Vee

The last two eps are a huge step up on every level but especially dialogue, though I thought a lot of eps 3/4 were strong (and the early scenes in ep 2? with Dani and Anita). The only confirmed weak link for me remains the Morgans and Robo-Martin. Jury is out for me on Chelsea and Naomi, who have good and bad moments.

They're rich, powerful and I think, per most soap dynasties, used to a degree of drama. Dani's gun was full of blanks and she's likely pulled stunts before. For families like that (or the Kennedys or Bushes or whatever IRL example we could cite) it is often about control first, trauma second. Hence the reason they were all there in the first place (Martin).

Truly wild watching the bulk of the white cast of a soap opera reduced to talk-to and reactors after the fact to the main Black plot. Refreshing! Meanwhile, Derek stares at AHN-dre and Ashley and mentally drafts tonight’s 4chan post. I do wish we'd gotten to see Dani and Pamela just sitting here knocking back drinks at Uptown AbFab-style for awhile. Bill and Hayley's living room is, uh, different. And yeah, Anita and Dani are in no way Mona and Erica. Anita has a hold on her that seems very strong and at times toxic, which may have contributed to part of Dani being who she is (including re: Chelsea). Anita is the one giving Edward Quartermaine or Lucinda Walsh here to me, while Vernon so far seems to be the soft power.

I love that Nicole went after Dani following Anita's dressing-down despite their differences. Tamara was great, too. You understood and totally got her anger while (for me, at least) understanding Dani's hurt. Same with Anita coldly dismissing Naomi when she doubled down on supporting herm other. Classic soap family nuances and crosscurrents. Martin remains an android. "Humans are sometimes pushed to extremes!" The reason Karla can do as much as she's doing (and do it well) as Dani is because Daphnee is so, so strong as a foundational character. Trying to get Anita to apologize, while Anita keeps her nose turned up.

AHN-dre and White Ashley stuck in the ABC Fan Fantasy crossover elevator is a cliche as old as the hills lol. "I'm sure she'll be here soon," her loaf of a husband tells the thin air for the third time. Please recast them both. Karla has been killing it the last two days in particularly, first on Friday in the very vulnerable and beautiful (and well-dialogued, the best on the show so far) scenes with Andre and Bill and now in today's show going HAM. Was she OTT and foolish? Absolutely! That's soap opera. I don't mind a histrionic, narcissistic and messy character when they are presented honestly as such; it's not like the show is saying everything Carly Dani is doing is great, unlike at GH. Dani is her own worst enemy and the show clearly tells you that. I think KM's well-known crazy-ass soap opera eyes sometimes can obscure her talent lol. And her range, which she's proven to me in the last several shows much more than before. I never thought I'd buy her as a ladyboss of Chelsea's career, etc. But she's giving Erica Kane, among other more deranged examples. Not too sure about that whole-ass afghan Leslie/Dana is wearing. But she's still great. Nurse Shanice gossiping about the IG stream at the hospital is hysterical.

Paramount has been pretty good with BTG in the last week IMO. I was astonished they put it up within an hour or two of the West Coast airing. GH on Hulu takes much longer.

We're really gonna make new accounts with the same name in front of everyone while our current ones are still in good standing just to get more attention? Okay. I can block both. Amazing improvement in the show in the last two eps.

Hoo boy. So who wrote today, Lynn Martin or Guza? Or can we not be sure under the circumstances, given HW passes?

I feel bad for Zoe Saldana, who'll get yet more Internet hate over this silly win (and from Ariana Grande stans). I choose to take it as a win for her excellent work in Avatar: The Way of Water. Demi should've taken it, but I liked Anora a lot and Mikey Madison was wonderful so I'm not too fussed about her win. I wasn't surprised it swept - it's funny, sad, closer to Academy-typical style (almost a Bogdanovich-style screwball farce) without being as old-fashioned as Conclave, and it's nowhere near as long as The Brutalist, which I thought deserved considerably more awards and was equally remarkable. So Anora, while good, was kind of the safe Hollywood choice. I would've rather Brutalist taken a couple of Anora's awards (at least Best Director), and I would've rather Best Actor gone to Fiennes, who was excellent in Conclave. The Substance is a funny and very well-made but very unsubtle gore-soaked horror satire (and a bit of a riff on silent film - there's very little dialogue for most of the first hour) which it's insane they nominated at all. If not for Demi and the impeccable direction by Fargeat it would've been an underseen and underrated streaming-only release on Shudder last summer. There's nothing wrong with any of that though - Rosemary's Baby got essentially the same makeover. I'm just glad Demi was recognized as much as she has been this season. I still need to see I'm Still Here and Nickel Boys this week. I will say The Seed of the Sacred Fig is very good and everyone should see it. That stuff always is so weird. I don't like them directly talking to the nominees, lol. This isn't The Real World. That's awful. Olivia Hussey has indeed been a school staple for generations.

Tina outwitted Cain in summer '91. Later, the character returned and they got involved after Cord 'died' in Jaba City in the fall.

I would love for any soap to run year-round, I just don't think it's viable for a streaming or hypothetical revival show. So I'd split the difference and do it in arcs that have a solid 13-16 weeks and reasonably short hiatus periods. I do think it's very important to replicate the cycle of soaps celebrating holidays, etc. onscreen 'live' along with the audience - Christmas, New Year's, etc. So I would try to make sure those arcs fall along most major holidays. That's a way to sort of replicate the same ongoing connectivity to the audience as a year-round show.

