DRW50

Jill Larson really played the hell out of Ursula.

Amazing that DAYS has managed to waste Blake Berris three different times.

Thanks @soapfan770 for tagging me. I never went to the boards (and yes those MediaDomain boards were a mess too), but as others have said, Dan was very nice in the few times I interacted with him many years ago. None of the ego trips and nastiness of some soap board bigwigs. I just hope someone will save the recaps and profiles. Much as I complain about the fancruft in the profiles, they are still years of work and are some of the only resources around. I'd say this is the end of an era, but the era ended a long time ago. Still, it's a moment to mourn, and remember where we came from.

I thought the same but figured it was a repeat.

That's true. Add in an attempt to get John in earlier and you could have had some good conflict.

I suppose Margo's antics early on (like the affair with James) make Cricket seem modest but by this time she had centered herself and Cricket is still a mess. I think they only had her get pregnant this time because Lisa was pregnant, but it screams lack of interest/ideas. Given that they never bothered to bring her back later on (although at least they mentioned her, unlike Maggie), I appreciated these rare sisterly moments here. I know what you mean about the music. Reminds me of when AW suddenly couldn't get enough of Tangerine Dream in the mid '80s. Must be later than that as HBS arrived in November of 1983. Or bring Melinda back from the dead. Hell, even remember Frannie, Sabrina or Andy existed. Then again look what they did to Dani... I know I was frightened of Dusty in his last incarnation, albeit mainly due to that awful accent.

They did, yes. Lucinda's involvement helped end his marriage to Karen, IIRC.

I haven't heard him yet, but she seems to be from the US, or at least spent a lot of time there. She may just be trying to put on more of the cliche posh American Dynasty type of accent. Anica Calida - CMC - Creative Media Careers (cmctalent.com.au)

Finished watching... I'd never heard of that Sam character - I guess I must have as she is in the credits for the bullring episode, but I only remember the bullring scenes from that one. She seemed to know Betsy and Steve and had a fair amount of dialogue. Was she Tucker's girlfriend before Heather arrived? I can see where Meg's Betsy would appeal to viewers, but I just find her a bit exhausting. I am glad to have them acknowledge she was all over the place during her pregnancy. This must be heading into the exit for Annie and Jeff. Still a mistake to write them out long term, even if they do feel spent. Until the very end with the sinister closeups the fantasy didn't feel very much like James. So was James paying that woman to pretend to be Dusty's dead mother? There were quite a few plots in this episode so kudos to them for that at least.

Thanks! A shame it didn't work out for him after he had a successful run on The Doctors.

Thanks! Karen on paper was a real mess as a character but Kate McNeil makes her fascinating to watch. This was clearly very early HBS as Margo with that longer hair (and of course Deas still being there). @Mitch64 You have to watch that bizarre scene where Tom tears into Cricket (in absentia) saying you can't expect anything from someone named after a bug and then very pointedly saying, "SHE'S A TERRIBLE ACTRESS!" I wonder if some writer was venting about Lisa Loring (RIP). @DramatistDreamer trying not to annoy people with all the heavy tagging but I know you're always on the lookout for vintage ATWT too. Which Brian is this? Here he looks like Barry Bostwick.

Maybe just an extra? I'm not sure.

As soon as I saw Brad, sucking the air out of the room as always, I mentally checked out. I appreciate any new scene, especially as we have none of Melinda's exit, but he must be one of the worst soap characters of all time. This must not be too long before Jay leaves.

I don't disagree with you about the abruptness of a number of changes, in careers, and outlooks on Sonny, and how sloppy the handling was, and trying to slowly reset the show in certain other ways. The show briefly flirted with trying something new and then reverted to norm at whiplash speed, in a very ramshackle way, but aside from the extra sloppiness I don't know if I can say it was different than other attempts along these lines over the years. Late Guza, or the brief tone differences with Wolf in how characters like Carly were framed, or the tonal jolt of the early JFP period followed by the other jolt when Pratt/Guza came in, etc. all come to mind for me. What was so jarring about the GL shift at the time was that while the show had been bad and had been full of whiplash before her arrival and the struggles with Rauch, it had never been quite...like the way it was. Selina going in a few months from Buzz Cooper's girlfriend to having her mob moll tea spilled in Blake's book and TV interview and being beaten up by Tony Santos before fleeing Springfield for good is still disorienting to me all these years later, whereas with Sonny, I never thought the changes were anything but lip service anyway. Taking away any GL mentions, the rushed exits of Finn (although surprisingly I thought that was well handled) and Austin do show a much more out of control backstage element, although it's another case where I wonder if something is just reverting to type after relative stability for most of Valentini's run (the increased network interference in this case as I imagine Valentini desperately wanted his OLTL pals to stay).

