Vee

I don't mind it with Sam. That relationship was nasty early on, and they did the work with her and Alexis. Plus I'm not sure Sam ever had much of a family let alone a mother. Her adopted father (played by Melrose's Stanley Kamel, IIRC) was a grifter. IIRC she never called Julian "Dad" and that was appropriate. Carly and Bobbie I also don't mind - I feel they did the work, in addition to Virginia.

Which is why JJ quit again. According to his own interviews, he had expected a romance for Lucky and Elizabeth and got them broken up and him paired with a newbie, and found the rest of his material unrelentingly dark and bleak.

Imagine getting gassed up because they show more than 4 sets!

He was so good in his final appearances, too - as part of Viki's heart transplant story in 2004. There were many dumb things about that story but the performances were rock solid and to Malone's credit he did play Larry still as a trusted and beloved family friend, he wasn't just there to deliver exposition. Michael Storm did talk in the oral history about how it was painful losing his place in the show's institutional memory. I had always wanted OLTL to do a special episode devoted to him: "24 Hours with Larry Wolek," where you see Larry go about his day, doing rounds and check-ups wiping the noses of everyone's kid or grandkid in town, waking up next to an old picture of Meredith, still pining for Karen, etc. Reminding people of the character or educating newer viewers about how important to the foundation of the show he was, the unsung hero of Llanview. At the end of it you could have Anna (since Doris Belack was still alive and working at the time) turn up with a young Wolek for him to take in and drive new story for the family. I always wanted the Woleks back.

We've had this discussion!! Silver Daddy Zander is worth it! I do not actually want an Esme lookalike though.

I don't want her gray or redeemed by way of amnesia. She has to get it back and then go down. She can come in and out for stints like Heather does and like Obrecht should be doing. I don't think Cody would be a serious thing for Liz, but it could run for a bit. I would sooner bring hot daddy Zander back from the dead since Chad Brannon looks amazing now to stir up more drama, and work up to bringing back a Lucky for the real deal for Liz. If JJ is willing to work a deal as he's sometimes hinted at, great; if not, recast finally. I wished Heather would've brought up some of the old days with Rick and Lesley and the Webbers and the supposed 'perfect family.' Of course, if Ron had done it (and he would've) it would've been in the most obvious fan service-y way possible vs. an organic discussion. I wish Laura would've made some mention of Heather being a nightmare since those early days with Jeff, how her mother had taken her in, etc. He doesn't need to be anyone from the past IMO. I would be fine with them saying he's Mac's but not Dominique's, have him recount most of his scurvy ways and focus on being the somewhat duplicitous stable boy and leave it there.

I think in his best days Sonny could be commanding and dangerous. That was a long time ago. I also have wondered about Laura going back to Webber (Viki unexpectedly went back to Viki Lord after decades on OLTL near the end, and it worked). I personally think Laura should and would go back to Spencer given their family name's incredible fame in the town, seemingly for PR reasons for her campaign but also because she still has unfinished business with Luke; Kevin could get upset about it. But they could ultimately split the difference and have her go back to Webber in the end. I think characters like Dex (or Cody) can be used as rent-a-hunks for fluffy sexcapade stories with various women - I would have overworked single mom Liz get her groove back in a fling with Cody - but I don't have a serious investment in them. But a good soap always needs decent eye candy for bedroom scenes. If you can build on them later (and I think you can with Cody despite his wildly unpopular introduction) then who knows. I already talked about the Heather/Esme scenes, but I did want to add how good AP was in them with her abject disgust and revulsion. It made me think about bringing on a sister or lookalike, but those rarely work out as well as the OG character especially when they're 'good.' Still, the show could use a young doctor or med student in her age range. I think Esme needs to remain a villain.

She talks at length about it in the oral history and makes it clear she deliberately opted out of renegotiating her contract ("please don't tell me how much you were going to offer me"), and says she wanted to leave to focus on her life and family with her son grown and raised and her having remarried IIRC. She seems happy enough with her exit.

lol he really does. And yes, he's a typical Frank hire. Passable and hot but not much else.

I believe she decided to go open a bookstore in Seattle with a new love interest - I can't remember who, a known TV character actor I think. Marilyn Chris chose to leave. @janea4oldI'm sure we'd all appreciate more of your recollections. I'd love to know anything you can recall about the twists and turns of the original Carla story and how it played out or ended, and the love triangle with her, Jim Craig and Price Trainor, or anything else. Usually our knowledge doesn't go beyond the premise or people retelling the big reveal scene with Carla and Sadie in the hallway.

It must be from Joe's original return from the dead story, where he met Wanda out of town(?).

Is that Wanda with Joe?

