Vee

I didn't know Lorie wasn't there at the beginning. When did Katherine arrive? I thought it was the first year or shortly after.

They're really dogging Cody after a year of major progress for the character. It's sad.

Nothing about the show looks cheap to me. The lighting is pretty strong at times, but that may be a thing of early production/untreated shots. I have no issue with the sets. The fact is that no soap is perfect out of the gate and there are always hiccups, changes and adjustments. Historically they've usually needed a year or two (or five) to bed in and find an audience. BTG may or may not get a huge amount of grace time, but I am sure CBS/P&G and Val Jean are aware of the historical trends. And sure, GH will be tough competition simply due to brand loyalty. But you don't make this kind of investment to roll it up in 6-12 months (particularly with the added prestige/pressure of the NAACP, which puts a certain obligation on the network) unless it's some kind of staggering failure. That's not at the front of my mind.

Trucker and Trisha would probably the one and only major couple verging on that status, at least from what I know. I love Alex and Ava but I'd never heard of them before I got deeper into the show. I suppose Casey and Ally were also pretty popular.

We get it. You hate the Black girl.

It seemed like there was a moment in time where The Talk had caught on and The View was on the backfoot for awhile. Maybe I'm wrong about that, or maybe it changed with Trump.

Too dangerous! It'll invent 20 new farm boys living just outside Fairmont Crest in the first week, along with the oversexed young heiresses who lust for them.

It was okay, but they didn't do nearly enough that sweeps. And a big part of it was because they didn't cull the cast. (I also suspect they'd intended to have Tony Geary back, which didn't happen and neither did any real use of the revived Cassadine weather machine.)

Oh, give us a hint.

🤐 I totally didn't plot all that shít out and figure out how to cut like 10 people in a month last week. May Sweeps: Port Charles is rocked by the shocking news that the Metro Court Pool and Lounge has instituted an all-Speedo/bikini policy for its summer staff.

Still not sure if I hallucinated that. I was just aghast at how far GH had fallen and how fast.

I will eat my hat if Vivica doesn't appear at some point, given she is the one who told Sheila Ducksworth and the NAACP to go to MVJ for a soap. And good for her. Victoria Rowell is the one where I wonder if she is still off-limits to CBS, not just Sony.

No. I do think Kimberlin was excellent on PC. And the role's deep, deep lore in Kevin's background (which I think was shepherded by writers from '90s GH) was fascinating. I think she could've run longer than she did, sadly. I'd bring Rachel Locke back on GH today to raise some hell if I could. In fairness to him, IIRC they did have him dancing naked or shirtless to Right Said Fred's "Too Sexy" in the cryogenic lab several weeks in.

I would be shocked (and pleased) if it was a barnstorming hit out of the gate. Any soap is going to take time to grab a foothold, if it can get one. This was the case even in the glory days. I hope CBS and P&G are prepared for that window, which I am sure MVJ and co. are aware of. It's another reason I am frankly glad Bob Guza is involved, as he is no stranger to stunting for ratings.

I especially appreciate that there is a day or two focused on the show's creative genesis. The more we go back and revisit stuff like classic '90s GH or Generations, the more you realize just how unsung a piece of soap royalty Michele Val Jean often has been. I want to hear much more about her and this process. I wonder how long she's had this show in a drawer. As for the other CBS soaps, I think @Khan is right that in the end the only thing keeping Y&R propped up anymore - because I can't tell if they actually have any actual long-term storylines at this point - is the cultural/audience power of Victor Newman and Eric Braeden. Which is a lot, in fairness! But it can't last forever. Still, I will believe CBS (or Sony) have any interest in changing anything at the other two soaps when I see it.

I just checked Paramount, so I'll assume next week's specials will come up under the main BTG episode portal.

All credit to CBS for this. They are not fuckin' around.

I've said it before, but they will have a hard fight on their hands up against GH and its baked-in loyal audience. I still watch GH myself, though I don't watch it live very often.

LOL. Never happen.

She def hired some faves (Steve Burton, Jason Thompson). She brought in another useless blonde named Courtney for her daughter (just like GH and AW). I think Jensen Buchanan got a job there at that time. I can't be fucked to go through her whole dismal tenure to recall the other FOJ hallmarks.

I preferred the ambiguity of Sid and the lady mechanic played by Karen Wexler's mom from GH (Denise Galik?) in Season 2. (Though I don't think he slept with her either.)

Putting aside the ugly preamble with Gus between them, it was a very weird religious/Mormon take on lesbians to me. Their entire relationship was centered around this cloistered life where they each orbited first Gus, then the alleged suburban dad ideal of Frank Cooper(!!). In the end Natalia(?) had another child by him, once again venerating heterosexual parenthood and homemaking above all else while the two women remained weirdly chaste and retiring onscreen.

Unspeakably (her OLTL character was somehow even worse). And both their stories with Gus just prior to his death were uncomfortable and skeevy to me, first from a weird Mormon fundie POV (the whole Natalia mess with her kid) and then Olivia's weird obsession with him. And I was someone with very little time for Gus to begin with.

I don't know of a lawsuit threat at OLTL. I'd be interested in hearing about that. The GH legal mess was amateur night and completely avoidable by Jill, but she just had to have Jensen Buchanan ASAP. In the end that whole year in the saddle torpedoed her career as any kind of creative executive at ABC.

It's not a positive per se, but I do think JFP had a very canny sense of how to frontline certain vets of a certain age as a delivery system for her own objectives and preferred actors. At OLTL she did this expertly. Erika Slezak, Bob Woods and Hillary B. Smith were relentlessly frontburner again and doing great work, but it was all in service of lousy storylines transparently designed to push her favorite actors and upend the show for them. The trick was you often couldn't stop watching as a dedicated fan if Nora, Viki, etc. were your favorite characters (as they were mine). They were on 4, 5 days a week and I was dying to see if Nora and Bo would finally make it back together. (They didn't, because Kale Browne, Mark Derwin, etc. were Jill's priorities.) Don't worry though - the troll who thrives on any negative engagement will show up to rehash gushing positive talking points about JFP from 1998 soon.