DRW50

Melissa Archer and Jessica Morris.

28 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

I find him...what's that word @DRW50 uses?

 

Anyways it looks like new EJ inherited those ugly oversized suits Sonny would wear.

Asexual?

5 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

I think it depends on the types of media you're talking about. NYC based media (even the Metro section of The Times) definitely could not ignore Adams, he was a factor from the very beginning but if we're talking about...say, USA Today or eve Politico, well, I wouldn't be surprised by that, as Politico leaves a lot to be desired.

I was surprised to see Adams referred to as some sort of neophyte whose biggest claim to fame was being Brooklyn borough president. Adams may be a lot of things but 'new' ain't one them.

I also meant the Twitter journalism pundits who had an outsized influence in 2016 and 2020 and still tend to now. 

This tweet probably sums them up (and your larger point):

10 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

No, Adams benefitted from being perceived as a known entity.

I meant in terms of media coverage. They had little interest in Adams compared to Yang (or to others whose campaign flameouts and scandals got a lot of notice, like Morales or Stringer). Once the media gets a bit in its mouth, it will work nonstop to drive a candidate into the ground for clicks. Yang was a lousy candidate and ran a lousy campaign, but he also seemed to run afoul of a lot of media personalities and they spent months wearing him down.

Nellie Oleson and the Daytime Confidential hacks are one of the main reasons I posted a lot here early on. That's the main thing I choose to remember then by...that and sometimes I think of "Soap Opera Spirit award winner" and laugh.

Oh look, it's the can...sailing down the road...again. At least we have Chris Coons telling us how special bipartisanship makes him feel.

As @vetsoapfan might tell you, I'd say he's much more striking and charismatic onscreen. 

I would say Rick #1 > Jeff > Rick #2 for hotness. Something about Richard Dean Anderson has always felt a bit cold to me. 

35 minutes ago, JaneAusten said:

Wasn't Christine Quinn a "lock in" 8 years ago? The only saving grace is hopefully Yang opened his mouth too much and ruined his chances. My niece who lives in Bay Ridge thinks that Garcia might be a consensus candidate with rank choice voting but who knows.

Initially, until de Blasio got the momentum in the last weeks of the campaign. There was a lot of built-in animus toward Quinn for approving Bloomberg's third term. 

I remember some hot takes about how Yang was in a post-Trump world where negative media publicity doesn't matter. I'm not sure if that finally took a toll, or if his own gaffes did. His pro-Israel tweet seemed to be what really threw him off balance. 

Adams seemed to benefit from being able to wait and watch with all the attention going to Yang (or Stringer or Morales, etc.), as it meant so many weird comments and plans from him and mini-scandals hit too late to make a difference. Stuff like this feels like something from an SNL impersonation:

Thanks.

This was amplified by Politico. What is not mentioned is none of these legislative successes did anything for the Presidents involved or the members of their party who voted for them. (W and the GOP ran on terror, not tax cuts). I get the idea of going out and speaking forcefully, and I also get why some feel Biden's lack of speaking up is further hastening his declining poll numbers, but this is a situation where it doesn't really matter what he says or does - Manchin and Sinema are not interested, nor are the senators hiding behind them.

Here is Sinema actually laughing at people who are frightened about the end of democracy:

30 minutes ago, Dion said:

Yeah I've complained about the pacing on these forums before.

 

As an example, in 2019 the King family burned through years of storylines - dementia, suicide, rape, infanticide (in backstory), pyromania, abortion, near incest, temporary paralysis - in their first six or seven months on the show.

Fascinating.

I have to admit I was surprised when I went on Wikipedia and saw that characters like CeCe or even Marty or Tess or Dawn had just been around since 2019 as it feels like they have had very long, pained histories. I suppose it's a credit that CeCe and Louis both feel like compelling characters even though they went through so much story, but it does make CeCe feel somewhat isolated. 

I guess at least some of the more longstanding characters like Drew, Boyd or Harper still manage to seem fresh. 

Has the pacing always been like this?

