All My Shadows

This here...this here is miles and miles of open road with the one you love in the passenger's seat. This song makes me feel all kinds of things.

The barmaids article is great! I'm ashamed to say I don't know who most of them are, but nevertheless it's still nice to see the pictures. It's a much different article from the EE25 article where most of the original cast members seemed to have bad memories of the show. The Sophie thing is really starting to irritate me. I can't believe there are people out there who thinks she's one of the top ten best characters over the show's entire history. She and Sian sat on the backburner for most of this year, and only recently did the show decide to do something with their storyline. And at them being named the top two sexiest, above Michelle Keegan. That's ridiculous. The sexiest men list is pretty sweet. So good to see Ryan Thomas at the top followed by Rob James-Collier. I'd switch Ben Price out for Bruno Langley.

I can't find anything to back it up, but I think I remember reading that they also had a hand in Ted Corday's other soaps, Morning Star and Paradise Bay. My memory could be making that up, though. Looking at that article you posted...Susan Brown looks a lot like 70s-era Kathryn Hays in that picture! And Geary looks like he just came from the set of Room 222. It's so weird reading short biographies of him and David Lewis without GH being mentioned. ETA: Wait, no, I'm sure BCP didn't do the Corday shows. I'm confusing them because I always figured...the Cordays owned DAYS and saved the episodes, so they must have owned Morning Star and Paradise Bay and saved those episodes, too.

I'd say it's quite possible all of BP exists. It was produced by Bing Crosby Productions (Ben Casey, Hogan's Heroes), which is now owned by CBS, so perhaps perhaps.

Sophie is not funny...I think that pairing's got a bad case of the Nukes, and it's even worse because Sophie and Sian are on even less than Luke and Noah were at the beginning of their relationship. Chris Fountain is gorgeous, and I liked him a lot on Hollyoaks, so I hope he does well on Corrie.

That list is atrocious! The Sophie overload is bewildering because she's obviously included for the lesbian story, but that story has barely even been featured since the two became a couple. Ugh. I was going to start watching again but decided against it once I got behind on EE. Nothing's really tempting to get back into Corrie, I'm afraid. That promo highlights everything I dislike about the show right now.

Still playing the catch-up game...the Thu. and Fri. wedding episodes (11th and 12th) were fantastic, just great. All kinds of emotions were played, all kinds of dynamics were on display. All of the interactions were on point, and the mood was perfect. I don't want to ramble on and on each thing but a few frivolous side points: ~ Jack was in the trunk for how long? Nobody thought he stunk from sweating buckets in a trunk over night? He held it in all night too? ~ Damn it, Jake Wood's won a fan. Max pleading with Lauren not to leave was riveting. ~ What's the deal with John Bardon? Can he not talk? It saddens me that he's relatively young, yet he's got all those health issues. ~ Poor Tamwar lol I didn't mind seeing him mope around in his undies. ~ Connor/Carol needs to happen, for real. I'd love the show forever if they went there. ~ Julie is such a sympathetic character. I was sold the second she ran out of the Vic. Her and Billy are perfect together (for now), and I can't wait to watch their story progress. ~ Sal She looks like Sally Jessy Raphael. ~ I softened considerably towards Kat and Alfie (and Ronnie and Jack). I was glad both couples got their good weddings. ~ One thing that annoys me about the show is how half of the characters disappear for long stretches of time. I know not everyone in the square likes everyone else, but wouldn't simply being neighbors almost guarantee the presence of people like Zainab, Christian, Syed, Bianca, Ricky, Ian, Peter, Denise, etc? Don't get me wrong, the Vic was packed with people, but that sorta drove home the fact that the others were presumably at home while there's a party in the local. ~ The Ronnie/Kat scene was incredible, and both actresses deserve a round of applause. That's what soaps are all about. ~ And last but not least, Mo raising the roof to Crazy in Love was HILARIOUS.

Oooh. It seems like a classic case of "it went to his head," then. I've only seen bits and pieces of the storyline. I watched a few episodes when I was getting back into EE/Corrie, and I thought they were all right. It was right after Jackson's accident, so Aaron was moping around being sad without being sad. What's the current view on ED right now? Would yall recommend it or not? Not that I need to be getting in on another soap as I'm still about a week and a half behind on EE...

Wasn't the press swooning all over at around the time of the British Soap Awards because of how proud he was and defensive he was over Emmerdale?

