All My Shadows

Room for the character of Rick, yes. But room for a snide, smirky, depressing loser who brought with him a shroud of negativity into every scene? I'll pass. Relating him to other characters doesn't make him more entertaining.

I've never seen anything with Rick, but I think Carl has the best answer. Honestly, I hated every bit of Craig's contributions to ATWT over the years I watched, and I think the show would have been better served by not having such a character on the canvas at all. He was a waste of time, and even after they spent so much time trying to make Hunt Block the show's big antihero leading man, they ended up doing a merry-go-round of actors in the role. SB's return was good because you could tell he saw more to the character than what they wanted him to be, but that didn't last.

Nope, and I always always always wanted her to pop up. My dream storyline for the Hughes family was for Chris and Christina to be rivals at Oakdale Memorial and the dynamics of Christina clashing with the rest of the family. I'm one of the few people who liked Katie Peretti and saw a purpose for her and had no problem with her being a focus of the show (the mistakes were in the execution, IMO), but they could have just as easily had Nancy serving as Greek chorus for her own granddaughter, and it would have been a much better use of the character. Christina Hughes not showing up and none of the Ward quads showing up will always be one of the biggest errors of the last 10 years, in my opinion. They had the tools to keep the Hughes and Stewart families alive and vital, but for whatever reason, they refused to go there. A part of me wonders if TPTB even knew such characters existed.

The first 35 years, particularly the early/mid 1960s, late 1970s/early 1980s, and early/mid 1990s.

Honest to god, other than Whoopi and Joy, who TF are these people?

I do love the 80s theme, but I guess because I wasn't around watching the show when it was used, I don't have the fondness for it that others do. I guess my main thing is that the music coupled with the visuals gave the show a very sci-fi look. I think they could have updated while still keeping some of the bigness of the previous music. The original version of "My Guiding Light" over on GL was majestic without being overblown, and they kinda brought back some of the grandness with the toilet flush theme.

They did, for the 50th anniversary episodes in 2006. The music wasn't exactly the same, but they probably did the best they could with a piece of music that was played live 35-50 years earlier. I always thought the 80s theme was overrated as hell. They went from the grand, majestic, sweeping 70s theme to that?

I don't understand the point of remaking old crime/action dramas if they're all going to have the exact same look and feel. This has the same tone as Hawaii Five-0, yet the original Five-O and original MacGyver weren't very similar at all. I remember Lindsey Wagner calling TPTB out on this when they remade Bionic Woman.

It's really frustrating that they don't make any bigger changes, especially since we're heading into summer. It's the perfect time to roll out some interesting things for the weekends, but we get nothing.

Wow at that spoiler in the pics! LOL at Paige's bitchy, shady ass giving ol girl the look. Marco is still as fine as ever.

This was the ONLY song I liked from Britney Jean (besides WB). Hopefully the new album is better.

But I thought nobody was saying the album is good??

"Second, the songs from the last album and this one sound like B-side songs…like she just came up with this songs through her (*(&(*)(*_(&(*^!" This doesn't really tell me what you dislike about the songs though lol Granted, I don't think any of these songs were made with radio in mind, but that isn't something that makes a song a bad song.

That's what I mean, though. I wasn't trying to imply that you didn't like Single Ladies, but I'm saying that people will find fault regardless (which I get is the nature of the business, but still). If she was still turning out just the fun, dancey stuff that she built herself on, a lot of people would accuse her of not growing or changing, or worse, of embarrassing herself. I say good on her for trying new things. You can do that when you're 13 years into your solo career, and I think she's doing it well.

Glad you are enjoying the Kool-Aid. Some are saying the whole supposedly rumors of J cheating was a ploy to bring publicity to the album…to create more buzz for the album. I won't put it pass them to do so….either way the album is downright awful. What, they can't promote their album? Jeez. It should be even more impressive that they created all of this and he didn't cheat, because everyone was ready to believe he did. Why? Because she sold the fck out of it, that's why. I'm over the "I miss the old Beyonce" complaints because it wasn't long ago when people were rolling their eyes at her because they thought she was too old to still be doing stuff like Single Ladies. I wonder, though, what exactly don't you like about it?

