OzFrog

It still feels so unreal (and yet so heartwarming) to see Anna and Carrie’s mother/daughter relationship on screen - Leann Hunley should really have been a presence on DOOL during the 90s when Carrie was part of some major plots. She and Christie Clark work so naturally together!

You better believe I’ve preordered the album! The first two singles are **MAGIC**! And furthermore, they’ve already stormed the top 2 spots on the UK iTunes chart. How frickin incredible that 2021 has brought us this joy ❤️

Definitely remains to be seen what kind of trouble Dismay can cause for Trina - one to watch for sure!

I watched the scenes of Anna talking with Liz and Finn at the hospital - Anna so knows Finn played a role in Peter’s disappearance, but doesn’t know how exactly. It’s refreshing to see her intelligence come to the fore again in those scenes. Yes to whomever said Terry & Britt for co-COS! If Monica does indeed decide that way, that’s going to be an interesting dynamic to play out. They would absolutely hate each other at the beginning, yes, but I could legitimately see them developing a begrudging respect for each other. Some questions around Nik & Hayden - is it true that Laura already knows that Nik had Hayden shot? I’ve seen some comments on YouTube videos of recent scenes that Laura has full knowledge of this, yet the writers are downplaying or just outright ignoring it. Would be great to have some clarity. Further to my earlier wondering about Spencer and Valentin, I do also wonder if, despite Nik ultimately getting the Cassadine fortune back, Spencer still carries bad blood towards Valentin. Now this is my imagination going a little crazy here, but having seen the lengths Spencer will go to to get revenge on Ava, would it seem so far-fetched that he has similar intentions for Valentin? I could envisage a scenario where Spencer somehow finds out the truth about Bailey/Louise and uses that against Valentin at the worst possible moment. The writing on GH has been amazing this year, if not 100% perfect. Characters are being driven by character motivations rather than plot, scenes are actually meaningful and add context to the whole story - almost sometimes as if the ghost of Bill Bell or Agnes Nixon is driving this. I cannot remember the last time I was so involved in a US daytime soap for such an extended period - the writers and actors need massive kudos here. It’s just a shame GH is still such a fair way behind B&B in the ratings 😕

Speaking of which, I wonder when NuSpencer is going to have a scene with Valentin…

The guy playing Spencer seems to have chemistry with just about everybody he’s interacted with thus far - Nik, Laura, Ava, Trina, Britt, you name it. I also like in his reveal scene with Trina how he mentioned Courtney. One thing I do find weird though… does Spencer ever acknowledge his mother’s side of the family? I mean, does he know for example that his grandfather recently passed away from dementia, or that his Uncle Sonny is presumed dead?

JFC. I’m so sorry to hear this! Back in my late 20s in the late 2000s, I became part of a MLM thing back home in Australia. I lasted six months before I realised how manipulative and insidious it all was (not to mention the amount of money you have to invest to even get a start). One thing’s for sure, and I’m talking from my own experience - never let anyone who is neurodiverse near any s**t like that.

I second AbcNbc here… Despite certain quarters on these forums deriding the quality of GH writing on here, the GH I am seeing right now has been written so true to character in recent times I cannot remember the previous time when it was this much character driven. I just watched Carly’s telling Britt the bulls**t story about her and Jason “discovering their feeling for each other”, and I thought, “that was just low AF”. And yet, it is true Carly. I remember some people on here a few weeks back going on about “why aren’t we exploring Jason/Carly rather than Jason/Britt?”. And yet now it seems that the writers are doing exactly that - they’re exploring both at the same time, to boot. And re Monica’s reaction to the news, I think she’s have enough years of experience to just shrug her shoulders and let Jason do what he wants. I did find it touching that Monica was speaking to Jason as “her son”, and it’s equally moving that Jason took the time to tell Monica himself, considering he has literally no memory of Monica as his mother. Spencer & Trina look good thus far, although I can only imagine what she will do once she finds out he’s Ava’s stalker - how would the writers realistically get them back on track, in light of the excellent character writing we’ve seen recently? Terry’s scene with Portia was actually quite good, including their repartee with Britt midway through. I really liked that Terry was hitting the CoS stuff from her experience of being trans (which once again is being written in character), and what she could bring to the role in terms of improved services for trans people. The community issues stuff they’ve been hitting lately has been quite well done - the racist judge, the BLM stuff, and now this. Speaking of the racist judge stuff, Molly & TJ getting involved in helping Shawn and Alexis has also been a real highlight. I actually can’t wait for Shawn’s release to occur so he can hit the rest of the town again - would be intriguing to see how he interacts with Curtis again, and hopefully Portia and Taggert too. We all know what Stella thinks about him 😏 Nina/“Mike” needs a bit more of a move on, but I would not be surprised if somehow Britt found out about “Mike” and instead of telling Jason, she actively conspired with Nina to conceal the truth, as a way to get back at Carly. What a way to have the two Westbourne cousins interacting with each other… Anna and Valentin are 🔥🔥🔥. The natural way they have come back to each other throughout the whole Peter storyline has been an unexpected surprised. So much to play with here, especially with the truth about baby Louise/Bailey yet to be uncovered. And I love that it’s Anna who’s catching on to Austin and who his parents are, as I believe Anna and Jimmy Lee did interact with each other way back when. So much more I could write about, but those are my initial stream of consciousness thoughts about the current state of GH play. May the strong writing continue!

