Vee

Exactly. And in fairness, when she came back for the end she did commit all the way. I can buy Agnes wanting to work with guilt/trauma because as Megan said, Agnes could certainly write about guilt to fuel drama. I don't buy it in terms of her merely wanting Julia punished for it, which is what Jim Reilly's tormented, conflicted Catholic mind often did with characters. Certainly not from the woman who surely had a hand in the flawless execution of the Cassandra abortion material on AMC 2.0, with the direct address to camera from Angie to Todd Akin.

I thought the ending was fine. I didn't mind the returns, particularly Dixie and Stuart. Those deaths should never have happened. I didn't love the slapped-together cliffhanger but as a statement about Erica it made sense for who she was. I thought OLTL's network ending was superior on many levels, but AMC's was solid enough for me and they clearly did those last weeks with a lot of love.

Her relationships with Susan and Agnes at least seem to have some nuance of love/hate, but she's awfully cruel to Lucci who never sounds like she was ever anything but a typically precious/insecure actress, and always at least outwardly sweet to her. The thing with Cady got me because as I said a few posts ago, no, what she said about Cady's performances in the mid-2000s is not exactly untrue, and we've long heard Cady can be a handful. She's also a real talent and a cornerstone of the show. That's the business. She knew it was wrong to do what she did but when she did it she admits to having taken glee in slaughtering the character. Or with Jean Carol, it's the slightest offense.

Agreed.

Plus there's about 50 people to fire as is.

Yes and yes. He was in on that, but he was portrayed pretty sympathetically. Helena poisoned little Lucas. Roy and Melissa were the heroes of the show that year, but even JFP had to make them take a backseat to Luke and Laura in Endgame. IIRC Melissa stayed topside worrying over Edward. I think by then (fall/November) Angel had been written out, Jill and Megan knew they were in serious trouble and so Roy and Melissa had begun to be pulled back on. By February or so of the following year, Melissa was out and carted off to jail.

I think action/adventure is a part of GH's DNA at this point, and can be done well in certain situations and with a skillful use of budget. (As they did with the Metro Court hostage situation in the 2000s, and as Frank did in 2012 with the water crisis which probably saved the show from the axe.) But I don't think they should keep attempting it in the chintzy ways they have for much of the last 5-6 years. Either commit to something more impressive or with scale/scope and cut a few expensive people to help pad the budget, or don't do it. The Michael fire stunt in January was very impressive, but that's a smaller example. Of course, the way I'd do an Endgame kind of situation would be ludicrously ambitious, but would only be done that big in order to transition the show from the network to something revamped and more streamlined on Hulu/streaming, with grand promotion and fanfare - and it would only do so by blowing the show's annual network budget lol. Go big on your way out, I say! But it sure wouldn't be a bunch of confused boomers wandering some cheap tunnels. That's where Frank and Ron used the canvas much more effectively during the water crisis - appropriate action, for the most part, happened with appropriate people at appropriate places spread all over Port Charles (not unlike folks hunkering down at Kelly's or wherever in '81 re: the weather machine). When the town was saved, everyone was shown celebrating at various places and that's how it should be.

Zzzzz.

Yeah, she was dead. Stavros murdered her in the summer and framed Stefan, who was still into her. IIRC Luke did let him fall into the random bottomless pit that opened in a hole in the floor lol. While grinning and gloating like an idiot. It was all very, very poorly staged, shot and crafted. I seem to recall over half the cast standing around down there like 'we have to get out of here, this place is endless, it's going to collapse!' But there was zero sign of any danger or anything particularly descript about those corridors. It was so bad.

Oh good grief.

It didn't make sense for him, no. They dragged him into it because of Alexis and Kristina, I think, but also just because everyone had to be down there. Jax, Bobbie and Scott were particularly comical.

Sure, but this was also still in the period well before Tony started parroting the Guza line about Luke and Laura. Until around 2007 he was very respectful and reverent of that legacy, from what I recall. It was. According to both Megan and longstanding BTS info the original plan was for the hospital to be blown up (so JFP could remodel the hub, which she later did) and for Stavros and Helena to unleash a biotoxin into Port Charles' air supply or something. This was all scrapped due to 9/11 and hastily redone to feature the ridiculous, cheap-looking underground maze stuff where everyone including all the middle-aged vets just hung around in the catacombs pretending to be Stallone. Having Bobbie, Roy, Jax, Melissa, etc. all down there just wandering around was hysterical, to say nothing of Luke's queeny final fight with Stavros where he attacked him with pillows and a curtain or something.

A long, fairly damning interview with Schumer, both before and after this week's disaster. I think Chuck Schumer is a good man whose point of view on certain issues I can understand and sympathize with - at a different time. This is woefully out of touch. I think it's time to go.

I don't doubt some of what she is saying is true, lol. I just think the work Tony did on his original return story with Claire Labine was good, and I think Tony's off-the-cuff rewriting near the end of his run in his scenes with Jonathan Jackson in 2015 was still very good. So Imma side with him, because Megan's amateur night Endgame is still burned in my brain lol. The most I know of Tony's original concept with Irene Suver is that it apparently involved the return of Robert Scorpio.

