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Vee

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Posts posted by Vee

  1. If Martha was a little older you could (and I would) pass her off as a recast of Liz's scheming mother Carolyn on GH, unfortunately I don't know that it's quite plausible although she has visibly aged and Becky Herbst hasn't. (Especially if you reintroduced Sarah as an older sister, then it gets tricky if you cast someone like Tognoni who is only four years younger than MB lol) Yes, Martha played Andrea Floyd for 10 mins but who cares.

    I try not to think about the QAnon-adjacent path her situation with her husband seems to be going down.

  2. Social media has never been a good barometer for an election cycle. Especially on the left. Most of the party base is not truly plugged into or caring about the axes being ground by Briahna Joy Gray, Jeet Heer or other dead-enders. Even more prominent jerks like Stancil don't have any pull outside a small sliver of the Very Online element of the left. RTs are not votes.

    If I spent all day inside the online left bubble I could convince myself that this is the predominant voice of the party, everything is collapsing, why isn't Biden doing what these loud (and often mostly white) geniuses tell them? But when you step outside of those people (who predicted Dem doom for every cycle in the last four years) the world is a lot more both nuanced and black and white on certain areas (abortion). The reality is they are speaking to a specific echo chamber or pundits like them, that they are not the voice of the base (or a lot of the left, which is a very big and vast tent) and the rest of the base makes up its own minds.

    2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

    Hopefully the polls will be wrong again, as they were in 2022, and Trump won't overperform the way he did in 2016 and 2020.

    Consider though that even where he overperformed last time, it wasn't enough to win. And it's now four years later.

  3. 5 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

    I would kill for Scotty to do something awful and have Laura rip him to shreds. He is well past the shelf life of being a jerk because she broke his heart. And I like scoundrel Scotty, I just think she should call him out.

    The audience and Laura missed out on so much important storytelling when Laura was recovering. I think it would have been meaningful to watch Laura pick up the pieces of her life and rebuild her mental health. We saw all her breakdowns and traumas. It was a real missed opportunity.

    I just think it took a very long time to see a Laura who is as strong and confident as she came off in that 2008 stint again. She does pretty well these days but she really gave people the business in that short run after the rather degrading (IMO) turn of the delusional woman who was too sick to be told the truth during the pity wedding in '06. It was clear her '08 run was a reaction to that writing and likely requested by Genie (who I believe also talked about being more confident in herself, having lost a lot of weight).

    And yes, Laura needs to tear Scott up just once. I could not believe he kept trying to remind her of when they went to Hollywood or whatever as late as '08 or '13. They were teenagers. Move on.

  4. 9 minutes ago, Jdee43 said:

    Didn't it turn out that it was Scott who killed Rick? How is it that Laura still has anything to do with Scott after that? 

    He also tried to get Lulu the chair over Logan's death.

    Laura has been way too permissive with Scott for decades. Any time he does some insane shît she sighs and just says 'oh, Scotty.' I get that she left you for Luke but it's enough. The fact that RC re-introduced her in 2013 with a cheap stunt where she and Scott had somehow began romancing again offscreen in Paris after all the above had happened, and were engaged - and got married again for about 3 minutes, with Laura looking like she was headed for a firing squad - was so ludicrous. It was a weak, transparent attempt to try to rev up the L&L triangle again in the dumbest way possible and it makes no sense she'd ever be with him again. We didn't even really see any of their instant marriage/divorce onscreen that year either.

  5. Just now, DRW50 said:

    I look at polls out today like the one claiming that Trump is leading by 8% in Michigan or all the polls about how well he is doing with minority voters or young voters, and even as I want to think the polls aren't reliable, I still feel like there is such a disconnect with the reality of the GOP and what the public sees them as being. Helped by a media that is more in bed with them than ever.

    That's more about polling that oversamples the wrong people, IMO. Or people who still answer landlines. There's a reason polling is often off. The general public does not believe the GOP is great. That's the Beltway. Bad polling promises them there is a huge new youth or Black vote for the GOP every cycle. It has yet to appear.

  6. I'd notice, because I've noticed it even when D&C were there. I thought they were at times an improvement on Passanante's regime. They had some good stuff last year, especially with the vets reacting to Ryan's death.

    12 minutes ago, Bright Eyes said:

    Drew breaking up with Carly immediately, and now asking Nina to return to Crimson ... respect.

    I am wondering if this is going to lead to them hooking up after all. They do have manic chemistry, and they are already playing Nina more broad and arch again (as she should be).

