And now, a Very Special Ask FOC Dorothy -- She Knows It All:
FOC Dorothy sez: "*puff* *pant* You know, I'm just as inundated with the spirit of the holiday season as the next written-off OLTL character but come ON -- all this Christmas shopping for my extensive, "never seen on camera but once often talked about" family is really wearing my holly jolliness thin. *grrr* And seeing that damn "Red Shoes" ornament Joey gave me last year for my Christmas tree doesn't help, either. I...I hope he won't think it's weird that I'm sending him a Christmas gift this year. Studded gold lame bikini briefs aren't too showy, are they? I mean, someone's got to break him of his "tighty-whitey" habit and it won't be that little loon he's been doing the horizontal tango with lately.
Psychologically, the holiday season is an "upper" for most people but it's a real "downer" for others. There are numerous psychosomatic reasons for this and I'd be happy to look them all up in my eight-volume desk reference set, "Jung-le Bells: Seasonal Psychopathology for the Beginner," but I've got the hit The Gap for a few last-minute stocking stuffers for my new best friend, Kelly Cramer, who also had the good sense to drop Joey like a hot lump of Christmas coal. Anyway, I like to think sometimes we're happy or depressed based on our propensity for being either naughty or nice. It can go either way, frankly; sometimes when you're naughty, you feel bad. Sometimes, though, there's nothing nicer than a little naughtiness. That's what Javier and R.J. used to say when I brought out the whip and handcuffs. Mare says I'm right and since her approval is all I care about, really, in the whole wide world, I'm ready to give everyone my opinions on how being both naughty and nice affect us each holiday season. I know it all, so unless you're all about Santa bringing you a lump of coal or Kevin Buchanan for Christmas, don't question me.
NICE, NICE BABY
Think about it. If you're nice in Llanview, for instance, you get the things you want but it takes at least two years and then you're written off by the time you're blissfully happy with the thing you wanted, usually another unrealistically good-looking character. Here are some examples. In the milieu of soaps...
NICE is:
- Saving the life of some poor, surgically-enhanced beautiful person who's being threatened by dayplayers not usually all that pretty themselves. Marty Saybrooke saved Patrick Thornhart's person from The Men of 21 in that little Irish pub, only to be utterly miserable for the next year and a half of her contract. Ditto Patrick. And she still had to marry The Ficus, Dylan Moody. Speaking of lumps of coal...
- Taking the blame for getting an ingenue pregnant, even when she conceived not-so-immaculately through what most of the audience considered a cheap plot device one-nighter. This gets you the girl, but it also gets you the three a.m. feedings, dirty diapers and eventually, the stress resulting from the "We've Got To Find The Baby's Real Father So We Can Save The Baby, Who Naturally Has The World's Rarest Blood Type, By Infusing The Real Father's Blood" plot device, which always comes later.
And of course, once the teen years hit and the child finds out the truth, adoptive fathers face the reality that the teen will run away, get in lots of trouble and inevitably bring home a tough-but-tender good samaritan hunk/beauty who they "bonded" with on the road. This person always wreaks havoc in the family, by the way.
NAUGHTY is much more fun because...
- Cheating with your brother's/sister's/mother's/father's/best friend's lover/spouse always brings the family closer together in some little way. Or takes the friendship to new dimensions one never imagined (or hoped) possible.
- Swindling another out of his/her business or worldly possessions reminds that person how precious their former material lifestyle really was.
- Giving, not receiving, is the spirit of Christmas. So, by giving someone else a push down the stairs, always resulting in their instant death, you're aiding them spiritually. Or maybe you're just turning them into a spirit, the kind that comes back to haunt the family during periods when the writers can't come up with *real* stories.
That said, FOC Dorothy sends this holiday wish: "Happy holidays, everybody! Remember, there's nothing merrier than getting your, uh, stocking stuffed. Tell him you've been a "good girl." Or spike his egg nog. Whatever works."
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Posted to rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc December 24, 1998
FOC Dorothy is Mandi (mandia@earthlink.net
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