Vee

I was livid when she was put on contract in late '02 while needlessly appearing at that time only as Jen's scheming helper and shrill Mini-Me, but she did become very popular with Al in the otherwise insane Malone II era of 2003 when they softened the character tremendously while having her gaga over the mysterious 'Voice of the Night' (Al). It was not a pairing Brian Frons was expecting to become popular, so he was forced to rehire Nathaniel Marston and then the Michael/Marcie mess began, when they should've just undone Al's death. I get that a little of Kathy Brier can go a long way. And I do think Marcie stayed a bit too long in later years, but her high points (the early Marcie/Al story, the hostage standoff with Viki in Paris, Texas in Carlivati's early days) were strong for me and she was popular with the audience.

She also only exists to tie him in further to the show - with Luke and Laura's alleged grandchild.

According to Warlock himself a year or two ago, he was cast at the last minute when a chosen actor couldn't hack it after several days of taping.

Valentin is a pervy piano-playing arms dealer and crime kingpin who absconded with his mutant child against the other side of the family's wishes while facing federal and likely international prosecution. The show is trying to shine him up here because FV and Korte have always been overly fond of him and JPS and want to keep him around at all costs.

No.

Agreed. It would take a serious effort to make me take Kristina seriously in the business.

Marston was always horribly miscast as Al IMO. Tipps was very green but NM was a total 180. They brought him in to be the heavy and turn Al into a psycho stalker/heel for Cristian and Jen. It was the pairing with Marcie that saved NM and made him work as Al despite his having been wrong for the role, and then they stupidly killed the character which should never have happened.

IIRC he's not a scriptwriter on the show, he's on breakdowns.

Same lol. But I think Kristina has been a flake for over a decade.

I wonder. Most of the Robert/Holly fans on social media seem over the moon about the Sasha retcon debacle and their tawdry exit - it's their ultimate fanfic fantasy - while the general audience just seems pissed. But Emma sounds thrilled, and says the show has been very kind about both using her often and accommodating her re: her health with giving her less physically strenuous scenes as needed. I'm happy for her, but it's Holly I can no longer stand. I have always been one of the Robert/Anna fans, though I was obviously not watching live in their heyday. I will always be a fan of theirs and I'm still sad it didn't get a proper redo when Tristan was more able. I do think Jax was also LW's best pairing as Carly, with the exception of her too-brief time with Sean Kanan's A.J. That could've been one for the books.

I think he (and the network) feel compelled to use them in the very sort of lackadaisical way they have since the early 2010s. When Frank and Ron tried to mostly phase the mob out they got backlash from MB who incited his fans, and since then they've allowed the mob to still have a role. But it's never had the stakes or weight it had in the Guza years (which got very repetitious and tired themselves), and Maurice's performances have seriously degraded as well. DZ and Alexa are great together and their clashes are clearly meant to reintroduce Lulu's brash personality from the old days, without the hardness and coldness JMB often had. But I wish it wasn't all over that mutant child.

Very sad.

All I know is the stuff in spring-summer '91 is interminable, and that's without even mentioning Kevin and Stephanie. NuMax and Lee Ann is just gross, and the business with Alex faking a pregnancy and early Bo/Cassie is pretty lame.

A great deal of classic GH is MVJ's work. Stone's death, the Wards, Liz's rape, you name it.

They really ought to, but I bet Frank won't out of loyalty to Chad. It's also clearly a bizarre quick change, since they had set up Michael being vengeful over Willow and Drew, then dropped it all for him moping around lovelorn and boom, burnt to a crisp. I wonder just how bad off Chad is IRL.

That is ridiculous lol. Sonny has been grievously injured or lost his mind a dozen times.

Nina as a character has never needed to exist and still doesn't need to be around. Watros is the only one who's made her appealing to me at times, and that's largely on the strength of her own personality. But I would still probably cut her (not immediately, but soon) if it was up to me. She had a moment where Drew and Nina could've gone the distance for me under Patrick Mulcahey, but that's gone.

I think Ava was going to go to Valentin after puzzling out that he screwed with Sonny's meds (her discovery of which was done very clumsily, I agree) and they were going to collude for awhile. But who knows.

I think the Ava B/C-story with Ric (because that's what it is at present, though I enjoy them together) is more about marginalizing her again vs. her being bone-dry as a character. Ava can still almost always get up to shít IMO. But someone didn't like her having one over on Sonny, etc. and as soon as the writers changed she was out his door and into a meandering court subplot, and now this. I can sooner see Alexis having a casual fling with Sonny again (as we've discussed before) than Ric tbh. But yes, Rick and Nancy have always had chemistry. That pairing was really torpedoed.

I like the mid '90s OLTL opening (and the focus on the paper, the city, etc). But if OLTL were around today I think an updated version of the famous Peabo song with a similar montage to the mid '90s opening would work best. I don't think anything is as timeless as FOTH and the AMC '90s-2000s tune though.

That's Korte, IMO. As soon as Mulcahey was out the door Ava hit the skids again. Similar things have happened with Nina when she 'won' Sonny from Carly. Every day was about humiliating her.

IIRC, girl vanished in the bathroom mid-dance contest. Cady was embarrassing in what became a very cartoonish role as Kelly Andrews(?) on Y&R. To this day I am not sure who exactly killed her off. I liked Cynthia Watros in the role - she was visceral and raw in her grief over her child - but I don't think the character had a purpose other than to be Billy's other woman. Watros has done valiant work in poor roles, including the mess that was Nina Reeves on GH long before she got there. I would earmark her for a short-term role on OLTL were it to still exist (which I originally thought up for the late Anne Heche), but we don't live in that world.

BTG is Michele Val Jean's baby. Guza is a co-writer and Ron Carlivati is a staff writer. I don't really think it's fair to judge her brainchild according to the white men working under her, though I personally think Guza in particular has his merits.

Which is why she actually thrived in Peapack, where all the artifice was stripped away and she was just doing old, fat, horny Reva weary of the world. If they intended it to put her in her place after clashing with Wheeler it didn't work. I think some of that was Kim's best, most nuanced work with truly weak material. It's when I gained a new respect for her and began revisiting her classic years in the '80s. I've said it before: In middle to late middle age Kim could've thrived on the British soaps. They have dozens of women like her.

I think the story (under Mulcahey) was them growing to understand and respect each other in a more romantic way. I definitely saw it happening with Drew towards Nina in spring and summer, as he softened and saw her in a different light and they began to work well together at Crimson/Aurora and in his political career, and seeing her with her family. He called her a spoiled dilettante (which she is), she called him a cocky boor (which he was). Then they began to shift. The dalliance with Willow was what got in the way, in true soapy fashion. I wasn't against it at all, as crazier things have happened on soaps. But the way it's been done since Mulcahey dipped has downshifted Nina and amped up Drew being portrayed as a skeez. It's a fine line between a cad and scheming but fun cavalier hunk vs. an outright skeezy dude, especially in today's world. Cameron can portray both and I think has done so well, but they've leaned hard into the latter since PM exited. I do not think they are trying to present Drew and Willow as true love. I think he is the full heel. And that's fine too if it has to happen (though it didn't), it can still make good drama. Just not the way GH generally does it, rushing things and wasting potential good villains and drama.