The pacing on this show fascinates me. On the one hand, at least bad stories are wrapped up quickly, but it's dizzying when I go back through 2021 and see that in mid-February, Marty meets a dream woman in a delightful romcom setting (so much so that he even trips and crashes into things - repeatedly - at the mere sight of her) and by early May, they are both complete emotional wrecks, as he has to stop her from going to the police over mercy killing her father and she leaves Ferndale to get away from the agony of her memories, asking him to never contact her again. I mean...wow.  

Glenn and Grim have found yet another new progressive hero to hide behind in their crusade against sexual harassment allegations (unless they are by mentally ill grafters that can benefit St. Bernard, of course).

46 minutes ago, FrenchBug82 said:

I remember being fascinated by Carly at the time - not in a good way necessarily but I thought it was captivating to see a story ostensibly built around the traditional good sister/bad sister dynamic where surprisingly they were writing the GOOD sister as very unlikeable to the point we are rooting for the "bad sister". I'd like to think it was clever writing (since CQ was a good actress so it couldn't have been her) rather than bad writing that lucked into a dynamic that could be tedious to watch at the time but admirable in retrospect.
Of course now I suspect it was the latter - and I hear you that it didn't make for fun viewing when the show didn't quite notice Carly wasn't very pleasant to watch and used her more than they should have
I never cared for Paul for a variety of reasons - some shallow but the main one being my personal allergy to anything mob-related on soaps. Immediately loses the rooting value of a character. 
But it gave LP good material at times and interesting character moments for Ava and Kate so I look back at it with indulgence.

 

That isn't shallow at all - we all have our own tastes. I have barely seen most of his mob period but if I didn't like Joe a lot as an actor from his ATWT run I'd probably be less interested, as most of the time they don't do a great job showing the love between Paul and Ava. 

That's a very true point about Carly. Maybe that is what they intended. Either that or they just put the character through such a wringer, the material had an unintended consequence for viewers. By the end of her run it's just 100% angst and crying and binge drinking.

I don't really buy that Paul was still in love with her, either. I guess they just had to get him off the show in a hurry.

13 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

The 1991 episode is from November, 1991. I think this was online before in a partial form. I really liked Giff and Gwyn as a couple. I think Cox and Tudor Newman had nice chemistry. This episode also includes the reference to all of Giff's marriages and children, which is something that often got ignored. I believe later Casey mentioned Giff's multiple marriages, but I don't think his siblings were ever mentioned again. Ryan Munisteri set up Revel's arrival in her final episodes in December 1991 or January 1992. Revel was a musician and suppose to show up shortly into the new year. I assume this was delayed because Mary Ryan Munisteri left. 

 

Early Dinahlee is so much fun when she was scrappy and more complex. Dinahlee was sleeping in her car before she crashed in the art studio at Alden University. Her affair with Trucker was very interesting, but I can see why Trucker and Trisha fans would rebel. Neither character came off well during that storyline, but they were more human than in most other sequences I've seen.

Yes, I remember this episode too - just without commercials, and in better quality. It was good to see the episode again...as you said, Giff had so much potential as a character and such natural chemistry with those a round him. I never understand how characters like this are so easily sacrificed. What I like most about the Giff and Dinah Lee scene is when she tells him she's the only person in Corinth not related to the Aldens, and he reminds her he is in the same position. The concept of Corinth having a higher class and people tied to them, then "others" like Dinah Lee, is so much more compelling than Dinah Lee going through various Alden men or the husbands of Alden women. 

Carly is such a draining character. Any time she's onscreen I just feel a weight hang over the room. I think Colleen Quinn was a fine actress and she worked as Ava's sister and Kate's daughter, but that whole story with Paul and Ava is just very good actors coping with middling material.

There are somewhat unique circumstances in Colorado and Virginia (at the time Republicans controlled one or both chambers). Oregon is an outright failure. 

12 hours ago, FrenchBug82 said:

Everytime I rewatch those old episodes, I am reminded what gems Christine Tudor and Lisa Peluso were. Loving was low-rated and generally poorly regarded but it is a shame the broader soap community doesn't treasure them the way they do other leading ladies of defunct shows.

Christine left the public eye after Loving, although at least she did that reunion last year. 

Lisa is someone who may have had the misfortunate of being a big part of shows that were in their last years or not well-regarded. Still, I think she has her share of fans. 

