Lesbians to the Rescue!

Last week was one of Passions‘ funniest ever. The title says it all: A bunch of lesbians came to the rescue. You really don’t need any more than that, but there were also two separate paternity bombshells. It was like one of those episodes of Maury: “Julian, when it comes to twenty-six-year-old Chad, you are NOT the father.” Yeah, that’s right – there’s gonna be a whole lot less incest from now on. I think we all saw that one coming, but if you want to know the other paternity switcheroo, you will have to keep reading.

Friday’s show starts with some super-gross public making out by Miguel and Kay. You see, last week, Kay got electrocuted by the washing machine, and when she woke up, she believed that she and Miguel were engaged. This is not exactly amnesia, because Kay and Miguel were never engaged or even really dating. And Kay remembers that Maria is their daughter, and how old she is and everything, so this has nothing to do with her being stuck in the past. She appears to have a medical disorder specific to Passions. It’s Mistaken Fiancé Disorder (MFD).Dr. Eve made a house call and told everyone that if Kay is relieved of her mistaken belief that she and Miguel are a happy couple, it could be extremely dangerous for her health. It’s a good thing they called in a doctor, because as a lay person, I would never have deduced that the proper treatment for MFD was to instruct everyone to pretend that Miguel and Kay are really engaged. Sure, I’ve seen similar charades gone through on soaps before, but usually they at least make a case that the victim has a heart condition and that’s why finding out the truth could be fatal. With Kay, we aren’t getting anything nearly that, uh, scientifically plausible.

Kay really wants to get it on with Miguel and is very loud about announcing it to everyone in the house, but Miguel manages to convince her that they should just take it easy for the night. Still, he agrees to share a bed with her, and he also makes out with her a lot. Fox and Siren are both furious, and much of the week was spent with the two of them venting their anger in various ways – Fox by yelling a lot, and Siren by hitting Kay over the head with a baseball bat, and then getting away with it in ludicrous fashion. (She convinced everyone that she was trying to kill a fly, and that Kay simultaneously fainted.)

In her current state, Kay remembers Fox as her snotty preppy neighbor. She doesn’t recognize Siren but figures she must be Fox’s girlfriend. Siren tried reminding Kay that she is a mermaid, but – get this – Kay thought that that sounded ridiculous. I guess the electric shock has disqualified Kay from being on Passions.

So, today, there is more kissing as a disgusted Fox and Siren look on. Tabitha and Endora are watching too, but they seem less nauseated and more reflective. Siren decides to handle the situation by putting the moves on Fox. Wow, her frustration over losing Miguel sure didn’t last long – she’s like, “Hey, look, there’s another perfectly good man right over there.” Tabby frets to Endora that Fox, like Miguel, will suffer the mermaid’s curse if he makes love to Siren.

I want to know whether the extreme PDA is supposed to be part of Kay’s medical condition. If not, she deserves another powerful electric shock every time she does this.

Back in the Roman catacombs, Theresa is mourning the loss of her cell phone. You see, she made yet another attempt to get evidence of a connection between Gwen and J.T. Cornell, snapping a cell phone pic of the two of them having a secret payoff meeting. She tried to show the picture to Whitney right away, but her battery was dead. Never fear, quoth Theresa – she would just dash back to her hotel and charge her phone. However, before she could get there, Gwen tackled her and stomped the phone into smithereens before taking off. Poor Wile E. Theresa!

Chad and Whitney are in the catacombs with Theresa, but they’re not too broken up over the loss of her phone, because they have just learned that their incestuous love is no longer incestuous. Well, that was anticlimactic. The way it happened was that J.T. found Chad’s real birth certificate in Alistair’s replica-Crane-library-slash-evil-hideout. Interesting. Do you think it was a replica birth certificate? Does Alistair keep the real one in the real Crane library, and then in his replica Rome Crane library, he has exact copies of all of the same documents filed in all of the exact same places? He might want to look into storing some of his files on the web so he can access them from anywhere. I’m just saying.

