Vee

I hated that whole story, I hated Jason and Sam and I didn't care about that baby. They practically canonized the damn thing after the fact, more than its namesake.

The Borg is dead and should never come back. I'll take a new kind of Jason.

I seem to recall Joseph Phillips ranting about his conservative politics contributing to his downfall in Hollywood. Which, uh, probably isn't it. But there were a couple embarrassing interviews a few years back. I absolutely loved him in the role - and I think he also played the crazy, drunk, dark Justus the character devolved into after the whole Damian thing. I don't think that was Monti Sharp. I can't remember much of anything about Sharp in the role, unless of course it was him and then I'll be really embarrassed, because I remember Dark!Justus and just thinking 'wow, Joe Phillips is amazing.' And then the character disappeared. I never believed they'd bring him back, and I was shocked when they did. Unfortunately, Justus, who had apparently gone into a monastery or something to repent, came out played by a very mediocre young actor, whose new Justus immediately decided, 'hey, let me go back into the mob.' Because it all worked out so well before! At that point I stopped caring about the character. I didn't like Mfundo Morrison, and I was mortified when they had him quickly segue into singing old spirituals to comfort the Quartermaines during the PC Hotel fire in 2004 - it was exactly as Tim Stickney famously said about playing R.J. on OLTL - how he had deliberately sang off-key anytime they tried to get him to perform on the show, because if he didn't sabotage it, "I knew I would be singing Negro spirituals to Bo on his deathbed sooner or later". I thought Morrison was pretty bad, and they clearly didn't care about him. I was completely done with the character when they tried to sell us on his weird romance with psycho Faith, and then when they had him pointedly reject poor, boring Lainey Winters. IIRC, he was surrounded by a gaggle of white mob molls at some bar, and he grinned at Lainey and smugly said, in the script, something like - I'm paraphrasing - 'and for the record, it's not that I don't like black women - I just don't like you.' Because there were soooo many key black characters on Guza's GH that we had room for that kind of toxic [!@#$%^&*] on the show. After that, they found him dead and I didn't care. Justus was already dead to me. It was just such a waste of a once-wonderful character.

This is a very, very, very strong run of episodes so far - much stronger than Series 7 and, IMO, possibly Series 5 at this point. And Listen was pretty fantastic. For my money, there was something there. But what they did with it - the ambiguity of the ending - was brilliant. Capaldi is already in my top tier of Doctors. Clara will probably never be one of my top ten companions, but she is very, very good this year and JC is doing great work. I do love Samuel Anderson, I just hope the story with him and Clara surprises me a bit more. When they arrived on the "last planet," my first thought was that these were the creatures from Midnight.

It goes the other way around. Tony Call - married to OLTL's former continuity supervisor, Margo Husin - gave the anecdote to Jeff Giles' essential Llanview in the Afternoon. Light promptly denies recalling this offer or any such details, but she did refuse to return at the time and it was, in 2011, rumored to be because of story. I had heard at the time that they had wanted to tie her into the deeply boring Terri Conn's story as con woman Christine/Kristine Karr - many fans suspected her last name was no coincidence, and that the character was actually Mary Karr, the baby who Karen had once stolen for her sister Jenny. But that may be just fan spec that spiraled out of control. The Karen/Herb idea is a typical RC history gag - look, they used to be at odds, Herb is the one who put Karen on the stand and made her melt down, and now they're married. It has no basis in the characters themselves, which is why I think it's stupid. He wanted to do the same thing with Demi Moore and John Stamos last year on GH, have their characters come back together for the anniversary. That might have been cute because their characters were pretty lightweight, but with something like Karen and Herb Callison - I mean, if that's the only thing you can think of to do with them, come on.

Did she? I didn't notice.

Why am I not surprised?

So were they all still in the apartment building at the end or what? I was a bit taken aback when I watched part of the Christmas episode from '86 and saw David Forsyth enter something that looked like a separate house.

I don't remember much about Kevin or any boyfriend, I just remember the claim that he was last seen at the carnage at Holidays after it was blown to bits, which is a shame. Billy Douglas got a better send-off than that. I think it was a bit afterschool special, but that suited the tone of AMC, which was always more (IMO) suburban and wholesome - and there's nothing wrong with that. But when you're a kid and you're gravitating to the grittier or more action-packed shows (OLTL, GH) you find that somewhat trite, or at least I did. I like it much more now because I understand the show better. Some of it is a bit overly earnest and '90s, but I prefer overly earnest AMC to cynical and Fronsian AMC. I think so much of the best of AMC (and for that matter, a lot of the early '90s OLTL I grew up with) is about being deeply earnest. I don't think all of the teens were bad - I adored Kelsey.

