Vee

Confirmed, not that we needed it. From SOD (we can quote part of the article, right?):

Lord! I've never heard of this movie but I feel bad that she's getting memed because she's legitimately a brilliant actress.

Season 6, Episode 15 (Inside Information): I'm not sure if Lorraine Ferrara has directed for the show before, but there's a fantastic opening to this episode which begins deep inside grainy handheld video playback via TV news cameraman from the Gary Loder (he of the Tidal Basin mythos) murder scene. We don't initially realize this is not a 'live' sequence until we hear Mack asking them to roll it back in voice-over, the footage pauses and rewinds and then the camera pans out of the monitors to show Mack, Abby, etc. at Pacific News watching the old footage. There's an equally wonderful holy shít moment as Abby silently clocks Scott Easton in the footage, standing in the crowd. What do a string of dead Galveston Industries secretaries (apparently dummied up to seem like a serial killer case - unless it is a serial killer) add up to? I would expect maybe something involving the Empire Valley conspiracy, but who knows. Abby's bob is fortunately back to God-tier this week, which serves as a bit of a panacea for Galveston riding herd on her over the Val secret. Abby cleverly but perhaps hastily plays the Tidal Basin card immediately to fight back, and the look in Galveston's eye is deeply unsettling; you can’t help but wonder if he's telling the truth that he's enjoying their game. I think he is but could also kill her without a thought. A genius story choice has the bedridden post-op Karen, annoyed with being stuck at home, stumbling upon the Loder news tape. There, she spots not Easton but another Galveston man from the recent Lotus Point meeting - and dimes the Galveston connection out to Mack, despite Abby's best efforts to play dumb. Are patrons at Isadora's really supposed to be avidly eating up Joshua's TV sermons? I guess the Bakkers were pretty big back in the day too. At least Cathy is singing another banger. Joshua is jealous of Cathy's fans while shrugging off his own, and jealous of her opportunity to go on tour; when Lilimae and Cathy talk their musical dreams, it's a smart use of Lilimae's candor about her past regrets that enables Joshua's controlling behavior by convincing Cathy to back off the tour. There are more and more hints of the darkness under the surface with Joshua over these last few eps: The couple's easy physical roughhousing at the club with their last less serious tiff, then his very coolly dismissing Cathy's acquiescence this week with little more than "good" and an embrace in which he piously tells her "all is forgiven." I think the puritan streak in Joshua, the authoritarianism has always been there, even when he was innocently asking the others if Val losing the babies was punishment by God for her sin. Meanwhile: Val (to Abby): Boy, you're pretty. Frustrated with Gary's fixating on Galveston and Empire Valley, Abby heads to Shula! The above moment is great as Abby and Val/Verna come face to face. The writers once again do the right thing with Abby here by having her try to do the decent thing, level with Val and ask her if she's coming home but of course Verna is clueless. Abby is a little too thrilled Val has lost her mind, lol. Interesting that Parker Winslow is immediately onto her though, clocking the Ewing name. I was surprised that Parker is that suspicious of the whole situation that fast, but he is clearly paranoid and possessive - he tracks down an article on Val's disappearance at his local library and immediately has the connection. His solution: Propose to this mentally ill woman after a month! What a yokel. Verna is very winning in Shula but are we meant to think she and Parker haven't slept together when she adorably teases him about his wanting to buy another pillow for her bed? It seemed clear in the last couple eps they were hot and heavy. Back in LA, Greg and Laura see a highway bill go down for Suspicious Reasons - all Sumner's newfound Senate power is being stripped away due to pressure from Galveston. Greg confronts Daddy, but gets no ground while Laura looks on as he bobs and weaves about the tycoon with Mack. Laura finally pulls the truth out of her lover in an incredible fairy tale-flavored monologue from William Devane in which Greg is alternately a hype man, a storyteller and a cajoler. You wonder how much was scripted and how much with Devane was improv: The manic electricity never leaves Greg's eyes or his body language as he keeps throttling up and up with enthusiasm while telling Laura about walking in on his mother in bed with Galveston the day after his father died, never betraying the rage or pain that must seethe just beneath the surface. Finally, as Greg lowers the boom about who Galveston really is to him he immediately, violently jerks Laura into his arms to force a kiss and therefore control. Greg must always find control even when he’s out of control, and the move adds an even more chilling and fascinating exclamation point to an already fraught sequence. It's also made explicit after the commercial break that rough (but consensual) sex between Greg and Laura followed the revelation - Greg exorcising his demons. This is fairly shocking content and layering for glossy '80s primetime soaps. The final brilliant