Vee

Good.

I don't hold out a lot of faith in the quality of the show bc of how rocky a road Discovery has been as opposed to SNW and Terry Matalas' Picard Season 3, and the showrunner's past credits do not fill me with confidence. But I do like Tilly and Tawny Newsome so I'll give it a chance as it's Trek. I'm much more invested in SNW and presumably a soon-to-be-greenlit Picard spinoff with Seven, Jack, Sidney LaForge, etc.

My sentiments exactly.

@AdelaideCate007 will be surprised as I am that they are doing a new DSC-era show after all:

I'm glad they announced a new live-action show, but I hope this doesn't preclude the Titan/Picard spinoff show everyone wants:

@Darn has said Terry cannot react to a page convincingly and bless her, it is true lol. I am glad the character is there but she does not need major story. Britt should not have been left in charge of a Chia Pet after the shít she and her mother pulled.

That's why I've always been against using her as a lifer like her screen mother, because she's so cloying and cutesy. She was a bit less so this time, but we barely saw her. Unless she can show real chops I'd still recast. Robyn Richards wasn't as green. I think she could've worked out, but people are forgetting that Kirsten was intensely unpopular in the role for her first disastrous year or so. She had bad and deeply unsympathetic stories. It was moving her into a comic role and the Spinelli pairing that saved her, IMO.

Tiffany wasn't onscreen - she did a voice cameo over the phone due to Sharon Wyatt's illness, I believe. I think any Lucas but Ryan Carnes is a nonentity. He did great, was popular with the audience and left very abruptly and unexpectedly.

The show has also put out a series of decent memorial episodes for people. The John Reilly one was a bit silly but mostly very heartfelt, and had a beautiful use of his daughter. This one was even better. Leslie Charleson being left to a voice cameo - I'm so glad she did it, but the last time this happened that I can recall it was because either Sharon Wyatt's illness or other circumstances had apparently left her unable to appear onscreen for whatever reason, and so Tiffany was used by voice over the phone instead at John Reilly/Sean Donely's memorial. Leslie supposedly had a fall or accident around this time last year and was expected back soon. Now this. I don't want to worry about her, but I do. I am glad they wove her in any way they could. And while I do wish they'd managed to get Kimberly, and Kent Masters King and Minae Noji as Lainey Winters and Kelly Lee, having Emma appear in the Drakes' stead was decent enough. Brooklyn Rae Silzer has improved. Another thing the show has gotten better at is realizing where the real meat and weight of audience investment is. I may not love every story she has and find her pairing with Kevin milquetoast, but Mayor Laura is extremely central to the show and canvas these days. She's the heart. The same goes for Elizabeth; they throw her at every loser under the sun, from serial killer to Michael Easton, in part because they know and have increasingly valued just how important she is to the audience. So Elizabeth becomes the linchpin and centerpiece of this episode and her catharsis is the audience's catharsis. They know her value to the show and have slowly begun acknowledging it. Now if she could just get more A-story for her own sake, and not for Easton or Howarth's continued employment. I admittedly found Epiphany annoying as hell a lot of the time - I never understood her forced admiration for the mob scene considering Sonny and Jason got her son stuffed in a trunk and killed, and I didn't like that soppy song they had her sing to Sabrina and Emma at the 2013 Ball which repeated at the end of this episode. But it was tradition so they used it and that's fine, and Sonya Eddy was a lovely woman who was absolutely devoted to the show so I was sad for her and for the cast and the show. You could see Drew Cheetwood (never much of an actor) and Carolyn Hennesy were barely holding it together, even in their earliest scenes. It was all very touching, and it was well done.

Sorry, misread.

Lucy very poignantly referenced both Amy and Jessie in the first returning Nurses Ball in 2013. They unveiled gigantic pictures of them onstage as she honored them. Amy is now up on the memorial wall shown in this episode with Epiphany and all the rest. It's often shown any time a castmember dies. Audrey was the sister of Nurse Lucille March, the show's original head nurse.

I forgot that happened. Still bonkers.

I think Brooke Newton was a potential stealth hit as Colby on AMC 2.0. She started out as a total vixen but revealed layers near the end of the run with Cassandra and Opal and caught on with the audience. I think she would've been big.

Oh lord, I hated Natalie Hall. I'll never forget the clip they played of her caterwauling on The Soup(?).

Like much of the recent cast, Chloe has left and returned to the show approximately fifteen times. I'll believe she's gone when she's gone two years.

I'm not sure I would classify Gloria and Dimitri as a hit. I know Teresa Blake had her fans (@DRW50 being one of them) and I didn't dislike Gloria, but I don't think Alec, Adam, etc. really worked with her. I kind of liked her and Tad back in the day but I was under the impression I was among the few.

Have you watched this show? Because we don't generally do picture pages.

She's right, but I still think it was a dumb fakeout. It's a great, candid interview and people should read all of it.

I would argue that Kelly was more than established as a household name by the time Regis left. Do I think they could've fired her anyway? Yes. But it's egregious any way you look at it. She'd been with the network since 1990, she'd done years of Live as well as Hope and Faith, and they were still treating her like that.

Kelly Ripa (Hayley, AMC) talks pay disparity with first-time actor husband Mark Consuelos in Variety, but her treatment at ABC overall for many years seems outrageous:

All officially renewed (Lower Decks is now renewed to Season 5).

As I've said in their threads, GH is in a unique position in that they've either lost or pushed out certain vets and now, suddenly, as if by osmosis or fluke accident they have a very strong core of older veterans whose characters all have very close friendships which we watched onscreen for decades and who are still regularly featured onscreen. If you'd told me ten years ago and especially fifteen that Mac, Felicia, Kevin, Lucy and Anna's various longtime friendships would form the backbone of the show's veteran corps I would not have believed you. But people watched Felicia and Anna, Mac and Kevin, Felicia and Lucy, etc. all become beloved friends for decades. They know those relationships are 100% real. And they are serviced very regularly onscreen. That's a rare thing and I think it's at least half by accident due to other actors who have been lost and needing JJY/KW, Finola, Lynn, etc. to shore up the vets. To say nothing of Laura, who while her role is not perfect is 100% central and integral across the whole canvas today. Every other day people are talking to Laura, taking Laura's orders, Laura is running the town, etc. Y&R hasn't been able to do anything like that, and it's sad.

I'm of the opposite opinion: If I had to slash and burn the show's budget and reinvent it again (which should've been done some time ago) for a streaming platform, I'd put Braeden and Melody on recurring and let them come in and out for stories when they can be integral. As it stands now, just floating around the characters are burnt out. Most of their family is. Victoria would be gone, possibly for good. I'd phase a lot of Newmans out, probably leave Nick and Sharon parked somewhere if on contract at all (probably not). They would be tentpoles if they hung around. By contrast I'd definitely keep and marry Jack and Diane as a tentpole senior couple, cement the old/young generations of the Abbott and Winters clans (including Rowell) and focus there for the time being along on the young ones with new people. I'd kill Billy. I think many of the other young Abbotts have more viability. Over half the cast is tired. It's time to cull. Bell did it several times.

I assume folks have seen this joke tape made by the producers during the show's run already (I didn't watch it all as it goes beyond my viewing time), but the 'added' gag scene(s) include Laura/McCashin and Ciji/Hartman going in for a kiss around 3:11. "Kenny and Ginger do the smart thing and move away."