  7. 5 minutes ago, Bright Eyes said:

    I think it's helped that I can't even remember the last time I watched the show with any regularity, because I've been enjoying it more than most it seems.

    I think we're pretty evenly split in here, at least among those of us actually watching the show and not following along on Twitter. 

  8. IIRC somebody was asking about who was responsible for resurrecting Lesley. In a 2018 interview with Michael Maloney, Genie claims credit:

    Quote

    When you left in 2002, the writers sent Laura away after revealing that her adoptive father Rick Webber (Chris Robinson) was revealed as this icky philanderer who drugged Laura after she walked in on him having an affair with a nurse named Theresa Carter. It was very tough for long time fans to see because it was a re-writing of Rick’s character. Fans wouldn’t mind seeing that story made right.

    You know, I would love that, too. Nobody liked that. Nobody liked that Rick Webber was suddenly this horrible guy. But they were looking for a way to have Laura lose her mind so that’s what they wrote. Nobody liked that. He was a beloved character and so is Lesley. Do you remember when Lesley was dead?

    The darkest 12 years of the show? Yes.

    I got that undone!

    Your ideas are great.

    Thanks. It was when Wendy Riche had taken over as executive producer. We had gone on a long walk together and we talked about what Laura should be. We talked about the Cassadine thing. I said to her I could never imagine Laura being on screen without Lesley. For me, the essence of her character was Laura finding her mother because that goes back to her beginnings when she was tossed back and forth between the Vining family [who adopted Laura after Lesley believed she had died at birth] and Lesley. For me, that’s what made Laura ‘Laura.’

  9. A few reflections on the remainder of the week that was (the first half of it, anyway):

    Say what we will for Ron Carlivati back in 2012 but he came in hot and started killing people on Day 1 and ending stories, and I was all for it at that time lol. The writing and dialogue was pure camp and nonsense at the time but it was also very satisfying to see almost instant changes. Yet a number of those changes led to stuff that was less than fantastic (the Connie saga), and more importantly and relevant at that time I think is that the show was believed to be on a clock: Most believed GH had a year or less left and I think FV/RC felt the same. The situation here is more nuanced; GH does not seem to be facing doomsday, so the show is changing slowly and carefully. And we're seeing that slowly.

    The biggest change for me in the first proper week is, again, a really sharpened-up series of interpersonal dialogue scenes and a continued focus on family and social connections; the stuff with Wagger and Anna was very human, not just plot-driven, as they had Wagger present himself as both vulnerable and flawed re: how he approached Danny and as they talked through the Sonny stuff re: Stone and Robin. It wasn't all plot-driven, and it gave me the first indicator that maybe they won't simply throw Wagger under the bus over whatever this setup is with Jason, because he admitted to being fallible in those scenes. Even the BLQ/Chase and Cody/Tracy stuff feels smarter to me, focusing on just the engaged couple's relationship (actually appearing at their own apartment and not infantilized within a clan on a family estate - imagine that!) and on Cody and Tracy connecting re: Dante. I appreciated that, even if little James is intolerable. Cody had the right idea in the first place: Lasso Maxie's brat and yeet him off the grounds!

    This leads to another issue: I think the stuff delineating and defining Jason's two sons differently is a great idea, and while the kid playing hero-worshipping Danny is very green I think he has some charisma and potential. This is not the case for Aiden or James, and while the new team's attempts to push family connectivity and these relationships are very admirable, these kids do not need to be given more dialogue lol. They're terrible. It's time to recast Aiden yet again and James, well, I don't care what happens to him because I still can't get over the fact that he exists (third child? what third child?). I don’t care what Little Mushmouth thinks of Tracy! That's her horse! Yet I suspect this is another adorable kid Uncle Frank thinks is too precious to recast, so I expect we'll see yet more of him.

    The material itself is not perfect - some of the dialogue with Liz and Aiden in particular is very B&B-esque and artificial as they continue to work overtime to set up various characters' new personal parameters. Elizabeth standing there monologuing about how Jake's (offscreen) feelings have changed hers for Jason to nobody in particular while we can’t get Jake onscreen that day does not work lol. Jake is going to be on quite a bit next week so that's fine, I get there are likely guarantee/availability or block taping issues in Uncle Frank's world and I am happy for the changes and differentiation in character on paper, but with some areas it's a bit forced and kludged together. In others I feel it sings. The scenes with Alexis and the latest terrifying Molly recast were smart and heartfelt, I felt. Even Valentin and Nina had some good dialogue, and people know I can't tolerate that whisper-thin simp. He nailed it when he said Sonny isn't complicated, just erratic. The Sonny/Natalia stuff, tedious, but that's how I feel about the entire Kristina/Blaze plotline so far. If you want to get Kristina a girlfriend find someone you didn't hire as a dayplayer.

