Today’s episode of One Life To Live was crazy. Rex is on the operating table, dying. While they’re working on him, he’s playing a game show for his life called “So you think you can be Shane Marasco’s father”. They brought back some of the old cast for it, including Colin McIver (the VERY yummy Ty Treadway), Jen Rappaport and Lindsey Rappaport. To win the game and stay alive he has to name his father. The candidates he has to choose from are Bo Buchanan, RJ Gannon, Walter Balsom, David Vickers (the man, not the dog), Mitch Lawrence, Charlie Banks, Cain Rogan, Jackie McNaughton, or Snoop Dogg. My vote is for Mitch Lawrence. Who do you think Rex’s father is?

Well, I’ve just finished watching the season 2 premiere of the SoapNet  series General Hospital Night Shift. I just don’t get what they’re trying to accomplish here. The main characters here seem to be 3 characters from General Hospital. There are one or two cast members from Night Shift’s first season but for the most part it’s all new faces. Jagger arrived in Port Charles, he hasn’t been on General in so many years I forget how long it’s been. One of the characters they kept from the first season, Dr Julian, has been recast with someone who looks and acts nothing like him. Robin and Patrick are moving forward with the pregnancy storyline that’s occurring during the day, so obviously there is show carryover. So far I just don’t see the point. Any GH fans out there? What are your thoughts?

I was catching up on some tv today, I have four hours each of three soaps on the tivo. All My Children came on and I noticed that quite a few of the people that appear in the shows intro aren’t even on the show any more. With turnover and casting changes being what they are for soaps, I don’t think characters should be shown during the intro at all. What do you think?

I was tivo’ing through two days of soaps today when I realized that most home interior sets on the soaps I watch always have flowers. Just the houses and apartments, not usually the office sets and not even the hospitals so much. I started wondering if they were real, and I’m thinking probably not. My guess is they’re probably silk flowers, because if they were real ones they’d always need to replace them with more live ones and that would cost a fortune. Whatever they are, they always look nice, that’s for sure.

I watch All My Children. Actually, I watch all three of the ABC soaps. This month All My Children brought back two characters from the past that were fan favorites - Angie and Jessie. Now Angie was alive, somewhere. Jessie was thought to be dead, but it turns out he was hiding. The storyline was heading in a silly direction, like tv shows sometimes do. Well, this week, things got weirder and left me asking myself a question I haven’t figured out the answer to yet. This week, for Angie and Jessie’s wedding (not the first), their old good friend Greg flew in. Viewers have seen some flashbacks to scenes from many years ago, a number of which include Jenny. Now why is it they couldn’t bring Jenny back on for a few days to do something. She was played by Kim Delaney, later of NYPD Blue. We had a grave scene full of memories. Why didn’t they write a few scenes for a ghost Jenny or something? It would have fit in much better. I mean come on, they brought back Dixie last week to haunt Adam. What’s one more ghost floating around? Anyway. The powers that be over at AMC seem to be focusing on the middle age characters for the moment. Does anyone else watch AMC? Have you been enjoying the episodes from the last two weeks?  Oh. What happened to the old Colby anyway?

Have you ever watched a show where the plot focuses on an ad campaign run by one of the show’s characters? This has happened to me a couple of times with my soaps. All My Children characters run a business and occasionally the pretend company’s advertising coincides with the real deal. Right now is one of those times. Recently on All My Children they’ve been mentioning the Campbell’s Go Red For Women movement, along with the mention of the color red and heart disease. Turns out this one’s for real!

February is American Heart Month. The leading cause of death in American men and women is heart disease. To promote public awareness about this killer disease Campbell’s is running the Go Red For Movement. Along with offering valuable facts about heart disease and a personal risk assessment tool, the Campbell’s Go Red For Women website  features three dresses created by designer Lisa Perry that the public can vote on. The dress that receives the most votes by January 30 is the one Toni Braxton will wear at the Women’s Day Red Dress Awards being held to kick off American Heart month. For each vote cast on the Campbell’s Go Red For Women website Campbell’s will donate $1 toward the funding of public awareness campaigns to educate people about this deadly disease.

Please take a moment to vote because it’s so important and could help so many people.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers say that “67 percent — 64 of 96 — television series this season are scripted, down from 81 percent just two seasons ago.”

All late night shows are in repeats now, except for Nightline which will remain live and original.

Soaps can make it into 2008. How far into the new year depends on the show. NBC says they have enough to get through January. CBS says they have enough to get through February. ABC says their soaps are written “well into the new year,” and that they will “continue to produce original programming with no repeats and without interruption.”

Production has already shut down Desperate Housewives, Greys Anatomy, New Adventures of Old Christine, Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Rules of Engagement, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Heroes, Back To You, Til Death and KVille.

I hope they can come to an agreement soon or there will be little tv to watch that I want to watch.

We have the DirecTv Premium package, which means we have all the channels. One of the channels I really like is the SoapNet channel. Here’s the reason I like it. It plays my ABC soaps every night. You’re thinking “big deal”, right? It can be huge here in Jersey, where things are interrupted and pre-empted all the time. Well SoapNet shows the complete episode, no matter whether it was pre-empted on the local channel or not. Cool huh?
SoapNet carries current soaps including All My Children, One Life To Live, General Hospital, The Young and The Restless, Days of Our Lives, As The World Turns and Guiding Light, Passions and The Bold and The Beautiful. The channel shows episodes of older soaps including Ryan’s Hope, Port Charles, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, Dallas, The Colbys, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Another World and Knots Landing. The channel also offers some original programming as well. If you like soaps, this is for you.

When the SoapNet channel introduced General Hospital Night Shift earlier this year, it was stated that they wanted the show to stand on its own, and that viewers would not have to watch both shows for things to make sense. Characters were to overlap but most stories wouldn’t. Well now that the Night Shift season is over, the powers that be have carried over a couple of storylines. How can some storylines and not all be carried over? Patrick and Leyla romancing carried over. Lainey’s father was still murdered, and we saw that character carry back over to GH as well. Dr Julian and Dr Archer both have appeared on GH. Nurse Jolene murdering patients to help an hmo take over carried over to GH. They did not attempt to carry over some ridiculous stories, such as Jason performing community service at the hospital. On GH Jason was in jail at that time, so that would be hard to carry over. I think the show was disappointing and served no useful purpose.

Let me start by sharing with you shows I currently watch every week. I have a season pass set up on our living room Tivo for most if not all of them. Tivo’s season pass allows the viewer to schedule all or just some episodes of a tv series. This list doesn’t include what we watch occasionally, anything we watch on a whim , movies or news - it’s just current recurring series.
Soaps. I only watch ABC soaps. All My Children, One Life To Live and General Hospital.
Comedy. Til Death.
Drama. Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, ER.
I just started watching these shows this season. Some are new, one is not. Two and a Half Men, Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money, Big Love, Burn Notice, The Dead Zone.