Vee

That show is doing well despite my never having heard of it before last week. He will not be back!

It absolutely feels like that.

Cannot believe I am going to watch this. I have been dying to see what this woman looks like for years. Damn you.

I remember that they played the full song on the show a few times, including IIRC the finale. I never got over the impassioned Michael McDonald-sounding dude on background vocals going 'ohh yeahhhh, yeahhhh!!' over the terrible lyrics. I understood the concept of it and thought it was a nice idea in theory, but as Kim Zimmer pointed out in her memoir (which I think we've both clearly read) it was just 'a bunch of hairy-ass arms reaching out to hairy-ass arms'. The other unfortunate part came when they would get some of the eight million little child actors on Wheeler's Mormon GL to read some of the narration and God bless 'em, those kids sounded like they were delivering it phonetically.

I'm not gonna link them here because I'm pretty sure they've been poached from the older source by a notorious video thief I have some other suspicions about, but there's a decent sprinkling of fascinating eps from spring-summer 1992 on YT - fairly early Gottlieb/Malone, back when they were still fully committed to Grace Phillips' Sarah Buchanan and Mia Korf's Blair. They're pretty interesting stuff, and give some of us who weren't there a better sense of the timeframe on several storylines: Sarah's pill addiction (and apparent crush on her shrink) came not long after her return from the dead and is already wrapped up by April or May, and now they've moved onto her and Bo reunited just in time for her to become the prime suspect in the Carlo Hesser murder case. The reveal about Blair and Addie is slowly parceled out, and in early May Blair tells Max everything about who she is and where she came from while Elaine Princi's excellent Dorian tells Cassie harrowing stories about her childhood. I loved Kassie DePaiva's Blair and always will, but it's still unconscionable what OLTL pulled after Mia Korf quit to go back to the stage - I can't remember the last time any soap in America had as much of a commitment to an AAPI lead before or after Blair in '92, including the Asian-American characters onscreen today. She is a central, incredibly important player in story, bouncing between Max, Asa and her vendetta against Dorian, and for my money she is great. Simmering in early eps is Lee Ann feeling trapped in the Buchanan clan, spending more and more time with Jason Webb to Viki's consternation, and the slow disintegration of Asa and Renee as he becomes more infatuated with Blair. Also present: The incredibly earnest and annoying "Maggie Vega" character, a Latino police officer they'd apparently intended to pair with Andrew (and you can tell in these episodes) until they failed to secure their planned hire (allegedly, Saundra Santiago post-Miami Vice and pre-GL) and Bob Krimmer turned out to have more chemistry with Laura Bonarrigo. Sloan Carpenter has only just arrived. And LaTanya Richardson, Mrs. Samuel L. Jackson herself, appears as the original Rodi who figures into the Hank Gannon/Sheila Price/Troy Nichols triangle. I have a lot of fondness for Terry Alexander (Troy) from his role in Day of the Dead, but he cannot compete with Hank. Hank comes on very strong and very broad in these episodes in a way that would not fly today - he is often a brash [!@#$%^&*], and they only take him down a few pegs in subsequent eps. The writing for Troy - pushing him as a stodgy, white-collar man who can't relate to Sheila or Hank's interests - feels a little too convenient and broad as well in that classic Malone way, in that I don't remember the Troy in episodes from '90?/'91 seeming too much like a stuffed shirt even if I also didn't find him too interesting. That said, Nathan Purdee does have great chemistry with Valarie Pettiford, who is the only Sheila I ever liked and I like her more the more I see her as an adult. You can see why Purdee quit Y&R for OLTL initially. I remember Gottlieb in an interview making much of their hiring Black writers for this story, for whatever that is worth. Either way, whatever peaks or valleys it has it doesn't feel like the "Black story" is an afterthought in these episodes. I still like Grace Phillips a lot as Sarah, but that may be my anti-Jensen Buchanan bias. Either way, she clashed with Gottlieb and was out not too long after all this big push. Either the BTS issues or unpopularity were strong enough that I believe she took most of the summer or fall off and then returned (with new red hair, as Phillips was obviously already looking for new work) for Thanksgiving just in time to die within one or two episodes. (Nora had already been introduced a couple months before and begun sparking with Bo) I'd love to hear more takes from those who've seen the eps and/or those who remember more.

If they'd brought her on as a fresh character (a Quartermaine cousin, anything) she could have so much more longevity and carry a lot. As it is I will never really care about Nina or her useless secret children even though I love Cynthia Watros' performances. I remember how much of an apeshit lunatic Nina came onto this show as before the recast, I remember her tormenting Ava. I don't buy most of her functional relationships. I buy Watros' performances, but that's a whole different thing. Ultimately it's a lead balloon. But will Watros get a second or third character like Howarth or Easton? Nope. (Not that any of them should, frankly.)

It shouldn't have happened with Michael either, even though he's too boring to live at this point. Or Maxie, or Lulu when it did for them ten years ago. And we've already discussed the pulse-pounding excitement of Brook Lynn, Chase, etc.'s unmarried storylines.

