DRW50

I thought Zainab as a nosy bitch was some of the best stuff on the show in months. I love the Masood comedy. And Zainab was burnt for her nosiness so that shows she isn't written as being above everyone, as some characters are. I really enjoyed the comic moments with Tamwar, and Amira interacting with Zainab and Tam. Unfortunately this overshadowed what should have been the main story, which was the Amira/Syed marriage. He's too dull to care about. And the only time he seems to have a bit of personality is around Amira...does the show remember that he's NOT supposed to love or want Amira, that he's supposed to want and love Christian? Supposedly the actors who play Amira and Syed are dating in real life. Dot was butting into a private conversation. The problem with this war story is that as always the pacing was awful. I know you're not a big fan of Corrie's stories and I can see why but they at least made a slightly better attempt at building up Gary's decision to join the army, as he badmouthed service, was upbraided by several vets, then checked out the information himself and decided to go to war. This went so damn fast, Billie is obviously just doing this to have a tantrum and to get attention, so why was all this about oil and be all you can be pushed in? It just makes the story look half-hearted and it does not bother to present a valid reason for why you would want to join up. They had that beautiful scene with Carol showing the family photo and explain the cost of war, and what did we get on the other side...Dot talking about how Nick should have joined up? Billie is so incredibly unsympathetic, why should I care about anything he does? And will Whitney ever have a purpose beyond whimpering over him? Is it just me or is Leon UGLY? His face looks like a bad road. I wouldn't mind as much but isn't he supposed to be a hunk? Didn't you love that the place Billie held up a week ago is now throwing a party for him? When they let Janine come back so soon after she ran over Danielle and when Roxy invited her to Amy's christening, I wasn't as surprised, because most of the Mitchells never cared about Danielle, but no way would Peggy or Roxy let him back in the pub after he tried to rob them. Unless they were just hoping he left and never came back??

Interview with Sophie and Sian (the actresses playing them) on their upcoming relationship. http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s3/coronation-street/interviews/a212196/brooke-vincent-sacha-parkinson-sophie-and-sian-corrie.html I am really enjoying the story with Rita and Audrey falling out over an escort. Some always sneer at any stories for "old" characters but they are playing out emotions and pain and history that few younger actresses could understand, and the fight between them in yesterday's show was far more interesting than any chavette hair-pulling.

Congrats to the gorgeous and talented pair Charley Webb and Matthew Wolfsenden, as Charey has had a baby boy. Named...Buster. http://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/s12/emmerdale/news/a212835/emmerdales-charley-webb-gives-birth.html

You're right, Lacey looks exhausted. The way they write for Heather is very cheap and two-faced, because they always want us to feel sorry for her, yet they also want us to laugh at her expense. There's no reason why Heather should even stay around now. The naivete they wrote with her character just became creepy, weird, all the rest, when she bedded an already attached 18 year old, had "special cuddles" with him, and actually expected him to live happily ever after with her. Those faces she kept making when she was talking to Billy got on my last nerve. She's not cute. I never understand Phil storylines. He destroys everyone around him. He just takes and takes and takes and rarely gives back. He has caused Ben horrible pain, both from Stella and from being more interested in the bottle than in his son's welfare. And now we should be happy he's getting another child, even as he continues to barely tolerate the "family" he does have? The show seems to see him as this great man we're supposed to love the worse he behaves. It's all very Victor Newman. I guess that's why I can sympathize with Ben.

Does it bother you that no one actually cares about what is best for Louise? Shirley and Ben were all, "We have to do this for Phil." Why? Why does a hopeless failure of a man, a pathetic boozer, need to be coddled with one child after another he can't raise? Shirley is so weak, she will do anything for Phil. I cringe at her these days. And I think the idea of Louise being a little diva would be fun, but why is she so well-adjusted if her mother is mentally ill and if she was wandering the streets and in care before Ronnie found her? I also sort of cringed at her bad line delivery to Ben. She sounded like Danny, although at least she's still a child, that actor is grown yet he constantly looks confused and talks like he has had bad dental surgery. I thought Ben's anger towards Louise was amusing. I don't really blame him for being upset. I kept wondering why putting that foil in the microwave didn't cause a fire or a power outage. Billie is another pathetic loser. He has that pout on his face all the time, like he's trying to try but can't. You can always see Devon Anderson acting. And Whitney does NOTHING but chase after him. Nothing else in the world matters to her now. The bit about joining the army was out of nowhere and ludicrous. He's well on his way to weighing as much as Heather, they wouldn't let him in. Speaking of Heather, why does she have to make those weird faces in every scene, like a rabbit stealing food. I thought Janine and Ryan were great, I especially loved when he dragged her back to bed and then when he seemed to be trying to make her feel bad for wanting to con her way into working at R&R, then he said, "I'd wondered what happened to the Janine I knew." or something like that. I don't understand why Stacey wrote the note in the first place, or why Ryan doesn't realize he could be the baby's father. I also wish they wouldn't keep putting Ryan in those jeans that show that he doesn't have an ass.

