Vee

I forgot about the whole Party of Five mess. Was that the year they had Neve have a 2-minute lesbian flirtation with Olivia d'Abo?

She can still be volatile and unpredictable without being a damsel. Brenda's always been good at that.

Oh, I agree. I'm just glad it got done (via VM's insistence) despite Guza wasting a lot of the time on the Dante angle, getting to tease the Jason/Brenda pairing again, the Balkan, etc. Those fascinations and biases were his typical fatal flaw. IMO what I liked about the pairing and marriage is what the actors (even Maurice, who VM activated and energized as she always does) and the daily writing team brought to it. The actors and writers (especially Vanessa) all had to drag Guza to get them to the altar really, as you say. And seeing them turn over a new leaf in moments like the wedding, actually living together as husband and wife, etc. That interested me. It's also what interests me about the endgame scenario many of us have posited now: If we get Sonny and Brenda, if he moves out of hard crime to more white-collar scheming for Brenda and resumes the patriarch role he'd begun to settle into some time back a la Victor Newman, if they are married, become Victor and Nikki, and (unlike that couple) she becomes the prime mover in that couple's major story on the show while he takes a back seat (which would frankly better suit Mo's current energy level and health), what does that look like? How do they function as a married couple, live together, co-parent, etc.? That to me is the new frontier.

I wouldn't necessarily lump Sonny and Brenda into that - that was the Guza regime, and I think the other quickie weddings were all Garin Wolf desperation throws (or throes, depending on who you ask). Sonny and Brenda's marriage was also the culmination of decades of buildup and lack of payoff, and I didn't post those but the Sonny/Brenda wedding scenes (where he accepts her despite the Dante secret right there at the altar, and tells her her domineering father Harlan lied to her about her self-worth) were also some of Mo and that writing team's greatest work in years. And I say that, again, as someone who was not a S&B fan in their heyday and preferred other people to Brenda back then lol. It took me a long time to fully appreciate her, or them and revisit the classic era with new eyes. I couldn't care at all about that tease or the weird recast Valerie lol. I do think you could bring her back, sure, but I probably wouldn't revisit the Kristina thing. I would try Valerie with more men, since I believe she (like Krissy once upon a time) was explicitly bisexual.

100%. That was a weird period where they seemed eager to marry off everyone, including Jasam. But Dante and Lulu was far too soon and it cemented Ron being totally uninterested in them as what titan has already indicated - 'boring nice people' - when he came in the following year. The only time he bothered with either was when he tried to redo the insanely unpopular Teen Jessica storyline from OLTL with Rylan's Lulu and Milo after her Cassadine cryofreeze - a sentence I cannot believe I just typed. I don't think they were ever really frontburnered under Ron, at least not by my standards, except for that period. Even the Valerie thing was an afterthought. Now that character is radioactive despite being a compelling idea that should be reused, a biracial Spencer.

If he wins, and I absolutely think he can and was on track to before this and can recoup, one of the nicer bonuses (along with saving democracy as we know it) will be grinding this into the media's faces like never before. Their palpable disappointment re: 2022 (and the 2020 primaries) will be nothing by comparison. The fact that they've been relatively cowed by this presser into admitting yeah, he still knows the job is big. I was not expecting it to make that much of an impact.

That started very weak and bad IMO, and got much stronger as he went. Even jackals like Nazi fangurl Nuzzi and grinning manque Brian Stelter admit he did well, which is an indication of the immediate media reaction - they were, to my shock, mostly appeased. Which I didn't expect. I don't think losing the donors, etc. is a foregone conclusion. I think what comes next and how the WH handles it is critical. They need to keep putting him out there, early and often, to calm this kind of intra-party bedwetting strife. And he needs to not start weak - he needs to be where he was for most of that conference.

Meghann Fahy (Hannah, OLTL) is doing this Netflix drama with Nicole Kidman: Brittany Allen (Marissa, AMC), who's become a legitimately talented scream queen, is doing the Dexter prequel series (I'll pass, but good for her):

Classic Chuck Todd.

It's not an ego thing. Many soap actors of the classic era went out of their way to keep copies of scenes they treasured via kinescope or otherwise, believing they would never be archived or seen again. We know Jacquie Courtney here and Ellen Holly at OLTL did this with famous scenes and episodes, particularly with the Carla Gray story which was hugely important. We'll be very lucky if any of them eventually surface, as so many other clips and eps have.

@DRW50 I guess I have to rewatch my Criterion of 3 Women tonight.

Unlike the GL story I think the characters here are at a disadvantage bc a lot of what they are and have been for years is ciphers, that much is true. But I do think the show and the outgoing recent writing team played to two key strengths in two longtime soap stars, namely Watros and Cameron Mathison. Watros is great at manic screwball comedienne stuff and histrionic behavior, and Cameron IMO is always at his best when he is being the debonair schmoozer and sort of cocky, mischievous man about town, which is what this team rapidly transformed Drew Q into. It's shades of the early Ryan Lavery on AMC and what I think people loved about him. Has the whole mother-daughter thing and political saga further turned off people who were already tired of his Drew, or couples fanbases like the Sonny/Nina loyalists? Sure. But it's a character shift that makes sense for me and I think CM has more than sold it. We now have another scheming, gladhanding suave Quartermaine power broker in the classic mold. It also helps that as I've said before, Cynthia and Cameron know how to bring heat onscreen and fúck on camera in a way that much of the anodyne, flavorless modern GH has long since left behind in search of being safe and merely staying on the air. Katelyn MacMullen is no great shakes from what I've seen, but she's not a terrible actress and she does have chemistry with CM and can play a different role here than say, Blake on GL. I suspect in the case of this story Drew and Nina would/would've been endgame. I think PM and co. made the best and most interesting material from a barren situation on the ground with much less rich or layered characters than say, classic GL. But somehow that's how you inherit a show and you just have to build. And I think despite all the controversy enough people have responded to it, particularly to the Drew/Willow kiss, because they're just happy to see scandalous soap opera on GH again vs. microchips and the latest OLTL returnee. It'll be a shame if they walk it all back in favor of bland factory settings, but that's what I expect.

