Vee

As several of us have said the last time this came up, it's not at all hard to believe P&G doesn't give two shíts about its soaps. It has nothing to do with their value judgment. The issue in this day and age is simple logistics. Both safe physical disposal of that kind of archive per local or federal laws, and the internal expenditure involved with wiping year after year, day after day. I don't believe they cared enough to take the time and effort to physically wipe 50+ years. I can believe the game of telephone from person to person has confused things a bit down to any actors who claimed such, and so I think it's much more likely ATWT is just rotting away in some closet somewhere, forgotten. That's more often the banal way of things in forgotten company properties vs. any grand gesture of contempt. Real contempt is not caring at all.

IIRC Lily has recently said they're in college. I'd de-SORAS them too regardless. Y&R has done crazier things. I do think they made many mistakes in how they handled SSM's return and some of the stuff she did they discarded, but I particularly thought Tristan Leabu (or whatever his name was) was a unique find as Reed. The idea of pairing him with Lily's daughter was not a bad idea (I think that's what they were aiming for?) but it was too soon to SORAS those twins.

I never got over that. Watching in real time it shocked me. John and Marlena went away on their honeymoon and those kids of theirs were toddlers, they came back and it's Kirsten Storms plus Jason Cook when Colin O'Donnell(?) had played Shawn-D for years and had 10-12 years on Belle. It is really weird that many of the GH kids are now up there in real time. Which is another reason there should never have been so many.

I agree with all that. And yeah, the Charlotte thing is just because they are desperate for people to fully buy into Valentin. Charlotte as a character has no other function. She is Lulu's mutant test tube rape baby in order to cement JPS as siring a Spencer and everyone just went along with it. I would undo that and send her far, far, far away lol.

Yeah, that's why I talked a bit about making Dante's (and offscreen Lulu for now) parentage and father status more real when I edited my already long post and added more lol. There were so many family/parenting character vignettes in the 90s where we saw how and when these people evolved into adults or were shown as a family unit, and that's what characters like Dante and Rocco need. Liz evolved too, often by virtue of having so little frontburner story in the last twenty years. Bringing Dante and a slightly-younger Rocco into the loop more with Laura as well as Ned and Olivia, Leo and BLQ (who I wanted to pair with old Bensonhurst pal Dante, for awhile at least) might help too. I def would want to bring on Lila Rae Alcazar at some point. I have no objection to Skye turning up to make trouble for the Qs in doses, lol. That's how she is best used on this show. Danny would definitely be back. I just don't see an immediate need right now when the main focus is the older youths. He can always come back in a year or two to stay with Grandma Monica (assuming poor Leslie Charleson is still with us) or Alexis.

Oh, I had no idea DVSM was related to Paul Avila Mayer. She directs a ton of Yellowjackets now.

It's the exact same traffic jam build-up of kids GL had by the end as well as AMC 1.0 not far behind. Fortunately AMC 2.0 did a time jump and culled almost all of them along with the cast. Rocco barely feels like Dante and Lulu's kid as is since they rushed into a pregnancy story because that's all Ron Carlivati liked to tell for 'good' characters, and so we've never really gotten any sense of them as parents IMO - the kids on the show today are generally accessories vs. the type of relationships and family build you so accurately described with the older generations back in the day. I never felt Dante and Lulu 'graduated' to becoming parents organically like characters did back then. I would show some more quiet character scenes - Dante the single father looking at pix of the old days (probably with Julie Berman photos lol), sitting down with his son or his mother and just doing domestic things while reminiscing about Lulu, openly talking about how he got here, how he became a young parent after being a rough and tumble young man, processing that and allowing the audience to therefore sit with it and get used to it. The way we got used to the life we watched Mac, Felicia, L&L etc. lead with their kids. Even Ned did it with BLQ despite her on-off presence as a child, and is doing it with Leo today. Alexis also did it with Molly and Kristina, Carly, Jax and Sonny with their boys. I definitely am not going to make any exceptions for Charlotte whose genesis disgusts me and is only a reason to keep Valentin rooted on the show, so while Rocco would remain and percolate, she'd be gone. Sam is played out and I'd be writing her out anyway, and I don't want Jason back any time too soon so Danny would be gone for a good while. Georgie II, Scout, whoever else can come back someday when the show is in need, but right now IMO what the show needs in that area of the canvas is to focus harder on its strong young college set, altering/tweaking some roles or recasting where needed (Joss) and adding a couple new HS youngsters behind them male and female who aren't all related to everyone else or anonymous. That would include some Asian kids, maybe a Ward or two in addition to bringing on older Wards, and it would definitely include queeny Alec Barrett with Brenda who would also be a mischief maker like his mother. I would not touch Jake; Hudson West is seriously talented. I'd give him a contract before he walks for good and start to build him up, the way they had Robin waiting in the wings behind Brenda, Karen, Jagger, Jason, etc. in the early '90s. He would turn out gay (or bi), as I'd mentioned, giving the audience the swerve vs. his little brother but that would not be his story; his early on would be focused on the traumas of his past because West is such a strong actor. He would be the soul of the younger youth set. Any other young girls or boys, remains to be seen. They don't all have to be figured out now because as it is you have a really strong main set with Spencer, Trina, Cam, a better-utilized Joss and potentially Emma, plus Esme going in and out as the crazed wild card per appropriate story. I would also add an entirely new Q in that age range - a brainy European relation, Alexandria Quartermaine's grandson, to play off Joss - but that is another story.

