Vee

Believe me, I've been ranting about it for years. At least with the Nina/Ava stuff they've discussed and acknowledged in recent times how strange their current BFFship is given their history. I guess I can sort of buy it because they've talked about it and because they're both deeply fucked-up people whose saga goes back decades. But the Sonny, etc. stuff is ridiculous to me. No way.

She's not around long, but yes, many soap vets are sprinkled across MP's long run. I think they knew it was change it up or cancellation with the latter half of Season 1 and Heather. Doug Savant's storylines as Matt were decried as tame and vanilla even in those days; I remember they infamously cut away from a kiss he had with Billy's friend(?) in a later season. I can't recall if the kiss was filmed or not, I think so. Matt's personal stuff was always kind of third-tier but they did thread him into ongoing storylines better later on, and eventually he started getting much edgier storylines which often came off kind of laughable (Matt on meth, or whatever he was on in Season 4 or 5) but at least they were trying to use him. I'm just glad Doug has gone on to have a much more fulfilling career - he's still married to Laura Leighton (Sydney, who you will get to know very well soon enough).

Hoo boy. Good luck with much of that first season! I do think a lot of it is essential though to understand the character dynamics when it shifts into gear near the latter half. The Jake/Jo, Michael, Jane and Kimberly stuff especially. I was a devoted viewer from the beginning as a kid; the promo campaign with Billy and Alison and keeping the toilet seat down, etc. got me along with Josie Bissett being stunningly beautiful, Vanessa Wiliams, etc. Earnest youthful drama was very much the moment at that time so it was kind of understandable why they thought it would work as is; I was nowhere near as big a 90210 viewer as I was Melrose. But I was fascinated by Marcia Cross as Kimberly from the jump, even before things took a turn. Many of us have dissected Melrose's later years a lot in its thread - check it out sometime.

Confident inaccuracy is a brand.

We've gone over the bizarre permutations of GH's various attempts to bring back the Brownstone not long ago, lol - Elizabeth's place is supposed to be the very same Brownstone as in classic eras. Frank and Ron attempted to resurrect it briefly in 2014-2015 with Michael and ELQ announcing they were renovating the classic building with great fanfare and it was unrecognizable then, then kind of vanished. Now it's sort of similar to that refurb but still definitely barely recognizable as a 'Brownstone'-type place. Still I can't complain that they are attempting to use a classic location in name only, even if I think it should look more like the classic set. I do love that Laura has a penthouse set appropriate to her stature - I wondered for a time if it was Todd's old penthouse from OLTL all the way from NYC but I highly doubt that; I assume it's actually Sonny's old penthouse redone. There is karmic justice to me in Mayor Laura having his giant space while he is relegated to a single paltry room tricked up to vaguely give the impression of his old one. Anna openly acknowledged a few days ago that she was stuck living at the Metro Court again; this is something Finola apparently complained about in the early 2010s and she allegedly made a point of getting her own set at contract time. She got the redone Chandler Mansion from AMC and now it's gone, I hope she gets a new one.

FV has always been very skilled at managing a budget, which gives me supreme doubts he is going anywhere. Nonetheless his GH looked much more 'peppy and cheap' for much of the 2010s - everyone was living in the Metro Court for a long while, most of the sets slathered in grey paint, etc. That changed over the last 6-7 years. There's still too much of the Bed Bath & Beyond uniform look in the Q mansion, Carly's home, etc. (and Sonny's new 'penthouse' is one room and embarrassing) but beyond that the show looks pretty good.

Don't get us started on their having a damn live horse in the stables. The show's budget situation for sets at least has improved a lot since the mid-2010s. I'd credit dropping Steve and Howarth, but those were much more recent and Steve is back.

God who cares, it's 2024.

I've begun to suspect that even more than before over the last couple years since Dobbs, this IVF thing and other measures like it - the whole Dobbs shockwave that keeps coming - will be what ultimately dooms Republicans again. I always thought Dobbs would keep on doing that, but this latest has put it in sharp relief again. This is a not a public conversation they want to have and they're terrified of it electorally.

It's long been my position that Cody should at least be a fun transitional thing for Elizabeth - a hot younger man who makes a harried mother of three feel desirable again and gives her a heady secret fling. There's no way some of the audience can't respond to that, and it doesn't have to be a huge A-storyline or the long-term future for Liz. Whether a more solid role manifests for Cody in future who knows, but it's not really important atm. I don't have an issue with his being Mac's kid, though the Dominique aspect is nonsensical and makes zero sense timeline-wise; AFAIK Dominique had no prior relationship with Mac pre-GH, and no time interval in which she could've bore his child after.