1996: Laurel is shot on The Cutting Edge. I was one of (very, very) few people who was fond of Laurel, probably because Felicity LaFortune was practically a dead ringer both physically and in delivery to Hillary B. Smith from OLTL (she ended up subbing for HBS on OLTL during the JFP years). One of my first big stories as a kid watching AMC was the whole Janet/Jane Cox caper with her terrorizing Laurel, and I was sad to see her go. I remember being iffy on the whole Michael Delaney story even then - I found it forced and sort of shoved into the story with characters we'd never seen before (I hadn't really been around for OLTL during the Billy Douglas story). I think I was too hard on the show at the time because I was so into OLTL and GH by then. It plays much, much better today. And it's so well-shot, with the swooping camera even while Tim and Amanda are backstage watching. Both Ben Monk as Kevin Sheffield and Chris Bruno(?) as Michael are much hotter than I remember, but I was like 13 or 14. I remember being so outraged that AMC had hired Brian Gaskill from Models Inc. and was trying to pass him off as a high schooler - it felt so phony to me, the whole PVHS setup used to remind me of Saved by the Bell and I thought it was just plastic and cutesy compared to how OLTL or GH treated kids. Again, all of that plays much better today too. It's really good stuff. Liza wasn't yet defanged here. "I want blood!" I remember loving her affair with Tad and thinking she was fantastic (meanwhile, Cady McClain's hair continued to spiral down into the abyss). Almost immediately after they put Liza with Adam - a pairing which worked at first - I thought she quickly turned into a frumpy, dour woman in mom jeans and never really recovered while Marcy Walker was still there. I cracked up at Opal somehow bringing the discussion back to Bobby's bad grades and need for tutoring. Classic. I miss her and the show so much these days, after last year.

I wish I hadn't clicked that, but it does sound neat.

Winter Is Coming is now going off a Boxtrolls interview Isaac Hempstead-Wright just did with the Irish press (from today, apparently), suggesting he will be filming even if Bran's back-up crew is not. I guess we'll have to see. HBO has yet to comment.

That whole article is hilarious.

Bran Stark and Hodor are taking a holiday. Their storyline has caught up with the books, so that crew beyond the Wall will apparently not be featured in Season 5. I am not thrilled as Bran is one of my favorites, but I'm also not surprised given the situation with the books. And that'll just make that crew's return that much bigger, I think. I can cope. ETA: This news is only from an offhand quote from Nairn in an article about his DJ tour, so there is apparently some possibility that only Nairn and Ellie Kendrick (Meera) won't be featured, as some at Vulture have speculated. But for now I'm just going off the quote itself, which may be subject to change. Stay tuned.

I think Erin did just fine in her love scenes, etc. with David Fumero, Jason Shane-Scott and others. She was assertive and in the moment and she and David, who was a fair bit older, had serious sexual chemistry. I think the problem was mostly manufactured, frankly; I didn't see her miss a beat with any of that material. She always came off more mature than Bree Williamson, both before and after she left (and returned for cameos). But would they have ever paired her with Kamar de los Reyes? No, never. I have never had a doubt Erin could play adult stories - with Jessica's children, with Brody Lovett, at the Banner, etc. Lord knows they hardly even attempted to write Bree's Jessica as a mother or a working adult professional. I remember they had some little video Q&As (maybe for SOAPnet) in 2002 with members of the cast, and Erin got pitched some softball question from a fan about what mistakes she thought Jessica had made or something. Erin was clearly barely restraining herself and being polite for the cameras as she talked about Jessica maybe not making the best move staying involved with Seth Anderson. She was gone a couple months later.

I know they were still very close, but I have no idea if they were in a relationship. I doubt it.

Steve Harris was hired for that story. I don't know if Routh didn't want to play it, but he did leave a Bible-thumping rant on his website after being fired promising that God would judge those who had let him go. Erin Torpey chose to leave because she was upset about her story over her last year or two. She took the Natalie/baby switch story personally, felt it had disenfranchised her and invalidated her years playing Viki's daughter. She may or may not have had antipathy towards Melissa Archer, though that's never been substantiated. She despised the pairing with Seth, both Seths. She felt her airtime and story suffered in comparison to MA/Natalie (it did). So she left. She may have done so anyway, but those stories and choices pushed her out the door.

You didn't step on anything, I just wish you'd not always restate everything. I think they were right to recast when Erin chose to leave, though she wouldn't have done so had Gary Tomlin handled her better BTS. The mistake was the stories they gave Jessica in Michael Malone's (and Brian Frons's) rush to make her a more mature young adult female lead. In Malone's mind that meant pairing with her first love's much older brother in an OOC storyline that was on everyday. In Brian Frons's (and Malone's as well, IMO) that meant making her a lily-white damsel in distress who had an IQ of room temperature. IIRC at least part of the reason they fired Routh was because Gary had planned for the gay story with Seth and Rex. I do agree Erin and Melissa were wonderful together, especially near the end as their relationship mellowed. Erin was even and more mature, Melissa was the fire and they complemented each other without it being caricatures or one person being good vs. bad.

I think they would have developed as separate and distinct types of heroines, as they were doing already. They tried to continue that with Bree's Jessica up to a point, but ultimately it came down to her only stories being DID and [!@#$%^&*]. Which left Natalie as the only really stable core heroine (other than Starr, ugh).

Yeah, I already said that twice but it means a lot more coming from you, John.

Her arc was to walk in and say hi. She was on for a few days at best.

Barely. It was enough for them to get away with.

It's very interesting, but I have to wonder how well the wild step of moving everyone in town into the same apartment complex went over with fans and the cast (outside of their press clippings). I mean, was the rest of the town a desolate, bombed-out wasteland after the flood? No one can live anywhere else? Are there roving gangs of cannibals on the streets? What is the infrastructure?

No. They hid her face in the flashback used.

No comment.