Vee

She would be great, but I of course am thinking of her in What's Love Got to Do with It.

Some spoilery press photos:

For those who care (like @DRW50) and want to be spoiled: I guess I have to reluctantly rewatch

Oh yes, I still remember that. But I'm much kinder to David Henesy than you are overall.

I think the pre-Barnabas episodes are very underrated both for dialogue and character. They're slow but they really create a world and fill out the characters, imbuing them with heavy dimension that ultimately will have to sustain them for years as the show largely stops writing for character after it returns from 1795. What we know about them by then is what they have to power them. (I don't think the show was bad after, I actually love it in '68 and often in times after that, but it was very different.) I think the B&W episodes with Barnabas' early days are especially frightening - they terrified me as a kid - but the color stuff in '67 is also very strong, especially in the stretch where Julia is on the run, Carolyn is under Barnabas' control, and you get the sense that events have gone off the rails for the regular characters and anything goes. As a child viewer seeing it in syndication on the Sci-Fi Channel, who had no idea who lived or who died, it was a lot. Mitch Ryan is especially powerful in the early pre-Barnabas era as the sort of Byronic Burke Devlin character. You knew they had to kill him once Barnabas comes in, despite Ryan's alcohol problem making it impossible to keep him at the show - Burke dominates the first year or so as the fulcrum character, he's incredibly magnetic and charismatic. You couldn't see him becoming a dupe for Barnabas and Julia, as Anthony George's more benign, mild version briefly does before getting unceremoniously killed off. I always found Burke's offscreen plane crash death very eerie and suspicious, and I think the show does toy with the question if Barnabas' powers somehow got him on that plane and if he took it down. I had always wanted Burke to return one day, in any revival project, as a kind of vengeful power broker and puppet master, driven by Vicki's inevitable demise to get revenge on Barnabas and co. I still have Art Wallace's "Shadows on the Wall" DS bible somewhere. IIRC in the earliest versions of the plot Vicki was going to somehow be tied to the butler or his daughter - Betty Hanscomb or something. I don't remember the exact details. I do know there's all sorts of raised and dropped plotlines and characters offscreen in '66, like Ned Calder, the man they clearly intended to pair with Liz and so on. I've always found '66 very rich, but I don't begrudge the show after for it because it's still awfully well-written, specifically the early Barnabas stuff.

I'm just pleased the homeless plotline has a point. I'm surprised they're going here this soon with the kids.

If I'm being 💯 about it I think Jan is a fine supporting part for a solid daytime vet (probably someone from the P&G soaps), as opposed to someone from the production location who is clearly cheaper. Which seems to govern some casting. I get the rationale, but I would start going through the ATWT/GL, etc. rolodex myself.

tbqh I don't care about Jan, I don't care about Ashley and I think Jon Lindstrom as Joey is an acquired taste. Jon is a great actor but certain things are in his zone and then some are not. Some days I find Joey credible and compelling, but the stuff with him hanging around the Golden Corral, grumbling about Doug and bitching at Randy is not amazing. If he had material on par with what MVJ wrote for Ryan/Kevin on GH back in the day it'd be a different story. I do think he has real chemistry with Vanessa, which is in large part due to MVJ clearly molding that character (and hiring an appropriate actor) in the Lucy Coe vein when she reinvented Lucy in the '90s as well. But I am not here to spend 6+ months watching Jon glower a lot (which is what he's doing half the time to carry weak story) and make more vague dire pronouncements while Jen Jacob gets flustered and weepy over "Daddy" or whatever would come of that storyline. Putting them together sounds like a recipe for doom to me. But I may be in the minority on that.

Lucky Day is an awfully good Doctor-lite episode focused on Millie Gibson and Jemma Redgrave - I am glad the show brought in Varada Sethu who continues to give major Caroline John/Liz Shaw vibes, but Millie was always very good in what felt designed to be a single arc companion and she's very good here too. She deserves a bit more somewhere in the franchise. The depressingly relevant storyline aside, I was most impressed by the showcase for UNIT and Kate Stewart. Jemma is always good but she was amazing here, noting the Doctor would've stopped her from going all the way re: Think Tank if he were there. Yet it's the kind of brute force her father could and did resort to in extreme situations back in the day. I almost hoped she would allow Conrad to be killed right then and there, which is something I think the Brigadier also would've done when backed against a wall over operational control and the safety of the Earth. She came very close, and the steel Redgrave exhibited (as always) was amazing. Whatever spinoffs can still materialize given the current streaming climate and DW's uncertain future (I do think it will continue somewhere, but I would not be shocked if it's back to a run of holiday specials for awhile a la Tennant's and Whittaker's), aside from the upcoming odd Sea Devils miniseries that's in the can, I still hope UNIT and Kate can get a proper one sometime.