Anyway, J.T. found this document while Alistair was messing around with the chalice. Then J.T. somehow managed to run off with both the chalice and the birth certificate. He took off into the catacombs and a bunch of people looked for him, but Chad was the one who eventually found him. J.T. tried to bribe Chad into letting him escape by offering him the proof that he and Whitney aren’t siblings and can have as much sex as they want. Chad refused the bribe, but somehow he ended up with both the document and the chalice, and J.T. ended up getting away for the zillionth time.

“I’ll make you a deal. You let me keep this lovely piece of tableware, and I’ll, uh, fix you up with your sister.”

Chad then found Whitney in the catacombs and gave her the great news. The birth certificate says that Chad is the son of Liz and Alistair, not Eve and Julian. “But Amanda, wait,” you might say. “Liz and Eve are sisters, so this just means that now Chad and Whitney are cousins. I guess that’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not quite good enough for all that sex they want to have.”

Well, you can set your mind at ease, because somehow J.T. was also able to determine from this document that Eve and Liz are not sisters after all, but merely stepsisters. We always knew that they had different fathers, but I guess the story now is that Eve wasn’t old enough to remember that when her mom married her stepdad, he came with baby Liz already in tow, so Eve grew up thinking that her mom gave birth to Liz. How convenient.

And how confusing. Isn’t this several major revelations at once, all downplayed into what is at best a D plot this week? I don’t get it. What did happen to Eve and Julian’s son, then? Is he dead as originally believed? And if Liz had a baby by Alistair, why didn’t anyone know that? Liz must have known it – what did she think happened to her baby? And why did DNA tests show that Chad was Eve and Julian’s son? And isn’t Eve supposed to be substantially older than Liz? Didn’t she “abandon” her by moving out of the house when Eve was a teenager and Liz was little, leaving Liz to be sexually abused by their father/stepfather? Doesn’t this age difference mean that Eve would remember whether her mother was ever pregnant with Liz or not?

Yes, yes, I ask too many questions. So far, everything is being explained under the rubric of “Alistair is really evil, and he likes to tell lies and keep secrets and ruin people’s lives for fun.” So if you have any further questions about any of this, just refer back to that answer. And get ready to enjoy Chad and Whitney’s steamy relationship, and repeat after me: Nah, it’s not gross that they slept together when they both THOUGHT they were siblings. It just means that they really, really love each other.

Theresa is the first person to learn Whitney and Chad’s good news, as they are all still milling around in the catacombs. She’s really happy for them, and they agree to help her look for J.T., again, some more.

Now comes the good part of the show. Alistair did finally unlock the power of the chalice, but it was only a few seconds after that that he lost it, so he never managed to unleash his wrath upon the world. Instead, he found himself bickering with Beth, Edna, and crazy Norma, who still thinks he is her “daddy” and still tries to axe-murder people every few minutes.

Apparently Alistair’s lair wasn’t all that well-hidden, because it was located by Luis, Fancy, Noah, and Ethan after very little strategic planning of any kind. They all busted in on the many assorted villains and vowed to bring them to justice. Of course, the big emotional payoff in this meeting came from Luis seeing that Beth is alive and inferring that Marty must therefore be alive too. Beth admitted that Marty’s alive, but she refused to tell where she has him stashed. There was a standoff involving Alistair wanting to kill Luis and Beth trying to save Luis because she loves him, but that never really led anywhere.

The good guys grabbed the bad guys by the arms and dragged them out into the plaza, where Alistair had a little surprise ready. He yelled out to a bunch of well-hidden goons and suddenly the good guys were encircled by a whole mess of thugs, who proceeded to beat the crap out of them. Remember on Lost when the good guys scoffed at Zeke and said there probably weren’t that many of the Others, and then Zeke whistled or yelled something out and suddenly a huge ring of light appeared out in the jungle showing that our heroes were surrounded by a shitload of Others? Yeah, so this was like that, except without the budget or the good acting or writing.

At this point, Simone and Paloma kind of appeared out of nowhere and saw that the good guys were really taking a beating. Simone announced that she knew where they could go to get help. And then we had one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen on this show since, well, ever.

Simone and Paloma walked into a bar. Melissa Etheridge was playing (“I’m the Only One”). There was a huge rainbow flag on prominent display. A woman came out. She was tough, scary, and butch. Or rather, she acted tough, scary, and butch, and she was wearing the official tough-scary-butch uniform (a gray wifebeater), but she was also wearing seventeen pounds of makeup and an attractive blonde bob. By the way, this woman is clearly American, despite the fact that we are in Rome.

