Vee

Good lord! Not Aremid!

Alexa and Jane together are solid gold. I just wish they weren't skimping on Genie, both airtime and story. None of the Spencer characters should be in B-story, and presently they are.

I think they absolutely believe that. Which explains their terrified response to Sprina, their swimming in circles on key actors and story, and the numerous pointed comments that they don't listen to Twitter but to 'other social media outlets'.

I dunno. Inertia is a hell of a thing.

It's clear they're hedging their bets with those two and seeing if anything catches fire or someone better comes along. It's just incredibly boring to watch. And yes, they've all looked rough at times. Poor Watros sometimes looks like a puppy waiting to open her eyes lol. Speaking of Mo, apropos of nothing I will add that I cringed so hard at Mo's latest attempt to sweep up a new protege in Finn Carr (Rocco) in the State of Mind thread. Quizzing that poor child about seasonal depression and rambling on about mentoring grown-ass Isaiah. Of course now we've barely seen Rocco in a month so Frank has evidently lost interest in him. They could do good work with those kids (and a recast Georgie) with a new teen scene but they can't invest in anything because they still have the show anchored around Sonny, Jason and Carly, all of whom are either tapped dry (Sonny and Jason atm, with the only x-factor for Sonny being Brenda AFAIC) or need a real reset (Carly). And everyone younger than them gets jammed up. It's the same problem we've talked about over and over. You can't angle new story around younger people - at any age tier - when you have to keep feeding that aging beast. Except for Willow and Drew's entertaining madness nothing else is really firing at the A-story level, especially with LNL2's mystery solving capers inexplicably being stuck as a B-story. That's unacceptable, especially for Jonathan Jackson. And Lulu is just roaming atm. But now I'm just rambling on, again!

I honestly think the Brendabots ended with Vanessa's contract return in 2010. Claire Walsh was the last one. I think this is just another case of Frank wanting to hire a daytime 'get' and refusing to let them go, and Mo being between viable love interests. So they're trying to make this work, same as Carly and dayplayer Brennan (I'll never stop calling him that). It's pure stopgap work, it's lazy and cheap. I think Eva looks alright, but some angles, lighting and especially her opening shot can make her look very, very rough. I also swear they have kept bronzing her more and more lol Whenever things turn bad with Drew it is time for vengeful widow-in-waiting Willow to prove to Chase that his dick still works, just to screw with the Qs. It's their destiny.

Why is it every time I catch up on this show BLQ turns up dressed like Biggie Smalls or the Blues Brothers. Enough.

On the contrary, I think this move is absolutely about GH knowing they now have competition, and trying to shore their Black/CBS crossover audience up with this token appearance (and tossing in DT and Tanisha Harper). But I do think longtime brand loyalty is very strong for the audience at what's left of GH, so it's gonna be a tough fight no matter what. Ron doesn't concern me. He is relegated to breakdowns, he has no creative control and isn't writing scripts. And Guza has a certain skillset I think suits a show well (especially a new one trying to make waves). But this Is ultimately MVJ's show, not his - he's her co-HW, but this is her creation. What it does and where it goes is ultimately down to her first IMO, and a lot will also fall on the dialogue staff. (Which, like @Khan, makes me wish they would persuade Mulcahey to come aboard on that level despite the fact that I believe the entire dialogue staff is Black.)

Lord! Paging @Darn who explained that entire franchise to me in exhausting detail last week.

I can't be fucked to check tbqh lol. I think it might have been foster care? Who knows. Like you and titan above have said, Mac's past is a rich vein of history to tap. Instead they did something that is just not viable.

Yes, but they now have two excuses not to cut her - she's Robert and Holly's daughter (and we know Emma Samms at least will recur soon) and related to a zillion people, and she is having Michael's child. Much more of a buffer than she had a year ago.

I'm sure. I just wish her acting career hadn't gone to the dogs.

LOL Tanisha Harper.

Those ads are probably good money! I just wish she wasn't stuck with those Lifetime movies.

I actually think they thought this was their way of giving a kind of love letter sendoff to Robert and Holly - it's clear someone there is a big fan. I just think it was done in the worst, most lazy way imaginable, and also to shore up Sasha who almost got cut last year (and probably should've been). But hey, their fanbase seems happy.

God, I hope he isn't angling for a new acolyte a la Chad. It was deeply awkward watching Mo quiz this child about depression. I could only skim it in brief bits.

