DRW50

I think it's supposed to show life and life going on, Peggy looking over the whole Square and seeing good and bad. It's a bit cheesy (especially the whole walking while everyone else is in fast motion - so 1998), but I liked it. I wouldn't be surprised. I hope it doesn't happen though.

The weirdest part was when they decided to try to fix it by having "Connor" cut Mark's hair. I was never that interested in Mark either way, but he actually looked good with longer hair. With short hair (especially such a severe cut) his face looked hard and a bit mean. The whole thing was like Bizarro-producing, from start to finish.

David has had so many hairstyles...

Even she didn't do it. She enabled him until he was held at gunpoint in her home. It's one of the reasons I don't like their relationship. He needs a brand new woman.

I always enjoy Ross' relationship with Finn, but the hypocrisy and whining from Ross is intolerable. I can't hear him pouting about Finn wanting to work with Pete after Pete beat him up and left him for dead without remembering how he hung Pete over an overpass and tried to make him commit suicide. This character desperately needs someone to call him out in order to keep him from ossifying even more into a woobied-fists-of-fury Aaron knockoff.

Yes, I for once did feel sorry for Chrissie, and I also felt sorry for Lawrence. It's odd that his reaction about Edna felt more authentic than people who knew her and were close to her for years, like Jimmy. I skipped a lot of the Liv stuff, but I did enjoy Robert scheming against Lawrence - you could see how much he was enjoying himself. I hope they don't go anywhere with Robert and Charity though. Tracy's hair is just shocking. I'm glad she got through to Jacob, but I still wish that had been Leyla.

I was reading an interview with Gerald from 1992 and he said he had asked Linda Gottlieb if he could come back on the show, and she'd said no. He said one of the reasons he took a short-term gig on Another World after that was because it was OLTL's timeslot competitor. It really confuses me as to why she wouldn't want him back, especially given all the capers and comedy with Cain and Tina and Alex and so on by this point. Maybe it's because he wasn't "her" character. I don't know.

Thanks.

Thanks. Why did Rolf kill himself? Illness? Is Deniz supposed to have some illness story too?

I couldn't help being distracted by Ronnie's frozen forehead and drawn on eyebrows today. (Andy also has drawn-on eyebrows). I have to admit I've always liked Ronnie more than the character ever really warranted, but she just feels spent. I hope Sean O'Connor comes up with a suitable exit story for her.

She was good. She had a very Eastenders style (she was always an odd fit on Corrie, Northern or not, although I liked her on there). I could have done without Stacey's involvement, but I felt like they did try to have some balance in the writing rather than making Alison a bigot. I'd rather see an array of teen stories like we see on Degrassi. I'd wanna see them involved in school plays, going out for extracurricular activities and competing against each other, one of them stressing over exams, one of them at crossroad as to what to do post college--stuff like that. Absolutely. They seem reluctant to have stories like that because they would be seen as "boring" so instead we just get the usual love triangles and insta-pairings that rarely work. I'd even take another "teens in the woords" week over that.

I think he was saying anything to try to keep Jay off the payroll because of the money demands from Babe. I'm not sure though. Shakil did have a lisp. And that manbun that made him look like he was from Freaks. I agree about the likely pregnancy - just ugh. It's a shame we have to assume this for soaps now.