touch of the episode comes at the end: Abby returns to Westfork to greet Galveston's threats to blow the whistle on her about Val's whereabouts, only for her to turn around and immediately disempower him by telling the just-arrived Gary all about Val. I was not expecting that at all and it was fùcking incredible, right down to the beautiful freeze-frame on Abby’s fùck you smile to the old man. They have threaded the needle with Abby in this storyline very well so far. Episode 16 (Out of the Past): Finally, it is Bill Duke Hours once more! You know what that means: As is custom for a Duke episode at this point, a great deal of this hour is bathed in shadow, spotlights and lamplights warming the dark corners while other key moments are shot through with ethereal light. Galveston's shadowy military(?) contact early in the episode is gorgeously cloaked in his warm half-shadowed leatherette chair by Duke, while his murky physical appearance is a kind of inverse Mack MacKenzie in type and build. Abby and Karen working together at Lotus Point so much lately in spite of each other is great - neither of them trust in Empire Valley or Galveston. They make a very good team. Gary hits Shula! Val is so carefree and fun as Verna at this point, so I can understand people's fondness for this storyline even if I have found the whole Parker angle deeply tiresome from the beginning. Of course the local hicks don't believe Gary's very sensible pleas. The beautifully-shot gauzy flashback to young Val and Gary's first meeting in Texas is a standout here, great handheld work by Duke featuring age-appropriate actors who nonetheless embody the leads. They don't try to make JVA and Ted play 16-18 like most shows of the period would do (and as KL unwisely attempted with several female leads in Season 1). It's very winning stuff, and pays off wonderfully when Gary (undaunted by his street beating by Parker and his buddy from BrutalTops.com) reprises their first meeting during Val/Verna's lunch rush. There is great cutting between past and present from frame to frame, and a fascinating, fluctuating performance by JVA as for a moment, Val knows exactly who he is and it terrifies her. Laura and the rarely-seen baby (toddler) Daniel are so cute, in part because I feel fairly confident that this is still Constance McCashin's IRL son Dan Weisman, who apparently played him on and off in Season 4 and 5. There is an adorable moment where the baby is pointing up at what are obviously the studio lights and asking 'what's that?' "It's the ceiling," McCashin/Laura replies. Daniel/Dan? also throws a fit when being handed off to Lisa Hartman to exit the scene. I didn't initially remember that Galveston and Laura had never really met when he arrives at her office (Greg's office, I think?) with no announcement and is pointedly avuncular and familiar re: her and Daniel - an intimidation tactic. He promises to fulfill Laura's heart's desire if she helps him with his son, pinpointing what it believes it to be - "To be richer than Abby Ewing. You can tell her where to get off." A nice historical beat. This is where I would post an IG video Dan Weisman posted a couple years ago of his mom dancing to Ariana Grande that made it onto KL fansites, but it seems to have sadly been deleted. There's a lot of power playing and maneuvering this ep; Abby is always recalibrating and tries to throw in with Paul Galveston and increase her leverage on him as Mack's net begins to close, while Greg is finally ready to comes through for Mack but wants no questions on his connection to the old man. The echoes of the Wolfbridge saga are very deliberate in this episode with Mack even invoking his failures there to Karen, but both he and Abby are determined not to be left without a chair when the music stops this time. I do enjoy watching the constant push/pull between Abby and Galveston; he never has her totally over a barrel, as Wolfbridge did. Over at Pacific World/News/Cable/whatever, Joshua has apparently pushed his favorite pastor out of his own show. I loved Abby waxing messianic to corrupt him further, boosting their shared business and driving a new wedge with him and Cathy. Their rapport - which may or may not turn overtly sexual - is very interesting work by the writers, Mills and Baldwin. It's also great to see Abby and Cathy finally properly spar again, bringing up the past that already seems so distant. Cathy tells Joshua about her past with Abby, but I have a bad feeling about where that's going. The other centerpiece of this episode besides the Gary/Val stuff is an excellent scene between Galveston and Greg. Howard Duff is a deceptively jovial presence, physically similar to fellow Old Hollywood star Howard Keel on Dallas in many ways with ruddy cheeks, cowboy getup and bolo tie. But unlike Keel's kindhearted and sweet Clayton Farlow, Paul Galveston is a smiling cobra. When Galveston turns over a chair threatening Mack if Greg doesn't get his old friend to back off, Sumner (outwardly, at least) coolly shrugs off the idea of Mack's death - he says anything is worth getting to his father. This could be played so many ways with sneering villainy, chest-thumping and big musical stings, but instead Duff and the writers play Galveston as instantly overjoyed, happily believing father and son to be more alike than Greg admits. I love this fuckin' show.