Oh, I know, I know. We don't hear real percussion at all anymore, though, and that's sad. I heard her on MusicChoice once! I love her style, the way she's in the song but not so in to that she can't smile with the audience and what-not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAlwBJD_IuM

Wow...that's unbelievable. And no one (on the show/in the audience) had an issue with Heather being in her FORTIES talking about having sex with a TEENAGER? Jesus H. Christ. In a way, I'm glad they don't use her much anymore. Any scenes with her and Darren talking about their child would be utterly awkward. Quick note about the current episodes -- I'm not feeling Vanessa and her storyline much at all. To be honest, she's boring me, and the whole Desperate Housewives style they've got going on with her just doesn't fit the rest of the show at all. Her blaming everyone else for the lie she told to her daughter for nearly 20 years isn't helping.

Randomly reading about some stories from the recent past....and WTF, Darren and Heather had sex!? THE HELL!? Who wrote that and why?! WHY?!

Wow, that renders the countdown utterly useless then. Graeme above Emily, Ken, Deirdre, Kevin, Sally, Peter, David, etc. is ridiculous.

Catching up on some episodes...Janine is flipping insane! Loved what she did with the booze at the Vic. I really hate Kat now, so anything that grinds her gears is good in my book. I hated her shrewish behavior over Roxy and Alfie. Carol's hair She looked like Annie Sugden from Emmerdale. I hadn't watched in months, so this was my first time hearing the stuff about Ian that Jane told to Christian. Did it really happen like that? Because if so, Ian's an ass.

Ooooh okay, I'm starting to remember now. Isn't it 24 episodes in the second-half though? Since they said the season would be 48 episodes long. And yes, it was wrong for me to blame the goddess that is Linda. I don't understand why TEENick and ABC Family do this. It undermines any momentum built up in the string of episodes. Just as I'm getting into things, boom, we're stuck with a "summer finale" or "fall finale" or "winter finale" or whatever. Just give me a good, solid 20-30 episode season stretching from September to May, and I'm good. I finally saw the second Riley two-parter from the 4-eps-a-week string. It was...I can't even lie, it sucked pretty bad. The dialogue is absolutely atrocious and so heavy-handed ("You don't hit a homophobic, Riley! When you hit a homophobic, they only become more homophobic!!" and "If I ever hear one more homophobic thing from you..." are the winners, by far). I used to like AK as Riley, but he can't handle this at all...at all. I like the guy who plays Zane, and he's able to work through the crappy dialogue, but Zane's gotten quite annoying. Who was that cute guy who bid on him in the auction? Why is he wasting time with Riley when Degrassi/Toronto obviously has other cute gay guys to go after? The only part of the whole hour that I didn't get annoyed by was the scene where Riley was about to come out to his mom and bitch just bulldozed the whole thing with perhaps the single most harmful thing a parent can say to his or her closeted child: "I just want grandkids." It's not about what you want, so pop off. I liked the understated way Riley reacted to that, though. Not a rage-filled cry-fest, but a small death deep inside. That was well done. Wesley, I don't like him and I don't like how we're supposed to root for guys like him. "He's smart, he's nice blah blah blah." He has the spine of a jellyfish, and I think most people consider that an undesirable trait. He's unlucky with the ladies not because he's not conventionally attractive (which, if he got a freaking tan and did something to that hair, he wouldn't be so bad at all) but because he has no confidence, and as long as he's crapping his pants every time someone like Anya looks at him for more than two seconds, he won't ever have any. If you like the girl enough to beg your "friends" for help on how to "mack," then you need to scare up the courage to do it your own way. And if she doesn't respond, move on. Sheesh.

I was actually talking about torrents. I found season three (as taped off of SOAPnet) at some site...forgot which one. I still have it seeding on my other computer, but that one's currently out of commission. When I get it back, I'll still have it up because I'm not even touching those eps until I've finished watching my S1 and S2 DVDs. Speaking of which, I finally got to Land of the Free this morning. WOW. It was like every deliciously cheesy 70s B movie about gangs that you can find. Even the music sounded like something out of The Warriors. Karen and Sid basically screamed the entire episode, the bikers themselves were laughable ("Not ripe enough."), and I still don't quite understand all of the hooping and hollering over them merely driving circles around everyone at the beach. The physical violence was one thing, but at one point, Val is screaming and all they're doing is donuts. My favorite part was at the very beginning when the one biker drives through the volleyball net and promptly falls off his bike

How many episodes were there in this half of the season? Because I don't understand this ish one bit. So after next week, S10 is done? Or is there more in the spring? Because cutting the season up into three chunks is so unnecessary, Linda. I tuned out a few episodes before the end of the summer soap set-up, not because I was disinterested but because I was just no longer able to watch. And I guess the MTV episodes weren't getting the ratings because they're not airing this little run of episodes.

