Soaplovers

I liked that today's episode had a common thread that all scenes and couplings shared... wedding rings. Joey/Vanessa: Today was another stellar performance from Lauren B as Vanessa where it wasn't what she was saying, but the tone of her voice, her body language, and her facial expressions/eyes after Joey asked her to remove her wedding ring, when she heard Doug making a breakthrough, at hearing Doug's word after he hears Joey, and her sad surrender to Joey. Skillfully written and acted. Doug: As he makes a breakthrough with Vanessa, the hurt on his face and voice after he hears Joey's face, and the words he says to Vanessa are going to haunt her if the ending indicates what I think it will indicate. Naomi/Jacob: They're in a good place with the two of them working as a team, enjoying one another in and out of the bedroom, and getting to hear a bit of backstory on their relationship (where Jacob designed the rings) so her losing her rings almost served as a trigger for a fear Naomi has that she'll end up in the same position as her parents especially her mom. Little has been shared about the Dani/Naomi relationship... but Naomi deep down works to not be in the same position with a man that her mother was in. She definitely is her father's daughter. Ashley/Derek: They're a couple that are together out of deceit.. intentionally and unintentionally. Ashley due to seeing Andre with Dani and Derek keeping quiet the possibility he can walk. There were a few instances where Derek had a look of worry/anxiousness on his face... the baby steps to a more grey area Derek is ongoing. June/Ted: Chemistry testing.. or just a random scene between two people that share a connection (her kids are his adopted grandkids). I had said in the past that I thought the order of June's story was out of whack and today just proves it. The potential of a June/Ted coupling should have been focused on as a step in her ongoing path to regaining her life after a long period of struggle. The Tyrell/Samantha bombshell should have waited till June was further along in her path of rebuilding her life. It's partly why I side with Smitty (one of the few apparently that did LOL). Overall.. a good episode and a nice hump day episode.

1995 to January 1998 has some great moments, but I was hoping they would have started with 1990 when Nixon came back on staff instead of 1995. Still something is better than nothing.

I forgot about that! Hayley's 'pregnancy and miscarriage' mirrors Kristen's pregnancy tale on Days. Derek's accident (after his head injury in earlier episodes) is mirroring K. Allen's Billie's drug addiction story (great scenes and story)... both instances have bought out a naughty side.

Now Andre/Dani being married will generate some potential good story and conflict because I think people, other than Nicole, were unbothered with them together because it was assumed they were just having fun... but I have a feeling the Duprees and other people will be more surprised/unsure of how to react to the two getting married. While Andre/Dani have a solid friendship as a foundation... seeing them trying to navigate marriage will be interesting because she still carries a lot of baggage from her marriage to Bill so Andre being a player won't sit right with Dani now that they're married, etc.

The reason it's been a bit slow since Chelsea's kidnapping is the same reason the show was a bit slow after the Ted/Nicole/SPS bombshell and the Dani pulling a gun at Bill/Hayley's wedding.... it's because all other plots seem to stop and the focus is only on just whatever plotline is going to climax. So what ends up happening is once the climax is over and we start to see the fall out of that particular plotline.. the other plot lines that were paused/not shown have to restart and aren't in a position to hit their climax. With that said, I do wonder how Dani and Andre will operate as a married couple and I wonder if this twist is another example of the show tweaking things after the positive reception of their characters as a couple. I think we're in the range of episodes that were written after the debut of the show.. which explains the shift back to Dani/Andre, a possible Kristen Dimera turn in Derek's character, Hayley/Caroline having friendship scenes again, etc.

My thinking was that the show was in an odd place during her era where there weren't a lot of females in that age group outside of Michelle... and with her trapped in the Santos orbit.. it made sense to have another female character in that age range to have some focus. It's just a shame that Drew wasn't revealed to be Ross's niece until after Dinah left the show since I imagine the two of them would have had a lot to talk about.. plus it was a shame that Phillip wasn't interacting with his Marler relatives by that point because I think he and Drew would have clicked.

