All My Shadows

Brandon Claybon is a better actor than Alex Alegria, but so is Ronn Moss lol when it comes to who is the RM of the show, it has to be Claybon. RM was never just a line-reader like AA. He made some peculiar choices, and BC has made some, too.

B. Claybon

Super unpopular opinion, but I’ve never gotten the hype around Ambyr Michelle. Eva comes across very flat.

She has to be mentally ill if she thought what she did was contributing something. The lack of interest I have in anything Dani does is off the chartsssss. Tired of listening to other people tell her she's gorgeous when we've seen so many narcissistic characteristics in her. As much as a disappointment Kat has been for me, CM really comes off as a classic soap ingenue.

I actually just remembered that it was captioned as being from 11/22/63 - the part of the show that went on after they permanently switched over to Cronkite. I’ve always heard that the full episode existed in very few collections, but I don’t recall ever seeing it. WoST might’ve had it back in the day.

I cannot remember where I saw it - either on FB or Insta - but a brief clip of Lisa talking on the phone with Alma popped up somewhere in the last week. As far as I know, it's our first time ever seeing an Alma scene online (unless the clip was ever used in a flashback montage). There really wasn't much to it, but it was something.

Is BTG taped using three cameras? It's become a regular thing to see some noticeable editing flaws, especially in scenes where two characters are facing each other. I will say this, Martin does feel like he is Nicole's son when they have scenes together. There's this sense of youthful nervousness that one only has when they don't want to disappoint a parent. Okay, but now being reminded that Martin has/had presidential ambitions is cracking me up. This man can not be no damn President of the United States.

It definitely wasn't a weekly thing. Maybe once or twice a month. ***Okay, now I've found why it didn't last long lol Cutting the episodes would have meant reducing script guarantees for the SWs, resulting in substantial paycuts and breaking an agreement between TPTB and the WGA. ABC wanted a waiver on the agreement, WGA countered with protections for the scriptwriters, ABC refused the counter, so the WGA said "well then get the fck out of our face." It's funny because several SON posters correctly predicted that the breakdown in talks between ABC and WGA basically signed the cancellation notices for AMC and OLTL.

ABC did cut down on the number of episodes their soaps made each year, but it wasn't a huge decrease - like, maybe 10 episodes per year? IIRC, they just sprinkled reruns in at random times throughout the year. I remember one of the more notable reruns was an OLTL from 1996 with focus on Marty and Patrick. GH might've dug as far back, but AMC never did. I feel like it didn't really last long across the network before they just stuck with more contemporary reruns (blech). *** Found a SON thread from 2010. ABC was considering cutting as many as 20 new episodes per year for each of its three soaps. I don't think it ever went that far (obviously because they cut both AMC and OLTL down by about 250 episodes each within the ensuing year and a half HAHAHA). I've always hated soaps being referred to as having "seasons" because in most cases, a "season" has a beginning and an end, with an "off season" in between. It makes no sense to use that to refer to something runs year-round.

Two just off the top of my head are Dr. Kildare and Angie.

Daphne really is the star in my eyes, and I'm ready for them to shift more focus on Nicole and her journey. I liked her in the beginning, was extremely underwhelmed by her for a good little while as I watched on and off, and then saw the fire in her once the Ted/Dana reveal happened. She's the character who's evovled (if you want to call it that) in the most natural, classic soap way so far. And god yes, I don't want to be a creep and mention it every. damn. time. but Mr. B. Claybon just be cheeked uppppp. Well, Anita saying that the Duprees don't use violence is rich while her daughter, the spoiled gun-toting nutcase, is sitting right there. Dani's line about "our men in suits and a nice car" really highlighted how privileged the Duprees are, so it makes sense to me that she would be so shocked that Vernon and Martin were attacked. Things like that happen to other black people, not them.

I feel like the word “vivacious” was created for Eileen Fulton. She was truly one of a kind, and I yearn to see more of Lisa’s true heyday in the 60s and 70s.

Naomi was all poopy pants over Jacob having the nerve to protect his future/well-being by arresting Dani for shooting up Bill and Hayley’s wedding. The preview for next week has her hollering about how she’s a Dupree first and foremost, no doubt ready to defend her grandparents and cousin for covering up a murder for two years. The Duprees are awful people lol Re: Martin as Vernon and Anita’s son. That definitely would have made more sense, and if they’d just established that he and Nicole have always had a super tight sibling bond, then everything with Nicole feeling betrayed about being out of the loop could still play the same. Especially since we’ve barely seen them as mother and son anyway. They could have also made him older so as to make him and Smitty believable as the parents of teens.

