babe to marry him all over again.

Kendal had been on some tear ever since the night of the helicopter crash that something was wrong, and that Babe had the wrong baby and she wanted a DNA test, damnit! She had a screaming fit at Babe ripping through Babe's flimsey veil of denial as Krystal produced ye-old DNA test proving that 'Bess' was Babe and JR's. Babe let that slide. Babe privately confronted Krystal who confessed that it was true, the babies had been swapped, but that she -- Krystal -- had simply doctored the old DNA and changed boy to girl.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Bianca had a shitfit and threatened to disown Kendal over Kendal having 'hurt' and embarrassed Babe by her 'unfounded accusations.' (Actually, had she not been outmaneuvered by the Krystal DNA test, Kendal had been dead on the money). Babe did nothing, having decided that it was the swapped baby holding her marriage together. She wouldn't risk telling JR that their baby had died.

All this wasn't a long span of time, however, because Babe knew that that "Bess" was not her child because the big-ass gripe everyone had with Babe was that she knowingly took 'Bess' to her own memorial service. That outrage was never, ever forgotten on the boards. She also came up with some bizarre rationalization about making Bianca 'godmother' to Miranda-bess that she was 'sharing' Bianca's baby with Bianca. So she also knew about the swap before 'Bess's christening (another black mark against her on the boards).

Then Babe spent the next 9+ months crying almost daily that she'd do anything to make Bianca feel better. Anything but tell Bianca the truth about her baby. Jaime, however, figured it out and confronted Babe. Babe weeped copiously, talking about how she wuved JR and she couldn't risk losing him, so Jaime decided to keep quiet. And the big, strong lunk's noble silence won Babes heart... so she started to have an affair with Jaime.

Then (I forget how) she figured out that OLTL-guy had lied and that OLTL's Kelly and Kevin had hers and JR's baby and were raising it as their own. Voila! Babe decided that she could give Bianca her baby back, all she had to do was get her own baby back first!

Complicating factor there being that by then she was in 'wuv' with Jaime. So she made a plan. She crossed over to OLTL, got hired as a campaign worker in Kevin's senate campaign (I think he was estranged from Kelly at that time), flirted with him for access offering teh sexxing soe she could get into his home, drug the baby nanny, and steal "Ace." Now with her own baby back, she wrote a letter to JR telling him that the baby that he had raised for a year wasn't his baby. That their baby had died in the crash. Bess was Bianca's, she was running away with his 'brother.'

JR completely freaking lost it and stormed over to Bianca's waving Babe's letter, screaming that he wouldn't fall for a cheap trick like this so that Binks could take Bess and give her to his runaway wife. Bianca on the other hand screamed that JR was evil, that he had evilly, evily forged Babe's 'confession' about stealing her baby, because Babe would never, ever, ever do such a terrible thing. He was just evilly, evil trying to shatter Babe and Bianca's special friendship.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

So, JR actually revealed the baby swap on the very day that he'd learned about it, it's just that neither he nor Bianca actually believed it (albeit for entirely different reasons). But both he and Bianca had the same amount of info and denied it.

Off in Florida, Tad had tracked down Jaime and Babe...and discovered that they were walking around with the Senator's kidnapped child "Ace." Babe and Jaime told Tad all, and Tad told them that Bianca didn't have her baby back...and it was all JR's fault because Babe had written a letter, after all.

So Babe arranged to meet Bianca in person to tell her the truth. Jaime cornered JR about how eeeevil he was to not have given Bianca's baby back. JR declared "lies! lies! lies!' Jaime taunted JR that God didn't think that JR deserved a baby, that's why God killed his. JR snapped and beat the shit out of Jaime, and headed out to confront Babe.

Babe confessed to Binks in the clip I linked (that went on for several clips more). JR arrived, he and Bianca got into a screaming match that had JR pushing Bianca. Bianca hit a faulty balcony guardrail and nearly fell to her death. She ended up in a coma.

Tad dropped hints to Erica about the truth about Bess (keeping hidden the truth about Ace being alive). Erica broached Adam with the truth. Adam consented to have DNA test run on Bess. The test came back that Bess was Bianca's. Adam was the one to convince JR to relinquish Bess. Binks awoke from her coma in a "Christas miracle" when Bess/Miranda was brought to her hosptial bed... contrasted with JR curled up in a fetal position sobbing on Bess's nursery floor. Jaime/Babe decorated a Christmas tree in Florida.

