Vee

One take Frank!

She had it at AMC 2.0!

I will be surprised if Paramount lasts til this is filmed and airs (if it's even picked up). I think it's going to go under and merge with either Peacock or be subsumed into Netflix. But who knows.

If CBS also decides to attempt to get Y&R back on its feet vs. it being the Mary Celeste of daytime and ABC truly feels compelled to compete with a Black-centric soap beyond just GH, its existing diverse soap brands are back home now. Just saying. No, I will never get over PP fumbling the bag on AMC/OLTL with mismanagement and a bit too early. And I wouldn't be shocked if this show goes after Debbi Morgan. Paging @marceline

I said it earlier in this thread and I've alluded to it in others, but this fits with what I'd begun to suspect since the WGA/SAG strikes and the streaming crash began. First, the strikes and income/pay inequity in that situation indicated that one of the last bastions of dependable income in the industry was, ironically enough, the world of the dying soap opera. They never close year-round. They will not have episodes burned without airing for a tax writeoff. They will not be renewed and then cancelled on a whim before the next season begins shooting. That's why so many institutional families (Labine, Bell, Culliton, etc.) pass the creative jobs along as generational security. It is hard to break in because of those closed ranks but once you do it's even harder to get drummed out. (Alarr, Morina, etc) This may warrant its own thread, but: Is it possible that the networks and parent companies have begun taking a harder, sober look at the fallout from the streaming wars - where almost none of them are sustainable long-term individually and will begin to consolidate under a handful of umbrellas for survival - and are now looking at dependable, long-lasting shows with huge libraries (like the supposedly shopworn old sitcoms, procedural dramas, etc. that also do huge numbers on Netflix) as a renewed income stream? Because my thought last year led me to this conclusion: If the only place writers can still make dependable money in this business is soaps, and if enough streamers keep falling apart and also need new safe harbors, that may lead the networks back to the soaps too. After all, soaps always did pay for everything else. And that in turn makes me take another look at the creative shift at GH. And what will happen to Y&R.

I suspect I was not the only one who found that recent random EW article on Generations odd. Probably not coincidence.

I think that's a big assumption for right now and not immediately likely. But P&G being back allows us to imagine a little. I did think last year during the strikes and beginning of the streaming crash that soaps and their income might start looking more appealing again to the industry.

Yeah, it's insane. Almost as insane as P&G coming back in when we know they were starting to starve and offload the soaps for years before they actually began killing them off. I've always felt it was a horrible sin not only to lose the last of the New York soaps and that wealth of rich BTS history, on-air talent and employment potential (don’t get me started on how I’ve bored young actors I know in NY with this), but also how P&G abandoned their soaps slowly after their being an institution unto themselves in them and a seal of quality for so many decades. Wild.

I will just say again for whoever definitely isn't listening that not only is GL a timeless brand IMO but AMC and OLTL would still murder at 30 mins each back to back, in arc-based seasonal periods on streaming if necessary (ironically, what Gottlieb pitched 30+ years ago). That's it, that's the post.

I still don't think broadcast has a long-term future for soaps, but I do think GL in particular could do well on streaming in a tweaked format focusing on the families and suburban aesthetic more, in the ways Nancy Curlee, etc. so eloquently laid out. But I and others have laid out our convoluted ideas for those revamps many times before. GL and AMC sort of epitomize that Americana tapestry to me.

I'll believe it when it exists onscreen, but this doesn't seem to be the same thing as that fly-by-night Pine Valley effort a few years ago which I was always skeptical about. I think the only thing keeping that in the mix for a year or two was the star power of Kelly and SMG.

I missed that part too. Procter & Gamble. Remarkable. Paging @DRW50 @DramatistDreamer and others I'm sorry to forget.

Whoa!

LMAO you finally did it

Alexis' law license, surely.

I don't think she's a great actress (paging @Darn), but the character is important. So I'm glad to see her.

I think it was primarily Steve's laziness. He was largely on cruise control after he returned having failed to conquer Hollywood. I mentioned this on another forum recently too; you're absolutely right. I rewatched '96, etc. stuff recently and Jason was different.

I'd settle for the mob focus being downshifted, as it's been before. (And titan is also right about the past shift.) And if these scenes help contribute to that I am all for it. They felt very much like the new team.

Then the beef would be from 1998 and I'd have to watch this guy do a bad accent. And the beef would be petty over losing a woman. This hits different because of the content being candidly addressed in 2024 in a way it hasn't seriously been in many years, and because it's from a character who has been gone forever. Sonny is who he is, he hasn't changed enough and people should say it.

I really don't think Jill had anything to do with that, as she was out of power within the job pretty much by the time he returned on contract for Guza. Steve just didn't give a shít.

I guess I don't see that many people doing that, beyond cherry-picked anecdotes from the NYT economy beat.

They'll come to it slowly over the next week or so. They always grudgingly do, often with excuses made for the GOP/Trump. People are tired of him. They were tired 4 years ago. And while the Biden dislike factor is already heavily overhyped by media and often Very Online, even if it were more legit a lot of people would still either crawl over glass to vote against an actual corpse vs. Trump. Or, if we're talking GOP votes he's lost before and tonight, just stay home again because they're still tired. And that's not even getting to Dobbs. The only people in the general public not tired of Trump are his remaining base and the mainstream media.

Trump only got 63% in Virginia - Virginia - among his own party. Neither @marceline nor I need to put a show on in the barn to indicate what that suggests for the future.

I can buy it, especially after what Ryan, Nikolas, Esme and Austin and his hick family put her through. She's always been bad news IMO but I can see that all spurring her to decide now is the time to go all in, kill Austin and work her way back to power after being pushed around for a number of years.

Maybe. But I think if he knew it was Ava and saw how close she's gotten to Sonny again (and he has clearly been monitoring this situation) he wouldn't wait. And yeah, as I said she doesn't give a fúck. Ava never has.