14 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

Lucinda/John

Barbara/Gunnar

Margo/Tom...HBS and GM version

Emily/Paul ..MS and AK version

 

These were end game pairings although Marland didn't create Gunnar.

Emily/Paul is an odd one for me, because I felt like it made sense mostly as an example of psychological hangups - Paul wanted to feel like he was a man, and protecting and loving Emily was part of that. Emily needed to be protected (as they mentioned in the recent interview, nearly all of MS Emily's love interests gave her a gun!), and she also bonded with Paul because they were both scarred by James. Yet I don't think they ever would have worked as a pairing once they both got older.  It's one of the reasons the later Emily/Paul relationships are white noise for me. 

20 minutes ago, lilyredd said:

My only quibble here is that Lucinda gave Worldwide to Lily. Lucinda is like Miranda Priestly- she ain’t going anywhere!

Worldwide could have been a great source of stories that last decade like Succession and Billions. Walsh and any other companies fell so they could have established that company as a monolith like Amazon. Have all the grandkids vying for power with Lucinda as puppet master.

 

Thanks - I forgot she gave it to Lily rather than battle.

ATWT got some flak in the early/mid-90s for having too many companies and too many rich characters. On paper I can see where cutting the material down made sense, but in the long run it left a void. The corporate battles in the '00s also did nothing for me because they felt hollow, and also because I was completely repulsed by Craig. We also got no hint of reality or work in the corporate dynamics compared to Marland or the first few teams post-Marland. Yes, I know that wasn't realistic either - gorgeous people in perfectly tailored suits and tight blouses and skirts - but at least it was an attempt, one which made the people involved seem close to human. 

12 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Having her closeted husband canoodling with Luke seemed very 1995 to me.

To be honest a story where Lucinda got too attached to a barely closeted gay man (with the implication being that she knew, but she had come of age in an era where she was willing to play dumb as long as he was a handsome escort to parties or kept her company) and then he ended up betraying her with a family member is something which might have been interesting with better handling but it was so rushed and seemed to be something someone got cold feet about (I'm surprised it got through at all).

I was talking more about her storylines in 2010 as enjoyable to me, although I agree part is down to low expectations. It's the same reason I enjoyed Barbara's material in her last year more than anyone here, probably. 

Liz did offer ideas for stories that would have been about Lucinda, like Lucinda going back to school. I wish they'd been accepted, even if in Lucinda's case, her being a spoiler/meddler was ingrained in the character and seemingly difficult to shake.

Just now, DramatistDreamer said:

 

That seems more akin to being a shining star on top of a massive dung heap.

On the one hand, I agree, but, even if it wasn't anything especially original for the character, it's still probably the most i enjoyed anything they did with Lucinda in ATWT's last 10-15 years. 

16 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

It just feels as if people forget that the series didn't begin and end with Marland's tenure. 

Lucinda's vitality as a character should have boosted as Lily became more and more entrenched in adult life, yet Lucinda didn't go in that direction in the character's latter years. Other than having Lucinda stricken with illness, what was really done with the character to show her as a vital, spirited woman? When Lily became a mother and it was clear that she was fully on her own as a woman, would have been the perfect time to give Lucinda a new path. I don't even remember Lucinda driving much storyline at that point.

Generally the show would focus on Lucinda reacting to another relative, usually one who was long-lost, if the story wasn't about Lily. Marland returned to the pattern previously established with Sierra by bringing in Neal and Royce. Then after Marland's death, Sam filled that void. Then as Lily moved into a more settled life, they brought in he's-her-son-oh-wait-he-isn't David, and granddaughter Georgia, along with the bizarre James romance. I don't think any of this ever would have lasted, to put it kindly, but Liz Hubbard's hostile relationship with Felicia Minei Behr ensured it wouldn't. Then, when Liz returned to the show, she was mostly kept in an even stricter supporting role, there to react to Lily or to Craig. 

I do think Lucinda's use in the last year, so heavily manipulating various story strands and finally leaving for a life of her own after Lily took Worldwide away from her, was satisfyingly done - more than I would have expected by that point, anyway.