DRW50

I guess that "I don't really care do u" jacket was as much a message to her husband as to the dying kids. Who was the last First Lady to be as utterly worthless and callous as she is anyway? How far back does it go?

Oh I didn't even recognize her. I wish we could see that clip...

I remember that but I was thinking more of everything before then, especially when she and Viki were at loggerheads through all of 1993 and 1994. I guess it would be something to ask Malone about...

Hopefully Watt will never go into any GH reunion chats - they would make GL fan complaints about JFP seem like rainbows and puppy dogs.

I could have bought Dorian keeping quiet if Viki had not campaigned to have her locked up for Victor's murder. Dorian was on death row, if memory serves, and she still wouldn't say anything? I thinks he would have brought it up to try to get Viki to step in, or would have earlier on in the investigation. And Malone wrote that story too, so the disconnect has never made sense to me. Anyway...

@Vee speaking of Parscale, I noticed he was pushing the dementia stuff again yesterday, and that various operatives (including Russia-loving leftists like Matt Taibbi, who also pushed the Tara Reade garbage) were putting out new deceptively edited videos that people were eating up. And trying to fan flames of fake outrage because Biden said Floyd's death got more worldwide reaction than MLK's due to video. I keep hoping that people won't fall for this stuff the way they did in 2016, but it still makes me sick to my stomach just how many who call themselves progressives are going along. Speaking of the platform, it looks like they took a pass because there was too much fighting over what changes should be made. This article also has a lot of quotes from a Republican transgender delegate, which must be a real level of self-hatred. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/11/republicans-rnc-decision-314172

I do wonder if Helen Wagner preferred getting to play a harder Nancy - she would try to work that in at times. The Dobsons were very talented writers but they seemed to have no real idea what the concept of ATWT was.

I did not realize just how ridiculous and sad this article was going to be until I read it. This man went out of his way to grovel over taking a knee, to the point of saying he couldn't even eat and sleep. Now I see why so many people find this practice to be phony and manipulative. (Jamal Bowman is running a primary against longtime Congressman Eliot Engel - I don't live there so I have no real opinion, but Engel hasn't been doing himself a ton of favors)

I saw that Nene seemed to 'like' comments suggesting Andy should be fired. (and more Kandi shade) I know she has a lot of axes to grind, but I do wonder about whether the shows would be in a better place without him. Just on the race topic, I was thinking not only of everything with Joyce, but also how much Kim Zolciak was coddled and how they clearly intended her to have a big, successful comeback at the expense of the black Housewives who'd made the show a long-runner while she half-assed it and then quit. I'm not sure how much of that was Andy and how much was the producers at the time though.

Between this, his doubling down on praise and support for Confederate generals, and choosing to showcase vicious racist self-haters (as shown below), he's pushing hard to drive out the white supremacist vote while relying on voter suppression (and a steady stream of ex-Bernie cultists reminding us that he and Biden are the same or that Trump is the true progressive) to get him reelected. Sadly this could easily work.

His stories are all pretty ??? too, especially compared to how constrained and tightly plotted much of ATWT was. The sister, losing his voice (which feels more like a Johnny Bauer story), didn't he have a crazy fan (or am I making that up). And his ending, where he sleeps with Nella Franklin and they head to LA together, is also a bit jarring compared to what we normally got at that time. It's also something I'd never heard about - I didn't even realize Marland had kept Nella or her mother around and were still using them in story at that point.

Didn't Judi have problems with Vincent? Or did she not? I can't remember. I loathed the Nick/Mindy pairing. I felt like she was reduced to being his little woman, just as Alex was reduced to being his mother. I never understood why I was supposed to care about Nick. If I had been watching at the time of Lujack, maybe I would have, but I wasn't, so I didn't. I just thought he was a sanctimonious pain in the ass who tanked two great characters. Similar to what Buzz would go on to do with Jenna and Nadine. I have a feeling JFP moved away from the Mallet/Mindy pairing so she could remake Harley into an image she wanted and put her with an actor she thought highly of (the same would happen at AW and OLTL). I hated Mallet/Harley too. You can see why I lost a lot of interest in the show after Maureen died. She was a short-lived love interest for John, I think. That was a very classy comment from Frank Beaty. He was so much better than Pelphrey ever was on GL. I wish he had had the career Tom has, but sadly life doesn't work that way.

I did love Connor, but otherwise I see what you mean. Past similar characters under Marland, like Pam, felt more "real," even though they never had that much to do. I think Beau is the first character similar to what you describe (and he's one it felt like Marland quickly tired of). I wonder if Caso's arrival is one of the reasons for the flatness. Ellen Dolan had already taken the character in that direction...I suppose an unfamiliar face, with some wooden performances and not that good of chemistry with Scott Holmes, didn't help. She came in at the worst possible time for a recast of such a key role. Schemering's book mentions that Edith would return for Christmas visits for years. I wish we had more info on that. I feel like Irna used the Hughes family to work out her issues about repression in society. The idea that Jeff was a "bad boy" caused no amount of heartbreak for Penny - if Nancy and Chris had accepted his goodness sooner, then he wouldn't have lashed out so much and they would have been happier. Nancy then interfered nonstop in Don's relationships (isn't this what caused Don to leave Oakdale for years in the '60s?) and to a degree in Bob's, and was in general a cold and brittle personality. It seemed like, similar to Bert and Papa Bauer, Pa Hughes was the main one who could see through her and push her down the right path, it's just Nancy was cold and Bert was a volcano. I think one of the reasons viewers connected to the Hughes is because they were more of both an idealistic and a realistic version of the American family - you got both sides. I remember when Marlena de la Croix panned Pa Hughes as boring, and she got some harsh letters from fans, 25-30 years after the character was gone and rarely mentioned. That's fan loyalty. I do wonder why Nancy was softer on Lisa than on a lot of the more genuinely nice women that she gave hell to, like Janice Whipple and so on. Maybe Irna's soft spot blurred her writing, or maybe Nancy saw Lisa as the woman she wished she could have been - all emotion, all drama.