I don't hate Jason quite as much this time and I do think Steve is putting in a bit more effort. But there's no story and nothing interesting for him to do. If Steve is serious about what he claimed up and down last year in interviews and podcasts, which I doubt (especially post-divorce) - that he wants to do a couple more years and then wind down his career and retire - I would call him on it, and give Jason a final story on his contract with a new/old woman (Keesha Ward, just to fúck with the Facebook biddies in the audience) and then write him out and kill him off at the end of his contract. That or if he doesn't like it he can go at the end of his next 13 weeks. It wouldn't make any difference to me. He costs too much and sucks up too much time (unlike, say, Lucky, who has less airtime, has begun to settle in and has a clear place to land in story/romance despite a rough intro), and his return has flopped. So Steve's in a much weaker position IMO than Jason has maybe ever been. He can play what he's told and then exit, or he can go immediately. That would be the deal for me.

I really don't think Disney owes Maurice some unrelated menial job, though the idea of Mo working a forklift is sending me right now. Maurice has been paid very, very well for decades. They are free to let him go at any time. It's not an industrial college or work release program. Do I think they will let him go? No.

Yes, I saw. Hence the desire to nuke them all (including Sidwell).

I figured he would be Eloi. I'd send the entire family over a cliff in the fictional James Lipton Express Bus that we don't even think actually existed, but no time like the present.

At this point I think Mo just likes naps and getting paid. Takin' it easy!

It was Alberti, and he was not great. Bruening came later.

They brought on Alexandra Daddario as J.R.'s insta-girlfriend Laurie, as well as Seyfried as Joni who fared a bit better. (Daddario could not act back then.) But both came out of nowhere and had a series of Saved by the Bell-style teen plots with the terrible off-brand J.R. recast of the time (I think it was poor Andrew Ridings, who was wooden in the role) and whoever played Jamie - I can't remember, there was a rotating series. There were a few weird episodes devoted to these new insta-teens and maybe Brooke, Adam and Liza? sitting around a movie theater, which I found very strange (and again, straight out of an actual SBTB episode IIRC). There was the very hard, sudden Fusion push lumping all the women under 50 together in one office/job, and the massive push beyond Frons' new chosen leading men with each female lead - the remarkably terrible Carlos for Greenlee, the early, vaguely effeminate and very weird Michael Cambias for Kendall who came off too old for her, Boyd(!), etc. Like Fusion, the new men came out of nowhere and were promoted at this time as a singular unit in advertising - 'these are our new leads'. The truly unfortunate Henry Chin thing others have mentioned was, I think, around this time and he was among the above males, which was too bad bc I liked Henry. (Did no one consider the optics of naming a AAPI family 'the Chins' and having them run a Chinese restaurant?) The endless intrigues of Cambias, Lena, etc. began to take over the show out of nowhere. There's more craziness but that's what I can remember offhand. The very sudden, very forceful stuff with Fusion, the teens, etc. felt so foreign to the show for me. It did not feel like I was watching All My Children. I remember being surprised any time I'd actually see Erica, Tad, Adam, etc. Like 'what are you doing here?' Both the videos above are from this period IIRC. It was very late 2002 to maybe summer '03.

Fire him. Am I correct in assuming Sonny and Natalia still haven't kissed? If so that is deliberate and can only mean Mo doesn't want it, they know it's unpopular and are regrouping or both. But hey, I am sure Frank thinks the magic of Sidwell and the Sidwell/Ramirez family dynasty will solve everything for another interminably boring 2-3 years so he can hold onto Eva LaRue.

Jason and Carly absolutely flopped in 2021, lol. The actors have been very open recently about how unpopular it was, and it hasn't exactly been a secret (to anyone but Liz Korte) that the actors have never had sexual chemistry for the last 20 years. The show derailed last spring when they tried it again - something I think Patrick Mulcahey should've gotten hazard pay for walking in having to attempt to redo as the pairing's creator, but without Sarah Brown - not only because it just doesn't work with LW but because nothing was working BTS. Then Frank and Korte put her with that dayplayer (Brennan) to give her something to do, and have fumbled about with Jason with Sasha who's half his age and Anna who should have nothing to do with him, and from there here we are. There is no complex long-form story bible being played out on this show - anywhere, with anyone. There is no intricate slow burn couple. Jason and Carly are not laying in the wings waiting to happen and there is zero evidence of it onscreen, nor has there been for at a minimum six to eight months. It is not happening. As a result of trying to go back to that well briefly this time last year and flopping again, they just don't know what they're doing with either character period. Both Brennans are a triage/cheap stopgap pairing for Carly as a result. And the Jason stuff is just as bad. Maybe if they just show the audience lots of fanedits it'll help.

This is bad (particularly poor frumpy Liza being treated like the ugly one), as was virtually everything about the brief Rayfield/Cascio Frons' vision on steroids era that preceded Megan's return - I had never seen the show more unrecognizable and bizarre to me, and never would. But I will raise you and give you this video (timestamped), which features the unbelievably annoying original song I had almost convinced myself I'd imagined for the last 22 years until now. "Fuuuusionnnn! What women want!!"

I think the reason I liked FLF is because she was indeed so very similar to Hillary B. Smith on OLTL, who she ended up subbing for. Never seen her again.