The Dreaded Baby Plot Arc - a staple of Daytime Soap Operas!

Need to fix dinner and not post on the internet. But I like blogging, particularly after drinking a vodka/pomagrant/cranbery and tonic water cocktail. Oh by the way, I've hear that pure organic cherry juice, red or black, is a miracle cure for arthritis. So try it and let me know if it works. It has to be pure though - no oceanspray or concentrate.

This is about "Plots" that do not work for me. I know. Look away, look away. First up is The dreaded Pregnancy/Baby Plot. I hate this plot, people, with a vengeance. It only works in family dramas...or reality based dramas such as Grey's Anatomy and Parenthood. In Sci-Fi/Fantasy it often becomes really silly and cliche. Also, ahem, somewhat chauvinistic and sexist at times, due to the fact that most of the sci-fi/fantasy genre is written by white male assholes who don't realize that they are white male assholes. It would be easier if they got this. But nooo.

Just finished watching Fringe's take on the dreaded baby plot and yes, it fell into all the predictable cliche traps. Farscape, Buffy the TV Series (Nikkie/Robin Wood), Fringe, Angel, X-Files...sigh. All about the male nightmare of not being able to protect the child, the child losing its Mommy, or the child being used to destroy the world. And oh...the baby is always a boy. Why is that? Why can't it be a girl? I mean seriously, why is it always a frigging boy!

I've decided these male writers have serious Daddy and Mommy issues, either that or they've been reading Freud.

I hate this plot arc. I hate it in fanfic. The writer has to work overtime to convince me that the baby fic works. To date? The ONLY fanfic writer that has convinced me that having a baby works is rarhihah (whose lj name I can't spell). She convinced me.

What did Rah or Barb Cummings do that others haven't? She discussed the normality of it. She doesn't romanticize. The kids are well kids. The pregnancy advances the characters. It's not there as a plot-twist. We don't get the kids being kidnapped. The mother isn't tortured prior to having them. They aren't necessarily boys! The sex of the kids doesn't necessarily matter. The mother gets pregnant with consensual sex - yes, I know, shocking. She's not drunk. She's not jumping time lines or universes. She just doesn't realize that the vampire got a little human and was able to impregnate her. (I liked that.)

See my problem with this plot arc is the sturm and drang of it. It's so predictable.
( the dreaded baby storyline and pregancy storyline...please skip if you love this stuff, I'm bound to piss off someone. But slightly tipsy, tough work day, and so don't care. Most likely will care tomorrow and delete, delete, delete. Also skip if you think Whedon isn't a soap opera writer. )

Glee...

Not too bad tonight, some decent musical numbers. But the plot was all over the place. And so many inconsistencies. Watching Glee often feels like watching someone toss plot and character into a lettuce mixer, then poke their hand in and select something at random.

( Glee - tonight's episode, cut for spoilers, and yes, it goes on a two week hiatus like everything else including my fav, The Good Wife, until February Sweeps. American television is annoying isn't it? )