Chris B

I'm very curious what this will look like. I will say, despite it's issues, it's still very enjoyable and good overall. I like that they made this change before the show had completely run out of steam. I think of Hollyoaks in recent years as a good comparison. BTW, do we have any idea when Wadey's stuff will start airing?

@SkyloverI like the Panesar's and the new Mitchell's but the Knight family is so boring and has soaked up far too much screentime. I do like Kojo, but the entire family could go and I wouldn't mind. I do agree with you that the show is lacking in balance, especially this year. It seems like the stories are very disjointed just jumping from issue to issue. It needs more balance and there needs to be more long term planning like when they developed the six story or even Cindy's return.

I started watching last June so I didn't get to see Bianca before this more recent run and she is absolutely brilliant. One of the best soap characters that I've seen. She really makes me want to one day go back and watch the old episodes. I hate that the actress lives in the US and likely won't return full time. She is absolutely amazing!

I finally decided to start the reboot. I started with stunt week and now am getting ready to start Sienna and Ethan's wedding week. I'll say I'm enjoying it, but I still am not sold on all of the cast changes. I do think Tom should've remained and James is a difficult one for me to take, but I can accept that depending on what develops for Ste in the reboot. Misbah, Donny and Diane all could've gotten the boot. I'm shocked they were kept. Especially Misbah considering she no longer has any family on the show. I would've kept Sally over her in particular. The highlight for me has been the Frankie/JJ story. They cast these roles incredibly well and it's such a complicated story and the entire family is knocking it out of the park. I also am kinda enjoying Mercedes cancer story but I hate she's run through so many love interests. I wish they hadn't run through so many men with her because it makes it hard to care once they decide to put her back in a romantic situation. Also, it hasn't been featured a ton yet but I am very interested in Cleo's kidnapping and can't wait to see more of that. I'm glad they're uploading the show in an omnibus. It makes catching up less daunting since it's just an hour a week. I'm going to try to catch up as soon as possible and I think it's strong enough I'll stick with it.

I could be wrong, but I could've sworn I read somewhere that they were airing Price Is Right reruns once The Talk ends.

I've heard this and I wonder why they seem to be struggling so much. They have a pretty big and diverse library. I do think one aspect I find confusing is how Showtime is within the app, but separate which makes it difficult to find those shows/movies. The app definitely isn't very user friendly and doesn't highlight just what they have.

Between Kelly Monaco leaving and now this, the show is finally getting rid of the dead weight. Both actors were good at one point but have been checked out for years. I hope they don't write Michael off and give the character a chance with an actor who wants to be there.

I 100% agree with you. I was happy they noticed on the podcast that the change came before Heather Locklear which is what they remembered. I love Heather and I love what she brought to the show, but I hate that she gets all the credit when the show had improved before she joined. Switching to serialized storytelling and bringing on Jo were the first things that really saved the show for me. With that said, I hate Jo never lived up to how interesting she was in season one. After that they tended to lean into putting her into victim situations and took away a lot of her layers.

I saw an interview where she was promoting her new tv show with Tyler and she said her team told her he was sending her an offer for a movie but he wouldn’t negotiate. When she saw the offer she was stunned because it was a huge amount of money. Then at the premiere he gave her another check because he said she did so well in the movie. Based on that, I imagine she got paid just as well for this new show and the show is a hit so it’ll likely continue. I’m not surprised this wouldn’t make sense for her now that she’s getting that Tyler Perry money.

He looks like Darnell Williams. He has quite the resume as well.

Chaunteé Schuler who played the second adult Bonnie on ATWT from 2007-2009 plays Maria Cross on the new Amazon Prime Alex Cross tv show, Cross. I hadn't seen her in anything so I was shocked to see her again. I enjoyed her Bonnie, particularly when she was with Dusty.

The Tyler Perry and 50 Cent shows aren't on a major network like CBS. But, I think what will help this show is that they already have a big Black following. CBS has shows in primetime with Black leads as well. I'm sure they'll find the right balance when promoting the show.

One thing it has that other new soaps didn't is a second window on streaming. Passions would have likely never gone off the air if it aired in the streaming era. In terms of live ratings, I want to see it at least do better than The Talk which was averaging about 1.3 million viewers. The CBS soaps are averaging around 3.24m and 2.81 for the past season, but it's hard to say how a new soap would do. I just hope for the best. I'll admit, the only thing I'm nervous about is ratings.

