Vee

That's my dumb ass told. I never thought they'd go there with Jason and Anna unless their backs were truly against the wall with Steve's flop return, but clearly they are already there.

Not bad:

Not sure this would really help the situation! If Sonny murdering A.J. or shooting his pregnant wife in the head didn't get him thrown off the show, there is zero chance that 'killing'* the mediocre country-western recast of Antonio Sabato Jr. who didn't last nine months on-camera is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. (* - besides, I highly doubt he will end up being the one who really murdered Wagger anyway. They have no room to maneuver if Sonny killed a fed in cold blood.)

Harris' MSNBC interview with Stephanie Ruhle:

I thought my old town couldn't get a worse dude than de Blasio. I was wrong!

Yeah, I'd be happy to purge whatever attachments I have put up but it doesn't seem to be giving me that option.

I think they've all said they weren't sure what to do with Dorian until the trial - the Emily Haynes thing, etc. What's really bizarre is some recent and I think period reports (maybe from Malone himself, I can't recall offhand) which suggested they originally conceived of Joey/Dorian on paper with Chris McKenna(!!). That seems unfathomable to me. I have been watching him be tested heavily with Reiko Aylesworth's Rebecca in summer '93, and it's clear he just reads too young for her too. I was pleased to see Robin expressing sympathy for how Elaine Princi was treated on Twitter awhile back. Princi did a very strong job pinch-hitting.

A bit more from the original Business Insider article.

They were rushing a lot of things in late Rauch including Bo and Cassie and Max and Lee Ann, both of which are weird and in the case of the latter downright creepy. Laura Bonarrigo is particularly taxing at this point as Cassie is written so weak in the early months. I adored her by the time I started watching a couple years later, and I still think she should've never been discarded by JFP. She's still beautiful today, BTW. Joey Thrower is cute but I can't imagine him in any of the stories of '93, etc. OTOH I do remember him being good during the Megan death stuff. I guess I'll have to revisit it in time. I had no idea until the other day that Virgil the angel reappears very briefly, in an almost abstracted Twin Peaks moment, to Viki the day after Megan dies in '92. He's there in the hospital room and she knows without dialogue that he is there for Megan. They showed an extensive flashback to Starship Heaven to prime the audience as to who he is, but other than that he has almost no dialogue that I saw beyond calling "Victoria's" name. A bold choice which I appreciated - you knew why he was there. Father Tony is very hot! It's weird to see him with Jason Webb, two characters from two different eras. They should not have let Mark Brettschneider get away. Also: I love Chris McKenna and his Joey, but his asthma attack scenes are giving Sanford and Son.

Exactly, which is why I said end credits aren't always worth much. (As we saw with Patrick Mulcahey ghostwriting at GH a bit early before his name was on the credits this year.) The divide among fans for the Gottlieb era has always been there, but I am just very grateful we are able to see both the glory of the '80s and this incredible transition period these days. I do agree about Robin's issues BTW, but personally that only happened for me when she came back again in 2003. Robin was deeply hurt by her being forced out by JFP, and I've long felt she came back determined to make herself indispensable to OLTL by bringing her performances up and up and up, feeling as though this would be her giving it 100%. She still did good work in the last decade-plus, but she was often too quick to go for the histrionic vs. prior stints for me. I love how his letter to her said 'let's never let the words get in the way'. I am not going to back and watch the rest but haven't they known each other maybe a few weeks? And is this message not tantamount to him suggesting they just fúck?

@Darn called it 'Maurice Benard staring at Eva LaRue's tits for six months' and that's about the size of his day to day storyline as I see it.

