DramatistDreamer

Thanks anyway for responding. Maybe someone will come across it. Wow, so bookmarking it won't guarantee that you'll be able to locate it? Oh no.😳 They do have brief ads but they are rarely placed at the proper scene breaks anyway. It's not often, but there have been a few episodes that are poorly presented- either something wrong with the audio/visual or in this case, an episode that looks as though someone recorded it on a VCR and left it on "pause" too long, forgot, then realized they should have hit "record" and hastily did so. I mean come in, these episodes are what, 22 minutes, how are you going to have minutes missing? Why are soap production companies so bad at archives and preservation?! And Bell productions are one of the better companies where daytime soaps are concerned. I'm convinced that the people in of the business of daytime soaps, really don't like soaps. Otherwise, what are they doing??

Indeed.

Other than Susan Flannery, Johnson was the second best actor on that show in those early seasons. Okay, I'm getting frustrated with the B&B YouTube channel posting chopped up episodes. They actually missed the scene that featured the first slap Stephanie ever gave Brooke?! That's simply unacceptable! Okay, don't be mad y'all and I know this has been asked a hundred times now but which way to the Vault? I promise to bookmark it this time, but I need to see that episode properly, not the jumble of chopped up scenes presented on the B&B YouTube channel, which must by run by unpaid interns and volunteers.

Another audiobook. I just listened to the chapter where he narrates his experience of his parents becoming estranged and he got lost in television shows as a form of escape. There is a passage on how the soap Dallas blew his mind, in particular, a scene where Sue Ellen arrives to breakfast by horseback! The estate of Southfork became aspirational for Smith as a child.

May Archbishop Tutu rest in peace. He was a consistent freedom fighter and religious shepherd to his people.

This seems like an opportune time to implement this, in fact, it's overdue. I cannot tell you what a bad taste it left on my palate to have to order from Amazon and Walmart so often last year, simply because I couldn't find certain basic items anywhere else.

Love Eileen Davidson but don't think I can stomach another Locher Room episode. Glad that others are seeing what I see. Once upon a time, there used to be some trolls in the As The World Turns thread who would pounce if critical posts and they were especially exasperating on how they'd fawn over Locher and his livestream show. How I wish someone could contact and convince Roger Newcomb of the We Love Soaps blog to start doing livestream podcast interviews with daytime soap stars, who deserve so much better. Some of us had asking for this for a solid year now, to no avail.

That review is certainly interesting. Thanks for posting, @Faulkner Not having seen Being The Ricardos but being very familiar with Sorkin's hyper masculine type of storytelling (hey, at least it's not Mamet), I could easily see those issues undermining the narrative. The issue of not allowing Kidman to be funny, seems like a real problem, given how flat out funny Ball was. If what the reviews are saying are true- that the movie fails to show how Lucy was able to become so beloved while being so exacting, then that might be the most unfortunate part of all. Perhaps no one can explain this dichotomy better than Ball herself, who, in an interview, once described how she berated crew on their seeming inability to capture the right lighting on set, while also describing how she cried any time she had to fire someone, not to mention, a biographer also mentioned that in business meetings with network executives, Lucy functioned as both boss and traditional homemaker, often cleaning the tables before or after business meetings at Desilu Productions. It seemed as if Sorkin had the perfect opportunity to dramatize this dichotomy with the condensed story structure he opted for, with all these inciting incidents occurring in the space of a week. It also sounded like the reviewers bent over backwards to stress that Kidman and Bardém are excellent actors and have chemistry, while stating that both were miscast to play these roles. I'm not sure about the reviewer's choice of Katherine Hahn, who would, without doubt, be able to pull off the comedic elements (had there been any), but I am unsure about how Hahn would inhabit the glamour of Ball, who, outside of the show, was very glamorous (as well as gorgeous) when you see archival footage of Ball in print and on film. If you're going to go with a non-Cuban actor, Jaime Camil seems like he would have been a very good choice though. Having seen Verdon/Fosse, Being The Ricardos should have followed the template- choose character actors, over movie stars.

One aspect in which the U.S. has been abysmal at, this other countries have generally been better at, by leaps and bounds, something that would have helped, is contact tracing. Had the U.S. at least made a concerted effort, it might have made a difference, particularly in early warning signs to people who were infected but unaware and the death totals might not have been so appallingly high. Part of living with a virus of this nature is making the necessary modifications, in order to mitigate the worse outcomes and these things, by and large are still not being done. People still fighting (sometimes literally) over not wanting to wear masks. Tests not being accessible enough to all of the people who need/want them. People screaming about not having kids in school while the number of schools that have proper ventilation systems that make the air safer so virus doesn't linger in the air, infecting people indoors is still very much a major factor. None of what I am seeing suggests a country prepared to live with this virus, in a way that doesn't lead to tens of thousands of more COVID-19 deaths per month. What's going on in the hospitals nationwide seems absolutely unsustainable right now. We can only hope the numbers of hospitalizations decline and very soon.

You ever have one of those times when something a character says just flashes in your mind? I just had one of those moments. Elizabeth Hubbard is so great in all her hysterics in this sequence where Lucinda is with her lawyer Ambrose discussing what she is going to do to avoid being blackmailed. When she says "... they're going to split the 3 million dollars and go on their merry wayyy!" It sent me! 🤭 Just the inflection of that sentence, I wondered how La Hubbard came by that choice to express that snippet of dialogue in that fashion. https://youtu.be/ql2U79o7TOs

Oh, I forgot to say, that Stephen Shortridge hadn't appeared in the opening for months, only to pop up again for an episode.

