Dena Higley Through the Looking Glass

Rereading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' is always a treat.  They're both the sort of books where you discover something new, or relate different passages to things happening around you.  And in the past little while I decided I could apply it rather nicely to my Dena Higley ranting.

'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first--'

'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'

'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'

'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'

'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.

We all know that one of Dena Higley's main problems seems to be that she and her team are always dicking around with the history of the characters, or forgetting aspects of their past altogether.  Rafe was an orphan raised by nuns.  Then out of nowhere these two sisters show up reminiscing about warm family moments with good ol' Mama Hernandez.  Now suddenly he has a brother, too (one whose existence wasn't acknowledged in any way, shape or form in Arianna's video will only a couple of months ago).

This is only a recent example, of course.  What about the huge, convoluted reaches we've had to make into Stefano and Caroline's pasts to believe he would become involved in the ridiculous organ-snatching scheme, and Caroline would know how to hack into a computer system to change paternity results  to stick it to Victor?  What about the fact that with all this unearthing of the Grace debacle, neither Sami nor Nicole brought up the fact that Sami's initial reason for not telling EJ about her pregnancy had nothing to do with  the hit put out on Philip or the murder of the mayor?  And is Gabi ever going to find out that Rafe, Sami and Will tried to cover up the shooting, which indirectly led to Arianna getting hit by that car or is that over and done with now?

"One's memory works both ways."

Another problem of Higley's is that she's writing with blinders on that are not only keeping her from acknowledging the history of the show (unless she can twist it for the benefit of one of her current storyline disasters), they're also keeping her from pulling back and seeing the big picture and what long-term damage could come from it going forward.  She's left varying degrees of scarring on just about every character on the show now, and not all of them will fade easily.  No matter what happens in the future, Sami is still going to be the woman who shot a man in the head and got away with it.  Rafe is still going to be the dirty cop who covered it up.  Will is still going to be the guy who bullied Arianna into the street and got her killed.  And who didn't want to reach into their TV and throttle Kayla when she lost her mind and sounded off at Carly's hearing? 

Because Higley seems to take a connect-the-plot-points approach to writing. She's not thinking about further down the road when these characters are put in a position where we're supposed to feel sympathy towards them.  And think about loved characters who might not appear on our screens for much longer.  When's the next time we'll be seeing Kayla again, for instance?  Is she going to fall off the end of the earth with the viewers hating her?  What the hell kind of legacy is that?  Or Caroline.  Right now I'd like to push her off the end of the earth, nevermind waiting for her to fall off it.

'What sort of things do YOU remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.

'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone.

Dena Higley is all about "shock value".  Like Erika Slezak (OLTL) said, "She doesn’t write stories, she writes events. It’s like one event – let’s have a bomb, let’s have a plane crash – but there is no story."  It's almost like Dena thinks to herself, "Well, I'll have Sami shoot EJ in the head.  That'll be shocking and something the viewers can look back on and think, 'Remember that time when Sami shot EJ in the head?'"  Higley doesn't know that most times we finish that sentence with "...that was really stupid", "that was a colossol error in judgement", or "that was the last time I watched Days".

The Hatter shook his head mournfully.

'It was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing:

"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!"

'You know the song, perhaps?' asked the Hatter.

'I've heard something like it,' said Alice.

'Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, 'when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"'

'How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice.

'And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, 'he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'

A bright idea came into Alice's head. 'Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.

'Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: 'it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'

'Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.

'Exactly so,' said the Hatter: 'as the things get used up.'

'But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.

Good Question.

The thing that immediately drew us to EJ is that, as a baddy (and I don't believe him to be one anymore, despite Cordiglay trying their damndest to make me think otherwise), he had so many layers.  He's never played it straight evil.  Hell, even when he was messing with Sami's head it was clear that he was crazy about her, and that crazy would expand or level out as needed.  The truth of the matter is, whether it was intentional or not, James Scott never played EJ as the moustache-twirling, cape-wearing bad guy whether he was asked to spin it that way or not.  And the one constant was that he played EJ as being hopelessly in love with Samantha. 

With spoilers telling us that EJ is going to be "enchanted" with and "humanized" by Nicole's sister over the next couple of days/weeks/months/who-the-hell-knows, and that he and Stefano are going to keep Rafe stuffed in their basement in a ridiculous ploy to get Sami to fall out of love with him right through spring (I'm sure it all makes just as much sense in your head as it does mine, mental illnesses aside), it's just further proof that:

 a) Dena hasn't a fucking clue how things are actually playing out on-screen - EJ's been human for about four years now.

b) It appears her logic is that she can make Sami look better by making EJ look worse. 

Some viewers might feel otherwise, but I'm going to have to have a lobotomy to forget EJ bleeding out of the head while Sami buggles Rafe in Lucas' bedsheets.  Hell, I still can't forget Sami's dirty feet in that one sex scene filmed from above the bed, nevermind Stefano crying and clutching EJ to his chest.

So is EJ being punished by being thrown into this endless cycle because JS is too good at his job?  That's my spin on it.  I sincerely think the writers tried to even things out between EJ and Sami by having him keep Johnny away from Sami despite his son's wishes to see her, but that didn't work out in TPTB's favour, either.  So here we are - another attempt at some Sami/Rafe angst and double the screen time for Commander Hernandez, while characters like Nathan, Philip and Carly sat on the shelf.  Well...we still have Crystal Chappell, but let's face it - how much longer is she going to put up with this crap?

I invite you to rant along with me.  No one likes to rant alone.