Vee

A very sweet anecdote from last year's Locher Room with the Cramer women (which KDP indicates she was as sick of hearing forced into the scripts every day as I was, in addition to Robin Strasser always getting them together BTS to 'Cramer-ize' the scripts as she called it): Kristen Alderson, among others, has stayed close with Robin and stayed at her place in NY weekly for a year while doing off-Broadway not long ago. Robin woke her up each morning by singing at the top of her lungs. She also drove Robin across PA and NYC to get her COVID vaccine.

Didn't Austin's adopted family turn out to be deep in the underworld, and he's supposed to be in with them for some criminal shít? If the Gatlins(?) turns out to be like some sort of Ozark backwoods deal that could be interesting or at least give Howarth something more to play besides 'nice doctor on TV show because Frank is still not over Roger slipping through his fingers to CBS 20 years ago'. That being said, it would still be a story centered around Roger Howarth #3 and some recurring players. Unless they reveal Austin Gatlin-Holt is in fact a closet backwoods underworld psychopath and play that out accordingly (leading to his eventual exit), I am not super interested.

The Chase/BLQ storyline is so dumb yet at the same time is giving exactly the same kind of coked-up, neon-drenched energy as dozens of other pop star/singing storylines on soaps in the '80s and '90s. A skeezy producer! A cop or other hero 'forced' to sing! A secret and wholly unnecessary Scooby Gang plan in which a bunch of young people plot like the Goonies to 'get' this recurring bad guy who is just happy to not be waiting tables in Santa Monica anymore! Other assorted hapless recurring players all built around this silly story! It's giving me distinct "Lujack is a pop star, no really" vibes from '80s GL and a bit of the legendary Danny Romalotti and Friends musical capers from Y&R, or Ricky Paull Goldin's silly stuff on AW. It's dumb and I don't really care about Chase or his romance with Brook at all, but I can't be mad at the story bc it's a pretty classic daytime chestnut, however lame the execution. And I do think the Dr. Luke/Kesha/Scooter Braun/T-Swift parallels are very relevant, and could be made use of in a much better storyline.

He does look very good whereas I had gotten used to this very talented actor being styled like a cave troll. I just assumed he always deliberately let his hair look terrible on TV, lol.

Nikolas said awful things to Ava, but Ava has done just as many awful things if not far worse (Connie). They are deeply toxic and made for each other, and I'm not some big shipper. You could let those two and their chaos run for years with the right actor for Nikolas and the right stories. Roger Howarth and Maura have had chemistry since her first days onscreen with her opposite bleach blond Franco where they crackled together despite his idiotic return, but it's too late to put them together now. Dr. Austin is a boring nice guy. We've seen Ava with boring nice men - I sat through some of the Griffin debacle. What are their stories supposed to be? Ava is a villain or at the very least a dark antiheroine. So that's all to say that yes, they should recast Nik sooner than later. As for Spencer, I think he is definitely smug but that's always been part of his personality since Nicolas Bechtel. He is smug and he is absolutely doing the Cassadine thing to his father with this very stupid custody scheme, just as Laura said the other day. He is reveling in it the same way Nikolas sometimes does. He's more sympathetic and more of a 'good' character atm, but he's not all good - this aspect of him is just who he is, too.

Granted I need to catch up on an ep or two, but I did want to chime in on about the recent Nikolas Discourse on various forums (and if you've seen this before forgive my crossposting): Whoever the actor, I think this is who Nik has been for a long time. He's been going down a darker and darker trajectory for the better part of 20 years. He dabbled in Stefan and Stavros' sketchier dealings for a while. He cheated on Emily and then lost her forever, which broke him on a fundamental level IMO. He slept with his beloved brother's wife when they'd all been friends since kids and carried on a torrid affair with her, then had a protracted battle over Elizabeth's pregnancy. He got in too deep with Hayden Barnes and tried to have her killed. Then he fled the country and ended up getting got by Billy Joel Valentin, somehow. I am not some huge Nikolas fan by any means, but there is nuance to some of this. It's been somewhat overwritten by both the show and overzealous fans who just really love to watch Nicholas Chavez do his thing to claim Nik was always a bad father, but based on the show I watched Nikolas was a devoted father to Spencer for a very long time, or at least as devoted as most soap parents in frontburner story get, raising him consistently in PC and then offscreen in Europe - until about 2015, when he skipped town on the Hayden rap and then 'died'. His staying underground, faking his death and diving deeper into the dark to take Valentin down was what changed everything for him and his son IMO. But all this has been a long time coming for Nik's character AFAIC. When he tried to kill Hayden and then fled as Tyler exited the role I bought it, because Nikolas had been cruising downhill morally since he lost not just Emily but before that Stefan, who also lost himself to the same darkness (and very bad writing). There's also the loss of the guiding influence of Laura, who for a long time was catatonic in a long-term facility. And Lucky and his sister both being gone, the sister Nik adored from birth. The affairs, the schemes, etc. all led here - knocking up his son's girlfriend, locking her in a tower, etc. It's all very Cassadine, for good or ill. GH very rarely gets super good these days IMO but some scenes along with great performances really hit for me still. A week or two ago, Ava said "my God, you're so weak. I can't believe there was a time I didn't see it." That really encapsulates a lot of the Nikolas character to me. He wants to be good, he means well but often he is weak, and goes down bad paths. I don't want Nikolas gone for good and I do think Adam Huss has done a surprisingly good job - better than Coloma in recent days - but I hope someday Tyler can return. They don't need to clean Nik up too much for me though. This is just who he is now IMO, a very gray character. On a side note though: If they try to use all this to make Esme a conventional heroine on the show fück that. That character is a lot of fun but is the definition of Shelf Life. Paging Obrecht, Nina, etc.

