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Note: Hi all! I’m not the Queen of Hearts, just her lowly Page. You see, the Queen of Hearts is busy watching the deadline for her new book whoosh past like a freight train in the night, so she decided, in honor of Brenda Barrett’s last week on General Hospital, to make me dig up, er, to entrust me to locate her very first column, the one so many of you missed because you weren’t on board with the Queen just yet. I found it hidden under a chamber pot, and the Queen Bee, er, Queen of Hearts took a look at it. She wanted to know if what she thought way back in the early days of January still holds true for poor Jax and Brenda, the wedding wannabes who made it to the altar, but barely escaped alive. Still soggy? the Queen asked herself. Yes, she decided. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Here’s what she wrote back then..]

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.

Oh, brother. The Queen of Hearts is hanging over my shoulder because she wanted to dictate an addendum about Jax and Brenda. The Queen of Having the Last Word, er, the Queen of Hearts told me to tell you that...

A few things have changed since I wrote this column — for one thing, the murder has been solved... No, wait it hasn’t. Or has it? Who knows? Who cares? Forget the murder. Although somebody up there decided to manufacture some quickie conflict to blow the wedding apart — the specter of Sonny, of course — what other conflict is there for anyone on that show but the Great and Powerful Wizard of Corinthos? — and they also, blessedly, removed some of the childish tone there at the end, it didn’t change the fact that they didn’t build Jax and Brenda’s 955th reunion with any oomph (or any sense, for that matter.) They both came off mercurial and feckless, unsure of their hearts and paying no mind to how their actions affected others around them, till the bitter end. No one is an island, Jax and Brenda! Not even you! And then there’s the little issue of the lovers representing the other halves of each other’s hearts. Although they trotted out Ned to tell Jax that he was Brenda’s once-in-a-lifetime soul mate, did anyone really buy that she wouldn’t have taken Sonny first if he weren’t married? And Edward with his “She is your Lila” crack. Oh, please! Who in the world cares what Edward Quartermaine thinks? Everything he knows about love he saw in a mirror. A cracked one. And who wants to be anyone’s Lila, for goodness sake? The woman is an enabler and a dodo married to Edward Quartermaine! Nuff said. So, no, I didn’t think this pitiful excuse for a love story got any better. But, hey, at least the wedding was lively. And at least it’s over.

Are you through? Her Royal Highness appears to be through. One more thing, she said. Of course. There’s always one more thing. She wants you all to know that she really appreciates all the e-mails and comments, and she’s sorry she hasn’t had time to respond to all of them, what with the volume of mail last week and those pressing deadlines and all. I sense another job for the Page coming up. Maybe I should stage a palace coup.

 Until next week, I’m still the lowly Page and she remains..

 Comments/feedback?
Email me  QueenofHearts@soaptownusa.com