    Another week of scenes where Willow has inappropriate chemistry with anyone but her weak tea husband! She clearly wants more of Stone Old (not a typo) Uncle Jason in her life. Also, it's time to stop letting people bring clothes from home or letting the wardrobe dept repurpose quite so much stuff. That denim/blue jean top LW wears often looks like something she brought in IRL and is not favorable, it does not suit Carly or her. Nor do I understand what kind of horrifying Amish blue dress Eva LaRue was wearing at the brewpub with Sonny. It looked like a set of repurposed window curtains and she resembled one of the stars of Women Talking. Meanwhile, BLQ's latest wardrobe gives her both the coloring and dimensions of Super Mario.

    Also: Frank’s Next Time previews are so random now. it's just random snippets of dialogue from almost a dozen scenes and we're getting bits like little James saying 'are you a bad boss?' Who cares! How is that second grader a teaser for the next episode? It reminds me of Peapack teasers. Those need to go. Back in the day (and not that long ago) GH previews had fewer scenes but used to hit hard. Anyway, that's enough ranting, I'll get to Thursday and Friday later. Sasha already looks like a mime, BTW.

    7 minutes ago, j swift said:

    I agree that Laura grew up around Heather.  But I would contend that was mostly due to Leslie's relationship with Alice (Heather's mother).  Also, Rick adopted Laura when she was already 18, so the idea that she thought of him as a father is a bit of a stretch.

    She said it onscreen constantly. She called him Daddy, at least for a time. It's not a stretch, it's what happened. They had Laura go all in on Rick very quickly in the material that's available.

  10. Just now, j swift said:

    Both are tangential Webers by marriage (direct or indirectly).  So, their familial bond is based upon their shared surname is tenuous at best.

    Laura considered Rick her father. And Heather was very much treated as a part of the family in those years by way of Jeff, if a sketchy one. That's why they had her staying with Lesley when they sprung Robin Mattson from the sanitarium in '80, and why the young Laura had a number of scenes with Heather in those years.

  11. Just now, DRW50 said:

    1999 is also a period which goes for long stretches without a headwriter. There were claims JFP was just happily headwriting the show herself. Then ABC moved Megan McTavish over.

    Pretty sure she was. When fans and I think the mags caught on they made her hire Megan, and unfortunately they got on like a house on fire.

    Becky did return again very briefly for Asa's latest fake funeral in 2002, when all the wives turned up. She was nice enough then but had very little dialogue.

    3 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

    The changes to Rachel were horrific and degrading. The material she got under Sandra P Grant felt sadistic and, at times, outright racist. Sandra was better served singing karaoke on a Bruce McCulloch SNL pre-tape a few years earlier than she was by her OLTL run.

    The stuff with her and Georgie hollering away at each other is hysterical - it feels like an infomercial for bad roommate situations. Then Georgie just starts whaling on her with a phone which, I'm sorry, I laughed. This is when you sublet!

    For those who may not be aware, this is one instance where JFP briefly got her way at GH later on: She helped get Jennifer Bransford (Georgie) hired as the forgotten, lamented Carly #3 in 2005, when they either could not secure Laura Wright yet or were still figuring things out depending on who you ask. I remember being floored by the recast as no one had heard of JB since OLTL. It did not go well! And she was dumped as soon as Guza and co. could get a name (Laura) to replace her. Some have said it was a deliberate sabotage attempt to prime viewers for a stronger recast post-Tamara Braun, but I don't buy that; I think they were over a barrel with no big name available right away, and JFP stepped into the void (as she would later do during the 2008 writers' strike) to try to exert her will once again, and it flopped.

  12. 8 hours ago, JamesF said:

    For my ills, this is why one day I hope I get to watch the era through because I remember reading about some absolutely wild shifts like Linda Dano, Rappaports, Ben Davidson, Skye and I'm super curious. Incidentally, I did my time with GH around 2004-5 and that was quite enough for me.

    That was more Guza than JFP - she was reduced to a line producer for his vision when he returned in '02 after JFP and Megan McTavish's Year of Hell. She had very little creative control after that. But woof, yes, Linda Dano's ABC Daytime Tour, Skye, Ben, etc. Don't get me started.