I watched the entire special and really enjoyed it. My fave songs were Daddy Lessons, Freedom, Pray You Catch Me, 6 Inch, and All Night. The video for All Night was beautiful.

My baby daddies are together again

It was. I forget where the original setting (Barrowsville) was located, but I think at some point, they were in NYC before settling in Rosehill, NY, by the early 60s.

I think most would agree that RH was rooted in those three things as well, and probably her GH, too.

I liked Jake Weary as Luke and was very upset when I learned that they'd be recasting for the coming out storyline, but I took to Van pretty quickly, and I genuinely thought he was a fantastic actor the first year or two. .I don't recall a whole lot of backlash at the time. Ultimately, I think the Luke/Noah pairing (and, by extension, them as individual characters) suffered from a lack of real planning and care on TPTB's end. It was established pretty early on that they didn't have to do too much to keep the fanbase happy. Granted, they cycled through the same stories over and over again with the other characters, but with Luke and Noah, as long as they ended up together (complete with kisses and cliched lines), that group was going to give a resounding applause. In fact, the ONLY huge backlash from the Nuke Squad was when the show had gone too long without showing a Luke/Noah kiss, and so IIRC, these fckers literally ended up on CNN to talk about it. I was pissed because I wished that much effort and attention had been focused on improving the stories themselves. But, like I said, the stories simply did not matter to a lot of people as long as they got those one or two scenes of fluff per week. Oh, and Re: JS being uncomfortable. I don't necessarily mean uncomfortable playing gay like Chris Engen was uncomfortable playing gay (which...well, I'll leave it alone). I mean uncomfortable in that he was just completely awkward and clumsy with it. Maybe it was more the pacing of shooting a soap, idk. I always thought he seemed more at ease in scenes with anyone other than VH.

I think by then, VH realized he wasn't going to get the type of material he might have wanted and was just going through the motions. That's my conjecture. He was excited in the beginning, and it showed, but after sticking around with nothing to do and then getting saddled with a very hollow love story and having to sell, sell, sell, it was pretty obvious that he was just over it. ESS was awesome, Reid was a great character (relatively speaking, at least - as great as he could have been on this particular show at that particular time). If that had been the story in 2007, then maybe things would have turned out a lot differently with Luke. I could see that, but I also think some actors just don't have heat. It was the same way with Martha Byrne, although she and Paolo had their moments. The Larry Lau/Luke story is one that would have worked for me because it would have been such a trainwreck, but otherwise...I don't know. Then again I may have said something totally different years ago. I haven't seen these episodes in such a long time. It's easy for me to be glib now. I do wish they'd brought in more gay characters for more stories. This is true. A recast might have helped give a little zest to the character, but IDK. They always treated Luke with kid gloves because he was The Gay Character, and that goes back to the writing. Maybe a more dynamic actor would have inspired them to go there a bit more with the character.

I think by then, VH realized he wasn't going to get the type of material he might have wanted and was just going through the motions. That's my conjecture. He was excited in the beginning, and it showed, but after sticking around with nothing to do and then getting saddled with a very hollow love story and having to sell, sell, sell, it was pretty obvious that he was just over it. ESS was awesome, Reid was a great character (relatively speaking, at least - as great as he could have been on this particular show at that particular time). If that had been the story in 2007, then maybe things would have turned out a lot differently with Luke.

