All My Shadows

Yes, because my first reaction was, "...and then they were all burned in a fire." Yall, what about those damn Christmas movies? We were had, weren't we?

I always wondered why we never saw Sid's daughter Annie again after the pilot. Now that I'm in the second half of S5 and that awful twit Diana is finally absent for a long stretch of episodes, I think it would have made a lot of sense if we'd seen her reconnect with a reformed Annie would promises Karen that she'll take care of her. Speaking of Karen. I absolutely understand why Michele Lee disliked the pill addiction story. She fell into addiction way too quickly and with no nuance to speak of. We've had more of her as a hardcore pillhead who is pushing away everyone who loves her than we had of the build-up to addiction. I'm slowly adjusting to the "new" show. It's a deep dive into three soap subgenres that I've never been crazy about - crime, business, and politics - at the expense of what, to me, is purest subgenre of soap - domestic life. I think what's tough for business on KL rather than business on the other three shows is that the other three shows had family woven tightly into the business storylines. For Knots, the more you go into business, the less you're in to family.

Dropping in to say that Polly Holliday's death so soon after Linda Lavin's stings so sharply. The entire original cast of regulars from "Alice" is now gone. I imagine it holds the unfortunate distinction of being the most recent series, outside of Golden Girls, where the whole main ensemble cast has passed away (up until the arrivals of Diane Ladd and later Celia Weston, of course).

My immediate reaction to that photo was "LARISSA?!" in Shay/Buckey's voice.

I’ve been watching some episodes of Hollyoaks from its first decade, and I’ve always known that it was stylistically very different back then, but it’s still pretty hard to believe that this is the same show. It begs several questions: Did ALL of the UK soaps just melt into a blob of generic sameness by 2005 or so? Has Oaks ever been rerun regularly in the UK or abroad? It’s so easy to find tons and tons of classics eps of the other main soaps, but there are only a few handfuls of pre-2005 Hollyoaks. When the show glammed up and went the way of camp during the Kirkwood era (did that start with him or before him?), was the general consensus that the show needed that kind of change? Not just for ratings and relevance but for quality. They went from one episode per week to five episodes per week rather quickly (over the course of eight years). Was it necessary? Did that have a lot to do with the change in tone? We know that the once-weekly soaps are held in a different box from the daily soaps in the UK, so was the rapid expansion part of a plan to get Corrie/EE-style attention? In the long run, have the McQueens been that popular or are they seen as having eaten the show at times with all the various relatives with quirky/tarty names popping up? I do love Nana (RIP) riding her power scooter in the current opening sequence.

There were soOoOoOoOoOoOo many characters who were introduced in the 1990s and 2000s who were no blood relation to Susan and had not much of a connection to the remaining Stewarts lol for the life of me, I've never understood the idea that it's pointless to bring back characters if they don't have many connections on the canvas while new characters pop up with 0 built-in connections to the canvas all the time. If they brought in one or two of the quads, then they would have been "the remaining Stewarts." They would have also been completely fresh slates, ripe for building their own relationships with the rest of the canvas at whatever time they would have showed up. And then, maybe, under TPTB that cared, their presence would have then prompted return visits from Ellen and/or Annie. The fascination with them is that they were characters born into the second-most important family of the show's first 30 years on the air and were never reintroduced later on as a means to maintain the Stewarts' position on the canvas via adding a new, younger generation to the family. The fact that they were born and then disappeared is perfect because, again, fresh clean slates. ATWT rolled in so many short-term, out-of-the-blue characters near the end (remember Elwood!? The Z twins!?). Several of them could have been written as Ward quads instead (and no, I don't mean all four showing up all at once). It might not have made a difference story-wise, but it would have provided something all of the newly-created characters couldn't have - continuity. ATWT was on the air for 50+ years, and it wasn't an anthology series. It was meant to trace multiple generations of these families over the decades. Bringing in even just ONE of the Ward kids would have honored that original premise in a huge way. PS. I don't think Christina Hughes ever existed onscreen outside of her mother's uterus, and plenty of people spent time wanting her to pop up in toward the end of the show's run, too! The whole point of wanting that was so that she could indeed become a fully realized character.

Thank you!! My problem is I don’t really care if providing my thoughts brings or brought down the thread lol I enjoyed periods of ATWT in 2006-2007 when all anyone ever did in those threads was rip the show to shreds. I managed to deal. I see nothing wrong with being thorough in praising what you like and constructively criticizing what you don’t like.

I can’t get past the 3-day June reveal and now the 3-day Leslie/Barbara reveal. I don’t ever wanna see anybody claim that “it’s nice to finally have a soap play out all the beats of a story again!” Bullsht!

I think I’m done with BTG for a while bc the June/Samantha/Tyrell stuff is pissing me right tf off. The lion’s share of characters in this show are bad people, dumb af, or both. Y’all enjoy!

