DRW50

This Wilma was always worth watching, even if I wished they'd allowed her to be less of a caricature. She was a good reminder of what Natalie had come from. Sometimes I wonder if Kate used her as inspiration for Janet. Brooke/Erica was the feud that lasted, but Erica/Natalie is the one that interests me most. I don't know when exactly it ended, as Natalie was sanitized later on.

I think GL was also just done. The show was incredibly lucky to have lasted as long as it did. Ellen Wheeler probably was not the right choice to take that journey, but if they'd had another year, they could have made it work. I think some of the choices did work, just not enough, and I think GL at its core was a punchy show that could have benefited from a lo-fi look. Just not the one they got. I'd still rather watch some of that last year again than most of what ATWT was putting out.

Thanks. So I guess they will stop...if you have a breakdown. Wonderful backstage atmosphere. The way you describe it shows what this Gio story could be compared to what we are going to get. And now I'm reminded they had the whole Trina paternity story which also ended up going nowhere. If they'd ever had any real interest in Trina/Gio that might have been a good writing choice to have them bond over these lies. They still can, even as friends, if the show cares.

I can't remember so I'm genuinely asking - wasn't it said that the whole awful breakdown/pill story they were doing last year was truncated because Maurice didn't want to play it?

That's why I said if he had cared. I know his history with soaps. Search for Tomorrow alone. I loved Melanie Smith's Emily enough to where I would have had a hard time accepting a recast, but I don't think Kelley was ever a good choice. She ticked boxes of vulnerability or sex appeal, but she lacked the heart. Her shadings tended to veer more toward pathetic and sleazy. Even just walking around A&M she gave porn star. Melanie's Emily was never that way, even when she was cheating and behaving badly. Kelley had some good moments, especially during Emily/Hal, but she was never Emily to me.

Hollyoaks of 1998 was likely more appealing to a younger audience. I imagine being on Channel 5 didn't help - wasn't the channel just starting at the time?

Admittedly I'm not the biggest Lois fan, but I actually do think there's potential in someone who prided herself on honesty and integrity keeping such a huge secret from mother and son for decades. It's much more interesting, on paper, than the years Lois spent going on about Ned's scheming, or the recent "story" about losing her accent. The problem is, as a few have already pointed out, the story is poorly thought out and probably won't have any aftermath beyond Brook Lyn being mad at her mother (maybe) for a brief time (unless Rena leaves and there's some permanent rift). I do hope they will at least bring up Olivia's own paternity lies about Dante and how that may color her reaction to Lois' actions, but that type of history/nuance probably went out the door with Mulcahey, unless "the historian" wants to surprise us.

That special often feels like a goodbye to the genre for me.

Between this, Mulcahey's tenure, and the frequent NAC speculation, GH is still king at suspense...just not oncamera.

GL was the CBS soap that barely held on. Sometimes I wonder if ATWT might have been kept if Moonves hadn't wanted to give his wife a job, but P&G seemed fully checked out, so I put some blame on them. If Frons had genuinely cared about all the ABC soaps, they could have run a few more years. He sacrificed them for a show that only lasted a few months, and a show people only remember because of a guy that was accused of harassment. I would say he could be happy his beloved GH is still on, but he's on the outside looking in, forever and always.

Carly has been so burnt out for a variety of reasons - overuse, she has been on top for too long, her kids don't give her good enough story (although she has had some with the Michael burn plot), she was an anti-heroine who they decided to write as a heroine, and they never found another proper partner for her outside of Jason and Sonny (they were never very serious about Jax/Carly).

I'm not sure if those are the same episodes or not, but the final week was uploaded by Chandler Hill Harben a number of years ago. I went back a month or two ago as I was trying to remember if there were any he had up that had been taken down.

This is one of the reasons why ATWT's last years just make me angry to even think about - so much of their last 10-15 years. Many of the pieces were still in place. Yet we got so much heartlessness, callous, and sickness with people who were clueless or ashamed of ATWT's essence - and as a bonus, a steady stream of stunt casting that no one asked for and led to a slew of characters being ruined. I don't really care about how location shots looked as that was never what I watched soaps for. You could bring F.W. Murnau back from the dead, I'm still not going to sit through Danielle pawing all over Craig as she calls him "daddy."

