Vee

Over some dogs! Again I ask, what animal will Rocco selflessly feed and care for next? Where will his reign of terror end?

Woof. They're re-airing TG's last episode on New Year's Day. It's not great!

I have neither the time nor energy this season to keep tabs on both this administration and the swiftly collapsing Bari Weiss regime at CBS News, but the segment she pulled from 60 Minutes at the eleventh hour about the CECOT prison (over staff objections and ensuing revolt) has leaked online. For those of us in the States many mirrors are popping up everywhere.

Very sad. He was so excellent on The Wire, in It and Sinister and many other things. He had a difficult life but was so talented. @DRW50

That would be terrible.

Generally that's true but I think Kimberly and Sydney had evolved enough to be functional. It was the budget cuts and skewed priorities at Melrose post-S4 that did Cross and Leighton in.

A Kenny and Ginger spinoff? Can I turn the gun on myself?

It was the right thing to do, though I believe it was a Malone move. I was amazed they kept Cat Hickland through that, seeing as Lindsay had a downward spiral and murdered Sam sort of by accident while in a psychotic fugue. It was very believable to me frankly given their history, but somehow they pulled her out of that hole to keep her around though the character was fundamentally altered. Laurence Lau might make a fine Jeff Webber, come to think of it. I don't have any issue with Willow doing it and getting off if it serves plot function and her continued mayhem. The marriage and their twisted relationship would ensure her freedom, for now. My issue would be putting it on Drew simply to blame everything on him and keep any profound new plot shift - like Willow fully breaking bad - to a minimum, which this show too often does as is.

I think Timon Durrett is excellent. The rest vary but I have no major objections other than to Ben Gavin and Alex Alegria.

Drew setting it up himself is the kind of goofball shít this show would do to make sure he remains the equivalent of a Scooby Doo villain. Still one of the strongest organic elements of the show, but they keep leaning into him doing pure forced nonsense like hoarding the Quartermaine belongings! Like he's the Grinch!

Much like Passions before it, a show would have to be purest Chernobyl before I would rate anything lower than B&B today. Even DAYS has come up.

I don't think that's true. GH had no problem mentioning Britt, Luke, Bobbie, etc. at varying points from January to November of last year. Britt was one of the first things that came up when Jason and Carly reconnected in March '24, and Luke and Bobbie were discussed at length by Lucky and Lulu.

I actually thought DG was surprisingly smarmy and sinister. It reminded me of his early Kevin Buchanan at OLTL, where Michael Malone wisely leaned into the mess JFP and others had made of the character (a philandering manwhore sleeping through multiple women in the same family) by having Kevin return to town a schmoozing politician out to bed his wife's last relative. There was a darker edge to it here for me based on the situation and who Peter was, and also someting in his eyes. It's giving Scott Peterson. But I could be projecting wildly based on the DiMera background, esp as Peter may well be some sort of red herirng.

This isn't news. It's a shítty clickbait site making a suggestion for a tribute episode and then framing the headline as 'ABC announcing an airdate' for an imaginary tribute episode that doesn't exist. ABC has announced no such thing, they're literally just making stuff up for hits.

They were friendly. Lots of people were friendly with little Spencer. I remember how much he used to wail about her: "Bwitt! Bwitt!" But he did the same with "Unca Sonny" and their relationship wasn't that deep in the long run either. Britt and Spencer's scenes after he got SORASed were not that plentiful. If it comes up in conversation I have nothing against it. They cared for each other. But it was not some incredibly central relationship in either of their lives that the show is somehow glossing over. It may be important to you, but it's not what the rest of us see. And it's not something Van Etten would try to obscure either. He came up under Ron Carlivati, who created Britt and molded and favored little Spencer. CVE clearly adores Britt and I don't see any indication that he dislikes Spencer. It's just not that deep.

Boy did I read this title wrong.

I'll pass.

To their credit, other veteran cast were also quite good. Laura Wright was excellent as Luke's mother in a very different role, and I thought Jason Thompson did an amazing job essaying John Beradino as Steve. He had Beradino's voice down and was clearly taking that responsibility very seriously. Ryan Carnes was pretty decent as the sulking Phil Brewer. (Becky was solid as Jessie but I didn't get too much of the same embodiment from her)

Yes it was. It was done with huge fanfare for them and I was impressed. I have pored over the blogs, fansites, interviews etc. for more details re: the original intent for Empire Valley but I think the reality is no one quite remembers. The surveillance state, paranoia and spying elements were there from the beginning in Season 6, and I do think are very relevant today. I think just how sci-fi it got the following season may not have been what was intended.

I keep tripping out whenever I see Thomas, the little kid who was so good in Weapons (and has now accordingly left the show). I will tune in to see Dan Gauthier. I was very impressed with a lot of the special actor eps, anniversary stuff, Drake's memorial etc. earlier in the year. General stories aside I felt they handled a ton of small and large milestones (Stephen Nichols' anniversary, Bo and Hope, Drake, the 60th, Sami's reaction to John, etc.) very well all year long and did not skimp on flashbacks or time with the veterans. The show still has a ton of raw potential.

Maybe in principle, but my problem is that Tony's way of dealing it (both before and after Guza left, and during the intervention story no less) was to loudly and repeatedly proclaim in interviews that Luke was not an alcoholic and had full control of his drinking, even after the character had been drinking to abusive excess for years and had just drunkenly mowed down his own grandson. That's just ridiculous. Luke was unavoidably an alcoholic by that point onscreen, and FV/RC had planned to directly address it per his illness. Tony's response was to ad-lib Luke continuing to drink, betting that Valentini would bend the knee and not stop him. He was right and the storyline was changed (along with any LNL plans) to say oh no, Luke isn't dealing with the consequences of his alcoholism, he's just got radiation poisoning from the bad guys. I could get behind the family reveal, but not as part and parcel of Fluke which was unbelievably bad. I also thought Tony's performance as Evil Tim Spencer, the ghost jabbering away at Luke, was honestly hilarious. The Soup perfectly captured him in their impression of him, right down to the hysterical dialogue. "You're oooollddd Luke! Come join Daddy in hell!" I will say that Joey Luthman was excellent as young Luke, and that I thought Tony was absolutely right about the terrible Frank Smith revisit. That whole 'final adventure' was cheap and bad. I do wish Luthman had gotten a contract role as Cameron or something, the same way Chloe Lanier got Nelle (which was squandered).

It's that time again. @DRW50

It's looked awful for days if not weeks. She looked better when she'd just gotten out of the coma.

We're through the looking glass here, people!

Donnell is back!