Vee

The Big 3 are a fact of life for me at GH, like climate change. Since I can't eliminate Sonny and Jason the issue for me now is usage, and so far I think the Jason return story has been done well by showing more than just the worshipful take. Jason's family, loved ones, children have legitimate issues with him and have given voice to it, mostly his children and exes. Anna and Laura (and Wagger) are given voice to accurately put Sonny on blast in smart scenes. Steve is at least showing up to act for once, and Sonny is being played for a total fool and sabotaging himself. I can work with all of that. Carly, who knows. I doubt it. IIRC Hannah was a Riche mandate, and the disdain for her oozed out of the scripts. I liked LV with Billy Warlock, but looking at it now she was very green and it was probably time to go.

IIRC Hannah was cut in 2001 by JFP. They literally shipped her off to Alaska or somewhere lol. I have no idea with AM but I suspect the Guza team and ABC both wanted no part of him after JFP's failed Roy Hospital. I have my doubts. We have nothing in place yet to suggest FV is still holding full control, especially since he was forced to cut Roger Howarth. I should add I was very impressed with the Laura/Anna, etc. stuff last week myself. “Charm has no moral weight, and impulse is not character.” Dialogue is just much smarter across the board or more soulful. Even stuff with Chase/BLQ and Finn/Alexis talking about money, their family pasts, etc. is much more mature and thought-out.

I agree, but it will take more than dead-ass Gregory for me to get excited. It's time for a good 3-4 people to go. Just for starters! I remember the crazy days of Malone II at OLTL. IIRC they didn't dump a ton of people in the first month, but after that they started cutting a swath like a house on fire (starting with Larry Lau's Sam Rappaport), slowly but surely over those next six months. There were also a lot of additions of course. And Guza II here at GH dumped Kristina I and Roy fairly quickly in 2002 (and GF/Laura, though I doubt very much that was the plan going in), but I can't remember anyone else getting iced. Of course, those shows' canvases were not quite as bloated or full of pointless people as this one is.

Please!!!

Semafor takes aim at their rival:

It's true!

I've said it a dozen times, but it is ludicrous that Maxie has one child, let alone three. She has never been a character built for that. It was very realistic when she was just fobbing off Georgie (an accidental child) on Mac and Felicia for years. Two more is insane. But that's the way the show has operated for years - babies, babies and more babies in lieu of story, because it eats up airtime and is 'safe'.

Roddenberry was indeed a very complicated man lol. There's also the affair with Nichelle Nichols.

Incidentally, since I'm catching up a bit on last week following some IRL distractions I wanted to say last week's Maxie/Felicia scenes continued a trend of being much more sharp and interesting and showing KS engaged again. She's come a long way in the last month-plus with the writing change.

I doubt he is working totally by them if he is at all tbh. Even Marland didn't; several characters were gone from ATWT quickly, and the Snyders and Doug Cummings came in very fast. I do think the show is much improved day to day, but I also think changes have to happen faster. Hopefully May is the start of that. I don't think the cast should look like this by the end of the year at all.

Please let this rivalry between those two girls end in one dead baby.

A genre legend in front of and behind the camera. RIP.

I blame the FV actor guarantee shuffle. As I think others have noted, he began this process of the constant actor merry-go-round at OLTL with RC and brought it to GH where it became much less manageable, especially with a bunch of recurring/veteran subplots that would rotate, disappear and reappear for weeks on end. I think that's a big part of what is often at play.

I'm so far behind but I hope to at least get to 75-100 episodes before possibly warping ahead. Very happy for the show's nominations - well deserved. Neighbours reminds me so much of what a revival of Guiding Light could do here. Some of the acting in the Varga-Murphy/Rodwell non-reveal (just before Flashback Week) was extremely variable from the kids and Wendy, but I do like them. J.J. had some very green moments but I'm pretty fond of him. I hadn't realized the Rodwells were apparently a relatively new addition to the show themselves.

