titan1978

1 hour ago, carolineg said:

I like the idea of Chase/Brook Lynn much more than the actual execution of the couple.  They are just boring.

As far as Mo goes, it's hard to say.  He never had an issue with his lines in the 90's and had more complex dialogue.  It's possible medication, age, memory, shorter production time, whatever,  has contributed to his inability to remember his lines.  At the same time it's his job, so if MB has to make adjustments to be able to memorize dialogue he needs to do that.  If it was a new problem for MB I might be concerned, but he's had trouble with his dialogue for about 2 decades now.

And those Labine era scripts were very dialogue heavy, with long scenes. Guza’s teams were as well, but he structured the show differently so they were not quite as verbose. Those Labine era scenes really proved how talented the GH cast at that time was- it was a lot of meticulous dialogue. Filmed under better conditions than now though.

I am not out here trying to bash Maurice. But he has bitched about the show for a decade. And he hates it when he doesn’t have a story or isn’t being used constantly, so it’s not like he would enjoy having a schedule like Tony did. He’s been very open about how the COVID shutdown lead to a breakdown for him, and missing the show was a huge part of that. So if everyone else is upping their game then he needs to dig deep too.

59 minutes ago, dragonflies said:

Shannon Peace out there dragging the show for the lack of screen time for the black actor's. 

Good for her!

She has a point. We should be seeing Trina, even if It is grieving for Spencer. We spent months of Robin going to that bridge to remember Stone.

Stella, Trina and Portia are great. Jordan was not a good recast, at least for how they have written for her. DT plays Curtis like he would rather be anywhere than in every story he has had for a couple years. But there are plenty of other duds that have been seen.

We need more of Portia being as strong as she has been at the hospital, more time between her and her daughter. Stella has been utilized well at the hospital too.

Also- if the show wants me to care about Molly and JT’s surrogacy storyline, we should see them way more than we are.

20 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

If an actor should leave it's MB. 

He was atrocious today. Does he think stuttering and yelling all his lines as acting?

Even Steve Burton was better than him today.

He has been terrible for a long time. If I was a younger actor watching him, and he tried that mentoring crap he always does on me I would decline. Intensity is not great acting. He used to be pretty good, and his disdain for not being celebrated outside daytime really shows onscreen.

At his hammy worst, I would take Tony Geary over Maurice any day now, and I was sick of him when he left. But at least he had a sense of fun and scene partners that loved working with him because it was fun to do so. Maurice strikes me as someone that offers acting advice while he himself is tanking the scene with terrible acting.

I love Maura West. The problem is that she is playing a character that should not still be here, simply because it’s Maura playing Ava. Would I get rid of handful of characters before I even looked in her direction? Yes. But at the same time she is no better than Sonny as far as people who have not paid for their crimes.

I wish for Nina to lose it and leave in a blaze of glory before Ava though.

2 hours ago, BoldRestless said:

I actually think yesterday was the worst Carly propping I've ever seen in my life.

It was Courtney adjacent for sure! 

They had their chance for me with Ava and Nikolas as a new version of Alan and Monica. Only Ava was the more violent partner this time, like Alan. I could have seen her last way longer in that dynamic without taking away her edge.

Watch some classic pre-90’s Alan and Monica. There is danger, passion, violence, comedy, romance, challenging each other, loyalty and betrayals. And they are both smart, dedicated professionals who have a terrible marriage and cannot quit each other.

I laughed out loud a couple of times during today’s show. Only they both felt like I was laughing with the show, and not at the show.

Those buttons! Maybe if Drew wore a shirt in his size it wouldn’t just fly apart when barely tugged. CM looks incredible, and he plays this kind of material so much better than knight in shining armor. That leather skirt Nina is wearing is not going to be easy for a down and dirty office desk quickie.

“What’s up Sonny!” Oh Jason got jokes now.

Maura West is still amazing, but some of those I am thinking hard and not speaking closeups were giving me Kristen Wigg’s surprise lady from SNL. She looked like she was about to blurt out about his meds.

I saw all the complaints about Drew/Nina, and in general the show itself. And I think if the show/ABC had been using Twitter as a focus group, no wonder we have been stuck in blandsville, USA for years.