The show has been unraveling for such a long time, but one of the main reasons for why (protecting Sonny, Carly and Jason) goes back through multiple EPs. It goes back nearly 30 years in the case of Jason and Sonny. I can't see any of the major issues changing with a new producer. I would say the situation with Rauch and Labine was much worse, both for how jarring the onscreen changes were (Blake suddenly being written as Lucy Coe, the bizarre and woeful Mary Mae the cigarette girl, shootouts in the Bauer kitchen, Selena suddenly being a former mob moll who is berated and banished by the newly evil Santos granny - beyond lengthening scenes and resetting a few character relationships, GH under Mulcahey didn't have any huge jolts from what came before), and for ugly drama spilling out. I believe actors who were let go by the show went to the press and directly blamed Labine in a way I often did not see in exit interviews. It felt like Rauch playing games. IIRC some even made sure to praise him. There was a great deal of hostility fanned toward Labine as a result. Emphasis on [!@#$%^&*]. I'd rather watch a test pattern.

I think Josh Marshall is correct, but what a contrast reading his thoughts in reply to Benjy Sarlin painstakingly working to find and spread a palatable message for Trump's racism and bile. Another reminder of just how eager the Beltway has been to get to tear Harris down on a topic they see as a weakness for her.

The dead enders have already started, although they have much less influence than they had in 2020 and 2016 (and there is no viable third-party option for the left unless they want to turn to Stein). A great deal of that fragment of the left are never voting for Harris, they are just waiting for the talking points as to why. There are a lot of issues I worry about with Shapiro as the choice, but the biggest is that I'm afraid it would indicate a fear-based pick from the heart of DC, some of the same mindset that doomed Hillary in 2016. Trump is going around berating her as hating Jews, there's no shortage of criticism about whether she is supportive enough of Israel and Netanyahu - given Shapiro's comments the pick will look defensive...and there's other baggage surrounding him too, like the claims against his former aide.

This sums it up all too well, sadly. And here's this GOP-friendly scumbag, lying that Kamala is an immigrant.

I think it was JFP, but I'm not completely sure.

Never even heard of this network. Adele blaring in the background at the hate rally (I assume she said no but they use it anyway). I guess this is the next step of the GOP's plan - having biracial people recycle these talking points so you can't point out the racism as easily.

It seems like the whole clown car is in on this. His rally is blaring an AP headline about Harris being the first Indian-American senator. These are deeply cynical attacks that have been around for years but sadly I think they are effective with a lot of stupid people. I think they were around even before this loser but a starting point: He wasn't even doing that weird shouting of his. He must be upset.

Wasn't another young woman brutally murdered in the very same storyline? I agree, even if he didn't make the decision, that was the world he created. Given his general contempt for the women on the show it's hard to imagine him disagreeing.

I suppose I'm still stuck in 2016. These puerile, gutter-level attacks paid off for him then, and many of the same people in power who were pushing for him then are doing the same now, only backed up even more with huge tech moguls and industry figures.

I would deny that, as one of the reasons I stopped watching on a regular basis was down to how much the show bored me, but that may be down to Riche and the rotting at the top of ABC Daytime as much as him. I would agree he had a better scriptwriting team than the show had after he left. My main issue with his involvement is that I never felt like he had any respect for soaps. He came from films, and he spent his entire daytime career trying to ape films and primetime TV - Sopranos, Godfather, Thelma and Louise, what have you. As the years passed, his contempt for the genre became more and more apparent. I know it's slim pickings with former soap personnel as many of the best are dead or extremely old, and I am sure MVJ has a good relationship with him, but I hope there are going to be more people involved who actually have any kind of respect for soaps, as that is desperately needed when starting a new show.

I wouldn't be surprised, but this is a longstanding attack against Harris, which is one of the reasons so many of his sycophants, like Boobert, were out there with headlines. I saw that Judge Joe Brown was also going around claiming her father told him he wasn't really black. This was all planned. Divide and conquer, trying to get black voters to think she is using them and to cause more conflict over biracials, and trying to get the public at large to see her as a liar and opportunist. And the media will lap it up.