titan1978

It was especially egregious how often it was incorporated into the supercouple formula on DAYS. Y&R had supercouples too, but they were more organic and not within that formula. I think DAYS missed an incredible opportunity not having a take back the night story with all those women banded together to take one of Salem’s rapists down. Even Hope was retroactively SA by the Gina storyline, and I think until then she had been spared what Marlena, Kimberly, Kayla, Jennifer, Sami, and I’m sure others had endured from that era. Although I don’t know everything about the Larry Welch storyline so maybe Hope had been before Gina too.

I think they decided they had gold just laying there with Willow/Michael/Drew and decided they wanted to go full steam ahead and not wait him out. Rory’s Michael hit the ground running, and Chad had been very ineffective as a young lead for years IMO. I know Chad would not have been able to add the same kind of intensity to those confrontation scenes with Willow last week. Or come across in scenes with Tracy where it feels like Michael is a decision maker in the family, not just someone stuff happens to. And I liked CD’s version for a long time.

I agree with Chase/Willow. The main reason I want this story is because he is often so strident about being right that I want him to have the affair and then learn all of what Willow has been up to and see him really have a breakdown about how wrong he has been the whole time. This guy is ripe for a rock bottom fall apart.

He was very private after he left GH, but he has admitted later that he was abusing substances, especially alcohol, to get through that part of his life. It’s not that he hated success, but he also had demons that came out the more he was less able to hide in a character. Now I agree his acting became hammy and self indulgent at times, especially the later years. I think he always did his best work with a grounded performer. Genie and JJ were similar as far as acting partners for him. Put him with Jane or Kin though and his instincts were to go big honey! IIRC Nancy and Ingo outright said in an interview that someone higher up did not want them paired together. There was a little of that when Alexis and Sonny slept together too, a not so subtle dig at NLG not being sexy enough for those men. That whole period of GH was a mess. PC got several actors that would have been fantastic on GH at the time. Riche splitting her focus was bad for both shows. And she and Guza were not gelling like they had during his first run in 1996, their conflict was beginning to show onscreen. Plus the show was not set up well due to all that turmoil to then lose Kanan’s AJ, Brenda, Robin, and Lucky all within like two years of each other. And Genie was out for like a year and half on maternity leave, which stalled out the Cassadine story. That’s a lot to not be working in two years. Riche’s run never recovered from that period of time.

Really sad news to see. I haven’t read her book but I heard many of the stories she talked about. Heartbreaking.

It’s part of why I am only watching some of these episodes. That was the best Gina scene for me too, Hope in the snow transforming. I hate this story. Hated it back then, hate it now. And it’s not even close to the worst period of the story yet.

It did happen though. It’s part of why he relocated from Chicago to California. Watching the shows as they aired and things had been changed, dialogue dropped, scenes reworked beyond what he wanted. It’s part of why he and Conboy fell out and there was sometimes friction with Wes Kenney about that too if I remember some old interviews correctly. Launching B&B was a huge reason for his move, but so was ensuring his vision was fully executed. But then again, he had zero issue with Victoria Rowell and Shemar Moore taking the scripts and making the language feel more natural for their characters. I really dislike Marj as Alexandra, and Stafford is one of those performers I could use a decades long break from. But I will give them both some credit here. I wonder if Stafford added all that to her performances over time because the writing got worse? One thing you could count on in the Bell/Alden days, even with Jack Smith’s more plot driven writing, was character work and motivations clearly set over time. After them though, what we often got is writing with a character like Sheila or Phyllis is they are capable of anything, so just have them do whatever. With Marj it was clearly an encouraged JFP thing. She tried to amp GL up as time went on and the show began to collapse under her decisions. Look at that scene with the confrontation with Roger at Mindy and Nick’s party. It’s an over the top mess. At AMC she didn’t go full camp until we got closer to the Proteus reveal. And AMC was already more forgiving of a mature actor leaning into camp- Phoebe Tyler comes to mind. So does Erica. I think the pace, lack of rehearsals, and time constraints really do impact a lot of these folks who could do better work. They have to come to the stage ready to not mess up and have already made decisions on their own performances and choices. The good ones still try to be in the moment as well, but even they have to make a choice that had they done three takes and had time to see it/think about it and go again would probably change. But with Stafford it’s gone so far that I can only see resting the character. There are many instances of actors trying to get a scene or scene partner back on track during live and live to tape! It must have been very nerve-racking to work that way. In defense of Tony Geary, I think it was the deep well of emotion he brought to Luke and the complexity of anti-hero writing that made the panties drop. It was a reaction against the standard male character of the times, paternalistic, stoic, and serious. Luke was funny, dangerous, full of passion and unique. When he said he loved Laura, you could see it in his whole body. His eyes carried a lot of emotion. Back then this was kind of new type of leading man, especially on soaps.