I don't think it's Disney per se because sex was still on the menu long after they took over; I think it's too much self-censorship from the show itself re: its fears over a senior-skewing audience being alienated by various elements or shake-ups in stories or couples. I do think baby stories at every show being so easily greenlit may come from the networks/parent companies reacting to their perception of the audience though. We see this at other shows in some of the same ways over various issues (race, sex, LGBT stuff). They're getting a well-known leather daddy for HW next month, sooo we'll see how it goes!

Never did!

Again, I'd let Cody roam around giving lonely heroines (like Liz, as you said) a fun time. He doesn't need to have a bigger purpose than that any time soon, if at all. He's just a fun stud. Willow and Sasha remain barely distinguishable to me and they'd both be gone along with Michael, who'd stay gone for at least a couple years before returning solo. lmao I was thinking the same. This is the Face of Deception? Amanda Setton as BLQ should be going gangbusters but between the chaste, staid writing for most young people and the apparent BTS issue with Setton refusing to do intimate scenes it's a wash. I can think of many things to do with her but not if she's going to refuse to play hot material.

It's because Sasha is (like much of the canvas) among the most boring people alive. I'm not saying Cody is a work of genius himself but JK at least has some real charisma and could be put to much more fun use than the last couple years.

It's hard not to after the Sasha/Cody karaoke lipsync for their lives, which I straight up muted. I did wonder if the swift conclusion on the Spixie stuff was setting up an exit for them which, yes please. But I doubt it.

I will say I'd add the Selina Wu stuff with Sonny to the collection of stuff that feels tweaked and a bit sharper. She had a few pretty good lines in there beyond just scowling. Ava eavesdropping on them also made me wonder if maybe Wu was right to keep Ava out. The true Ava from back in the day that I remember could've orchestrated all this (including Nina's downfall) herself.

I do suspect they have tweaked some scenes, as we've discussed. But there's nothing that has straight-up jumped out at me so far in the way it did when Guza ghostwrote upon his returns, or when Malone and Griffith began ghostwriting at OLTL in January '03.

My Dallas roasts in that show's thread over the last year or two go on quite awhile and I haven't even gotten to those latter post-dream seasons. I've pretty much stopped doing them as I imagine people are sick of hearing me trash a beloved show. I know Knots transforms quite a few more times and has good and bad periods, but those changes and the drastic new shapes still fascinate me. I hope to find a lot to love in the latter half despite the peaks and valleys. Plus, as I've mentioned in the past it's given me a new outlook on the final, resurgent season of Melrose Place which was apparently masterminded by Peter Dunne. It wasn't a perfect year by any means but had stronger characters, an over-arching storyline (Matt's diary and its secrets about the complex), long-running elements (Amanda and Eve's teenage secret), and Eve herself was basically a singing Ciji analog by another name. By the time it ended it should've been allowed to keep going as it'd had a bit of a creative revival whereas 90210 was on fumes. Ah well.

A few interesting notes here: She was hired in December by Teschner, who was asked to approach her by FV for this arc and FV directed her first two shows. Frank has directed before of course but I'm not sure of the last time.

I don't think it means she won't continue to appear. But we'll see.

IIRC we knew she had a short contract when she debuted. This isn't surprising, though I did think the initial contract was already over.

I would not be surprised if this quick push on several couples and stories this week is to usher several characters out.

There is a lot more in the Loving thread if you dig around; there's much much more knowledgeable posters about the whole of that show than me.

B&E were never brilliant writers anywhere - their hackwork is equally infamous - but I will give them credit for the Loving Murders (which are controversial to this day, as a stroll through the LOV thread will tell you but which I enjoyed a lot) and for their seeming commitment to a Black canvas at most of their shows. A few years ago the entirety of the storyline was uploaded to YT; it lasted from (IIRC) July '95 to the show's end in early November '95. I don't know if it's still there or not, it went up and down a few times. That's how a lot of us got to revisit it during lockdown, I hadn't seen it since it first aired. I think a lot of people would credit the quality of the LM material vs. B&E's multiple attempts to revisit that hype (like the less popular Masquerade serial killer arc on The City, or the Nursery Rhyme Stalker mess on GL which I believe was also them) to the other creatives on staff at Loving at the time, like Linda Gottlieb who actors from the show recently confirmed was consulting in that storyline in some way - I suspect the excellent ad campaign was her, if nothing else. But as for how they've been referred to, it's always only been the Loving Murders online or in print. It was alluded to occasionally on other shows (OLTL '95 had Todd hilariously ponder if the unstable Viki might have been 'piling up the bodies like cordwood' in Corinth) and when GH had Luke and I think Holly visit Corinth and the abandoned Alden mansion in summer 2013, I believe Luke did actually call them 'the Loving Murders' in a clever way by referencing the killer's motives.