Again: It is idiotic that Spencer wants to adopt a baby or that he and Trina might get married over this mess, but the endless stream of instant nuclear family stories for most young adults and often even young LGBT characters (immediate pregnancy, babies and marriage - Kish, Wilson, Lucas/Brad and Mariah/Tessa all check some if not all of these boxes, as did Bianca on AMC before them) over the last decade-plus are clearly what the soaps or their networks feel comfortable greenlighting to what is perceived as a predominantly older conservative audience. Most young people on network soaps are not allowed to be young and fùck or do young people things - they must procreate, wed and settle down.

I can believe they'll kiss at February sweeps, I predicted that awhile ago. I can also believe they will then next kiss at May or November sweeps, lol. I think the show is petrified of showing them intimate out of fear of the racist portion of the audience and is trying to keep it as chaste as possible until Chavez leaves. I would love to be proven totally wrong.

He didn't, actually. It was Brown and Esensten, who used Darnell and Debbi heavily on Loving and The City (along with Agnes apparently having a hand in the return too).

The actual storyline was pretty lame, but Angie and Jesse's return itself was so good that I didn't care. Same with the Two Todds that has a handful of good scenes and some excellent performances strung along an absolutely nonsensical and hilarious story. Howarth, KDP, Florencia Lozano, Erika, etc. all sell it and make it work (while TSJ is out to lunch) and it was so satisfying after what had become of Todd since the rapemance.

All the 2000s P&G soap openings just scream "we don't give a [!@#$%^&*]" to me. It is muzak and flashing faces or scrolls. The precursor to the incredibly bad current GH PowerPoint opening, where literally any recurring player or small child shows up depending on the day, like a slot machine.

Meanwhile, Frank is wondering if they can shoot their kiss all reverse-angles.

I just hate all the fake elevator music themes GL and ATWT got in the last 10+ years. And yes, that opening was always so bad. The Peapack one was somehow worse.

It has to be either Stefano or Jack on DAYS.

I doubt it will happen anymore than several attempts to let Peter Jackson do an ep did in the late 2000s-early 2010s due to conflicts in scheduling, but Wright does have a longstanding relationship with the production and in particular Steven Moffat (who he co-wrote Tintin with). And they did finally get Neil Gaiman for several eps. I would love to see some New Adventures or classic people return again like Paul Cornell, who's been gone a long time and is mostly in comics atm. Or Ben Aaronovitch from the McCoy era, since they did manage to get Rona Munro back in Capaldi's era. The really interesting stuff in the interview for me is the spinoff talk - we know he's been talking about it a long time, how to re-franchise the show again, but it's exciting to see it made manifest. I didn't know about this article. (As it says it's not paywalled, you can click a link inside it to undo the block) It's in the news because of this. The video at the first link is good, but the other two parts of the article are linked in the tweet below (along with better quality images). And over at Big Finish: Speaking of spinoffs: Grain of salt, but rumor has it this latest Blu-Ray extra's focus and branding is not a coincidence.

@DRW50 @Faulkner

It is surreal to watch Frances Fisher on my EON binge while she's in the middle of this whole thing. I still don't think Woman King deserves a thing. And I like Gina Prince-Bythewood and of course Viola is an immense talent, but it's just a poisoned chalice of a project IMO.

How many episodes of Willow am I going to have to suffer through if I catch up on the last week? I tapped out at last Tuesday lol.

I'm gonna leave Uncle Porkchop and his unnatural burgundy hair alone. I would cast Jennifer Ashe as a spooky older lady for some story on a soap in a minute. She was so good on both ATWT and this. Lauren-Marie Taylor took years to finally begin to age at all, but she still looks lovely and is a regular on the horror convention scene thanks to Friday the 13th. A nice cast shot from Twitter I'd never seen. I'm surprised they bothered at a certain point tbqh:

Colin Egglesfield (AMC, the CW Melrose Place) has unfortunately landed himself in the latest Neil Marshall/Charlotte Kirk (if you don't know, google her) midlife crisis debacle, a crime thriller called Duchess.

Bryan Cranston really is all class.

Pretty sure the show has enough extraneous young white people doing nothing.

They'd absolutely be pairing them up if Tinker wasn't out. I wouldn't assume it won't happen in future. Somewhere along the way Ron decided that camp and bitchy characters, or irredeemable villains, are simply another way he can show his skill and force his will on the audience to make them accept the unacceptable. This started with the rapemance on OLTL and he's been doubling down with many characters since. Almost all of the 'good'-typed characters on a show (who he in the past wrote very well) are classed all as either boring or hypocrites, while Leo/Gwen/Obrecht/Ben/Victor/et al are bold truthtellers who deep down have hearts of gold and must be embraced by those to whom they've done wrong. And it's too bad, because his conception of LGBT characters IMO used to be a lot more nuanced. Today you're just waiting for the next two-dimensional stereotype which Ron then pretends is simply 'queer and proud'. I don't have a problem with loud gay characters or edgy characters; I have a problem when that's all they are, and when they do terrible things and then the show tries to meme its way through it. Case in point: Leo.

Drake is so sweet.