Vee

I'd forgotten all about that. It still annoys me that the various J.R. moves related to Knots (the methanol business Gary and Abby sell him on in Season 3, the publisher) never come to anything.

Also:

@Faulkner @DRW50

In fairness, Natalia's Emily was much softer on the Qs than Amber's. But I still want to see Amber play the role once more, lol.

I will again defend some of Brenda's Italian interlude bc I thought it was interesting to ease us into showing her living a very different life. Of course that didn't last long because IIRC Sonny or Jason showed up very quickly, and Sonny was running away from all the horrible shít he'd done recently and I seem to recall Brenda excusing most of it at the time and enabling him. They also knew they were on a clock with VM and that she might not re-up, which she didn't, and they wasted some time. Now, my defense aside I also haven't watched any of that material in over ten years, so... I can't fault Vanessa for intervening on some of it. I don't think anyone was really into hearing about her epic affair with Dante except for Guza, and I say that as someone who really likes Dante and thought they had chemistry. She had been promised Sonny and Brenda, the goods had been sold to their audience and she wanted it delivered. And I wasn't even a big Sonny/Brenda fan! But I think she was right to put her foot down and get that, because the subsequent wedding scenes and some of the dissolution of their actual marriage were to me some of both of the actors' best work, period, and probably the last great work that longtime writing team did. I think seeing them together as an older, supposedly more mature (lol) married couple was and is a new frontier, and forced the writers to do something different (briefly). I think she still definitely has it tbh, pretty close to the surface these days as opposed to some of the soppier past times with Nik or with Matt Cohen's idiot character. She laced into Nikolas with beauty right before he 'died' and then she pretty easily disposed of his 'body' without hesitation. It's just something the writers keep flirting with and then trying to dance around. I knew the moment they started sharing more scenes, then when she started babysitting the boys all the time that it was coming. It was the show's way to try to prove NL/Emily was ready for the big time and was now a mature female lead. People called me crazy. Folks said it again when I warned 'em after Howarth and Becky started sharing more scenes. They doubted his word! He was a nobody. They were really running on fumes with Whack-a-Mobster at that point, and they also brought in the Zaccharas around the same time who had much more going for them.

I also checked out for a while after that, or rather right after the PC Hotel fire. The shooting was so disgusting. I had been ride or die for Maurice and Sarah's Sonny and Carly and I hadn't disliked Mo and Tamara together early on, but that cured me of S&C forever. I had been merely rubbernecking at the disaster for most of '03 (which honestly felt like it lasted five years) but I was super into Carly and Lorenzo because it was clear that had gotten away from the show and out of its control in late '03/early '04, and the early build for them (mostly pre-shooting lol) was legitimately decent. But the hotel fire (and before that, the bizarre Sonny/Sam sword in the stone caper which... I don't even fully recall) was a hilarious farce. And after that it was clear the show was hitting a not even interestingly bad period, so I walked away until coming back in summer '05 to watch another trainwreck as I realized (before anyone else I knew, I might add!) that they were going for Sonny and Emily, and then the show completely imploded. They all have a lot of similar characteristics. Mob queens who don't flinch. Maura was only originally supposed to be on for a few days (something I still don't understand). She did things early on that got the other two wasted. Ava has survived due to a different regime and a popular performer, moreso the different regime because both Cynthia and Sarah were popular. Ava has 'faced' her crimes in the past with various self-pitying themed episodes I didn't really buy into, but to see an actual mirror would be more intriguing for me because I think not too far deep down Ava is still absolutely that person.

From an hour ago: The binary code says '3 hours to go', presumably til a full trailer.

We used to chronicle the misogyny day in and day out on TWOP back in those days. It just got worse and worse in 2003-2005 or so. You could never have gotten some of that onscreen at 3 PM today, and I think part of it was just part and parcel of the very crass TV landscape with the Bush-era 2000s. That element toned down somewhat once Pratt was gone, but the repetitive, Toho Studios Godzilla-esque 'now here's a bigger mobster!' cycle remained. As I said a week or two ago, at least in the 2000s they tried to differentiate them and make unique characters some of the time vs. the various anonymous (to me) heavies of the late '90s/early 2000 period. But it was still way too many. To this day I have no idea what happened to Manny Ruiz, or his 'good' identical twin who I think was a priest. I said it recently but Guza clearly just wanted to hire Robert LaSardo as his character from nip/tuck and that's all Manny really was. He came back 3-5 times like Wile E. Coyote and it got so ridiculous. By the time they got to "Karpov" nobody was taking the mobster cycle seriously. The Balkan story was a nice idea on paper but the writers were running on fumes, and it was a waste of poor Adrienne Barbeau. The very gothic Zaccharas at least felt lived in and had texture and layers to their backstory that could've powered more varied story outside just the Sonny sphere, but that got worn out quickly too. (And the less said about the Garin Wolf period with Tracy's 'wacky' marriage to Anthony the better.)