She has always been a buffoon, since her ride or die very online days with Bryan Craig. This and her mediocre performances and paper-thin character are why I've never gotten behind her or Britt.

I blame the strike for that last year. But tbh Ron Carlivati toyed with it too early on in the 2010s, because he was clearly starstruck by the idea of reuniting Frisco and Felicia for the 50th anniversary. This fell on its face when Jack Wagner came back, clashed with FV/RC and phoned it in onscreen.

I believe the Bailey story was yet another attempt to keep Wes Ramsey/Peter August, one of the least popular leads ever, on the show for another couple years. Maxie shouldn't have two kids, let alone three. At least Georgie is an oops baby. But Kirsten is wearing the whole modern Maxie character sketch a bit better now as she seems much more refreshed and energized onscreen, the writing for her has improved by leaps and bounds since PM and co. arrived (and since quit), and now for the first time I can actually mostly buy that Maxie has grown into a capable businesswoman. I still don't buy her having three kids, but I rationalize it by noting how much time Mac, Felicia and yes, Spinelli still spend raising them in addition to Maxie finally doing a notable share herself. There are way too many kids on the show, as I've said before, and as I've said before I'd def murder 2-3. No regrets!

Good for Susan.

That's a great idea all around from both of you.

That's excuse enough for me to post them yet again! Here:

She stays goofy.

This was a period some of us like @carolineg and @titan1978 I think have discussed a lot - the last of the worthwhile Guza team works. They had downshifted considerably from 'Sonny the hero' over a period of time here and continued to do so, as it seemed Guza had soured on him or Maurice; more focus was given to Jason, to Jason and Carly openly acknowledging they had failed to take care of Michael or raise him right by raising him among Sonny and the mob (first by his getting shot, then by his killing Claudia and going to prison and becoming a spoiled, traumatized brat with Drew Garrett in the role), and most of all DZ/Dante here was the show's key new star, who they had kept in the wings for a year or two before casting. The material was good, rich and layered, and Dominic was very good. He was clearly Guza's new focus and fascination, along with JJ's return not long beforehand with Lucky as Dante's partner - I have said before I think they could have carried the show for years a la Luke and Scorpio. It fell apart of course by defaulting to Dante protecting Sonny even after taking a bullet. (I think they even had the neighborhood cop Dante cited turn out to be corrupt, lol) And the Brenda return saga not long after this was another example of Guza refocusing the show on Dante - he had wanted Dante and Brenda to have had an affair years before, and for Brenda's child to be Dante's son. (VM vetoed this.) But what's tragic is that this kind of intense and layered focus on nuanced male characters went away with that team and with the advent of FV/RC, for whom most 'good' male characters are just clueless stock himbos to be manipulated by fun scheming women or gay men. Almost all the life was drained out of Dante instantly at that point. He's come back from that nadir a bit since then in recent times and DZ still does great work, but he's still not in the role he once was on canvas, when he commanded the show. I'd also say (and I won't repost them now unless you ask, because I've gone over them on here way too many times) that I think Sonny's final scenes with Brenda in summer 2011, the following year, are the last great performance Maurice ever gave and the most honest Sonny has ever been with himself or anyone else. One of the last great pieces of work the longtime writing team did as well, and those are the scenes I always cite when I say there is no point in romance for Sonny ever again unless it's Brenda and it addresses what happened to their marriage.

Honestly that whole mess would've likely been stupid no matter how long RC got to play with it. For me the simple one-line answer is: Tomas in his capacity with the CIA/various intelligence agencies posed as the Alcazars at one point as part of a spy operation, and is possibly distantly related to them. That's it, he's not secretly Lorenzo or Luis Alcazar from GH. I would be happy to see Skye again (in doses) or Lila Rae, and I would be pleased to see TK return as Lorenzo. But the Tomas thing can be explained in one line of dialogue and you move on - not that it really needs to be referenced again either.

I like the Congressman Drew Q saga a lot, but any time they say that guy's name it makes me think of the infamous George Lucas 'Greedo shot first' retcon from Star Wars:

I honestly found both Ginger and Kenny painful to watch too. Could you have refashioned Ginger into a Brooke Armstrong/All About Eve type out of Melrose Place, sure, but I think the overall ensemble was way too strong at that point to be bothered.

1-4:

Part 2 of ME's exit interview. He touches on the end of John McBain and other things. Nice guy. I agree, as he says here and as I've said in the monthly threads, that Finn's exit could've been longer, darker and more drawn-out and full of high drama. But given the chaotic BTS state of the show and many other issues I can understand just brooming him out quickly, and I'm glad they did that too.