Finishing up the week watching Friday’s show, and I had to laugh that Sam and Dante are essentially wearing the same clothes and colors while sitting on a couch that is also blue. I’m not saying it’s that big of a deal, but what other show would not make a simple change here?

I loved the scenes of Portia going off at the hospital about Heather. Soaps used to be all about the community reaction to the actions of the characters. And her point of view makes total sense to me.

I also like Joss and Kristina’s natural animosity. The show was very lacking in essentially good people having true differences. I even liked Joss handing Dex a burned grilled cheese. It’s exactly what she would do. Everything isn’t so generic anymore!

2 minutes ago, Khan said:

I agree as well.  But the problem is, where's the drama in Kristina having the baby and then just handing it over to T.J. and Molly?  That's why I, too, wish this surrogacy storyline would end, because I can see only one outcome for it, and that outcome is cheap, tacky and not at all realistic.

The only other dramatic option I see would be if there is a medical crisis, the baby ends up fine but Kristina can no longer have children. Couple that with postpartum depression, and maybe some fixation on the baby and it leading to her life coming unglued again. within that fixation, Molly decides her family needs a fresh start and they leave town.

It doesn’t have to lead to Kristina trying to keep the baby or taking it, there are plenty of other directions to fall down- trouble with the law, alcoholism, family strife, etc.

14 hours ago, Taoboi said:

Exactly! If a new writing team can make you actually come around or at least feel something for a couple (or some characters) that you feel nothing/indifferent about, I always find that to be progress toward a new writing team or good writing IMHO. 

I haven’t watched entire episodes of GH daily in almost a decade. I’ve been a daily viewer again for over a month. There is a lot of cleaning up needed on the show, and hopefully they have the courage to cut some losses sooner rather than later.

Any writing team that makes me care about a barely established (even though it’s been years), thrown together couple like Sam and Dante is doing something right. And credit to Dom and KM, they are both killing it.

If I started watching with Jason’s return, I would think Sam, Dante, and their family were major characters on the show, and truthfully they haven’t been treated that way in years.

Cody can do every scene without his shirt on all summer. Please. They cannot possibly be hinting at Tracy taking this stud out for a ride can they? 

1 minute ago, j swift said:

I despise when soaps push the common misconception (pardon the pun) that gestational surrogates all want to keep the baby.  In fact, that occurs far less frequently than portrayed.   It is a terrible myth that causes families to overpay for other forms of treatment like IVF which is 98% less likely to succeed.  Much like how soaps have adults abandon their adoptive parents once they connect with their birth parents, it is a gross idea about the supremacy of self-gestation that should not be promoted in order to sell diapers on daytime TV.

Now, can someone help me down off of the soapbox

I agree. It’s lazy conflict. 

16 hours ago, Vee said:

This may be of interest to @titan1978 - I remember he and I have talked a number of times about the trend towards a rift between the mob husbands and the downgrading of Sonny in the late Guza years. 

Carly and Sonny have been at odds for so long, and his relationship with Nina was isolating, revisiting these themes is organic even though Jason has barely returned.

Here is my problem with Kristina’s love life. It reeks of what the prior writing regimes under Frank have been doing (except RC). If this was intended to be a major story and couple the build up would have not been basically filler material. I feel the same way about Dante and Sam, Robert/Diane, Terry/Yuri, even Cody/Sasha. It’s just people together because they were there, not because there was an actual intent or they were given any actual story. It’s why we also have Laura/Kevin.

Kristina and Molly should have been in younger lead stories for years, not hit and miss and used just to have something for Sonny and Alexis to do (Dawn of Day).

Mansi should be mixing it up and in major story. Instead she’s in a surrogacy story that should have been dropped for many reasons, and a relationship with nowhere near enough fire in it. And I don’t dislike Blaze, I just question the investment.

1 hour ago, BetterForgotten said:

You know, I never cared for Sam and Dante and always felt like they were thrown together because they had no idea what to do with either character. That and Kelly Monaco appeared to be in an acting coma for like a decade.

However, the more thoughtful day to day writing has made care and accept them. I can now totally buy them as couple and that they love each other. I also think their blended family with Rocco, Danny, and Scout is adorable, and those blended family scenes on Friday had a lot of heart.