I suppose it was a happier place to vacation in than it would be later on. There were likely international travel advisories against Pine Valley by the mid '90s. The crossovers likely only happened because it seemed to be an ABC Daytime mandate in the early '90s, for the New York soaps anyway - wasn't this also around the time Adam Chandler and Dorian Lord met? That did happen, didn't it? They really should have had these in the '80s. I'm not sure why they stopped (I know there were several in the '70s). Lorna would have been a natural for an AMC stint. The best part of all these AMC/Loving crossovers was probably getting to see Ruth Warrick get in some prime Phoebe and interact with her fellow '50s soap queen Pat Barry as Isabelle...although they should have had Phoebe say that Isabelle looked a little familiar... My favorite part of this is always that nerd-until-you-take-off-his-shirt guy who was in love with Trisha geeking out over THE Claudia Cohen arriving. I'd guess even many of the people who had Regis and Kathie Lee on in the background every morning wouldn't care if they met Claudia Cohen. Oh and this channel has a few old Cindi segments (in the full episodes, including one lengthy, cringeworthy episode involving Jeff Bezos wearing a cowboy hat and piggyback riding with a man). retrovancouver - YouTube

That is a great idea about Chuckie not actually being dead and the revenge plot from Michael Shea. The Dobsons probably would have loved writing all that mess too. Just add in Cricket getting pregnant again and John having a death feud with Michael. I remember liking Scott at the time. When I have rewatched parts of that period in the last decade, I still do, but that's more down to Breen's charm and breeziness than what should have been most important (his ties to Lisa and Tom). It didn't help that Tom was in the middle of a very heavy story at this time with Margo's rape and HIV scare. I didn't care for Wert at the time, but if the show had been in a better place and he had stayed I might have felt more invested. At least this time around he was more directly involved with Lisa and Tom. I just wish they'd had better plans for him. Pining after Sam and then scheming to get Rosanna's money - none of it interested me. Anything with Rosanna tended to be a nonstarter for me. Cass mentioned how odd the timing was as he was appearing on Loving as a hallucination of Jack Forbes at the same time as he tempted on ATWT.

I know SMG has had struggles with finding the right roles for quite a while now. I don't know if Buffy needs to come back, especially as the show ran about 4 years too long and the shadow of Joss Whedon is always going to hang over everything. I do wish them luck and I hope they give Buffy fans a happy conclusion for the character (as I know most of the show will be about new characters).

They may have already had some story in place to where they couldn't just write him out.

Given the state of the industry, between the lingering affects of the strikes, what led to the strikes, the streaming bubble bursting, that !@#$%^&*] Zaslav and his clones, the fires, etc. I wonder if we will get more of these soap drop-ins while the show is still around. Now that you mention it maybe Chris wouldn't have had time to play a long-term role like AJ anyway. If this does somehow work out and he's another JPS (I know he has had a much longer-term primetime career), I wouldn't complain. I am definitely glad to hear about Erika. And @slick jones you are right, he could have made a great Steven Lars too...although he would probably just be killed by hammy Heather's poisoned hip.

@Vee Thanks for tagging me. I know we both always praise McKenna's work on OLTL so how somehow fitting for today's GH that he is dumped in a part that as you've said is so throwaway (I didn't mind Measure and I do think he had a real spark with Laura Wright, but your dragging of the character has been more entertaining than the material he's been given). There's so much you can do with Chris McKenna and this is where you put him? He probably won't even last to the end of 2025. Summer, maybe. I'm not surprised he isn't a Drew replacement, as I imagine Frank and ABC want to hang onto Cameron Mathison as long as they can, but he definitely would have made sense as a new AJ. Maybe Frank is never going there due to the nasty way the show treated AJ and Sean Kanan. I don't have a problem with them losing Martin's accent as it was just something else for MEK to struggle through, but trying to get rid of Lois' accent seems silly when it's a defining part of the character and doesn't seriously affect Rena's performance. When the story came around I wondered if Rena didn't want to keep doing the accent, but if it was a Frank mandate it just comes across as a producer who knows his time on the show (or the show itself) is winding down and wants to grab at any random power move.

Thanks for letting us know!

