Vee

I wouldn't begin to know who to tag on this beyond @dc11786 @Paul Raven @VelekaCarruthers and @DRW50, but this looks like a big deal. There's two of these so far.

Beyond her offscreen stupidity, Thiebaud has very weak range and can't play real romantic drama or convey depth. When she tried in the Carlivati years it was embarrassing. So instead they kept trying to turn Britt into a snarky gay 'icon' and that this was somehow queer-coded material by simply telling us over and over that she was one while she was just... a straight woman. I could not believe they had drag queens at Britt's sendoff while having no actual LGBT story on the show lol. Like I'm sorry, penning a handful of scenes where Britt and dayplayer Brad give forced giggles watching the Nurses Ball does not automatically make this snarky queer-coded content lol. I don't care what easily pleased sea lions on Twitter say. She had chemistry with Steve. That's the most I'll give her. She was real lucky they were in a bind and she was the B/C player on the show available. Hated them. Do not especially miss Obrecht the mad scientist who (per her original story) committed horrendous medical crimes while experimenting on various patients. Sorry! I don't mind seeing Obrecht in a villain role coming in and out from time to time; Kathleen Gati is talented. Do I need her hanging around GH indefinitely while people are on a fond first name basis with this madwoman? No! GTFO of here with 'oh, that Liesl!' Man, this show.

Good thought, I agree. I suspect Bill blackmails them to be there to shine up his public profile. The Duprees turn the tables by showing up in mourning clothes. I thought Cady might be in that wedding shot but didn't go back and look. Well spotted! The comment in the TV Insider article by Clifton Davis about being there as long as he could was touching.

Another reason I've suspected Bill and Dani will end up back together down the line.

IIRC Genie asked for a contract and a serious commitment to a new love interest when she agreed to return full time in 2015-2016. What she got was FV playing it cheap, again: Preexisting recurring player Kevin in a romance that has never made much sense to me. I'm glad the actors enjoy it and I know the couple has fans, but it always simply felt like dismissive budget Tic Tac Toe to me vs. anything organic because FV would rather die than spend money he can waste on JPS and stars from other soaps on hiring someone new specifically tailored to Genie. Anyway, good for Jon and Cady. I do hope he can do both shows, even if I am not pleased with the use of Kevin in recent years.

There is a ton of background in this TV Insider article on the show's genesis (apparently originating from a primetime pilot MVJ created 20 years ago), Tunie and Davis joining up, etc. I expect we'll get more next week on CBS/Paramount.

Morgan can stay with the worms for all I care. Though his death still doesn't feel real to me as it weirdly had zero impact. lol.

It looks much better here without the bangs, which gave me flashbacks to some of her nightmarish late 2000s choices.

Wow. A first for me. I didn't know it could work like that. But yes, GH poorly utilizes Jon.

Wait a minute. DAYS lets Wally Kurth appear on GH while he's on a contract?

Anything that breaks up Kevin and Laura's boring marriage works for me at present! I do love Kevin but I have never liked those two characters together. I would hope Jon is doing the Wally Kurth special but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. Always happy for Cady, less happy for her latest disastrous hair choice.

Oh God, not to go back to this again but I forgot about Harley's endlessly under construction house! For some reason I thought you were talking about another Peapack 'set'. What a world.

Pardon me if I am retreading very old ground, but searching can be tricky re: discussion on some of this stuff. With the back end of ATWT '86 picking up considerably as it nears November sweeps, I just realized the show will soon be at a disadvantage. IIRC (and if various wikis aren't inaccurate, which they often are) it seems Gregg Marx is out as Tom as soon as the end of the year soon after a relatively recent reunion with Margo, and apparently the show won't have another Tom Hughes (the ubiquitous if considerably less sexy Scott Holmes) for many many months. Soon thereafter I believe Scott Bryce is also out as Craig in spring or summer of '87, not too long after he and Sierra have finally reunited. I wonder what was known when to the show - presumably well in advance, which is why they've started adding more men like Duncan, Seth and will soon add William Fichtner as the controversial Josh. I am surprised Marx was able to get out of the show after only two years? I do find the handling of the triangle with Lily, Dusty and Holden to be interesting in that Lily is openly cavorting with Holden and making out with him off and on while at other points clearly wanting to recommit to Dusty, go on dates, etc. There are plenty of gaps in 1986 online, but this seems to be a recurring thing over many months both before and after Dusty and Meg's ill-fated jaunt to New Mexico. I'm not sure of Lily and Dusty's relationship status at his point. Not sure a show would be quite as bold or casual with this kind of young love today. Also interesting is the seeming pivot to Barbara and Duncan, who do have major chemistry. I assume this was always merely a feint/angst re: Shannon.

We can't say they're trying to hide the show. I will give it to CBS for going all out. I wouldn't mind seeing the stars do talk radio in the District back home, if they haven't. Or (I know) The Breakfast Club.

