Vee

I honestly have no recollection if the rumor was it was a flashback or she would turn up alive. I just recall there was some major soap star rumored to be playing her that may have hit the mags, I think it was someone from P&G or Sony/NBC and IIRC someone brought it back up a couple years ago.

Hastert shoutout:

I seem to recall a rumor around the time that they had recast an undead/flashback? Althea Chandler for the storyline with some sort of major soap star - I don't remember exactly who, I think it's been bandied about on this forum before. I believe it was true bc I think it made the mags and there was a specific name mentioned, but I was not the one who knew about it back then. Obviously that was scuttled if true.

And then everyone on each show instantly became her new best friend and kept sitting down for coffee with her. Including Sonny, IIRC.

Oh, let me be clear: I would not be fine with Skye staying a Quartermaine lol. Darn can attest that I have been heated over it since 2001. I was over the moon when Guza undid it and I despised RC and JFP forcing the familiarity with the Quartermaines overnight. I don't mind her mixing it up with them as an independent character, though. What I would've been fine with was the pairing with Ned, but it amounted to nothing. BITD they would've fucked like minks and screwed everyone over at ELQ, but by the time they got together Ned and the Qs were C-list players. The Luke thing was clearly Jill's last desperate Hail Mary to make Skye relevant on the show when they were casting about for a new story for Luke. It is obvious she said 'what about Skye?' and Guza (who had major control of the show) just shrugged and allowed it for a little bit. Until Tracy came back. The Rae ABC crossover voyage where everyone from twentysomethings Sophia, Eve Lambert, Kelly, etc. to 40+ yo Max Holden were floated as her kid was among the most embarrassing things I've ever watched. Meanwhile, ABC fans were expected to follow aging Another World star Linda Dano from show to show. Come on. It was JFP's vanity.

If nothing else, Skye can make a good troublemaker to come in and out or with her daughter, who does have fertile ties (the Alcazars, the Q relationship). With, say, Lila Rae it's not dissimilar to how they basically adopted Brenda. But I would not highlight Skye actually 'being' a Quartermaine ever again. I would have her go back to Chandler in the wake of Adam's death for semi-cynical reasons, always capitalizing on her latest 'family legacy.'

I am still not over this plot point. And yes, the Ned thing too. When the thing is they would've been fine together if not for that (not that I really cared given the flimsy Q backstory). No one knows, IIRC. Guza's response was a shrug emoji after he de-Qed her, lol.

They really do not, and watching him try to romance Kirsten Storms is nauseating. She's too young, no matter how rundown and beaten by life she looks.

IIRC someone (probably JFP) just had Skye and Alan, etc. insist she was 'still family' even after Guza pointedly had her de-Qed. They'd only known her like two years at that point, lol. She has been an 'adopted/honorary Quartermaine' ever since. It's nonsense, but because Guza didn't care about the Qs and RC had a contract it was easiest to keep them islanded together.

I don't think there's anything wrong in theory with RH coming on the show playing a long-lost Q or a doctor. It's what he should've done to begin with if they had to have him on GH (though I did not hate Todd's stint), not three characters in. And people have been asking about Jimmy Lee's brood for decades. It was an obvious avenue. I just don't care about it three characters in when Howarth, Easton, etc. have been receiving preferential treatment for over ten years and given multiple roles on the same show back to back. It's stan stuff. Yes, Chavez is talented but they are writing to the fans and also perhaps because they may have hated Coloma BTS at this point. Which, fine, but it can be a bit more even-handed.

I have ranted about Skye on GH so many times over the years. You both know how I feel. I don't think she was tolerable until the very late years when she was just coming in and out doing guest stints in the late 2000s/early 2010s to keep RC's health insurance. Skye coming in for short runs to mix it up as an ABC interloper, like Marco Dane used to do on GH, is fine. Skye as a Quartermaine I never acknowledge. It was all just Angela Shapiro (or someone's) blind worship of JFP and her vision at the time. No one else would've cared to put over Dano and Robin Christopher on an ABC audience and shove them down everyone's throat. Which is why when the worm turned, JFP was basically deposed and Guza had control and instantly demolished Rae and Skye's place on GH onscreen and off (with Jane Elliot returning as Tracy to humiliate them) it was extremely satisfying to me.

It's been a stressful few months IRL but I am finally getting back to Knots S6. I still have a lot of questions about the apparent BTS turmoil over Empire Valley. It seems a lot of TPTB incoming and outgoing say the story 'got out of control' and either got changed or sped up or something. But it's clear the Peter Dunne, etc. team that leaves after this season already had a lot of very specific ideas about whatever this storyline is (a military conspiracy, etc).

This is hilarious.

You and I both know I have been ranting about this for 20+ years. She was calling him "Grandfather" within like a month! I have never gotten over it.