I agree, but by the same token Cord haranguing Tina over and over got exhausting. The show actively begins to play against that endless pattern in fall '91 by having KW's Tina confront Cord about it. I think Loprieno may have misread the paradigm shifting moment. I think they may have locked in quickly on putting KW with Christopher Cousins as Cain, and I think Malone and Gottlieb may have hoped to really try Korf's Blair with Cord. At least for awhile, as I know there have been rumors Witter and Loprieno did not get along (which is too bad if true, as they had real chemistry). I also have heard that the original endgame for KDP's Blair (pre-Todd) was Cord. There's just a lot of potential roles not taken, and I do think Cain and KW's Tina had plenty of chemistry, but I can't say that I necessarily found any of them better than a more evolved, less repetitive Cord and Tina.

That's very interesting. I had no idea.

A scorned ex pulling a stunt at a wedding is pretty typical soap to me.

Oh, how sad. Both legends. This is what I always think of re: David Johansen in recent years, from Sofia Coppola's A Very Murray Christmas special on Netflix I was obsessed with Angie Stone's Mahogany Soul and Stoned Love albums in college. What a loss.

I think the only way to revive most US soaps not named Edge of Night - AMC, OLTL, whatever - is to do them at 30 mins and yes, give them seasonal breaks of 2-4 months and make them arc-based for maybe 13-16 weeks at a time. Something Linda Gottlieb attempted in a way in a year-round format and got trounced for, and something Prospect Park only attempted when they ran out of cash lol. But it's viable IMO. Unlike GH or Y&R, it moves pretty fast. It's not a chore to watch at an hour so far.

Thanks! I'm still usually making my way chronologically as best I can through the Marland years but I do warp ahead at times for special stuff.

I won't reiterate my commentary about needing to recast Ashley. She and Martin are the biggest problems for me right now unless they quickly, hopefully improve (Martin being #1), because as others have noted characters like Derek are disposable. Then again, so is Ashley.

Frankly I don't think they have the room in the current landscape to move that slowly in a first week. They needed to make bold moves out of the gate to get eyes on them, and they did plenty of that in a first week. It wasn't nonsensical or rushed like other shows, it felt like it flowed organically out of an preexisting situation to me. Slowing down and bedding in can come once they've hooked people in these first couple weeks. Then it will be time to hit hard for May sweeps, which it sounds like they plan to do.

I would call it a pretty successful launch. The last 3 days showed considerable evolution and growth in the scripts out of some of the baldfaced expository dialogue in the first two, many of the characters have grabbed me, the potential is massive, the show looks great and Karla Mosley really impressed me with her power and authority. Is she subtle so far, not incredibly, but Dani hasn't really been either yet in story - she's making big moves. Nonetheless KM no longer came off like the creepy carnival doll I remembered from GL and early B&B, and I've been impressed. Whether Gen Z viewers will take to her deliberately arch performance or to soap opera in general remains to be seen. I've seen a wide range of reactions to the show or to certain scenes from the more uninitiated audiences, but what I haven't seen is anyone wanting to stop watching. That's a good start.

She's green but she hasn't gotten the kind of material he already has. Dude's delivery is like a video game NPC.

I am catching up, but Thursday is pretty strong IMO. Naomi impressed me, the dialogue has improved considerably with less exposition, and KM projects a lot more authority and imperiousness than I previously thought she was capable of as the momager supreme. You understand the faith in her MVJ has here, it's giving Black Erica Kane. Yes, the character is outsize but that's the nature of the role. If she's divisive (as she clearly is here) that's part of the appeal. Mona is very real. They should give her family ASAP. This show is much easier to get through than hour upon hour of GH. And the lighting in Uptown and wardrobe/hair on Chelsea is phenomenal - she looks amazing even if her acting is neon green. Ashley OTOH still comes off like they recruited someone from the crew.

Exactly. I had a feeling she would be on it. The other two young girls in the family, meh. Martin is like a host from Westworld. Shape up or ship out!

I just wonder what made them pull back on Kyle so fast other than Josh, unless LM was that much of a nightmare BTS.

I think it was supposed to be an in-joke because that was one of Leslie Charleson's nicknames on-set IRL, but it was still unnecessary and juvenile to me onscreen. I also found that scene silly. Lesley is an old woman who hasn't been on staff in aeons but manages to put on a lab coat and sneak in while poor Denise Alexander struggles to cling to the hub to keep her balance. I appreciated their wanting to use her but there were other ways to do that. I think Ron has a lot of love for the genre, and he's done a number of stories I truly enjoyed and characters or couples I loved at OLTL, and some stories I really enjoyed at GH. Unlike his replacements at GH he also understands energy. His efforts there saved GH and that can't be denied despite the work being very messy. But he's also developed far too much ego since being touted as the savior of soaps, has no filter, he loves to lazily bring up history in the cheapest way in recent years, and without enough constraints or checks and balances he goes off the rails fast. And when he doesn't get his way with either the audience or a show or actor he often develops contempt for it, and that shows onscreen. He deserved to be fired from both his last two soaps. I know very little about Jamey's actual soap work or the nitty-gritty of what he's done at DAYS but his fanfic always sounded goofy to me. idk about Jamey, but Ron absolutely does. I remember him writing in a 'get over it' to the fans re: an extended scene about which of Todd Manning's kids was inaccurately older than the other due to crazy SORAS. Like it was a three minute scene of just the two children awkwardly arguing over which of them should be older, and the one who was too old told the younger "get over it". Later he got so pissed about GH fans regularly commenting online that no one is accounting for Robin having PTSD from her abduction by having Robin stop a whole scene at Kelly's to repeatedly say she has no PTSD.