As I keep saying!

The P&G/Beyond the Gates post on the main forum has a lovely video taking note of ATWT and GL with some nice comments from a rep. Very surreal to see after all this time.

The P&G/Beyond the Gates post on the main forum has a lovely video taking note of ATWT and GL with some nice comments from a rep. Very surreal to see after all this time.

Never thought I'd see the day P&G recommitted to their historical institution.

So strange to be in a new soap's first thread like this. I never thought I'd see the day.

That's absolutely what Kim and Reva became by the end. Reva was an aging, overweight good time girl who still clearly liked to drink and fúck, in the vein of a Pat or Peggy Mitchell or whoever else. And because the show was so regularly shorn of viable budget and coherent story, and perhaps because Wheeler wanted to put Zimmer in her place, they let her appear like that and wrote her like that regularly. Would never have happened before. But virtually every character was demolished and deconstructed due to the Peapack poverty grind, made banal or demystified. For many of them that demeaned them and made them small. For Reva (putting aside much of the actual story, or the marriage to Jeffrey) I think it just made her greater. This makes Peapack GL seem far more artistically intriguing than it is. I assure you, IMO at least it is not (and I say that as someone who owns Bill Gunn's Personal Problems, a public-access Black 'avant-garde soap' shot largely on very very rough home video from the early '80s). The show is a debacle. But what works amidst that mess is often down to Kim and other veteran performers creating something from very little in half-written scenes, and what aspects of the characters emerge from the disaster. For me, Reva is #1 with a bullet. Which I guess is all a kind of endorsement to watch, in its own way lol. But I still hate that era.

IIRC, Cassie's "house" looked like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Scrap metal on the lawn or whatever.

Kim (by her own admission, IIRC) complained constantly about story or lack of story, in almost every regime. But I think even she felt some of Reva's major stories in that period (like her ludicrous late in life pregnancy by Jeffrey) were stupid as hell. IIRC she did like the cancer saga.

That may be true, but I think ZImmer is right about what she says in the book: I do feel some of the material in the Wheeler/Kreizman was intended to demean her or run down Reva, and put her in her place (and I was not exactly a Reva fan going in, lol). But for me it did the opposite. The worse she looked and the more overweight she was (and not in a good place emotionally or physically by her own admission), the rawer and more spellbinding her performances became. Many of us have made the comparison to late 2000s Reva and the British soap divas. The more minimalist the storylines and frankly also the scripts got, the more naturalistic a lot of her interplay with others became. A lot of scenes felt at least 50% improvised in Peapack. Kim, Jordan Clarke, Robert Newman, etc. could sell it. Much of the rest of that era's cast could not. I find the incredibly razor-sharp, arrogant Robert Gentry Ed in the '60s eps very compelling, but so different from Peter Simon's or Hulswit's, both of whom I liked (especially Simon, but I'm biased). It was wild and very bizarre seeing Gentry return in the Rauch(?) era where they were trying to put him over as the same family man Ed. Don Stewart - I've said it before, I'll say it again, he's good on GL but I will never get over his starring role as the skeezy, barechested middle-aged circus lothario with a talking chimp in the modern Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic "Carnival Magic" (now featured in Season 11 on Netflix). I think that was made right around the time Marland came in. I commented on the comics a bit upthread.

It is wild that they made up Tony Call to look old and staid when he was a freshfaced young officer on Star Trek not too many years prior. And of course he was charismatic and suave on OLTL almost a decade later. Ironically, while the main line Spidey books still sell fairly well (for the current market) due to brand recognition and the MCU, allowing Marvel editorial to keep circling the wagons against the marriage they undid (though they allegedly have to keep rehiring only old writers who were involved when that choice was made, as apparently no new creatives want to abide by it), it's now another Spidey book that is currently outselling all of them - Ultimate Spider-Man, set in another universe, written by an A-list creator. Its premise: Peter Parker is thirtysomething and happily married to Mary Jane with two kids. But back to GL - In fairness, Zimmer makes it clear she was no picnic to work with at that time herself and takes some pains to try to give Wheeler the benefit of the doubt in the text re: the pressures she was under with the network and the parent company. I think Ellen Wheeler is a talented actress, and that she meant well. But the impression you still get - not just from that book but from virtually every anecdote from the cast/crew and every media appearance Wheeler did in that period - was that she was unstable and totally unfit for the job. I still remember Maureen Garrett's absolutely scathing remarks about her brief appearance in the last week. She was horrified by the conditions.

Jenz schmenz. Must we all be on a first name basis with this latest non-threatening cardboard villain? Can't we keep it to either "Sidwell," "Egghead," "Cueball," "Chromedome," "Baldo," "Matt Lauer" or (my personal favorite, a riff on Lost in Space) "Bald-Headed Booby?"