Finally finished the last few weeks. Some thoughts: Lights Up was nicely done - maybe the best of the "special" episodes in the revival. Memories of past friends and loves were done with restraint, and Harold's memories of Madge had all the more poignancy knowing that Ian Smith is leaving again soon. The scene with Paul comforting Hilary about her old love Kenneth Muir may be the best Paul has had in the revival. I also thought the show did a decent job remembering David a year on, showing how his loved ones struggled with how to mourn him, with a minimum of tears or tantrums but with a clear sense of loss. The idea of Nicolette impulsively letting Yaz flee the country (and even pushing her from immediately confessing) feels true to the character, and Leo figuring out and blackmailing her into firing Seb was an even better twist. I liked that she wasn't self-righteously outraged and instead just did what he wanted because she didn't give a fig about Seb anyway. And her talk with Leo about why she got caught up in the moment with Yaz, how David would feel about the two of them lying, etc. was great. I do think the whole story with Nicolette being belittled and banished by everyone (including Leo) over her keeping a record of Aaron's struggles cast a cloud over these scenes. I wish she had reminded him of his big moral outrage over her actions. And when Jane and Aaron find out, will they have a big angry reaction? Byron in particular should be mad, due to his friendship with Holly. If they are mad, then it's going to pack less of a punch because they were already furious with her last year for much less. The Leo/Krista/Seb story goes around and around without any rooting interest. I don't believe in the Leo/Krista relationship anymore and I think the longer the pairing has continued the blander Krista has become. So much of her personality is about this relationship. On paper, the Krista and Seb history should be much more affecting for Krista than it is. Instead, he just reminds Krista of umpteenth old stories while she gives a wan grin. Rather than Seb pursuing her, I would be more interested if she had fallen back into old habits with him, or even kissed him, by her own choice. Clearly Seb is just meant to be a spoiler for the money couple, so it's telling that the show is so unsure of the rooting value of Krista and Leo that they had to have Seb take a shot at Davod to remind us of who the "bad" character is in this story. I do find the actor who plays Seb attractive, and I think he would have been better served in another role. This one, like everything here, is a nonstarter. Holly may be one of the vapidest characters I've ever seen on a soap. She faces trauma after trauma, but other than variations on, "Why is this happening to me?" she goes right back to factory settings. She is so vapid that when she went to talk with Andrew I couldn't tell if she was flirting with him. The show going back to Max and Holly just makes the decisions made with Max during the time they didn't share scenes more confusing to me. His backstory is also confusing. He was so mad over a female friend being Roofied that he Roofied the man responsible, yet he didn't think twice over harassing Sadie? Speaking of that, have Max, Byron and Sadie had any conversation about that whole period since Max got out of the hospital? What was the point, other than the old cliche about someone starting on a show as a pig so we will get to see them improve? Taye seems to be there for the same arc. Knowing he's one of the few new regular characters makes it more disappointing that I found him so unlikeable. Dex feeling isolated in the family makes sense as something for Taye, who is clearly bitter toward his sister and very emotionally immature, to take advantage of, but it's not something I want to watch. Speaking of characters I don't want to watch, I just don't think I'm ever going to care about the Paul/Terese relationship. I'm glad they finally had some scenes where he talked about his guilt over David's death, they were long overdue for Paul, and I thought Stefan and Rebekah were both excellent. I wish they didn't feel so much like exceptions. A great deal of the time (and this started before Nell's return), I don't even get the sense that Terese likes Paul, I had completely forgotten about Katrina (I didn't even remember her name) until she randomly returned last week, going from a cold and selfish character to running a food drive for the needy. It makes sense for her to return with Chelsea on the way, given that Chelsea got her fired from the hotel (if this is the same character). I hope she runs Chelsea out of town as soon as possible. I can't tell if the show is planning a loneliness story for Andrew or if they just have nothing to do with him so that's why everyone he cares about keeps shunning him. I enjoyed the scenes with Gino and Vera as she was convinced to move into Eirini Rising. I couldn't muster up any involvement in her ties to Byron, Max and Sadie because we barely saw her with them before this story began. We had two mentions of Curtis Perkins in one episode, but no sighting of him. Is this another budget issue or is something else going on? I've seen more selfies of the actor on Twitter than appearances in the revival. The brief moments with Aaron and Rhett had some chemistry, and more depth than I'd expected (learning about Rhett being a father). I didn't invest because there's no point investing in any guest characters. I hope this isn't the end of the story, but there's no point to expect more for the time being. Jane's story with Clint has also sped along, likely due to yet another case of perils of the guest character. We only had a few episodes of her reacting to the age difference before she learned he was a cleaner and pulled back from seeing him. I'm sure there is more to come, but I can't bring myself to care when I know this character may not even be remembered in a month. It's been tough for me to feel much about Byron and Sadie, due to the same lack of development of other couples/relationships, but the whole mini-story where he almost got a piercing to please her before not being able to not go through with it was a good way to see their different personalities and how much they care about each other.

Did Vivien even have an exit? I thought Gretchen worked well enough with Carmen Duncan, but she was probably more of a fit for the late '70s AW than what the show had become. I would have considered trying to build her character up, but I'm not surprised they just let her go.

Those are scenes I'd love to see mostly because they sound like a huge batch of WTF.

That does make sense about Curtis. I just would have had him locked up and more doubt going on about whether he was the killer. Maybe even had Gwyn frame him. His being the last Alden, or reuniting with a Tricia who could not remember him, would have been poignant to me. That Youtube Uploaded I mentioned did complain about some of those early '95/late '94 stories, especially Trucker's exit period. And the whole Danny intro is a mess. I do appreciate what B&E did with the black cast.

I think they were right to cast separate actresses post-Moore. I just wish they'd cast a bit better for Sabrina.