Vee

Another treasure. Thank you (and the uploader)!

I'd just like to see BTG get a proper multi-year pick-up, and preferably begin purging its tendency towards the B&B/Bell house style MVJ has picked up post-GH, so she can gravitate back to the work she did best in the '90s and 2000s. For GH what I want is a strong new creative/writing regime. I'll even keep FV if that's not negotiable. He's been very successful at keeping the show afloat so he's probably bulletproof. But I can't see any of that happening there.

The timeline doesn't totally make sense at all, but it's a soap so I let some of it go. What I do factor in is Anita is meant to be older than TT.

I've seen worse! Including on daytime. But yes lol, I was still definitely reminded of this from Twin Peaks Season 3 (which is admittedly worse, and intentionally so) @DRW50

I don't think they were saying that from '98-on, but it's true the POV got coarser as Luke got darker. I do think they adopted that revisionist mindset and Tony's own changed thinking after about the mid-2000s, which is when his own attitude changed.

They're just rerunning his final episode.

I think Kirsten has been so excellent in the last year that I'm willing to ride it a bit longer, but I agree overall. Meanwhile both Georgie and Emily were in the medical field or the sciences IIRC. It's a no-brainer to have one or both available. You could say the DVX have been holding Georgie (in a medical coma, imprisoned, whatever) over Frisco's head for decades, which would explain some of how his WSB has been regularly corrupt, compromised or totally ineffectual lol.

I'd still bring both back, lol. I'd bring too many people back (A.J., Justus, etc.) but I just don't care! A.J. is one thing but Georgie is another. I've said this before and it applies for Emily too, no matter which actor you can get there. Do it as part of some anniversary thing, the girls are both alive. Lindze is retired but can do a few days as she has many times before, then you send her (and/or Emily) off to get her life back in order again or something, maybe in a medical facility, and then Georgie can just be out there until the character is needed and GH can reluctantly recast. (I say reluctantly because Lindze was still excellent when she recurred as Ghost Georgie in the 2010s) Done! Simple and it takes a couple days. And then you have a Scorpio girl you can go to whenever Kirsten decides to take off for a week or idk, 9 months.

It was lovely to see Alan's "stupid trains" as Tracy affectionately called them a couple months ago. Kudos to the writers who dug that up. I thought Denise got fired after tangling with Monty or the network.

Thank you so much for passing these along. This one in particular is a gem. I don't even know why Bobbie is crying in her close-ups during Steve telling the Christmas story but just that and Beradino's recitation got me. Good old Jackie. Meanwhile Luke and Laura are all but fúcking in the doorway in front of the little children. Good times all around.

The way they insanely botched a lay-up in this period, where A.J. and Carly finally fúcked again and LW and Sean had insane chemistry (IIRC Monica even found them in bed together, or they had to hide from her lol) only to dump it a few weeks later when they could get Roger Howarth back onscreen ASAP as serial killer Franco - to pair with the woman whose son he got raped - is one of the worst GH fúck-ups of all time.

The amusing part is that Prospect Park, which was a Wild West operation run by (likely coked-up) venture capitalists, sued GH but couldn't even follow the legal agreement themselves lol. They had people openly mentioning Sam by name in scripts on OLTL 2.0 during this same time! I enjoyed the two PP soaps but it was so messy BTS.

One of my favorite moments of all time, in addition to him being super jazzed and proud of Michael lol. I also never forgot how happily Brenda welcomed A.J. home, as did Robin later in the year. I was pleased those character beats were included despite that regime already beginning to sour on Kanan.

I suppose I could see that. He did something similar with Todd and Blair re: Tomas from OLTL, but had Tomas (who was purely a HEA spoiler for T&B) disappear before she could marry him offscreen in Llanview which kept the absentee triangle going. And Ron would've likely continued that string indefinitely with Blair going in and out of PC but with other obstacles to keep her and Todd apart, had events not intervened.

Really? Idk. They had pretty much gone all in on Sonny and Brenda again for a number of years by then, and I felt Vanessa had as well in print. I thought the quickie Jax thing was just another classic Carlivati bit - bring back the other partner vs. the fated couple in an offscreen insta-reunion/marriage/whatever for some very artificial, quick drama. He did the same thing with the awful, awful, awful Scott/Laura returns that year, where they had somehow yet again gotten back together after all the shít he'd pulled, were engaged and then got married in a courthouse hallway, with Genie wearing a gigantic tablecloth and looking like she was facing the South American firing squad from the end of Soap. That marriage lasted about three seconds and served no purpose other than to push drama for a LNL reunion Ron wanted but Tony was never going to play. I am still infuriated about all of it.

This isn't really a spoiler so I thought I'd put it in here. Cute pic.

I'm not adding anything new but I will say this is an excellent point.

Yep. Though the final scene left it ambiguous as to whether or not they actually had sex.

Oh, right. Whatever. The whole renewed romance was so forgettable. And yeah, it was ridiculous to me that he would opt for Connie over Brenda.

