I Am A Swede

Although I'm not all that familiar with Catherine Hickland I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no. KKL may not be a master thespian, but she has managed to imbue Brooke with enough positive characteristics to survive some really awful writing. Add to that the chemistry she has/had with her co-stars, especially Susan Flannery, and you have a recipe for success. For me the big draw with B&B was never the love triangle Brooke/Ridge/Taylor. That wore thin very fast, and by now it's more off-putting than the opposite. No, this show was always at its best when Stephanie and Brooke was at the forefront. Flannery and Lang worked so incredibly well together, and I doubt that Hickland would have worked as well.

I thought General Hospital was older than Days of Our Lives?

And the creative bankruptcy of the entertainment industry continues to manifest itself.... How many old tv-shows have had re-boots or revivals in recent years? The list has grown very long. Granted, not all of them have been bad, but is it really that hard to create something new? Or do they simply don't have any confidence in their own abilities to create something original so they have to latch on to something that already exists and hope that name recognition and nostalgia will help turn their new show into a success by default?

Well, it does ensure plenty of screentime.....

That was great fun! Thank you! I think I saw another prime time soap connection as well. I'm pretty sure that Deborah Rennard, who played Sly, J.R:s secretary on Dallas, featured in an ad for Sizzlers at around 2:30.

I honestly don't know how you've come to this conclusion. Noone has said anything about Steffy being responsible for Sheila's actions, and I don't think anyone has ever believed that either. What is being said however is that Steffy, in her rants about Brooke and her attitude that Brooke is lower than the dirt under her shoes, fails to acknowledge that Brooke actually stood up for her against Sheila, unlike Steffy's own mother, and paid a price for that. Certainly not as severe a price as Steffy and Finn did, but still..... And now Steffy is using that in her attempts to get mommy and daddy back together, so that they can be a family. I would have thought that Steffy's first priorities now would be to spend some time with her own husband, you know the one she almost lost, and heal their family. Instead she's already on the warpath against Brooke and Hope, trying to get Ridge to leave Brooke and reunite with Taylor, and encouraging Thomas to take Douglas away from Hope, even though she knows that Thomas knew about Sheila messing with Brooke's sobriety and kept quiet about. That, coupled with his history, would make most people question if he's really ready to be a responsible parent. But Steffy ignores all that, because she sees everything like a battle between the Forresters and the Logans.

Yes, that's all we got. I will admit though that, like you, I did find the scene rather poignant and touching in an understated sort of way. I do still find Moira's presence completely unnecessary though. The cynic in me can't help thinking that they desperately wanted to inject some sort of Dingle in the scene, and Moira, while not a Dingle by blood, was the closest they could come and still make it somewhat believable. As an absolute minimum I think they should have ended the episode with the classic theme music playing over a picture of Sheila Mercier. This would also have been worthwhile. The only quibble I have is that the Woolpack would probably have been filled with Dingles, and that thought makes me 🤢 I will never forget when the Dingles ruined the memorial for Joe Sugden, and I have never forgiven the show for that.

Exactly! Steffy seems to have forgotten that the reason she even went to confront Sheila, which ended up with her and Finn being shot, was that she had found out that Sheila had targeted Brooke for doing what Steffy wanted: fighting Sheila's attempts to ingratiate herself into their lives. Quite the opposite from what Steffy's own mother did....

R.I.P. I remember laughing so much I cried when I first saw this scene

Well, I guess they're at least a little more discreet than the Nazis. They just remove the books and hide them while the Nazis burned them openly.

The did as little as they possibly could on the actual show. This is the sendoff they gave her.... And this is what the official Emmerdale channel on Youtube put up... I would call it a pathetic tribute to Emmerdale's most iconic character, the heart and soul of the show, but that would frankly be an understatement.

I envy you! Judging by the way you usually post, I'd say you would hate it almost as much as I do.

They were. The sixth king, Tar-Aldarion, only had a daughter, and he changed the law so that she could inherit the throne. Which she did, and she became the first ruling queen of Númenor, Tar-Ancalimë. Before that, if the king had no son, the nearest male kinsman of male descent from Elros Tar-Minyatur (Elrond's brother, and the first king of Númenor) would inherit the throne. There were two more ruling queens later, Tar-Telperien and Tar-Vanimeldë, and as stated earlier Tar-Míriel should have been the 4th ruling queen. But her throne was usurped by her cousin, who under the name Ar-Pharazôn, became the last king before Númenor's destruction. Aragorn was also a descendant of the Númenorean royal family. His line, and that of Elendil, Isildur and Anárion, descended from Silmarien, who was the daughter and eldest child of Tar-Elendil, the 4th king of Númenor. She didn't inherit the throne, since the old custom that only males could ascend to power was still in effect at that time.

