Alan’s Soap Box: The Best Decisions Soaps Have Made in 2021

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I have my annual Best and Worst thread that I start around mid-November with categories like The Chandler Massey Award For Phoning It In and Best Actress In a [redacted word for excrement] Story. This year, I’ve decided to utilize my column here at The Pop Break to kick off the Best and Worst season with a list of the best decisions soaps have made in 2021. It is very easy for me to be negative, so I’m going to embrace the positive and maybe get in a few digs because my personality is what it is.

10. Hiring Rory Gibson as Noah, The Young and the Restless

It is no secret that I haven’t liked a lot of the decisions Y&R has made this year. The show is a bore. They recently had an episode about which character was going to say goodbye to another character when these people all live in the same town! You are going to be seeing these people at the same three places that everyone in Genoa City congregates at. It doesn’t matter if you say goodbye at a fancy wedding in Italy.

Although, Y&R has made a wise decision in bringing back Noah in the form of Rory Gibson. As the son of one of Y&R’s most popular pairings of all time, Nick and Sharon, Noah’s presence was badly needed. The show lacked young leading men after Kyle’s exit because Y&R allegedly wouldn’t give Michael Mealor outs to do other projects. Noah is obviously here to fill that younger leading man void.

Y&R has largely not cared much for Noah since he was a teen. There have been several lackluster pairings and not a lot of investment in his character beyond making him a less slutty Nick Jr. Hopefully now that can change. Rory is handsome, he’s younger than Noah’s previous portrayer Robert Adamson, and he has parent/child chemistry with Joshua Morrow and Sharon Case. Robert had inappropriate chemistry with Sharon, so it is a good thing Rory’s chemistry with her isn’t that vibe. I don’t think Noah needs an oedipal complex. That kind of dysfunction can be reserved for Victoria who married a softer version of her father.

Hopefully Y&R gives Rory the story and pairing he needs to cement his take on Noah because he is a good hire. Y&R has a habit of hiring talented young people and wasting them, so I really want them to buck that trend. The show has young in the title. Act like it.

9. The initial Quinn and Carter affair, The Bold and the Beautiful

While the story eventually took an offensive turn into cuckold porn plot territory, the start of Quinn and Carter was hot. Rena Sofer and Lawrence Saint-Victor have excellent chemistry and fans were desperate for a story that didn’t involve Liam being the worst or Thomas dry humping a doll. Soaps thrive on illicit sex and drama and B&B gave that to us. Then, they had to go and have Pop Pop Eric order Carter to pleasure his wife because his penis refused to go into Quinn, which is very rude of Eric’s penis. I’ll always have fond memories of Quinn and Carter banging before Papa Smurf dictated it.

8. Hiring Jamey Giddens as a breakdown writer, Days of Our Lives

While Jamey’s work hasn’t aired yet, I must applaud the decision by head writer Ron Carlivati to bring him onto the writing team. Jamey showed great instincts for modern soap writing on short-lived OWN series Ambitions and has been watching Days for decades. Days was also the only soap that had zero Black writers prior to his hiring. This is important because there needs to be someone on the writing staff that knows the Black experience, especially since they’ve added new Black characters. Ron is a middle-aged white gay man, so he needed someone with that cultural specificity to better inform him about things he might not know about.

The story where JJ shot Theo is still a sore spot for fans years later. The story did have positives. It got James Reynolds an Emmy and had great scenes; however, it was very white focused. The show was more focused on JJ’s pain than Theo, who almost died. The show was trying to be timely, but by centering the pain of the white cop, it turned a lot of people off. Hopefully with Jamey now involved, future stories like that can be more sensitively told. Jamey can do that and give Ron a one-man show over Zoom all about Marlena’s history. He knows the show, and I’m so happy for him.

