Watching the soaps for the last week has been pretty interesting. As the World Turns and General Hospital approach the Sweeps period from almost diametrically opposed perspectives. On the former, you would never know that it's February sweeps. Characters sit down and talk about their feelings, that guy Paul in the cabin sweats a lot more and has a couple visions, and . . . tune in tomorrow. General Hospital, on the other hand, has dropped everything that was going on last week in order to tell the story of the "nasty strain of encephalitis" that's sweeping Port Charles, thanks to that effing chimpanzee. It seems like GH hangs every sweeps period on a disaster of this sort. A few years ago, everyone was trapped in the same hotel fire. November sweeps last year featured a train crash, both literal and figurative. The incredibly boring aftermath of the crash lasted nearly a month, in which the characters had the same conversations over and over again, only inside a collapsed tunnel rather than over coffee at Kelly's, as they normally would.
Not surprisingly, the gay storylines on the two shows are very different. GH used Lucas for a couple of splashy weeks, then sidelined him for the big epidemic, except for the occasional aside about how his parents just don't understand him. While some of the dialogue has had a ring of truth to it, the the story has been overwhelmingly artificial and appears to be over, at least until everyone else's brain fever starts to subside.
On ATWT, meanwhile, the Luke storyline is playing out much more slowly. Earlier this week, it looked like Holden had figured everything out: the h8edboi blog was a red herring, but Holden's vivid recollection of that backrub was definitely bothering him. Then, over dinner, it looked like Holden was going to share his suspicions with Lily, but all he said -- at agonizing length -- was that he was losing Luke because Luke is not his biological son. Lily and Holden seemed less worried about their son after sharing the ultimate soap comfort food: a steaming bowl of cliches and false pieties. Luke, meanwhile, had sneaked off to meet Kevin at a kegger. Luke's unrequited crush on Kevin, while larded with some incredibly lame dialogue, rings true. By the end of yesterday's episode, Luke seemed to have worked through all of his problems: he sort of got that Kevin was never going to like him that way and he also figured out that the reason he was feeling awful all the time was because he felt so guilty about lying to his parents. Unfortunately, as he raced home to confront them -- and also to avoid getting caught violating the grounding he earned last week -- he was distracted by a call from Kevin and dropped his phone. While fishing around under the seat, he struck a pedestrian. All we saw was a body flying up over the windshield. Oh no! -- Peter
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