Vee

The superior Sam returns.

I think some sources have said Sly opted to move back to be with Paul and Jenny around that time. I don't know if it was ever depicted onscreen, or just mentioned in dialogue. I have always wanted him to reappear, but I live in mortal fear that Liz would fûck him too and that's just a few Lucky connections too many.

I really liked Viv and her doomed husband in the plane crash episodes. But I wasn't surprised to hear that all of them and even the amazing Shirley at the Woolpack had croaked in the intervening years, and many of the young characters had met dire fates. (I thought the original child Scott also did quite a good job portraying PTSD, clinging fearfully to his horse) The complaint here reminds me of when EE killed off Dennis Jr. a few years ago - a huge waste of future potential given his lineage.

I'm still steadily catching up on my Neighbours backlog but I glanced at the 2024 preview recently posted and I have to say it's remarkable that Guy Pearce appears committed to making semi-recurring appearances as Mike for Jane vs. their immediately breaking up or him being killed off, which is what I'd expected. What a class act.

John, we both know we could line up at least 8 useless people on contract at this show and still not be done making room.

Not that confusing - I knew a fair bit of Emmerdale background on some stuff going in, and the rest was easily researchable. I do think it's a shame both next generation Sugden boys are gone atm but what are you gonna do. Frank Tate is even sexier than I remember, sorry not sorry. It's a very strong month-plus of episodes.

Tubi had a good selection of past Emmerdale - until today. Not sure where it'll end up next. Fortunately I'm still able to finish watching the plane crash saga and its January '94 aftermath, as part of my holiday soap viewing. I want to thank @DRW50 among others for providing a wealth of knowledge, it's been interesting digging into other key events in Emmerdale's past. I can't believe they killed off Frazer Hines not long after this. I know he's supposedly been rallying to come back; they could do (and have done) far worse.

Good riddance! I've never understood that recast. The last guy was fne.

Yeah, I am pretty certain it was Wheeler/Kreizman who undid Sandy as Jonathan. I may be wrong but I don't think so. They were right to do it, it was so anticlimactic and he was such a lame character. I always thought it was a huge mistake not trying to get Billy Kay back. He seemed poised for big things with L.I.E., etc. (with Brian Cox and a very young Paul Dano) but sort of vanished.

Tom Wilkinson was an absolutely towering talent. (Small soap note: That is a very young Austin Williams, Shane Morasco from OLTL, glimpsed in the scene with George Clooney above.) I saw him live in Guys and Dolls many years ago. What a talent. I recommend people see him and his brother at their best in Francis Ford Coppola's recut version of his own Cotton Club film - The Cotton Club Encore - which centers their characters more than the theatrical version and is now free on Amazon Prime.

He wasn't. He got written out early in the 'second season' (actually mid-Season 1, but they broke them into two when it debuted in the summer) and replaced on the show by Don Michael Paul's character. I actually liked BG on Models and was bummed about that. Gaskill had been presented as an early-mid 20s young professional on Models, and as a kid I was not used to such intense daytime soap SORASing yet. So I was flabbergasted when maybe a few months later (if that) he turned up on AMC on a high school set opening his fuckin' locker! He looked way too old to be playing someone near my age.

It was obvious from the jump the stalker was supposed to be Jonathan, whoever he turned out to be played by. The choice (under Conboy/Weston IIRC) of his being Sandy was always bizarre to me. I didn't like the character and his strange introduction as a voice-over DJ with a hand puppet or something was just another bizarre flourish of that team.* Plus Sandy just seemed too pedestrian a guy to be Reva's long-lost tropical prince of a son. He was a boring guy with a bit of generic spunk. It was a nothing event. Which is why it didn't surprise me when the next team changed it up and found Pelphrey, hellbent on revenge. *(Ironically, OLTL '03 had one of its few successes around this time with Al Holden as radio DJ The Voice of the Night, following in stepmother Luna's footsteps - but we knew fairly quickly it was Al, a character the audience was invested in, and there were no fúckin' puppets.)

Starring Brian Gaskill as David Morse on the Paramount Plus revival of Northern Exposure!