7. Sonny and Nina, General Hospital

I usually hate Sonny in pairings. They usually have him telling the Brenda Bot a sob story about his stepdad Deke being mean to him, and then he takes them to the island he bought with his mob money and gives them a dress. Lather, rinse, and repeat. Sonny and Nina aren’t in that tired pattern. Why? Because he had amnesia. The lack of autobiographical memory led to Sonny getting to know Nina through working at the Tan-O and not through his usual script of seducing women. It felt fresh. Of course, Nina knew his identity the entire time, but Sonny had no interest in finding it out. He was happy just tending bar and flirting with Nina.

Now that Sonny has his memories back, the spark is still there between them. It’s clear that Sonny still has feelings for her. He didn’t rat her out to Carly the minute he returned because it was obvious he wanted to protect her. His interactions with Nina still have an undercurrent of flirting even if he’s ostensibly mad at her. Fans who have watched GH for a long time know that when Sonny is really mad, the gun comes out or he threatens to kill them. He once threatened to kill baby mama Alexis when she was district attorney back in the mid-2000s! He’s been kind to Nina in every interaction they’ve had post-identity reveal, so you know he still wants her.

Now that Nina has been arrested on trumped up charges of fraud and identity theft because that blob of unseasoned mashed potatoes called Michael bribed a D.A., she’s now a damsel in distress and we all know Sonny won’t be able to resist helping her. GH pretending that not telling someone his name is a crime is annoying, but I’m here for it leading Sonny into “must save my woman!” mode.

Cynthia Watros and Maurice Benard have excellent chemistry, so kudos to Frank Valentini, Chris Van Etten, and Dan O’Connor for this pairing. They have me watching scenes with Sonny in them without fast forwarding or rolling my eyes, which is quite a feat.

6. Giving Camryn Grimes a story, The Young and the Restless

While I would say that Y&R’s “We Are The World” baby story, which had a Black man who donated sperm and a bisexual woman who had never been pregnant join together to give a wealthy white woman a baby, is one of the worst stories of the year, it did give Camryn a story. She had been sidelined for too long. Mariah just existed as a talk-to and busybody auntie type. Camryn is 31 and a two-time Emmy winner. She’s too young and talented to be playing a character that just existed to be like, “Oh, you are dating that woman? I don’t approve! Let me lecture you about it because I don’t have a life of my own because this show doesn’t want to give me a story of my own lest a grandma in Kentucky gets upset about it. Mrs. Kravitz noises!”

Would I prefer she had gotten a good story? Obviously. But Camryn was handed dog crap squished between two rocks like it was a sandwich and turned it out. She’s likely going to win another Emmy next year and it will be deserved. This horrid story also gave Cait Fairbanks some material to play which I’m grateful for. Tessa tearfully telling Mariah how unfair it was of her to push her into having a baby was one of the best scenes from Y&R this year. Can we get a better story now for them please? They can bring back Mariah’s one-night stand Lindsay as a psycho and I’d take it over baby rabies.

5. Hiring Dan Feuerrigel as EJ, Days of our Lives

If you are thinking “Alan, I distinctly remember your horrible nasally voice calling Dan ugly on the podcast The Chat earlier this year,” you are correct. I sure did call him ugly. I have reversed that opinion as I have become accustomed to his face. He is attractive and, more importantly, he’s a good recast. Dan’s EJ was the missing ingredient the DiMera family needed. Chad is too dumb to be the center of the family. Jake is a sitcom character masquerading as a soap character. You can’t even take him threatening someone with a gun seriously. Kristen is deadly, but ultimately too unstable to head the family. EJ is just right.

Dan’s EJ works as the cold and petty manipulator. Dan was delightful in the scenes where EJ was trolling Chad and Abigail by financing Johnny’s film just to twist the knife in Chad’s back by playing John to Abigail’s Marlena. EJ wanted to remind Chad that he has bedded Abigail before and he can do it again. Why do this? Because Chad wasn’t going along with what he wanted, and EJ loves drama.

