Paula's Soapbox

For those of you who were undoubtedly worried about my sanity after reading my first blog post about Rafe 2.0, worry no more, because after this week's episodes I am officially disenchanted with him. Just as I predicted DOOL has gone too far with the evil twin thing, although much sooner than I expected. Rafe 2.0 was pretty good at providing some comic relief the first few days he was on, but this storyline keeps getting progressively worse and Rafe 2.0 keeps getting more evil. In short...I hate him. I never liked the fact that Stefano and EJ were threatening to take Ally away from Sami, but I thought, or perhaps hoped these were just empty threats designed to make Rafe cooperate. I never really expected them to risk raising suspicion by following through. Granted EJ had a change of heart, but he didn't put forth much of an effort to ensure Ally's safety. I'm sure Stefano would never be able to reach her in Hong Kong if he wanted to. At this point I'm not ...

If you are like me and grew up watching Stefano manipulate and otherwise destroy the Bradys in various science fiction inspired plots, it wasn't too difficult to see the Rafe double coming. Once I realized that Stefano and EJ were planning to bring in a Rafe replacement I thought "great, here we go again, the evil twin plot." While this plot device is another soap staple it is also often used by critics of this genre to point out the absurdity of it. And since DOOL has a tendency to go overboard with this sort of thing that opinion becomes difficult to refute. I can still recall each of Eileen Davidson's 5 simultaneous roles on the show and I was not looking forward to the prospect of Galen Gering repeating that history. I have to admit though that after seeing this "evil twin" in action I am cautiously optimistic about this additional Rafe. I'm not thrilled with the fact that Stefano and EJ are using Ally as a pawn, in fact I hate it. I'm tire...

After months of allowing herself to be deceived and manipulated by Nicole and Stefano so that she could keep her baby's adoption intact, only to find out that said baby wasn't hers because her baby had died, one would think that Mia would have enough drama to last a lifetime. Instead it seems that she has picked up a few bad habits from Nicole because she has turned to manipulating Gabi in order to stake her claim on Chad, someone she didn't seem to want a few weeks ago. As if the Mia character wasn't irritating enough already, this newly calculative Mia is actually making me feel sorry for Gabi, which only makes her that much more irritating. I was stunned that she used Nicole's hearing as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Chad and Gabi, the same hearing that they were discussing her baby's death and the kidnapping of Will's baby sister. In doing this she not only undermined Will's importance in her life, but Sydney and Grace's as well...and p...