Good for him! Is there any way he could get jobs in this production for Danny, Leon, Roxy, Heather, Syed, Billie, Adam, Minty, Zsa Zsa, and Tanya?

I don't remember it being a scandal when it happened with Cosgrove, as this happened around the same time with Mark Collier at ATWT, didn't it? They were trying to push the envelope, before Janet Jackson's nipple caused the usual nanny staters to step in. I didn't remember the Marty West stuff. What I loved about GL and what made me have such high standards for the show (which often meant I would probably not give some stories a fair shake) is that GL had such wonderfully complex characters, few people were saints or sinners. Seeing them played off against each other was riveting, and often the characters I had the most problems with were the people who were constantly billed as being above everyone else and being so perfect. Back when ATWT and GL were the main soaps I watched, before ATWT went on all their purges, I used to feel like ATWT had my heart and GL had my head. Yet there were so many wonderful characters on GL who meant so much and I still miss them. It tells you how strong some of those characters were that they survived so many huge changes in tone and structure, because I'm not sure if any soap had as many wild changes in tone, theme, and structure as GL did. Just look at poor Trish Lewis suddenly forced to have hair piled up to Jesus and big fur coats once the Lewises descended on Springfield.

This was rumored a few months ago and I think may have been denied at the time. The rumor was that As for Berridge, a lot of fans say Kate Harwood was even worse. I don't know.

I do remember that terrible Vicky. A flop in two accents. She always sounded like she had a cold. How hilarious that Den basically said he could never love her as he did Sharon. I didn't see the later Ferrieras stuff, like her fling with one of the brothers, but their early stuff I actually thought they were OK.

Well, I got my biggest wish with Carol. Others I'd like to see again: Alan. He was a nice, ordinary guy who would blow up when you pushed him. He had fab chemistry with the entire Jackson family. They just pretend he never existed. He should be there for Billie's story. Shabnam. I see no reason why this role cannot be recast if the actress does not want to return. Santer said that Masood and Tamwar would be overshadowed if she returned, and that her role is taken by Syed. I don't get any of that and I think it's an odd way to write a show -- using that logic, the Beale/Fowler family should have been limited to Lou, Pauline, and Mark. I think Shabnam should return as a very conservative woman who unsettles most of her family and reinforces to Syed just how out of step he is with his family. Belinda. This isn't a big deal but she was the unexplored Slater and I think she could be their Aunt Sal, an occasionally seen supporting/comic figure. Lisa. I'm sorry, but if Louise is there I think Lisa has to return even briefly, no matter what issues Steve McFadden and Lucy Benjamin may have. Steven Beale. His exit was appalling and a slap in the face to the character and to what he should have been to the Beale family, which is a confused good/bad figure who pushes their buttons even when he doesn't mean to. He would also cause a lot of problems for Christian. They can recast. David Wicks. Again, even briefly. Kelvin. This role can be recast. Kelvin was best friends with Ian and Ian still mentions him. The Foxes are probably on their way out, and Kelvin and his family can help fill the void with black characters. If they keep Denise, which would be fine with me, they could pair her with Kelvin and have her interact with his kids. That's just off the top of my head. There's a lot of others I still miss, some even after many years (Colin, Punk Mary, Sharon, Ruth, Sue Osman) but I know they probably don't have a story on the Square now. There are a few others like Michelle and Vicky I wouldn't mind seeing recast but that's a huge minefield and there's no reason for it at the moment, there's too much else going on. Who would you pick?

Wow! That's quite a departure. So Calvin is sleeping with Teresa now? How tacky to have these men whore around with three members of the same family.

All I remember was that she couldn't act and Daniel Cosgrove showed his bare bottom in a sex scene with her. http://www.soapcentral.com/gl/whoswho/eden.php

Yes. I always remember that story for Blake freeing herself from captivity and instead of going to the police, immediately going to the beauty salon.

In the past few years Emmerdale hasn't been known for doing too many stunts. That stopped around 2007. After that they were criticized more for their being "panto" or having too many Dingles or dumb plots. I think the show is a lot better than the other UK soaps now but it's still cooler to overlook the show. The plane crash episode is worth watching, although it's harrowing. The saddest part is Joe Sugden's stepson Mark, Joe made him go out to another farm to take back a vacuum cleaner. Then after the crash you see his arm under the rubble (he was wearing a watch Joe's mother had given to him), and the vacuum cleaner. There were also some tough scenes when poor Archie vanishes in a fireball, and when Kim Tate is forced to watch her horses burnt alive.

