It’s Only My Opinion For The Soap Week Ending June 6

A Pleasure To Meet You? (From l.) B&B’s Luna (Lisa Yamada), BTG’s Leslie (Trisha Mann-Grant), GH’s Gio (Giovanni Mazza) and Y&R’s Claire (Hayley Erin) have been introduced with varying degrees of success.

Everyone has a different barometer for what’s believable and not believable on soaps. Timelines mean little to me because a day can last a month on a soap. (I once overheard an NBC exec at an Emmy party say Passions’s entire eight-year run on his network took place in six days.) It’s expensive to change sets all the time, so each show has a small number of bars, restaurants, hotels, etc. that everyone goes to, which works great from a “Fancy bumping into you!” perspective.

Characters fly to Europe and back in a commercial break because sitting on planes is boring. Kids age from toddlers to teens overnight because employing school-aged children brings added costs and time constraints. I get the economics of producing soap operas, so none of that bothers me.

What rankles me is character logic. It’s so obvious when a show introduces a newbie with no clear idea of who they are going to be.

A good example of this is Bold and Beautiful‘s current hell raiser, Luna Nozawa. B&B took her from innocent Forrester intern who lost her virginity to RJ Forrester (another misfire who has completely disappeared) to unwitting drug-taker who had sex with Zende and cried for weeks afterwards with regret. They reframed that story into Luna having actually planned that sex, and then she murdered Tom and Hollis and tried to kill Steffy. Luna went to prison, and that was that until…

Chief Baker: “Luna Nozawa has been pardoned.”

Steffy: “No way.”

Way. No logical reason was given because there isn’t one (I Googled it), but Bill’s defense in orchestrating Luna’s literal get-out-of-jail-free card was that she suffered “significant trauma” in her childhood. And now? Luna teamed up with grandmother/fellow murderer Sheila Carter to reboot her life. First up was stalking Will Spencer, the handsome son of the man who got her sprung from prison, despite his serious relationship with Electra Forrester.

Electra (reading Luna’s text to Will): “ ‘At Il Giardino. Want to be alone with you.’ What the heck?”

Will: “It’s stupid. Luna knows I’m with you, not to mention she’s a double murderer.”

Electra: “Clearly, she doesn’t care.”

She doesn’t. Luna has no money, no friends, no family in her corner (except Sheila on occasion), no job and no home, yet she is the cockiest person on the show. And now she’s out to get Steffy, like that would soften her bio dad Finn’s feelings towards her. It makes no sense.

This story might resonate if Bill were involved, regretting his role in Luna’s parole and making an effort to protect his son, Will. Or if Deacon hadn’t been an MIA dolt for so long, not realizing his wife was hiding the local murderer. Will Sheila be the one to save Steffy from Luna? That might do it…

Over on sister show Young and Restless, it’s hard to understand why they crossed Sally Spectra over from B&B. Her crimes included attempted murder (Bill), kidnapping (Flo), cyberbullying (Hope), larceny, and espionage. It would have been more logical to create a new character for the actress, because the girl who faked a terminal illness to hold onto Wyatt on B&B would never be intimidated by Y&R’s Phyllis. Cut to Claire, who helped her lunatic aunt try to kill the entire Newman family. Now, Nikki is wearing Claire’s picture in a locket around her neck.

Victoria: “Is this new?”

Nikki: “An early birthday gift from your father.”

Victoria (reading the locket): “’ Strength, courage, beauty.’ Dad does love to go big. I think Claire inherited that gene.”

Victor and Claire have both held people hostage, so Y&R can make that argument, but writing Claire as a delicate flower with no backbone doesn’t jibe. We watched her inject vodka into her alcoholic grandmother Nikki’s veins. Claire should be telling Victor to stick it!

Days of Our Lives has a habit of bringing on new characters who do terrible things to people we love, and then backtracking by saying it wasn’t the baddie’s fault, so we should like them. No.

Cat impersonated Chad’s late wife and broke his heart. There’s no coming back from that in my book, even after Cat pleaded her case that she lied about being Abigail back from the dead with plastic surgery (!) because her mother was being held captive.

The same goes for Doug III, whose excuse for stealing Grandma Alice’s valuable necklace on his first day in Salem was that he owed money to someone nefarious. That’s not how rooting value works. Once a stranger hurts our faves, it’s very hard to rebound. Yes, Holly sees some good in Doug III, and yes, Chad has warmed to Cat. But she’ll have to do more than raise money for the hospital to get Chad to forgive Hi, I’m your dead wife.

Beyond The Gates has a once-in-a-lifetime archvillain in Leslie, especially when she praises herself in the mirror for her evil behavior. No notes.

General Hospital deserves credit for hiring an actress of Eva LaRue’s caliber to play the unlikable mother of Blaze, but the show underestimated the unwillingness of their audience to accept Natalia’s homophobia. This is a show that put Blaze/Kristina and Lucas/Brad front and center, so viewers were conditioned not to accept that. That’s a good thing, although it seems to have cost us an excellent actress in what could have been a pivotal role.

Similarly, I think GH was surprised by how Jenz Sidwell electrified the canvas so they may regret his violence towards Lucky, Isaiah, Anna, Jason, and Sasha. That said, if Lucy Coe sees good in a character, that’s cause to dig deeper. Sidwell’s unconditional love for his gay son, Marco (whose mother is the aforementioned Natalia), goes a long way towards humanizing him.

When in doubt, be vague. We couldn’t get a handle on whether Jack Brennan was a bad guy, good guy, regular jerk, or undercover agent before he set his sights on PC and Carly (never mind the recast). That’s a textbook example of how to bring on a new character: Chem test him with your leading ladies and make us curious about who he is.

Which brings us to Gio Palmieri, er, Quartermaine? No one can dispute his connection to two of PC’s biggest core families, or the value of the reveal that he was the child Brook Lynn gave up in high school after she got pregnant by Dante.

The real payoff there was that GH knew exactly who Gio was when he showed up last summer from the “old neighborhood” to play the violin at Brook Lynn and Chase’s wedding. Think back to when Carly asked Lois about Gio at the Metro Court pool, and Lois acted strangely evasive. Or when Brook Lynn and Lois discussed if she wanted to find her child, and they were interrupted by… her child.

Gio: “Is this a bad time?”

And who could forget that scene at the Q mausoleum when Gio joined Brook Lynn while she was torn about finding her child, and he consoled her.

Brook Lynn: “Sorry to be so cryptic.”

Gio: “Well, we are at a crypt.”

When Gio said Brook Lynn and her family “felt closer to him than cousins” back then, it was a flare gun only we could see. That’s how you set up a newcomer, with all of us going “Hmmm” for a year, then showing us we were right.

Never underestimate character logic!

Hey. It’s only my opinion.