titan1978

Speaking of Ron Carlivati nonsense, Frank Smith still being alive only to be killed again after like a four week story was just plain stupid. Tony Geary said something along the lines of Frank was old in the 70’s when talking about how ridiculous it was. And I know it was a recast, but still a bust as a return. I feel like the Labine era Frank was better than the original, Commandant Lassard from Police Academy. Andrea Evans had to be the most requested and looked forward to return from ABC. And it was very hit and miss. Although her last return was better. Carlo Hesser also came back to diminished returns. I think had Andrea been there during the first Malone era, she would have had stronger writing and investment, which would have made Tina more vital than what Krista did. But maybe not, because Witter was an excellent Tina and they kind of squandered her. So many villain returns just don’t hold up. After the peak of Hello Barbara, James Stenbeck becomes a cartoon. And while watching Carlo Hesser lust after captive Christian Vega was perverse fun, it never really goes anywhere, and he really got cartoony. Olivia Jerome was originally calculating and psychotic, so she could be unpredictable, but she had so much intensity. Her return was not thrilling. Faison used to be quite scary, and while I didn’t hate the Faison in a Duke mask reveal because of Finola selling her repulsion so well, that should have been it for him. Because he became eccentric and silly. I will give DAYS credit for Stefano though. His return in the early 90’s really drove a lot of story, cemented Peter, Kristin, Celeste and Lexie with great stuff to do. And while he went campy with the underground city and beyond, they wisely walked him back from the camp ledge in the 2000’s. One of the things Tomlin did well was establish another family around him and gave him back a more grounded persona.

It was a little fuzzy when she left- was she let go or did she choose to not renew her contract, or wanted out?

As time has passed and we have more accounts of bts stuff, I have a much more nuanced take on this than I used to. I think he influenced pairings Jason was in. I know he fought against taking his shirt off anymore. We know he didn’t want to return to the mostly nothing role Jason Quartermaine was, and was plenty vocal about it. But he clearly loved Stuart and Leslie, and always talks highly of John Ingle. I don’t think he is the reason why the Quartermaine family was decimated. Was Guza and that writing team (who was still mostly intact when he was gone at the end of Riche and beginning of JFP) propping Jason as the most noble Quartermaine/hitman for over a decade? Yes. There are times when everyone acts like it is saint Jason who would never betray anyone he was loyal to starting all the way back to Guza’s 1998 return. But we also now know Guza didn’t want to kill Alan off. I think they suffered from the mindset of the soap executives of the time, especially at ABC. Get rid of expensive older people, focus on tough, morally complex male leads, and make the women always at each other’s throats and sexy. And everything was permeated with a feeling of this is all going to end in a few years, so wiping out legacy characters the audience loved or could build the future around didn’t really matter anymore, and because of that short term gains were valued over longevity.

Jason was never really my problem when Sonny/Carly/Jason dominated the show. When the show paired him with Sam, KM’s choices in acting and Steve’s Jason growing increasingly more stoic did not work for me. It’s why Burton was great in scenes with Brenda, Sarah’s Carly, Spinelli, Maxie, etc, because the Stone Cold nickname works there. Even Guza was starting to show how much total loyalty to Sonny had cost everybody in his circle when Michael killed Claudia and went to jail for it. In the past, they would have written Dante as the heavy against the family. And while there were scenes of that, Dante was Guza’s new favorite, so the criticism of Sonny actually landed and Dante wasn’t vilified. Burton did himself no favors by being clearly checked out at times. But I don’t recall him ever phoning it in when the scenes called for emotion. Jason more in the Q orbit has been good for the character.

My hometown has the same, a town police chief and police force, and the county Sheriffs. They overlap on some things.

It reminded me of when I used to love Jason, he didn’t used to be emotionless all the time. But I am sure it was difficult in a real way and would be hard to play Stone Cold with this passing. It’s going to be a rough few days to watch.

I think it was a stylistic choice to put them as kind of bookends. Edward with his hands on Sonny’s shoulders doesn’t make any in-character sense. At the time they were firmly back in full Luke and Laura mode, reunited and against a common enemy with Damian Smith. Just in time for a few months later for Nikolas to arrive and blow it all up again. Well structured when you think about it, reminding the audience of them as a team just before fracturing it pretty much forever. Love that OLTL cover too. I really was into Jake and Megan as a couple.

How awful!

Another one of my favorites, though not from AMC. I also love these kinds of stories on soaps!

Enlighten me? Was it something to do with James Kiberd?

