OzFrog

Julian is dead dead. His body was recovered soon after the collapse (Sam was the one who identified his body at the morgue).

Folks we are off to Turin in Italy for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, with the theme of the contest being The Sound Of Beauty!

 

We have officially 40 countries competing in this year’s contest, which will happen on the following dates:

• Semi Final 1 - 10 May 2022
• Semi Final 2 - 12 May 2022
• Grand Final - 14 May 2022

 

Semi-final running orders are below:

 

In addition to the Semi Final lineups above, the host nation Italy will be performing in the Grand Final in 9th spot on the running order (as per the draw done at the Heads of Delegation meeting on 14 March). 

 

All songs for this year’s contest are below:

BULGARIA

 

CZECH REPUBLIC

 

ALBANIA

 

MOLDOVA

 

SPAIN

 

NORTH MACEDONIA

 

IRELAND

 

ISRAEL

 

ITALY

 

ESTONIA

 

LITHUANIA

 

LATVIA

 

NORWAY

 

POLAND

 

CROATIA

 

SLOVENIA

 

SAN MARINO

 

MALTA

 

AUSTRALIA

 

UKRAINE

 

FINLAND

 

NETHERLANDS

 

MONTENEGRO

 

GERMANY  

 

FRANCE

 

DENMARK

 

SERBIA  

 

ROMANIA 

 

SWITZERLAND

 

UNITED KINGDOM

 

BELGIUM

 

GEORGIA

 

AUSTRIA

 

CYPRUS

 

GREECE

 

SWEDEN

 

ICELAND

 

PORTUGAL

 

ARMENIA

 

ARMENIA

 

AZERBAIJAN

 

Alright I’ve decided - new thread time!

Yeah the UK Government are pushing ahead with vaccines being their #1 defence strategy against the virus, seemingly at the expense of other mitigation measures (and I can say this firsthand as someone who lives in London). With the winter flu season coming up as well, the hospitals here are going to be feeling a lot of strain, and there is the danger that the NHS will get too overloaded (we already have 5.7 million people on hospital waiting lists for elective surgery, and that is growing by the thousands every day).

So catching up on yesterday’s episode…

 

 

Wondering if it’s worth starting a Eurovision 2022 thread yet, seeing as we are now in a ESC new year and the host city has been announced…

On 9/29/2021 at 4:44 PM, Soapsuds said:

He was a hot mess. He's clueless.

We getting into transphobic misgendering now?

The Cameron/Spencer scenes were really well done! It’s those types of scenes I love watching, where they start to delve into the psychological a bit more. 

FWIW, I’m still enjoying the individual scenes and character interactions, even if the beats of the story aren’t making as much sense now as they did previously. Then again, I’ve always been more about the characters than the plots, as long as the characters were written true to themselves, so I’m keeping an open mind here.

I’m intrigued by the Mrs Wu/Brad speculation. Is it actually confirmed that Brad is in fact Mrs Wu’s son, and I just missed something along the way?

One thing I wonder about MarDevil and Sami - was it not PossessedMarlena who originally convinced Sami to steal Austin away from Carrie back in the mid 90s?

Both “Don’t Shut Me Down” and “I Still Have Faith In You” made a big splash on charts worldwide this week! In the UK, they debuted at #9 and #14 respectively, making Don’t Shut Me Down their first UK Top 10 hit in almost exactly 40 years (their previous was One Of Us back at the end of 1981).

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

20 hours ago, xtr said:

I believe he knows that Sonny's dead. (In addition to visiting Mike's Grave) He's always been very close to Sonny, that's one of Sonny's best relationships. He introduced Sonny to Valentin when he was younger and said that Sonny was from his "wonderful mother's" side. He's mentioned Courtney before when he was younger, but he's been mentioning her quite a bit since he met Trina. He's already talked with Trina three times about Courtney. It looks like they are bonding over issues regarding their parents. This might come into play even more if Curtis ends up being Trina's dad. I could see a storyline about her paternity happening. 

I agree that the New Spencer has good chemistry with a lot of people. I enjoyed his scenes with Britt the other day. They've always had a good relationship and he considered her a mother figure. It's nice to hear that they continued to keep in touch offscreen and see them bond again.

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?

3 hours ago, Gray Bunny said:

Lord... folks... just when you thought she was out of the water. 

Now we learn she's part of an MLM Pyramid cult scheme. I can even tell you which one: [redacted]. Look up the reviews. I'm amazed people can be so dumb, naïve, and vulnerable to fall for such garbage. It's cultish and similar to the idea of Scientology. She's trying to get our good friend to join now (so that she can make it through to the "third tier."). That's it. We're done with her. It's a lost cause. 

 

On second thought, I'm not going to list the name because I don't want those crazies to find this thread down the line during a random google search. That's how nuts these people can be. 

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.

 

1 hour ago, John said:

I do wonder if there is a connection between this novak family on GH & Joe novak on Ryan's Hope

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…

15 hours ago, OzFrog said:

 

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!

 

I just watched it - I almost cried…

 

 

3 hours ago, victoria foxton said:

Anna and Liesl smashing 80's/90's electronics/VHS tapes was the best thing. About today's episode.

 

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!