Vee

I don't mind their horny delusions. It's good soap when it crashes down. But this whole saga has been so rushed and squandered ever since PM was shown the door. It could run a long time.

That is wild shít. Happy holidays, everyone!

I don't, but I get it.

They had both her and Cord comment on that a few days prior as well, I think just before the official HW change though Malone was clearly already in the mix (foreshadowing Luna, etc). I've talked about the strange, symbiotic Asa/Max relationship through the years a few posts back, but it is deeply bizarre in this period even when it makes a kind of character sense for them in the larger picture through the decades. I just can't believe JFP did it all over again in an even worse story.

This soap (and most soaps today tbh) have a very difficult time reconciling adoptive parent vs. biological parent relationships. Once the bio-parent returns to the picture they act like that was the only adult in a child's life. Cam called Lucky his father for many years but they don't really acknowledge that now because Cam's not around much. Further, it's awkward for them because they made Cameron very close to Franco in the interim to try to sell Roger Howarth to the audience. They also now act like Ric never had any relationship with little Kristina, and have all but forgotten Jax being very close to Carly's sons. They've done the same thing over time with Jake and Drew. They were very, very close when BM was in the role and when Drew informed him he wasn't his father after all the boy was beside himself. Today that close relationship is nonexistent. Hudson West to his credit pulled out considerable emotion and tears again when CM's Drew was stabbed in prison a couple years ago, but that's the last time I remember the relationship even being acknowledged. And why is it ignored? Because Jason is back, and it's awkward for the show and inconvenient for Jason. They don't know how to deal with nuance in families beyond biology most of the time, and they assume the audience is too old or stupid to remember.

Fair enough.

Brennan is a bizarre and pointless character as is.

Except she exited right as Frank and Ron were arriving. It was a matter of a couple weeks. Wolf was almost certainly axed or known to be out well before she quit. So it's a question of whether it was Wolf and JFP or FV/RC IMO.

Interesting bit of tea from MVJ re: GH. I put a marker for that discussion in the GH Classic thread. Odd to think of that time as 'classic' now, we're all getting old.

Outside of maybe the Monty run, Paul and Jenny always struck me as Riche making do with what they had while trying to right the overall show. Same with Bill and Holly (or even Karen and Jagger to an extent IMO - trying to find a way to reengage the youth audience, which succeeded). They were vaguely appealing people and had some chemistry so Paul and Jenny were it. Once they got a clearer vision for the show with Labine and reacquired Luke and Laura, you could cut a lot of stale or milquetoast couples. Though IIRC both Sabato and Cari Shayne chose to leave, it did feel appropriate there too since both Brenda and Robin were ascendant. I can't see Karen and Jagger fitting in for long. Like Jenny and Paul they were surplus to the revamped canvas. Ironically GH is populated almost entirely by those kind of placeholder/timewaster couples today, or some who are vaguely inoffensive. Though I'd argue many of them are even less popular or exciting than Paul and Jenny or Bill and Holly. But will FV cut them? No. In other news, this should be reposted in here from the BTG thread per its content: Is MVJ referring to the very brief Garin Wolf era or the advent of FV and RC?

I've said this too much, but I think it's both FV and the network hedging their bets. They don't want to rock the boat and seem only interested in maintaining their shaky equilibrium, so they go with what allegedly can be easily greenlit by a skittish network: Babies, babies and more babies, which fill lots of airtime per year, monopolize long story and are reasonably conservative. Plus secret children. It keeps a lot of the show on cruise control and avoids edgy social content. The kid issue, in terms of keeping all of them onscreen, is more about FV IMO; I think he is an indulgent paternal figure to a lot of young people raised on the show, just as he was at OLTL or with Nicolas Bechtel/Brooklyn Rae Silzer, and is often fond of them and loath to cut any of them. To the show's detriment. Forgot to add I do remember that old Q drawing room(?) as well and am thrilled to see it again, even if it's got that weird new color scheme. They rarely show it these days but should do so more often.

The problem is Drew remains dramatically unpopular with the audience, partly due to all this past bad story with Carly and partly because of this year. I think part of that is down to trained audience impatience with these kind of more morally complex characters as well as just plain years of bad writing prior, and I get it but I personally would keep him.

They were definitely teeing up casting Natalia's son Eloi under the PM regime. I am sure it is still coming to try to shore up ELR's role on the show, but I'd just as soon never hear of him again. I have no need for any more of Natalia, her children or her inevitable husband Baldo a.k.a. Sidwell a.k.a. "Arr, Me Jewels!" The youth set is indeed simpering. You look at the young people on the Hulu soaps even 10 years ago and it's a stark difference.

Not really, no, and that's because of all the babies and the obsession with the mob 3. It does. It can be done, but you have to be merciless and plan over time, almost like a Douglas Marland did when he had his canvas modular in a way - IIRC, he knew he could rotate Snyders in and out over years just by mentioning names, seeding them and when someone like Jon Hensley (Holden) might leave his brothers could step into the fray, or Meg and her sisters. In terms of the youth or twentysomethings I know I'd add young Wards of various ages, that I'd add a teen or young adult Alec, that I'd add Asians but you can only do so much without cutting everyone that's already there. So some of those, or other people, would have to come at other times.

