The launch for the new Jabot line begins well as Jack and Lauren field questions from the press, and Michael supports his wife. Jill is an old pro at the launch even as she grieves for her son losing the custody battle. Abby decides to come after all. Sofia arrives fashionably late. George Kotsiopoulos, Shiva Rose and Christina McLarty are in attendance. Meanwhile, Billy attempts to see Delia, but Chloe refuses to allow it. Victoria tries to call her mother at rehab, not realizing how late it is. Tucker is released from the hospital, but Ashley tries to talk him out of making an appearance at the launch.
No one watching the show for the first time would guess from this episode that, like all current soap operas, it is clotted with silliness. Recently the series has been sloppy enough to have two back-from-the-dead story-lines going on simultaneously. The story involving Cane Ashby is by far the worse of the two because - unlike the one with Sharon Newman, in which we were let in from the beginning on the secret that she was still alive - it tries to take back what can't be plausibly taken back. An exceptionally stupid, tedious explanation involving an evil twin makes us wonder if the soaps shouldn't have died back in the radio days.
But here are down-to-earth matters. It's all pretty good until we get to the confrontation between the crumbling Billy (Billy Miller) and a steadfast but heartsick Chloe (Elizabeth Hendrickson), which is exceptionally well written and well played. It's the kind of thing this show used to do well and which most soaps used to do well; but now the bizarre plots involving amnesia, evil twins, resurrections, doubles created through plastic surgery and such that used to add spice are the whole meal on most shows, while scenes like this are scraps fallen from the table.
No one watching the show for the first time would guess from this episode that, like all current soap operas, it is clotted with silliness. Recently the series has been sloppy enough to have two back-from-the-dead story-lines going on simultaneously. The story involving Cane Ashby is by far the worse of the two because - unlike the one with Sharon Newman, in which we were let in from the beginning on the secret that she was still alive - it tries to take back what can't be plausibly taken back. An exceptionally stupid, tedious explanation involving an evil twin makes us wonder if the soaps shouldn't have died back in the radio days.
But here are down-to-earth matters. It's all pretty good until we get to the confrontation between the crumbling Billy (Billy Miller) and a steadfast but heartsick Chloe (Elizabeth Hendrickson), which is exceptionally well written and well played. It's the kind of thing this show used to do well and which most soaps used to do well; but now the bizarre plots involving amnesia, evil twins, resurrections, doubles created through plastic surgery and such that used to add spice are the whole meal on most shows, while scenes like this are scraps fallen from the table.