Worst Handling of an “Issue”
Around 1990-91, SVH decided to tackle “serious” issues like drugs, divorce, racism, eating disorders and homosexuality. Regina died of a one-time-sample of cocaine. Sweet Valley was torn apart by harassment and hate speech towards their token 3 black students. The Wakefields had all sorts of marriage trouble and separated. Yeah, most of these were kinda clunky “issues,” but the worst by far was the homosexuality plotline. See, Tom McKay breaks up with Jean West because he doesn’t feel passionate about her. Around the same time, Enid’s cousin Jake comes to town, and all the girls are all aflutter over him. At some party, Tom and Jake discuss jazz music and tennis or something and strike up a friendship. Then Jake confesses to Tom that he’s gay. And Tom freaks because… HE might be gay too!

There’s no mention of sex or attraction or passion or interest or ANYTHING. Just “what if I’m gay too?” because he couldn’t “feel passion” for Jeannie…? And because he enjoyed talking to Jake about tennis and jazz…? Because you know how those boys who like tennis and jazz are….

Biggest Backpedal
Lois Waller. For ten years and 70-odd SVH books (and who knows how many SV Junior High and SVKids books), Lois Waller was the fat girl everyone made fun of and who was the complete butt of the school. Even Liz isn’t really friends with Lois, because Lois “tries too hard” and “makes her uncomfortable.” But then, in the book dealing with the Issue of anorexia (Robin Wilson becomes anorexic and starves herself nearly to death in, like, 2 weeks), suddenly Lois is all healthy and “good-natured” and well-liked and has a boyfriend and Liz thinks she’s great. “Lois would never be a fashion model, but she clearly had a great relationship with Gene, and her outlook on life was completely optimistic. So what difference did it make if she couldn’t wear size-six jeans? None at all, Elizabeth told herself confidently.” Too little too late, fuckers.

Most Problematic Problem Resolution
“The New Elizabeth” and the surfing championship. The hell? Maybe we should be relieved that for once a Wakefield/SVH-er didn’t score yet another Automatic Big Win at something…. But I can’t help thinking this sends a really weird, really problematic message. See, Liz could easily win the big surfing contest. She WANTS to win the big surfing contest! She’s been practicing for weeks, trying to prove something to herself. She’s good. She’s (of course) a natural talent. But there’s a problem. Her surfing instructor, Sean, has (of course) fallen in love with her. And Sean’s long-time friend Laurie is in love with him! Oooh, the drama! And Liz finds out that Laurie also takes up surfing to impress Sean so that maybe he’ll fall in love with her, Laurie, instead of the beautiful and talented natural surfer Elizabeth! So Liz ON PURPOSE loses the surfing competition with an ON PURPOSE clumsy wipeout so that Laurie will ON PURPOSE win the event and be secured as a romantic partner in Sean’s eyes. And not doing her best is okay because she knows deep down she’s as good a surfer as Laurie, even if she screwed up ON PURPOSE in the contest. Because Sean will magically no longer have a crush on Elizabeth, but will now get together with Laurie. And that’s a Happy Ending. Because Elizabeth ON PURPOSE did all of this. So it’s worth it, totally. For fuck’s sake….

What’s especially stupid is that Bill Chase, Surfing Champ can tell that Elizabeth wiped out ON PURPOSE… but Sean, Surfing Champ and Instructor, can’t tell at all. Oh no.

Most Unexpected Ending
Regina Morrow croaking from a drug overdose. That was really surprising… and even pretty sad (if melodramatic). Although I guess the Morrows musta been pretty pissed that they spent all that money having Regina’s hearing restored at a fancy Swiss medical clinic, only to have her die a few months later….