Drew was bought on as a spoiler for Dahlia/Marcus/Sugar... she was the spoiled daughter of the record producer that employed Sugar and where Marcus was trying to get signed. Tammy Blanchard said she wasn't sure exactly what the show's plan was for her character.. but she had said in an interview that once Taye Diggs left and the record story was dropped... she was going to be paired with J. I think she was cut off and J giving her a job was the first step in pairing them together. I think the actor that played J also left so she was kind of backburnered until the show decided to make Drew a spoiler for Michelle/Jesse. Rebecca Budig and Tammy Blachard had good rival chemistry.. and I think the show was planning to pair Rebecca Budig's Michelle with a recast Bill... but she quit the show and was replaced by Joie Lenz.. and we all know what happened next.

That's probably why I like the Joey and Vanessa scenes because you have two strong willed and driven people interacting... keeping one another on their toes. I've been saying since almost the beginning that the level of misandry on this show is through the roof, and it's an extreme over-correction from what other soaps have been doing. If you look at soaps from the 80s and the first half of the 90s, you had a great balance of strong and interesting male and female characters. Even on BTG, though the female characters are somewhat better defined... they also seem to lack any layers nor complexity (unless the actress is injecting something into the part). Characters like Vanessa and Dani tend to be one note characters... but the two actresses have injected layers into both characters that isn't on the page... same with TT with Anita (who is very one note, but TT is such a good actress that she makes Anita more layered). It's why female characters such as Hayley, Ashley, Naomi, and Chelsea have been hit or miss... because the characters provided to them are pretty paint by numbers and all four actresses are not strong enough to inject layers into them. For petes sake, Hayley is the worst written of the four characters so the actress probably is wondering how she's supposed to play most of her scenes (especially in regards to the phantom pregnancy and miscarriage).

The problem I had with Josh/Reva was that they were reunited quickly when he came to the show in late 1986. There was an episode where they come face to face, he admitted he was aware of what she had been through the last two years and she was hurt he never bothered to reach out to her. And right after that episode, they're back together again as if they just had a lovers spat and not spent two years out of contact with one another. I often think had Long been head-writing, she would never have put them back together right away and would have slowly worked to get them back together. So I think when she came back as head-writer in mid 1987, she realized that the two needed to officially break up and did so. And it was the right instinct. The 1989 wedding was a magical event and even my mom, who wasn't a Josh/Reva fan, loved the wedding and how it was filmed.... and it was payoff for the audience that waited two years for the two to get back together again. @TheyStartedOnSoapsActually... Long was the one that wrote Reva's suicide attempt at the bridge. It was one of her last events she wrote before she left as head-writer (along with Lujack dying in Beth's arms). I was a kid when BC came on as Beth in 1989.. and I remember my mom saying that she was beautiful and a decent actress.. but that she wasn't Beth. Although I will say that watching her first stint as Beth, she did infuse Beth with a bit of intensity and a sarcastic element when speaking the lines. It just wasn't the Beth that Judi Evans played... but Beth had been missing for three years and had become mute over the trauma she had endured over that period of time so she wouldn't be the same Beth. So when did the whole Lorelei bit, I didn't find it out of character because Beth had reacted to extreme trauma with a mental break after her 1986 disappearance so I just viewed the Lorelei story as Beth trying to be more assertive and confident and figured a new personality would be just the thing to help her cope and live life. Also, I always hated when Lizzie was on how Beth and others would say that Lizzie was just like Beth was at that age. I remember thinking 'No way... Lizzie is more like a young Mindy'. In fact, when I watched 1983 episodes with Krista T as a young Mindy, I was reminded of Marcy Rylan's Lizzie and how she played LIzzie.

