Vee

A choice! They haven't worked together in over 20 years (and very briefly the last time) and Griffith is not the writer he once was. I find it crazy SOD made zero mention of Howarth's very public issues with playing a rapist and didn't ask how he feels to be doing it again.

I mean, I hated a lot of those characters in 2000s DAYS and thought the writing for them was wretched but to each their own. They certainly had their fans in that era who are still fond of it.

Eh. It was all lousy for me after 2003 or so lol, and at that time I had never watched the show much before coming in at Sheffer's glory period around 2001 (except for some embarrassing stuff from the Eddie Silva, etc, period) so it had nothing to do with the past. It slid wildly downhill once Passanante got more involved. Any time I tuned in after that it felt off-brand and like it was going through the motions, and then slowly zeroing out on budget and just becoming sad and turgid. Once you got a look at the Marland classics they would run over the holidays in the 2000s or on WOST, and I began to dig deeper into the show, even a layman could see the show deserved much better.

I haven't seen it since it aired I was also very fond of Reilly's Terror Island saga on SuBe, a blatant and successful attempt to rip off the success of Scream. It was typically shoddy/silly script work from JER, but it worked tremendously on a teen viewer who also loved horror. It also managed to have a body count of known characters who added real weight, and a culprit ("Ben") that added stakes. It didn't become total embarrassing farce for me like the Salem Stalker. Of course I haven't since it almost 30 years, so I can't imagine it holds up that well.

I didn't see a topic like this floating around (none recent, anyway) so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I make a point to watch a lot of scary stuff for my favorite holiday, and sometimes that includes the soaps. I grew up on Dark Shadows which I know by heart at this point, and Reilly's DOOL speaks for itself. But I was wondering if anyone else had any particularly special and scary soap eps/storylines that stuck with them for this time of year. I'll probably tuck into an episode or two later of my Edge of Night 1980 backlog with the creepy Nola Madison witch saga, or the recently recovered Somerset ep with the infamous Jingles the Clown (wasn't that also Henry Slesar?). I also found the 1991 Halloween episode of OLTL nicely spooky recently, where little Jessica Buchanan runs afoul of the mystery in newcomer Asian Blair's secret room (her mad mother Addie). Any favorites? IIRC James Stenbeck's big return on ATWT in the mid-'80s was right at or after Halloween.

I actually loved that Portia and didn't find her smug so much as very blunt, professional and bracingly focused vs. a lot of the hospital stuff lol. It became a bit much later when the show clearly didn't and doesn't like her though, preferring to write for animatronic Jordan and Cruisin' Curtis. I am here for this relationship for now though, I'm open to it.

I can't really buy the upright, forthright professional Portia of the past being friends with Ava at all (unlike her daughter, who has a kind of Robin/Sonny thing going with Ava), but I'm here for it for the moment. We can let Portia crash out for awhile, then one-up Curtis and Jordan before the smuggersons either leave town or die and start getting her life back together.

On paper it's not a bad sketch for a new character, but making it the wildly polarizing and overexposed Cane, with Lily and all the other nonsense (including the train) it's terrible. Trevor had actually aged dramatically enough to be semi-plausible as Tucker, but he got bored very quickly (as he often does), played against everything and the story and writing were also quite bad.

Tamara and/or Roger playing Sharon's relatives (and still being potentially bad news) could've been legitimately interesting. I will admit I am, again, amazed RH would take another role like this after he's been very candid about his struggles with Todd, even in recent years. I guess he could use the money.

Then how would you know?

As @Darn reminds me, It is kind of ridiculous that Sharon is now to be terrorized by two ghosts from her past in rapid succession lol. I was just thinking of her and the Linden Ashby character. Also, isn't Matt Clark dead-dead?

Hoo boy. Wild that he took this part.

Gee, I can't imagine why a guy who suffered through working there for years would think Days is a mess. Whatever its ups and downs, it's often been a joke creatively for the better part of 3 decades and many of the actors were poorly treated in recent years.

They had heat from the jump when Patrick Mulcahey put them together last year for hate sex. That's pretty much nuked now by everything that's happened since, and I've enjoyed evil Drew and the Willow crashout and think a lot of it has been good for the show, but it was clear to me anyway that PM had Drew and Nina on a glidepath to end up together despite his scandalous thing with Willow. With today's Drew, who is considerably darker, it'll never happen. I agree about the lack of romance but you only have to look at how FV refuses to put Dante and Lulu back together with these actors to see how fúcked the show's priorities are. When they finally do it'll be like a year from now and he'll probably fire one or both immediately after.

