Vee

I think they did. Again, it is not an either/or proposition for most of the audience so far. Most don't feel the need to stan one or reject the other.

Re: a surprise guest, if you're gonna hype it up that much it needs to be either someone like Demi Moore, Stamos making up with Frank, or Tony Geary. Nothing else would shock or impress me at this point.

The way this show handled Nikolas' shooting Hayden, Austin's murder, the long slow delay to getting rid of Cyrus, etc. we're likely to have it revealed in a year when Nina is 3 weeks away from leaving and has had minimal airtime.

Is he still spamming demands that they hire the campy chick from The Haves and Have Nots? Or whichever show it was. I don't think it's an either/or. I happen to think Dana, Dani, Eva, Nicole, Kat, etc. are all great. Certain folks aren't going to be some posters' favorites and that's fair enough. But I would argue most of those characters above (and several others) have caught on with a lot of the online audience. I've even warmed up to Martin!

I have not been convinced any Stephanie since Shayna Rose can read.

Wasn't there talk of them bringing back Rita as Gus' mother at one point? Or something?

Insane how relevant Andor S2 has become despite being filmed some time ago - darkly predicting this administration in America. Mon Mothma whipping votes in the Imperial (formerly Republic) Senate for a cause she cannot accept is futile, in the hopes of a semblance of good governance, hits far too close to home. Andor is, as ever, Star Wars does The Wire, does Oz, does Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so many genres. Easily the only work of import left in this exhausted, overspent franchise in recent years, and far too good for its brand. If you haven't watched it, do. You won't believe it's Star Wars.

Am I the only one welcoming the preemptions because I've been mad busy and have to catch up on over a week of episodes? Just saying.

No. Agnes Nixon had worked on a number of shows before creating OLTL (and AMC, which she had in her drawer waiting to come to life). AW was only one of them. Many classic soaps have personnel coming across back and forth all over the map, it's not a unique situation. And to my knowledge very few of the head creative teams at AW came to OLTL. If you're thinking of Harding Lemay, he did only a very brief consulting stint in '98 and maybe '99, and clearly had little actual impact on the writing. Paul Rauch was also a different EP at AW than he was at OLTL, GL, Santa Barbara, Y&R, etc. Nor do I recall him bringing many writers with him. Nor did his work at those shows resemble his time with Lemay at AW AFAIC. Frankly '70s Rauch and '80s Rauch seem like night and day. Beyond Rauch, the only two examples of key AW additions I know of would be first when George Reinholt and Jacquie Courtney jumped from AW to OLTL in the '70s. They were debatably the first daytime supercouple (some might cite Penny and Jeff from ATWT), and the show attempted to recreate that with new characters at OLTL to garner ratings. This was not unique to these shows; many soaps attempted the same trick after them. It might've worked but Reinholt's behavior once again drove him to quit and/or be fired. Robin Strasser was hired several years later as Dorian, but not opposite them in any triangle. Reinholt was long gone. JFP would be the other example and the only one who actively tried to model it after AW, bringing over several of her favorite actors from AW and several other shows she'd worked on in 1998-99. She was accused of trying to remake her AW at OLTL, but it was a poor fit because of their being very different. (She tried the same at GH.) I don't think OLTL was ever seen as 'just Another World' even remotely. It simply occasionally had AW stars coming aboard. And in the late '90s, they didn't fit. Jacquie Courtney and George Reinholt's characters fit in much easier, but Reinholt's in particular didn't last and Courtney's became quite different. OLTL and AW were dramatically different shows IMO, which is why JFP forcing actors from it onto the show didn't work or last.

I said they would do this when they hired him, lol. He's the new Cyrus who will mope about his family woes while terrorizing more people for the next 2-5 years as the show tries to have it both ways. Much of what he's done so far (including eavesdropping in the church) can be planned by simply taking old breakdowns and doing CTRL-R on any mention of "Cyrus" and adding "Sidwell".

I agree they need more, but I suspect they will get it. I think they went a bit overboard cementing the Dupree family as the core early on as much as possible.