Continuing on the Days momentum, as much as it pains me to say.. but another failed return was: Jennifer in 2000 as played by Melissa Reeves. After the way she quit suddenly in late 1995 at the height of the Jack/Peter/Jennifer story... there was excitement for a return by Jennifer. Sadly, it was without Jack so the show had to find her another actor/love interest (I think his name was Colin).. and it didn't work so Matt Ashford was lured back in order to reunite Jack/Jennifer before writing them off again in 2005. For whatever reason, JER seemed inspired to write for Jennifer when Melissa Reeves was playing her in the 90s. She had chemistry with the actor playing Peter (On and Off screen as we came to find out) and even had good chemistry with Mark Valley as a recast Jack.... so I don't know who the writers were in the first half of the 2000s, but they seemed unsure of how to write Jennifer during that period. And after her brief return during Alice Horton's memorial where she had a great scene with Vivian over what Lawrence did to her.. she was bought back full time and it started off promising until she was subjected to Daniel and lost her spunk/drive. A character like Jennifer is now best seen in small doses because she can come in, have scenes with her relatives, react with her feisty temper at something she doesn't like, and then will say her good byes and leave.... and Cady was not a good Jennifer and I'll die on that hill.

Rewatching the Patty scenes on Andrea Evan's channel, while her take on Patty was less fragile/neurotic... I did find it interesting during scenes between Patty and her therapist that she worried that she would always snap and never get out of the mental loop that she had found herself in. And the therapist stated that if Patty could learn to live in the real world and not in a fantasy world, she would be able to get a handle on her mental health and not continually snap when reality hits her. And then admitting that she viewed her marriage to Jack as being part of her fantasy world and how that seemed to cause her harm. Those scenes really foreshadow the dark and tragic turn that Patty takes when she finally returns to the canvas in the late 2000s. Without meaning to, the horrid writers really didn't retcon Patty into a looney person.. but actually followed the thread set up by Bill Bell for her character.

Tamra is the big problem on the OC, and no matter if she's proven right in this current situation... an individual like her needs to be fired, locked up in psych ward, and kept away from the public. Society would benefit from trash like Tamra being locked up. In all honesty, the OC hasn't been consistently good since season 11. The first sin the show committed was not firing Vicki after the whole Brooks cancer scam came out. The second sin was allowing Gina/Emily to stay on the show so long. The third sin was moving away from focus on the families to just petty gossip.

There is a Youtube channel that is reacting to the original Dark Shadows series.. and he's close to getting to the 100th episode. Today he was reacting to episode #97 where focus and attention was on the portrait that looks like Victoria Winters... and Liz/Roger trying to gaslight Vicki into abandoning her assertion that the woman in the picture resembles her.... but Carolyn remarks that the picture looks just like Vicki.. end of episode. The reactor was saying he couldn't wait to see when Vicki's parentage would be revealed and how she tied into the Collins family. I didn't comment that after that episode, her quest to find her identity was abandoned and never really explored in great detail again. While I know it was due to Moltke quitting, but I kind of like that Vicki never found out her past.. it added to the tragic element of the character and show. No happy ending for Vicki unlike Jane Erye.

From what I understood, there was a big change that always signaled when Long would return to the show as head-writer. That Alexandra/Reva scene was redone a few years later between Alexandra and Blake (SS's version)... and both scenes were well written and done... and played by strong actresses. From what I recall, Long's return after the writer's strike was also noticeable because it was right after Maeve was killed off... and that inner circle was processing that information as a community. With that said, as much as I did enjoy Long's writing.... I will agree that within her first year of her initial writing stint.. she did seem to have characters islanded (Reardon family at Company, Bauer's at Cedars/house, Lewis Family,).. with the Spaulding clan being the thread to uniting some of those islands. The Nolarobics era was cut short due to Brown quitting.. but I will say that it did connect some of the islanded characters. However, I don't think the story was going to lead to anything major.. although maybe Nola/Quint could have been used during the Infinity story since she was working to make exercise tapes, wanting to use copy righted music, etc.

OMG! I thought it was a fever dream from when I was little.. but glad to get visual confirmation that this exists

Even by 1990, Andrea had modulated her Tina compared to the more campy 1986-1988 period so I do believe she would have continued to adjust her approach during the Malone era. My late mom told me that her version of Tina circa 1978 to 1981 was much more low key compared to her 2nd return. All My Children: Maria and Julia Santos returns were so disappointing and a waste of both actresses and their characters. Days: Carly Manning's early 2010s return was underwhelming and the show didn't know how to really write her and Crystal Chappell had trouble getting back into playing Carly after her decade playing the more over the top/erratic Olivia Spencer.