That's how they've done it for years with these couples. It started in the Frons/Guza era and it's gotten worse. Lipton is one of the top talented young people on the show and Cameron is beloved by fans from a very beloved family/parent, but Frank is focused on the latest stud. Whenever that happens the audience favorite gets run down for the new white flavor of the month. Remember when they tried to put Brando over? Me neither but it happened. I'd say it's shades of Matthew on Frank and Ron's OLTL where allegedly teenage Eddie Alderson may or may not have been told that if he didn't put on like 10-30 lbs of muscle like the Fords that he couldn't have a frontburner story with Kelley Missal, but it's not as extreme as that old rumor. It's still shitty. The next move will be to try to make Cam less and less sympathetic. She was a temp who Frank kept because she was white, blonde and under 20. He thought he finally had his Starr Manning redux. She is marginally fine but not good enough. But he doesn't care. He wants a white teen princess to lead that canvas and that's what he thinks will keep getting the youth demo. He is operating off a 2008 mindset where Starr and Cole on OLTL are the apex of young-skewing ratings success (they weren't).

I assume you're talking entirely about Republicans above. Which, that's nice, but I don't care. I am talking about the general public and you are trying to talk to me about Republicans. I don't care about what Republicans believe. I don't care what they want or feel. Their feelings and beliefs about this situation are irrelevant because at this moment in time they do not have enough influence over the larger electorate. And so they're losing this messaging fight with the general public. If any of that were true about the larger public, the GOP wouldn't have just had the midterm they had. Of course they still have a considerable share of the public. Of course the country is divided. But they are not the majority. Slim at times or not, sharply divided or not, disinformation or not, at this moment in time and for the last however many months, the critical majority edge of the general public isn't buying their argument. And so they are still losing. That's why we're here, and that's why this farce is making most less politically plugged-in, more casual people even more mortified by them. In the end, winning is the only edge that matters. Not what their base wants or feels, because their base is not winning them enough elections. Not what Republicans on Twitter say, not what the dirtbag left says, not what Politico tries to will into happening. All that counts is the result. Elections and consequences. And by every metric that counts, they are losing this.

Good lord! It's tea time. From the paywalled article:

Thanks for the clips, folks.

Did they explain clearly how Heather and Ryan Chamberlain got together? Those are scenes I'd like to see if there's a date and it's on Hulu. She's done it before: The Taylors. They knew her, but they didn't know her connection to their son.

Before Susan Haskell came back, Marty Saybrooke on OLTL would be #1 with a bullet for me. Visits aside, I have never been fully behind her returning on a contract because even though Marty is one of my favorite characters of all time, I think her story was said and done and wrapped up nicely in '97. And as it happened her long-term return was mostly bad stories. (They had to retcon her terrible final OLTL exit with a few background lines from Hillary B. Smith on GH a couple years ago.) You forget just how potent and well-oiled a show GH was until you go back and revisit those years and realize Lois, Stone, etc. were only on for a handful of years and have resonated forever since. A year will not go by on GH when someone does not mention Stone. I think Sloan Carpenter on OLTL qualifies. Sloan was not super popular with a lot of the audience (though I think elements of that love story are very well told and other parts less so) but you can't deny his arrival changed the show forever. Not just because he broke up Viki and Clint for decades and destroyed the Buchanan family unit of the '80s, but because his arrival and role in Viki's life, his book about her father and his research into the past, spurred the entire reopening of the Victor Lord murder case. We all know what happened next. It was years in the making and is still brilliant work IMO. Less mentioned often these days is the fact that allegedly, had Clint Ritchie not gotten in his fateful farming accident, Clint Buchanan was supposed to win out in that love triangle. Sloan was a kind of polarized mirror image of Victor Lord, remote and repressed, an austere high-society man; he was someone Viki could sublimate her psychosexual issues with her father onto. Either just after or shortly before Sloan died, Michael Malone made a point of writing a terrifying nightmare sequence in which Viki embraces and cuddles with Sloan only to watch him turn into her father. This was not coincidence or just a random jump scare, it was deliberate. It was a deeper layer of uncomfortable storytelling than most shows touched. The Mel thing, with his later ghostly appearances, was in part because I think the audience loved him and still felt the psychic wound of his unjust exit and also because Robin Strasser never fully got over losing Stephen Markle as a screen partner.

All I'll say is that when I first took a real look at ATWT as a teen in the late '90s (I had vague memories of the '80s years my babysitter watched as well as of classic Y&R, but I got invested via the ABC soaps around '93), the show was nothing but weird men lusting after Ellen Dolan's Margo who was presented as a love goddess (and I like Dolan now but I'm sorry, she was not that) and scene after scene of Carly and Molly, usually together. They looked exactly the same with these severe lesbian haircuts except for their hair color. They behaved exactly the same. They were constantly 'you go girl!'ing each other or high-fiving and complaining about everyone else. They were a matching set. I was bored to tears by both of them and could not understand their purpose. It took me years to take interest in either Maura or Lesli Kay after that.

Word. People have tried too hard onscreen and off to Make Britt Happen.

Oh, sure, rub it in. I don't care how right wing Joseph Phillips is, he could get it on Cosby and GH and he can still get it now. They have him decked out like a grandpa but ol' Buck still is a silver fox! Y'all remember when half the forum spent COVID 2020 thirsty for Buck in the Loving Murders? Good times. If they can pull what they did with Extremely Dead Diane on Y&R then they can definitely do that. I would go for it.