Deep Soap: Gone Baby Gone

It’s Ten O’Clock. Do You Know Where Your Baby Is?

I hope the health reform bill will have a special section covering soap obstetrics. Baby stealing has become a pandemic, that threatens to destroy the soap nuclear family, as babies spend months or even years raised by the wrong parents, then must readjust to new homes when the truth about their parentage is discovered. There should be a law mandating that all newborns be assigned a guard until they leave the hospital. Specially trained psychotherapists should be dispatched to every soap town to help all the little Hopes and Faiths adjust to their new families. Also, soap mothers should stop naming their babies Hope and Faith. It’s just asking for trouble!

This is a long way of saying that in the midst of last week’s casting madness, I did not get a chance to comment on daytime’s newest babymapping victim, little Hope Abbott Newman of The Young & The Restless. Even the most carefully crafted babynappings require both a combination of convenient coincidence and hospital ineptitude. But this babynapping resulted from more than an unguarded nursery. Y&R asked viewers to believe that:

1. Two women in labor would not be allowed to leave a locked mental ward in order to get adequate medical care.
2. Not a single one of the psychiatrists on staff at said mental hospital, who presumably completed all of the standard rotations during medical school, have any experience delivering babies. I cannot be the only one who remembers that moving episode of Growing Pains where psychiatrist Mike Seaver successfully delivers a baby.
3. No nurses would step in to assist the women.
4. In fact, the hospital would allow a legally blind man with no medical training to deliver a baby without supervision.
5. Sharon, who had not only regular pre-natal care but genetic testing to determine her baby’s paternity, would believe that her baby was so severely malformed that she should not see its body.
6. Adam would figure out the precise dosage of drugs to give Ashley so she would black out and have no memory of her hysterical labor.
7. Ashley, after regaining consciousness would not notice that her body does not look or feel like she just gave birth. She has had babies before. I do not want to be overly graphic, but I doubt a hysterical pregnancy would mimic those physical effects.
8. Adam and Dr. Taylor would be able to move the baby from Sharon’s hospital room to Ashley’s without anybody noticing. Shouldn’t there have been staff patrolling the hallways during this lockdown?
9. How convenient that Ashley’s faux labor would occur at the exact same moment as Sharon’s real labor.
10. Nick would not ask more questions about his dead child. Sharon was physically and emotionally spent, and vulnerable enough to believe Dr. Taylor’s claims. Nick should have been suspicious.

Even by soap baby switching standards, this is ridiculous. I do not believe that Sharon would not want to say goodbye to her baby, no matter what she looked like. Sharon is not squeamish. She saw Noah when he was premature. I realize that willing suspension of disbelief is a part of all babyswitch storylines. We know that in the real world mothers and babies are assigned mtaching identity bracelets along with hundreds of other precautions to make sure no actual baby switches occur. This is just the set up. The payoff is that Victor is now raising his grandson as his son. This will complicate the usual medical testing reveal. It’s also why I think Y&R is hoping Eric Braeden will come back. The story will be incomplete without Victor. There should have been a more logical, elegant way to get to this point. Way back when Sheila swapped Lauren’s baby with one she purchased on the black market, she was able to use her nursing credentials to gain access to the nursery. It made sense. I encourage General Hospital’s Carly and all of the other soap Moms to be to consider a hippie home birth with a midwife. It is the only way to insure that you will get to raise your baby.

The Definition of Bad News

SoapCentral is reporting that ABC is postponing plans to upgrade One Life To Live in high definition, citing economic difficulties. With rumors swirling that the show only has one year to live, this is indeed worrisome. ABC is spending plenty of money to move All My Children across the country. I am choosing to remain optimistic. OLTL consistently beats AMC in key demographics. It does very well on SoapNet. Hopefully, this really is a simple financial issue.

Not So Happy Return

Greenlee Smythe, as played by Rebecca Budig, used to be one of my favorite soap characters. Unfortunately, I cannot muster any enthusiasm for her recently announced return to All My Children. Her last stint on the show damaged her character beyond recognition. A good writing team could rehabilitate her into the fun, spoiled yet ambitious person she used to be. I am doubtful that this regime can pull it off. I definitely do not want to see her in her rumored storyline — a love triangle with Erica and Ryan. That is just nasty. Setting aside the Erica issue, I have never found Ryan and Greenlee to be a rootable couple. They bring out the worst in each other. In fact, I do not think that any of Greenlee’s post- Leo relationships worked. Budig is coming back, it seems, because the show is moving to L.A. and she needs a job. AMC, smarting from the loss of Thorsten Kaye, is scrambling for big names to replace him. In my humble opinion, the only way Greenlee will work is if they pair her with someone new — Scott, Frankie, Brot. I do not want to see her and Ryan emotionally abuse each other again. Better yet, since Budig does not want to sign a longterm contract, I’d like to see Josh Duhamel pull a James Franco and come back for a short stint to give Leo and Greenlee the happily ever after ending they so richly deserve.

More on These Topics: Deep Soap | The Young & The Restless | Top