B&B and Y&R survive on loyalty and in B&B's case, the runtime. That's it.

Episodes can flow without lots of characters on, that doesn't mean you should lift them out. There's plenty of space to find Dani, Nicole, Kat, Dana, Eva, etc. all essential. If anyone's broken out I think it's Dana first, Dani next and Eva/Kat not far behind. At least gauging by the response I see to all of them online.

I think if he is (and it has occurred to me) he may not even be aware of it. Nonetheless, my answer to the problem remains the same.

I do understand the sense of obligation from the show and the people there who love him. It is far from the first time something like this has happened at this show or I'm sure many others. GH for years put in all sorts of subs for Jessie Brewer and worked around Emily McLaughlin's issues until they couldn't anymore. We know they did the same for Kirsten Storms, which has recently turned out right. I do think FV's heart is probably in the right place re: Mo's health. But it is not good for the show, it's not their job, it's incredibly bad for story at this point and it's ultimately bad for Maurice IMO. It needs to change. And that's not even getting to the other question.

I liked the story but I think if it actually was affecting Maurice's IRL health then they were between a rock and a hard place. (Although I sometimes do wonder if Mo's health is sometimes leveraged against story he doesn't like, intentionally or not.) In response to that though, I simply would've sent Sonny away for a bit on a break and then tried to resume it. But their solution to this, working him as much as possible so he isn't at home spiraling or whatever while retreading the same tired plotlines, is not a solution IMO. Which is another reason I've spent years insisting that in addition to breaks they should bring back VM, have Brenda carry the lion's share of major story for a pairing with Sonny, while Maurice can take a senior/secondary role and be on less. I suspect if Maurice would feel content doing that with anyone it's Vanessa.

I am too, but that's another reason I am saying it. What happens when another producer comes along (if indeed one ever does) who doesn't indulge Maurice's need to be there everyday, or in story all the time? What happens if Frank's GH simply ceases to be able to afford it anymore and he has to cut back? When an actor literally needs a soap opera to keep going, the story always ends the same sooner or later. Not only are they using Maurice very poorly onscreen, which doesn't have to happen in order to keep him around and keep Sonny on canvas, but IMO they're reinforcing a pattern which isn't sustainable for his health. That needs to change. Same as how they crashed last year's story with his breakdown because Maurice apparently couldn't handle it. They need to start moving the character in another more, viable direction both story and airtime-wise. As has been attempted before, by different regimes. And yes, we agree it has to be about finding a way to do this that can not wreck his health. It's awful. And however I used to dog him in the 2000s or even early '10s it's gotten so much worse.

He might, but he needs a break and the character needs one too. If Maurice can't function mentally without being on 3 days a week that is an issue in and of itself. The show cannot be functioning as that kind of release valve forever. It's not healthy for him, and certainly not for the show's stories.

That headline is misleading. Dyer's interview blamed a new producer coming in (I can't keep track of them - was it Clenshaw?) and claimed he didn't like the Carters and began dismantling the family and firing Mick's kids, but I thought that might've begun with another EP. He said the pairing with Janine was a byproduct of that. It seemed like a rather convenient personal narrative, but many soap actors have a version of that same story they believe whether it's true or not.

They need to start giving Maurice Tony Geary breaks. Let the audience miss him insofar as they can.

There's a lot of things they could do, but I am far from convinced the dude playing Derek could sell that kind of story.

I also think Beth was actually very good as Irna. And I thought Kim nailed Charita Bauer.

I will hazard a hot take that the audience will largely return. It's a different kind of show and the viewership is different.

Exactly. There's at least a dozen things to fix on the show if not more, but in the longview of building a soap this has honestly been a drop in the bucket time-wise. Still, certain folks in the thread have been predicting doom for this show ever since their fanfic spec scripts were returned to sender. They need it to hurry up and die.

We all know Jacquie Courtney did it as I'm sure did many others. The difference is Courtney and those others didn't often seem barely there onscreen.