I don’t know. Guza would absolutely kill that baby. Especially back then, I remember feeling in that return that they really wanted us to believe Sonny/Brenda still had a connection, but Carly was who Sonny was obsessed with. It felt kind of heavy handed to me at times, but the writing team was so in love with Carly by then.

It’s also their ages. I don’t think Jason bickering with Brenda would be as fun now either. It’s kind of how I feel watching Y&R with Nick and Sharon. They refuse to grow them up and it isn’t fun to watch. For me at least. But I would love to see a new dynamic with Brenda and Jason if she ever does come back! One of the great all time what ifs though. They had real sparks in that first return, and I think she would have played out what became Sam/Jason really well.

That was when I first realized there was never going to be a payoff to the return of the Cassadines. Because all Guza wanted to do was keep them on the show and keep the wheels spinning. Once Luke and Laura had Lucky back there was no good reason why they didn’t destroy Helena and Stefan. Laura slapping him was pretty epic, and it broke them up for good, but that was all really. It would have made more sense for me at the time for Faison to be obsessed with Robin because of Anna, and Laura because of holding her son. He did have history with Felicia, but not like that. And forgetting that entire period with Luke and Felicia is one of the best examples of utilizing selective amnesia.

I saw it differently at the time. What I saw was Britt had finally lowered the walls, and felt like a man was actually there for her enough to share her deepest fears, and didn’t have the history to know that until recently it was still Carly first for Jason. She’s not Liz or Sam, she wasn’t there for the actual Carly/Jason days. She didn’t fight because she didn’t think she would win, and it’s better to run away than deal with vulnerability. I just wish KT had the chops to play that out to its conclusion now.

Saw this photo posted recently on another site. And I know Kate Collins left and wasn’t fired. But seeing her as Natalie and OG Janet in the photo really reminded me how much the show lost when she left. I didn’t even see most of her run at the time, but she was just such a fantastic actor with a great, layered character.

And the writers are not doing Britt or KT and favors. Instead on the glimmer of vulnerability and professionalism they worked really hard to instill in her the last year she was on the show, she is coming across as a huge brat. Sarcastic/jaded characteristics on soaps usually have stronger actors to play them. KT is no 1990’s Roger Howarth. It doesn’t help that the Rocco story with Britt is very offensive. A surrogate, even one with stolen material is not his mother. I actually feel bad for the actor playing Rocco because they are wasting him too with this trash.

I hope they do not intend to keep Jacinda and actually try to pair her with hot Michael. She was perfectly fine for the Drew bodyshots moment, and as a light blackmail schemer with Portia and Nina. But let’s not waste Michael on her please (never thought I would say that about Michael!). Or time we could invest in a better match. I see online chatter on other sites where people are already shipping them, and seem to live for her. And after being perplexed, I did think about it and I have a theory. I think the characters on GH have been so genial and bland for a long time. Even the vets. It’s not often that anyone has scripting that lets them stand out, or for the vets has any specificity of their character in the words. I think that’s why people seem to like Britt, Obrect, and now Jacinda. They write them with snark or kooky (or both), and apparently lots of people want them to stay because of it. How about we also write the layers back into the characters already there? Mulcahey did it with Maxie. Went from somewhat snarky but mostly bland heroine back to her old quick witted self. Gave Nina a personality other than pathetic.

And yet, I also applaud the energy. Because it was really stale on GH for a long time. And the show has energy again, even if it is wobbly AF. I have said this several times but Patrick Mulcahey in such a short period of time made Nina a real character for me, and her scenes with Willow were really great. Willow also was placed into a trajectory that led us here, and she has finally become entertaining to watch. I think Nina is better written and used than Carly has been in a year or longer. And it shocks me because I wanted them both gone for years. The problem with the show is the same thing that has been there for years. They just keep the train running, and nobody has time or the power to say we need to slow down and check in with characters like Olivia and Ned, because this stuff matters to the overall Gio story and would make it feel less like it was dropped. Dante questioning Drew should have involved at least a few lines about Scout, and what this is doing to Sam’s family. The details matter! And while Joss in the WSB does not bother me, they have spent way more time with her as usual than with Trina, Gio, and Emma, who all deserve better. They spent the time to get Gio into a better performer, it paid off, use them better! Emma turned out to be a good hire as well!