I don't know that everyone hated her (the director was a big fan), so I have no idea if she was difficult anywhere else. I thought her character was kind of a drip but as she was written to be the heroic waif in the movie that's unavoidable. She is definitely one of the more accomplished actors in the whole silly movie, lol.

In honor of the date I am watching Friday the 13th Part VII, starring KL's own Lar Park Lincoln (who I have yet to see on the show). In this movie Lar battles Jason Voorhees onscreen with the powers of her mind while allegedly battling much of the cast offscreen - according to the copious special features and commentary for the wonderful F13 series box set, Lar and onscreen love interest Kevin Spirtas from DAYS couldn't stand each other. Small world!

On EON, the Mansion of the Damned shoot was sabotaged because its producer, huckster Eddie Vaughn, was keen to boost its PR profile with a series of horror-themed stunts and faked 'disasters' on the set and soundstages to spook the public and media and get it a ton of attention and hype. MOD was supposed to be based on a 'real' legend of a witch local to the Monticello area, and Vaughn's angle was to make people believe the witch's curse was plaguing the production. Things went south when starlet Nola Madison urged her old flame Eddie to set the soundstage on fire after filming had wrapped (IIRC) in order to both collect the insurance money and cement MOD's legend as a 'cursed' movie before its impending release. (Her real motive was to kill her romantic rival in the fire.) Eddie thought it was going too far and refused, but Nola did it herself. Eddie died in the fire trying to save her, and the MOD shoot came to a fiery end. It was only a week or two later when, IIRC, MOD's director Owen Madison realized the raw footage had been erased when he tried to play it back - suggesting that the witch's curse was real after all.

Didn't MOD end with Owen Madison discovering the reels had erased themselves mysteriously in the screening room, suggesting that 'the curse' behind the real witchcraft story was real after all even after the hoaxster in question died? Or was there more to it after that?

It's insane to me Nina has been on this show almost ten years. I think in both cases it's less talent (though Watros is talented and Stafford used to be more talented than she is today) and more inertia, inability to develop new or past characters, contractual obligation in the case of Stafford's long tenure, and a preference to just stick with existing players no matter how played out because they just don't want to make too many waves anywhere in any aspect of this show. I blame the show coasting along on inertia, as mentioned above, and simply opting to mostly write what they perceive to be inoffensive gruel for a Facebook-oriented older audience. Anything too edgy with younger characters in particular is too far and could upset the delicate balance that keeps GH renewed in the absence of any other profitable programming.

Nina has always been nuts. I tolerate her more with Cynthia Watros in the role and I'd much rather watch her than Michael or Willow at this point (not that the three of them need to be on the show anymore), but that was pretty batshit. The Young Whites quad of Chase, BL, Josh Kelly and S*sha is boring as hell. I love Setton but her stories are terrible. You could do a whole riff on some sort of Sia/Gaga songwriting scandal with Brook Lynn, some spicy stuff with young hot people, but they have these very basic, boring stories with some of the blandest white folks possible like the romance with Chase who, I'm sorry, is also boring and always has been. And why are Chase and Cody dressed in matching flannels in the same scene like little twin boys? Josh Kelly is still hot even if audiences seem to detest his character's introduction. I think there is a way to salvage that.

This was also my take.

I never got Wilson Bethel myself. I do believe he auditioned for Captain America and had a moment he could've been big. I guess he has CW shows now or something? Maybe streaming? I don't keep track.