The Duprees lie and keep things hidden whenever it suits them. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Vernon was being phony all along about not knowing Barbara. I’m not saying it’s likely, but it’s not impossible. I feel like if Dante was the father, he would have already made his appearance. There’s less shock/juice/“soapy goodness” in revealing that her father is a character we’ve only heard about but haven’t actually met yet. Peaches could have known that and dropped it along with the Barbara reveal, and not a single beat would have been skipped.

I’m not gonna sit here and say that Vernon is definitely Leslie’s father, but it was foreshadowed multiple times today: Vernon wanting to blame himself for Nicole and the Mosley character having crap taste in husbands, Nicole saying that Anita isn’t exactly like her, Vanessa, and the Mosley character because she has the perfect marriage, and the “playful” banter between Vernon and Sharon broken up by Anita “playfully” reminding her that Vernon belongs to her. I fully acknowledge that I can be wrong about it, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that’s where it goes. Leslie as Barbara’s daughter makes a ton of sense, but as someone else said, if they had opened with that angle for the character instead of her already being far off the deep end from the beginning, it would have served her better. TMG did a great job softening her today, but it’s hard to forget all of the cartoonish antics we’ve already seen.

So, basically what’s been going in nearly every single daily/weekly/monthly discussion thread on SON since I first got here as a wee eighth grader 20+ years ago lol

And that’s absolutely fair. It’s the only one of the five (almost said four!) that I make any time to watch at all, so it’s definitely on a different level and consciously doing different things. I just can’t excuse some of these glaring missteps because it’s new or because we’re only X number of episodes in. I think of how the June/Samantha/Tyrell reveal should have been paced out, but then I think of how that’s really not the story that needed to happen there. I liked them as a more conventional family unit working through the Martin/Smitty break-up with the kids having their own short-term, tertiary arcs (Tyrell being affected by his parents’ split more than he lets on and his girlfriend helping him to keep his own goals in focus). Even if the story was about Samantha or Tyrell making the choice to find their mom, when the whole premise is that they were more than old enough to know that they were being mistreated (and why), it’s hard to believe that they’d willingly reach out for her. Do they even do closed adoptions for kids as old as they were when they became Martin and Smitty’s? How does that work when the kids will obviously know/remember who their birth parent is? Unless June’s name wasn’t originally June, if either kid wanted to find her, it wouldn’t be hard to. And he has no real ties to anyone at all. An employee of Bill’s, a fling of Kat’s, and a “friend” of Eva’s. They can follow each other on Snapchat before rides off to wherever.

The polar extreme is not any better, IMO. I think if people didn’t have the other current soaps for comparison, BTG would get less of a pass. He reads his lines as if he’s an anchor on “Access Hollywood.”

I cannot believe Smitty is continuing to let this funky btch sit on his furniture and disturb his children this way. The only only ONLY thing that made sense in this sht today was Tyrell going in on her useless ass. Naomi is going straight to hell. Why did this meeting even happen at their house? So what if the kids decide (rightfully) that they don’t care about June and don’t ever want to see her or smell her ever again. Now she knows exactly where they live, and so if/when she goes off the deep end again, who’s to say she won’t try to break in? It’s not like these people are afraid to use Orphey Gene’s for everything else, they could have met there.

Or worse, they think the audience is that stupid.

I am so tired of hearing June sound like she’s reciting passages from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” I hate her so much.

And in 1-2 years, they'll be legal adults, and all of it would have been for nothing. For that reason alone, I hope this has nothing to do with a custody battle. I have to believe that they can't botch this up even more. I agree. I have no problem with asexuality portrayed in a soap, but from the very beginning, Kat has had a fire in her that, IMO, still hasn't realized its potential. I think she's already suffered from having to play the self-righteous role in the Leslie/Eva story (not that she's wrong to look down her nose at them, even though I hate it). I wish the Duprees had a black sheep. Not necessarily an estranged relative but someone on the inside who can look at everything from an outside perspective and doesn't automatically share the loyalty to a fault mindset the rest of the family has. Someone who can say, "Honestly, the Articulettes' music has never done anything for me," but still have a seat at the country club table.

I am all for whatever they have to do to keep TMG on board (and I do mean TMG bc she is more valuable than the character at this point), but Eva really ran around town for half the episode agonizing over a letter that easily could have been junk mail? It’s the little things. This leg in their story could have started with the phone call. And now Leslie, rightfully, is frustrated bc these people are asking for her SSN and other info over the phone, and Eva is still rolling her eyes and stomping her feet and how have we made it 100+ episodes in without her uttering a Kim Parker “Daaaang, Mama!” Oop, there’s a “But, Mama!” Leslie, please slap ts outta this girl, she is an IDIOT. First, she wants her Leslie to open a letter that, on the surface, is junk mail. Then, she wants her to give these strangers her SSN over the phone. Now, she's mad because Leslie won't answer an unknown caller? MY GOD. It's extremely obvious where this is going. Over the course of two episodes, we went from no one at all knowing that Samantha and Tyrell are June's kids to Samantha and Tyrell having to weight the pros and cons of meeting her? In LESS than two episodes, really! Naomi and Martin are such close cousins, and Naomi knows how much time, money, and energy went into Martin and Smitty securing a closed adoption, but now she wants them to throw all of that away bc the kids' mom just so happens to be her current rich girl project? Naomi really sucks!! She is only thinking about herself and her ego, absolutely no regard to how anyone else might feel. Martin. "I'm not completely against the idea." Please STFU!!!! Now all of a sudden, Martin is self-conscious about being "just the other dad." THEY WANT TO SEE THEIR MOTHER!?!!?!? THEY'VE DECIDED THIS ALREADY!?!?!!?? PLEASE call me negative, a complainer, "can't please some people." I don't care - the way this "story" played out over two episodes is utter shyte.

