Welcome to the Love Shack, a brand-new column for this new year, where I plan to explore the couples of ABC daytime, up close and personal, between the sheets and between the ears, taking at look at what’s going on with their fevered loins as well as in their pounding hearts. We’ll have fun! Romance! Passion! And vitriol! What could be more exciting?

I already know what you’re asking yourself. Who died and made me Queen of Hearts, empowered to judge a tricky, sticky issue like chemistry, so often incredibly dependent upon the eye of the beholder?

I admit it — I am not actually the Queen of Hearts. I don’t have a kingdom or anything, more’s the pity. No, I’m afraid QoH is just my nom de plume du jour. I’m heavily into pseudonyms, y’see, since I write romance novels for a living. Starr Crost, Tempest Tost, Belle Amour, Trixie Truelove... All me. Day in and day out (and not just in the daytime) I write romance. So I have to balance character, attraction, conflict, and plot — the same ingredients it takes to heat up a romance on the soaps — and somehow make it come alive and resonate for all kinds of readers. I fancy myself an expert when it comes to romance.

Yes, there are definitely differences between writing romance in book-form and writing it for the telly. I have the luxury of exploring my characters’ inner thoughts any time feel like it, while they’re limited to dialogue (or if they’re really old-fashioned, the dreaded voice-over of Olden Days). But they get the benefit of very, very pretty people to play their roles, filling in a lot of blanks with charisma and telegenics, while I have to describe every detail and let you picture it yourself.

But the biggest difference is that I get to end things with happily-ever-after, while the poor soap writers are stuck recycling through boys-meeting-girls, boys-getting-girls, boys-losing-girls, and boys-getting-girls-back into eternity. Happy couples are boring couples. Which puts a whole lot of names after the hyphens for characters like Erica Kane, and a decided crimp in the long-term romance department.

So the key to sustain a successful soap couple is clearly conflict. Lots and lots of hot, steamy conflict, to fuel their tiffs and reunions onward and upward again and again.

Which brings me to my first pair of lovers. Because they are severely lacking in that respect. Here’s a little ditty I’ve parodied just for these two. I think you’ll figure out who I’m talking about pretty quickly.

Someone left the s’mores out in the rain.

I don't think that I can watch it

'Cause the powers- that-be have botched it

And I just can’t bear to look at them again.

Oh, no!

Yes, that’s right. The sticky sweet twosome who makes marshmallow-and-chocolate confections seem tart by comparison. Jax and Brenda. Or, as a poster on one board dubbed them, the Reggie and Veronica of the soap Choklit Shoppe.

Jax and Brenda generated some heat once upon a time, enough heat to turn a little rain into steam. But this time around, in the scrozzled, helter-skelter mishmash that is General Hospital, where plots come and go more quickly than Lisa Marie Presley’s husbands, Reggie and Veronica, er, Jax and Brenda have become a rather curious and unpleasant pair.

Neither seems to be clear on who he or she really loves best and first, making them unappealing right from the start. Well, that and all the broken promises they’ve left in their wake. And there is no real conflict here, which makes them go down like s’mores left out in the rain. Soggy, spoiled, a little runny...

Yes, there is a potential for conflict, based on her loyalty to ex-love Sonny and current husband Jason, as well as his ties to abandoned wife Skye, but that’s all external and at this point, relatively unexplored, when internal conflict — what is inside their hearts and heads — would make for much stronger storytelling. What about the fact that they currently suspect each other of murder? How does he feel about the fact that she slept with another man — and a villainous one at that — for four times as long as she was with him? All good stuff for drama, all unexplored in favor of s’mores and giggling and jumping on the bed.

No matter the couple, I firmly believe that you have to get a sense that two lovers represent the other halves of each other’s hearts, that they are not interchangeable with other suitors or simply standbys or consolations prizes, that his heart does not beat if she is not in the world and that she dies a little more every day if she can’t have him nearby. With these two, we’re simply told that they are in love — or maybe just that Jax is in love and Brenda finds it pleasant to be loved by Jax —  without ever seeing undying passion or even a smattering of that “I can’t live without you” feeling.

Mad at Skye? He’ll just unplug her and plug in Brenda and go on without a pause. Can’t have Sonny? Jason annoying her? She’ll take Jax out for another spin and see if he can fill the gap.

That’s not romance. That’s convenience.

If all that wasn’t enough to put the final nail in their graham cracker coffin, the tone of their scenes is all wrong for the rest of the show. They’re silly, they’re childish, and considering the fact that murder charges are hanging over their heads, that his ex is drinking herself into a stupor while her ex is dead in a puddle, their goofy antics seem positively delusional.

With all the levels of adultery involved and yet not enough heat to melt even one mini-marshmallow, I think we can safely say that Jax and Brenda put the ho in ho-hum.

So what’s my conclusion? Fizzle? Or Sizzle?

This one isn’t even lukewarm. Total and complete fizzle.

Next week... Do they out the fun in dysfunctional? Or just the diss? It’s Todd and Blair, the battling Mannings. How do they rate on the Love-O-Meter?

X O X O

The Queen of Hearts