NotButch wanted to know what these two bubbleheaded (and bobbleheaded) girls were doing in her bar. Simone decided to demonstrate by planting a huge kiss on an unsuspecting Paloma, leading NotButch to say what I was thinking, namely, “You could have just said you were gay.” Paloma apparently agreed, as she quickly clarified that she ain’t the gay one. Anyway, apparently this is a superhero lesbian bar, and here’s how it works. If you are a lesbian, and you have an approved problem, they will help you. It’s like having your own personal bat-signal. Or, actually, it’s more like going to your embassy for help. You know how if you’re in Spain, and you get mugged or arrested or something, you go to the American Embassy and ask for help? Well, Simone visited the Lesbian Embassy in Rome to request lesbian citizens’ assistance.

Um, I like you too?

When NotButch found out that Simone’s problem was with Alistair Crane, she became supportive, because apparently Alistair is world-famous for his homophobia. She called him a “hateful old breeder,” and she yelled into the back room for a team to come out and help this “sister” who needs Alistair’s butt kicked. And then … a whole bunch of lesbians came pouring out of the back room. Some of them are supposed to look butch. Some of them are supposed to look femme. Some of them are hanging all over each other. And all of them set out in mob formation to kick some Crane ass.

Here we come to save the day!

Back at the plaza on Friday, the fistfight is in full swing when Alistair hears the lesbians approach. We hear loud marching, military-style; I have to assume this is the sound of their Doc Martens. Alistair mutters to Beth that if that’s who he thinks it is, he’s in real big trouble. The lesbians enter to much fanfare. The big one in front is carrying a big wrench. Simone holds up a feathery fan and says “Sic ‘em, sisters,” and the lesbians shriek and rush into the fray wielding various club-type implements. You might think I’m making this whole thing up, but really, I never could.

One Italian lesbian rushes Alistair, and Beth decks her. Just then, Gwen arrives. By the way, the actress who plays Gwen is pregnant and it has become totally obvious; they just aren’t doing anything to hide it yet, and they really should. Gwen asks Fancy what’s going on, and Fancy says, “My grandfather is trying to kill us all.” We see a thug trying to slit Ethan’s throat, and then a lesbian comes up behind the thug and bashes him over the head.

Lesbian power!

Chad, Whitney, and Theresa are out looking for J.T. They’re not at the same place where the fistfight/wrench fight is going down – there are actually two different “Rome outdoors” sets. Theresa’s down in the dumps about J.T. being missing again, but she feels guilty about dragging Chad and Whitney down with her, so she sends them off to have some romantic time together. Then Theresa sits alone and talks to herself for a moment. Suddenly she hears J.T. around the corner trying to steal a moped. She runs after him, forgetting her busted cell phone on the ledge where she was sitting. J.T. takes off on the stolen Vespa and Theresa somehow chases after him on foot and knocks him down. They lie unconscious together on the Styrofoam cobblestones.

Back to the fistfight. Haven’t these people ever heard of guns? There is a super-cheesy moment where Luis decks some guy, gives a proud look to Fancy, and she gives an adoring nod back. Noah sees this and looks like he might barf. I feel you, man. Mrs. Wallace is pinning down a thug with her walker – that’s pretty funny. By the way, Mrs. Wallace and Norma are on the same side of the fight as the good guys, because Alistair wants them taken out as annoyances. Meanwhile, Alistair, Beth, and Fancy are not involved in the fight at all and have been doing sideline commentary the whole time.

Lines of the episode:

Beth: “Daddy, stop! Please let Luis go!”
Alistair: “I was hoping he’d be dead already, but the lesbians have turned the tide, so your precious Luis will be just fine.”
Beth: “Thank God for the lesbians.”

Well, that’s what I always say. The thugs get their asses kicked and run away, leading to much female-empowerment yelling and cheering from Edna, Norma, Simone, Paloma, and the lesbians. The lesbians and other good guys then surround Alistair and Beth. Luis delivers a rousing anti-Alistair speech. Incidentally, Alistair is still wearing his monk suit. He has been wearing it this entire time. Also, Norma is still dressed as a pizza man, and Edna as an Italian peasant girl with a walker. This show cracks me up, and I think this episode is proof positive that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, in case anyone had any doubt about that.