Something I’ve been meant to write about for ages… Måneskin’s subsequent worldwide chart success post-Eurovision! While “Zitti e Buoni” had an initial impact when the song won the contest back in May, it’s been not one but TWO of their other songs that have been charting like mad around the world. The first one is “I Wanna Be Your Slave”, which has been hitting the top Top 10 all around Europe, and is currently Top 5 in the UK of all places. The second is a song they performed while competing on X Factor Italy back in 2017, “Beggin”. This one broke into the Billboard Hot 100 this week, currently also Top 10 in the UK (yes, Måneskin have *two* songs in the UK Top 10 simultaneously), and has just gone Top 3 in Australia (?!). This is surely the first time since, like, forever that a Eurovision winner has broken out into the world charts so soon and so spectacularly after winning the contest.

Well (and I admit this is a stretch), considering Ava’s mother is Delia Reid, and Delia had involvement with Joe himself once upon a time, I wonder if that will play into this storyline at all…

I just watched it - I almost cried…

I actually like that their relationship is a lot more layered and nuanced nowadays, rather than the usual “Anna=good, Liesl=bad” stuff we had in the past. I haven’t watched this scene yet, but am certainly dying to!

All I can say with this scene is… WOW. KT and KG frickin nail every single line and beat ❤️

GH should absolutely be trouncing B&B for second spot in the ratings right now - the storytelling over the last few months has been just about spot on. Characters actually written to character, beats getting played when they should be - others have said it here, but this GH is getting back to basic classic soap storytelling style, and for me that’s working big time.

Happy Eurovision Grand Final Day everyone! May the best song/country win tonight! 🥳🥳🥳

I just watched the John Reilly tribute. That was so well done. The flashbacks were so vivid, and it really did bring back the feeling of what it was like for GH back then - he really was an integral part of the canvas at that time. A few things came to my mind during that episode: I know people here thought the writers completely screwed up Anna’s character by having her believe in Peter initially, but Fiona Hughes has been playing TF out of her remorse ever since Anna finally saw the light. Her scenes with Felicia were so real and down to earth - and so rooted in the joint history of those two characters. I also hope this signals the start of Felicia coming back to Port Charles to play a more active role in helping Maxie against Peter - Maxie needs her mother! Overall though, that was brilliant storytelling in the way they used Faison’s poisoning of Tiffany as a way to incorporate the Sean Donely character into the Peter poisoning Chase storyline - and thus set a realistic and solid foundation for the tribute episode. I like others here hope that Caitlin Reilly comes back as Annie Donely in the future - it would be so perfect to continue the next generation of the WSB gang (Annie as Sean and Tiffany’s daughter, Robin as Robert and Anna’s daughter, Ethan as Luke and Holly’s son - the possibilities are endless). Bravo though GH... the return to more traditional writing and storytelling is working from my perspective!

Devastated for Denmark, but so happy that Portugal made it! And Iceland too, considering their COVID scare!

Oh no 😢 I Treni Di Tozeur is one of my favourite Eurovision songs. Rest in peace!

in your opinion, of course. I actually think a lot of the songs this year are quite high quality and very diverse in their offerings - certainly worth celebrating!

^^^ Awww that is so sad. Vila i fred! In terms of this year’s contest, the first and second rehearsals are now pretty much done for all countries, and the betting odds are insane at the moment - for the first time in many years, there is no absolute standout winner. Currently based on odds aggregators (c/o EurovisionWorld.com): 1. Italy 🇮🇹 - 22% of winning the whole contest 2. France 🇫🇷 - 20% 3. Malta 🇲🇹 - 12% 4. Iceland 🇮🇸 - 8% 5. Cyprus 🇨🇾 - 6%

I may be in the minority here... but I actually enjoyed the Jordan/Portia chat! It’s really nice to see them become friends after the tension between them over the whole Taggert fake death thing. Trina also knocked it out of the ball park with Cam. I’m really glad they’re addressing systemic racism, and I hope GH continue to do stuff like this.

Jason and Britt together have been a revelation. All of their scenes recently are utterly riveting to watch. The writers struck paydirt with this storyline!

I actually just skip any of their scenes nowadays - but I did make an exception for Carly’s brutal takedown of Cyrus at the Five Families meeting - that was such a joy to watch.

I can officially confirm that I was in the vaccine group 🥳🥳🥳 Basically it mean I have already had two shots of the J&J vaccine and am thus considered already fully vaccinated. Also, I learned a couple of things... The J&J trial I’ve been involved with in the UK was previously testing on placebo v 2 doses (as opposed to 1 dose that the US were doing). As a result of recent data coming through, the UK trial has now changed to an open trial of 1 dose vs 2 doses - anyone who was previously in the placebo group would be offered one single dose or can opt out of the study and take one of the NHS-approved vaccines, and those who had already received two doses of the vaccine (of which I’m one) are considered fully vaccinated and do not require anything further. So essentially, I’ve done my duty @DramatistDreamercongrats on dose #1! Let us know how the aftermath goes!

I’m meant to find out today whether through my participation in the J&J trial I got the real thing or the placebo. I had two shots, and only had side-effects after the first one (48 hours, chills, muscle aches, the usual flu-like response). But that went away pretty quickly, so I’m assuming I’m in the vaccine group.