That's exactly it, Amello. It just reeks of "Well, he's not a hunk, so obviously we can't put him in any serious storylines. Or serious scenes. Or give him anything serious to say. We have to call attention to his girth as often as possible because if we don't, the fans will be confused. And he must be sexually-frustrated." Judd Apatow would be proud. And those three are all Marquess creations? Sheesh. Cheryl hasn't been on too much yet for me to fully form an opinion on her, so we'll see. Brendan...ugh. A cartoon. What really was the deal behind Matt and Darren leaving the show? I haven't really found anything other than they just wanted to break more into behind the scenes work and presenting. For some strange reason, I've always had this baseless notion that they were disenchanted with how soapy/dramatic the show had become as opposed to what I've always figured were lighter and more comedic earlier years. But I could be totally wrong on that.

I love me some Barbara Knox. Such a fun, bubbly personality. She's almost like a slightly tamer Eileen Fulton, and geez, can you imagine those two working together? It always makes me a little sad when UK soap vets kinda allude to how much the shows have changed. She's obviously still having a ball doing Corrie, but that face/tone when she talked about the increase in weekly episodes speaks a lot. Just like I want all US soaps to go back to 30 minutes, I wouldn't mind it if the UK soaps all went back to two episodes a week. Of course, it's always a question of whether TPTB would trim the shows in the right way. That huge article on Corrie coming to the States is great! Doris Speed, bless her heart. I wonder how the show fared in those markets.

All of this talk of Stephaniedeladean dying is making me sad. I just don't get how/why people accept it when shows are almost entirely unrecognizable from what they were just four years earlier. I don't have the history most of you guys have with Oaks, but Steph is one of my faves. And Duncan? Please don't tell me they really want him to happen. He's gross. And not because he's fat.

It is sad, and that's why I was looking forward to this. 'Oaks is really blowing it, though. And yeah, definitely. Once the shock dies down, Ste will either let Brendan's abuse "turn me off blokes f'ever" or just disappear. What's coming up with the Jasmine/Jason/Bart thing? Or do I want to know...

The Ste/Brendan stuff is turning into a big joke. I can't believe there are commenters claiming that Ste's enduring the abuse because "in his heart, he knows he loves Brendan." Get outta here with that bullshit. It's just, YET AGAIN, another "gay story" happening at breakneck speed because overzealous fans don't know how to sit and watch a story unfold over weeks or months. The only parts of their "relationship" we've seen is kissing/sex and Brendan beating the hell out of Ste. How on Earth can you root for that? And WTF, Ste, who up until this point on the show, has been involved with only females, gets drunk, kisses a guy, and all of a sudden he's claiming to be gay or bi? There's no time to think about it? He just accepts it. Okay. I know they fit in that line about him and a mate in juvie, but if I understood all of that right, he never even did anything with that guy, just felt a little closer to him than a friend would. I guess my main issue with stuff like this is that I think that the audience should always *know* the character enough to know what he or she is thinking and why he or she is doing what he or she is doing. Slipping in this whole notion of Ste having fleeting feelings towards men essentially changes every relationship he's ever had on the show. I'm glad they brought up the idea of whether or not his sexuality issues contributed to his troubles with Amy. Imagine if they did it write it so that his issues were indeed the cause. It would basically crap on all of the work the writers of that storyline put into making it plausible and character-driven. But let's not worry about that. Two hot guys are making out on our televisions, we should be completely satisfied with that. If we're high-maintenance enough to want an actual story, we have to write it ourselves.

Got really behind because I couldn't get the episodes (computer troubles...ugh), but I've been catching up. Loved Blossom and Alan! I'd love it if either one or both came back in a more regular capacity. Thursday's episode was really good. Carol's finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She hit rock bottom with the near-suicide, got her world rocked, and now things are starting to look up. Her and Bianca were great together at the end. I'm loving this thing with Janine, Ryan, and the Slag sisters. Ryan wore the hell out of those shorts Kat and Alfie are starting to bug, and I almost want to say "especially" one or the other, but it's really both of them. Extremely obnoxious. I do have a question about these houses in Albert Square. Why is that on most days, the living rooms look so tiny, yet when there's a "party" going on, there are dozens of people freely moving about? It was the same way for Billie's fateful party.