Fun pointless fact of the morning: According to the wiki, the current "Brownstone" set is actually a renovation of the original Webber/Scorpio house dating back to Rick, Lesley, Laura and Alice Grant in the '70s (and later being lived in for years by Mac, Robin, Felicia and her girls). I wonder what became of the original Brownstone set. This has been your pointless trivia for today.

The beat with Heather and Esme where she stumbled over her words as she explained that sometimes wanting to be a mother 'comes later' for some women was brilliant. She played a wealth of Heather's long and sordid history going back to the original Steven Lars/P.J. adoption caper in that sequence (a great deal of which is available to watch on YT with both Mary O'Brien and Robin Mattson in the role and which drives this further home), and you could see it in her face and eyes. It hit much more genuine for me than what Carlivati did with Robin Mattson's Heather early in his run, a trick he would often go to with villains - he'd give you 'odd couple' pairings of unlikely characters, have them voice their anxieties or feelings and then unexpectedly, inexplicably hug and emotionally bond. Robin's Heather had a scene like that with Rafe Kovich Jr. of all people where he bemoaned the loss of his family, and suddenly he and Heather were hugging and bonding. It was totally unearned and I didn't buy any of it. The next scene it was back to Heather's usual psycho hijinks. Pathos doesn't work like that. It has to come from somewhere beyond just a few soppy lines between random acquaintances.

I think it's a good role on the canvas for her and potentially workable. I just don't think anyone has bothered challenging her with real material in over ten years. If she falters fine but I might try it.

Chavez has come a long way in a short time. He was electric with Genie, and as others have noted it is wonderful to see her connecting with performers who give her their all just as she always does. (Tyler and Tony Geary had their ups and downs, though I do think Tony always brought it with her despite his other behavior; so did JJ, even when the material got very ugly.) I am all for Molly growing up and becoming an ADA but like others I go back and forth on taking her seriously. I do think Hailey Pullos is capable of more and I don't dislike the role for her, but the show has such a superficial investment in Molly as is.

It's 2023! Learn to timestamp! In all seriousness though I have no fùcking idea where this is supposed to be. I have a very very vague recollection of it. I don't think it was seen again after the Guza regime ended. I don't think it ever really supplanted Kelly's. It reminds me a loooottt of the dual coffee shop set used on both AMC and OLTL 2.0 lol (which was a lot bigger). I'll have to rewatch them again.

Violet is just intolerable. Laura is the most proactive mayor in history lol

I'm not sure I remember that one? I do know Julian's embarrassing pub they tried to give him when they pretended he was going straight as a good man. That is still around and I think Phyllis, Sonny and Nina's buddy from Nixon Falls owns it now.

Esme's adorable baby is the size of a Buick.

I love Michelle Hurd's work on the show - I've always been a big fan of hers going back to SVU or earlier and am so glad she's found a space to showcase her talent years later, and has seemed to be embraced by the Trek fandom. I think many of the stories for the new characters from S1-2 on Picard (much like DSC) are a bit tryhard and overwrought but Hurd plays it to the hilt with so much feeling and heart. I'd love to see what she could do on a more stable show a la SNW, which ideally a Titan show would be. I've just accepted that a lot of DSC is cringe at this point and embraced the silliness as a feature and enjoyed what I can of it. I'm far more invested in SNW and LD. Speaking of the non-Discovery/DSC shows: I think it makes sense that the recent generation of Starfleet officers (Shaw, Raffi, Seven, etc.) are much more damaged and cynical people - they are coming off stuff like the Borg, the Dominion War, the synth ban, etc. You see echoes of this even with the animated characters like Mariner on LD who we know served in the War. I think it's refreshing to see that no, they're not all alright after the fairly sanitized episodic utopia of some of the '90s years where so much was swept under the rug. And ideally you then present characters like Picard, etc. as being able to help them rise to the occasion despite their issues. But I do think some of the dialogue needs a touch-up and someone needs to put Shaw (a drinker and clearly a traumatized dude) in his place a bit more. The way he treated Picard and Riker when they came onboard his ship would not have flown at all in the TNG/DS9/VOY era. Even Janeway didn't treat visitors like that out in the Delta Quadrant, and those people weren't even Starfleet who outranked her like Picard and Riker. The constant therapy-speak and emotional orgies of Discovery OTOH, I'll pass. (Of course, TNG had plenty of therapy-speak for its time...)

I definitely would've liked to see her clash with Susan Pratt's prickly Claire, or get to know Maureen a bit. There was a great scene with the two of them fighting over Maureen's qualifications in a recent summer '84 ep I watched. Sort of an opposite situation, which I'm sure you already know about: Milli was the first Jim Craig on OLTL and played the interracial love triangle with Ellen Holly, only to be recast for whatever reason with the much older-skewing Nat Polen as a more conventional patriarch (to Holly's chagrin) which contributed to ending that story.