This is why I don't get the outrage of her exit. They tried to give her story and we know she tanked that story and has been phoning it in for years. She's lucky to have lasted as long as she did considering the performances she was giving. They needed to get rid of someone likely for the budget and also, as we saw in the ratings, killing off a major character can generate good ratings and story. Who else would yall recommend they have gotten rid of with a similar pay? She didn't seem like she wanted to be there. Hell, she definitely doesn't seem like she wants to return and yet her fans are still begging for her job back. I just don't get it.

It was either Ryan's Hope or GH and of course once GH went to an hour it became one of the biggest shows on tv. I think it was one of those things where you had to strike when the iron was hot. To launch a new soap and be as successful as Ryan's Hope was, it needed to happen early on. Once GH became the focus everything changed.

Something I realized after reading the recent oral history on Ryan's Hope is that Claire Labine had more to do with it's demise than I originally thought. Yes ABC could be a disaster at times, but so could she. She had a habit when leaving the show and returning of throwing everything out, even popular stories and characters to try and bring the show back to her original vision. She couldn't evolve. Her biggest mess up is in the early 80s when the show was booming in the ratings and ABC wanted to expand the show to an hour. She turned them down and GH ended up going to an hour and the rest is history. It's crazy to think how different things could've been had she agreed to that. Of course the show was ultimately displaced by Loving and put in a timeslot it could never be successful in. Had she allowed them to expand the show to an hour that would've never happened.

I know for Bill Bell, he always regretted changing Ashley Abbott's paternity. I also personally felt he made a mistake by eliminating the entire Foster and Brooks families. They could've found room for at least a couple people per family.

I wanna say those plane crash episodes are in Prime's classic episode collection. I noticed the last time I checked they added a lot more episodes to that collection. I need to go back and watch some of that. I love a good event story like that.

Guza's GH was great, even when it became The Sopranos. He knew how to balance the violence with the mob with romance, had strong teen scenes, strong female characters and he could craft an event like no other. I do understand why GH fans were conflicted about him because some of the vets did suffer when he wrote the show, but you can't deny the impact he had on that show. For Michele Val Jean it's literally the perfect choice. It's someone she knows really well and someone she knows can get the job done. She's creating an all star writing staff and I'm excited to see what they give us.

I was reading the article about the break and sweet Harold tried to kill Paul?! There is still so much I don't know lol. I'm excited for the break and I hope they give us a nice cliffhanger. I took a long break after Toadie's exit but I've recently begun catching up. The show is still good and I love all the characters, I just needed some time off since Mackenzie and Toadie were my favorites. Right now I'm loving Terese hitting rock bottom. I thought it was heartbreaking when she called Piper and she was too busy to see her. I hope they consider bringing one of her kids back for her or some sort of family. I want to see Terese come out of this stronger than ever. Another story I love is what's going on with Wendy and Andrew. I've seen some complaints since technically she isn't cheating, but an emotional affair is often worse than a physical one and I love that they're playing this. I'm excited to catch up and see some of the stuff I've heard about like the Ramsey family return and Chriselle Stause finally arriving. I'm happy to hear things have remained good while I've been away. Lastly, I'm not worried about the show getting cancelled like some are. I always watched the show on Prime and if anything, I think making it a Prime Original will only give the show more visibility. On the few times I would checkout FreeVee, it did have some interesting stuff, but since it was another separate app, I rarely really dug in to watch anything. I'm happy the show is now with the other Prime Originals so people don't have to search for it.

This is the next episode in my rewatch and I had forgotten what a wonderful job they did developing this story. I think I had blacked everything out and thought it was a "very special episode" sort of thing, but they did a good job of developing Olivia's addiction, why it happened and how it affected the entire family. Yet another reason I love season 8. For a new crop of writers they did a really good job of re-freshing the show but keeping it grounded and centered around the characters we love.

I understand Doug isn't coming back, but why would you kill off a core characters daughter if you can't bring her parents back? Why bring back Ian Ward but Paul and Dylan aren't around? It's bad writing. Killing Heather is a waste of a legacy character who had potential and a bad story all around.

It's insanity lol. He's gotten more action off the show than his last few years on screen. But this is what Josh Grittith does, he loves off screen stuff. It reminds me of finally remembering Keemo only to kill him off screen. Such wastes of history.

I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm excited for the first major character they add once the series is on air. There is always a missing piece or two waiting in the wings. I can't believe we have a new show to look forward to and new storylines. For the most part, the current soaps are going in circles. It's nice to be able to anticipate something different for once.

I still can't believe they killed Heather off to begin with, but this is kinda confusing. Daisy would've made sense, but Jordan and Ian Ward? Ian Ward would've made more sense in a Nikki/Dylan/Paul story, but with none of them here? And if Jordan wanted to torment the Newman's, why would she pick Sharon and Heather as her vessel to do that? It doesn't make any sense.