Vee

Michele Val Jean is on the Soapy podcast with Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart today and does discuss her time at GH. That show has been surprisingly candid and in-depth - I am still working through some other good episodes. She does discuss the rape revisit in '98 as well.

MVJ and Jeresa Featherstone are on the Soapy podcast with Rebecca Budig and Greg Rikaart today. That show has been surprisingly candid and in-depth - I am still working through some other good episodes.

MVJ and Jeresa Featherstone do the Soapy podcast.

I keep forgetting AMC legend Lorraine Broderick very nearly took over as HW in 2012 when Frank came on. He wanted her because Ron Carlivati was supposed to be indisposed (at Prospect Park, I think). A real what might have been, same as Nancy Curlee almost going to GH in the mid-'90s (or am I wrong about that?).

That's not where Laura was raped.

They had ardent fans on certain forums. It drove me crazy because Skye was so poorly shoehorned into the show and nothing about any of her relationships (except maybe the friendships with A.J. and Ned) were believable to me. Liking an actor does not make a character fit!

I don't think Jill had any plan there, no. She and likely the network were just snatching Ingo back up once he was free hoping for a ratings bump. Like most longtime GH characters, she and Megan McTavish clearly had no idea what to do with him or who Jax was. That was evidenced by the crap they had him playing with Angel, then the insta-romance with Skye who was Jill's favorite. As far as I can tell JFP had very little affinity for GH's history or characters. She was about her favorites. That's evidenced again by the strike in 2008, when Guza is gone for a few months and suddenly GH becomes The Rick Hearst Show and resembles early-mid'90s Guiding Light, when Jill was in charge. Not that I don't love Hearst, but suddenly having A-story spinning around Ric and some immigrant woman he married was crazy. But that was Jill.

I was very into Sonny and Carly with Maurice and Sarah, and later in the early period with Tamara before Lorenzo came along and things got really grotesque in '03. But I never liked the A.J. situation or how he was treated. It was always just plain wrong to me. I was baffled in '98/'99 when the show tried to paint Robin as being in the wrong.

I knew he'd be back very soon. Ugh.

I thought that whole move with the meathook was so cartoonish. It showed they did not understand how the show handled these characters. (They also had a ridiculous reintro for Jax where he rappels upside down into an auction or museum or something hunting for jewels like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible.) Of course things got far more cartoonish later when Guza II began. I do blame some of that on Pratt's insane excesses, but Guza def made some terrible choices all on his own for years to come.

No. That was Jill and Megan btw.

I'd be into a good political storyline with Bill and Martin (which could tie in the Kenneth secret). I just think it needs to go beyond the vague platitudes Martin currently totes around. As Vernon has told him, he's not battle-tested.

It's a solid narrative choice for the show at this point.

I have seen the brief scenes and they are reasonable reads. The old GH writers' room from the Labine/Guza years would have had ol' Misty Britt (because she was giving that misty nausea look again that Kelly puts on when she's 'concerned' or 'pained!) absolutely eviscerated though. I like how Rocco has ten million hours of community service over these dogs. Like which pet will he walk and care for next?

Britt scenes are a big ask for me on top of the last 24 hours of national horror, but for you I shall investigate.

Then they should have done much more than they did.

I would incorporate that as well. We would learn he faked his death in the ignoble ski lift, etc. and then went on, and it would unfold future story for his surviving loved ones. I've outlined my woulda-been plans for Luke's final story to friends like titan or DRW before but in some ways this sad news makes a revision simpler, more elegiac. I won't go into them in a thread like this, friends can ask me in DMs if they wish but I'll just say again, I think the focus has always needed to be heavy on Laura re: Luke passing away. Her grief in 2022, like the entire event, was very perfunctory and rushed. Largely because I strongly suspect FV had gambled on getting Tony back for the 60th or a future time (as he'd gambled with Steve Burton in 2012, and Trevor St. John at OLTL in 2011), and revealing that offscreen 'death' to be a hoax or scheme. (Even Bobbie suggested this in 2023, which went nowhere.) Who knows, maybe GH did have an arrangement and then Tony's health grew worse. But they should never have let that weak stuff go to air unless they were certain. Just speaking as a general audience member, Laura should never have believed Luke was dead. The Cassadines faked her death and the death of her mother and son. People saw fake bodies. Even if remains are presented Laura shouldn't believe it. All this time I have to believe her somewhat muted reaction and the scant writing is because Laura has quietly, consciously or unconsciously, been waiting for Luke to come back. And when she realizes he isn't coming back that should break her life as she begins to fully reconcile her heart re: her life with him. Something we could learn Luke had finally begun to do himself before his own death.

And maybe discover that dumb ski lift was not how he died.

They are going to.

They really should handle Luke's death in a better way going forward. I viscerally hate how poorly and perfunctorily it was done in story, and it was clearly half-assed because Frank gambled he could get Tony (elderly, on the other side of the world, temperamental) back for the anniversary IMO. Bobbie was still openly questioning his death just in time for the 60th. But since it's 'settled' onscreen we'll probably just get a card at the end of the show or something. As it is I don't feel Laura ever really was allowed to process his death onscreen, nor were most others. I myself never gave up on having Luke back, just for a little while, to conclude things for the character and his family properly. That will never happen now, but there are ways to do some of it with him gone. Still, what matters most today is Tony's incredible body of work as such a complex, complicated performer and person who was indelible to General Hospital.

Fúck. What a day, week, month, year, decade. Century.

Because your link actually leads to the last page when I put the cursor over it. I think you're pasting the wrong URL into your link.

There's going to be a lot of rubbernecking over the Reiners' film Being Charlie in the days to come - one of Rob's last films, written by Nick, semi-autobiographical about Nick's addiction. Rob obviously made it to support his son getting sober and they did the whole press tour together. I didn't see the movie so I don't know how it treats the parents but it will be a very unfortunate, disturbing Hollywood curio like the Twilight Zone film going forward.

A lovely thread.

People is running with an alleged perpetrator very close to home, but I'd need more confirmation on that. Regardless, it's nightmarish.