Vee

He checked out well before that, lol.

To this day I'm pretty sure I have no idea who the [!@#$%^&*] Covina actually was on AMC. They used to mention her constantly and I was like, 'who??' When I began watching there were like six family homes with proper names - Wildwind, Linden House, etc. I could not keep them straight and still can't.

I would still make Duplaix's Rachel and Dan Gauthier's Kevin a tentpole couple at OLTL. But that's enough OLTL bullshit from me.

At the same time, it's absolutely inescapable that dozens of minority actors are dumped off to the corner with each other on soaps every year while chemistry with white leads and Black characters is avoided like the plague. So that can't be discounted especially when discussing the unique situation at OLTL in the 2000s. And plenty of people just liked Evangeline more with John and Todd/Victor, period. (Fun fact: Before TSJ came along, I'd wanted to pair Roger Howarth and Ellen Bethea's Rachel, but admittedly that would've been a betrayal of her character on some levels.)

Is it just me, or does the way Martha Byrne keeps discussing the Goutman conflict in such vague but dark terms lately suggest something real relevant these days?

You could make the same case for DOOL with the Hernandii vs. the Black characters as you can for Y&R, or all the other examples you mention. The Santos and their holding up Mateo as the exemplar for years - give me a break. At OLTL: David Fumero was a gorgeous, talented man and frankly I thought he and REG had the most chemistry out of all her prospective pairings (I think she did too, based on her own discreet commentary to press at the time), but he was consistently devalued, not just by the show but by the warring fanbases. And why? Not just because of racism, because the audience was diverse. I'm sure many folks just preferred her with Easton or St. John and that's fine, but the way Fumero was dismissed always got me - I felt it was a reflection of the same calculation we all saw. And I'm all for as many black/white romances as possible, lol! I'm sure others felt Fumero/REG was just the option that would've relegated her to the sidelines, though it never got that far. It's a messy topic. But I just think it's awful when we can all see the game being run by asking people to choose between different representation of different characters of color as an either/or, and then see people's prospects being railroaded or limited around it.

Over a decade ago, my master plan as an unemployed writer with too much time on my hands was for ABC to try to snake Y&R's audience by hiring Rowell onto OLTL to play the daughter Carla gave up for adoption, possibly with kids of her own in tow. She would come to town with an agenda on behalf of her family with a big town secret, mirroring the real-life issue of the show disinheriting its original Black cast. Ideally it would've lured Holly back too, of course. Of course, this was hugely naive as ABC didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about Black characters. But it'd still work!

I remember being appalled when Nora's Jewish heritage on OLTL began to disappear, and Hillary B. Smith made note of her celebrating too many Christmases. IIRC the pendulum swung back a bit later, but still. Mulcahey is of course correct and we've all noticed it - the default is to make any non-white character as milquetoast or not tied to their cultural heritage as possible. Also at OLTL was something Tim Stickney (R.J. Gannon) discussed in the oral history book, which was again quite evident at the time and is a tricky topic: ABCD had done studies in the mid-90s which determined that the white audience was more comfortable with Hispanic/Latinx leads and pairing them with white characters. Therefore Hispanic characters were prioritized, which allowed the network to claim they were all about diversity while disenfranchising the Black characters. You see it at other shows too. I don't need to mention how omnipresent the Vega family become in the 2000s at OLTL. That's not to say it's an either/or - these characters are important too, and I absolutely loved Kamar de los Reyes' first run, loved Antonio and Andy in the 90s, etc. Loved David and Melissa Fumero even in bad stories. But what became of Antonio later on, with Jessica, the Santi mess, etc., and the fact that they could seemingly keep adding more Vega-adjacent characters while relegating the Black cast to talk-tos and BFFs, it was obvious even before anyone openly discussed it what the calculation was. At Y&R today, too. It doesn't have to be like that.

A travesty. I'm glad I finished them when I did. That story was propulsive, dark yet full of soap and it got me through much of the early months of the hell that is this year. I never thought I'd get to see that story again as an adult and it holds up. If Disney/ABCD ever wises up and monetizes the old archives, I'd pay for it.

Thank you so much, kalbir.

I get that; what I mean is, is there a list of which has aired when in the last few months?

Is there an ordered list of the classics and what has aired when in the last few months? I am trying to follow the thread from like a month back and catch up, lol