DramatistDreamer

I’d rather call you a host. They need to save the Daytime Personality moniker for the People’s Choice Awards, or another awards show where the public can vote. Daytime Personality sounds weird for an Emmy award. Will fans be voting in these categories? That’s the only way this would make sense to me.

Daytime Personality?? Can this genre sink any lower?

Oh man, this is sad news. There are a number of videos of people who had never seen Rocky reacting and loving the movie. Carl Weathers was such a charismatic presence on screen. A true onscreen action hero.

Sounds like something that would happen at an Elon Musk owned company.

Josh Griffith is infantilizing Ashley (as well as seemingly writing the beginnings of some sort of psychosis or mental breakdown, seemingly in a (failed) attempt to revisit and exploit Ashley’s history of mental health instability (as if someone of Ashley Abbott’s means didn’t have access to a good psychiatrist and effective therapy). Josh is infantilizing Ashley, the way he used to infantilize Sharon, the way he is also infantilizing Heather. In Val’s defense, she has had much better writing and an actual career that we saw her working on in her previous stints, so she wouldn’t have had time to handwring over Daniel’s indecisiveness. Also, that’s not a cold sore on Val’s lip, she’s had it for years and it’s the same type of mark that Eileen Davidson once had for decades until she either had it smoothed down or makeup artists started covering. I have contended for years that most of Y&R’s writers over the last 15 years haven’t a clue as to how to write women with any sort of nuance-it’s down to the most flattened stereotypes: fragile basket case, harpy-shrew, overly ambitious seductress/promiscuous, doormat or practically asexual presence/nonenity. JG is no different. He is simultaneously giving us lush/needy Nikki who Victor calls “baby” every five seconds while he reminds her to sit down(why not just buy her a fainting couch?), Angsty Ashley, who has taken to shouting at waiters in Parisian alleyways. Hapless Heather, who is practically using all her intellectual powers (instead of as the strong-willed, occasionally cunning and ruthless, brilliant lawyer that she was once written to be) to get Daniel to canoodle with her in public (and the stupidity of that hamfisted contrived scene if Lucy giggling behind the door, left ajar was the stuff of constant eye-rolling). They have Phyllis even acting like a collegiate with half the emotional intelligence, in a quest to do what? Mess with Christine (seemingly the only female character operating with operating with any autonomy-maybe LLB put her foot down or inspires some regard as a Bell?, as much as I like ZS, what I like about Audra has everything to do with Silver and nothing to do with how she’s written), mess with Danny, operating out of sheer boredom? Phyllis has never looked more brainless than she does now (one thing Phyllis never used to lack was savvy). For this reason, I only ever sporadically watch this show for the past 15 years. I haven’t touched upon Sally whose actress seems to have been given Sharon’s cast off storyline of bouncing between two brothers (feeling like a fool?).

An Op-Ed written by a former hostage of the October 7th attack offering an interesting and insightful perspective. You should be able to access this article freely. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/opinion/gaza-war-holocaust-shoah.html

On the first day of Black History Month, an op-ed piece by Charles Blow. The Dawn of a New Era of Oppression

Over the last few years, I have seen ads for these very short form dramas, but I thought they were some sort of spinoff of Korean dramas. It will be interesting to see whether this takes off in the U.S. and whether brands sign on for advertising, which we all know has been critical to most soaps that air on broadcast television. What are your thoughts about this? Minute-Long Soap Operas Are Here. Is America Ready?

Something that I was thinking about and frankly, was bothering me when I decided to tune in again to see what was going on with this show. Diane is an accomplished architect who had her own career and now, it was just reading as someone who has given up her talent and everything she built to stand by her man. Yes, there is the question of what would she do, how would that look onscreen but right now, she could have been taking meetings at Crimson Lights (like everyone else in town) with Sharon on designing Sharon’s office building. Do we have to see it? Do we see half of what anyone does for work anymore? Or they could just do a weird CGI a la Summer’s rollercoaster ride or Chance and Summer’s concert date or a CGI construction site or exterior, like they do any number of places. Photoshop can do any number of things these days. Welp, a perfect illustration of my previous post, @dragonflies. They’re already doing it so they might as well fully commit and branch out. Although, they could give more detail and better shading and light.

Me too, come to think of it. Was it Mal that gave that insulting interview about killing her off being a “gift” to viewers? And then implying that her pregnancy was somehow costing the show. I can’t remember exactly what was said but at the time I was pissed! That woman worked wonders, she actually made Bryton (who I have nothing against, I actually think, given the right material, can perform as well as most of the other actors) look like one half of a bona fide soap supercouple. Even if they we to bring the actress back as Hilary tomorrow, I don’t think they would be able to restore what they once had, not with these writers.

