Vee

Did these fools really count off their hands together on 3, shout "the Richardsons!” and fake collapse together on the couch?! I’m leaving the state.

I think some days are passable and others are pacey or interesting, and contain good stories or at least scenes. But many stories day to day either drag or are just bad, and other days are just pure dogs lol. That can be an issue at any soap, granted. The problem is the hit ratio for that at GH is way off. It's an ordeal to get through most days for me because so much of it is tedium, bad stories or running in place with tired or bland characters.

That would explain a lot about elements of the pacing and climax, though the story was still trash AFAIC. Higley's OLTL was its dumbest, darkest period til the end for me, and it had its share of lowlights in the final years. And yes, Bo and Rex did go to the gay bar together lol. I still remember those scenes. Mark had been gone for quite some time IIRC.

Do you take me as some FOOL, SMITTYYYYYY

I thought Bogue had a very unique, intense energy that could be both easygoing or psycho (probably why he plays the main villain in Grand Theft Auto 5). I just dug him.

Tomas' delivery is giving male enhancement pill voice-over guy. When does he tell us about the occasional side effects of blindness, rectal bleeding and psychotic fugue?

Bill is hysterical at the dueling press conferences, in the best way. TKD is so good at this stuff. Calling Dani a 'raging bull!' "Dani Dupree is a manipulative serpent!" LMAO! They'll be waist deep again by September. This stuff is all great and well-cut together, with the have-nots watching at Orphey Gene's. Less great: Jacob's hilarious intro scene with Marcel Malone, poor acting and writing on both sides. "Maybe you thought I could act because I am a venerated detective and also an old man. But you were wrong!"

I think that was almost certainly the plan with Mulcahey - but with a lighter tone and doing Blake/Ross/Holly from GL, and Drew gets his comeuppance and I strongly suspect the endgame was Drew/Nina as a cemented pairing, which I was all for. But now, yes, I'd have her go ape and then get carted off, or if I'm feeling charitable, still go nuts but then calm down and say screw this, I'm out and jet out of town. Either way I think she should go. Which is the case with most of the cast on Frank's show tbh, even the unpopular or bland longtimers.

I agree with all of that. The fact is too many fans at GH (and all soaps, but certainly there) have been trained to believe that being a fan of a character and 'good writing' for them means they are not at risk or doing bad things. Too many fans of Ava just love Ava being fierce, love Maura West and think that she's some heroine or slightly skewed antiheroine. I enjoy Ava and I like having her around. But Ava is a killer who came on this show murdering in cold blood, yet when Mulcahey reset her to who she's always been last year a lot of that audience cried foul claiming Ava's 'changed' and that it was 'bad writing' or degrading for her to be the same dangerous schemer and criminal she's always been. But she really never has changed, and the times the show has tried to shift her into Carly Snyder mode (Griffin, some of the Nikolas years) went over like a lead balloon. Even now this Ric thing is a B or C-plot. It's a coasting storyline. People need to get over their stan goggles and let Ava be Ava, with Ric or whoever else. If that means Maura isn't on the show for another ten years, oh well. Ava has had a long run and can still run longer if properly insulated in story despite her dirty deeds. I say it again: The Alex Olanov OLTL model is the model here, and it can always work for Ava. I think Nina (and Drew!) actually could've run a few more years at least under Mulcahey - what he was doing with them was that fun and exciting for me a la Scott and Lucy/Dominique or something, or Julia Barrett and some of her men, whereas before they were normally characters I would quickly cut. But since PM's exit Drew is becoming a total black hat and Nina is superfluous. I would give her a big exit because I like Watros but ultimately I think it's done. Drew, I haven't tuned in tbh much in the last few weeks but I think they've been setting him up for a murder arc for a long while. You could do that or just shoot him and let him live to keep scheming, because his plots and schemes and affair with Willow are the only interesting things on the show for me at present. Both options would work. But the more nuanced take on cocky, arrogant but human Drew last summer is gone, at least for now. The issue is some audience are trained to keep falling for it too. Like, I'm sorry but I do not give a fúck about Natalia and Sidwell, or Sidwell's kids. He is not intimidating or interesting. It's also the same rinse/repeat plotline as creaky old Cyrus and his secret family, Shiloh and his secret connections/cult, Peter and his family, etc.

I had avoided writing more about my Marland binge in here because I didn't want to spam the thread, but I'll just repost some of my private commentary now that some time has passed. I'm in early '87 and I find Shannon much more fun and entertaining (following the end of the tiresome filler hostage caper with the goofy mobsters during the Tad Channing mystery) than I did in the fall. This is right after she's left Brian at the altar over Beatrice. Sadly Brian's growing fascination with Beatrice prior to this, as well as Casey and Lyla sealing the deal and deciding to officially become a couple, is largely not on YT AFAIK; the stuff I saw jumps from a jilted Casey in late October, dumped by Frannie, drunkenly lashing out at Temp Lyla for only being focused on her family vs. her own needs and you don't see much of them together in the majority of November '86 that's available, most of which is actually online. The uploads then skip from Thanksgiving to late December when Steve leaves just before Christmas, and by then Casey and Lyla are already a couple. In any event, Shannon getting away from Brian and Oakdale to promptly go right back to Scotland - where Duncan is re: the Stenbeck situation - has her a lot more zany, fun and watchable than the more forced, disconnected antics earlier. I've always liked Margaret Reed from my very earliest glimpses of her when CBS ran the Christmas '85 episode one holiday many years ago, and that same energy holds up here again when she's more in her element. It may or may not date well, but for now I am really enjoying her (and Duncan) again, castles and capers and all. I also really love Casey and Lyla. I hope with their renewed interest in the soaps, PGP will someday put some of this era up in pristine quality. The show is compulsively watchable a la BTG for me in this period and I am lucky a lot of it is uninterrupted on YT right now, but the quality is rough and it kills me to know that with the complex Frannie/Sabrina mystery heating up and so much of January '87 being available, much of what I presume is the climax in February sweeps is not online at all.

