DRW50

He also did the whole psycho Steven story I hated (that is back now...) and wrote out Yolande, a very good character, and made Lucas, another good character, a serial killer. And never gave Chelsea anything to do... I've been catching up on Redwater. The acting is very good but the plot is mostly meandering. Kat and Alfie, especially Kat, feel like bystanders on the show - she is only ever there to worry about her son the psycho murderer priest. The best thing I can say about the show is that one of the main guys on the show has a black wife and kids and it's not just treated as tokenism - she gets a big role in police work and mystery-solving even tough she's heavily pregnant, and their oldest daughter gets a lot to do. There was a good scene where her grandfather wanted to know what was wrong with her and when she didn't want to tell him, he said, "You're too old for secrets." Then when she told him not long after that about her father's affair, he says he knows, and asks her not to tell anyone. She says, "I thought I was too old for secrets." As DTC always has to overegg the pudding, her father starts up an old love affair with his male cousin, making this the third time he's done a story with gay men having an affair while one is closeted and with a wife who is pregnant or pretending she's pregnant. This was actually the first of this cliche where he managed to not make the wife/girlfriend look like a bitch, and where the two men involved didn't come across like assholes, and were actually quite a believable couple, in spite of, you know, being cousins. (if the show ever comes back, which I doubt, I have a feeling they are going to undo them being cousins) There are a lot of people on there who would have been good additions to Eastenders, not that it's ever going to happen. And they'd just sit around talking about Ian's diabetes anyway.

I'll be surprised if they kill him off, although you never know. Some site claimed 4 more people are going. I'm not sure I believe it as a site can say anything. Lachlan and Pierce are likely going, so that would be 2 more we haven't heard about beyond them.

Most of their '90s producers are still around although I guess they probably wouldn't return. I know some want Diedrick Santer (he was producer in the late '00s) to return. I would rather not. Did you watch any of that Redwater show?

I have a hard time believing it was on his own terms. Most soap producers don't just pop in for a year, and he was giving big interviews about the show only a month ago. Everything with Steve McFadden's break from the show has been odd so I can believe he may have had something to do with the departure. He was horrible to me and he made the show very crude and nasty, but we can agree to disagree. Lamb was also a big egotist and repeatedly showed his ass on Twitter. He's just not a good choice.

Some think Alexander Lamb, who helped destroy the show a few years ago (he was behind ideas like Mick being Shirley's son and Bobby killing Lucy, I think). Others say Phil Collinson, who ruined Corrie years ago. I would rather have someone new.

I'm not a passionate Dynasty fan - I just thought the trailer looked awful and I was shocked by how poor Fallon (who should be completely on point for any version of this to work) was.

Thank you for finding that.

1996 was a real mess for the show.

It's pretty much just their party apparatus as a whole. Trump's not going to say or do anything they listen to, even if he probably agrees with them about contempt for the poor. He's just a pen signing a bill, if he can remember how to write. They can just do what they want based on their longstanding views. Some of them hate most of America. Many of them simply don't care. Some of them have zealous plans to crush those they deem lazy and unworthy and ungodly so that they will either take inspiring life lessons from having nothing but a space on the sidewalk, or they want to weed out those they see as weak. Others don't see people in the first place and just see tax cuts for their rich donors and friends. The one thing they agree on is that if a lot of people die, even millions, it just doesn't matter. Even these "moderate" senators are only worried about their own state because of their own careers, not anyone else anywhere else. Thanks to this election we're getting the full truth - they just don't care. They only care when they can make it actively worse. The media doesn't care - they are still too busy talking about Russia and talking about Democrats in disarray and talking about how Sean Spicer isn't their friend and making up "winners" and "losers" lists. Even many on the left likely don't care, as I've seen more talk about purity contests than about the health care bill at some places this week - the same navel-gazing nothingness as always. Most people just don't care what happens to those affected by this bill. They don't care now. They won't care when it passes. They won't care when people die. It doesn't matter to them, ever. Maybe they're lucky enough to not be affected by it, or not to know anyone who will be affected by it. I envy them. I envy that level of sociopathy, because clearly that's what it takes to get by now.

One of them will be that media whore Rand Paul most likely. He will likely cave if they push hard.

It's unfortunate because when I think about Swajeski's AW I immediately think of things I disliked (the treatment of Nicole, anything involving Frankie/Cass, the degradation of the Cass/Kathleen relationship, and most of all the whole fiasco with Donna, Michael and Stacey that made me despise the latter two), but she did a lot of good things too, and there was some fantastic drama, especially Jake's shooting trial, and the reveal of Iris as The Chief. And I adored Cali Timmons as Paulina, and Ryan, and Lorna (although I'm not sure how much of Lorna's best material she wrote), etc.

Fair point, but I feel like just calling it "mean" minimizes it. I guess it doesn't really matter anyway as anyone who doesn't already know how bad this is won't know until it affects them. And they'll probably still blame Obama.

I saw that the Senate Democrats are criticizing the health care bill by having big cards that say "MEAN". ???? While I would happily vote for Susan Banks to be elected to the Senate or even the White House these days, I'm not sure I'd hire her as a marketing strategist.

Oh. I got her confused with someone else. Sorry. Alana somebody, who was in the whiteface story on Y&R.