August '91. Did not realize Andy #1 and Hunter Guthrie were still on (and yet to marry) by the time Gottlieb and Malone are on the scene. Absolutely deranged scene in which Joey Thrower is chained up (in literal chains!) on Carlo's yacht by this preppy kid who wants to rape Stephanie. Bonkers. I believe @Khan always said the resolution of this Friday cliffhanger in the first week of August - where "Hudson"/Cain thinks he's shot and killed by Tina by accident - was Malone and Gottlieb taking over the storyline to end it. I wondered if the sudden shift a few eps ago, where Cord learns the truth rather quickly, Cord and Tina finally talk things out in bed and then Tina goes to Asa and Renee to tell them about the Hudson mess and maturely own up to it was part of the writing change, but I know most anecdotal sources or research ( @dc11786 may know, or others - sorry, I just remembered they said Craig Carlson's name was still on 8/9) indicate Malone's name may only have officially been on the show the following week, not that that's a great indicator of anything sometimes. Either way, I'm there. They clearly knew Christopher Cousins and KW had chemistry though, as was evident in earlier scenes with her telling him lots of old stories about classic '80s plotlines while boozing it up. I feel fairly confident the episode a week or two before devoted to Tina's NYC makeover walking the streets to "Pretty Woman"(?) while Penn Jillette guest stars was Gottlieb (presumably sans Malone) running out the clock and experimenting, but who knows. They also briefly show Alex in Mountainview this week and Bo is convinced she's faking. They actually had Tonja Walker in exit notices in all the soap mags at this time, so I wonder if they decided to keep her before or after those scenes. Not long after this when her staying was confirmed, TW told the mags Alex was definitely faking. I wonder why they replaced Joey Thrower later on; maybe too much of a babyface. He's not terrible, but not Kirk Geiger. I talked about Nicholas Walker earlier, but his insistence on having Max adopt a broad Sweetwater yee-haw accent while palling around with the good ol' boys is deeply grating.

Peak Thompson:

LOL of course he clipped that. Alex Thompson is such scum. Joe might be right, but I am frankly glad we don't have to find out atm.

Yasmine Bleeth was a hot commodity on two soaps and later on Baywatch. It doesn't surprise me they held onto her, even if Lee Ann had a rocky start under Rauch. The thing with Nicholas Walker's Max is so gross. I'm not sure if they just waited out Bleeth's contract to play teen drama (the pregnancy and marriage to Kevin) or if they'd wanted her to stay longer, but she clearly wasn't going to. Stephanie doesn't seem to have ever worked - I think they recast a month in, and the character had only been on a little over two months before this nonsense with Kevin and his siblings trying to rescue her from Carlo. The whole thing with her singing Miami Sound Machine over and over is unbearable and I hope it wasn't Gottlieb's idea but given her focus on bringing in more contemporary music I wouldn't be shocked. There were a lot of stories about Griggs being a problem BTS. I'm not sure if she even lasted six months on contract, as I think they brought her back in '92 for the Carlo murder mystery. I didn't know until recently there was any potential interruption in her run on the show. I may be wrong on that. This random hiatuses happened with a few people in both Malone runs, including Grace Phillips in 1992 who allegedly had a bad relationship with Gottlieb and bolted or was fired fast. From what I've seen she was very good. I know she was off for months and months after being played very heavy in early '92, then when she returned for maybe one or two days in November engaged to Bo she died in the car crash immediately.

Summer 1991: Viki just rolls with family acquaintance Alex taking her two younger children to Loon Lake out of nowhere. Times were different for us all.

If it's DC some of us will know it. There better be go-go music somewhere!

Nicholas Walker undoubtedly had serious chemistry with Fiona Hutchison and was clearly very committed to the work, but his Max often comes off OTT and effete too much moving into the realm of camp. I'm curious how he was received (and how long it took Matt Kingston to be unmasked as Max in '90).

I got this as well.

I remember that Pleshette interview, lol. The wonderful advantage of sites like that one and Tommy Krasker's blog is both got extensive interviews with staff and cast while they were still here, including Krasker talking to Richard Gollance. You do get the sense depending on who you ask that Filerman might have his own POV and version of events, but I guess everyone does. I guess Marcus either came up with the Ciji pitch before leaving or lingered into Season 4 longer than we knew.