“I don’t know if sleeping with a married man qualifies as “living large.”
Brooke to Adam

Now that’s the Brooke English I remember and like. No, not the adulteress, but the quick-witted, passionate Brooke. It has been years since she has paid us a visit. I missed her.

Adam and Brooke shimmer in their scenes together. It is good to see that evil twinkle back in Adam’s eye. And it is wonderful to see Brooke sparkle again. She wasn’t sparkling when she was with Edmund this time, even before the Maureen saga began. It is hard to sparkle when deep down in your heart you know you are second choice.

It has been such a long time there was true adult conversation on AMC that I had to replay my tape so I could enjoy it again. I think it took someone with as much life experience as Adam to sum up why Brooke behaved the way she did about Maria. “All the mistakes you made brought you to that moment and it was safe to breathe again.” Brooke believed Edmund was her heart’s reward. How could she give that up easily, if at all? I think as humans we like to believe that we will always do the right thing, the honorable thing, make the moral choice. But sometimes we just can’t. Brooke is a good example. How could she give up what she thought she would never be blessed enough to have? What separates her from Adam-think though is that Brooke is horrified by what she did.

My favorite Adam-think? “Ditch the morals, find yourself some comfortable sleepwear and have a happier life.” I don’t know who is writing this dialogue (perhaps Ms. Nixon herself?), but I hope the new headwriter keeps him/her around.

Adam and Brooke’s witty repartee was a nice balance to all the sadness surrounding Leo’s death. The actual death scene did not move me to tears, what with the annoying distraction of Trey being there. But David and Greenlee in the aftermath reduced me to tears more than once. What helped those scenes work were the smaller scenes between David and Greens over the past year. Their emotional intimacy did not come out of left field.

A lot has been made about all the movie allusions during the Proteus story. One of my favorites was the nod to A Star is Born, when Greenlee corrected the EMS technician about her name: “I am Mrs. DuPres. Mrs. Leo Dupres.” That is about when my tears started to flow.

It showed astonishing maturity on Greens’ part to acknowledge the service was for the people that Leo loved by asking Bianca to sing. Karla Bonoff’s “Goodbye My Friend” always makes me cry.

And then the scene at the cabin made me cry. Geesh.

Thank goodness Donald Steele showed up in PV so I could give my laugh lines a workout.

Plus his appearance put an end to another Trey trying to be trés sincere scene. This character is not working for me. At all. He is an example of overkill on all counts. When he first arrived, he was totally evil. The way he terrorized Mia about her child’s adoption was cruel. Plus his assorted other misdeeds. Then suddenly this was all to be erased because he had a bad childhood. Again overkill because Trey did not just have a bad childhood, he had the worst childhood in the history of mankind. Because it is all so over the top, none of it is believable. Leo’s unfortunate childhood was believable. Tad’s certainly is. Hayley’s is. Trey’s is not.

Although I did feel bad for Trey when I realized he did not just suffer from vertigo but from that very rare form of vertigo, vertigo americus specificus. He only suffers from vertigo when in the United States, since he had no problems on that balcony in Paris. And only in specific situations because it did not keep him from climbing the ladder to Bianca’s room to commit theft and arson.

There is so much going on in Pine Valley these days. I like Jamie defending his mother. I like him being angry with Edmund. Of course he does not understand the complexities of the situation, but he is sensitive enough to get that his mother has been hurt, too. And that’s rather endearing.

Now if I only could figure out who that kid was he was talking to on Halloween. Laughing. Of course, it’s his brother the newNuJR.

Simone also has a brother. Who knew? Who cares? Maybe I would have been interested had this fact come to light a little earlier in the Proteus story, when we were first getting to know her. And first getting to know her father, who is not just an angry SOB but also an incompetent shrink.

A competent therapist would have locked the door during the hypnotherapy session. Failing that, he would have thrown Edmund out the minute he barged in. Although the scene was saved for me when Maureen said to Eddie, “I am Maureen, not Maria.” Which of course she had to remind him of again when he was kissing her breasts in the stable. If only she had thought to wear a name tag.

And one final thought, why is Chris concerned that Erica will think his relatives are tacky? Didn’t he notice she was wearing an imitation tiger-print toilet lid cover as a dress?

If anyone likes Trey and would care to give me a reason why I should, too, I would be happy to hear it.

Kate
Katebrowneos@hotmail.com