Vee

Ooh, Mac and Dara? JJY and Vanita could've been hot.

I had to half-watch a lot of episodes this week while working so I am diving deeper into 'em now. I'll be that guy: I thought the Jasons (get it) fight scenes were fine til non-acting Aiden wandered in as the hype man and it turned into camp hysteria. HW was just fine and the Danny kid is green but had energy and was no Andrew Trischitta. Could it have been better, sure, but anyone who watched the Shane Morasco bullying story on OLTL (or any of the child content on GH in the last 10+ years, paging the Spencer/Emma/Cameron/Joss fourth grade love quad) has seen far worse. I was also pleased with the Molly/Kristina stuff continuing to again explore them unpacking their past childhood romanticization of Jasam, which was so much a part of the girls back in the day. It was well written but would've hit better with at least one of the original actors. This Molly still feels like a random contest winning civilian to me. The baby plot now seems like a total afterthought; Kristina should miscarry tomorrow. Also very pleased with the Trina/Joss scenes which for once do not center Joss. Eden and Tabyana do have real rapport and warmth together. Kelly Monaco and Steve Burton both seem to have come back to work. I've been surprised and pleased with Steve especially, who rarely makes this much of an effort. Even Diane didn't piss me off in those scenes with Jason, because CH played them earnestly and with some heart and it wasn't all Diane complaining about the mobsters she loves to work for. Tristan really does not look well and I'm very concerned.

It's late June '92, like the last week of the month or something.

I still want to know more about that. It sounds bonkers.

No tweets rn, but I'd just like say the ground game in Michigan and elsewhere looks impressive for Biden. Trump seems underfunded. I would recommend checking out Simon Rosenberg's feed. Elite media pooh-poohed him last time and openly mocked him for not buying the red wave, but he's been right and he has a lot to say about current trends for this cycle.

I will defend the OLTL finale, I thought the show went out like gangbusters. Yes, the cliffhanger under the BTS circumstances was unfortunate on one level but the show was vibrant, vital and had some wonderful material in those last two weeks, especially Viki's big speech and Drew II's birth. More importantly, the cliffhanger for me does what I think all soaps should do if they go: Give a sense of a continuing world and continuing stories (a la Edge of Night's ending), even if you're not there to see it. I think that is a great comfort for a generational audience, I think permanently closing the book is a betrayal of the contract with the viewer. There were many bad stories in that last year on OLTL but the show went out fairly strong and with a bang and I was proud of that, it proved it was the strongest soap on the network at that time. It didn't slink off like a dying animal, which I felt ATWT did with the globe, etc. or crippled like GL. AMC's situation was more complex; they had a beautifully filmed ending apparently, and had to junk it and the cliffhanger felt very slapped on by comparison to OLTL. But they had some nice ending weeks too that did not feel funereal in the same way as ATWT and GL ending.

I just know I came to the same queasy conclusions many others did based on how Martha's been talking about it for several years.

Valentin (and Ava, hopefully) works for me for Pikeman - I suspect the original writers' plan was for Wagger to be deep in it as a bad guy, which, no lol. And the rumors about it originally being Jennifer Smith or Susan Moore, no. I just don't think we need another undead bad guy plotline right now. I would be all for adding Damian's young heirs as troublemakers.

If they truly had to bring someone back from the dead for Luke's exit I'd have chosen Damian. He's really a great villain rewatching now, he even comes on with links to Ned from their school days. He slots in everywhere and is such a sexy snake. I remembered his story spinning its wheels later on as a kid (and I think it got into some real goofy capers with the good guys putting stuff over on him before he died) but he's fun to watch. And it's fascinating rewatching Sonny slowly build his empire from a small time hood to a major player in the power vacuum post-Frank. I never really grasped that when I was young. I did not know MB was offered Damian - that's nuts, and yet Damian was the character who had true investment at the time of hiring. Even today they could bring on Damian's illegitimate kids, a la Damian to Frank. I just think Katherine makes a great villain and MBE played it very well. I enjoy watching her. I do agree Stefan and the DAYS revisit ruined it (and Stefan/Bobbie, which I am trying to revisit some of).

I think it was both him and (also gay) Frank. The fetishization of Yuri and the continued insistence on the awkward NB strip show reminds me of the Milo Hour tbh. Yuri is just another Milo to me, only on Scruff lol.

Yep. I would argue it's primarily the massive Ryan saga with Felicia (and some Karen/Jagger, and maybe the Lucas custody drama?) that got the show through the post-Monty doldrums til Labine; at least that's how my ex, who started watching in early '92, saw it. I was watching some of that stalker stuff again recently, it's good. Hadn't seen it in many years, including Felicia's brief 'dark' phase following the stalker story. I don't think KW did badly with it but it is pretty jarring to see Felicia completely shut down on warmth. Mac and Katherine always seems so bizarre to me when I see them together again. I think they were trying for good guy/bad girl but I did not care about Katherine like that. Mac and Felicia were already home for me as a viewer because they'd spent so much time on building them together (including before I started watching in late '93) and as a family unit with Robin, etc. I will say I think MBE is exceptional as Katherine then and now, a total departure from Kayla. She always brought 100% even when the audience detested her for years lol. Leigh McCloskey is still very good as Damian too.

Come on now.

Truly the Twilight Zone.

