Soap Box Hero
(he got stars in his eyes)
Patrick G. Duffy (born March
17, 1949 in Townsend,
Montana) is an American
television actor of Irish descent,
who has appeared primarily in
soap operas and television in
character-type roles. The
naturally black-haired Duffy is
best known for his roles as
Larry Hagman's younger, nicer
brother and partner, Bobby
Ewing, on the immensely
popular 1980s CBS drama,
Dallas (a role he played from
1978 to 1985 and from 1986 to
1991), and as Suzanne
Somers's husband, Frank
Lambert, on the long-running
1990s ABC television sitcom,
Step by Step. In March 2006
Duffy began playing the role of
Stephen Logan on the CBS
soap opera, The Bold and the
Beautiful. Later that year he left
the show, but returned on
November 5, 2007. Beginning
in the spring of 2008, he
became the host of the GSN
partially interactive game show
Bingo America.
April 10, 2008

Welcome back for another rant.  Today is a doozy
in my own mind.  I hope you agree.  I used to justify
my obsession with watching professional wrestling
by saying that it's the male soap opera.  As I was
working out today at the gym, I was watching the
televisions that they have mounted up and three
different soap operas were showing.  After
glancing back and forth amongst the three of
them, I have to say that I've been insulting the
wrestling business for far too long.

I've always said that watching wrestling is a guilty
pleasure of mine.  I still say that it is because in all
honesty, I probably should've outgrown it years
ago.  Even though I feel like the product has
steadily declined over the last 10 years, something
keeps drawing me in to watch it.  There's always
that potential for a great storyline that could rock
the industry.  There's always that one moment
where someone does a move no one's ever seen
and it is shown for years to come.  I want to be
watching it live when it happens.  

Soap operas, they don't get a lot of replays.  After
what I have seen this week during lunch while
working out, I've come up with a few
generalizations for soaps.  Every guy on there is
the biggest cheesedick in the world.  It's some guy
who didn't quite make the cut in his modeling
career and grew some whacky hairstyle or decided
the slicked back look was still in style.  I think the
kiss of death is when the writers decide that your
character should wear an eye patch.  I'm not
kidding, I saw this today.  I guess that guy is one of
the bad guys.

I think all it takes to be a female soap star is to be
semi-hot, have big boobs, or be able to play a
complete bitch.  The second characteristic is most
crucial, though.  You have to be able to make the
most idiotic faces nobody would ever make in real
life.  With some of the ludicrous storylines that go
down in soaps, I'm sure it's hard to keep a straight
face.  But come on, I've seen Corky from "Life
Goes On" look more serious than most of the
actresses in soaps.  And to be honest, the
Corkster was a better actor than most of them ever
dreamed about.

While I agree that Vince McMahon and wrestling
have come up with some ludicrous storylines over
the years on a weekly basis, the soaps have been
pumping out this shit five days a week for decades.
 How many crappy storylines have been recycled?  
And who watches this shit?  Apparently lots of
people do.  There wouldn't be so many of them if
people didn't watch them.  There's like three
magazines at every grocery store checkout
dedicated to catching you up on what you missed.  
Trust me, you've seen it before.  But people do
watch this stuff.  I'm betting it's because we'd watch
anything they put on during those time slots.  They
could run reruns of "Mama's House" and people
would watch it.  They could show "Thailand's Got
Talent" (I'll admit, that might be funny) and people
would watch that.  

I just about crapped myself when I saw Patrick
Duffy on one of the soaps today.  Little Bobby
Ewing sure has fallen from grace.  He was on one
of the hottest shows of all time and played a
significant character (the show was "Dallas", for
those of you not following me).  After that went off
the air, he took a step backwards and played dad
on the TGIF sitcom "Step By Step", also with
another "Dallas" vet, Sasha Mitchel, aka the
Code-Man.  It wasn't the greatest show, at all.  
Then he became a punchline on "South Park" for
playing the leg of the imaginary monster,
Skuzzlebutt.  The funny thing is, he actually went to
the studio and said one line for the voice of
Skuzzlebutt's leg.  Now, he's on "Bold and the
Beautiful".  How the mighty have fallen.  

There's only one step lower than a soap opera as
far as TV goes.  No, not reality TV.  Latin soap
operas!  It's like they are trapped in the 70's and
can't get out.  God forbid that one of their girls are
hot.  If that happens, some American producer will
snatch her up, give her a record deal, make her
sing, pose for Playboy, or totally overexpose her
somehow to the American public.  No problem for
us, but boy does that piss off the South American
boys.  

I don't know if you agree with me or not.  Frankly, I
don't care.  

Until next time, throw up a T for...

T-BONE!
The Bone Pile
“You are the
vulgarian,
you f*ck!”
"Life Goes On" featured the
Thatcher family, whose son
Charles "Corky" Thatcher
(played by Chris Burke) had
Down syndrome, while their
daughter Becca (played by
Kellie Martin) was gifted but
socially awkward with her fellow
classmates. Tony Award
winning stage actress Patti
LuPone played the mother and
Bill Smitrovich played the father.
Eldest sister Paige Thatcher
was played by Monique Lanier
during the 1989-1990 seasons
and by Tracey Needham during
the 1990-1993 seasons.
However this character initially
had relatively little involvement
in the plot of the show and was
infrequently seen for the first two
seasons. Jerry Berkson (Ray
Buktenica) was Patti LuPone's
quirky boss.

Executive Producer Michael
Braverman first cast Chris
Burke in the 1986 television
movie Desperate, based on
Braverman's favorite book, Lord
Jim. After seeing Burke's work,
ABC executives asked
Braverman to create a show
around Burke.

The show is set in the fictional
Chicago suburb of Glen Brook,
Illinois, which is named after the
high school attended at the time
by one of Braverman's children.

In the opening credits of each
episode, Arnold, the dog, sits
forlornly in the kitchen with his
bowl in his mouth, apparently
forgotten by the family. The
show's producers received a
constant trickle of letters each
week from viewers who thought
this was cruel, so in the final
episode's opening credits, a
bag of dog food spills out of a
nearby cabinet.