I have never cared about Sam. And I agree they just put them together because they needed something for both of them. And PM and Korte have made the pairing work and family too!

OLTL lost the Wolek’s, but the Lord family stayed important all the way to the end. They started as the two core families though.

AMC- was anybody left from Phoebe’s family at the end of the ABC run? I know Brooke was in the PP revival, but hadn’t she left the main show?

56 minutes ago, Khan said:

It's always incredible to me how he can dig into characters and find some truths in them that make them relatable.  Characters aren't just spouting exposition; they're actually revealing something about themselves, which is how good storytelling should be.

Especially on GH right now. I have been watching stuff I would normally FF, and characters that I have zero interest in. They could still go, but while they are here at least they are becoming actual characters.

19 minutes ago, Khan said:

Really?  I mean, he's alright, but...he's no Philip Brown.   

I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. Or Robert Tyler. Come on gentlemen and break up Laura and Kevin.

7 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

I find it amusing that they're giving Chase upcoming marriage to Brook Lynn airtime. I mean if I were marrying Chase....I wouldn't give to shits where I'd marry him. I'd be more interested in the honeymoon.

On the one hand, I agree. On the other, the show has ignored details for so long it is kind of refreshing to watch every single beat be played, like the old days.

15 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

I don't need anyone to follow these rules to make a good show, and Marland often didn't follow them himself. They're good guide posts, but not necessarily a mandate for a strong show. 

I think those rules are great, but he absolutely didn’t follow them himself.
 

The only rule I truly need in 2024 is do not flood the show with new people right off the bat.

We already knew the change was abrupt, because they had to rework the original Jason returns plan. I would imagine they are looking for things to spark, and hopefully building and setting stuff up that we are not seeing fully yet.

We have heard zero indication that Korte and Mulcahey arrived with a bible ready to go. Much like when SSM was recruited back to Y&R, she didn’t walk in the door with stories. Her problem was she focused so much on character and never found a groove with stories to propel her forward. I am holding out hope that we won’t see what their real show is until May sweeps and the summer. Hopefully we start seeing some actual stories moving besides Jason, including some exits.

Plus Mulcahey has no problem being interviewed and there has been nothing so far. They seem to be cleaning up the writing, and tightening up the characters, and letting the Jason story drive momentum while they test out the cast.

6 hours ago, Vee said:

Yeah, that's what I thought, hence my mentioning pre-Monty. I was under the impression he came in with a big broom which also included adding Leslie Charleson from his LIAMST vs. Patsy Rahn.

She arrived and he left shortly after. And the cast liked Patsy Rahn, so it took time for them to accept LC. Which is crappy behavior- she didn’t fire her.

From everything I have read Donovan was liked by many people in the cast, and had modernized the cameras and sound equipment, which Denise Alexander said was from the dark ages before he got there, and DAYS had very modern everything (for the time).

I have only seen a handful of scenes with Valerie Starrett’s Diana and she seems fine, I never felt really drawn to her like I always am to Audrey, Leslie, and Jesse. Meg Baldwin draws me in too. But I haven’t gotten to see anything that really focuses on her Diana. I just like Brooke Bundy, and my first time seeing her was also in The Dream Warriors.

1 hour ago, Vee said:

It's exactly what Jason would do, tbh.

Stuff like this is exactly why the show still needed AJ. We need someone to be in Jason’s face about Michael and his hypocrisy at shunning the Q’s and then totally ignoring his own children. He’s actually a worse parent than AJ would have been when you count the abandonment, shootings, kidnapping, constant threats. Jason Morgan left because he wanted to be free to choose his own path. Are Sonny, Carly and Jason’s kids free? 

19 minutes ago, Vee said:

Bobbie is absolutely vicious to Laura in '78 especially. Gives Carly a run for her money.

It's the Heather/Taylors story that got me hooked awhile ago. Mary O'Brien is underrated.

It’s a great cat and mouse game. And I actually like Brooke Bundy as Diana. I know she was not really a popular recast. I like Peter too, one of a few legacy actors left before he is killed off. I remember being so excited when I finally got to watch the entire LSD episode on YouTube.