Appreciated. It's about what I expected.

Donna, I'm only indulging this despite having you blocked because I already addressed the rest of this mess when it got quoted in someone else's post. I never said anything about how or when SN was hired. I'm not disputing any of that. What I specifically said is that you going off the word of some Patch/Kayla fan on Twitter that Stefan and Katherine was 'always the plan' from Guza and Wendy Riche is nonsense. This is where reading and listening are fundamental and you just don't do that to anyone on this forum other than yourself. You get excited and start saying things that aren't accurate. Now if you want to show me in black and white, in print, where Stephen Nichols or anyone else specifically claimed that Stefan and Katherine was always the plan under that creative regime, you can do so and I'll eat crow and eagerly apologize to you. But otherwise this is another example of you wanting to make yourself central to any conversation and not accepting it when you're not.

Yep. Which is why IMO Alexis never, ever talked about it for years back in the day - until Guza got fired, there was always the suggestion of something very dark there. I remain convinced she blocked it out and her mind has instead settled on the polite fiction of the dad being her brief prep school dalliance with Julian. Incest is not exactly something uncommon to families like the Cassadines.

I still believe it was Stavros. Julian was so pedestrian. There is zero chance Guza wrote Stefan and Katherine lol. And looking at yet another tiresome blocked post, there is actually zero in that anecdote that would suggest it was his plan or even that Wendy Riche planned to pair them up. It's just some Patch and Kayla stan with a (biased) personal opinion on Twitter being touted as the gospel.

I can't see why with another soap on the way. Unless Sony has zero interest in what CBS does with the daypart. I think there's part of that re: stuff that is familiar and comforting, like the popularity of long-running sitcoms on streaming. But I think it's also just been an overwhelming glut of 'Content' that burns fast and flickers out on streaming. People want some stability. I don't think a return to soaps, sitcoms, whatever is about conservatism so much as possibly a steadying force in turbulent times vs. chasing trends and pop culture quick hits.

OLTL's Melissa Archer was on a podcast not long ago and said essentially the same thing many PP vets have - they were ahead of the time and ahead of the curve re: streaming, but didn't understand the nuts and bolts of making a soap 5 days a week. I do think some of the controversial and bold changes introduced (more commercial music again, more risks with content and yes, language) could've worked and could still work in the current day and age, particularly if you hope to sustain an audience of kids home from school/on their devices, and not just seniors. But you can't do it all at once in such an extreme way, and you can't do it without a sustainable plan and strong financial base for long-running production. While I think the productions themselves were strong and staffed by soap lifers from various shows, the nuts higher up at PP were simply gambling with venture capital. I think if they'd tried to launch one show, or (my preference) both shows at simply 2-3 days a week like the UK or European soaps (or Australia's new Amazon transplant Neighbours, now nominated for US Daytime Emmys and rightly so, which runs at 4) and on a seasonal-arc basis with a collection of banked episodes and breaks - something Archer suggested, something Port Charles did and something Linda Gottlieb tried and failed at many years ago early on in 1991 - then it could've worked. That to me is more sustainable than the grueling network pace.

I suspected during the strikes we might be in for better news - GH doesn't have any flags around it for cancellation that I know of and hasn't in some time, and previously-dismissed 'old TV' like soaps, long-running sitcoms, etc. had begun to be seen as more reliable programming in the wake of the strikes and the larger streaming crash. I thought all these factors might trigger a reexamination of the genre business-wise. Did I think it would happen quite like this or this fast? Nope.

Same. I would prefer Marci frankly, as I always had issues with Berman's tics.

When you put it all that way, if someone had told us any of this around New Year's I doubt any of us would've believed it lol. Great news. I do hope it means more change at Sony/CBS.

One of the most brutal takedowns (and worst interview responses from a subject in the hot seat) that I've read in awhile. And sad for WAMU/DCist, two mainstays of my hometown.

How you keep all this straight is beyond me. Very impressive.