It reminded me of the story Kim Zimmer told of her audition as Reva where she was given a bible of the character where she got to read Reva's history, motivation, and personality. It helped her get into character when she auditioned. I wonder if Jen Jacobs had any sort of detail/back story provided to her when she went to audition as Ashley. I'm going to guess no. And I say this because when lauren B went in to audition as Vanessa, she had said she put her own spin on the character by presenting her as flirty and a man eater. So I agree with you that if there isn't a detail summary/bible for the character you're auditioning to play, you have to put your own spin/provide subtext when playing a character.

Doctors have a thing called 'God complex' where they think they're invincible and act in their day to day life with this mentality. So Doug is acting just like any medical professional I've met and been around in my life. People need to understand that people can be intelligent and skilled at being a doctor.. but it doesn't mean that they have common sense nor critical thinking skills.

I do wonder if the Joey/Vanessa/Doug story is going to climax and/or hit the next stage in the story because Guza will soon be leaving the credits so I have a feeling he's going to set up the next stage of the story so that his replacement can try to guide it to the next stage (though my instincts say that this Tracy T replacement is too similar to MVJ when some of the best head writer duos have different strengths and don't always agree).

I agree that Vanessa is totally a Guza character.. and the actress provides different flourishes to her scenes depending on if she's acting opposite Joey, Dani/Nicole, Bill/Hayley/SPS, and Doug. She acts flirty/sexual with Joey, caring friend with Dani/Nicole, snarky with Bill/Hayley/SPS, and being concerned/wistful with Doug. Now... Silk Press Sheila in this episode had her acting campy (like Gina Demott of Santa Barbara fame) with Eva and subtle/hopeful with Anita. I think the campy stuff is a front in order for SPS to protect herself from getting hurt. The actress does try to infuse some layers in the character.. but she can only do so much with writing that veers into camp.

ugh... creepy Jenna is back. She's very uncomfortable to watch and I think she would have fit in better with the OG's. imho.

No offense, what exactly were you expecting of MVJ? She's hardly had any experience head-writing.. and it doesn't seem like she has anyone to give her feedback and/or to help her structure and pace all the stories in an organized matter. However, I also think the whole filming and writing schedule (4 months filmed ahead, 6 months written ahead) is what will prevent the soap from fixing what isn't working even if they hear from fans and/or seeing how the actors play the scenes, etc. I looked at today's episode as a build up to another climax... and it looks as though maybe the climax will involve the Joey/Vanessa/Doug story while I'm curious to see if any focus will be on Derek's slow descent to the dark side.

Two things can be true at the same time.... Kat can be an entitled brat and Eva can be a lying enabling schemer. Tomas could be bad in bed and Kat might just not into him so of course the sex isn't anything to write home about. The only highlight of this episode was the Joey/Vanessa/Doug story... and Doug going to Bill was a nice way to have two characters interact that normally don't interact... and then having Bill show to talk to Joey/Vanessa was a nice surprise since we all know Vanessa isn't exactly a big fan of Bill's.

Derek looks to be going to the dark side a bit... but I have a feeling by episode 160 that he'll be regaining his legs, guilting Ashley, and threatening Andre while pretending to still be sweet Derek. There has been foreshadowing since the start of the show that Derek might be embracing the dark side with his expressions anytime Andre was around Ashley, how off he acted after his one accident where his head was hurt, and how he felt a little bit of glee when he saw how jealous Ashley was when she saw him with Shanice. Shanice is bound by HIPAA so she can't warn Ashley... but our Shanice is creative so I'm sure she could figure out a way to warn Ashley without violating HIPAA.

Irregardless, I do think that story fit with the essence of the Iris character.. who always seemed to border on edge in regards to neurotic tendencies. Granted, I do wish the show had decided to show Iris near the end of the show either still in prison and/or going to be released with her deciding to start over back in New York City and perhaps helping women restart their lives after being released from prison.