David Tennant reminisces about The Christmas Invasion. "I'm still alive, so they've wheeled me out to talk about it!" He also takes a shot at the BBC Archives for not preserving DMP. @DRW50

It wasn't something they did a lot of in those years. Ron and to a lesser extent Frank's post-RC regimes have done a lot more of those kind of offscreen bomb drops, because Ron couldn't manage time or characters properly and then he'd always go on Twitter and blame the editing bay for cutting scenes for time. Then we'd cut back to Duke and Lucy after 3 weeks and they're fúcking! What?! I'll never be over that one. I think Pratt is the main reason 2003-05 have such sleaze in them and really abject misogyny. Not that Guza couldn't absolutely be sleazy or misogynistic, but there is a hysterically vulgar, almost camp edge to the brazen sexuality and envelope-pushing, to Faith's sex-laden madness and how the men would grapple with her (I think I've talked about the extended scene with Sonny sadomasochistically manhandling her in front of the Five Families and asking the men if they 'want a piece of this whore,' which should not have aired), to the catfights and even lesbian teases with Faith, Courtney, Carly, etc. that fades after Pratt's gone. And a ton of blondes, blondes, blondes. And of course they hired Kari Wuhrer, who I think Pratt may have had a tie to from his time at Spelling soaps. I'll always give him his props for his days at Melrose, a show I adored, but it's a totally different beast.

Olivia got dosed with LSD by Heather in 2012, the first year of Carlivati and FV's regime. I think the visions started pretty quick. The painful Sonny/Olivia interval, which IIRC ran for part of 2013, was pretty brief. The idea was that Sonny was awkwardly trying to reunite with the newly-integrated 'Connie'/Kate, as wallflower Olivia quietly pined away for him while wanting to support her entitled cousin. It was all lousy on top of the dreadful DID story but also clearly just a time-filler for Maurice and LLC, the latter of whom Ron obviously liked a lot. Sonny felt totally marginalized at that moment. I believe Brenda came back in the middle of that for the NB and it was utterly implausible to me that Sonny would still be giving either Falconeri woman the time of day with her on the scene lol. And I say that as someone who has a lot of love for Lisa and Olivia, especially at that time. I think it fizzled out when Sonny started making mob moves again to Olivia's horror (shocker!) and they threaded him into the A.J. mess and got him back with Carly. The character has of course not recovered from murdering A.J. And yeah, I think Psychic Olivia was one of a number of Carlivati camp flourishes the network clamped down once he was ousted, along with the endless kid quad (Spencer/Emma/Cameron/Joss, and nary an actor among them!) he was forced to stop before being fired. I'd still bring her visions back!

I've spoken about it already in here but it is easily the best adult LGBT show I've seen in quite a long time and it's not close. It's beautifully shot and written, in addition to the excellent work from the leads and of course the remarkably explicit content. A recent interview from Jacob Tierney that various streamers or bigger outlets tried to push them to move all the physical consummation and sex to Season 2 (or add another 'female entry point') speaks to not only the political climate but I think just generally a squeamishness about this kind of material when it's not couched in the Heartstopper, etc. mold. There's a drive to neuter gay sexuality and try to make it much more about emotional intimacy between men vs. the physical, and a tendency from female-driven fandoms of these shows to infantilize the characters or stars as desexualized pets. All of the above also being a line of attack the Guardian happens to level at HR too, but which I think is very clearly inaccurate and untrue - you can't get through virtually any episode of this show without explicit, often dom/sub-flavored fúcking. There's no way for young or sheltered audiences to engage with this and strip out the sex. Tierney himself has said 'these books are porn', but fortunately there's more to the story than that. I like Heartstopper a lot but it's a sweet coming of age story about two young boys as written by an asexual woman in the late 2010s. They amped up the sensuality a bit as they matured, but it's still something very rarefied. HR is also written by a woman, something that made me skeptical going in as does any huge hype cycle around a new show these days, but Reid is a generation older which may speak to why the material is more frank and explicit. And Tierney, the showrunner, is an old pro in Canadian circles and openly gay, so that helps considerably. A THR piece re: the female audience.

I actually think they had pulled way back on the psychic LSD visions by that point if not eliminated them entirely post-Ron. I am not sure when she last had one. I'd bring 'em back tbh! I liked Psychic Olivia in doses lol. Olivia could do a riff on the recent spate of Eastenders flash-forwards, or the dream/near-death experience of future portents Ava had on LOV years ago: She can see a cryptic vision of events in the coming year at its start. Hey, it's a fun gimmick sometimes. I think Cameron is as good as the quality of writing given to him. He always works hard. I do think he was uniquely suited for the nuanced power player/cad Mulcahey was molding him into, and he is by his own admission enjoying being the cartoonish black hat they've made him into since. But he could occupy a happier medium. Happy holidays, y'all.

Jill was never a huge advocate for women lol. And I am sure she contributed to Genie walking. I have no doubt she could've been in agreement with playing hardball on VM, but given how huge Brenda was to GH at that time, how all in they went on her return and how heavy a micromanager Frons was at the time I just can't see him leaving that up to her. Especially when she was routinely shut down on stuff she tried to put over post-2001 (like repeatedly trying to get Kale Browne back onscreen).