The problem is I don't think they'll ever kill Donna off (even though she should not exist at all) bc IIRC she is literally named for a recently deceased beloved crew member. I would kill off Avery to reignite the Sonny/Ava feud, which should never have ended. I've always had an elaborate story strat in mind there too which I will refrain from illuminating in here. I think most people cannot tell half the show's kids from the other half, I can't either, which is why many of them (Danny, Wiley, Scout, Amelia, Maxie's unnecessary spawn, probably more I forgot) need to be written out with their played-out parents (Sam, Maxie, Michael) for years to come so the field can be clearer for the active youth set we already have, plus a few additions and a few characters waiting in the wings like Jake, Alec Barrett, maybe some kids from the Asian Quarter, etc. Aiden and Rocco both do not need to be as old as they clearly already are looking like Jake's near-contemporary, who is also closing in on William Lipton physically - it is ridiculous to have this many young teens/tweens on the show just loitering and growing older and older with no intention of doing anything with them. So those two would survive the purge but they'd be de-SORASed a bit and unseen for a little while. Little Leo is great and not going anywhere. Others like Charlotte and Violet should not be part of the show anymore period - Charlotte, the creepy test tube mutant, would be de-Spencered and written off after Valentin cacks it, and Violet the lisping brat would be gone with Finn. In their place I'd re-add Emma, probably with a recast, to play a closet troublemaker role with unsuspecting Cameron (a more lasting version of the dynamic people see with Esme, with a saner and less crazed female lead) - Emma Drake would come off in public like a beloved legacy good girl, and she would be the last person the audience expects to be bad news.

Donna and Avery should not exist. One can die. Sonny and GH in general has way too many random children. There is a major traffic jam in its youth scene. Half the little kids are now already tweens and teens yet they only just recently got a semi-functional college group the audience is invested in. Charlotte should not exist, Scout, Wiley, Amelia, Maxie's multiple needless children, I could go on and on. I'd write most of them out. GH has turned into Mormon GL and late-stage AMC 1.0, because babies are the only story guaranteed to be greenlit by the network which views the audience as largely older and conservative and by an EP who fears the Facebook demographic. They've outright said they largely get their data from FB, while neglecting other social media. They are afraid to lose any of a dwindling elder audience, which is why you see stories that cater to what they perceive to be a conservative viewership - all babies, no discussion of abortion, even in these trying times when GH's socially conscious spirit is needed more than ever.

We still face so many heartaches and challenges, but it's hard to overstate how crucial a blow this is.

She does that too. That's how it escalates. Nina finds out she faked it and covers for her out of guilt and also because Nina is still a little batshít. I dunno who starts sniffing it out. Brook Lynn in her new role as socialite sleuth (the model I had for changing her role on the show to something more fun and Lucy-esque was Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor)? Little Leo?

It was my idea! Let's not get it twisted. Darn gets co-writer credit.

Bobbie has never told a worse lie than that, and I'm pretty sure Bobbie once lied about Laura wanting Luke to rape her.

As I told Darn earlier in our Private Correspondence (available on OnlyFans), the greatest twist ever would be if Willow turned out to be faking all this for the attention. A Grey's writer did it! Mine as well. That and the E.T. thermometer trick, which I want to tell you all here and now can go south fast if you leave it on the lamp too long. ("It says here your temperature is... 130.") Kids at home, if you lurk on this forum (why??) don't get caught slipping. Leave the thermometer on a non-direct part of the lightbulb for no longer than 20-30 seconds. Take breaks!