Lamest A-Plot
Emily Meyer’s Family Traumas. See, Emily’s dad has remarried and has a new baby with Emily’s stepmother, and Emily’s being forced to give up playing drums for The Droids and become the kind of person her stepmother wants her to be- And who else can save Emily but Elizabeth Wakefield…? Well, try Elizabeth’s Grandma, who intervenes and talks to “that poor child” Emily and tells her some sob-story about when she first married Grandpa Wakefield who had a son, Louis, from an earlier marriage- Which, of course, we never hear about again, notably in the Wakefield Sagas. Everything about this plot sucked. There was the deus ex machina couple ending, in which Emily and the Droids’ bassist declare their love for each other. And there’s the whole ultra-wholesome “7th Heaven” Family Ending, too, in which the Meyers are all happily reunited and Emily and her stepmother are “mother and daughter” and everyone’s hugging and all that. And there were smaller putrid touches, too; for instance, Emily blubblering “Oh, Grandma Wakefield” rankled… it wasn’t her Grandma, after all. And the Wakefields getting all involved in another family’s personal business and offering to let Emily live with them was hard to swallow. And Jessica not gossiping about this stuff was unbelievable. And the fact that the Wakefields invited none of their friends/business acquaintances to their Going-Away party for the grandparents, but instead just invited THE MEYERS who they BARELY KNOW was stupid. Moreover, the happy reunion scene with The Droids playing in the Wakefields’ dining room was wretched. And of COURSE at the end EVERYONE lives HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Honorable Mentions: Ronnie Edwards and the bookies, and Tony Esteban and the steroids. Even 90210 handled the betting/gambling and steroids “issues” better than SVH did here. And it’s a good thing I’m not keeping a Stereotype Tally, what with all the mobsters and jocks….

Lamest B-Plot
Yeah, how do you choose? Jessica thinks Mrs. Wakefield is pregnant. Tofu-Glo. Liz and Todd have a battle of the sexes. Cousin Jenny. Jessica is a rock roadie. The secret puppy. Yeah, hilarity and hijinx ensue! I think an all-time low was the Mr. Wakefield Has a Mid-life Crisis thing. It was the most tired, most unrealistic, most doesn’t-ring-true, most ripped-from-the-already-overdone-sitcom-genre of storylines in the world. No, no, I know… it was the Todd, Ken and Winston dress up as girls and sneak into Cheer Camp ( SVH #114, V for Victory) thing! Truly vile.

Face it, most of the B-Plots sucked.

Best A-Plot
Lila is nearly date-raped. Not so much for the Jekyll-Hyde quality of John Pfeiffer, which bugged, but for the fact that she had to go on and deal with it… for several books. And, while still melodramatic and stereotypical as per SVH, it actually… had some element of realistic feeling to it.

Best B-Plot
Um. Uh. Um. I guess if I had to choose, it’d be from Book # 47, Troublemaker: Jessica the Wannabe Ballerina in You Can’t Take it with You. I’m a sucker for ballet details.

Most Unreal A-Plot Twist (in general)
That new girl, Andrea Slade? She’s the DAUGHTER of Jessica and Lila’s favorite rock musician, Jamie Peters, who has moved to Sweet Valley! Yeah!

Most Unreal B-Plot Twist (in general)
Jessica saves the Sweet Valley Centennial Picnic by… making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…? And no one laughs at her or complains or is pissed or anything? Because she messed up the order for the food all irresponsibly? And everyone paid a ton of money in advance for a great catered BBQ that never happens? How could she make enough PB&Js all by her own little self—and keep them fresh—for an ENTIRE TOWN?!

Runner up: DeeDee Gordon recopies Mrs. Wakefield’s big design plans after a party Jessica has goes awry and someone spills beer on the plans. Of course, DeeDee manages it in just about a half-hour, and finishes JUST as the Wakefields get back from the airport, and Mrs. Wakefield CERTAINLY can’t tell the difference between her own handwriting/drawing and that of a high school girl who’s taken one design class at the community center.