This is the first I'm hearing of people loving this period so much with Conboy already on base. It's interesting to hear discussion of from more veteran fans; I may have to go back and look at it again. I just remember the Conboy/Weston regime that followed being utterly deranged in a new way, as bad as Rauch's excesses yet somehow even worse. On a side note I'd really thought Claire Labine would work out at the show, it's too bad she didn't. The MAC/Annabelle Sims story, from both decades, is ultimately just a farfetched, kludged-together ripoff of Peter Straub's horror classic book and film Ghost Story, which came out shortly before the original take on the storyline in the '80s. I couldn't believe they were ripping off the same storyline twice, both times clumsily retconning all the elder male characters as having known each other long ago when it just did not work. I do think Kreizman had some good ideas early on - a Roger revisit with Holly, an Ed return, Jonathan - but it was clear he had no ability to execute (and the Sebastian story became a nightmare).

I blame myself!

I've only seen bits and pieces over the years, but I am in fact watching the plane crash saga this holiday season in time for its 30th anniversary. (There is some claim online Kathy Tate is apparently returning in 2024 after years, but I don't think it's credible.) I always did like Kim and Leah Bracknell's character.

The last I ever saw some years back was some evangelical video. I'm still sad about what happened because I loved her on the show, but I don't blame the show for those circumstances.

Don't feed the troll.

OLTL A case can be made for Adriana replacing Cassie in Dorian's family - Melissa Fumero was so talented and had such good chemistry with Robin Strasser that IIRC what was intended to be a hoax storyline, with Dorian claiming Adriana as hers to keep her away from her grandson River, turned out to be the truth. Like Cassie, Adriana came to town a sweet young teenage girl who soon wanted to connect with her mother. Later, Langston Wilde did the same to Adriana; Dorian adopted her in late '07, and Adriana (who had completed a bitch goddess arc) left for Paris the following summer.

Paging @Darn.

That part I understood, yes. I actually found his descent into madness intriguing. But what I meant in my OP was that I found it inexplicable that it was mostly ignored when he returned after wreaking havoc for years both before and after he exited. They just swept everything he'd done (including Grady) under the rug.

I never understood why they made Phillip into the Big Bad both in his exit and then offscreen, had him invisibly stalking his family and friends for several years as they struggled to get GA back, etc. and then when he does show up he is mostly fine! Very little is mentioned of his psychotic break or all the crazy stuff he's pulled both before and after his 'death!' Except for one thing, when he literally throws that creep Grady off a cliff and no one ever finds out! They just go back to more folk-rock scenes of Phillip strolllng the dilapidated streets and bonding with people! WTF?!

I was just thinking that. We've all heard of those scenes too but this is an opportunity to see them. Pieces of them also recur in some of Gabet's other wonderful uploads from spring of '77 - the typically baroque, abstract dream sequences Slesar adds to Nicole's dreams of Claude Revenant's island, where she seems to overlay an old-style pirate ship on the sea and an island native with a machete (complete with kooky Chromakey FX) onto her memories of the explosion and her abduction. I think the other younger Nicoles have their merits, particularly Lisa Sloan but they just don't have the stature or cosmopolitan vibe of McGuire. They feel like her younger sister, even if I like them with Joel Crothers. I don't know why they thought such a major shift would work, but I guess the other Nicoles did remain popular with Miles for almost another decade. I've always been curious to see if any material with McGuire and Crothers is available. I do remember seeing Kevin in some other old episodes but I can't recall for the life of me when. His story with Raven has always sounded harrowing, but I've actually seen little of Raven period as I have mostly watched EON material where she's not present or in the episode. My long, long binge of the Nola Madison saga is leading up to her return though.

What a fascinating gift this special was - we've all heard about it for so long. It's also, like many soap surprises lately such as the revival of Neighbours on Amazon Prime, very instructive re: how soap is put together. Slesar and co. use several narrative devices - Geraldine's coma dreams, Kevin Jamison's exposition to the doctor and most skillfully the Faraday custody trial - to recap major ongoing plotlines for a new audience on a new network. It's impressive work. They waste zero time with Nicole; this was what, her second day back and her memory immediately returns lol? I didn't realize Lois Kibbee was almost fired as part of this storyline; was it the network move that made them hold onto her and try to get Maeve McGuire back? I also didn't realize that Adam and Nicole must have had some sort of night together again soon after she returned, despite his relationship with Brandy Henderson, for her to be pregnant early the following year. (ETA: Never mind, I misread the dates; seems that episode was from all the way in '77!) Wasn't May allegedly angry they ended Adam and Brandy, and did that contribute to his brutal exit over a year later? And WEHT Phoebe Jamison, or Tracy and Danny, etc. Nice to see Linda Cook from LOV as Laurie.