It's a sick joke. Sadly many in the media will still push this as a big moment.

The PA House speaker who was blasted for not letting Democratic legislators know that one of the GOP caucus had COVID (even though one of the Democrats, Brian Sims, had donated a kidney and was at high risk) is resigning. https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/06/09/pa-house-speaker-mike-turzai-expected-to-reportedly-resign/

In other positive news, even if these never mean much in the end.

I think it was '83 or early '84... I missed Lyla but I'm glad I never had to see her even further trashed to prop up Goutman pet Katie, after that nonsense FMB and Broderick did with her being the stage mother from hell, forcing Katie into kiddie beauty pageants.

Socorro Santiago was way too good for such a paper-thin role.

Now that you mention it, the Sean Baxter character, the rageaholic, also reads as very repressed queer to me, especially in performance. I was surprised to learn Burke Moses was straight, to be honest, after seeing him on there and on OLTL. Seth was another character who for me was very gay-coded - I felt it at the time when I was too young to get what it was, and I still do now (sensitive, distant from the 'normal' family life, a dreamer who moved to the big city, etc.).

Michael Logan used to talk about parties Marland threw and stories they shared, so I figure he was out to the industry. (someone also told a story about Marland's home, during parties, having a photo of someone Marland disliked placed in the toilet seat...) For me Marland has a second wind at ATWT for 91-92, with some really interesting, layered, albeit dark stories. He did not properly balance the show by his last year, which left them in a bad place, unfortunately, but I prefer that period to a fair amount of 88-90. '90 in particular has some odd lows, like the Frannie/Sean stuff with Sean in a nonstop rage that had all the nuance of a porn film. The only real downside for '92 in my opinion (even though I get why people hated the Carolyn story) is dull as hell Rosanna. That's interesting. I wonder if plans changed because Mary Ellen Stuart told them she was leaving? I did like Larry a lot, but I was fine with him being with Susan rather than Frannie. That relationship never felt very serious. Darryl was certainly presented as a very selfish and weak man. Rex Smith's charm and good looks and the heavy POV we are given from him early on may mask the more villainous nature - I guess that was the idea. By the time of the ski lift scenes I feel like he could have easily pivoted into a very dark place, if Marland had followed through.

It's a bit odd with regard to Maggie, because I feel like she was in competition with Margo from early on, due to the Tom relationship (he originally dated Maggie). I don't know if she and Margo ever quite gelled as aunt and niece, partly for that reason. So that probably didn't help Maggie stay on the show. She had quite a bit of major story in 1984 and 1985, with her adopting a baby and then the Cal story. I'm not surprised if she was shocked to be let go. Angel is more complex on paper than on the show. Essentially, Caleb Snyder used to work for Henry Lange. He and Angel got involved. She aborted his child. This was all backstory, mostly - Angel didn't really get focus as a character until Holden Snyder returned to the show. He was working for Lange Enterprises, and had married Angel to get past his feelings for Lily. Angel couldn't have a child, due to her abortion. She and Holden considered adoption. She realized that Holden did not love her, but she wouldn't give him a divorce. As it turns out she didn't want to be alone because her father had been raping her for many years, and he was the father of the child she'd aborted. (Henry had been sexually abused by his mother, which the show let viewers know via flashback after a flashback of Henry with Angel) When Caleb found out, he confronted Henry. Henry committed suicide, but Caleb ended up being put on trial for murder until Angel agreed to testify and tell of her abuse. Caleb and Angel tried to reconcile, but realized their time had passed. Angel and Seth Snyder fell in love and married, and she moved away with him for a new life. Alice Haining's work was very tender and quietly powerful, and what could have been a very exploitative story was handled with a great deal of respect (in contrast to many ATWT stories about rape and sexual abuse). I think he started in summer and was gone by late September or early October. I have a feeling the interim writers may have had more plans but Marland wanted no part of that.

Apparently a city councilwoman gave them access to City Hall. I hear a lot of things about how many problems Seattle has - is their mayor of any value or are the problems too insurmountable? After 32 years, we're finally finding out what the bad boys are gonna do - get canceled. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/cops-tv-show-ends-32-year-run-following-george-floyd-protests-according-to-reports Live PD is being "evaluated" by A&E, after reports that they filmed a man who choked to death. https://people.com/crime/black-man-died-after-saying-i-cant-breathe-during-arrest-filmed-for-live-pd/ Richmond, Virginia's statue of Columbus was thrown into the lake.