Vee

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.

I'll give you that one. That's a good joke.

Biden and the WH are having a field day with the GOP's budget plans.

I have never been into Robert and Holly, but in fairness I've seen very little of their glory days. I love Emma but I have always been about Robert and Anna. I can't help it.

It looks like a big quilt or housecoat someone sewed an old woman into as a burial shroud after a nuclear holocaust, like something out of the TV movies The Day After or Testament (shout-out to @DRW50). Except Diane then got up, cut some leg holes in it and is now walking around.

My mother had done the same recently at close to his age after a sudden, very bad ankle break, after years of never breaking a thing. She's pushed physical therapy too hard and it interfered with her recovery. I know how he feels. Like all of us, Eric Braeden may be a lot of complicated or contradictory things but first and foremost he shoots from the hip, is candid and loyal to people he cares for and wears his heart (and maybe his ego) on his sleeve. He's a TV legend who's spent a lifetime in a lot of people's homes and I wish him all the best for his recovery and health.

I actually liked the scenes last week where Scorpio asked Diane flat-out why she worked for Sonny and she reminisced about her start on the show. Unfortunately they didn't take it far enough, because Robert would've taken a harder line on the issue. Also, Diane's most recent crocheted blue outfit is absolutely fuckíng terrifying.

I would write out Maxie (and Michael) for years but I would not reunite her and Spinelli. His biggest sign of growth was leaving her and marrying Ellie Trout, and it was a huge regression to idiocy for the character to leave her behind. He would reconcile with Ellie (who is still seen from time to time) on or offscreen and remain a recurring character.

I don't remember if it was Monti Sharp or not - it probably was - but I remember watching one day after not tuning in for awhile as a kid and Justus (who was coming off the Damian murder case not long before) was on drunk, volatile, cynical and disillusioned. This was likely after Guza took over, I don't remember when Sharp started. It was jarring to see Justus like that, so down and broken by what had happened with him, but I thought the actor did a wonderful job and I could buy Justus going through a dark night of the soul. Mfundo Morrison was a mediocre actor and Justus in the 2000s was so lame, especially when they had this formerly suave businessman and attorney reduced to holding impromptu prayer services in the burning hotel during the PC Hotel fire. I mean, how racist can you get? His nothing subplot relationship with Kent Masters King's Lainey was also boorish and sexist. I would still bring Justus back today from WitSec as another Q elder for the family. I think the Q family needs that perspective, as well as needing more rooted elders of color and a solid entry point to bring on more Wards. Joseph Phillips still works a lot so as long as he doesn't get too crazy on social media I can live with his views like so many other soap stars. He's my optimum choice because he was so good (I had a crush on him both there and on Cosby), but if they wanted to de-age him a bit to make him viable for someone like Portia it's obviously been done before and I wouldn't be too upset.

Yeah, that's why I said they could make an Ellen Burgess joke.

I won't be shocked if he turns up on CNN or Semafor or something. There's always a place for the loud wrong white guy who insists he is only 'data-driven' while clucking over liberals fact-checking him about COVID masking protocols. Nate's behavior is their behavior and comforts their priors. It's the same reason the vacuous Brian Stelter is led around by the nose by any contrarian op-ed.

I am not looking to put Angie Hubbard on recurring lol. She'd just pop in for a relevant story! But thank you.

I completely agree. But I'd also only have Angie on for a couple days! 😄

Oh, my. @DRW50

I still can't tell Ben and Callum apart.

I just think it was the right character on the right show. It amused me to no end when half the town acted scandalized when John would run Jason or Sonny in on random crimes and he'd just shrug and be like 'why not?' That's who he was, the job was always his first love, that and the latest unattainable woman. I despised him on OLTL and I hated his treatment of Natalie and others, but in a place where he could be in his element, he worked. Terry is still around, but while I think she's lovely representation to have I would not give that actress major story lol. I found the whole 'Aiden likes pretty things - is he, you know 💁‍♂️' story offensive and a lead balloon because it went nowhere and had no real message. I would give Jake the gay story because he'd be a surprise after the whole Aiden thing, because it would make Jason's kid LGBT and because Hudson West is very good and could carry major youth story if they invested in him and locked him in, which they won't. I rag on it daily but it's improved a lot since a few years ago. There is a lot of potential in the current show, and some characters and elements I really enjoy in addition to a ton of crap and boilerplate stuff. They are very afraid of rocking the boat and wrecking their delicate survival balance, so they cater to a very conservative audience existing largely in their minds as well as Frank's own fascinations and preferences dating back to the first Obama administration. It's an easy and bold story to tell: Some local politico in the Port Charles area of NY state games the state courts, like the GOP are doing all over in real life. This politician gets a temporary abortion ban across that cross-section of the state. A week later: Joss’ period is late. She gets an infection or some other pressing medical problem, like so many women are currently dealing with in those states while given no help. But the staff at GH’s hands are legally tied. They can't wait because of her condition, and because it will take months or weeks for the ruling to overturn the temporary ban to go into effect, again like many other parts of the country atm. So Portia and co. (with the aid of Special Guest Star Angie Hubbard, whose final Agnes Nixon-inspired story on AMC 2.0 was also a direct assault on the GOP forced birth movement) break the law and do the operation. That’s a hot button story, it features a popular current lead of color that the diverse audience the show has always had is behind, and it's the kind of story GH used to be unafraid to tell. But hey, they ain't payin' me! Yeah, that's the fundamental issue at this point. They took it too far and now no one wants to see it. Nora from OLTL is one of my favorite characters of all time but every time she turns up now even I'm like 'really?'

