Soaps Deliver Summer Shockers

CBS

Let’s hear it for shockers! It’s great when a show zigs when we thought they were going to zag.

There was Y&R’s Lily siding with Billy over her brother, Devon, when we suddenly learned she had a secret plan regarding Abbott-Chancellor-Winters-insert-name-here.

Lily: “I have been playing Billy. I’ve been pretending to go along with his grand schemes for Abbott Chancellor.”

Devon: “I feel better knowing you don’t think Billy is some kind of business genius.”

Me too. Lily explained she couldn’t walk away from everything she had worked so hard to build, and Billy had Jill’s voting power. She had to be his equal partner while she figured things out. Meanwhile, Billy acted out the old cliché of being born on third base and thinking he hit a triple. He changed the company name by putting Abbott in front of Chancellor, which showed the same kind of hubris that kept him bouncing between Jabot and Newman Enterprises for decades until he landed at ChancComm, er Chancellor-Winters, I mean Abbott Chancellor. He’s entertaining, but he can’t be trusted — and he can’t hold a job.

So Lily flipped the script.

Lily: “I made a mistake.”

Billy: “Are you bailing on me?”

Lily: “I’m not leaving Chancellor. You are.”

Devon’s warnings — combined with word that Victor was planning a hostile takeover — caused her to realize Billy was a liability.

Lily: “You bring instability to everything you do.”

Billy: “I’m not going anywhere.”

Wanna bet?

“The game is on,” decreed Victor.

I was not a fan of DAYS’s convoluted Everett/Bobby split personality story (made even more confusing by hiring an actor for the dual role who had previously played murderer Nick Fallon) so imagine my surprise when DAYS just… killed him.

Jada (holding a pill bottle) : “How many of these did you take?”

Bobby: “I didn’t take any.”

Jada: “Bobby!”

Bobby: “I’m not Bobby. I'm Everett.”

Like I said, confusing. Turns out, some nutball named Connie poisoned him and staged it to look like a suicide. As he lay dying, Bobby turned back into Everett.

Everett: “I tried so hard to get back to you.”

Stephanie (sobbing) : “You’re here now!”

Everett: “I love you.”

Croak. Jada found a fake suicide note on his laptop that Connie had scripted, complete with instructions on where to find the gloves he was supposedly wearing when he stabbed Rafe (a crime Connie committed).

Stephanie (after Jada found his cell phone with 911 at the ready ): “Maybe he was too weak to press ‘send.’ Poor Everett.”

Jada: “Poor Bobby.”

Poor us. Connie’s walking around Salem babbling out loud about her crimes and talking to a cardboard cutout of a dead man (Li). Jada — the acting police commissioner — is all “case closed” after finding Everett/Bobby’s (fake) confession. As glad as I am that they pulled the plug on that tale, I am not a fan of stories that depend on smart people being dumb (Jada expressing a little doubt on Friday's episode doesn't save it). Bobby smoked Marlena into thinking he was Everett and Jada thought Bobby/Everett stabbed Rafe while the real criminal, Connie, was wandering in and out of Rafe’s hospital room and Bobby’s hotel room like she owned the place without Marlena/Kayla/Stephanie/Jada/Gabi even raising an eyebrow. And now our smart Gabi has hired Connie!

At least the Body and Soul train is rolling along. I appreciated the wink when Johnny and Chanel talked about their crazy “days of our lives,” but I did a double take when Leo put on a dress to audition for the new Salem soap and Abe gave him a trial episode as a writer.

Leo: “I am going to pen a soap opera script worthy of all the late greats: Irna, Agnes, Bill, Betty and Ted. Wait and see.”

Name-checking soap icons Irna Phillips, Agnes Nixon, Bill Bell, Betty Corday and Ted Corday goes a long way toward getting us to invest. I’m surprised how much I care about B&S , but then again it is a soap.

Kate (to Abe) : “Our little show is turning out to be a motley show of thieves and scammers.”

And humor and fun!

B&B pulled a fast one with Bill’s new/old flame, Poppy, introducing her as a granola-y festival-loving free spirit who chose to pop “mints” instead of drinking alcohol and then — whammo! — it turned out she might be a murderer.

Katie (to Poppy) : “Your story has holes. You suspected Bill was Luna’s father all these years? It’s almost as if you’re hiding something that could ruin everything. Something doesn’t add up.”

Indeed. Waiting 20 years for the paternity test is suspicious, as is having a confrontation with Tom just before he died (or was murdered). And why does Li hate her sister so much? Poppy is secretive, quick to anger, possessive, and has no friends. Katie was right to spring into investigative mode when she heard Bill was adopting Luna.

Katie: “Oh my God, Bill! Poppy and Luna have not been in your life that long. You need to be careful.”

It’s always the quiet ones…

Right, Molly? The GH legal eagle wanted to be a mom so badly she lined up her sister, Kristina, to be her surrogate even though everyone warned her it would end badly — including their mother, Alexis. The Davis girls went ahead with the pregnancy, a joyless journey from the moment of conception. There were no joint visits to the doctor, no happy moments of seeing the sonogram (or awkward scenes of who got to keep it), no sisterly bonding, no talk of a baby shower. GH missed almost every dramatic beat of that pregnancy; they just jumped ahead to the inevitable custody battle.

So, who predicted Kristina confronting Ava in her hotel room and then pitching headfirst out a window into a pool and losing the baby? That was a true shocker, made better by half the town witnessing her fall into the pool and a guilty Ava staring down in horror and then panicking.

Dante: “A witness down below saw you close the curtains. Do you want to revise that part of your story?”

Ava: “Now that you mention it…”

The ziggiest part of that exchange is that Ava talked to the cops without her lawyer, Scott Baldwin, present. She’s smarter than that. Fast forward to bereft mother #1 addressing the cause of Kristina and Ava’s confrontation.

Molly (to Sonny) : “My daughter is dead because of you!”

Sonny walked up to the roof, flashed back to all the run-ins he’d had with people (Dante, Kristina, Josslyn, Anna) and decided to jump. His dead son, Morgan , appeared and convinced him not to, Sonny asked Kevin for help and the jig was up.

Sonny: “Are you telling me I’ve been taking placebos?”

And so ended the “Sonny’s on bad meds” storyline which put him on the wrong side of family and friends but ultimately showed how loved he is. The biggest shocker there was that it took so long!

Hey. It’s only my opinion.