Vee

He has a character, it just contains all of the above! Plus that whole insane WSB hunchback backstory. Valentin and Willow are the two characters I would call a pay hotline to the network to have killed, just like DC Comics fans did in the '80s with Robin #2 Jason Todd.

And as we know, Frank (allegedly) hated Julian/WDV and tried repeatedly to off him, lol. The infamy of his initial exit story with Julian threatening Alexis with the actual dagger that killed her mother seemed to quietly put NLG off the pairing for good, yet he lingered for several years. At the time his survival was attributed to focus groups. Whereas I think FV is clearly deeply enamored of JPS and is willing to spin the entire show around him. Well, he's supposed to be dead but I don't believe it. That said, I'm always happy for more Jane and Tracy.

I like what little I've seen or read of both those guys in interviews - they seem creative and funny. I don't blame them for a lot of the current mess of GH tbqh. I think ever since Ron got fired it's been Frank's Playhouse and all his worst instincts as he micromanages the storytelling and character focus (including Wes Ramsey and JPS - those actors don't get heavily featured unless Frank asks for it). That's why they had to rerun the Mayor Laura story twice, IIRC - once right before Genie quit because Frank wouldn't give her a contract, and they had to hastily slot NLG/Alexis into it, and then again when Genie came back. Both Frank and Ron inherited that mindset of apres moi, le deluge for soaps. Because who's checking him these days with ABC barely taking note of the show? The only time we know for certain the network stepped in was with Franco a few years ago and refusing to allow him to bring back Todd post-#MeToo. Nonetheless, despite huge problems the show is a lot better now (or has a lot more potential) than it was/did for most of the Passanante, etc. interregnum. Which I suppose explains why more and more of us are watching again. That being said, I'd demote both guys for longtime returning writers.

We have populated the recent GH threads with way too many crazy ideas, lol. We discussed Fakin' Willow at length in the last monthly one, I think. Both that and this would be genius. (There is also some solid discussion of the GH next generation issue in the SORAS thread, if I do say so myself. And I apologize for what I have done to the Knots Landing thread for the last 30+ pages.)

Until she asks for a bump above her current salary!

Nah. It's as easy as a long arc where Brenda comes back with her gay-ass kid, makes Nina more and more insecure as she cozies up to Sonny and Lucy, they co-run Deception, somehow split it from Nina (who I think currently has a stake in it?) and they push her out or cross her in some way, she's getting close to Sonny again and the rest writes itself for like 12-18 months. There's plenty of mileage to get out of CW in a good role before exiting her naturally. (It's not too late for them to have it turn out that St. Willow is faking, though. That would be so good.)

Oh, Jerry! He never failed to sell it. I've had Stephanie Mills' Fletch theme song in my head for months since revisiting that movie not long ago. They would just throw bangers like that away on forgotten soundtracks back in the '80s, that's how many great tracks they put out in that era.

I think that's how most of the board feels. I have never gotten over the gruesome shít Stafford's Nina did to Ava when she gave birth (despite Ava being a largely remorseless killer from the jump) - something Carly actually brought up the other week onscreen - and I can sort of buy Ava/Nina's weird friendship now after that discussion, and the fact that they are perversely bonded by their twisted past with Silas Clay in NYC, but I still don't need Nina around. Yes, she and Maurice have chemistry and she seems to push him to deliver more, but if you bring Vanessa into the equation there's no comparison. The Y&R thing with Phyllis is still insane to me. That should be the exit ramp for the character for years to come, especially since Susan Walters has really worked out.

Only Frank would shy away from bringing back VM to re-pair with Maurice while the audience gets to watch Cynthia Watros do what she does best for an extended arc (go apeshit). We have already strategized on exactly how best to utilize Vanessa long-term as the prime mover in future coupledom/story while relegating MB/Sonny to playing white collar patriarch on her arm approximately 50 times over the last few years on this forum, so I'll skip that paragraph this time.

I am not going to go back over my many, many roasts of wimpy Billy Joel Cassadine, but suffice to say that yes, I find him and his mutant spawn unwatchable. I know Finola loves the pairing and that they again have something of a fanbase, but that doesn't make it right. Valentin is an absolute cornball. What's crazy is that they islanded Finola, Lynn Herring, to an extent Kristina Wagner, etc. for months in story hanging around that one house set with Valentin while waiting for JPS to return, as he's frontburner on recurring and FV is willing to skew a good portion of the show around his availability like this is ATWT in the early 2000s with recurring stars like Cady McClain, etc., or like Stuart just left AMC and is a hot commodity.

Yes. I also suspect she was sold a bill of goods about the rapemance pitch tbh, but that's a discussion for the cancelled folder.