How would he show his immense 2020s-era range in just 45 minutes?

Yeah, I liked Hunt Block but I thought Scott Bryce was pretty hot and suave in the '80s.

It's insane absolutely nothing has happened with his weather machine. I wouldn't be surprised If they're saving it for the 60th but I don't know why they started it a year ago if they didn't intend to move on it faster.

This is great. Meanwhile, I should've known who was behind these amazing, legendary ads: @DRW50 Clever Prime.

I am eternally grateful for all the users who have kept the show archived and available to watch, but a part of me selfishly wishes I could've seen the last couple seasons in HD. Fortunately there's 50 more seasons to go!

Tinker is on that Wally Kurth/Eileen business plan.

I'm sure he had a plan. I just hope it comes off with Tony appearing.

It has to be a fakeout. But knowing Frank's history (especially with Ron, but also since) he sometimes does something and then gambles that he can get an actor back down the road. As it is though, even with a potential reveal it's insane that they all basically know Victor did it and have done nothing.

Wonderful news if true!

I was surprised to actually really like CS as Victor when he first came on despite it seeming like an epic miscast, because they went full on in the direction of Victor being a bon vivant and aging playboy with an evil side which is not dissimilar to how Thaao Penghlis played it back in the old days. (His 2010s stint moved him much closer to outright supervillainy, but he still had lots of smarm.) When CS first arrived they had Victor really camping it up forcing the Cassadines together, scheming, etc. I even wanted him to shanghai Laura into (a fake) marriage, I thought it'd be a blast. It was a very unique angle to take with a Cassadine baddie, a guy who was still having fun. Unfortunately, over a year later he's actually done very little. The brainwashing nonsense was tedious, and didn't he have an actual weather machine he was using on the town again? What happened to that? He supposedly has killed Luke offscreen (I am not convinced TG will not turn up this year), yet Laura, Scorpio and Lucky who all would never stop until those responsible were dead, have done nothing? Where is the urgency? What is his plan? I don't blame CS for this because I think he came on playing an unconventional bad guy in a fun way. But there is no actual direction that I can see. Or maybe I've missed the episodes where they explain any of it, but nothing seems to happen.

I've never forgotten his death rattle in this sequence. You're right, I always thought it was way too real. Those scenes were excellent, though the show was very, very messy at the time and during that storyline. (It was a great idea on paper mostly executed poorly.)

It's how Frank always handled 'the ethnic/other characters' on OLTL - sidekicks to the white teens. I said at least a year ago this had gotten beyond his control and they're trying to keep it tamped down. It may not be what he feels personally IRL as an out gay man, but at this point it's hard not to conclude it is what he and/or ABCD feels is best for preserving his shows' audiences, which he clearly feels is predominantly old, white and conservative. I think Maurice and Tamara were great together for cementing the couple even more romantically, but I think Sarah and Maurice also had it all in a more visceral way. And you're right about heat. I always go back to the scene where Carly finally seduces him out of pure rage and spite and they play off each other; it is still mesmerizing. I still can't believe they were broadcasting material of that quality (both content-wise and writing quality) at 3 PM right after school back in the day. And at that time, with that writing team, it was commonplace. I think they are flailing now because they know it can't be ignored in this current culture and climate, so I think they're just trying to slow-walk it as long as possible. I think the show is terrified what will happen to their fragile numbers if they start showing regular interracial love on the frontburner, so they're trying to run out the clock on Chavez or tread water. In the meantime they'll do as little as they can get away with doing - maybe a kiss here and there, but tamped down onscreen for the most part even if the characters get together. I would love to eat my words. And yes, I absolutely think they would move Spencer to Joss or Emma if they could.

You'd be surprised, lol. People on Primetimer got real heated when I began to suggest TA was a superior recast and still do (not that I care). But yes, I think a large part of the issue is the show being very reluctant on them (and preferring to center Joss). We'll see what happens though.

I think the recast is better on every level tbh. I felt SM was a lot more green. I think it's the writing for Trina because when TA shows out she has plenty of fire. As for the topic, I think both Todds on OLTL had plenty of chemistry with their two leading ladies (Kassie DePaiva and Florencia Lozano) but in Trevor St. John's case he was scorching with FL.