Vee

For a Trekkie this show is painfully good. As a fan who laughed his way through Nemesis in the theater and has wanted the TNG crew to have a better wrap-up for over 20 years, I share the cast's noted joy over this season being their final bow vs. the movies which, for the most part except FC, largely sucked. They've talked about their relief over this season's closure for them a lot in interviews but these episodes just keep driving it home. Watching the Enterprise crew puzzle things out together intelligently like they did in the old days, competently vs. overly imbuing the material with emotional appeals (something most recent Trek has often been afraid to with the exception of SNW and oddly enough, Lower Decks), was so refreshing after the last few years. And there's still a lot of emotion to be had - the ending, and the Ten-Forward scenes with Picard and co. were great, especially Shaw's Quint from Jaws speech. I figured Shaw had to have been at Wolf 359, or traumatized by the Dominion War (probably both). I assume they have to be cueing up a Titan or other show with Seven, LaForge and presumably Jack by the end of this, assuming Speleers is not committed to more seasons of You on Netflix.

That picture is too blurry to make a determination. I'm 50/50. It would be classy to bring him back, but it wouldn't shock me if they have Miguel on in the background with no lines: The Leslie Brooks Piano Lady special.

The kid is dead, to be clear. Died not long after birth. Sam struggled to conceive for years; her two anonymous children are Danny and Scout. Danny is the child of Sonny's presumed dead right hand enforcer, Jason Morgan, once the central 'hero' of this show who absolutely everything spun around (along with Sonny) for decades until his right-wing evangelical actor, Steve Burton, refused to abide by the network's COVID vaccine mandate and quit/was fired in late 2021. Don't hold your breath on ABC not buckling and bringing him back. Sam's unnecessary and often forgotten daughter, Scout, is the child of Drew Cain (now played by Cameron Mathison), Jason's secret long-lost twin who was brainwashed by evil villains to believe he was Jason and who Sam and co. also believed was Jason for several years. Don't ask. God, I thought Nathan Varni was long gone.

They're dumb to let Lipton slip through their fingers. It's okay though, Lexi Ainsworth came back and he can too.

That does look like Lorie, but I'm not sure why they'd hide it.

I doubt Jackie was making a million by 1980, though.

Yeah, I'd need independent verification that Erika was making a mil by '80.

Please keep calling him this.

LOL. Now that Axios has brought it up and not mean overdramatic libs I'm sure they'll beg for forgiveness. Meanwhile:

RIP:

I dunno who did all this work but someone seriously overhauled the Carla Gray Wikipedia page. There's a lot more detailed info on story than I've ever seen. I had heard before that Ed and Josh allegedly left town in '87 to join Carla and Sadie in Arizona, and the page supports that. But I have no idea if that's true, or if the onscreen implication was that Ed and Carla ultimately got back together after their very sad parting in '85.

The Last of Us is a hit video game that dates back to 2013. It's only going to run a handful of seasons to cover the first, second and possibly third game which does not yet exist.

In honor of Picard/Crusher finally being canon, I rewatched a key episode from the final season of TNG that directly deals with that long-running subplot: "Attached." It still holds up and Stewart and McFadden's performances are wonderful (and @DRW50and other GL fans will be pleased to know Lenore Kasdorf appears, albeit as a very prim and xenophobic alien in a cowl) but it seems like a direct setup for a rekindling of the romance thread between them that the show had, til then, largely abandoned since Season 1. At the end of the episode Picard wants to explore the relationship and Crusher backs off at the last moment, seeming very conflicted as she does so, leading to Picard sadly blowing out the candles on their dinner date before the credits roll. I wonder if this was originally intended to be a serialized thread; they had allegedly floated the idea of marrying Picard and Crusher off in the final season, and I am not sure whether this was either the compromise or a potential starting point for that. I believe Patrick Stewart may also have wanted Picard unattached for potential romance in the films (which only happened with Donna Murphy in Insurrection). The only time it is returned to after "Attached" (and before this year) is in the series finale of TNG, where we see them married and divorced in an AU and then, in the present, Crusher lays a scorching kiss on him near the end of the episode. I have never forgotten watching that live as a kid, I nearly died. The actors discuss the past material a bit here, and you can see a clip from "Attached" in the early segment. I don't have any expectation of the characters ending up together in S3 as Picard seems committed to Orla Brady's character from the first two seasons. I like Brady a lot, but I'm sorry, I'd be happy for Picard and Crusher to surprise me.

Jason/Courtney was clearly only the brainchild of Frons and Chuck Pratt, and nothing Guza cared for. As soon as a bigger fish (Kelly Monaco) was onboard and Pratt was out, Guza terminated Courtney's airtime and then her life.

Courtney was unbearable. Sam at least had a volatile and tense relationship with Carly for years. We've discussed it in GH threads a lot, but is truly weird what went down with Monaco and Burton. She was clearly very into being paired with Billy Miller as "Jason" and had real chemistry with him. She was vocally unhappy online when they were split up onscreen for her and Steve. But regardless of any BTS issues they'd been paired come hell or high water for most of the last 20 years and seemed accepting of it. Then suddenly two years ago they're split up in record time after being the ride or die couple GH would never let go, Jason is thrown at multiple women in record time despite not being promiscuous and Sam is instantly paired with Dante. Bizarre.

@DRW50

Returns for Season 2 late this month. Remarkably solid in its first year and a bit of a sleeper at first. Excellent lead work from the young and old versions of the women; Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress and Christina Ricci along with Sophie Nélisse, Sophie Thatcher, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Sammi Hanratty. I'm very glad the showrunners are being very explicit about only letting the show run five years tops. I don't know how much the dual story can sustain, but I am very excited to see the winter months of 1996-97 unfold. I think the timeline shown in the first season only ran from summer (somewhere around May-July) to October or November. For those of you who haven't seen it, the (apparently un-embeddable) Season 1 trailer is here. The first teaser for S2 is below.

Both GH and OLTL were shrouded in atmospheric fog at night for a lot of years, and a lot of autumnal, warm tones as already mentioned. Unlike OLTL where it tapered off, that aesthetic persisted at GH until maybe the mid-late 2000s. That moody look, especially in night scenes really worked for me but I can see why others found it too much. I didn't like what I saw of AMC Los Angeles' look at all. It looked plastic to me, and the increasing location shoots (a sure sign in the late 2000s of budget struggles, though most other shows like ATWT kept confining them to poorly-disguised studio grounds or in the case of OLTL, one boring park) for AMC always looked like they took place in an overly glossy theme park which had no relation to Pine Valley. There was a vibe to the East Coast soap look that used to be unmistakable.

These folks never get soaps out of their blood. He'll be around.