The best part of the episodes for me was the Jay material. Realistic or not, I'm so pleased to see him with a new home and life - please tell me this will last. The social worker scenes made good use of Billy and Honey, and the Cokers, and Les' anger and harsh judgment felt less like forced conflict when we learned about the blackmail. This episode was one of the best uses of Pam that I can remember. They've often gotten this character wrong for me - it's unfortunate that such a strong episode comes at a time when there's a good chance the Cokers will be phased or written out. I hope this story leads to some type of exit for Babe - Annette Badland generally does a good job in the role, but it's far too much of a crutch for the show to use her as this all-knowing villain who will do terrible things to move the plot along. Glynis Barber seemed more low-key than in her last few returns (other than the dramatic coat removal). I'm just relieved Roxy wasn't pregnant. I also thought the guy who played Joel's brother was much better this time around. The only thing I kept thinking during these scenes (I'm not sure if this has ever been addressed) is would Ronnie really be that comfortable around Andy. You'd think he would, at the very least, give her some reminder of Carl White, enough to where she wouldn't trust him enough to take care of children. Bonnie Langford pretty much saved the material about Shakil wanting his parents back together, but the dialogue was AWFUL. "A leopard doesn't change his spots...nor does a cheater." "She has a tattoo on her back that says angel, but I think she's the devil." I didn't think the actor who plays Shakil was terrible, but he delivers every line like he's in pain. Just how tightly have they pulled that stupid bun on his head? I actually feel like they're doing a decent job with Sonia's cancer fears and Tina's attempts to support her while clearly being too immature to be there when it counts. I'd be lying if I said I cared about them as a couple, but it works for me. The fringes on the story, like the cheating, drag it down. Market stall stuff still feels out of place and badly dated to me. I should like the idea of a community focus but I just don't care. Does anyone else wonder if they're going to do the old cliche of Martin being arrested on his wedding day? I hated the scenes where everyone was laughing at Martin over being a model. HATED. Stacey is so openly contemptuous of Martin. She has no respect for him as a partner to humiliate him in front of everyone and allow her aunt (who was really annoying in this episode - it's DTC's Kat issues all over again) and all sorts of random people to mock him. Every time I try to accept them as a couple, something like this happens and I am reminded that she is just using him and feels he isn't good enough for her.

I can't help feeling for Piper in this, but I can understand the situation. I have to admit I really wanted to see Annie one last time, but clearly they have story reasons for her not to be there, and it's not a big deal. I didn't realize Anderson wasn't involved. I know he has some...issues.

I kind of loved when she said that, though... I think FMB, like so many others who came and went from various soaps in that period, had experience that could have benefited these shows, but wasn't empowered to effect lasting change. She had her strengths and weaknesses, like anyone else, but I'd have rather seen her (and her initial writing team's - Stephen Demorest and Addie Walsh were no slouches) actual vision for ATWT have played out for a reasonably measurable period of time than what followed. I agreed with her, but it was very...upfront to say to the press and public, especially given JFP's prickliness. I wasn't surprised that she rarely seem to have much say afterward. I don't know who to ever blame but I can't say her vision of ATWT did much for me, especially pre-Broderick. James gassing Oakdale, Margo having panic attacks, Emily cackling as she rode around with Diego's corpse. I felt embarrassed. She did get some things right, and it was many hands that broke ATWT and never bothered to fix it, so I am not dumping on her. I just wasn't that impressed. I think she needed strong hands on top, as she'd had at ABC, and there were none to be found.

But, yeah, even I only saw Rice-Taylor once or twice and then, when Batten came on, it was a true WTF moment. To be fair, soaps - especially in the past two decades or so - don't really offer the time or direction for even promising actors to play characters with completely different accents, etc. Batten did have her fans on OLTL, which I had not watched when she was on so I can't speak to. I was surprised, though, to read earlier in the thread that this was Behr's doing, personally. Were she and Batten really personal friends? To my knowledge, they'd never worked together previously, so I always assumed MADD made that happen. Even so, though, soaps with strong long-range stories have withstood ill-advised recasts. I still feel like this misstep was only emblematic of ATWT's larger problems. I don't think it was FMB personally, as in, "I want my friend to have a job." Batten's interviews at the time gave the impression (to me - and it's been 20 years and I don't really want to go look through my magazines on that mess if I even have any) that various ABC personnel who had moved over, like MADD, wanted to give her a job, because she wanted a job. And they gave her this job. There was no indication that they had any respect for Connor, or respect for viewers. It was basically giving a friend a job because hey she's that awesome and ATWT fans will be fine with it. That's the impression I got reading the interviews. There was a huge amount of arrogance, from the top down. Going away from MADD, I think FMB must have felt very protected in her many years with ABC because there was a tone-deafness to her that seemed to help lead to the end of her soap influence - that notorious Logan interview in 1999 or 2000 where she all but said the ABC soaps and especially OLTL sucked. The thing with Susan is she was a good actress. I didn't really know that at the time, as I had only a few memories of her as Luna, but I've watched more over the years, and I think she would have been perfectly fine as a new character, or, hell, even an Angel recast (and I loved Alice Haining's work as Angel so I don't say that lightly). But again it was the arrogance of the casting and the shocking wrongness of her in the role - with writing and direction that almost flaunted this wrongness - that guaranteed she would have no chance, even as other unpopular recasts at this time, like Winsor Harmon on B&B, settled in (admittedly, fans are more likely to forgive a man with killer abs and pecs and a sweet smile than they are a woman). There was absolutely no effort made to disguise the idea that these people were saviors brought in to clean out the dregs. But they weren't. I think MADD must have had memories of Linda Gottlieb's OLTL, where there was a lot of high-handedness in interviews and producing style that was mocked by certain quarters, but which paid off in ratings and quality. But ATWT was not OLTL, FMB (who, IMO, was an uneven producer at AMC) was not Linda Gottlieb, and P&G fans were not ABC fans. This is what no one at CBS or P&G ever understood for those last 14-15 years, or even further back, if you think that the mass firings of vets in the late '70s and early '80s were attempts to ABC the shows. ATWT, GL and AW were not ABC shows. They never were. They never would be. In many ways, OLTL and ATWT did have some weird kindred spirit for me, but not in the way that meant hiring Luna Moody and putting her in a power suit to dust blinds.

