DRW50

I'm sure they are genuine friends (as much as Anderson can actually have a friend...), but the neediness from Andy bleeds off the screen. When he "proposed" to Anderson I full on cringed.

There really are no good New Year specials at this point - I am probably just going to look up an old Guy Lombardo special - but I found him to be truly embarrassing and sad, and I got the feeling Anderson did as well.

@Franko Thank you for the Ellen Harper clip. I grew up watching Golden Girls, and I still think the first 3-4 seasons are great, but for me Ellen was Betty's prime role. We all have an Ellen in our family and no one has ever summed up this horrid type of creature more than Betty did - sweet on the surface, dipped in passive-aggressiveness, roaring toward viciousness and cruelty when provoked. Betty also had effortless chemistry with everyone on there, even Ken Berry and Dorothy Lyman, who were just in her last few appearances. I really did love Betty, for her love of animals, and for so many of her game show appearances and TV roles. She was even a naval officer on my favorite show, St. Elsewhere. I did not love the weird fetishization of her with some people in the last decade, complete with "the only good thing left" type comments that she likely would have thought were ridiculous. That is not how I'm going to remember her. There's something fascinating about her leaving us right before the 100th, the last moment of corporate cashing-in. 99 or 100, Betty lived a fantastic life, helped a lot of people, and will be remembered long after we are all gone.

That theme still sends a chill up my spine. I miss the ATWT it represented dearly...

Ben Dreyfuss, son of Richard Dreyfuss, is one of those out of touch pseudo-left-pseudo-centrist patronizing Twitter personalities I just have a vague dislike for. After seeing these tweets, even though he is likely "joking" through the whole thing, that dislike is now less vague.

They should do Lear shows that people haven't heard of, reframed for 2022. It would be interesting to see them tackling something like The Dumplings or Glitter.

@Cat Yes, the Maxwell trial definitely feels like an attempt to silence the speculations. There will still be speculation, but with newsrooms across the country being cut to ribbons, those speculations will be more in the hands of Q-lunatics who are likely to go after Tom Hanks and still believe JFK Jr is waiting to run with Trump. There has been such a steep decline in standards at the BBC, in part because they have to be beholden to the Tories to survive, but this was a jaw-dropping moment. I wonder if they thought most of their viewers wouldn't know who Dershowitz was.

His 2010 election, where he managed to get a GOP primary win for a moron who went on TV telling people to barter chickens for health care, was political genius.

"Bat and Cat" = bleh.

Thanks. What a great find. I don't think the loss is even something most people will truly feel for a long time to come.

I know the wedding material had been around, in lower quality, but I hadn't seen the apartment scenes before. That's a period I've read a great deal about but always wanted to see more of - Lee, isolated in the city, meeting new people. Agnes Nixon testing the formula she would make a success on OLTL and AMC. Lahoma was such a revolutionary character for soaps. I'm really glad to get to see more of her early days with Sam, another character who was not the usual type for soaps at this time. Lee is such a tragic character. I can see the seeds of Janice Hughes in her.

Lemay essentially said he felt Harney lacked the spark Courtney had, so I wonder if that's why he didn't really try for a romance.

The editing is first-rate, but the song is grating - the choice of an emo woe cover of a song that is already very depressing feels like overkill.

There is no summer hiatus for UK soaps.