Vee

So I'm sure this has been posted before, but I am posting it again because I am currently enjoying it. From the week of August 17th, 1992. I remember an old story about how in certain markets they heavily promoted Nathan Purdee and Tonja Walker together as though Hank and Alex were a couple. The chemistry was very obvious here. Yet they never pulled the trigger, apparently. Watching this makes me think I'd love to see Alex back in Cutter's business in Season 2 on TOLN should that glorious day ever materialize - maybe in a scheme with Natalie involved as well, just as Cain and Tina were back in the day. I did love Karen Witter's Tina. I loved Luna so much as a kid. They would never let Susan Batten be frontburner today.

I thought that was a pretty fantastic episode. There's scenes in there, duets with "minor" characters that would not have seen the light of day a couple years ago. Certainly not the Beth stuff, or the now much more prominent role for Carol, which Melissa McBride is taking by storm - she has such a core of strength and grace, and I don't fault Carol for what she did. That Carol/Carl palace intrigue scene is also something we'd never have gotten before. Those were amazing scenes with the father and the kids as well, and the little girls were quite good. If McBride and Danai Gurira do not warrant a nom next year it will be beyond me. Just that one wordless scene with Michonne and Judith was incredible. I felt bad for poor Karen, but I was just glad it wasn't Sasha (though I still fear she is doomed - ). And poor Rick and the farm! They're freaking me out on a lot of characters' potential to get sick. I got a twinge on both Maggie's dazedness at the fence, and Michonne having such an extreme reaction to the baby's crying. That may just be her PTSD re: her own child, but when they pitched the sound FX up I thought it was the illness. I don't think it was a psycho who burned Karen and the other dude, or the Governor. I think someone burned them because he or she knew they were infected and decided they couldn't take the risk for the rest of the community. I don't know if that person bled them out or if they were bleeding out like Patrick on the way outside. The question is who would make that executive decision. I know all the obvious suspects, but frankly my first thought - after tonight - was Carol. She is fast becoming the shadow council, making the hard choices under other people's noses. I'm not condoning burning them per se, but I saw it when she was talking to Carl. She was not [!@#$%^&*] around. I can buy that evolution because I think Carol's come a long way - I don't think it's like her sudden bout of Kirkman PMS at the end of the Season 2 finale - but it is still a bit bracing.

I don't think so. That may be part of the fandom reaction for some, but it doesn't apply to the larger audience or the show's aims.

I don't think they'll do anything to Rick until the show is over.

I like Daryl a lot, but I thought he was going to buy it last year and be replaced by Merle. I think he's got maybe another year or two in him, but at this point it's inevitable that they're going to start killing more of the old guard.

I'm pretty sure

Yet another GL alum does Grand Theft Auto V - Beth Chamberlin as black widow Abigail Mathers, a side mission character. For the record, also, here's Robert Bogue as corrupt "FIB" (FBI) agent Steven Haines, one of the key villains of the game. He's often seen in active missions, but he also is a TV star who hosts a "true crime" show, as seen here.

I have seen little of the original Andy, but I found her creepy as [!@#$%^&*]. Wendee Pratt was mine. IIRC, they made Hunter Guthrie an abuser.

They did say Andy cheated on Antonio, which I never bought, being a huge fan of theirs as a kid. Originally JFP was going to say Andy was killed in the line of duty, but KDLR refused that.

Patrick and Marty and Antonio and Andy were both Malone couples. And I loved them both. (Check your PMs!)

Yeah, AMC has been nickel-and-diming their premiere hits from the start (including Mad Men at one point, and I don't care much for that show). They claim to want to play in the big leagues but act like they're running TBS, or still running the old Roy Rogers Westerns that TCM doesn't want like they did back in the '90s and early 2000s. It's ridiculous. I have a terrible feeling that

I don't think a lot of that WD audience - or many of the people behind television, frankly, especially at the AMC executive level - are ready for the idea of pairing the show's lead hero with a warrior woman who's a dark-skinned African-American who could probably snap Andrew Lincoln over her knee. That said, I think they're the pairing to beat and I wish they'd have the courage to do it. The chemistry is huge and all over the scenes.

I don't recall one, but I don't really read them anymore.