There's also a Coronation Street Rewind channel that right now is mainly uploading episodes from 1997 (I think starting with the Battersbys' arrival lol). I hope that this doesn't affect the hard work that so many of done to upload most of the 70s-90s (and a good bit of the 60s). Unless, of course, they're planning to upload all of that themselves. I've watched a few, and just hearing the proper mix of the theme tune gets you in a different type of mood vs. the awful version they've been using for so long now.

Nail on head. The Mosley character is surrounded by people who support and enable her, people that (to her credit) she doesn’t really manipulate or use. Her family is supposedly the most influential family in town, and she has gotten away with legitimate crimes because of it. Erica had Mona, and she used her to her benefit whenever necessary. Mark came along, and he was decidedly hands off when it came to how she conducted her personal life (not really condoning or condemning her actions). Until she had young adult daughters, that was the extent of her family and long-term support system. Hayley, with her attraction to Bill, who was probably a paternal presence in her life from the very beginning, is cut right from the Erica cloth. The fake pregnancy is kinda without a real motive, but it tracks as an Erica-like move. Flaunting her marriage in front of everyone tracks, too. The main thing that sticks out, IMO, is her being such close friends with Naomi and the rest of the Hamilton branch of the family, and that’s okay bc in the end she is her own character with her own story. I think delving into her family is at the top of my BTG wish list.

I never realized it before, but this is exactly correct. She needs the put-upon mother figure to be her anchor and occasional conscience. I know people like to believe that BTG is above a lot of classic soap tropes (and it’s a hard disagree on that for me), but there’s a reason why some of those tropes have lasted through the ages. Dani is the younger sibling in a very wealthy family. Those people are almost always narcissists, and she is the textbook example rather than the exception to the rule. Any time she gives a damn about anyone else, it’s “Nice to see Dani with…” and “Nice to see Dani show concern for…” That’s bc all we ever see the spoiled btch do is get drunk and cry about her own disaster of a life! I couldn’t really hear during the preview for next week, but did we get confirmation that June is Sam and Tyrell’s birth mother?

The only, and I mean only, reason we had to see an hour of Dani the Introspective Girl with "Feelings" is to set it up so that she actually has a reason to be upset about Hayley's pregnancy lies (whatever they may be). She hasn't given a sht about Hayley's well-being at all since Day 1, but suddenly she's wringing her hands and pacing back and forth, claiming she's the most awful human being alive. Without that, whether Hayley's pregnancy is fake or not is really none of her business and has no bearing on her life. What a transparent turn of events.

I'm sorry, but am I putting two and two together correctly? Were they trying to imply that Andre 8 Dani's A???? She commented on what he did with his tongue, and he said she inspires him to do new things. Girl!!! I want to like Ashley simply because I hate Dani so much, but it's not happening for me, and I feel like Andre is an idiot for being involved with either one of them. Ashley is bored with Derek because he wants the both of them to continue to be successful in their careers and build a life together? Just tell ya mama that you wanna be a heaux for a while, Ash. Yesterday really set me in as a Martin/Smitty supporter. MM has really come into his own on this show, and I think he brings the best out of BC. I don't think Martin's offenses are grounds for a permanent split, but I think Smitty has the right to take all the time he needs. If they get back together, I look forward to seeing them in other modes. Re: BTG other soaps. My only experience with the other soaps as of late is when I'm not quick to turn off Paramount Plus after BTG and it autoplays B&B or Y&R. Not gonna lie, I've been pulled in by both, but it's almost like they are crushed under the weight of thousands and thousands of episodes and decades of stories. In the big picture, I would say BTG is on par with soaps in the first decade of the 2000s.

I've always been of the belief that, per Agnes's request, ABC starting saving AMC just ahead of its April 1977 expansion to the hour, so in my mind, the wishful thought is that it starts in fall 1976. Phoebe's funeral had those great clips of Phoebe with early Brooke (post-Elissa Leeds, so not too too early) and with early Myrtle, and those had to have been from the last few months of the 30-minute show. Literally no video footage of the show from 1971-1977 has popped up anywhere, and that drives me absolutely nuts. I thought we would have gotten at least a clip or two of AMC from that era before we would have ever gotten a full Secret Storm - in color - from the same era.