Vee

I'm going to wait and see on Trina. I think a lot of what is going on there now is typical FV guarantee shuffling and her mourning period getting caught up in the HW change. I'd be very surprised if PM doesn't end up making good use of her, if he has any control. But we'll see. Her grave scenes were very good.

I (and I think several other posters) would argue the show has made a lot of strides in terms of dialogue, character work, family connectivity and some more even-handedness re: the mob over the last month-plus. The issue right now is necessary cast cuts, bigger changes and new stories. Whether these things materialize remains to be seen. I do think TA got her most prominent and strong scenes in quite some time at Spencer's gravesite with a very good monologue across several segments a few days back.

I think SK pissed them both off, or that shít they wrote in would not have been allowed to stand onscreen every day for months. Not saying he's the easiest person on Earth to deal with based on some talk over the years about his outspoken politics, but he's clean and sober these days at least AFAIK and clearly is not lacking work. I'll always hope for his return. And yes, I think FV lives in mortal fear of Brenda lol. If she comes back that's when shít will get really real.

The true north will always be Sean Kanan's A.J. for me, but he is otherwise occupied and Frank's mortal enemy. Ah well.

@DRW50 @Faulkner apologies for all the @'s - EW cover story with the cast and RTD interviewed. They confirm Ruby is in for two seasons (in some fashion at least), and even Bonnie Langford gets a word in.

I don't care that much about it either, but I do think they have some chemistry and nice interplay. But I have also never seen Laura shortsell a pairing yet, ever. She didn't put him down or disengage, she was right there. Dear God he needs a haircut though.

I am tentatively open to more Carly/Wagger but I agree that blond on blond is a hate crime lol. And yeah, I don't care about Nina giving it up. Giving it to her always seemed arbitrary on par with the endless job carnival nonsense on Y&R; just a timefiller, not something she would actually care about. I still prefer Carly going back to her humbler roots at Bobbie's though, so I hope she'll keep that.

I believe he was. I will never forget his and Dr. Sarah's kinky softcore photo session where she like ordered him around under the hot lights lol. But I thought someone had him model for half a second too. As far as the last week or so goes I actually enjoyed a lot of the Carly/Wagger chemistry test, with the exception of the occasional rambling about Nina. The stuff with Carly talking about how much she'd invested in her time with the Metro Court was solid character work for me, and I could see something of the throughline from Sarah Brown's working-class Carly to the older woman who finally got to live out her dreams of being at the center of a luxury hotel and then lost it. I of course liked Drew and Nina, and the stuff with Alexis re: her license and talking about it with Molly and others has been consistently character-based and well-written, almost making me forget the presence of Contest Winner/Crewmember's Relative Molly #8. I think Tracy and Stella was in there too, and I have been very surprised to enjoy the Heather recovery stuff. The rest is a blur, but there's also been too much Sasha for me to tolerate and a lot of silly stuff I just don't care about, like goofball Nina rushing in to tell 3 different men in a business meeting all about Carly and Wagger. I like Nina as the crazy socialite but who cares? Why did they all sit through that lol? Also pleased to hear that apparently Cyrus' radio preacher man thing is over. Thank you, PM/EK.

If this was really PM's Santa Barbara, Comet the horse would trample her to death.

I'll agree with all of that. I'm going to be very curious to see how May and the BLQ/Chase wedding stuff goes, even if I find him infantile and boring for her. I expect fireworks next month at least, possibly in conjunction with that wedding. And I hope Drew and Nina kick it up in and out of bed and the office. It's very strange to be suddenly invested in those two of all people.

I hope they step it up with Natalia being the momager from hell tbh. That could be fun and actual conflict vs. the magic of Sasha, and it would give KM bigger story than waiting for this baby to either pop or preferably die. I thought JY's wooden Lucky might have modeled a little in the early 2000s, but I may be totally wrong.

Circling back to GH re: these crossovers, I still can't get over how the strike business with Martin (remember him?) being married to Blair from OLTL went absolutely nowhere. He has some big dumb secret about getting alimony from her and does Lucy ever find out or learn that the Deceptor was apparently stolen from Blair by him? I don't recall so. Pointless.

Am I crazy or was Charlie Brent the Man of Enchantment?

I think poor Andrew (who did improve a bit on OLTL 2.0 with actual rehearsal time) is a teacher or something now. Probably for the best!

I have my doubts there is anything Frank wouldn't do to keep employing the OLTL cast (like Batten) at this point. Only #MeToo has kept Todd Manning from Roger Howarth's umpteenth contract return, and then there's poor little Patrick Gibbons' recurring role as the boy scout Wyatt when all that poor non-acting teenager wants to do is go play hockey back home. If Sasha and H&H (or ME) finally exit, then we'll know something has begun to really start to change. BK/Portia is so much stronger and more committed onscreen than DT/Curtis it's depressing. I would cut him in an instant and free her up for a new man, because she has carried a lot of material over the last few years and her reward for it is just more Curtis and Marshall. I do think Easton has made a real effort with the Gregory stuff, particularly of late. I just am tired of watching him onscreen and I think the majority of the audience is as well. The weary look in Liz's eyes in their 'romance' of late also screams "you again?"

It's not really a story IMO. Just filler. But it needs to go away. IIRC it was PM/EK that had Sasha quit as the Face though, not C&D. But you could've done this "Sasha stays on as the home shopping girl" bit at the same time as her quitting the model job without making me watch more of Home & Heart. Unless Frank insists on more of Morgan and Luna Moody. It doesn't help when Soap Twitter is an absolute nuthouse. You have folks using all caps in every tweet about how terrible it is that Ava is doing typical Ava things or whatever. I thought SoapZone was bad back in the day, but so much of the second by second live reaction on Twitter now is entirely skewed around people's fan preferences vs. the reality of watching the show. If Ava and Nina's ridiculous friendship is busted up it is suddenly the worst thing ever and so out of character! For as much as I find Home & Heart or Diane's latest diatribe about Carly/Nina tiresome, there's also a lot of that histrionic reaction based on stuff that is totally out of sync to what's actually onscreen.

I suspect people are right that they had very little time to work on long-term plans. The slow character focus for the last month suggests that to me. Unlike others I was never convinced they had a bible in place because frankly I don't think the networks have been giving any soap people much time to work on that when they are hired on anymore; I don't think what happened at Y&R with Sussman was an isolated incident, and we've seen so few new HW hires in the last decade anyway that weren't just internal people or recycled like Griffith. They're just handing someone the baton with very little lead time to work up plans and saying 'go'. Hopefully they can put more new things in motion soon enough, but it's time to start culling hard. I've enjoyed the character depth and a lot of changes in pacing and focus, but I never want to see Home & Heart again.

They have been having the same conversation for over a year. Just let the horse kill her.

I find all three options singularly uninspiring, but Blaze being the Face at least gives me less Sasha to deal with.

Didn't ask!

I was very high on much of the last month but It's been a rough week or more, I've liked and cringed at stuff in equal measure the last however many days. But that's any given week on most soaps. I am hoping sweeps gets out of some of these doldrums.

Oh God, please no. I can't take any more Sasha than I'm already getting. Getting her out of being the Face was at least a step away from Princess Slow-Talker.

Do you actually watch it these days or are you still just posting tweets?

I think time (and watching the show) will be the judge of that. I think GH has improved a lot but has a long way to go.