Vee

The front page article on a return I am not even going to bother tagging at this point indicates the show is likely being penned by Mulcahey/Korte as soon as March 4th.

Notable from @Errol's article on the front page: So, that soon.

If anyone can make Steve's raggedy ass work again it's Mulcahey.

They always say that to excuse his latest show, and then it generally turns out to be the same toxic mix of wannabe viral camp, historical inaccuracy and two-dimensional caricatures. Capote's married lover did allegedly abuse him, but the stuff about the specific Swans is too reductive; some of their reactions to him and to "La Cote Basque 1965" were more nuanced than the show's approach indicates.

JFP adored RKK and brought him onto GH where there was allegedly even more trouble. He wasn't forced on her. The timeline on ATWT/AW is also inaccurate. Jensen and ABC got in hot water for her doing GH in 2000. AW ended in the summer of '99 and Vicky Hudson was killed off on ATWT almost immediately thereafter that same summer-fall, in a plane crash. By the time Jensen briefly did double duty on both shows, which got her in hot water at P&G/CBS, Vicky was dead and part of a ghost storyline wrapping up on ATWT. She was therefore appearing as both Melissa on GH and Ghost Vicky for a couple days in early 2000. They didn't kill Vicky because of GH, the character was killed long before she got hired at GH. They killed Vicky because they wanted to.

There's actually a lot of evidence Capote was deeply hurt by what happened; it was well-researched in a number of in-depth articles over the last decade and a lot of his associates (including some of the Swans, IIRC) were either interviewed or quoted via archival stuff. He apparently spiraled into drug and alcohol abuse with considerable more intensity once he lost his preferred social scene. I have no interest in this series because I don't tolerate Ryan Murphy product and his eager need to poach and associate himself with every possible pop culture totem by proxy, and even when his name isn't on the scripts the imprimatur, style and laziness of his factory style often show through. (Case in point: Promos showing Flockhart's character Lee Radziwill plotting Capote's downfall when by all accounts she was one of the women least impacted by his expose and didn't fully shun him.) Prefabricated viral camp moments and bitchery will always win the day in Murphy world, because he's a misanthropic nihilist. But I am glad the actresses are getting a showcase.

I'll just reiterate other people and say over half the cast (contract and recurring) of GH.

That was nuts and seemed like a Sonny/Lois chemistry test to me, as I noted to caroline at the time.

Genuinely wild to see good dialogue on modern B&B. So much of that show ran together for me when I tried watching it for awhile during somewhere around this time, for the actors like Heather Tom, Rena, etc. And you're right, unmistakable. This is why I feel confident we'll know if ghostwriting starts to happen early.

No, I'm pretty sure he was there for most of her tenure. He wrote for B&B on staff for maybe 15 years. He left before she did. I thought Lois still ran L&B all over the world. Shows what I know.

Extremely common for this show tbh. I can only hope PM finds real plans for Rena, who I'm sure he wrote for at B&B a fair bit.

That's interesting, because they never treated A.J. with much more than disdain once BW was in the role IMO. I did wonder early on as a kid if it was going to end up with them falling in love given the setup, but it never really went there (and should've, at least with Sean Kanan).

Anyway, from the other day, I didn't see this posted:

Is it true they worked from Guza's outline/projections til '97? I know Stefan and Katherine wasn't on his books lol.

Granted I am many, many episodes behind so things may well have changed with these actors/characters, but bear with me: I still can't decide if the kid playing Nell has any talent or is just that painful to watch. Her monologue about her dead mother with the therapist several episodes back was not bad, but in virtually every other scene (including some of that monologue) she is smirking and squinting her way through all her dialogue and while I assume they found this to be naturalistic it just makes me want to run her over with a car. Haz is a very attractive man who is also, unfortunately, one of the corniest dudes alive, even by the standards of a clearly very family-oriented Aussie soap. I'm so sick of hearing about the exploits of his cute dog. I won't be shocked if the dog starts gaslighting Mackenzie as the storyline heats up.