The one and only!

It sounded like “shady” to me.

Lord, I’m trying, but Anita giving Nicole a very detailed play by play of what happened as if she was literally right there on the scene is a problem for me. Anita sucks. Do these people realize how dumb they sound issuing all these justifications for what they did when their choices are currently blowing up in their faces? I’ve found Nicole to be rather bland most of the time, but if this positions her as being the black sheep of the family because she sees through everyone else’s BS, it would do her a ton of favors.

These seem to be a bunch of unpopular opinions, but I share them. Martin taking down two racists really doesn’t satisfy me because it existed in a space of about 10-15 minutes. We got the two racists stepping out of the truck, just enough pointed dialogue to let us know “Oh, they are racist,” Robin was in danger, and then Batmartin went into action. I already know I’ll be told “They were racists, what more did we need to see of that?” but if this is soap opera, then there is a million more things to see. Had we been privy to exactly what happened that night early on, it would have left so much time to really dig into the things you mentioned. The Duprees are the most powerful family in a predominantly black community, but show me how they’ve still had to fight against bigotry. Introducing Kenny as an explicit racist (and homophobe) and showing us just how low he could go before he’s killed (onscreen) would have made his death so satisfying. I think of how on “Columbo,” we knew within the first five minutes exactly who murdered who and how. But we still happily spent the other 85 or so minutes invested in how Columbo was going to piece it all together. In soaps, when you keep information from the audience for five months, it’s gotta be BIG. If not, reveal ts early on so that it’s clear that the real buy-in is in how tangled the web gets. I do want to add though that I’m glad it all landed just right for a good bit of people here (and the audience at large). Not trying to take that away from anyone.

Probably “spastic”

Having us in on the crime/secret from earlier on would have made everything land better, IMO. Chronologically, the story generally makes sense, but just one teeny tiny adjustment putting us in the know of what happened would have directed our suspense more where it should have gone, towards “What happens with Smiddeeee finds out?” and “How long will Kenny get by?” Mike Manning really is a good performer on this show. Never saw much of him on DAYS, but I can only imagine how much easier it is to connect to the script on BTG. Brandon Claybon is like Ronn Moss and half the cast of Passions - at this point, who he is as an actor has become who Martin is as a character. My dear Cornelius Smith could take over in the role, and I’d be disappointed bc Martin without the facial expressions, random smiles, and “Smiddeeee” just ain’t Martin. Can a character be typecast to a type of actor?

Yes. I’ve been watching only here and there for a while now, but this was set up in Week 1, and I feel like by Week 2, most of us here at least knew that Martin killed someone either accidentally or in self defense. All we learned today was that they were racists. In the beginning, my expectation was that there’d be some hidden twist in the event itself, a connection to another character or story that we didn’t see coming but still makes sense. What carries on from this is wondering if Smitty will stand his ground and really leave Martin and will they all get off for Kenny’s murder. What we learned today has no bearing on either thread.

Spoke too soon

If they think those kids aren’t listening in the hallway…and if those kids really aren’t listening in the hallway… I wasn’t being serious.

This secret would’ve been more exciting if the scene played out like the XHamster video it was setting itself up to be.

Martin: “Does any of this make sense to you?” Baby…

I'm in Spring 1973 and also loving every episode. I spread myself too thin over so many different shows that it feels like I'm making my way at a snail's pace, but I have to remind myself that they were only putting out two episodes a week back then, along with some time off. Peggy just had the twins, and Penny's friends Gwen and David just arrived. One of the things that I've had to get used to is that this is a show about the Sugdens, and most everyone else is temporary. New characters roll in, and I really start to like them, but then I read that they are only around for a few months, maybe a year. Not a problem because I really could watch the interactions of Annie, Joe, Jack, Matt, and Sam around the kitchen table all day (Peggy gets on my damn nerves, but I know she ain't long for the world). (I really want to message the saint who posts these episodes and ask if he can flip the playlists upside down so that they play in order instead of backwards)