We've all three been over this before, but I liked the idea of a storyline that dug into the seemingly-idyllic past of Laura and the Webbers, and utilized the fact that at that time, the Webber house had survived generations and many creative regimes to still be in use by Mac and Felicia and their kids. That alone gives you a real sense of history and place on the show, and the painful loss of a lot of these homes is something we've all dissected ad nauseum in recent GH threads. (The GH fan wiki is actually really impressive for tracking this stuff - whoever runs it keeps extremely on top of these minute details.) That being said the actual story was pretty clearly a ripoff of Alison on Melrose Place from the jump, and whether it had been the young Bobbie in Rick's arms as was rumored to be an option at first or someone else (or an actual molestation angle, which Genie is rumored to have vetoed) it didn't really work. There was something decent I'm sure you could have done with that setup - and the angle where Rick had apparently returned as part of a consortium looking to take over the hospital - but they didn't do it. I do like that they have dug into Laura's pre-PC past by adding MEK as her brother (and I think they could do more with him), but I still think there is more to tell overall. Namely about her commune days. As for Kevin and Laura, as I've said before I know they have a fanbase and supporters, especially Genie and Jon Lindstrom themselves. And I would like to see them have real material that digs into both their troubled, traumatic childhoods and I would play out that relationship before ending it. But I still don't think it can really hold a candle to the Luke issue which will eventually have to be dealt with, so I will simply reiterate my wish to give Laura a real rival to Luke for her romantic future without him, a dashing British WSB agent, maybe a relation to the Wards. And Kevin and Lucy can reunite as the cosmos have always intended. I do like Tabyana Ali basically being in Laura's old role as the young heroine. I just wish I could shake the sense that when they all get back to the States this is going to culminate in "Amnesia" Esme sliding into Spencer's bed like his father's before him, and that will be the stumbling block for a major young couple I still feel the show has issues with.

I'll be damned!

I've tried digging around in that era. It seems like the story got told before Emma actually appeared onscreen but idk. I'll look again.

That was my impression on why Susan Haskell said no, based on her interviews at the time a year or two later. I think it may also have been why Sarah turned it down, lol. I think they were tearing Luke and Laura down in the scripts well before Genie's '08 return, though I may be wrong; it's been a long time. Her returning as a clueless coma patient in 2006 too dim to be told the truth about her condition did not help matters for me. I wish I could find the transcript or episode date for when exactly Luke or Holly told the full story of their affair in the '80s. I have never been able to find it. I do remember some anecdote Luke told about how he came home to Laura and she just 'knew' in her eyes what he had done and supposedly accepted it.

Kim Onasch does look wonderful. I remember a lot of stories about her BITD.

Yeah, Frank got bullied into keeping Genie, at least twice. The first time she walked out was in 2013, when he supposedly wanted her and Stephen Nichols to hang around as part of the recurring veteran corps Frank and Ron preferred to feature at that time and they both passed, hence Laura's abrupt exit in the middle of the anniversary year. He tried it again the late 2010s. Both times Genie said she wouldn't stay without a contract (and in her first return, without a new love interest which she got, Kevin). AFAIC FV half-lucked into making Laura the centerpiece of the show, and that's only because they lost several people he would've rather leaned on more IMO (Geary, etc). I couldn't say who soured on Laura the most in the 2000s because the fact is the writing was heavily skewed against her after a certain point. Guza's team in those years made much of how Laura and their family was just a fantasy for Luke, how Tracy was his much more 'honest' partner in life, how she truly understood him and on and on. It came out of the mouth of virtually every character in that era and it was clearly coming from the top, which was Guza and then Tony Geary; JFP was not in the driver's seat in those days. And it's complicated, because as I've said before a lot of Guza's team had been there since the glory years and while the overall storylines degraded a lot of the day to day work could still be good, even when in service of bad ideas (Guza himself had been there in the Monty/Pat Falken Smith/Racina heyday in the early '80s of LNL IIRC, though I may be wrong). The best moment of all for me, though, was in Genie's underrated '08 return, where she listens to Tracy spout all that new gospel, doesn't really react and politely tells Tracy 'don't kid yourself' - Luke loves her. She doesn't bitch at her or scream or trade shots, she just graciously walks out, and the instant Laura's left the room Tracy's armor drops and she bursts into convulsive sobs. God bless Jane Elliot. That was the most honest moment of that whole era. Whoever wrote that from the old crew, it was very good. And it's not that I didn't like Luke and Tracy together, because I did at least early on. The problem I had with it that developed over time was the relentless need to demean, rewrite and unmake Luke and Laura to try to service and validate Luke and Tracy, which was not necessary. They were two very different relationships and that's fine. But someone wasn't secure enough in that. Also, Luke's constant scamming of Tracy and the Qs, stealing from her and leaving her, screwing her over got very very old as well. Tracy had at least 3-4 "I'm done with you, Luke Spencer" speeches early in the Carlivati regime and the first one was the only good one. They kept repeating it because Geary refused to end the pairing or go back to LNL (just like he refused to play Carlivati's alcoholism story for him by taking drinks onscreen), so Tracy just kept taking Luke back.

Does anyone have more details on this one?

Another one:

One of the more infamous for me: OLTL brought on Colin and Troy MacIver's sister Emily who had originally been referred to offscreen as "Carol". When Emily came on, instead of ignoring it Gary Tomlin for some insane reason saw fit to openly retcon this by having Emily tell her new beau (Teddy Sears) this absolutely tortured backstory about how children used to mock her and call her 'Christmas Carol.' Okay?

I'd be into it though it will never happen. I think they will develop convenient amnesia about Kristina being bi with Mansi in the role. But as I told you, there is a weirdness factor since at one point Joss was raised very close to Sonny by Carly for years, including some of the years Sonny and Kristina were very close. And of course Joss was a baby when Kristina and Michael were running around thick as thieves as teens. You would have to play a forbidden angle given the familial proximity and the age difference, but it would be considerably more realistic than expecting Sonny to give a shít about Cryin' Dex.

Lovely news, he's so talented.

Jonathan Groff (OLTL) is appearing on the new series of Doctor Who.

Quiet, you! Just give him a new character!