People on YouTube have pointed out a few times when there were errors in the opening and closing credits. Like, recently, months after the actor who played Dave (Brooke's former fiance) left the canvas and was no longer appearing in the opening, suddenly popped up again. Or them mixing up a character name and real life names. Yeah, to me it looks like exactly the same actress consistently throughout. 🤷🏾‍♀️

But which episodes?😂 Maybe she is being credited for the image in the photograph? I don't remember her at all.

Very bizarre, as I am revisiting these episodes, I only remember seeing Carla Herd (aka Carla Sands) in the role. I have never seen a Rosemarie Thomas in the role of Alex. Not only do I believe that IMDB contains an error, but other sites have obviously gotten their erroneous information from IMDB. https://theboldandthebeautiful.fandom.com/wiki/Alex_Simpson Is there an actual photo of Thomas in the role? I can't find any. Or any photos of the actress so we can compare and see if there is some resemblance to Herd? The Wiki entry doesn't even seem to list Herd, which is very bizarre. EDT. Lord, is Carla Sands running for Senate now?!😧

Davenport herself is nearly 6ft3, so how tall must this kid be at only 14?!

And these are the same fools who don't want to wear masks and will gleefully spread disease wherever they go.

Who had been previously infected, so that aspect of natural immunity after infection may not have as much weight.

The actress who played Penny, Rosemary Prinz has stated that she didn't want to be locked into long-term stays on the soaps, as she loved being on stage. Not sure about the actor who played Don, but Prinz preferred shorter stints, as she wanted to spend more time in theater. As a theater person, I can't really blame her. The show in the late 90s was languishing and could have really used some long remembered characters doing meaningful, if brief story arcs. The show attempted some form of this, bringing back Duncan McKechnie briefly when an adult Bonnie, his daughter, was on the canvas, but the story and its execution was laughable. If the writers aren't knowledgeable enough about the show's story DNA, trying to bring longtime favorite characters wouldn't matter anyway. After Marland's passing, the show should have made an offer to Susan Bedsow-Horgan to be the headwriter--an offer she couldn't refuse. She knew the show's storyline DNA, as she was there before and during aspects of Marland's tenure as HW. She would have had a better sense of continuity, while adding her own stamp on the storytelling. And she might have been more successful at bringing back some of the show's longtime favorites, who were more likely to trust her skill for storytelling. An actor who was nominated for an Emmy award during her time as a writer, would more likely return with her as HW as they would be more likely to trust her. Actors don't like the possibility of seeing their characters undone by poor storytelling any more than longtime fans do, and we know this happened a lot to characters who were brought back in the late 90s/early-mid 00s on ATWT. We all heard the stories of P&G wanting to exit the business of producing soaps, but ATWT could have at least made a case for their survival by writing consistently better stories, or at least end with a higher degree of dignity.

I would have ended ATWT in the mid 90s, years before the onslaught of horrendous storylines that befell the show in the decade and a half ahead. Don't bring back any ridiculously written long-time characters, don't bring back legacy characters to have them sleep with other characters they consider father figures. Don't kill off legacy characters that long-time viewers saw born onscreen in two years, especially less than two years after they are brought back. And don't devolve characters that put in so much work to evolve in the first place. I'd rather end it when the characters were still recognizable to people who actually knew the history of the show's stories, before the pandering to the new fans that never came and other who wouldn't stay anyway.

Before this, I really never spent any time considering what characters that I thought would return, as it seemed like so many returns on my favorite soaps had been a bust, I didn't want to think too much about it, but a post in the Cancelled Soaps thread, triggered a thought. With all the multiple returns of James Stenbeck on ATWT, I wondered why Ariel Aldrin (Judy Blazer) never made her way back to Oakdale. As long as you had Barbara, Paul and even John Dixon, there would have been plenty of characters that she could have mixed it up with. The character was off the canvas by the time Lucinda Walsh entered (I think), so given the fact that both were married to John, I think it would have been fun to see them interact. Both could be on the troublesome side at times.

Speaking of Judy Blazer, have you seen this? https://www.judyblazerstudio.com/

The U.S., like the U.K. before it, has now a reported death from the Omicron variant, as well as Israel.

Another aspect to consider is that the South African population has had a different level of exposure to previous coronavirus variants (Delta, in particular) than the U.S. and Europe that had much greater access to vaccines than South Africa. Exposure, coupled with a population that skews younger may yield different results, just to keep in mind. I have read that the U.K. reported its first death from the Omicron variant. Hopefully that will remain a rare report.

Somehow, I doubt they care, if they ever did. They've got the I.O.C. in their pocket, so they can stage their Olympic Games (as hollow and de-populated as they might be, if they do, in fact take place). The world has basically talked then promptly turned a blind eye when this happened to other notable and famous Chinese (Fan Bing Bing, Jack Ma) in the past, so there's no reason for the Chinese government to believe the reaction will stray from the usual playbook. From their vantage point, it's going according to the usual plan. I'm sure the Chinese government/sports ministry also believe, that, given enough time, they can convince the WTA to do business with them again. Just look at Evert's reaction already.