James Scott’s EJ was not as cold as Dan’s take on the character, but it works for me. EJ spent years as a resurrected vegetable, then a burn victim wearing a diaper and getting fed porridge by Sami. That would be enough to turn anyone colder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNSbQr–gMg

4. Spencer and Trina, General Hospital

Nicholas Chavez was a great find by GH casting director Mark Teschner. He was stiff as hell his first week, but he settled in and held his own with heavy hitters like Maura West, Genie Francis, and Jon Lindstrom. Most importantly he’s found a popular pairing in Sprina. Nicholas and Sydney Mikayla have that “It” factor that makes a young pairing pop. It also helps that a rich bad boy archetype paired with a brainy girl who says what she means is shipper catnip. I hope they continue to deliver because this ship is one of the most talked about things on GH hashtag.

3. Hiring Jackee Harry, Days of Our Lives

Bringing on Jackee to play new matriarch Paulina Price was an inspired choice. She can do comedy and drama and adds a new flavor to Salem that wasn’t there before. Paulina and her daughter Chanel’s reactions to learning about the history of the characters has been priceless. I would watch an entire episode of just Paulina and Chanel reacting to the things these crazy white people have gone through. Can you imagine them hearing about the Salem Stalker story? “So a dead body fell out of a Thanksgiving pinata and she later turned out to be alive with all the other dead people including Abe? Wait. You people thought she and her twin brother were aliens at first?!”

Ron’s track record with creating new characters has been pretty dismal at Days, so I’m very happy he finally got a win that also gave long-time character Abe a love interest and story to play. This time last year I was ready for Ron to be fired, but he’s earned a bunch of goodwill with me this year.

2. Putting the Devil back in Marlena, Days of Our Lives

When Ron was first hired at Days in 2017, I had a feeling he’d eventually revisit the possession. Ron loves the history of a show and he’s not afraid of outlandish stories. He had Bo and Rex time travel back to 1968 on One Life to Live. I didn’t expect it would take this long for Satan to return to Salem, but I’m glad he waited. The show had a budget increase to do this story justice. If he had done this story a few years ago, they would have barely been able to afford the demonic contact lens, let alone John being thrown around like a rag doll around a church or MarDevil teleporting.

You can tell Deidre Hall is having the time of her life playing MarDevil again. It is the best material she’s gotten in years. Days isn’t perfect, but they know who the queen of the show is and it is Deidre. Meanwhile over at The Bold and the Beautiful, they have Katherine Kelly Lang’s Brooke talking about her ex-husband/father-in-law’s dong problems. Marlena could very easily be written as talk to like Brooke does, but she’s the driving force of the story on Days and I have so much respect for them doing this.

1. General Hospital’s Vaccine Mandate

GH is the only soap to have a mandate for all actors and crew members to get vaccinated, and it is the best decision on soaps this year. The deadline is coming up very soon. Everyone should be able to go to work and feel safe without having some conspiracy-theory-reading idiot breathing on them unmasked during scenes. If they don’t want to get vaccinated, they can get a real estate license or show orifices on OnlyFans. They have that choice.

Shoutout to Nancy Lee Grahn for being very vocal about the unvaccinated problem at GH. I have called Nancy chaotic for social media snafus she’s had (the tweets about the Ellen Pompeo/Denzel situation were yikes), but in this case she was doing the right thing. There are immunocompromised people, parents with young kids, and elderly people on that set. Good for Nancy for advocating for herself and them.

I hope every soap takes up a vaccine mandate. It is good business sense because you don’t want to have Covid related shutdowns, but from a human perspective you should want to protect your workers. If you lose a few actors and crew, oh well. Everyone is replaceable. A safe set is more important.

Dispatches from Soap Land:

*If B&B puts Katie with Carter, I expect her to have another heart attack or have her arm fall off during sex. I don’t think she can handle all that man.

*I continue to be annoyed at Days insisting on putting Rafe with Nicole. If they have sex, is Duke the bear going to be cheering them on in the corner? “Swivel those hips, partner!”

*Y&R putting Abby with Devon would have worked a decade ago when Devon’s love interest was a day player no one cared about. Now? No. Just no.

*If Cameron and Esme on GH have sex, Josslyn better push Esme out a window. I want high drama and women taking headers out of windows on soaps again!