I've discussed this before, but the most jarring thing I saw on GH in years was the episode in 2015 where Jonathan Jackson played scenes alone with Tony Geary near the end of Luke's terrible exit story. Lucky had accompanied his parents back to town after the stupid Zombie Frank Smith caper Ron Carlivati had written for them had ended, and Ron was obviously once again threading in another plot strand he had no idea if he could ever pick back up again (and didn't); the idea that Helena's past brainwashing of Lucky had messed with his mind and that was why he'd been staying away from Port Charles, his family and his sons. (It was a decent explanation on paper, but the recurring problem with RC was follow-through and no commitment from an actor to return and play it out.) Anyway, Luke and Lucky had scenes alone together talking about Lucky's reasons for staying away. Past dialogue had been vague and obvious about his 'demons', etc. But suddenly the script was incredibly good, soulful, articulate and the scene was long. It was plopped in the middle of an otherwise bog-standard episode. It came as no surprise to discover (either just before or not long after, I think) that Tony and JJ had rewritten them themselves. And yet this was the kind of caliber we could sometimes still expect even in really bad times from the past members of the Labine/Guza writing corps that got almost totally flushed in 2011-2012. Including, of course, Mulcahey.

I tend to take them 2 at a time and try to average 2-6 per day when I watch, which hasn't been often lately with work, life stuff and other soap binges. But I'n watching it as we speak! I agree with others that J.J., etc. are really strong.

I'm all for it, because I find it fascinating when it's done (the OLTL/AMC Hulu revivals, Neighbours on Amazon and more recently Sussman's Y&R) even when it doesn't work out. But I'd be pretty surprised if PM does it outright here. I can't see Frank going for it. But we're all about to find out just how much power each creative has. @Darn and I were discussing this recently. It was very noticeable when Guza ghostwrote in late '97 and then again in spring '02 before his name was officially back on the show (the Carly 'death' story). I think Marland may have done it for a time early in his '70s run, when Bobbie was allegedly first introduced before his name was on the end credit roll. And Malone and Griffith famously did it in January of 2003 at OLTL a month before their "Storm of Change" soft reboot - the show's dialogue changed overnight from Tomlin's campy schlock. Ironically that ghostwriting period was a lot better than much of what came later lol. I don't know if that will happen here, but if it does knowing PM I'm willing to bet we'll notice fast. So much GH dialogue is purely functional exposition.

I've been wandering through eras both well before my time (the Marland '70s, the early/late '80s) and ones I haven't seen in many years, like '96. I was surprised to discover Culliton's name on an episode from early September of '96 - I thought he didn't come in til November or December around the Twist of Fate. We're the minority here. I think they sizzle together in classic eps but I've always been a Robert/Anna truther, and I just feel like the conflict with Duke's life vs. Anna's work was ultimately unsustainable. But I may be biased since the bulk of my experience with them was sadsack old Duke in the 2010s, where that did prove out although the writing was often terrible. I think the chemistry and spark could've returned had they let Ian Buchanan have fun onscreen as Duke in 2013-2015, which they didn't; he was just a morose, feeble broken man. But Ian Buchanan is actually one of the suavest and funniest dudes alive - he was absolutely hysterical on David Lynch's Twin Peaks and On the Air. There was no sense of fun in the Duke that returned in the 2010s.

I'm right before the flashback week lol. I've been kind of busy.

Oh good, because for a while there it seemed like you were just showing up to gently shake your head and tut indulgently at our opinions. The upshot of your expedition is that none of us have asked for it (and I was responding to someone else's speculation about Jagger and Karen's original exits/lack of return), so we're neither impossible to please nor blinkered in our motives or reactions. I've literally never given much more thought to Jagger coming back, because it's just not a character I see any purpose for. Did I briefly speculate that ASJ could've, at one point in the late '90s or early 2000s, garner interest for the network as a return given his lingering brand in those days, sure, but that's as far as I've ever taken that thought.

Point to where and when any of us said Jagger Cates should come back, particularly in the form of a blond frontiersman guest player on The Walking Dead.

I barely sat through more than a few episodes of Charmed because it was a debacle from the jump, but the feuds there were legendary. This whole thread (long and full of screencaps) is a wild ride, way more than just the OP. I hadn't realized Combs had turned on Alyssa.

But who cares? Why do we need to add Jagger back to the show? What is Jagger's relevance to today's already overcrowded cast and what is so interesting about this unrecognizable recast? I'm sure this actor is a nice man. Lots of actors are nice people. But if I didn't know he existed 48 hours ago I'm not going to start the White Country Radio Jagger Fan Club just because he seems nice and happens to share the same character name as a guy who last appeared on the main show almost 30 years ago and whose footprint on the current canvas is nonexistent.

Exactly. This doesn't change (or make Jagger any more relevant or interesting for today's canvas) just because ASJ is an ass.