I honestly have no clear memory of Scully Sr. himself today. That was in the era that all Sonny's mob adversaries just blended together for me - Scully, Moreno, Rivera (who at least had the Lily connection), maybe some other guy, then Sorel. They were all the same in my mind. (I do remember that the rumor at the time when JFP took over was that Sorel was going to rape Tamara Braun's NuCarly while Sorel's daughter, Angel made love with Sonny.) They at least began making Sonny's rotating adversaries a bit more unique later on - the Alcazars, Manny Ruiz (who returned way too many times and was literally just a Xerox of Robert LoSardo's nip/tuck character who Guza had clearly watched on FX), Faith*, the Zaccharas. Then came the Balkan, lol. I'm sure that was a decent idea on paper. But it's still essentially the same story over and over: Baddie comes to town, Sonny and Jason win. Ava changed that pattern for awhile merely by surviving, but again she and Sonny are practically besties today which is still insane. As a kid I had no idea WTF ELQ did. I don't remember many boardroom scenes in the '90s but maybe I'm forgetting. I do find the discussions of the business much more interesting rewatching today than I did back then. But they still seem to do most of the business anywhere but at ELQ. I guess ELQ was deeply tied to a variety of local town stuff in '94 (whatever that project in the working-class neighborhood was or whatever), which is a smart thing bc I think it tied back to Mary Mae, but it often seemed so ephemeral when they would just talk about it. The use of ELQ when Frank and Ron took over changed - it closely resembled the stories and choices they often played with with Buchanan Enterprises from OLTL, complete with office sets, but that all worked for me. For the first time in my memory you could see Michael, A.J., Tracy, etc. doing material things with ELQ, putting it towards actual story stuff or ventures that wasn't totally vaporware or conceptual. And I thought Chad worked very well in that role and with Sean Kanan and Jane, until he completely gave up on life onscreen around 2015 or so lol. Neither Michael nor Dante nor most other males pre-FV have had any kind of inner life or dynamism since Frank taking over, because any man who is not a huge Frank favorite is just a spare part/stock hunk on the show today. * - as incredibly crass and demeaning as some of the material with Faith was, Cynthia Preston was incredible and still works today. IIRC Faith pretty definitively died onscreen but that was a mistake, because if she lived and was out there I could believe she could wreak havoc.

Oh, I agree, we've been over all that. What I'm referring to is when Ron briefly revisited the triangle in 2013. They quickly started downshifting away from his and Frank's love affair with Kelly Sullivan and Connie/Kate (I wonder why - maybe realizing Maura West wasn't going anywhere, and would cost a lot? or planning for Michelle Stafford?) in early '13 and started moving towards a story with Olivia as the humble wallflower in Connie's shadow pining for Sonny while he was still with her glamorous, newly-integrated cousin. Then Connie was killed and Sonny and Olivia got together for about ten minutes. It was like a B/C-plot at best and it was one of the clearest indications Ron was not interested in Sonny at that time.

It was classic Carlivati that Joe Jr. was an admitted rapist, pusher and habitual abuser of women who basically came on saying 'yeah, but I feel bad about that stuff now, also I didn't rape the bitch!' Except he obviously did and there was no ambiguity about it, just his weak denials. Yet we were clearly expected for the bulk of his run to feel things for him, consider him to be a complicated character and take his potential pairing with Tracy seriously. They kept trying to play him as an actual older male consideration for Tracy, with his long-lost son, etc. despite his backstory. Tracy pining away at the mansion going 'oh, Joe.' I don't know what made them drop it all, which they did not long before killing off Trey (a.k.a. Ford: The Sequel with the exact same introduction) too. The whole Scully family drama with them, the family pimp medallion and Connie was dumb as hell. Frank and Ron went from annoyingly invested in those characters to abandoning them all overnight. Their investment in Connie and Kelly Sullivan faded not too long after in 2013. (Remember when they did a 10-minute love triangle with Connie, Sonny and Olivia with Olivia positioned as his true love? That was weird af too.)

Richard Steinmetz?! Because I thought he came off unkempt and weird the whole time (in addition to the lisp). I know he was a stud back in the '80s on Loving but by GH he looked and sounded like they'd just cast the maintenance guy. To say nothing of Joe being, y'know, a rapist. And yet Tracy was super sprung for him. And then there was the whole terrible McBain backstory with his imaginary new dead sister.

I try not to think about the Scullys after Richard Schtenmeitzh and Sho Shunior, the easygoing rapist who we were supposed to accept with Tracy.

It's really pretty remarkable what they accomplished. Again, just like Nick Meyer's two Trek films they were nickel and dimed and had to cut corners on sets, FX, etc. and still brought home some very quality work that became a hit.

Wow.

I remember @Darn having months of fun with this lol.