I liked the initial crossovers but I loved the Prospect Park soaps and I thought GH was on a healthy upswing when they left, so I have no regrets. But that's me. I did like John and Sam (and I had despised John on OLTL) and Michael and Starr, but here we are. I would have Angie appear today tbh, if Debbi Morgan was willing, as a guest as part of an abortion rights story with Portia challenging local law at GH. But that's totally OT and more related to GH's current abdication of its responsibility to relevant medical stories. You could even be cute and have some people think she's Ellen Burgess, who knows. I do think David would've been great to bring on mixing it up with people from time to time. But unfortunately Frank and Ron going too far with the crossovers and multiple failed roles for Howarth and Easton has poisoned the well, I think, for any more of that.

Oh, he totally was lol. But how many people had gone under Jason's wheels? I just didn't care. I also thought it was, again, a human and complex reaction the likes of which Jason hadn't had in decades. It made him more compelling to me when he was allowed to be wrong.

I think Ron and Frank at that time were just amped to make the shows deeply intertwined with big couples so OLTL could live on in some way, and also felt it would goose ratings from the other audiences (which it did in part, along with some big returns and the Robin saga) - I think their dreams of an omni-soap with GH as a safe haven for all of ABC's cancelled soaps were real, and at that time people thought they could do no wrong so they got away with a lot. I think there were good ways to utilize ABC's other properties on GH in a careful way, and then there were bad ones. They did plenty of both in that time. Frank has been forced to tone it down a great deal since, but they still sneak stuff in where they can. (I won't complain about Nora Buchanan's occasional appearances though, especially since the dialogue in her last one retroactively fixed Marty Saybrooke's character after Ron ruined her lol) I liked a lot of stuff about the crossovers, but they made a lot of mistakes and it became too much. Re: Blair, I should really just be grateful most of the OLTL spouses/love interests didn't get killed off in vehicle crashes like Cole and Hope or Vicky Hudson or most leftover characters when their husband or wife gets ported to another soap over the decades. But you could tell even before OLTL ended that Ron had his favorites and biases and Blair was not among them, which is a whole other conversation. This was a supercouple where they had been parted for almost a decade before reuniting at the very end of the show and splitting again, and then he goes to another town and falls for a woman very much like his longtime love down to her looks, while the past fanbase is left on a perpetual string teasing the ongoing subplot instead of making any real decisions. Again, Roger and Laura absolutely had chemistry and I didn't blame LW for any of it. I just didn't buy him falling for her, I felt it was ultimately a very superficial story and easy to cast as a rebound when he left town (something Todd even alluded to without mentioning Carly by name on OLTL 2.0). I was more into the weird chemistry he had with Kelly Monaco at the time, when Sam went undercover at the Intruder/PC Press/whatever (though I liked John and Sam). The Guza writing team Ron and Frank had dumped could've made Todd and Carly more interesting to me, though. Anyway, it all worked out. I think we've discussed the Jason thing. I was really into Jason suddenly becoming very flawed and human - being repulsed by what Franco had done and pulling away from Sam despite himself, hiring goons to beat up McBain. Ultimately Jason was a mob enforcer and a killer and that's the kind of shīt those guys do to people that get in their way. I understand why the audience and probably actors were up in arms over it. I just didn't care because I hated Jason and the show's past worship of him lol. It was a more honest and complex portrayal of the character to me, it humanized him because for the first time in decades I no longer knew what Jason might do next. And this is the same kind of gloves-off approach, BTW, that Guza had increasingly used with Sonny in the later years when he began to tire of Maurice - he began actively letting the stories and characters who loved him criticize and examine him.

My understanding at the time is that there was some concern from the network that there would be too much of the OLTL crossovers, so certain things were toned down. That was what I'd heard even before DC and Jamey came out with the Sonny/Téa reveal several years after Ron was fired. But I think the biggest factor ultimately was Steve leaving, so the story got wrapped fast. Later the network grew much more concerned about it and then the new management I believe were allegedly the ones who told Frank to waste Franco the serial killer and vetoed bringing back rapist Todd post-#MeToo. Not that they would have ever bothered with it, but Guza's team would've had a field day with Sonny and Téa. He was exactly her type. I agree that the story probably ended when it should have though. I still can't get over Ron making Carly choose Todd over Jason. I don't care whatever other issues I had with the pairing and Carly ultimately being a Blair rebound for Todd (much as Carly later rebounded from Jason with Franco and now Drew) - Carly would never have chosen anyone, let alone a man she'd only recently met, over Jason. Still wouldn't.