    Quote

    So that's why Becky Lee turned up for the inconsequential few months she was on?! Having not seen the 80s, she presented as a strangely Wario version of Nora (same hair but brassy and basic) and I had no idea why she was brought in.

    That is a hilarious comparison and accurate. But no, Becky Lee back in the '80s was a very sweet, calm, moral person.

    Quote

    Another era I hope to visit. I've read snippets of the Victor Lord story and insane sounds right but I am morbidly curious.

    Buckle up! Malone II was many things but never dull; it frequently rivaled JER's DAYS for me at that time, but it was equally mortifying to watch. There were the seeds of some decent ideas beneath the terrible execution, then there were huge debacles like Malone trying to force the robotic Jessica Morris as Jen into redoing Marty's entire story arc, right down to multiple scenes of Andrew and Nora standing around saying things like 'you remind me so much of a girl named Marty Saybrooke.' Then came El Leon Antonio, the noble peasant being executed by redcoats in Angel Square in fair maiden Jessica's Revolutionary War fantasy. That's not even the craziest stuff.

    Quote

    The character/Howarth is inherently watchable to me but the tipping point is probably the overlap of Marty leaving and Viki being his protective sister. It's a really unpleasant shift.

    Erika and Roger loved the Viki/Todd relationship and so did I in its day, but I also think there's a natural queasiness looking back on the overall shift to focus on Todd-Todd-Todd now. Especially while rewatching '93.

    Quote

    Your comments are also making me consider my thoughts on Rachel. The recast situation had the same vibe of what I felt with Sheila in being a watered down version (and I hated the victim narrative that went on and on and on in different stories).

    Malone had also intended for one of the recast Rachels in the mid-90s to kill R.J. in a murder mystery. Tim Stickney's popularity (and presumably Malone's firing) saved him.

  13. I think a lot of us are fascinated with LOV for a lot of reasons, not just those of us who love the Murders but also particularly the protean nature of the show; how it morphs into so many different shows and canvases over and over, especially in the '90s. There's so many disparate pieces that work or could work. But I would disagree that there's not much of Agnes in it. I said in the past and stand by the idea that it can be seen as an Agnes test laboratory for various stories, concepts, character archetypes, etc. which she revisited over and over through her career, including again and again at AMC in later years - in addition to Ava and Kate, Ally, etc., I think Cooper and Hannah, Steffi, etc. all are descended from Phil and Tara and other Agnes young love attempts, and can be seen to prefigure Becca and Scott, Greenlee, etc., all the way down to Pete and Celia and poor sweet suffering rich boy A.J. at AMC 2.0. You have various goofball characters (Egypt) that resemble her AMC successes or that she later tried to recreate again (arguably in the redemption attempts with Kate Collins' Janet at the end of AMC in summer '11, and Billy Clyde on AMC 2.0); you have the older Black character who is clearly an analog for Sadie Gray after Agnes tried and failed to port Ellen Holly and Lillian Hayman from OLTL to LOV. Here, in this misty little show too few watched, Agnes tinkered with her private fascinations over and over. That's a big part of what makes me often revisit the show, in addition to the unique visions of other writing teams coming in over and over trying to reconfigure the show to new visions from those parts. And that's not even getting to the Marland stuff early on.

  14. 32 minutes ago, JamesF said:

    I really appreciate getting a take from fans who watched this at the time. I knew from hanging round here over the years that Georgie was a Fatal Attraction/murder mystery so I was expecting it to pep things up for me. Some of it did I guess but I got that distinct JFP vibe that I remember from dipping into GH in the 00s. I seem to recall Todd referring to her as the "family blow up doll" and on the one hand I was amused but then it kind of sums up how the female characters were starting to be written...

    When the whole video sex scandal story started I think both fans and the actors were jazzed - HBS and Woods had been vocal about being not just on the backburner but 'in the freezer' for several years under the multiple post-Malone (no relation to Post Malone) regimes.* In early '98 it seemed like they were suddenly active, vital and in the thick of hot new story. (This was a key skill of JFP's in those years; she knew to play veterans early and often regularly, and keep viewers hooked - Bo, Nora, Viki, etc. rarely had any downtime regardless of story.) Then the Georgie story became a gruesome, ugly murder mystery that I felt often played like sheer hysterical camp (especially rewatching some of it recently) and then of course, the Rappaports took over the show. This gets much, much worse in 1999 and 2000 and more ruinous, until JFP leaves for GH (where she ultimately bites off more than she can chew trying to remake the network flagship soap GH playing her favorite actors in the same way in 2001, and is ultimately deposed to a mere facilitator for Bob Guza in 2002 - that is a whole other topic) and goofy but well-intentioned Gary Tomlin rights the ship somewhat.