According I believe to BTG staff themselves (and Tunie, I think), had they not been picked up here they would've stopped in August and only aired til this December. So this is good news, although I wish it had been a full 2-year pickup into '27. But it is a new show.

I think @Darn @Faulkner and others have a fair point re: it being an unfortunate look and coincidence. I can see their point about the two Black husbands in rapid succession, without much time in between. Frankly, based on the early casting notices I thought before the show's debut (and I still suspect) that Ted's crimes might be far worse than infidelity or a secret baby. That would've mixed it up more. It's a soap, people are going to cheat, but it might've given them more variety if Nicole was stepping out first. Still, I wouldn't trade the Leslie/Eva reveal material for anything right now. Still, Fanfic Account #3 is just looking for any weapon to attack the show for not accepting his unsolicited scripts. When it's not the husbands it's Martin, or Chelsea or Dani. He's seething it got renewed.

Presumably not MVJ herself stepping back, though.

I really hope the next steps with the show are building up/out family or story for both Mona and Shanice. Mona has always struck me as prime real estate for a proper family setup.

If Eva is a Dupree then I have to wonder how it shakes out. Did Leslie/Dana straight up heist the maternity ward?

Poor Lauren Bugliogi about to cry. Her emotional scenes in bed a couple weeks ago with ol' Doug got me.

Plus it gets the show attention on social media. It's become a thing and it's fun for people, as opposed to being seen as a signal of an endless decline as it was at Days (which ironically enough has lasted another 20 years since).

Like I've said before, I think the show is often a very strange (and admittedly fascinating to me) mix of very old-fashioned, purple dialogue and classic soap opera structural elements - right down to the insanely blatant, virally successful product placement for P&G - mixed with other dialogue or material that tries desperately to be current and hip. One moment it will remind me of very hokey old B&B stuff or expository stuff out of the '60s, and the other it'll look and sound like the Prospect Park soaps. Some of the hipper dialogue or material (Chelsea's sexuality, etc.) works for me, others are pure cringe. Same with the classical stuff, like the characters (particularly the elders) gathering around to recap plot, make grand pronouncements about each other or their children/family, or make grave portents of the future. Then there's the whole piano thing lol. It's a weird mix, but not one I'm mad about atm so much as mystified by. As a longtime soap fan it is very compelling to examine even when parts of it really don't work, because so much of BTG feels both very old and very new at the same time. I do think they need to dump the Bell (or maybe more accurately Brad Bell) school of dialogue MVJ has been working from for years, and bring in more of the naturalistic GH house style she and Guza worked from in the '90s and 2000s. If that means dumping a lot of the dialogue people so be it (I do think some are good). OTOH the Bell style seems to work for a lot of the social media and probably offline audience that isn't me, so who's to say. I don't think Dani is at all in the latter-day Carly though. She's not on quite as much, and she's far from always right. I do think they are definitely playing it down the middle with the Duprees while waiting to reveal more, but I do think they want you to see them both ways or divide the audience on who they are. Which seems to have succeeded because some people are baffled.

Lovely news, though I'd like a multi-year pick-up in future.

Oh God, she's back? I thought those first scenes were well-intentioned but hysterical.

Not hugely surprising, but still another awful blow for GH and soap history in general. Denise was a pioneer on several shows. Others have said everything far more eloquently than me, so I'm just echoing them here. I do wish more of her DAYS work was available - I always wanted to see them honor her again - but I am glad so much of her GH run is.

Another legend.

I mean, he is but he's also still an ásshole.

I don't hate Hayley but she would absolutely cry about falling for Jacob.

We've agreed plenty before! Probably.

You're both right.