Thank you for the transcript. I actually remember this interview - I remember being annoyed because she had no idea who Julie was, as I loved Julie. Julie wasn't a major character, but she had been a part of stories up to fall 1995, so the complete lack of awareness of who she was baffled me. And then I realized why they'd allowed writing that had Holden just casually dump Aaron off on Caleb and Julie, when Julie was...not a good mother, and had never had any strong interest in being Aaron's mother. I guess at least they brought her back briefly later that year, which no future producers ever bothered to do. Those repeated jabs at Victoria Wyndham help explain why she absolutely tore into him in an interview later that year - one of my favorite soap interviews of all time.

BE I was wondering how much of this you agree with? http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/03/british-soap-awards-2016-10-reasons-why-hollyoaks-should-be-the-big-winners-5857040/ Did you have any thoughts on my post about the James and Harry and Ste stuff?

Chuck Todd is a useless Beltway hack, a classic example of failing upwards. He will blow Trump onair if he gets the chance. I'm starting to get to a point where I can't actually believe that this campaign is real. The above gif did it. Anyway, I had to quote this:

I can't help wondering if it was Brandi's return that made LVP let loose the way she has the last few weeks, in regards to her criticism and views on the show.

They always seem to sideline Priya. I still don't even believe they planned to have her actually marry Rakesh - I think the original plan was an affair with Chrissie. And now she and Leyla have less to do in this story because of Tracy being so involved. I like Tracy but she should have a lesser role. I'm not sure if I trust the show to handle Edna's passing, but Katherine Dow Blyton and John Middleton were so good today. I hope they realize what a gift they have in Blyton. I hope we're going to get to see more of the community reaction. That part of the show isn't around as much now.

Cruz's father is a nasty bigot so I have no tears to cry.

Oh God: Sorry - I missed Vee's post. And of course we can't delete videos on the lovely new SON...

The scenes with Masood were absurd and embarrassing. Why did he need to be robbed? Wasn't the whole point of him staying in Walford was to realize he could still have a happy life without his family? It felt so cheap. It felt like he was being punished. And having Denise and Carmel basically belittling him for wanting the date made it worse. Way too much time spent on Tina and Sonia. I don't mind Sonia these days, but I don't care about her relationship with Tina. That Mick had to be her marriage counselor was just plain embarrassing, and I wish Sonia had told him to get the hell out of her house. And Sophie was just awful - psycho, deluded, and annoying. Clearly she and her mother go to the same bad acting school. I actually liked the scenes with Paul and Ben, but it was impossible to not see a cloud due to knowing Paul will be gone soon. And yet another episode with no mention of Jay. That makes zero sense. Awful continuity. Embarrassing. I have some sympathy for Kyle, as he has had no control over when people will be told, but the actor isn't the strongest. Stacey certainly seems very cozy with Andy. I imagine every instinct in DTC is itching for her to cheat.