Vee

Dylan, why do you delete your posts every time you get mad at people for not liking bad Y&R as much as you do?

Yes. I warned people.

Gladys and Sasha scenes are for when you worry your soap might have just enough white women and not more than enough.

An easier solution: Fire her! Oh, wait, they can't.

Rachael Bade, Ryan Lizza and the rest of the cheerleading squad at Politico are also very concerned about the GOP having caught the car: And in Tennessee:

Just posting the conference room reunion:

In other news: The true danger to the GOP is beginning to sink in for some of their slightly less clueless but equally vile folk.

A very solid episode, even if they really should've shown us more at the cliffhanger. I understand waiting to pack the big reveals into the last two eps, but still: My bet at this point: That's why they wanted Picard's corpse and past DNA. And Jack's 'telepathy' is actually Borg nanoprobes passed from Picard to Beverly during conception, as his brain attempts to form a kind of rudimentary Borg unimatrix communication with other minds. Seven might spot this but no one has really looped her in on Jack's issues. Data might see it. This has to be about the Borg - the real Borg, lost in the Delta Quadrant since Voyager - otherwise Vadic would not have said it's 'fitting' Seven was there with Jack. I loved Shaw giving Seven a bit of a lecture on the captain's responsibility to hard choices. The turnabout with the bad guys was of course a lift from Air Force One, but a fun one. I did find it a little too easy that Raffi can just cut down a bunch of changelings solo with some swords. The conference room reunion was just wonderful. Nice to see Marina back strong. And I loved the Tasha cameo.

Frank's taste and sense of the youth demo is still stuck in 2008, so what are you gonna do.

I don't mind good oldies. And I'll stand by the Rick Springfield/Jack Wagner numbers from 2013. Wagner's terrible acting performance that year and the bad storyline aside, those were joyous celebrations of the show and their roles in it and in the show's mark on pop culture as well as very well done. Even Kristina Wagner's heartbreaking, visibly struggling reaction to "All I Need" in the audience worked for the drama with the characters (while Mac and Felicia happily dancing in the back to "Jessie's Girl" instead was just fun).

My memory may be failing me, but Frank and Ron Carlivati are the ones who popularized this IMO. I seem to recall the existing song numbers in the old days at least having a thematic connection to the sketches or numbers they were doing onstage (even the absolutely unwatchable "Swannee River/Proud Mary" number with Luke and Felicia, one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life and it makes my skin crawl to think about to this day). But when Ron and Frank started doing big high school musical episodes at OLTL they would weave in characters singing popular songs like a jukebox musical. It got a big response so I think they brought it over to GH and the NB. But it makes zero sense for GH characters to get up there and sing Meghan Trainor or whatever for no reason. It drives me nuts, it's just Frank trying to get a few more teenagers. That's the essential issue for me. That and the painfully cheap, corny numbers like the opening as they march in place while someone toot-toot-toots on a muzak organ or something.

Half the town could kick his ass! I cannot stand them together but they have fans and I think Finola loves it. I'd kill him immediately. The number with Ric frantically singing (very, very painfully autotuned) and hip-hop dancing in place to a considerably unimpressed Liz and baffled audience begging for her love is among another of the major NB lowlights for me BTW. I never thought I'd see them make him do that, and I watched this show happily humiliate Rick Hearst for the better part of 15 years under Guza. Don't look it up, it's bad.

Let's not forget the time Phantom Spencer tried to kill two other children with hanging lights onstage in 2014-2015(?).

I've said it before: He is the corniest man alive, and not just when he's up there singing. I cannot believe half the show's story is clumsily arranged around his recurring schedule. Guza, for all his faults, would've killed this guy by having Holly ruined again uncorking a vial of super-measles in sweeps years ago.

Yeah, that's always been an issue for me with certain numbers or characters - context. To say nothing of every year now where Billy Joel Valentin gets up there and croons tearfully on the piano and embarrasses us all secondhand, yet supposedly is the most dangerous Cassadine of all and some supremely sexy male lead. He's supposed to be this mysterious, forbidding character and it's soppy Michael Feinstein stuff that no other last-generation Cassadine would ever do because Frank is absolutely entranced by JPS.

A fun fact I didn't know, but which was revealed in the new Jane Elliot interview in the April GH thread: She did indeed audition for Abby in Season 2.

When they first brought the Nurses Ball back Epiphany, Monica and Tracy stood around singing the Pointer Sisters or something in what looked for all the world like matching sequined caftans. I don't think they've failed to embrace camp lol. I just think the budget and sometimes the taste falls way off. But I still wouldn't give up the NB. I would just stop the dumb fuckin' "welcome to the Nurses Ball" opener which is cornier every year. I don't remember that being a thing in the '90s but I could be wrong. Meanwhile, Jane:

The NB has always been OTT and often cringe but I don't mind it. It's a perfect venue for plot and umbrella stories, I was fine with that in the '90s and still am. The issue in recent years is the execution; they simply do not have the budget to do what they used to and instead you regularly end up with sub-middle school talent show numbers like the random stilted bits with the nurses singing and dancing and marching in place under unforgiving lights that look cheap. You don't get, say, Dara and co. doing a most atmospheric Fosse number like you did back in the day, and they often have less access to copyrighted songs or you get random pop numbers that have nothing to do with anything (Meghan Trainor, etc). I would never want to lose the Nurses Ball though, to me it's a great story venue and part of the heart of the show. Cringe and all. I do think it's improved since some of the the truly gruesome lowlights of 2013-2014 (and the 2013 Ball also had some great stuff amidst the ugly), but I reserve the right to take that back when I see more of this week!

I've always found Lemon fun but clearly unstable. I can tolerate him in doses but it's no secret he puts his foot in it constantly. Sadly these stories are far worse and don't really surprise me.

Lord. Good luck with that.

This is how the Nurses Ball has been for a decade tbh. At this point I just go with it.

It was always outsize with reality. Carly, Jason and later Sonny would whine incessantly about the evils of the Qs but anyone watching longer than 3 minutes in those years saw a boisterous, often comedy-oriented rich family that just bickered a lot. You were not dealing with Victor Lord or even Victor Newman.

Even for proudly non-voting/opinion-having '80s Republican Peter Baker and Michael Shear (who once hid in a close family friend's bushes for a story) this is a strange premise.