    (* - Allegedly, the Drew storyline with Victor Browne in '96 was intended by Malone to be a interracial summer romance for him and Rachel, with Drew's mother, '80s heroine Becky Lee Abbott, rewritten as a bigot against the relationship. Becky Lee also inexplicably is shown as a con artist in this period, both turns are totally OOC for the character. Later, one of the subsequent regimes I think in that same year apparently intended for Drew and Nora to sleep together. Fortunately, none of these story turns happened.

    When Michael Malone returns in 2003 for his disastrous but insanely watchable second stint - it's kind of all his excesses turned up to 11, on LSD - he makes several feints at trying to reunite Bo and Nora. First by having Matthew finally be retconned into their son, after JFP made multiple attempts to destroy any viewer hope for that by having Sam run multiple paternity tests. A potentially dynamite Bo/Nora/Max/Gabrielle quad is teased early on but nuked when Frons orders the firing of the entire Holden clan. Then the Bo/Nora teases devolve into a series of kludgy, go-nowhere sequences where they are trapped together in close quarters and have people questioning their closeness, Asa tries to connive to reunite them, etc. Various new romantic spoilers like Mark Dobies' Daniel Colson and the interminable series of Paige Millers are introduced and ultimately none of it goes anywhere, possibly because of BTS reasons.

    Viewers do not really respond to almost any of Bo and Nora's other romantic options from 1999-2009 minus the brief, doomed Bo/Gabrielle romance and remain vocal about wanting them back together, but it takes til 2009 - and allegedly a come to Jesus talk with EP Frank Valentini - to finally put Bo and Nora together. When they do it works like gangbusters; the actors are fully committed again, very passionate together onscreen, and whoever was responsible for the long-term split Bob Woods later comments that it was a mistake to keep them apart, saying 'we could have been printing money all these years.' It was a nice way to close out the last 3-4 years with a strong veteran supercouple.)

    I do agree that the Todd redemption saga plays real different today rewatching it for the first time in many years, post-#MeToo. I understood wanting to keep Roger Howarth, I don't regret a lot of what I enjoyed with him in those years or when he returned in 2011 ready to work again, but some/a lot of it is also so gross and wrong now. You get queasy even about what you enjoyed or still enjoy and value, because you are watching in real time and with different eyes how they have recontextualized and in some ways marginalized the 1993 story you can also revisit in real time on YT.

    I adored Ellen Bethea as the original Rachel - none of the others worked until Daphnee Duplaix in 2009, who was too briefly on the show. HBS said she was the only one who captured Bethea's spirit and integrity, and she was right. If the show were alive today I'd have Dan Gauthier's Kevin and Duplaix's Rachel as a tentpole married couple for the Buchanans, raising Kevin and Kelly's difficult child Zane. (Bethea is all but retired as a poet/activist in Vermont.) In rewatching over the last decade I also discovered, like you, a real love for Valarie Pettiford as Sheila who I barely remembered. The recast just doesn't work, even if Stephanie Williams was a popular veteran of both Y&R and GH. Again, were it up to me and the show were around you'd see Pettiford back as Sheila on a recurring basis from time to time at least, happily remarried to Hank.

    The full first year or two of Gottlieb and Malone may become available soon. If so, I look forward to watching it make history.

  15. 4 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

    I’m actually surprised so many people posting seem to think the show was just magically going to be good. It’s going to take a minute to see what the new normal is going to look like.

    It's considerably improved on the day to day, which is enough of a good start for me. It holds my attention all week. I don't expect FV to turn into Linda Gottlieb. Would I love for there to be a new EP? Sure. Do I think it is likely in the current system? Nope. And I do think they've made a good start at delineating the boys.

  16. 14 minutes ago, Khan said:

    You know, I wonder what would have happened, had GH and ABCD allowed Tony Geary to keep playing Bill in addition to Luke.  Obviously, TPTB knew Bill was a dud and wanted him gone with the quickness, but what if they had agreed to let him play both roles simultaneously all those years?  Who knows?  Maybe TPTB and TG wouldn't have taken Luke down such a dark path.

    @dc11786 was gaming almost this exact question out in the Classic thread a page or two ago, but I believe it was more about 'what if they'd brought Laura back but not Luke while TG played Bill'. I can't see it working for long, but letting Bill run another 6-12 months as a kind of antagonist to L&L with Geary doing both roles might've been real interesting.

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