When Feb sweeps rolled around the Ace end of the equation popped, JR discovered that Babe had lied (again), that she had kidnapped "Ace"/Kevin Buchanan's son (Kevin Buchanan BTW, had never known that Ace wasn't his biological child because Kelly had done the whole fake preganancy thing. So Kevin was also blindsided, losing a kid he'd raised for over a year as his. Father's rights really weren't respected in this story).

Because of all the kidnapping going on, JR got custody of Ace. Babe broke up with Jaime and re-married JR so as to get ---now dubbed "Little 'A" --back (never understood why they didn't keep 'Ace'). Jaime left town. And she promptly began an affair with another guy, faked her own death and tried to steal Lil' A again with the help of nuGuy. At some point further down the line, JR and Babe married yet again and a house literally fell on her in a tornado. JR grieved... and at some point after I stopped watching he married Babe's long lost sister... thus is soapdom.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recap.

Yeah, I remember all of that now. It was an annoying storyline, but I've admittedly never been that fond of the baby swap trope in soaps. This one was possibly the most convoluted since it included One Life to Live in the mix.

They didn't keep the name "Ace" because Adam has a thing about every first born son being named after him.
So, characterwise - it made no sense to keep (Asa Buchanan's name) when you should have (Adam Chandler's name).
(That - at least was character dictated.)

I gave up on AMC somewhere around the whole Tornado bit. I think that was the last episode I watched - was the Tornado. I didn't really like any of the featured characters, can't stand Kendall and Greenlee, and really despised Ryan. And since it was pretty much the Kendal/Greenlee and Ryan show...that was that. ;-)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I hate Greenlee with a passion and somewhere between marrying Greenlee and the "I AM that monster" incident, Ryan went into the "dead to me" folder. And the secret vasectomy/robbing the sperm bank saga made me hate them both.

I don't really remember at what point I stopped watching the show.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Me too. Also can't quite remember when I stopped. I liked the guy playing Zach, so hung on for a bit for him, also hung around for Tad - was a huge fan of Tad, and liked the Tad/Krystal pairing. Also the whole Tad/Zach/Dixie story was rather interesting. But Tad got too old for the writers. And
the younger crowd did not interest me at all.

I came back briefly for the Jesse/Ange storyline (except it made no sense - actually come to think of it? The Buffy Comics remind me a great deal of daytime soap operas ...and my relationship with daytime soap operas. Lets' see: 1) insane convoluted plot that no one can follow? check, 2) previously ambiguously grey character, who was huge leading man or woman and romantic love interest goes evil for no reason then is all of sudden considered not evil? check, 3. Female heroine drops everything to go off with ambiguous character who she used to love, doesn't anymore, but wait no does - ignoring everything else? check, 4) repeats old storylines ad naseum? check, 5) gets preachy and feels need to do big message theme or morale theme? check. 6) characters thrown together in sexual situations that make no sense just to see if it works, then broken when it doesn't? check...7) previously killed off characters - brought back to life, even though we saw them die onscreen and their organs given away to people (that's what happened with Jesse) or burned to a crisp (Warren) - because oops, the writers forgot they did that!) You know? I'm pretty good at excusing most of these things...justifying it with, it's a soap opera, ain't supposed to make sense, as long as I like the characters, care about them, and their stories resonate for me on some level - all is well. But the moment, the moment! That they stop resonating for me. That I stop caring, or liking them, (mostly it's about caring one way or another),
and find their stories to be irritating? I'm done. Hasta La Vista, Baby.

Which is basically what happened with All My Children, One Life to Live, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, (I stopped watching the latter two years before they ended and went off air), Star Wars,and well the X-men comics. And now...Buffy has been added to that list as well. I stop caring about the characters, they stop working for me on some indescribably basic emotional level? I'm gone. It does take a lot to do it. But once it happens? I'm gone and there's no going back. ;-)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm in a really weird situation with the comics because I can't imagine actually caring what happens any more, and yet I still find myself picking at it like a scab.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! I think it's the five stages of grief...or it was for me.
Denial (this isn't really canon, so it doesn't matter), Bargaining (fanwank), anger (snarky critiques), and finally acceptance...alrighty then it's clear that the best ending I'm going to get is Chosen and Not Fade Away. And it's best I ignore everything else and treat it like weird fanfic.

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Wow, this was a blast from my soap-watching days past . . . the only thing I'm asking is Babe is a regular while Dichen is only a one-shot guest? WTF is RTD thinking?! The geek loyalty alone would follow Dichen, and isn't that Torchwood's target audience?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Seems odd. Though I am interested in what all of this will produce.

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Yes, this whole "new Torchwood" gets curiouser and curiouser . . .