Like a lot of soap stars who crossed to that genre Finn Carter will always have the love of horror fans for Tremors, me included. That audience never forgets. I hope she takes care.

IIRC J.R. did try to lean on Val briefly over Capricorn Crude, but he didn't get very far or seem very committed.

Happy anniversary. Maybe I'll get back to my slight backlog this weekend, I've been so busy with other stuff IRL and now there's a bit of a GH historical binge for Jackie Z. I'm still not through with the very end of Season 6, and eps are hard to come by at present.

They tried briefly but very poorly - Faith had a tortured romantic past with Mfundo Morrison's Justus. It was as bad as it sounded, and by then Faith had already dry-humped men while killing them with her thighs, tried to murder half the town, etc. Faith was there to be a heavy and a fetish object, nothing more. It's just chance that Cynthia Preston played the hell of it (allegedly it put her in consideration for Tina at OLTL during that period, which should've happened). She still works, but I'd love to see her back on a soap. I'd even accept an excuse to have a scarred Faith alive and making trouble for a little bit on GH, better her than Olivia (or as they now insist on constantly calling her due to the other Olivia's presence, "Liv") Jerome again. There's a lot of parallels to be made and discussion to be had onscreen and off about how Ava - who came on with almost as dark and dangerous an introductory period as Faith - has survived but Faith did not.

Another great clip I dug up while going back through Bobbie's classic stories: The climax of the D.L. Brock saga with David Groh (warning: Brock roughs up Bobbie). Rhoda Morganstern dumped him and he's real mad. The one good thing from moments like these is you get to take a tour back through a soap star's past and discover or re-discover so much history. Jackie in particular was a constant through so many very different and unique eras of GH, everywhere you look is a new tapestry. 1984-85 is no different.

I'm a Dallas tourist, but the strongest stuff for Victoria Principal for me is easily that first season so far. She's very good and then they were a hit and it all goes to the men. Patrick Duffy was very handsome and talented, but David Jacobs should've stuck to his guns about the show being Pam vs. J.R. IMO.

Sure, I understand the need for increasing Neil's stature a little via a light retcon. But when this point is repeatedly hammered in while Dru is barely ever mentioned, that's egregious.

It's not a bad idea. Nor is revisiting the commune/cult she was in (though you'd have to differentiate it a lot from the Dawn of Day mess). I don't think they did enough interesting stuff with Laura's past when it came to the whole Gordon Grey angle with Laura's brothers - Jeff Kober is a great heavy from the heyday of '80s/'90s thrillers, but as Cyrus he just came off as an ineffectual blowhard to me. Who cares that this mobster is whining about not meaning to run over their dad with the family car in the driveway (a scene that actually happened)? MEK is great as Martin but they need to play him and Laura together more. I think there is more to mine with Laura's early history.

I don't think it really counts since she died after the show went off the air, but Patricia Elliott's last scenes as Renee on OLTL near the end were lovely. She was at Asa's grave reminiscing with Bo. You could tell they put them in there just for her because she might not appear again, and I think she already had cancer at this point.

I remember watching that scene live. I had no idea she was ill at that time, but somehow I knew it would be her last. It felt very much like it. That was true fate.

God, I'd forgotten about the scandal with these two weirdos. I know she and Melissa Archer are still BFF but woof.

I didn't write it, don't look at me. What is essential knowledge is that daytime is one of the last bastions of dependable writing income in the current industry conditions.

Days fans might find this info worthwhile, though I imagine you are all already on top of this. It's from Ron in a solid article Vulture ran with soap personnel re: the strike (in the WGA strike thread):

A surprising front page Vulture article with daytime writers (featuring, yes, Ron). @DRW50 Remember to use Incognito mode or archive.is to bypass the paywall. This being mainstream media, of course, they get a few things wrong. Ron was not heading OLTL in 2013. I also have zero recollection of the event Cascio mentions. Could it have been Britt on GH? She 'faked' pregnant at one point.

It really is insulting how they pretend Neil was World's Greatest Dad with Devon and that their relationship was the central axis. I barely ever watch this show and even I knew back then that adopting Devon was Dru's focus, that he was her project and that she got the entire family onboard, to say nothing of the fact that the entire storyline was Victoria Rowell's brainchild in the first place.

You usually hear the exact opposite in situations like this, but that speaks to Kelly's personality. I've always liked her, I hope she cleans house.

Yes, I did know the Webber influx was another attempted revamp. So Marland and Monty inherited David Hamilton, that's interesting. I believe Kin had come on in that summer just a month or two before, and then the later team leaned hard into both. Thanks!