Biggest Plot Inconsistency
Remember how Todd moves to Vermont? And Elizabeth starts dating Jeffrey? And then Todd moves back and Elizabeth is all torn between Jeffrey and Todd until she realizes that Todd’s the one she REALLY loves? And there’s all this tension when Todd and Jeffrey meet for the first time in SVH #58, Brokenhearted…? Suspenseful, huh? Well, WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT SUPPOSEDLY TODD AND JEFFREY HAD ALREADY MET AT SOME WINTER CARNIVAL IN THE SVH SUPER EDITION BY THE SAME NAME? And Elizabeth, emphatically, was NOT torn between two lovers then, neither. Huh.

Biggest Unexplored Plot Aspect
Okay, so, Roger Barrett’s dad abandons Roger and Roger’s chronically ill and dying mother. Then, next book, Roger’s mom dies. And then it’s revealed that Roger is really a Patman and is RICH and is GOING TO LIVE WITH BRUCE AND HIS PARENTS! And so then Roger struggles with his relationship with Olivia and his “new” life as a rich boy and doesn’t feel he fits in, and doesn’t know how to deal with all this. Because, of course, it’s KNOWING WHAT FUCKING FORK TO USE DURING A FORMAL DINNER, and not, say, THE FACT THAT HIS DAD JUST BAILED ON HIM AND HIS MOM JUST DIED that is sooooo traumatic! God, he never even gives his parents a passing thought!

Biggest They-Expect-Us-to-Swallow-that-Bullshit-AGAIN?! Plot
Okay, the whole 6-part miniseries Margo the Evil Twin thing was bad enough. Yeah, sure, BY COINCIDENCE there is a 16-year-old girl out there who LOOKS EXACLTY LIKE the Wakefield twins (but with dark hair) down to the 5’6 and perfect size six and dimple and hair length/texture and everything. And not only that, but she’s PSYCHOTIC and WANTS TO KILL ONE OF THEM AND BECOME A WAKEFIELD TWIN HERSELF because THE WAKEFIELD TWINS ARE PERFECT! And Margo the Bad looks so much and acts so much like the twins that she can actually fool other Wakefields, including the twins themselves. Uh huh.

But then after that whole mess, when supposedly Margo has been killed, it turns out… several Special Editions later… SHE WASN’T REALLY DEAD AFTER ALL! And what’s more, she discovers SHE has a secret twin sister too! So there are TWO twins of the Wakefield twins, both psychotic and-

Oh, sheesh.

Please, Margo… do us all a favor….

Worst Use of Soap Opera-like Melodrama
Ken Matthews, Football Hero, is blinded in a tragic car accident!

Runner up: Elizabeth, post-motorcycle-accident-induced-coma, has a split personality/amnesia bout and turns into Jessica temporarily!

Second runner-up: Enid is paralyzed in a plane crash! But miraculously, she overcomes her fear to walk in order to save a small boy from drowning.

Worst Wedding
Just about every wedding that takes place in Sweet Valley is called off at the altar. Steven and Cara elope, and have a dramatic “Do you take this man?” “No” exchange at the cheesy Nevada chapel. (By coincidence, Steven and his girlfriend Billie also have a last-minute wedding-call-off in Sweet Valley University. Boy, between his girlfriends dying and jilting him, Steven should be a basket case.) The Wakefields’ family friend Sue is supposed to marry Jeremy… but the wedding is called off at the alter when Jessica announces that SHE’S in love with Jeremy and he with her. But the winners of the Worst Wedding are Alice Wakefield and Henry Patman from the SVH Saga, because not only does the wedding get called off at the last minute, it happens at Patman mansion in front of ten million people and then Alice goes running in her wedding gown all barefooted across town to find Ned Wakefield and confess her love for him. Hoy.

Best Wedding
Have there actually been any weddings that WEREN’T called off at the last minute? Well, there was the Fowler Remarriage, but that was dumb because “Grace and George will exchange the same vows that they wrote and exchanged eighteen years ago” and when I read that, I was all “well, yeah, ‘cos those vows worked so well the first time, huh?” And there was Annie Whitman’s mom, but who cares about her? Ummm… hmmm… uh….

PREVIOUS PAGE:|:NEXT PAGE: