Best Of Show Or Worse For Wear? Digest Hands Out Blue Ribbons And Booby Prizes

THUMBS UP!/
THUMBS DOWN!
Labor Day Landmarks
     There's a good reason why soaps rarely air anything significant on holidays: Audience attention is diverted. (Those of us who missed GH's fabulous turkey-day pizza fest at the Quartermaine mansion know what we're talking about.) But for some reason, this Labor Day found day-time and prime-time overlooking the holiday storyline embargo, scheduling really hot stuff when many of us were celebrating the end of summer and checking to see if Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa had hit another home run.
     MELROSE PLACE had the audacity to air its (summer) cliffhanger while we were cleaning our grills. This episode was the farewell for key characters like Taylor, Coop, Jennifer and Billy (who had been with the show since day one). It was a big deal - how many of us forgot to set our VCRs?
     That afternoon, DAYS OF OUR LIVES featured Franco lying in a pool of blood. Couldn't DAYS have waited a few days to pull the trigger on this significant story? Meanwhile, at SUNSET BEACH, the much-discussed, but never-seen Congressman Blythe was finally given a face. If you missed his Labor Day debut, you had only the following day to catch him.
     We're also giving these shows a "Thumbs Up," though, because the episodes themselves were extremely well done - just like the burgers we were chowing down on as they aired.