Vee

When ancient accounts stop turning up after decades in convenient suspended animation randomly touting board-unpopular opinions seemingly tailored to create transparent controversy (entirely coincidentally, like one of our most lasting trolls), then I'll stop playing Whack-a-Mole. As to the show itself: I wonder if they aim to give Jane an actual love interest since she's back for the foreseeable future, and Tony Geary is most decidedly not.

Woof.

George R.R. Martin's blog post about his education in TV as an up and coming writer and how things have changed for the worse is very instructive and educational. I've encountered some of this myself.

Yeah, I don't watch this but the Marsha Warfield return caught my eye online. I figure @DRW50 will want to know. I guess she's also back in the next season.

I wonder when they officially decided to call it quits on Meg and why. Even in the few clips of her around this era in the early '70s she seems unbalanced. It seemed like a long decline. As dumb as the PC retcon backstory with her and DV Bordisso the psychic spy was, I've always wanted to track down some of those episodes or at least transcripts discussing her, as any mention of Scott's mother is few and far between in the last 30-40 years and I'm curious to see a relatively contemporary perspective from any of the characters on Meg. I haven't seen almost any of that terrible SL since it aired.

@Faulkner Another lewk for Ncuti:

Jake Sherman stays on brand: Meanwhile, rival Beltway access outlet Semafor takes shots at Sherman and Punchbowl, insert 'let them fight' gif here (I will not be linking to Semafor):

Another month, another freeze-dried account that makes the game too obvious and hits the Ignore file. Anyway, why they all immediately blamed Ned is beyond me, and knowing FV the characters won't be nearly as contrite when this is over.

I'd forgotten that was Barry Jenner. I know him best as Admiral Ross, Avery Brooks' cohort in the final years of the Dominion War on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I am nowhere near Robin's run on the show yet but I look forward to it. I do wonder why/how Allan Miller's Scooter abruptly disappeared so soon after he and Laura started hooking up. There was zero mention of him or of Laura leaving his firm.

In other news: Whisper-thin Valentin writhing and whining to Anna in the Cassadine torture chair was giving Stuart from MadTV.

Don't feed the sockpuppets.

Oh yeah, I liked the ripped from the headlines aspect and Carrie's role but Austin doing even basic math is totally implausible.

I liked that story! The beginning, anyway. Just telling vaguely intelligent stories was a quantum shift for DAYS, but their management and audience didn't want it (not that that regime was exactly flawless, but still). The difference for me is GH has never quite descended to DAYS' lows that they needed to do that particular kind of story to approach some semblance of physical reality.

Calling the SEC is peanuts for characters on this show and just shows how much the last 7-8 years has neutered storytelling stakes on this show, first with Passanante/Altman in the twilight of their careers and now these guys who are clearly just writing what Frank okays.

Yeah, the whole Ivy thing is odd since I know she never showed up. I was under the impression Sharon Gabet was only on a temporary break, my mistake.

Even Peter Reckell!

Very little, but he's played by a very talented young actor who was outacting half the cast even when he was first hired. He should be put on a contract but he's already getting a lot of outside work, I think.

And another: The original spot, which like the others so far featured the audio above in reverse:

Andre kind of got off pretty light after working with Faison on the Two Jasons, didn't he? Just hanging around with his very tall hair. I remember the days when he was the navigator on Star Trek: Enterprise who they totally gave up on writing for because back then he had no ability to act beyond grinning and saying 'warp 9!' @AdelaideCate007 will back me up!

I've been deep in a '79-'80 binge of EON along with other soaps since COVID began. It's very interesting how much they played with stuff with the longer-running characters (so many Edge characters were transitory). Miles and Nicole are now cemented as a tentpole couple or seem to be after the brutal slaughter of Donald May's Adam (and preceding Nicole's own harsh demise in a few years), but they definitely play a new angle when Derek Mallory comes on. Dennis Parker plays Mallory as an absolute militaristic shitheel and chauvinist for much of the early months, but his clear infatuation with Jayne Bentzen's Nicole humanizes him and allows for some layering. Meanwhile they seem to be teasing something with April and Logan while she's cemented with Draper. More and more I think EON nailed what Dark Shadows could've done had it adjusted to the '70s - it also had an often transitory, sometimes rotating repertory cast of people who would come in, interact with the foundational cast and then leave from genre story to genre story. The Madison clan including Margaret Colin has fulfilled several story purposes and is almost entirely gone, leaving only Nola to wreak havoc; Eliot Dorn is still around following his cult story a couple years ago making mischief. This sort of modular formula is one EON perfected.

As I said last month:

Cody had one of the most unpopular character introductions I've seen in a long time last year. People still call him "Truck Nuts" for reasons I don't understand but find hilarious. Given that, I don't think you need to do anything profound except tread lightly and let him be a classic soap staple: Local mischievous hunky stableboy, and maybe loves his dear old dad (Mac). He can be a fun fling for Elizabeth, he can be slotted in other places (or written out) but you can figure it out later. Dante and Lulu never did it for me but they were, in their original incarnation with Julie Berman, a pretty popular couple. By contrast, Dante and Sam are a C-tier snooze button pairing designed to fill the actors' guarantees while the show clearly has little to no active interest in them. I thought pairing them was a nice idea on paper that didn't work, and I think Sam as a character is spent and should be written out. Dante I would move to Brook Lynn at least for awhile given their shared history and potential for fun mystery stories, and then I would reintroduce Lulu with Marci Miller or whoever. But I'd need to find a better version of the Lulu character to situate on the canvas - lean into the adventurous journalist thing that they briefly introduced before firing Rylan, maybe - and then you can see whether she and Dante work anymore, since I never loved their original story.