Per one of the recent interviews, Vivica is apparently the one who told Sheila Ducksworth to talk to MVJ about creating a new soap. I agree she deserves to appear as she's one of a select group of breakout stars who's always continued touting the soaps, both before and after her film career hit the skids.

I'm not talking about her hiring at Loving. What I said is they brought both of them back in 2008 on AMC. Which they did, along with Agnes allegedly consulting. B&E was the team in place for that very publicized return, and what I was saying is a large and prominent Black canvas was visible both in that (very flawed) era and in their time at Loving. IIRC that and Livia and Tom's return, etc. was all McTavish. She did know the show, even as she broke it.

Literally not possible in either case. And Holly tossed off a line about her and Robert sleeping together in early '92 to make Sasha which seems implausible at best under those story circumstances at the time, but the worst part is she was onscreen for the next 18 months. This is the shít that always pisses me off, especially when you still have people on staff who have been there long enough to know better (Korte). I can handle retcon kids even when I find some totally unnecessary (Gio), but I can't tolerate when it's physically impossible. The only message to the audience is that they think we're that fuckin' stupid. I do like Cody, and I like him as Mac's son. There's no need (and no way) for him to be Dominique's. Sasha I barely tolerate, and the insulting Scorpio thing makes it worse.

You really do not. Trust me. Anyone who has watched this show 30 years or more knows they both literally cannot exist. (They're alleged to have been born in 1991-92, respectively.)

Lord. Run, kid!

Yes, Brown and Esensten for all their faults had a fairly strong Black canvas during both their AMC and Loving runs. They brought back Darnell and Debbi (with Agnes allegedly involved as well), who they'd written for on Loving and The City, but also had Mario Van Peebles and his onscreen son as Samuel and Dre Woods (Samuel was another in a long line of failed love interests for Erica IIRC), and Yaya Dacosta as Cassandra. IIRC they also brought on Cornelius Smith as Frankie and of course, Randi. I don't think Natalia was them. I didn't know LR was that young either. I think teen actors in love scenes is and was a complicated and murky thing on soaps - but it's one thing when it's a consenting and comfortable actor with a partner close in age and another when it's something like say, Lily and Jonathan Lavery (where the young girl is both underage and on the spectrum and the IRL male is much older). At OLTL David Fumero talked in the oral history about his being uncomfortable doing love scenes with Erin Torpey early on, but they ultimately became fairly close friends offscreen IIRC and it seems it wasn't an issue. I've never heard of Kimberly McCullough having an issue re: Michael Sutton, who I believe was also older. Kristen Alderson at OLTL has never noted any issue with her various love scenes when she was younger, but she also was never one to complain or dish even when the show was long gone and I would not be at all surprised if she held back her feelings on some uncomfortable situations. (And the very young makeout scenes she had with Connor Paolo in the early 2000s frankly made me uncomfortable for them.) I don't think it's wrong to show teens having sex on soaps, but it's a messy dilemma. I remember people balking at the awkward scene with Mick Hazen even 20 years ago. Realistically, would Parker and his girlfriend get intimate IRL? Probably. Did they need to show it? Maybe not, particularly with that lame couple. But maybe something like Skins would get a different look today too. I think the primary issue is less depicting the reality with the right actors at the right time, and more with not putting young actors like Rambin in an uncomfortable and unsavory position. Anyway, sorry to go so far afield.

I think you're right. At a glance I thought it was Ambyr Michelle as Eva Thomas, where we know there's more story there.

Obviously BTG is going to have high drama and people behaving badly. That's soaps. But equating standard soap opera dramatics with Passions or Tyler Perry, or something inherently racist and stereotypical, is just an excuse for obsessive or mentally ill folks to drag the show for not matching up the fanfiction they built in their heads before seeing a frame of it or knowing any of the castmembers. This happens all the time with new movies or shows, this extreme positive/negative bipolar whiplash. You have some people who get intensely, overly involved and build a product up in their minds as an outlet for themselves and their own creativity. Then reality hits when it actually begins to exist, doesn't correspond to their fantasies and suddenly it's the worst thing ever. It can't be their thing anymore, they don't approve of this announced castmember or that previewed story or location choice, so suddenly this thing they were obsessed with becomes something they have to police, 'keep in line' and destroy. Anyway, if by chance anyone fits this description just get another SON fanfic blog I don't read and move on with your life. If that section of the board still exists. (And BTW, this won't be the only extreme knee-jerk reaction we see early on. The GH threads get them every week from folks who don't even watch.)

There do appear to be various socioeconomic strata on BTG, starting with But we'll know more when we see it.