Always thankful for the ratings information and analysis. But increasingly I do not understand why Nielsen is still the primary source for these shows. Or any shows. It’s such a small sample and such an outdated model. The only reason I can reconcile a more modern system is obviously streamers don’t always share their information (although clear reporting of those numbers was part of the SAG/AFTRA strike), and possibly the companies don’t want to pay out more money to the people/talent making the shows due to higher viewer counts. But wouldn’t the revenue be higher too with more accurate ratings information to use for advertising? I haven’t watched linear television in over a decade, and GH has really made an impact on the Hulu counts this year. It used to be routinely no higher than 8, and now even when Alien:Earth and other big releases are in the top 3, GH during the week is still quite often in the top 5, if not the top 3.

On the topic of Bill Bell repeating stories, I think he ultimately benefitted greatly from the lack of access to his earlier work. Victor and Hope on the farm has echos of Mickey/Maggie. The multiple sibling romantic rivalries. He even did the cut up photo as blackmail twice on Y&R in less than 10 years. @vetsoapfanwe have discussed your disliking of Reilly at DAYS a few pages back. It also left a bad taste in my mouth back then once Marlena was floating around, and I quit watching it for years, never was a true habit again. I also didn’t enjoy Passions, that kind of camp without any true wit or intelligence was lost on me. But during COVID I had access to the earlier part of the run, and I was surprised that I enjoyed a lot of it when I had maligned him for years. My question is did any of it work for you? The John/Marlena affair, and I thought the backstory for Billie and Austin with Kate and Curtis Reed was very compelling, as was Sami’s slow descent into villainy with her attachment to Roman and psychological damage from witnessing the affair and everything that came after. They lost me with Sami around the time she faked sex with Austin. Deborah Adair was the Kate for me, classy with an attitude when needed, more vulnerable. The lighting team and styling people also really knew how to show off Eileen Davidson, I don’t think she ever looked as beautiful as she did during her first couple of years at DAYS. Also- feel free to rip anything above to shreds. I ask purely for discussion, I have no real attachment to James Reilly or his work. Maybe on Guiding Light as a part of that team. Now if you were to direct vitriol towards Claire Labine’s General Hospital, well as they used to say them’s fighting words.

I think when discussing the supercouple era it does revolve around the types of stories that involved capers or were thrillers at heart. Lots of supercouples existed before the formula. But Pat Falken Smith and the writers under her at GH from 1979-1981, including Sheri Anderson, developed the prototype with Monty for the Luke and Laura on the run story. Then came the spies. And Sheri Anderson took that and “perfected” it at DAYS. There it became almost a grinder for every couple to be put through, and was less and less successful as the 80’s became the 90’s. Even shows that were better structured overall fell into the habit at times during the 80’s.

She has always been this way. Everything is Carly’s business, especially if it pertains to Jason. If you think this is bad, you should have seen her when Sam was pissed and told her Jason was the father of Elizabeth’s baby.

Frank still sometimes operates under the ABC mandates of the 2000’s, where they bring in anyone not famous for a soap and consider it good publicity for new viewers. As if that man is bringing anyone to watch him along for the ride. Brian Frons would be proud of this legacy.

They having been laying it on thick with Obrect since she came back. A tour around PC, being picked on by mean old Lulu and Dante, bonding with Anna and Rocco, crying about her Britta. It has been ridiculous. She and Britt are not misunderstood victims of circumstance. Sometimes people are actually abrasive in the real world, and it’s not covering up a soft, gooey center. And Obrect loves Caesar Faison, and was part of many villainous schemes. The show still has a bias problem. The only good that came out of the last couple of years was that a couple of Frank’s pets got forced out. We run the risk of all the good work they have done in the last six months being quickly unraveled to prop up another pair of people Frank just wants to work with. Also- KT asked to be killed off because she was no longer going to be paired with the lead male of the show (at the time) because Burton wouldn’t abide by the corporate vaccine mandate. She wanted to die in a major way so that she wouldn’t be able to just come back. She publicly asked for her job back a year ago and said they turned her down. Now they let her return. And Vanessa Marcil, one of the few actual daytime stars left with audience pull and a fan favorite on GH has never returned under Valentini except as a glorified guest? Make it make sense to me.

Plus it would have given the suspects more time to mess up their alibis and look suspicious in general. I did like Portia handling the body shot woman with tact and not hand wringing the whole time. If they let her lean into her edge instead of always falling apart and seeming to make choices in a panic, I would enjoy it more. Let her feel some control and power without feeling bad about it. That would lead to natural conflict with Trina when she finds out her mother isn’t always acting for other people, she’s equally capable of being selfish and tired of being under anyone’s thumb. We have a good thing with Drew. I think what I also want is someone to do Marland era Barbara Ryan. Sick of being a victim and fundamentally privileged and a little spoiled, and she goes full bitch to get what she wants. It doesn’t have to be a man either! Sasha would have worked well here.