I did too, lol.

The show definitely has its foibles and things to work on or problem characters/actors, and the dialogue still ranges from pretty good to B&B-tier from day to day or segment to segment. But it is compulsively watchable so far, and it moves like a son of a bitch without generally feeling rushed or too quick to me. Catching up on a couple days is a breeze. It feels like a 30 min show at an hour slot, and I think the rhythm experiment they're clearly doing here with trying to pace it for the new bingewatcher audience is working so far. The sheer tonnage of new viewers on TikTok, Twitter, etc. asking if a soap is actually 5 days a week, can they catch up and follow it, etc. is real and notable I think in the early good numbers for the show, so I think that pace is actually a wise choice. We'll see how it goes long term.

Yes, Riley came on as just a dayplayer in Flash/Sarah's entourage in '03. When the Flash story tanked Riley caught on with the audience and got a bigger role, and they put him and Flash together as a minor pairing. Then they cut her in January '04 and made Riley a more prominent male lead and put him with Jen, after Jen's story with Joey and Rex had also tanked. I don't think Jessica Morris ever learned how to act much though she did improve, and that team tried very, very, very hard to retrofit Jen into Marty Saybrooke for Y2K. It was embarrassing, but they wrote for her heavily, tried to infuse her with layer and nuance (mostly stuff riffed from Marty in '92/'93) and some of it at least had an impact on the character. I do think she was semi-tolerable with Riley. I was thrilled when she died, but I did think her death was brutally realistic and probably just unnecessary in an already trashy story. I do think the Daniel story under Higley was ultimately a problem of execution and priorities.

If they just straight-up copied the old Another World story with Val Dufour's Walter Curtin where Martin keeps opening a safe and cradling the scarf of whoever he killed and (woodenly) weeping into it over and over, then died in a fiery wreck and was replaced in Smitty's life by, I don't know, Vernon's long-lost hot British son or something, I wouldn't hate it. I'm just putting that out there! If BTG wants to make Martin end up like weepin' Walter Curtin I won't hate it, Michele Val Jean. That's the Vee Guarantee.

I did love Jay Wilkison as Riley (named for Joe Riley per Malone II, who said Daniel's ex-wife supposedly worked for him at the Banner - we talked about that in here not long ago when discussing Cathy Craig and the discovered '70s episodes). Good for him. I felt bad when that close relationship with Nora and Matthew was discarded upon his exit. I actually think the closeted Colson story (ripped from the headlines re: Jim McGreevey) was prime for use on a soap in one way or another. The big finish where Bo confronts Colson at Daniel's televised swearing-in was very well-done. But the actual storyline in its execution was deeply toxic and reprehensible, like virtually all of Higley's work. There was a way to do a story like that, even with Daniel as a bad actor (or even murderer, which he was) while offsetting more prominent positive LGBT characters. This was not it. And it was partly used to try to drive HBS/Nora off the show and replace her with Cady Huffman's Paige, who heavily resembled Hillary in mannerisms. It's a miracle Nora survived that long contract coma; Hillary allegedly had to talk to some network people. Mark Solomon (Matt Cavanaugh) was introduced by Malone II along with all the other silly Love Crew kids - Malone introducing a ready-made teen/college set, presumably to satisfy Frons, and jamming Rex, Adriana, Jen and Riley all into it as well, to try to mimic the youth set from the early '90s. Higley had closeted Daniel secretly dating the much-younger Mark. I think Malone had intended to do some sort of gay story, any gay story in 2004 (after what happened with invisible C.J. and the original Paul Cramer got nixed in '03) with Mark and Marcie's gay brother Eric, briefly played by Bill Dawes. But I can't say I found any of those insta-characters very inspiring or interesting. Don't get me started on the Love Crew story, the fake 'haunting' of the Love Center (which I suspect was intended to be real until it got a quick rewrite to end it), or the diaries of the mysterious ancestors of the Lords and McBains on the property...

Surprised they even discussed the brief AW stint - I thought she was pretty good.

I thought Robert Bogue was great. I don't understand why no other soap has picked him up.

I am. READY! To Post like MARTIN! All the TIME. Martin delivers his lines like he is doing a spoken word intro for a Beyonce track.

GH should be worried, IMO.

Sounds like a love interest for Lucas, at least.

I would also write her out. I like Watros and I've enjoyed her Nina this past year but she doesn't need to be here another five years, even if PM was still here.

I'm not advocating for her ending up working at the grill after terrorizing people like Sheila or whatever, but I would keep Dana/Leslie around as long as humanly possible.

I thought Vernon saying that was to demonstrate the Duprees' selective hypocrisy re: their own interests. Like any powerful soap family. I also thought it was probably too soon.

"Aristotle Dumas"? Really, Joshua?

They would have to be suicidal to kill Nicole and fire DD. Not going to happen.