Steve Burton used to outright say in interviews that Jason just wouldn’t be interested in someone like Carly romantically lol. I really wish I had saved all those soap mags I used to buy! I used to love Robin Strasser’s almost pretentious pronunciations of Carlotta and La Boulaie as Dorian Lord. And she loved a good hat! I know a lot of that came from her. As the years went on Slezak also kind of adopted a mid Atlantic thing for Victoria Lord, especially if she was an alter pretending to be Viki. All those A t’alhs had to be improvised. And Andrea Evans playing everything in a kind of breathless and haughty style really helped make Tina and her the huge stars they were on OLTL. Those ladies made a lot work because they knew how to play it.

GH actors, especially any who were there under Gloria Monty, did it all the time. It was even part of KM’s screen test for Robin, and she was so good at it as a kid it got her the job. It’s part of what gave the show the kind of looser quality it had in the 80’s. But they had more time to rehearse and they still did more takes if needed. Once that went away you could really see some of those folks struggling to keep it going. Sometimes I would see Luke or Lucinda (both of whom I singled out because they were still doing it all the time in the later era)and their costars trying to get back on track was reminiscent of Dorothy Michaels derailing scenes in Tootsie (Dustin Hoffman did spend time backstage at GH when crafting the film).

One I cannot stand was watching Tony Geary and also Elizabeth Hubbard trying to ad-lib when they didn’t have it and were practically stumbling around to find what to say. It came across as self indulgent and you could sometimes see it in their scene partner’s faces. In the days of multiple takes it was not as noticeable and often made for playful scenes. But when the time constraints became more prominent so did their inability to do it smoothly quite often.

@Taoboi that is what I prefer about Drew. Classic GH would have someone like Scotty or Lucy, even going up a level with Tracy and Alan at his worst trying to kill people. Always there to keep things cooking. But they would also give you the likes of a Mr. Big, Olivia Jerome, Ryan Chamberlain or Faison to be truly dastardly and eventually flame out. My template for Drew would be Roger Thorpe in the 90’s. He was never redeemed, but he didn’t really do the supervillain type stuff anymore. They let him have complicated relationships with Blake, Holly, Maureen, and Alexandra. And those relationships at time compromised those women too (Maureen not as much, but they killed her off before something could really develop, and I hated that they paired him up with Holly again after their past). But he was operating from a deep need that could never be satiated. Drew has that foundation with the loss of his son, every romantic relationship, his own history, and his outsider status with the Quartermaines. CM is no Zaslow, but for today’s soap writing they have the character already built. He just needs to have a couple of places where he is less villainous, like Roger with Blake and still being in love with Holly despite what he did to her. The part Maureen was willing to give a chance to. BTW, one thing I love about that era of GL is they let Roger have layers, but they also didn’t make it seem like Ed, Holly, or Alexandra were wrong just to prop him, like GH did with Sonny for example. They never tried to make Roger an anti-hero, he always kept a dastardly side.

Me too.

Another sign that the transition to one streaming service for Disney and Hulu is near. I can’t remember when Hulu is supposed to end, but it’s not too far away!

It is clear and I hate everything about it!

In another era of soaps Rory’s Michael would have had an entire section of the show built around him already by now. He is genuinely one of the best hires on GH during Valentini’s tenure. I have no idea why Y&R couldn’t figure out what to do with him, or why GH won’t just go all in here.