Tory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1mWm_9cC2s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsQyVL5zdg4&feature=related

Didn't she leave for religious reasons? Given the nature of that show I couldn't blame her.

I guess this is old news but I was looking in the new Digest and Jerry ver Dorn said that he had the scripts for his return as Ross, he would basically speak as a ghost to Ed and then to Blake. But ABC wouldn't let him appear. He said he lives near where they filmed the weddings in the last episodes so he was out there on a boat watching them.

I think there was a chance they could keep at least some of the viewers they got for the live episode. That's 7 or 8 million viewers, and this is at a time when Corrie isn't exactly going great guns and when there's less and less scripted TV to be found. It's hard to know if they can keep viewers because they never bother to keep momentum going after the stunt episodes. When they got the huge Christmas Day boost in 2007 they followed up on this with garbage like Tanya burying Max alive. I've heard increased criticism of the show in the past month, even at lovefest boards like Digital Spy, so maybe something will get through. What I don't get is that Treadwell-Collins apparently loves Roxy, yet he has done nothing but butcher her character for years. I dread to think of the weeping and self-pity and wailing they will give us when Danny takes her money.

Sorry, I don't think that was Phil Capice at Dynasty. I am mixing him up with someone else. I guess he was more with Dallas and Knots.

I don't know if the pacing will change or not, especially since Kirkwood could not pace Hollyoaks for sh!t for his last year on the show, but I certainly hope it's going to change. They are beating Corrie, a show that has been overextended and has been left to stagnate for a number of years, but they should worry about themselves, especially since budget issues mean the BBC is less and less hesitant about cutting long-running programs. The show has become a lot of nothing, a parody of itself, major stories go nowhere, and the actors, especially the newer hires, can't pull it off. They all seem like those last few years of Dynasty before Phillip Capice came in. Wooden actors, stories that start off big and then fade away, followed by increasingly flimsy stunt episodes. You shouldn't have to watch key scenes and think about bad acting or think about how self-conscious everything is. What bothers me is how often the show coasts on hollow stories ending in big yelly climaxes or on poor attempts at humor or on poor characterization with "That's just Eastenders." If anything it's anti-Eastenders. The show's best years had stories that built and built. They didn't have someone like Ronnie who stagged around like the undead for an eternity because the show hid lack of interest in character development under "She has to be miserable, otherwise she has no story." She has no story anyway. It's hard to believe that losing a child and revealing your sexual abuse means you have no story, but it does with her and has for months on end. They didn't keep any of the viewers they got for the live episode. I think that's a huge waste of an opportunity and as long as they keep focusing on getting press and on staging this cliched idea of what Eastenders is supposed to be, they're probably going to start losing more viewers.

I really think EE needs major changes in how they pace their stories. If that involves new writers then new writers should come in. I've been surprised at just how easily they let the show fall apart. They banked everything on the live episode and never tried to build up anything else before or after. Christian/Syed/Amira barely appearing for four months, made even worse because the times they did appear during last year they had the same one or two scenes over and over. The continuity is a mess. What was the point of having all that about Roxy making changes to the Vic and hiring new people when the Vic is completely unchanged and we never see any of those people working at the Vic? The need to have so much revolve around big fights or tense moments means everything is so forced that key scenes, like that stuff with the Mitchells in the Vic last night, seems like a bad knockoff of an 80s primetime soap. And there's no reason whatsoever why they needed to reveal that Ronnie was raped for years by her father and then never bring this up again for over a month. Instead she comes across as this freak who is shunned by everyone in Walford -- it just looks awful. So does acting as if the Tony story never happened and having Whitney jump into bed with Billie and obsess over him. As it is now there's really no reason why the show should be on more than one episode a week.

It's Laura Harring, in a horrible dress. http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/go_fug_yourself/2010/04/gossip_fug040210.html

The funniest part of the episode is when they try to pretend that Ryan and Whitney are brother and sister...it's basically more of the usual Whitney, "Me me Billie, me me Billie, gotta go, me me why are you leaving, well what should I expect, poor me, Billie Billie Billie..." The "acting" from Danny is also sort of amusing. Beyond the stuff with Janine and Ryan (they have a good silent scene) the stuff about Danielle was well done. Roxy is such a cow. The writers are clever because they're setting this up as, "Roxy is being manipulated to turn against Ronnie!!" when in reality she hasn't given a sh!t about Ronnie ever.

Her last credited Hollyoaks episode at IMDB is September 2009. Don't know if they've updated since or if that was it for her. This is her Twitter. http://twitter.com/Lynpapa

They're going to need to expand beyond Ashdown anyway. Several years ago they could count on several other writers. Now that they have leaned only on him it seems like his big hyped episodes fall increasingly flat (the Max/Stacey two-hander, Bianca/Ricky's wedding).