Vee

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.

I think the idea is that the baby switch was originally on the books to play out much longer across 2012-2013 but they pulled back on the story for whatever reason (maybe Steve quitting). I do think it would've been very in character for both Sonny and Téa and that they would have chemistry, but I also think the GH audience was not there for a frontburner pairing of Sonny and an OLTL star along with all the others. I still would've rather watched that than Connie.

Damn.

Good.

Nah, it was floating around a lot in the rumor mill that year from some reasonable sources who had followed that team from OLTL and over the last couple years had almost certainly been inside. Take it with a grain of salt of course, but I 100% believe it. The wilder thing that DC had a line on at that time and revealed years later (and they were close to Ron) was that before the baby swap story got truncated the plan had allegedly been to pair up Sonny and Téa Delgado, leaving Sonny forced to choose between Jason and his new love when it turned out Téa's baby was Danny Morgan. (It is no contest who Sonny would choose IMO, but bear in mind Ron did write that Carly sided with Todd over Jason at the time which would never have happened.)

Looking at those eps with fresh eyes recently I feel like Damian had his fingers in a lot of things (uh, aside from Bobbie). I remembered him just hanging around too, but they got a lot of mileage out of him for story and Leigh McCloskey was so good at that kind of role, not unlike Peter Boynton as Tonio on ATWT, sexy but so clearly sleazy. It would be interesting to introduce a character like that today to challenge the Qs and/or Sonny - a young magnate, possibly another Smith who (like Damian, IIRC) has supposedly sworn off the family business, who is more in the mold of the rich white-collar sociopaths from Succession. That's the real criminality today.

I had a decade worth of chances lol, I was just busy and lazy. I go back fairly often, so I hope we both get a shot.

They know he's not on the rise, but a lot of media still need the illusion of a horse race in the GOP primaries and something other than the same old party death spiral to try to goose ratings as well as boost their own spirits - it's getting much harder for Beltway journalists to keep pretending their friends or relatives in the Republican Party are the 'good ones' vs. a few bad apples. They also were briefly infatuated with the idea of another Great (Fake) Moderate GOP Hope, which of course DeSantis has pivoted far away from. He is flailing and fading and will be put to the sword like all the other Trump opponents, it's just a matter of time.

I have no idea, but I think that's around the time she came onscreen. I always meant to visit the Paley archives when I lived in NYC, but over the long years I just kept putting it off. Maybe when I stop back.

What's odd is that even though Jamey idolized the deranged Nikki Finke, I believe he used to consistently mispronounce her name as "Fink-ee".

I think so too. It's a matter of time.

Caveat: Haberman -

Degrassi will also stay remembered. Euphoria won't.

Willis is right about this.

Holy shít. Every Fox News personality who people think will survive and thrive outside of Fox, doesn't. I remember when Glenn Beck ruled the right wing world for ten minutes. This isn't Tucker's first time in the wilderness. But this is shocking since he is the linchpin of their entire network. And any time these guys try to create their own start-ups or make them mainstream they fail. He can't make Daily Caller over into Semafor, for example - for one thing, its laundered, newly-respectable Beltway alum like Kaitlan Collins would run for the hills. So I have no idea what he could possibly do other than stay home and sit on his money, which is probably the best thing for the country. Whatever ousted him must be very dire.

I was thinking of that too, yes.

I would be more than happy if they tied it into Orpheus, lol. They actually did intend to use the Robin arc in 2012 to bring back Alan and Stuart. When Frank and Ron thought the show was going off the air within a year and brought the OLTL characters in as well, the idea apparently was that Robin was going to explore her prison and discover it contained (at a minimum) Alan alive a la Stuart Chandler at the end of AMC, along with Trevor St. John as Victor Lord Jr./Todd II, who had been revealed to be alive and imprisoned at the end of OLTL in January 2012. This would allow them to tie up the plotlines of both soaps in a grand finale when GH was presumed to also be coming to an end. They might well have ended up revealing Starr's boyfriend and daughter were alive too, something I think Ron always intended to keep in his back pocket. Allegedly, Stuart Damon was not up for the strain of performing for such a twist. Then of course they saved GH, and the OLTL stuff all fell by the wayside when Prospect Park took control of the rights. Maybe it's me but Labine always seemed to relish writing those Mac/Felicia and Mac/Felicia/Robin romantic and family vignettes. They would just roll and roll on that stuff, even more now when I look back at those eps. I understand why they had to break them up at the time for the drama, but I'm not surprised they ended up back together. And I'm so glad they are today. I am glad the attempted redemption of Katherine never really came to pass. I've never liked her introduction stories.

She sadly wasn't mentioned as passing at the time AFAIK, but as has been noted recently Lucy paid tribute to her with a giant picture while memorializing her at the 2013 Nurses Ball.

Anything that keeps Garrett Wang from crying in public at conventions any more works for me! I highly doubt she will ever return again but I would be super onboard for a two-parter with Ro being sprung from a Changeling gulag or whatever.

I don't disagree on that. I just think Mac and Katherine, woof. I thought Rex Stanton was Dom's uncle. Which is a tangential connection to Katherine as is, I guess. I have said it before but I would happily accept Zombie Katherine returning for a brief (brief!) arc to make Lucy, etc.'s lives miserable, and I suspect using Katherine was something Ron had considered back in the day. Major stories for Katherine almost always failed but MBE gave great villain with Lucy and others.