In the latter half of his career if RC absolutely has to write for conventionally 'good' characters he generally either gives them babies to be stolen or bartered around, turns them crazy with DID/mental issues or both. He tried a bit of the second option with Lulu after she got frozen by Stavros; tried to redo the insanely unpopular Teen Jessica story from OLTL where Lulu suddenly had amnesia or whatever and hung out with Milo of all people. BTS backlash blessedly killed that quickly.

I think it has to do with several factors I've ranted on about over and over: Baby stories allegedly being the most easy thing to get greenlit and eating up months of story while keeping the lights on at struggling soap operas, a perceived conservative backlash among the audience the network most values re: more edgy storytelling or overt sexuality, and of course good old-fashioned misogyny and lack of ideas. So instead we've gotten years of young hot people just settling down and either popping out babies or haggling over them or wondering who their parents are up til now. This is also a key issue on Y&R. It was clear early on RC saw most of GH's previously layered 'good' characters as plot pieces vs. the more exciting baddies, like he often did later at OLTL. (The men also got this big time - Dante became nothing more than a clueless plot widget, like most heroic male characters on RC shows). It still feels unreal when I remember how I watched babies become the center of young Lulu, Maxie and Dante's lives all of a sudden. Settling down with children had nothing to do with who they were prior to 2012 as young, vital characters and it took me a long time to accept that all parties now actually had small children. I still don't totally buy it when I've seen Dante or Lulu with a son lol.

Me too, for a long time. The key is Charlotte is older and currently blessedly offscreen in a padded cell, and Violet is the obnoxious little one lisping all her lines. And yeah I saw some of that Halloween ep. There's far too many kids.

There are way too many kids on this show due to baby fever on soaps in more conservative, less risky times. But yes: Dante and Lulu have Rocco (who Britt briefly stole). Lulu (allegedly) has mutant test tube hellspawn Charlotte with Valentin, not by choice. Equally demonic Violet is Finn and Hayden Barnes' (Rebecca Budig) daughter. Violet is unfortunately a Webber, as Hayden is Jeff Webber's illegitimate child. Maxie inexplicably, unacceptably has three damn children: Georgie (with Spinelli), James (with sentient log Nathan West) and Bailey or whoever (Peter August). She should not have one child let alone three. S&C stupidly had Donna a few years ago so the show could name a baby after a deceased crewmember. So now she can never die. Sonny and Ava of course have Avery, who also should not exist but was Ava's insurance policy after Connie and A.J. Sam has Danny and Scout, her unnecessary daughter with Drew. I still remember the dreadful period in early Passanante where they worked overtime to put Julian over as a good guy again and had him wearing matching Christmas sweaters with a doting Olivia following Leo's birth. Never again.

I think everything titan said makes perfect sense. But I also think the final step (turning on Jason) would not be possible quite this quickly without his meds being tampered with. (Sonny has turned on him before, but it takes more time and more incidents.) So now this works for me. I still think Alexis has used her teenage fling with Julian to block out the truth about Sam - that she's the child of Stavros. Oh well.

She's been around a pretty reasonable amount with Maxie, Spinelli, etc. (I think she is still on contract again) in B-story, and she also starred in the wonderful Jackie Zeman memorial episodes, where they did a bit of a riff on her "Barbara Jean!" moment. She did very well with that, probably because she and JZ were close. I just can't get past the visual on Adam Harrington as Jagger, even if I think he's doing a good job and the material has improved dramatically since the regime change. I still wish they'd cast someone like Paul Anthony Stewart, who I expect is out of daytime for good.

As I think titan alluded to, this has been a long time coming. The previous regimes have made Sonny and Ava way too cozy in recent months and years, like a lot of other characters who shouldn't be. So this is a reasonable outgrowth to me.

I think if she's in on it she's gonna get caught, that's inevitable. But it's also in Ava's nature to sometimes act a fool over men beneath her lol. She's always been equal measures vicious, brilliant and at times stupid. Remember, she brought us Aunt Denise and carried on with Morgan all over again while wearing the damn Party City fright wig and talking like Lois. I also hope she doesn't pull back over new feelings for Sonny, but I'd never really considered that possibility. I doubt whatever happens will get to a point where Ava would be able to do so even if she wanted to. I suspect she'll be exposed before then.

It was Labine IIRC. I can't remember how/why they broke up or when or why Tom left. On paper MA should've worked and I thought he did well enough onscreen, but they just never found the right moment or partner for him.

I've seen him around. He is too old for her. LH is very attractive but the first Tate looked like a baby by comparison.

They were definitely playing the Kevin/Felicia romantic tension in '94 upon my revisit recently, but I don't know how far because I haven't seen a lot of this year since I was a kid watching live and I don't remember how much is discussed or played out. It was such a strange and unique (and at times uneasy) relationship at that time given the Ryan of it all, and there are periods when it seems Felicia is becoming jealous re: Lucy or Kevin is interested in her. But I do think Kevin and Lucy became the endgame for Labine early there, as in early in '94. I think the Felicia stuff is ultimately there to build the character and further distinguish Kevin from Ryan in her life and on the show after they work through the romantic, etc. tension, as Kevin becomes one of her closest friends.

I don't love the thought, but she has fallen for worse and/or dumber people while also up to her classic nasty business. As long as she's in it I'm happy.