It'll never happen, but Gio really needs to be the jolly bisexual twunk of the show. And more importantly, not related to everyone just so fan wiki-obsessed fans with no long-term thinking can nut over updating the family trees. The Sasha twist was bad enough and equally useless, but at least her blood ties didn't overly age up many relatively young characters who should be focused on active and passionate soapy story vs. always having more babies and secret kids. Unfortunately brood mares and stupid new long-lost children are the only long-term stories GH is wholly comfortable doing. Which is how you idiotically train fans to think that every male under 35 who isn't Black is somehow secretly Brenda's kid (last seen as a toddler in 2011! almost as young as Aiden!) who she left on the streets or Jason's latest needless son he won't care for or something. Pathetic. Anyway, #LetGioBeGio They'll never accept this until Steve retires or costs too much money. Same with Mo. It's also why they've allowed the youth set to back up for a couple generations and now Liz's boys and others are being squandered and underused. My bet is they won't recast Cam because FV likes Lipton, so we'll likely go without him too. And yes, I would recast both Emma and Spencer. Lila Rae is a possibility. But I'd cut (and add) a lot of people, in addition to keeping HW's Jake. I would also recast Georgie and basically redo Georgie I's original wallflower persona, and maybe do a triangle with her pining for rebellious Danny while he's involved with some wild girl from the Asian Quarter or something. And Danny and Georgie can be the unlikely endgame, while sweet Rocco gets the crazy girl or Lila or whoever, who knows. The problem is there's so many youths now in the mix, too many babies over the last few decades that you can't keep everyone, or use everyone you'd like to bring back. It's just too much. Which is another reason I'd move Joss to a secondary position for a while and introduce someone unusual for her (probably a geeky Q relation from Europe - an illegitimate grandchild of Alexandria). But in terms of who to keep or use - Cam, Gio, whatever? - I'm at a loss of how to balance it all while adding new unique characters or characters of color. Because again, GH has turned into a Christian breeding camp.

The Joss situation is especially strange because they spent so long with FV being all in on Eden as his precious NuStarr, the star of the show and trying to push her various pairings even while Sprina were ascendant. Then suddenly halfway through the year Joss and Dex can't buy airtime and she becomes Trina's talk-to. It kind of worked for the character because Eden and Tabyana have wonderful rapport and I frankly think Eden works better in a supporting or perhaps comic/scheming role (I'd still recast eventually, but not right away), but I wonder what caused the shift. And I fully expect them to try to put her over with the next guy. I think Mulcahey was trying to make them more palatable by taking Dex away from the mob and making him a cop. Those scenes with him and Anna talking about wanting to serve the people again and not Sonny's ego or criminal interests were heartfelt and I bought them. But I still never really cared about him.

Exactly. It's about deliberately marginalizing her and at times, I think about being actively trying to turn viewers off her. That's an old chestnut in soaps of course and Guza (or RC) were much more blatant, but it feels like repeating the same shrill scenes is part of the point. That and running out TA's contract. They want to be able to say she has a story but keep it as low stakes and inconsequential as possible so no one expects more from a Black lead again. The last time she had anything major was the wonderful monologue scenes at Spencer's grave early in PM's run. Ironically he barely touched her again - and knowing his history I don't put that on him.

This Trina/Kai C-story is so juvenile and shows how much contempt they have for this character they finally no longer are compelled to write for. Arguing over some slides while they repeat the same arguments over and over makes Tabyana look bad, and no, Kai isn't working well either. It's just boilerplate youth stuff with no depth and she could do much more.

Of course they would waste Isaiah on that cyborg.

I doubt it, it hasn't been that long. I rather doubt it's dead, Lifetime has a pretty tight system in place re: their product unlike ABC taking a flyer on a primetime pilot script based off a daytime soap which was the "Pine Valley" project a few years ago. I am not going to begrudge AMC returning in a format that could lead to it running and running with a series of TV movies. The Lifetime/Hallmark pipeline stretches on forever these days. I just hope they're of some quality if and when they do come along.

Llanview's own Nathan Fillion (OLTL) appears briefly in the teaser for James Gunn's Superman, sporting what can only be described as a very comics-accurate haircut as bad boy Green Lantern Guy Gardner.

I think Mulcahey had recrafted him into being kind of the political/business-mindeed Quartermaine operator and rakish, somewhat gray rogue character, but not a full-on heel as he's rapidly become now under the returning team. Both iterations work here and Cameron plays them well, but I do think Drew's likely to join Sam in the hereafter very soon. Which is too bad IMO, but unsurprising. This show always knows how to squander good opportunities.

IIRC Gio came on simply very sheltered about Sonny's life, grateful to him and expressing that he didn't know much about Sonny's business or why people hated him. This was just as Sonny was about to beat down Dex before Kristina's eyes at the Chase wedding.

Surprising to see Cain/Christopher Cousins back within 3-4 days of the official creative handover - I thought he turned up a little later.

I don't think GH has had a half-decent opening since the mid-2000s. And I was not a fan of the overheated, strobing rock remix of FOTH back then, or of the weird floating heads/backgrounds riff on that opening that came after it and lasted until '12. But at least those didn't feel like they had no connection to the past material. I'd kill for a new version of FOTH now but it's not going to happen under current management.