DRW50

That's such a sweet photo. Sheryl Lee still looks so ethereally beautiful. Nice to know Dana Ashbrook still knows the Bobby face. At first I thought that was Matt Borleghni beside him.

Mediocre, clunky writing is letting a lot of Peggy's return down, once you get past the strength of some of the performances. The Stacey and Peggy scene was especially clumsy, with Stacey actually feeling bad for getting married after taking Peggy's husband. Never mind that Peggy had broken up with Archie and was disgusted by him to the point of emotionally guilting her son into trying to kill Archie. What in the world was this dialogue about? The Ian and Phil scene about Peggy not wasting away was better, but the writing essentially shamed Pat for not committing suicide. That bothered me a lot. While I guess I get the idea of Peggy's grandchildren not bothering, they really missed an opportunity with Louise and Peggy talking about Lisa, given that she took Louise back to Lisa. And Paul wouldn't have told Ben to ditch seeing his grandmother. Paul loves his grandmother. He'd want to meet Peggy. The best scene was Buster shaking Ian's hand after the market sale was off. A rare kind moment. Belinda on the Square is not working for me. She's just a Kat knockoff. There were never any plans to have Sam around for more than a few episodes. The day before the article she tweeted that she was done and enjoyed the experience. The main paper that gets soap stuff right tends to be The Sun

I don't think people can find his actions sexy, but when he's shown naked with a woman, pleasuring her, then I think the idea is for viewers to see him in that type of light. They did seem to eventually stop this, but I never understood why they did it. Iwan Rheon is a sexy man but the character shouldn't be. I do see your point. I appreciate what you're saying and thanks for replying.

OK, but that's picking and choosing. There are plenty of people in the story who have acted as dishonorable cowards. At the top of the list is Tywin, Roose and Ramsey Bolton and Walder Fray. The whole Red Wedding was an act of cowardice by every single person involved. Ramsey tortures people who are helpless and weaker. Just because he isn't crying doesn't mean he's anything other than a cowardly little bint. Jaime totally gave up after his hand was cut off. Sure, I don't blame him either, but he did. Loras faced The Mountain . Then he didn't run when Stannis was coming until his sister begged him. I don't think there is any reason to think he isn't going to find his feet again just like Jamie and Theon have. Of course he could also be brutally murdered. It's less about actions than about how actions are framed. The show bent over backwards to try to paint Tywin's actions as strategy and cunning, rather than vile butchery. They downplayed the carnage and consequences to the North and they instead had him having philosophical debates with Tyrion about the matter. The show wrote Tywin based so much on Charles Dance and his charm that most of Tywin's weaknesses and cruelties were never properly shown, making his death an anticlimax. Ramsay has done many terrible things, but he is always presented as a warrior badass super-strategist even amidst his horrible actions. He was also repeatedly given hot sex scenes that did absolutely nothing to move the plot along and instead just seemed designed to further remind viewers of how awesome he was. Loras, in comparison, is framed as absolutely worthless, time and time again. Rather than ever showing him as a warrior (other than one shot riding in on a horse after the battle was already over), he was shown giggling with Sansa because gee he sure loves weddings. He is then shown as ruining his family's plans for Sansa because he tells all his secrets to a whore. Amazingly, he then proceeds to get back in bed with this same whore who betrayed his family and, amazingly, it happens all over again. Even when his grandmother talks about him, he's nothing more than a cheap gay joke compared to jokes about incest. The most he manages to do when he isn't ruining his family and planning weddings is to cry and be weak. And this is the show's main gay character. They erased any other gay characters from the TV version. This is the best they can manage. It's just another reason why the show, for all the hype of how daring it is, feels very retrograde and dated in how they write many characters. Loras is someone who managed to escape from The Celluloid Closet and stumble into Westeros.

I'd never seen this before - it's a short interview toward the end of this, Joan Bennett talking about nearly being cast as Scarlett O'Hara. It's a few years before she died, and I tend to wonder if it was filmed when she was at a Dark Shadows convention, as I recognize the outfit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVcths8K8RI

Did they really bring Osha back for a few scenes just to make us awed (yet again) with what a clever dangerous sexy badass Ramsay is? Glad I didn't see it.

The Red Viper was pansexual, not gay, although he was mostly written as straight and then just leering and winking about sex with men. There are plenty of characters on the show who aren't brave, but the show somehow always manages to go for a stereotype with Loras - weak, effeminate, incredibly stupid and constantly being the downfall of his family. Even his relationship with Renly was only brought back up as damning proof of his being gay, while it was dredged up again and again for Brienne's story. Last season when I quit watching, one of the reasons was because I had absolutely no idea if the show even felt that the Faith Militant's anti-gay views were wrong. If so, they certainly never have shown it in the writing.

Thanks. Not surprised about Faith and Bernie...

I loved Arlene Vaughan way too much considering she was a plot device character. I would have punched somebody in the face for that character. Olivia was just incredible. Incredible.

It could, yes. (the recast) I don't think they should have let Matthew go just for Alicia. David is a good, decent, moral character, one the show needs, and also a sympathetic character (something else in relatively short supply). I do wish they had handled the Alicia situation better. I wish Natalie could have come back briefly for this story.

I still don't get the Lockie thing. I wonder if there was some backstage issue. Didn't Porsche quit very abruptly?