Believe it or not, I haven’t been following her personal life. I stopped following anything NFL years ago, so I was almost entirely out of the loop until yesterday. The MAGA people just look desperately stupid for clinging onto this conspiracy theory. Their usual conspiracy theories are dumb too but this one is among the silliest.

^^That’s decent cross promotion and it made me chuckle. Made me long for the days when they use to do those cute preemption promos during the U.S. Open Back then, they really knew how to build anticipation for the shows returning after the Labor Day break.

This is so stupid on the part of MAGAts. Here’s to “Swifties” putting the, in their place.

ESPN is reaping what they have sowed. They have been alienating tennis fans for years, making tennis less accessible with their bogus ESPN+ platform (why relegate every match to ESPN+?) and they have been underinvesting in tennis for years now, despite vacuuming up the broadcast and streaming rights to 3 out of 4 of the majors. Most of today’s newest tennis “stars” don’t have the personality to get eyes in front of the screen past 8pm EST, let alone 3am. The time is set by Tennis Australia, so ESPN has no control over that but ESPN should be making streaming as readily available and accessible as they do their NBA games, in order to try to hook fans on the newest generation of players. The ITF and the entire alphabet soup of organizations need to start over with making this sport more accessible and appealing to a viewing audience. ESPN shouldn’t be allowed to have exclusive rights to streaming of the majors, neither should the Tennis Channel for that matter. USTA should take back the rights and put it back on their website, and just add commercials and run occasional ads at the bottom of the screen during matches. The All England Club and the FFT should do the same. Any viewers outside of that particular nation could pay a fee to stream a universal feed for the two weeks (with a choice of with or without commentary) The Tennis powers that be need to come up with some innovations before they decide to sell the sport to kingdom of Saudi Arabia, lock, stock and barrel.

Battle was such a dynamic dancer and incredible choreographer. A phenomenal talent.

The kidnapper is played by David Cryer, the father of actor Jon Cryer (Pretty In Pink, Two And A Half Men ). Cryer was brought back about 5 or 6 years later to play mob boss Phillip Lombard. I was hoping they’d have brought him back in the show’s final years, possibly as a paramour for Lisa since they had good chemistry. Instead the show shunted Lisa (and Eileen) off to the side.

Ah, I see @Paul Raven. Thanks for that post. Maybe the only thing that can be done is to try to upgrade the back office at Crimson Lights. The last time I saw that back office, it was looking fairly grungy. Unfortunately, he’s been writing stories this way for years. Someone should’ve nipped that in the bud when he started doing this.

The International Tennis Integrity Association has decided to appeal the decision to clear British player Tara Moore of charges of doping. https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/68141134

This infernal issue with sets and budgets, there’s a dignified solution in there somewhere. I’m fascinated by it despite no longer being a regular viewer. Question: Does Sharon still have a house? Could there be space for a home office? People do work from those..

A woman who was so vibrant, it seemed like she would go on past her centenary and keep going from there. ¡Vaya con Dios, Doña Chita! Descanse en paz.

Rather than typing in the URL, if you use a search engine and type in We Love Soaps, and click a link that pops up in the results, you will see the site itself, just not when typing the URL directly.

I know I am being nitpicky but Sharon used customer and client interchangeably. Is her company a public facing company or are they providing software to companies? The last time I watched, I had the impression that her company provided software to other companies, rather than individual consumers. Just wondering.

WLS was an invaluable resource. The interviews and the “On This Day in …” with the accompanying video clips and descriptions placed soaps in a historical and cultural context. Even the WLS YouTube channel was thoughtfully curated, thanks to their upload of ATWT episodes, I got to see The Willows storyline. Not to mention the fact that Roger Newcomb provided his services as a liaison between the SoapClassics people and the P&G people. He really was a true ambassador for the genre and that is sorely missed.

Ouch! It is nothing short of miraculous that Connick Jr.’s career was unaffected by the awful decisions of his father’s regime. Today, in the era of social media, Jr. catching a few strays in the hail of denunciations would have been unavoidable.

Unfortunately in the late ‘00s disparaging soaps was low-hanging fruit since so many were plagued by poor writing and production choices but the critical mass of disparaging comments read so much like piling on. That article did raise an issue that has been in the back of my mind for well over a decade now, the possibility that any shifts were going to alienate viewers at any given time period. Many of us 1970s babies grew up watching the soaps of the 1980s and loving them, but there is a possibility that viewers that were watching from the 1960s and 70s were alienated by the drift away from the characterizations of the everyday in favor for big action and adventure.