Jake Silbermann was awfully wooden the entire time he was on the show. He was SO not into it, and not to excuse VH, but sometimes it showed, to me at least, that VH was tired of doing the heavy lifting required to sell the couple. Don't get me wrong, I thought VH was downright dreadful by the last two years of the show's run, but I feel like he understood who the audience for this story was (not hip young kids but older gay men who were thrilled to see a young gay couple on the soap they'd been watching for decades) and he played to that. JS just followed his lead 95% of the time and never felt comfortable in the role. Once again, that's all just my opinion. After a few years of watching their stories unfold, I think I came to the conclusion that they should've just chalked the relationship up to Noah wanting to experiment but eventually going back to Maddie. They didn't play it was a triangle nearly as long as they should have, and in the end, Noah made more sense with Maddie (and JS was way more comfortable playing that). Luke would have been scorned, which would have been FINE because this is a soap, for Christ's sake, and he would have moved on with his life. If they'd had any sense, they would have taken their time to create a more complex character. Didn't we spend LOTS of time in the weekly threads crafting the perfect love interest for him? I think we wanted David Lago as sort of an eccentric rich kid with his head in the clouds. ITA!! I was always hoping/waiting for the news that a new Christina Hughes would show up. They missed a golden opportunity to have a Hughes who wasn't put-together as Bob's kids/grandkids, who really rocked the boat and played against everything the rest of the family wanted. Mary was pregnant with Christina for the big anniversary in 1986, so with her age adjusted for SORASing, she would have been around the same age as Chris and Katie. I'm one of the few people who really appreciated the Katie/Nancy dynamic, but Nancy would have been better served in her final years straightening out a granddaughter who wanted everything but to be a "damn Hughes." Shame on them for never bringing Christina on or at least ONE of the Ward quads. Like damn! I know they were really over the Stewarts after having them be so frontburner during the late 70s and early 80s, but when they were trying to rebuild the family in the 2000s, instead of giving us that unfortunate Dani Andropoulos recast or the random son of Emily and Larry McDermott, it would have been nice to have one or two of the quads show up. Their SORASing would have put them a little older than Chris, but hell, one of them could have been for Luke. One of them could have been for Katie so that they might have stopped putting her in the toxic orbit of Jack and The Angry Blonde One. Laurence Lau is the actor. He is most famous for playing Greg Nelson on AMC in the early 80s (of Greg & Jenny fame).

Luke's storyline was perfectly fine for the first year, IMO. Everything beginning with "the backrub" (LOLing at how excited we were over a goddamn backrub!) all the way through to Luke saving Kevin's life at Raven Lake was well-done (and I generally enjoyed the show as a whole, especially the younger set, during this time). Kevin's negative reaction was OK with me because it was contrasted by the other people in Luke's friendgroup being nothing but positive and supportive. I wanted them to do more with the family dynamic, but that was a problem running through the entire show at the time. Everything turned to sh!t when they backburnered the character for nearly a year and then decided the best remedy for that situation would be to spend approximately thirty-two seconds creating the Noah character and then squeezing the two into a coupling at WARP speed. I always maintained that they did it so quickly to placate the people who'd been upset about Luke's lack of storylines, which, OK! I was one of those people! But too many of the Nuke diehards were just so ready for Luke to have the teenage relationship they'd never had themselves that they were perfectly willing to fill in all of the blanks themselves in regards to the story. I used to write posts that were paragraph after paragraph trying to figure out WTF drew Luke and Noah together. Recall, Luke was not at all here for Noah when he first appeared at WOAK. He was annoyed because Maddie and Noah were being all flirty and cutesy with each other instead of working, then Luke dropped a box of VCR tapes, and Noah helped him pick them up. And THAT'S how Nuke began. WTF!!! But too many were desperate for anything at all, so they accepted it and rolled with it. For a while, I was cool with it, too, but once they started laying it on so thick with the two of them, I was over it. The crazy fans were saying that Luke and Noah were destined to be "the new Bob and Kim." FOH with that!! On a more positive note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our dearly departed pot-boiler. 60 years ago, that black and white globe spun for the first time, and daytime drama would never be the same. Cheers to you, World Turns!