I fell into a rabbit hole and watched a bunch of stuff from 1979. Makes total sense  how the ratings soared that year. There isn’t a weak link (aside from Anne Logan) or a boring storyline (even overbearing Jeff Webber is watchable).

It is always so interesting for me to watch Scotty, Laura and Bobbie. Bobbie and Laura are fascinating in those early years. Jacklyn Zeman really landed a fantastic part and they made it so complex between Marland, Monty, and Zeman. She’s doing so much shady stuff and she’s so rootable, even though Laura and Scotty are so adorable together. And Scotty is so different, although he is volatile enough that his later behavior after heartbreak makes sense.

Does anybody have access to the episode where Monica falls down the stairs/is pushed by Alan? I keep watching her in episodes in the hospital bed around the accident but not the actual accident.

1 hour ago, Planet Soap said:

What happened with SJB and Steve Burton  I've read before that the reason Jason and Carly (an obvious couple) have not been paired is because of Burton's refusal.

I've also seen it suggested that Kelly Monaco wanted to be paired with Billy Miller instead of Burton.

If you watched the show during SJB’s Carly, they spent a significant amount of time building to Jason being in love with Carly on paper, and Steve very visibly fighting any of that on camera.

Part of it was his holding out for KMc to come back as he preferred Jason with Robin. After she began her leaves for school, he would be in the soap mags saying how much Jason still loved Robin and in at least one interview I read he fully stated Jason would never fall in love with someone like Carly.

His exit storyline was built under an assumption that Jason would feel betrayed that Sonny and Carly had sex while he was doing mob business and got shot. It was laughable because Burton had spent that entire time visibly fighting it.

Kelly was vocal about feeing Sam had moved on and was happy, and again, visibly acted frustrated with reuniting with Burton the entire time the show put them back together. She was vocal online about it and about Billy Miller’s dismissal.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

What's really baffling to me is whatever the hell happened with Steve in 2021 with the musical couples, starting with the swift and seemingly permanent (for now) end of Jasam after almost 20 years.

It was wild!

4 hours ago, Khan said:

I liked how Claire Labine in particular saw Luke as someone who had experienced a lot in his lifetime, but who had finally settled down (or, as settled down as a man like Luke Spencer could be); and as a father who saw a lot of himself in his young son and, as such, would do his best to keep him on the straight-and-narrow.  To me, that level of maturity made Luke a much more fascinating character to watch than the drunken, self-pitying void he ultimately became.

He had a lot of layers too. You had the danger stuff with Frank Smith and the issues with being Sonny’s partner. His fatherhood issues with Lucky and Laura. His relationship with Laura as she was happy to be back home and he was more inclined to keep running. They also still had a believable romantic connection. He and Bobbie had a very specific dynamic. There was a lot of fertile ground and it didn’t feel like his maligned opinions at the end of his tenure.

I loved Luke during Labine’s run. Truthfully, I still thought he was a wonderful character until the Felicia affair. Which tracks, because I need Laura to help make Luke palatable, and that was a point on the show where Genie felt they had stopped writing for her. She was just miserable for like two years as she grieved Lucky and the end of her marriage.

I enjoyed him a bit more again when Lulu arrived as a teen, and he was pulled away from being selfish all the time. But it got worse from there.

12 minutes ago, Khan said:

In most of those cases, however, I'm sure TPTB had the power to say "no" if they didn't want to tell a particular story.  To me, that's a far cry from, "Steve doesn't want Jason's memories back, so don't even try it!," or, "Tony doesn't want Luke to get help for his drinking, and if you go there, he'll just sabotage the storyline with no pushback whatsoever!"

That’s the willingness part. What should be a collaboration sometimes becomes outsized on either end- a character way out of character to support a plot, or an actor refusing things or actively sabotaging the intent of the show (Burton with SJB’s Carly towards the end of his first run, KM clearly tanking her Jason reunion to stay with Billy Miller, whatever the hell happened with Liason/JaSam in the mid 2000’s, etc).

I remember reading an interview with Zenk about how much she hated Bitch Barbara on ATWT, didn’t agree with what Marland was doing, and fought against it. And then after the fact realizing that probably saved her in the long run because the show could see her as more than just a victim. Sometimes they should just act!