The Best And Worst On BTG, B&B, DAYS, GH And Y&R The Week Of Feb. 24-28

Quantrell Colbert/CBS; CBS; Howard Wise/jpistudios.com; ABC

(From l.) BTG’s Dani (Karla Mosley), B&B’s Luna (Lisa Yamada), Y&R’s Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) and GH’s Tracy (Jane Elliot) dominated the daytime action last week.

Beyond The Gates: The Duprees Take Daytime

The set-up was Soaps 101: A loyal wife whose husband cheated on her with their daughter’s best friend learns the cheater is marrying the vixen at her family’s country club and moving into her neighborhood. She slaps the vixen, takes a golf club to her ex-husband’s office and goes to bed with a hot young photographer who also happens to be her sister’s nephew (on the husband’s side, phew). And that’s just one character on this deliciously messy new soap!

Dani Dupree was on fire while her family smoldered around her, closing ranks and making it clear that Dani’s ex Bill was persona non country club. Her wise dad Vernon advised her she was giving Bill power he didn’t earn while her regal mom Anita counseled, “Duprees don’t hide.” They do, however, get blackmailed. Bill paid a visit to Vernon to remind him of all the times Bill came through when a Dupree “needed a favor,” making it clear they’d better show up at his wedding. Vernon and Anita agreed in order to protect their grandson Martin, queuing up another soap staple: Mommy and Daddy have a secret!

The family filed into Bill and Hayley’s fancy ceremony dressed all in black, refused to stand for the bride (thanks to withering side eye from Anita), and prepared for the vows. Dani had other plans. She opened her purse and… bang!

General Hospital: The Qs v. Drew

When is blackmail fun? When the Quartermaines do it! They’ve recently battled over Michael and Willow’s kids, where Willow can live and whether her new boyfriend Drew is allowed on the property (that’s a no). The latest go-round involved Tracy filing a cease and desist order against Drew for taking the famed Quartermaine name (around the same time he ran for Congress, which was no coincidence). In response, Drew’s lawyer Martin showed up at the Qs’, wondering when was the last time Tracy had the estate surveyed. Huh?

Martin explained that decades ago, Edward overshot the property line by 20 feet, building the family crypt on what turns out to be public land. “What’s a little property theft between friends?” he quipped as he downed Tracy’s expensive scotch. Bottom line, Martin explained gleefully, is that Tracy must let Drew keep the family name — or else he will have bulldozers at her front door.

“Tell that snake in the grass,” responded Tracy, “I’m calling your bluff!”

Bold and Beautiful: Finn Finds Luna

Finn let psycho Sheila into his life after he found out she was his biological mother, so it was no surprise he tracked Luna down after learning she was his daughter. “What are you doing at Bill Spencer’s, of all places?” asked Finn when a shocked Luna opened the door.

Great question. Fans know Bill negotiated some cockamamie deal with the prison system to let the double murderer serve out her sentence under secret house arrest, but Luna glossed over that. She launched into why Bill had helped her: Because they had similar troubled childhoods and share a connection. Luna acknowledged she murdered two people and tried to kill Steffy too (as if Finn would have forgotten that). She claimed she is ashamed, wasn’t herself, wants to make things right, etc. Finn just stared at her until Luna started talking about her father Tom Starr (who she poisoned), saying she doesn’t think it’s right for a father to not fight for his daughter.

“I didn’t know!” burst out Finn. Wha-at? said Luna’s face.

Days of Our Lives: Fake Rafe Is Busted

Rafe doppelgänger Arnold wore out his welcome long ago, even for EJ, who allowed the crook to stay (to punish Jada by having Fake Rafe leave her at the altar) when he showed up again in Salem looking for more money. Gabi finally figured out the lookalike was impersonating her brother because he was acting like such a hound dog. He slept with a stripper, made a pass at Stephanie and pulled Gabi into such an un-brotherly hug it gave her the ick. So she pulled a hair out of his head and ran to Kayla for a DNA test to prove Arnold had returned.

“Didn’t someone kill him in prison?” asked the confused doc. “Allegedly,” replied Gabi, adding that Arnold was sitting in her kitchen. He was, but somehow EJ managed to inject Rafe with a memory-erasing drug (so he can’t testify against EJ) and swap him out for Arnold. That lead to Jada and Shawn running into the real Rafe and questioning him; he replied he has no idea who “this Rafe person” is. So much for that syringe erasing only his memories of the past few months…

Will Jada be able to erase her memory of sleeping with Shawn when she thought “Rafe” was cheating on her?

GH: Joss Dials 007

The unexpected idea of volleyball-playing college student Josslyn being groomed by Brennan to become a WSB agent has potential because he’s dating her mother and Carly will be furious that her new beau put her daughter in harm’s way. It also makes a certain amount of sense because Joss just buried a boyfriend for the second time, so she’s in burn-it-all-down mode. The problem? A few head-scratching plot holes.

Assuming no one at the PCPD noticed that Joss kept Dex’s gun after he died, she had no training on how to load it or shoot it. Joss brought the gun with her when she broke into Cyrus’s place (without gloves). When Cyrus came at her with an axe, she shot him dead — and then moved the axe with her bare hands. Does that really scream ace WSB candidate?

Brennan has blackmail material against Joss for Cyrus’s murder so that part is believable, but whisking her away for training with no good-bye to her mother or best friend was not. “Can you believe a grad student dropped out of an environmental science trip to Easter Island at the last minute?” marveled Carly to Trina. No. We’re all for moving a character in a different direction, but this story went from 0 to 100 in less time than it takes James Bond to rev up his Aston Martin.

Young and Restless: Bottle’s Up

Last year, Y&R showcased an effective two-character bottle episode starring Jack and Nikki at a pivotal moment in their friendship where he decided to swallow a bunch of pills to “join her” in her addiction. Nikki called 911, Jack was okay, Nikki quit drinking. Crisis averted.

Where was the crisis in last week’s scream-fest between enemies Sharon and Phyllis? Moreover, how could Y&R subject viewers to another story involving characters locked up? In the past year ,Jordan kidnapped Claire and Harrison, Victor locked Jordan in the wine cellar, Sharon hallucinated Cameron and repeatedly went missing, and on New Year’s Eve, she was kidnapped and chained to a sewer. In this latest hostage tale, Phyllis and Sharon woke up locked in a drab room where their captor spoke to them through alarms, music and a disguised voice. The women pounded on doors and hurled insults, called each other poison, bullies, devils, bad moms and ordered the other to “choke on it.” Festive!

Michelle Stafford and Sharon Case are talented Daytime Emmy-winning actresses with enormous popularity. You’d think a full hour of these powerhouses working out their characters’ hatred of each other would have been a home run, but they didn’t do that — so instead,ñ it struck out. As we write this, the special episode has stretched into week two.

“It’s like we’re the only guests at a bad hotel,” lamented Phyllis. When’s check-out time?