I'm here for Ted and June. That's the most interesting he's been since the recast.

She's very enjoyable. Of course she's doing awful, hypocritical things but I understand Vanessa because they laid her character and arc out better than almost anyone else on the show in the earlier months. I do think (assuming the new creative shift does not abandon this story) that in the end she will take Joey's organization and usurp him.

Don't get me started. I'm sure she's a nice girl but Charlotte needs to be wished into the cornfield. It will never matter who plays her AFAIC. Valentin reveals a secret, Charlotte tells her non-mother, there's some crying, off she goes to find her true relatives, and Lulu gets drunk, crashes out and has wild grieving sex with Dante. That's it! Do it in a week! Two at the outside.

I'm rooting for Vanessa! She's one of the best unknown actors on the show, her arc has been clear and defined all along and she's a lot of fun to watch. I also think she has chemistry with JL/Joey. Sure, he's aging slime but that's part of the point. He's a bad man and they're both doing terrible things. That's soap! I find Vanessa compulsively watchable, and I can't say that about certain core characters.

That's a Frank Valentini thing, not Ron Carlivati (though RC may or may not now prefer it, who knows). I don't think we can ascribe that interest to Jamey on a whim just because he stans Ron. I do think his tastes are quite similar to Carlivati's, but I have yet to be able to lay specific blame on any of his breakdowns. Nor am I very familiar with his Days work.

They'll just bring in another fourth spare part and keep rotating them. Frank seems to hate investing in a lot of new characters period, but he really hates creating original Black characters. The islanded, incestuous Ashfords are all we get. I would free Portia and Trina any way I could and cast Curtis and Jordan (and likely Isaiah at this point) into the abyss, but that won't happen short of a miracle. They've also once again hurled Portia under the bus.

Jacinda, coming up next! She's white, blonde and can probably get paid in expired SNAP benefits for a contract so Frank says she's a leading lady! No need to actually invest in time and money major new characters for Michael or anyone else. Curtis, Portia, Jordan and Isaiah will be swapping partners again 2028 as well so as to avoid auditioning more Black folks. Which is also the only reason Curtis and Jordan are still on the show.

This team has a very schizophrenic relationship with Tracy. They have sometimes honored her well and certainly have done much better with her recently since Mulcahey gave her some grace and then dipped. But they still will do too many scenes of the whole family/community acting appalled at mean old Tracy. Those scenes are lazy and seem designed not just to do an easy bit of cheap drama but (and this may again be my tinfoil brain) to push once more the idea the ever-shocked BLQ, Friend of Frank, is the moral center of the family and its central midrange heroine, as she largely is to the show itself at this point, since Lulu is a B-player despite being a major core character and having a daytime superstar now in the role, grumble grumble. But back to Tracy! They need to stop doing these tired 'oh Granny Tracy' scenes. Even if Tracy is vindicated on Ronnie, too few apologize to her in these situations. And I think that's part of why they have yet to pair her with anyone. They kind of seem to treat her as not worthy of it at her age, or not worthy of it because she's mean old Tracy. I would not be shocked if they relent on Cody soon enough though.

I know for a fact they replayed that episode in the 2000s. I saw it live and was gripped. It was excellent and made me seek out much more of classic GL.

That's the B&B/Bell-esque house style they have not yet fully shaken. I do think a lot of dialogue scenes have gotten deeper, smarter and more dynamic over the last month or two since the kidnapping, as they've begun mixing things and people up more. But they still have got to break more from what MVJ learned at B&B IMO. OTOH I could be way off; B&B has a doggedly loyal audience despite my finding it unwatchable, and BTG has garnered an all-new and seemingly very dedicated online/offline audience. It's broken containment to the normies outside of diehard soap fans, and the fact that it is a Black-dominated soap is no coincidence re: that outgrowth. So maybe they figure if that part ain't broke don't fix it. But I would, lol.

I'm just glad this plotline will likely end the latest merry-go-round of 'put the older ladies with any cheap recurring player.' GH had spoilered the threat of pairing up Martin and Tracy either around this time last year or in early '25 in the mags. Martin and Tracy then had a bunch of cliche clashes fitting a typical hate-to-love pattern for awhile, but it thankfully never went anywhere. Now here we are and I assume from this it never will. I lost all interest in Martin when he lost the beard and the Foghorn Leghorn accent, which was about the only extent of my interest in him to begin with. There was never much meat on the character to begin with. Now he's just a whinier Tad.