Rose Ayling-Ellis: Strictly winner to leave EastEnders after two years

You're absolutely right. She could have been that. If Tolkien had ever written her like that. But he didn't...not in any published writings, and not in any unpublished writings. During the Second Age of the Sun, the timeperiod depicted in this show, Galadriel lives with her husband and daughter in different Elvish kingdoms in Middle-Earth. She spends some time in Eregion, but when Sauron, in his fair disguise, infiltrates the kingdom and helps the Elven-smiths forge the Rings of Power, Galadriel leaves for Lothlórien and so plays no active fighting part in the war between Sauron and the Elves after his betrayal is revealed. That is done by Elrond (characterized for this show as a canny young elven architect and politician) and Gil-galad. In this upcoming show, she is apparently traveling around Middle-Earth hunting Orcs for revenge. She travels to Númenor, which she never did in Tolkien's writings, and meets Queen Tar-Míriel, before the Rings of Power are forged, when in reality Tar-Míriel lived around 1500 years after that, during a time when the Elves were no longer even welcome to Númenor, and she was never queen either. She was heir to the throne, but her cousin forced her to marry him and usurped her place as ruler. I don't think one has to guess why these changes were made. We must have strong female queens and warriors if we are to attract today's audiences! Not women who wield their power in a more discreet way, away from the battlefields, or weak women who are cast aside by force and replaced by a man. Not after Game of Thrones! Who cares that it isn't true to the characters and stories that Tolkien created.

The simple fact that she's never referred to anything remotely like that in Tolkien's own writings. That's not who she is. Her strength is in wisdom, knowledge and counsel, in reading people's minds. Not brute force. Of course they've also eliminated her husband Celeborn and daughter Celebrian (later Elrond's wife and Arwen's mother), so that she can be portrayed as a strong, independent woman for a modern audience. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a little non-canonical romance planned for her as well.... And she's hardly a young woman either. She was born in Valinor during the Ages of the Trees (the Ages of Starlight in Middle-Earth), long before the sun had ever risen. By the Second Age of the Sun she's already thousands of years old.

Unlike you I am a very big fan of Tolkien, not just The Lord of the Rings, which is only a part of his creation. I had issues already with Peter Jackson's films, both LOTR and The Hobbit. They looked beautiful (for the most part) and had moments of greatness, but they also took liberties with Tolkien's stories. This new show will also, from what I've seen, have some beautiful sets and scenery, but they have twisted and altered Tolkien's stories and characters almost beyond recognition. I realize that you must expect some alterations when it comes to adapting stories for a visual medium, but this goes way beyond mere alterations. I have also seen what you've seen, and I can't say I'm entirely comfortable sharing opinions with some of them, since I'm usually on the absolute opposite side, but it is what it is. The showrunners, and even the actors, have shown very little respect for Tolkien and his work, that has been very clear in every interview I've seen or read. When you have the executive producer (Lindsey Weber) stating: “It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,” then alarm bells went ringing. Why should that be natural? Tolkien's world is a fantasy world in a long-distant mythological past. Why would it have to reflect today's world? So that they can cram in today's political views is the obvious answer. But this was something that Tolkien himself was vehemently opposed to. I think it is highly disrespectful to go against an author's wishes, when they are so well-known, I don't care if the author in question has been dead almost 50 years. He wrote these characters the way they are because that's how he wanted them, and as I quoted in my previous post: "I do earnestly hope that in the assignment of actual speeches to the characters they will be represented as I have presented them: in style and sentiment. I should resent perversion of the characters" (J.R.R. Tolkien) And, no I'm not just talking about skin colour now. I'm talking about turning Galadriel into Xena, Warrior Princess for instance, when this is not how Tolkien described her. Tolkien was from another era, and his stories are set in a very, very, very distant past. To alter his works, which he spent more than 50 years writing and perfecting, to please our modern sensitivities is not ok. Call me old-fashioned if you will, or maybe even other things. The showrunners and actors themselves have already started doing just that. I would have loved it if this show had been good and done justice to Tolkien's world. But it won't. And if they had done this show without attaching it to Tolkien in any way I would probably have felt differently about it than I do. But they haven't. They have done exactly what Tolkien absolutely didn't want. They have taken his stories, his characters, and his world and changed it into something else, something that is his in name only. Other people may have other reasons for critizing this show, that's up to them. But this is why I can't, and won't support this in any way. I gave them the benefit of the doubt when I first heard Amazon was gonna do this, but not anymore. I can honestly say that I have heard or read nothing, absolutely nothing about this show that I feel even remotely positive about.

The people behind this travesty are hacks, and I really have no words to describe how I (and seemingly many, many others) feel, so I'll just let Professor Tolkien's own words do it for me. "But I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about...." "The canons of narrative in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies" "I do earnestly hope that in the assignment of actual speeches to the characters they will be represented as I have presented them: in style and sentiment. I should resent perversion of the characters" J.R.R. Tolkien