The scenes with Phil and Peggy were good (and apparently partly improvised - no wonder they were good). I also liked Peggy on the milk float. The Kathy/Sharon/Shirley stuff was too contrived and got history wrong. Sharon also continues to look so weak in this story. And I wanted someone to slap vile, nasty, stupid Louise.

ITV put up Edna's first scene. Someone was kind enough to make a version that those of us not in the UK can see without using the cheat codes. http://sorenkingsley.tumblr.com/post/144345999064

They toned that down around summer or fall when they began to make Lily/Holden the main young couple rather than Holden an interloper.

He was known nationally because of the Ivana/Marla stuff.

Wasn't he already hugely known by 1990?

The non-Edna stories were about what I expected, and thankfully didn’t take up much time. Other than my annoyance that Edna’s family was not there (instead going on a “day trip” - even though Lily and her son had a terrible relationship after he found out she was his mother and even though Eve hadn’t had much contact with her father or Lily that we ever knew of), and a bit too much of Kerry being sour (they have gotten the balance wrong with this character in recent months), I thought the scenes were done well enough. I wasn’t really expecting to be emotionally affected, but Pearl’s goodbye to her, and Sandy and Ashley saying their own goodbyes, were very poignant, and very real. I felt like I was there with them, somehow. I’m also glad they remembered her relationship with the Kings, and Jimmy’s fondness for her. It was a nicely done scene. I also loved the last scene of Sandy celebrating with Edna, real or imagined, over helping Ashley through his crisis of faith. Freddie Jones and John Middleton are perhaps the most underrated acting pair in Emmerdale. And the beautiful shots of the countryside and community were also a nice touch. So overall I’d say I’m pleased, and I think Shirley got the respect she deserved. As did Edna. Even after all these months, I miss her as much as ever. But I’m glad I got to say goodbye.

https://twitter.com/BBCOne/status/730756492526129153/photo/1

There's a version of this on Youtube with the first 10 seconds missing, but I found the full version (I'd always wondered why Ken wasn't in the other one...) as part of a junction, so I put it on Youtube.

After the shambles Kate Oates made of Alicia's rape, I knew to expect the worst with Aaron's story, but I was unprepared for a child being raped for years somehow ending up being about the romantic travails of whether Aaron believes Robert killed Gordon. Worst of all, this story has been so poorly done and they've overloaded Aaron on so much repetitive, hollow misery, that a lot of fans are angry at him, the rape victim who just learned his abuser died and doesn't know how to process it. This story has repeatedly sent terrible messages to abuse victims and has repeatedly thrown any genuine emotion out the window in favor of melodrama. Kate Oates and Emmerdale should be ashamed of themselves for how they have handled this. Kate Oates should never be allowed to go anywhere near a sexual abuse storyline ever again. She's shockingly clueless and insensitive.

It's actually embarrassing. Belinda sees the light because of the pure love and fat bulge of Mick Carter. And of course she's going to try to win him for herself, because now she sees what a true man is. It's misogynist as hell, even on a show full of sexist caricatures (Sharon being #1 at the moment). And it makes Belinda so ridiculous it's hard for me to even care about her now.

Two "new" September 1998 episodes of Emmerdale have been put on Youtube, meaning the entire week of episodes with the horse theft are now available. I'd never seen the two that show the theft/Kathy's hit and run, and the immediate aftermath, so this is a real treat. Claire King also gives a lovely performance in the second episode - her quiet dramatic work is one of the unsung reasons why Kim was such an enduring character. The second episode is also the debut of Tricia Stokes, brought in by new producer Kieran Roberts to liven up what he saw as a staid Woolpack. With Tricia and soon Bernice, the pub would never be the same again. These episodes also have a drunken karaoke brawl, and the conclusion of the Biff/Tara affair. A night of passion doesn't change the inevitable outcome, but does give one last reminder of the incredible chemistry Stuart Wade and Anna Brecon had (and some all too poorly lit glimpses of Stuart's chest). (these are only 24 minutes each - the second half of each is some type of duplicate)

The scenes with Diane today were nice in of themselves - the reminders of her early days in the village, her choosing to leave rather than be turfed out of the increasingly insular Dinglepack, starting her new home and life with Doug - but I’m not sure if any episode has better encapsulated just how much Kate Oates, and several Emmerdale producers before her, have made the Sugden family completely meaningless to the narrative and to each other. Robert was on - no mention of Diane. Gabby was on - no mention of her grandmother, instead just a casual sneering at “old people” and gloating from unpleasant Liv about how she’d taken that “old person’s” bedroom. No mention of Andy, Victoria, or Bernice, even though Bernice was the reason she came to the village, and worked at the pub, in the first place. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Diane had been all on her own all these years. It’s sad to me just how little any Sugden interaction matters to the show at this point. We got more scenes when Andy was porking Victoria’s best friend than we do now. How does that work? And I can’t really assume it will get any better, because they have been so systematically put into their own little groups. So we get Andy talking about the importance of an adopted family when it’s time to move Chrissie’s story along, but he doesn’t actually give a damn anymore about that family. We get Robert hovering around the Dingles, who will (for good reason of course) never accept him as one of their own. We get Diane with Pollard and Doug. And we get Victoria...offcamera. Jack - and Kevin Laffan - would just shake his head at it all.

Ah. That would be an interesting topic to explore - whether he couldn't face the outside world partly for that reason. Karl Howman's so underrated on the show. I just hope they don't write him off. For me it's characters like Buster or Lee who are much more suited to EE than the flashier Carters.