Back to Harmony. Kay wants everybody out of her and Miguel’s bedroom, which is actually her and Fox’s bedroom. Fox gets up in Miguel’s face all threatening about how they better not do anything but sleep, and then he and Siren leave, along with Tabby and Endora. Fox tells Siren he’s going to sleep on the couch, but Siren invites him into her and Miguel’s bed instead. Fox is appalled by the idea of sleeping with Siren. Siren says she didn’t mean anything shady by it – they can just sleep, like Kay and Miguel are supposedly doing. Fox says no thanks and heads for the couch.

You know, if I were Fox, I would go and sleep at the Crane Mansion – operative word, “Mansion” – but I guess that’s just me. After Fox leaves, Tabby starts to taunt Siren, calling her “Fish Girl.” Siren pretends she doesn’t care that her bed is slated to go empty for the night, but Tabby knows she’s just putting up a front. Siren giggles that she has a plan and Kay is going to lose both Fox and Miguel. Behind the bedroom door, Miguel is, uh, struggling with his feelings. You see, he’s just a wee bit tempted to give Kay what she wants, especially once she puts on a silky pink negligee and climbs on top of him.

Tabby and Endora go down to the kitchen to watch Kay and Miguel in the Pensieve. Tabby gets Endora to shoot Miguel with some purple lightning. It’s very funny how they do this; obviously, someone is holding something up offscreen for the toddler actress to point to, so they can make the special effect where lightning shoots out of her finger, but she starts pointing too soon, and Juliet Mills (Tabitha) has to try to hold her arm back until the proper moment. She is really great with that little girl, who is getting harder and harder to control during her scenes.

Miguel gets zapped off the bed, and he and Kay don’t know why. The lightning has the intended effect of killing the mood; Kay agrees that they can just snuggle. Miguel talks to himself inside his head about how he’s having a tough time resisting temptation. Then Kay wants to know why Miguel never says he loves her. He says it, to buy her off.

Chad and Whitney return the chalice to the old psychic Italian nun. The nun is pumped to get it back, but then she gets kind of creeped out by the way that Chad and Whitney are hanging on each other. Whitney explains that Chad is no longer her brother, and so she will be dropping out of Nun University without ever looking back. Now, to me, this seems a bit offensive, from a nun point of view. This trashy girl only wanted to be a nun in the first place because she mistakenly thought she had had sex with her brother. Now that it turns out she didn’t, it’s see ya later, Mother Superior. I thought you were only supposed to become a nun if you felt called by God, not for your own personal convenience. Whitney is not even making a pretense of this being a difficult decision.

However, the nun says it’s no prob at all. She totally understands, and Whitney will be doing God’s work by marrying Chad and raising their son in the faith. The nun cheerfully sends them packing, and I can’t help but think that she knew Whit was going to be a crappy nun anyway, and she’s happy to be rid of her. After Chad and Whitney leave, the nun mutters to herself about how they are still going to have to endure great trials. Why she kept this one to herself after blabbing all over the place about Theresa’s upcoming pain, I have no clue.

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Speaking of which, J.T. is waking up after his little Vespa wreck. Theresa is okay too, and she gets up and straddles and pins him. She threatens to bash his head in with a brick, and I am kind of confused by how she’s managing to pin him down when she only weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet.

Maybe he’s lying in a puddle of Krazy Glue.

Luis thanks the lesbians for their help, and Simone says that you can always count on the sisterhood, especially against that homophobic pig Alistair. Alistair gets Simone and Paloma to tell Luis that he’s going to be shit out of luck with the Italian police, because Alistair has already paid them all off. Alistair tells Luis that if he takes him to the cops, the cops will just give him some “excellent Chianti.” Er, Alistair. It might all have worked better if you hadn’t revealed that. Let Luis haul you off to jail and then the cops will let you out, duh. But Alistair doesn’t go that route, so Luis starts trying to strangle him instead. The lesbians cheer.

