* Photo credit to The Closet *
Sick of hearing about Jessica slobbering all over every guy? How about reading up on her grandparents having sex instead? See, never say something can’t get worse.
And excuse moi: Just who is that oh-so-foxy guy in the left-hand corner? He’s pretty much the most delicious guy to ever grace a SVH cover, yet he’s hidden away on the inside. Is that supposed to be Ned Wakefield? No wonder the twins keep going on and on about how they wanna do their dad.
So our saga begins in 1866, Wakefield, England (oh, dear God), a town that is super attractive. Anyway, Theodore Wakefield—who wants to “leave for Cambridge soon and study the classics”—is riding a horse and hitting on his older brother’s 16-year-old German fiancée. He tells his brother to treat the fiancée right, and the brother gets so pissed that he tries to jump a horse over a wall and dies. That really showed them.
Theodore’s dad tries to snooker him into marrying the fiancée and inheriting the estate, but Theodore shouts “NO!” and runs away—to America! He hops a boat to the new world, where he saves the illustrious, Swedish Alice Larson from drowning, “and at that instant…Theodore knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.” Shame on me for expecting these teenagers to be more sane re: love than their 1990s counterparts. They can barely speak each other’s language yet they are sooooo important to each other, and Theodore whittles her a rose based on his family ring. They’re about to embark on a new life together when Theodore gets quarantined for typhus and loses her forever. What’s a guy like Theodore to do now? Simple: Join the circus and name himself the Magnificent Theo W.! (Snore @ that name.)
A half-Native American trapeze artist named Dancing Wind is way hot for him, but when Theo thinks that Alice Larson might pop up at the circus, Dancing Wind freaks out and tries to do a triple, mid-air somersault to woo him. You’d think a love letter would suffice. She nearly kills herself in the process, and that makes Theo realize that he loves her. They quit the circus and buy a farm, and then Dancing Wind dies during childbirth after spewing out some twins, James and Sarah. Oh, cruel world!
Sarah grows up to be a total fox, as suspected, and Theo becomes a stuffy ol’ prig who won’t let her date Edward the Babelicious Farmhand. Things especially go to shit when dysentery combines its forces with pneumonia and kills off poor James. Then Theo really turns psycho. Gone is the free spirit who ran away from home to join the circus (which is about as liberally wacko as you can get in any day and age), and in its place is an uptight father who tries to arrange his daughter’s marriage and threatens to kick her out of the house if she marries Edward. Sarah runs away to San Francisco with good ol’ Ed just as the earthquake strikes, and then they do it (out of wedlock!), believing to be on the precipice of death. (I like this plan.) But then they live! But then Edward dies ten seconds later while saving a baby, and Sarah returns home and learns that she’s knocked up! Who said being a teenager was ever easy? Theo is a big ol’ bastard and kicks Sarah out of the house, and he never sees her again. Why must you be so cold, Theo?
Sarah raises the baby—Ted Wakefield—but as its aunt, fearing that everyone will hate on her for having an illegitimate kid. Ted grows up to be a fine young gent, working as a server in a jazz club and canoodling with hot songbirds who encourage him to become a music reviewer and, ultimately, an amazing journalist. Sarah eventually tells Ted that she’s his real mom, and he’s so upset by this that he runs off to college and meets two sexy twins—Amanda (the Madonna) and Samantha (the whore). Samantha gets pissed at Ted for loving Amanda more so she frames him for smuggling bootleg liquor and he swears off women—until he meets journalist Julia Marks. They go through this process of rescuing some treaty and fall in love. It’s sort of a boring story. Then they get married, make a baby (Robert), and JULIA BLOWS UP ALONG WITH THE HINDENBURG IN FRONT OF TED’S VERY EYES! This just keeps getting better and better.
Robert joins the military and falls in love via the radio with an American prisoner/POW contact named Hannah, who’s trapped on a Japanese base during World War II with a bunch of other hotties. When she gets rescued, she and Robert make out in front of everyone and get married. Robert’s story of falling in love is even more boring than his dad’s.
Ned Wakefield (at last!) bursts forth from Robert’s loins and is a total hippie/stone fox. He even has his hair in a ponytail. (Be still, my loins!) He’s seduced by a stuck-up bitch named Becky Foster who renames herself Rainbow and pretends to care about the world only to get Ned to help her with school. She shows her true colors when they all get arrested during a protest. After that, Ned shuns women, and you know what this means: enter Alice Robertson! He saves her from drowning—gasp! How cyclical!
Tragically, Alice is all set to marry Hank Patman—yes! Bruce’s dad, who exhibits none of the cool, laid back traits he possessed in the books. Dismayed and super in love with Alice (although they’ve never even had one date), Ned packs his bags and plans to set out for a journey of self-discovery when Alice the Runaway Bride shows up on his stoop in her wedding dress, and they French in the moonlight to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Then later, they compare wooden roses and family rings! Such a coincidence!
And now you know who to blame for Elizabeth and Jessica. As you can see, it was totally unavoidable.
Here’s a question: How does any of this sync up to what Grandma Wakefield was babbling about in #25 Nowhere to Run? Oh, me, always hoping for continuity.
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