Vee

I remember Shari Belafonte coming on as Mayor Lomax in 2016. I was embarrassed for her. I don't remember anything about Scott and Obrecht other than I hated them continuing trying to push "Liesl" as a fun domesticated character the normal characters should all eyeroll indulgently at and get along with, which the pairing with Scott did yet again. It had its share of fans, I was not one of them. As for the strike, I am just grateful the mortifying spectacle of Jake paired up with the hellspawn (Charlotte) did not last beyond that period.

I hope that's true but yes, as you've intimated I thought she was heading for a breakdown over six months ago. Here we are. It's too bad, because I actually thought she was coming very close to leading the under-50 set of the show around this time last year regularly squaring off with Ava and Natalia. I thought she was very strong in that period, despite Kristina's in-character blinders about Sonny which were soon ripped off. The tedious baby story was largely incidental for awhile. I think she could still do very good work, but there's no inspiration in this creative team.

I think Dana/Leslie is the breakout character in the story. While I really liked Johnson's Ted, I also think he's the only one in that story sphere (including Nicole, Eva, Dana, Kat) that you could recast without a major issue. Any of the others I would be concerned unless there was some major issue BTS. Bizarrely, both DAYS and AMC (and maybe another soap or two I am forgetting) repeated this in later years. IIRC DAYS actually promo'ed doing it with Jack Deveraux in the prison shower, where Mark Valley went in and future sex pest Steve Wilder was revealed in the steam. And in the late 2000s AMC inexplicably opted to have the very popular Alexa Havins (Babe Carey) embrace her mother and withdraw from the embrace as Amanda Baker, in the same scene. Neither weird recast lasted more than a year.

I am not going to spoiler the news of an onscreen recast unless the mods rule on it, but that's me.

Idk about that one. I found it comical watching JFP try to turn GH into mid-'90s GL starring Rick Hearst with his dayplayer foreign bride while Guza was out of the building. I half-expected her to change the locks and light fixtures and maybe finally bring on Kale Browne as Jeff Webber. Then there was Sarah Brown's Claudia Zacchara getting a Tangie Hill/Angel Sorel-style color-coded intro. It was very strange.

I think the idea of an involved mystery where a frankly deeply ambiguous/unsympathetic or flawed character is teased as the murderer, then proven not to be and everyone has to find a way to go on with their lives, the suspect included, is interesting (a la the movie That just didn't seem to be the aim here.

I liked Dennehy's Blake from what I've seen. It was a very different, arch look though, the whole Glenn Close/Alex Forrest style and vibe, and I can't deny it probably wasn't what they were looking for from a heroine/antiheroine of the show. I am admittedly biased from spending decades worshipping her brief but important role on Star Trek.

Reading this and being in the middle of early '87 myself (with Frannie a year out from Doug Cummings and not too far off from when her next fiance will sleep with her identical sister), I just can't see how they could justify having Frannie embroiled in a long storyline with another calculating madman, making yet again the worst possible choice in a man.

Just kill him. But I'd dump both characters tbh and bring on new ones. Lord knows soap operas aren't lacking for potential white people!

Now I've got to see her. Kelley Missal was excellent on OLTL 2.0 and carried the show even while a lot of the youth set material meandered. She was a force of nature in the show's great tradition of fiery heroines going from Melissa Archer to Susan Haskell to Jessica Tuck, Andrea Evans, Fiona Hutchison or Judith Light, etc. But I wouldn't want her stuck playing Ashley on BTG, which is to me a pretty thankless role at present. Brittany Underwood could do it well IMO - she's talented but can play a B-player support part without seeming totally stifled. I find both vastly superior to Jen Jacob, sorry. So far she's the most colorless heroine I've seen since someone like Willow or Sasha on GH, and frankly they've both got more presence (and in the case of Willow recently, some edge).

I'm not even sure that a recast of a currently onscreen character qualifies as a spoiler. It would be if they were bringing someone back.

Was she? I thought they only really broke up after she promptly fell out the window and lost the baby shortly thereafter.

This is all part of my master plan to bring Maurice Johnson to GH as NuJustus while in no way employed by the soaps. But in all seriousness, it is an odd change and I do have to wonder if it's down to his simply not being up for the daytime taping grind.

Only slightly less comical than last summer's rationale of 'T.J. and Molly just had a fight after being together for 25 years, they'll probably break up forever, do you think I should file for custody?' It's awful. And yes, Mansi is being wasted. I thought KM's Kristina was coming into her own in a strong way last spring despite the albatross of the baby story, gunning for Natalia and Ava, and now she's just unwatchable. It's a shame how she's being squandered and set up for failure, but FV doesn't seem to know any other way with his 'favored' actors.

To say nothing of the soaps that dumped actors before they could even air onscreen. And then there's the Irna Phillips era where the actor would appear, Irna would watch the show live and then call in and have them fired the same day. There's almost certainly gonna be a lot more cuts or recasts to come, that's the nature of any new soap. While I'll miss MJ the replacement seems like a good actor, and several other cast changes can't come soon enough for me.

LMAO, they are not reading this board to get ideas. Sorry bro.

It's got to end. They've been coddling her for months and the show basically cosigns it. I chalk that up to Lucky not having been there and just not knowing much about the situation tbh, but it infuriates me any time anyone says it nonetheless.

Of course Frank would get around to trying it. I guess I spoke too soon, but I'm still hoping it's nothing. Hopefully it'll come and go if it does. I can't see Jonathan sitting around for being denied LNL2 again. I wouldn't even mind Lucky/Kristina as a spoiler for a bit if I didn't feel Frank was determined to push his preferred actors above all else. See also: Valentin, Natalia, etc.

I remember the stories about Hamilton being a partying nightmare. I'd forgotten all about Frantz. I don't remember any early recasts at PSSNS, even though virtually half the cast should've been gone.

Yes, I know all of that. I'm making a comparison.

Keith Robinson was already on-set for the premiere week, so clearly Johnson knew he was gone weeks or months ago. New viewers will get over it. It's the same old surprise as virtually any soap recast. If they were to recast one of the core four (or Kat!) then I'd get upset.

It's also been so long since most new soap debuts that we forget about the early changes at certain shows. I'd been thinking about this history for some time while wondering who BTG would cut first. AMC dumped the first Ann Tyler very quickly (maybe before air?) as well as several Lincs, and OLTL's first Viki never went to air at all despite promos along with swapping out Larry and Meredith in a matter of months. I'm sure many other shows have other examples.

At least they've popped the cherry and can now recast Martin and recast/dump Derek or Ashley. But I could understand staggering cast changes, i.e. the mention of Santa Barbara. You don't want to end up in a Ryan's Hope situation either, where it didn't happen as fast but they kept changing actors.

I saw neither of these, but to each their own.

Right. Breathlessly running back and forth between here and Twitter and saying 'omfg you guys this is serious' all the time based on some tweets you saw kind of makes you lose perspective. I don't particularly love Maurice Johnson being out but a recast on a new soap opera is not a major crisis. It is strange. I wonder if it was about the workload because he's been very active on social media. Some actors just can't take it.