We all know when another blond under 28 with reasonably trimmed body hair shows up you will roll out the instant fan club. Let these posters live!

I was telling Darn about this earlier, but HBS (who lobbied to get killed off when JFP made Kale Browne's Sam impregnate Nora) and Mark Derwin, an avowed Friend of Jill, both had no problem dunking on Browne with very little anonymity in Jeff Giles' book. And Tim Stickney openly put him on blast in the late '90s/early 2000s in the AOL chat era, I think. I think KB was a good actor in a very forced part, but I don't know of a person at OLTL with a good thing to say about him and he was fired the instant Jill left the studio for GH. Larry Lau, OTOH, seemed well-liked, especially by Hillary and Cat Hickland. He did almost make Sam tolerable. Back then I thought I would've put him and Lindsay back together if he'd had to be around (something the show seemed to sometimes hint was inevitable even with Browne in the role, but never did because it would making JFP's preferred characters expendable), but Cat caught fire with Ty Treadway and the rest is history. It felt very darkly appropriate to me that a psychotic Lindsay ended up killing Sam. Lindsay was one of the original desperate housewives - a woman who had given up her youth and career to make a home and family for a man who never really wanted her and then tossed her aside, who remained driven by her anger against him and the woman who'd taken him from her for years to come. When Mitch came along, put the gun in her hand and pointed it at Sam - even if she thought it was Troy - the fact that it was Lindsay who killed her husband seemed very fitting. Anyway: Way OT!

I mean, Taylor Swift decided to remake her entire catalog bc of a conflict with past management. Then there's the Dr. Luke/Kesha scandal. It's not far-fetched. The execution of the story is the issue.

Christopher Atkins in 1983 was absolutely a twink.

I remember that too, and I'm sure she was involved. But if Frons and Guza had wanted her around it would've happened - everything came from Frons back then.

Excerpts from the last soap work of the great Beverlee McKinsey, who did this guest role as Myrna Slaughter in '94 as a favor to her son (Scott McKinsey) and to keep her medical insurance.

Eric's secret college boyfriend, obviously.

Chris Atkins is certainly adorable and nice to look at in the story, but they do not seem well-suited lol. Same here.

I suspect it was Frons. JFP was largely a facilitator at that point, stripped of most of her control and power after her solo stint with McTavish tanked the show. She was reduced to facilitating Guza and Chuck Pratt's vision while they got co-producer credits. Frons interfaced with the HWs directly in those years and was heavily involved.

Yeah, she's a big right winger and one of the few has-been celeb "gets" they often muster at events, like Antonio Sabato lol.

They could have. They didn't want to accommodate her request for more time with her newborn son; they had her on all week. That's why she walked.

Kanan has the final seasons of Cobra Kai and will likely parlay that into more high-profile work, he'll be alright. Plus B&B and Y&R will keep bouncing him around for years to come when he's available. Do I wish he'd settle down at GH with creatives who appreciate him, sure, but he's got work.

In diametrically opposed news, I have dug into some of the 1966 episodes of GL. I see one of Agnes' lesser-known archetypes from both AMC and Loving recurs: The poor little rich kid/soft boi, in this case Don Scardino's adorable Johnny Fletcher, along with her classic teen romance angle with Fran Myers' Peggy (previously only available to be seen in eps where she is suffering through Roger Thorpe over a decade later). I mostly know poor sweet Don Scardino from getting slaughtered in Cruising, but what are ya gonna do.

Beth, Cassie and Harley all had like 6-10 kids between them by the end. I couldn't keep track of them all. Plus many others for other women on the show. It was the precursor to what became of AMC in the last years of the network show, and GH today. Breeding and endless babies vs. any more risky stories (with a side of Wheeler's Mormonism). Didn't Beth and Phillip literally videotape themselves dying on that mountain for their daughter lol? And then I think inadvertently filmed themselves fùcking. Rauch!

I do and I should! I do think the show missed a trick not putting her with A Martinez as they allegedly toyed with in '99. Supposedly Genie was for it and I liked them together.

I would put her with a Black WSB man, someone who can compete with the shadow of Luke at least. I wouldn't do an affair per se but you can play the quad drama as she slowly goes to this man and Kevin goes to Lucy. But of course, I wanted it all to begin first with a forced (and platonic) marriage to wacky Victor while Kevin got locked in the asylum by bad guys for six months (only to be freed by Lucy) so what do I know.

Any time I say this people get mad! The truth is that Genie made it clear to Frank she would not return again in the mid-2010s without a) a contract and b) a serious love interest, and what they gave her was Kevin who was on recurring so it meant not hiring someone new. Kevin is a fairly active character in story and Genie and Jon Lindstrom clearly love being paired together, but the relationship has never made much sense to me at all. They have a lot of fans in the audience but I think people are just happy to see Laura happy. I would play them but ultimately break them up. Laura deserves a new, action-oriented man where the Luke question can be openly dealt with (as opposed to shrugged off with pablum and very surface material, the way they've done it so far) and Kevin deserves poor Lucy.