Fancy begs Luis not to hurt Alistair, and Ethan and Noah pull him off. Luis says he knows agents at Interpol who will arrest Alistair, and Fancy whines about not wanting anyone to hurt her grandfather. Noah gives her a verbal smackdown for this. Luis leaves to call his little Interpol friends. For some reason, everybody else just mills around. I thought the lesbians wanted revenge against Alistair! They drove his thugs away, but now they’re just letting him stand there and plot with Beth.

Check out the two lesbians in the back row.

Beth wants Alistair to help her escape before Luis gets back. He tells her that he does have one option available – he is holding a little button in his hand, and if he pushes it, the whole plaza will blow up. Of course, this will suck for Alistair and Beth just as much as for everybody else, but at least they won’t go to jail. Beth isn’t really down with this idea, but Alistair gets ready to push the button anyway. Luis reappears and tells everybody that he just got off the phone with Interpol, and they’re on their way. Beth grabs him and tells him that she’ll see him in heaven, just as Alistair presses the button.

Post-explosion, everyone is lying on the Styrofoam and coughing. Apparently, Alistair’s button just set off a smoke bomb, and it provided enough cover for Alistair and Beth to get away. Seems kind of mean that Alistair told Beth they were all going to die. Anyway, Luis is super-pissed that Alistair and Beth are gone, but Fancy is glad her grandfather got away, and she and Noah bicker about that.

Tabby checks out Siren in the Pensieve. She explains to Endora that Siren is about to use her siren song to lure Fox in, and that this mermaid magic may be too powerful for them to counteract. Siren starts singing. Fox promptly drops his toothbrush into the sink and zombie walks toward Siren’s bedroom, slack-jawed and bumping into doors and walls all along the way. To me, the actor appears to be in his element for the first time ever. Siren shoots trippy green lights out of her finger, and Fox is sucked in. Tabby and Endora watch. Adorably, somebody has crammed a lollipop into Endora’s mouth to keep the actress quiet. Siren dispatches Fox into the bedroom and tells Tabitha she can’t be stopped; then she follows him in.

Put a sock in it, kid.

Alistair broadcasts an evil laugh into the plaza. I’m not sure whether this is supposed to be a recording that he planted earlier, or he’s got a speaker planted somewhere. He tells Luis that he’ll never see Marty again and he’ll never get Sheridan back.

Theresa tells J.T. that she has the power of God on her side. She explains that the nun told her she would receive information today that would bind her and Ethan together forever. For some reason, J.T. doesn’t feel like giving her the information she has been demanding all along; he decides to give her some different information instead. Apparently, Chad’s birth certificate wasn’t the only paternity nugget J.T. was carrying around with him. He has another one, and he claims that not even Alistair knows this: Ethan, not Julian, is Little Ethan’s real father. And another years-long Passions mystery is unceremoniously wrapped up with zero pomp and circumstance. It strikes me that this is a pretty good day for Julian. He’s down two illegitimate kids since this morning. If I’m counting correctly, he only has one left (Endora).

Chad and Whitney go back to the hotel for some sweet, sweet non-incestuous loving.

Hey, this reminds me of that time when we thought we were brother and sister, but we did this anyway! Good times, good times.

That’s it for Friday, but there were a couple of other things that happened earlier in the week. One, Jessica horrified her friends and brother by confirming that she is now married to Spike and has no intention of changing her mind about it. What they don’t know is that she married him so that he can’t testify against her in the string of john killings back in Harmony, which Spike says she committed, although she can’t remember anything except having blood on her hands.

Two, T.C. got wasted and crashed his car. Yeah, I didn’t know he was still on the show either. The timing of this was really rough, because Rebecca had just agreed to give Julian a divorce, after years of refusals. Julian and Eve had about three minutes of happily thinking they could get married now, and then Eve got word of T.C.’s critical condition and had to go rushing to her ex-husband’s bedside. There was even a long montage of Eve and T.C.’s happy memories together, underlining the fact that she will never marry Julian now because she’s too worried about T.C. To be honest, it was kind of cool to see a network show produce an extended romantic flashback montage devoted to a middle-aged black couple – even if it was only Passions.

Previews: Edna and Norma perform some sort of musical revue. Tabby demands that Kay decide which guy she really loves. J.T. repeats that Ethan is Little Ethan’s father.