DRW50

I best know him as Rex, and always will. In reality Rex wasn't much of a character, but Quinn was so likeable, handsome, and charming, he made you care. He was one of my favorite parts of Y&R in those years, especially his relationships with Jill and Leanna. I think he was almost too good for the role as I have a feeling Bill Bell may not have intended him to stay as long as he did (which is why he got such a poor exit). I will miss him.

John Leonard, TV critic, talks about the television season of 88-89 (up to late December, anyway), spitting venom as a whole, but praising Designing Women, Murphy Brown, and especially Heartbeat. He praises Roseanne Barr but dismisses the show itself as looking down on poor people. It's about 30 minutes in.

These people truly are the scum of the earth.

I think the shortest Maura got was around 97-98. I was surprised at first because I did associate Carly with her original cut, but after a bit of time it didn't bother me. I was more bothered by the writing, for many reasons that probably aren't worth rehashing, from how they trashed her relationship with Lisa (and made Lisa look bad in the process, even though I doubt that was the intent), to the baby contract stuff, to Julia...on and on and on. I just got the feeling a lot of the people working on the show in that last decade didn't even like Carly, let alone try to understand her.

Between this and Trump's hardline supporters now controlling the House, it's a reminder of just how much influence he still wields. As others said, storming after Lula was already inaugurated is an odd choice.

I think what made Laura stand out is she felt real without viewers being told how "real" she was (as we so often heard about Karen, especially as the years passed). When I started watching the Knots reruns, around season 3 and 4, Laura was the main person I identified with - her fears, isolation, and her knowing she was in a world that didn't understand her. Yet what keeps Laura such a compelling character is even though we are with her through so many crises, we don't ever fully know her - no one in her life does. That distance, all the way to her final moments, means she never becomes tedious the way the other longrunning characters do.

His 1988 run is from mid-September to mid-November 1988. Only scraps of that seem to be on Youtube at the moment.

I don't think she did as much as she could have, but she was certainly a very dominant presence.

Yes. For some reason I thought Iris and Russ interacted around this point, but I don't remember if Robert did.

That's a difficult question, because I think the show rebuilt itself several times. For me the best seasons were 3-7, and nothing is ever the same after Laura is killed off and Mack , Val, Gary, and Karen also become significantly more one-dimensional as characters. The show as a whole becomes more one-dimensional. They also start running into dangerous territory with Abby, but fortunately Donna Mills took care of that and left. There are still good moments in that period, but it's a different show...still a show that I found watchable, and fortunately I was able to accept Paige (if I couldn't have I just would not have been able to make it as a viewer anymore). Some of the new characters, even if they are more typical '80s gloss and lack the depth of someone in the early years, keep me involved (Frank, Pat, Linda, Anne, Paige, even go-nowhere characters like Paula). Aside from some pet peeves of mine (anything involving baby Meg, anything involving Olivia whining, anything involving DIRTY COP DIRTY COP DIRTY COP), I'm able to be involved in stories, even if I don't really like the stories very much for themselves. There are some fun interactions, sharp dialogue, etc. I think the show plugs along in that vein until around season 12, which is a much stronger year for me, maybe the best since season 7. The season 12 finale and the whole feel of season 13 is just too much, too much for the show to ever recover from. I know a lot of people enjoy the back of 13. I might try it again someday, but I'm in no rush. 14 I sort of half-watched, and I'm not in much rush there either.

@Vee Thanks as always for your writeups, which always add such detail with the behind the scenes info and casting and directing discussion (I had no idea poor Judith Barsi was on Knots). Learning about the turnover and meddling helps me to understand why this period begins to have story I found to be very predictable and hollow, no matter how well-crafted, like Joshua. The real meat is in the complex central characters like Abby, Greg, or in these years, Gary. I never quite saw the Verna story as a masterpiece either. I think it works best as a breather for Val that reminds you of her trauma in a way beyond what we usually got with her.

Logically, I know you're all in the right, and I do think Brian would have made more sense in this role (if Paul Stevens had still been alive), but I was just glad to see someone in Iris' corner, and I thought Nic Coster and Carmen Duncan worked well together.

Don't forget rape is sexy and it's great fun seeing camp gay men sexually harassing/assaulting other men. Makes you wonder even more what happened to make him vanish from the show so abruptly. I guess he just quit at the last minute to try fame elsewhere.

The AW opening is just so generic for me, yet also, for all the talk at the time of how dated the previous opening was, feels far more dated to me. The other problem is the arrogance of putting an opening she should have known the show would not have the budget to keep updating, which meant the whole thing was about 3 seconds long by the time the show ended. Justine only lasted to about early 1996. I think Victoria Wyndham never really knew what to do with the character, which is why she was so defensive about her, but the character did go fully off the boil under JFP, with the hook and other nonsense. I remember Eddie Drueding saying that every piece of brand new hospital equipment should have had a tag with the name of the actor who had been fired to pay for it.

Haven't they done this story with Kayla multiple times now in recent years?

I would say that's something Carly would do, but I doubt the writing is character-based. (does Joss even have a character?)

This is about as sad a victory lap tweet as you can find. May you and a drummed out of office Kevin work together on his autobiography very, very soon.

One last laugh for the night, via another media darling, before the wall-to-wall coronations for that soul-selling dumbass begin.

Matt Gaetz is about as scummy as you can get, but seeing him continue to publicly humiliate McCarthy before inevitably caving in amuses me, even if it shouldn't. One of the reasons is because I was reading Jake Sherman's feed, and Sherman was gossiping and giggling over every second of this vote. You could tell he was in absolute heaven, going on and on about the genius of McCarthy's special friend Pat McHenry and what a wonderful team they are. Then as soon as Gaetz voted present, the purple prose stopped immediately.