DRW50

The few times I watch these scenes, Mansi comes across as very cold and aggressive. I imagine this is intentional as she is the child who is closest to Sonny and is meant to be similar to him now, but it just makes the character as tiresome as her father. I think they just assumed they could hire a name from DAYS and give her anything, without caring about how fans would feel - and not just Lexi fans, but fans in general.

Thanks. I thought there was a Hank recast but maybe not. I am derailing the thread so I'm going to stop - apologies.

I mostly thought of Irna because of P&G, admittedly. I was trying to think of when Sunset Beach fired Ashley Hamilton and Adrienne Frantz. There may have been something at Passions (I don't believe there was at PC in the first month) but it was the only other one in recent decades that sprung to mind.

I am convinced Irna Philips is in contact with someone through the spirit plane. She would recast in five minutes and did not give a damn.

They know it won't pass. The plan is to slash the department to bare bones so that it can't be of any use.

More Leo and Alex. Who is this for, beyond a writer who has gone to [!@#$%^&*] another daytime bed and tell us how great it smells?

https://deadline.com/2025/03/jack-lilley-dead-blazing-saddles-little-house-on-the-prairie-1236346792/ Instagram The link is to Melissa Gilbert's tribute.

He looks better with his hair grown out some.

I or someone else posted a post strike interview with headwriters somewhere in here (I think) - I can't remember exactly what Long said but she clearly was not thrilled with the treatment of Blake during the strike. I think she may have said they moved too fast with her in story, and that meant Long had to change some of her plans for the character. Thanks. That's what I was thinking of. I loved Sherry as Blake but she always looked older than her age, so the change was a bit of a wash. I think the biggest difference for me is the characters often seem to lack inner lives under Marland. We hear how they feel - boy do we hear it - whereas with the Dobsons, we know how they feel.

Yes. I think at that time he is living in a home.

Thanks @Franko. Until reading one of the comments I did not realize Leslie played Gwyn for as long as she did (6 weeks). I find Leslie to be very dreary in her soap roles (the "best" being Maeve on GL) so I was definitely glad to get to see her finally getting a much more complex part. She doesn't bring the layers Christine Tudor brought, but she does OK. She was also thrown in at the deep end in being given maybe the ugliest Gwyn/"Clay" scene I can recall. Viewers knowing that this is not actually Clay makes these scenes more interesting, as Gwyn can't understand why "Clay" is so cold toward her since his return. And cruel as the real Clay could be to Gwyn, I don't know if he ever was this nasty. Admittedly, Gwyn started the ball rolling by saying she wished he'd died in the prison camp (!). How I wish Tudor had been there to play that scene. The scenes with Jeff aren't as interesting, but still worth watching. Jeff is still not in full crazy mode and genuinely cares about Gwyn, even as you know, like "Clay" told him, he will regret caring about her. And Leslie seems more at home in the bar scene, even playing her drunk moment in an understated, appropriate manner. What a wild month for the show - not only the Clay/Alex secret about to blow, but recasts of Ava, Jeff and Gwyneth (even if the latter was temporary).

No Knots people in this TV-movie, but the screenplay was co-written by John Pleshette and William Devane (both pre-Knots), which is crazy to me. I can't remember if either of them ever talked about this later on.

I didn't care for what I've seen of his work on Y&R, but the China Beach story he had with Marg Helgenberger was powerful. I think some are just better outside of soaps.

Thanks so much @VelekaCarruthers

I believe so, yes.

If NBC had wanted to cancel them they could have. At the time I did think they were moving them to Peacock to cancel the show more easily but it's run on there a few years longer than I had expected. I like Chris McKenna and Cosgrove is OK, but I wish they'd tried a soap newcomer in the part.

I did. Yes. Thanks. I forgot Brian played the part too.

Sorry to hear this. I don't care for what I've seen of his work as Greg, but he was in a very moving arc in China Beach's last season. And yes, it's unsettling to lose two Gregs in such a short time. (I can't remember if the other Greg is still alive)

Benard is the top of the list for me. Burton has improved but he still does little for me compared to others on the show. And there is just a big slew of "OK...I guess," like Wally Kurth. Even with Garin Wolf it was a break from established patterns. I think for most of Laura's tenure she's been written this way, for various reasons.