Poor little Vincent Martella and Kyle Gallner. Too pretty to survive. I liked that a lot. Reminded me a lot of the original Survivors, as Carl and I have talked about. I hope it's playing well with the rest of the audience. The plague is bad, bad news - it clearly started with the livestock.

What doesn't excite him actually excites me.

Joe also had a fling with the young Cathy Craig, IIRC. Dorian had young Dan Wolek before Joey, apparently. Who'd have thought?

IIRC, when Malone was still there he'd originally brought Drew on to have an interracial romance with Rachel, which Becky Lee Abbott would turn up over to be violently against, igniting some sort of racial strife in Llanview - which makes absolutely no sense, having seen Becky Lee. This was the story he vaguely outlined in some fan correspondence a while back, without really mentioning Becky by name but I know it was going to be her role. Seeing as I found both of the young actors in those particular roles at the time to be stunningly boring, I would have found it hard to care. I believe someone else later on did plan for Drew and Nora - HBS talked about it in an interview around the time JFP came aboard - but it got scuttled.

Man, I can remember the recons with the telecine stills of those scenes and the audio running over them, but seeing it in motion - wow. I never thought I'd see them. These are both absolute classic stories, and cornerstones of the Patrick Troughton era.

I remember the Poseidon reveal. I had no idea who Carlo was.

DV Bordisso and the psychic spies! That story still doesn't make any sense to me. Did B&E write it?

Just FYI: Robert Bogue (Mallet) has another featured voice role in the new Grand Theft Auto V, releasing tomorrow at midnight. I thought I heard his voice while watching some video from the game, and I checked into it and it's him. The Rockstar Games projects, and the GTA series in particular, have often featured soap alumni, particularly a number of alumni from OLTL and GL. GTA IV featured the late Doris Belack (and Sunset Beach's Tim Adams, who played Ron Walsh on OLTL), and Bogue played an ambitious bouncer in the game's second expansion, The Ballad of Gay Tony. I always liked Bogue, and he has a facility for dark comedy that both of his GTA credits enjoy.

Gary's show was high camp, mostly dumb - unlike the technique Ron Carlivati perfected years later, which on its best days mixes good, smart storytelling with comedy (and on its bad days does something quite different) - but he did bring back the show's heart after an extended hiatus, and he dearly loved OLTL and worked to respond to just about everything under the sun from fans. He tried to please everyone as well, which was impossible. It was a goof of a show, but it was fun and it gave me as a fan back some sense of pride, especially when a story or character did really work and connect (Natalie, the baby swap, and then Cristian and Natalie). Gary got in hot water with the old school Todd and Téa fanbase the following year when he brought her back, and then publicly commented on the classic fanbase mailbox-stuffing technique. It's common for most fanbases on soaps, really, but I'm not sure any other exec has ever addressed it or singled out a particular fanbase. I don't think they ever forgave him for that. I always thought it was horrible that they'd made a point to write in that Todd did not bother to call the Coast Guard to go get Téa and Ross. I don't know whose idea it was. It was typical callous, cartoonish Todd at that juncture, but it was so unnecessary, particularly after the emotional scenes he'd had regarding her, Blair and Starr before leaving that island. I loved Téa and had missed her since two years prior, but I thought her return in '02 was crap. Specifically after they cut the scenes they'd apparently shot with her and Tim Stickney, addressing the way Téa abandoned R.J. They set that up with R.J. talking about Téa with another character, then the meeting never materialized onscreen. Bullshit.

I did!

I don't remember the day to day writing being terribly good, to be honest. It would have the occasional poetic flourish by Malone - "Jen and Joey - we're the priest and the punk!" - but would come out sounding so stupid. Malone has always been very, very spare in talking about this run. I wish he would because oh my God, it was a disaster and so much of it was him.

So, back in 2003, this happened. Mitch and Dorian seek the Bahdra diamond, the mystical Indian gem reputed to be responsible for Victor Lord's wealth and power. Yeah. Sadly, I can't find a clip of the sequence where Dorian and Blair got trapped in this room with a series of torture implements and encroaching poison spikes as they attempted to take the diamond for themselves. This was all in the basement of Llanfair, BTW, so it's all still down there. This was a strange, strange time at OLTL - every day was like DOOL.