Good eye.

I think I may have put up an interview with the actress a number of years ago, although it mostly seemed to be about her issues with Y&R more than her work at GH.

I think they need to start pushing new faces more and need clear plans they can push forward, and I think they need to move on from Trump in their messaging. I think they need to remind people of how disastrous the GOP is with or without Trump. I also think they need to spend much more time and money on building up local and state parties. It's time to stop things like cold-calling districts 500 times a day and angering voters.

The other thing Democrats should face is that to many voters, Trump does not = GOP. The Republicans did a decent job throughout the campaign and since the campaign of working with him but also distancing themselves. There is no millstone to be hung around the neck of some random robot running in a red district. People may hate Trump, or fear him, but it is isolated to him. The Republican Party of 2017 is terrifying. It's not just Trump. Obama tried to point this out last year but it was mostly ignored and will continue to be ignored. The party is being whitewashed and shielded, intentionally and unintentionally, through Trump's presence in the Oval Office.

I think Ossoff was a passable candidate who did a decent job and probably did as well as ever would have happened in that type of district. I never thought he would win, and I think that the national party made a mistake in pushing so much money and time into this race. I think the shooting last week was one factor, but even without that, it was a huge uphill climb. Nationalizing this race was a terrible idea. It speaks volumes that a race that got far less attention and money was closer than this one. When big DC Democrats and their consultants start shoveling in, it doesn't end well, because they are tone deaf. There is no national message beyond "stop Trump." There's nothing to actually vote for. Instead you have a party that is out of ideas hoping that they can get through if people hate Trump enough. It didn't work in November and it's not working now. There are some reasons for this like gerrymandering and voter suppression, but there are also serious identity issues with the Democratic Party that aren't being addressed. The national leadership is tired and uninspired in general. I have a lot of respect for Nancy Pelosi and I don't believe that she costs that many votes, I don't believe there is some widespread hatred or fear of her, but she, Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer mostly seem listless and dated. There is no new blood to contrast to the usual Washington. There's a general condescending lack of interest in the makeup of a district in favor of some blanket idea that people in a district are supposed to "resist" and send a message, and if they don't, they are damning themselves to hell. This was a well-off district - jeering about how they won't get a living wage now and how they won't have health care now isn't going to make a lot of sense. It also dramatically overstates the likelihood of any of this happening if a Democrat is elected. Democrats need to learn how to manage expectations. The party ran headlong into this fantasy that these elections were going to lead to America rising up and sending a message. They did little to stop the media from blithely ignoring that these are all longtime Republican districts and there was no suggestion of this changing. As a result of poor expectations, an obvious and expected loss in a very Republican area has become a devastating blow that will drain media attention away from the health care repeal, away from so much else the Republicans are doing to ruin America and the world, and also cause less money and a poorer quality field of candidates for 2018. As long as things stay the way they are, there will no big wins in 2018. Democrats will be lucky to gain a few seats. And if they don't see this now I don't know if they ever will, especially if their bogeyman Trump leaves office and they are left with a milquetoast President who hates all the right people and who will have the daddy-issues media crawling over hot coals to help him win.

Even blue states elect disgusting trash, as shown in New Jersey and Maine in recent years. The problem is that the national picture as a whole keeps shifting right, and nothing stops it.

I was mostly talking about the voters in places like the Rust Belt (places that it was taken for granted that Hillary would win). White voters were responsible for Trump and I never intend to imply otherwise. My apologies if I did.

I think it was less not going low as it was just months of negative Trump antics and coverage numbing voters. Media darling Marco strutted around telling people that the man likely had tiny meat, which is about as low as you can get in a machismo-dominated country like this, and it didn't do him any good. There was so much about Trump, how awful Trump was, how terrible Trump would be, Trump Trump Trump, and so little about Hillary. I will always think that they made a big mistake in the Vice Presidential debate in having Tim Kaine spend the whole time yelling about Trump rather than saying anything positive about himself or Hillary. When people mostly hear about one man, especially people who feel disenfranchised and checked out of politics, they are more likely to either stay home or to vote for him.

I felt sorry for the actress who played Cheryl because she said in one of those "GH memories" interviews SPW did for their 30th anniversary how unhappy she had been with the writing for the character in her later years. I think she was also another who felt let down with the way Gloria Monty wrote her out. It's too bad they never did more with Cheryl as she could have driven a lot of story, especially with her contrasts to Tiffany. I know some fans said that the Bobbie/Tiffany custody battle over Lucas carried the show in the early '90s.

That and they didn't realize they were even voting against their own health insurance. They're damned either way because even if this doesn't get repealed, Trump will keep strangling the market until no providers will want to participate. Democrats will get the blame, because of terrible messaging, a media that worships Republicans, and a public that is apathetic and easily manipulated. And deep down I am starting to wonder how many leading Democrats actually want to win anyway - it's certainly easier, and more lucrative, to just tsk-tsk about Trump.

Around 1988 or 1989, they needed a love interest for Robert, as Anna was popular with Duke. Katherine came in as, I think, Robin's piano teacher. She and Robert hated each other - you know how that goes. They were a popular couple for several years. I believe that in late 1990 Gloria Monty returned and the actress got wind quickly that Monty had no interest in the pairing or her character, so she left.