DAYS still hasn't been canceled, on the network or not. I have no real use for Cosgrove, but he initially joined AMC 15 years before it was canceled, and GL almost a decade before it was canceled. He's the Ted McGinley of daytime in that any show he joined that was canceled was already on its last legs (and several, like Married with Children or Dynasty, still went on for a while). This does feel like another case of Frank trying to hire any daytime vet who is willing to show up, because this either reminds him of happier years or he is so stuck in the past he actually believes this will get someone new to tune in. I actually think Cosgrove would be more suited to Beyond the Gates as one of their supporting white characters. He's a competent but not very interesting actor who won't steal the spotlight. I wonder if he does stay around if he's intended as a new love interest for Carly, as I doubt Brennan is going to stay around long.

I would say it's down to more than just having a lot of daytime veterans - some of the daytime veterans are among the worst actors on the show, while some of the new hires of the last few years are real bright spots. We're still getting some moments, but I think the Carly favoritism has been much worse in some years than now - admittedly that is because Carly is about as boxed in as we have seen the character, so it could change, but it's not on the level of even a few years ago where everyone kept dragging Nina through the mud for daring to report Carly to the cops. How you describe GH is how I'd say it has been for a long time, including in Mulcahey's run (which I don't put all on him as he was clearly being sabotaged, but few things bore me more with this show than "We're all mad at Sonny...but psst...it's not actually his fault!"), but I think there are still some surprisingly good moments at times. Part of that is down to them taking what Mulcahey gave them and running with it (albeit in a very clunky, one-note manner), like the Drew darkness, and part is finally smoothing over some stories that had rougher starts (like the whole Brook Lynn/Dante/Gio story). I think it's just disappointing to watch the show because you know it probably won't ever be allowed to improve, that any small improvements are cut off and any improvements are probably network mandates (like firing Easton and Howarth), which isn't how things should be. And you can see the spite from Frank and co in how some of those mandates are executed (the returns of Lucky and Lulu). As the quality writers who kept the show watchable on a day-to-day basis are long gone, there's even less reason to ever hope for improvement, which can make things too demoralizing to even want to sit through. BtG is the great new hope, even though some of the writers (outside of Michele Val Jean) are the same group who did severe damage to GH, so GH is always going to be harder to watch. I can't really compare them as shows because both are in the same boat - they will be lucky to survive year to year, given the state of TV and of the genre. I hope they make it. Hell, I hope any of us make it year to year, let alone the soaps. But I also know that the GH which makes it is never going to be the show you or many others mourn.

Oh I knew they were still close - I think it was talked about on Locher Room (Melanie popping up on there repeatedly is why I'll always be glad for its existence - one of the reasons, anyway). Glad to see them though. She has repeatedly spoken about how horrible the show was for her. I think she outright said it was scarring or traumatic. That was her first acting job, IIRC. She said she knew she wasn't good but she did not think she was treated with kindness. Not exactly atypical of the industry, so I shouldn't put all the blame on Goutman, but it does exhibit a callousness and ugliness that also bled through onscreen at the time - one of the reasons I could barely stomach those years. I haven't seen a lot of her early early material as Tess but if they kept this in I wonder if it matches what we soon got of Tess - she was a liar and schemer who played up the "hills" persona. ATWT is where I first saw Parker and I just adored watching her, especially given how unbearably earnest all the other young characters were, aside from Evan Walsh. I'm glad she speaks well of the show.

Thanks. That's lovely. Back in the day I always enjoyed watching them but never would have known they were such good friends.

Thanks. Never thought I'd see either of those segments. I can't remember if I've ever seen that maid before. Soaps used to love to have lifelong servants who would vanish without a trace. It's odd to see her treating Ava like she's brand new as Ava had lived there with Curtis and had been living there with Clay for many months. Lisa seems greener and younger than she soon would as Ava, but not bad at all for her first day. I'm not sure if Roya and Randolph were friends, but there's some real emotion in her last scene, emotion which wouldn't have been on the same page. Roya was just special. Lisa was the first Ava I ever saw, and I loved her almost immediately, but Roya is one of a kind. I wonder if Roya was always leaving at the time she left or if she agreed to stay until the end of the strike. I notice her final date was in October 1988. Was the plan always for Randolph's Clay to be an impostor and to bring Egypt and Minnie in? I can't remember.