Vee

Damn! Curtis' hostess at the Savoy looks like she could beat up the entire male cast.

Not on network it won't, that's almost certain. I don't say anything for certain because I've been proven wrong about the wildest shít in the past (like AMC and OLTL coming back from the dead in record time).

B&B is an outlier; its style, tone and rhythm are totally different and so is its international audience and cachet. I think it'll run for some time to come just as is and can easily move to streaming if needed.

A question for the ages, and one Donna can rarely answer. Anyway, as to changing up the show: I just don't know. I do think streaming is the only real future soaps have, but Y&R is in no way equipped for it now, probably the least equipped soap left on air ironically; they have been comfortable at #1 by default and have done little to nothing to update or adapt. Their star paychecks even after what I'm sure are many pay cuts still have to be large. You could absolutely go back to the show's sensual, stylized roots, strip the cast down to a smaller guard, add new beautiful young people like the original cast and go back to 30 minutes on streaming, but what would that look like, and who in the current audience would watch it in large enough numbers?

Oh, that's wonderful.

I had no idea about DeWitt Bodeen and Val Dufour either! I know Bodeen via the Cat People films.

That is a very big assumption in this day and age. I don't actually think this strike is the death knell for GH or DAYS at least. I suspect they have planned for the strike and will muddle through one way or another. Y&R is another story. They are never recasting Jack again and most likely never firing Nick lol. I also think Griffith would rather cut off his arm than dump Thompson, MCE and several other played out people.

None of this is news to any of us. That doesn't change the fact that this is an extreme and very stupid move.

Britt was poisoned. They said that onscreen, there is no reason to doubt that. Do I think Heather was the original Hook at least in the scripts? No. Am I hoping another shoe will drop? Yes. Do I think the show is lazy enough to scrap it all and just blame Heather? Absolutely.

Even Logan is taking shots. As some will recall, he does not do that often unless he feels the target (like Ron at GH in 2015) is vulnerable.

Lord! Of course he moved to evangelical movies.

I'm sure some of them have taken cuts in recent years. But when you have that many top line stars it's not enough.

The stars.

Maria Arena Bell has not been at the show since 2012. The article from Branco dates back to '08. But yes, Griffith's relationship with the show and its personnel has been fractious for years. It's been suggested his relationships at CBS (Steve Kent?) and keeping the show functional are what keep him in place.

I'm not defending Griffith, but we have no idea if this is a mental health thing so much as clearly cutting costs to the bare minimum and Griffith being foolish enough to think he can do it all himself. Or it could be CBS/Sony pushing for it as well. I remember Gazzaniga from working on the PP soaps (I think they ended up one of the final de facto HWs near the end as PP kept cutting people to save their dwindling funds). I think Michael Conforti was one of the guys credited for the early youth writing for Dillon and Georgie at GH, though I may be wrong. I know Jeff Beldner's name but not from where.

It's cheap.

It's not a 'fake'.

IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong) Harding Lemay said in his book that after a couple years he ultimately took on the job of singlehandedly writing every script at AW himself after finding the work of what he rather discourteously called 'the sub-writers' on his staff to be below par. In a series of unnervingly casual and increasingly troubling asides throughout the same book, he also chronicles the subsequent breakdown and psychological collapse of his wife and then his entire family while he is churning out script after script after script five days a week, 12-20 hours a day, 365 days a year, spending every waking moment enmeshed in Another World. Good luck to Josh Griffith!

HAHAHAHA WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK @Darn

These repetitive Valentin/Anna safehouse scenes lately remind me of when Prospect Park's online OLTL very clearly only had Roger Howarth available for like two more days and clumsily shot almost the entire second half of his storyline in a hotel room where Todd Manning and friends would stand around, talk about their plans for the evil baddies (sometimes to himself) and then later come back to the hotel room talking about what they’d done re: said baddies elsewhere offscreen lol. I understand that while I may personally believe Valentin has all the commanding menace and charisma of Pee Wee Herman, Frank Valentini is absolutely smitten with JPS and is working with his recurring schedule but give me a break. Move this along or let Anna burn the place down the next time Valentin takes to the piano.

It's true. And I don't have a problem with sci-fi on soaps in doses, or with craziness or camp. I've defended a lot of Ron's wilder stories on OLTL or GH (like the gay marriage fest on OLTL which was ahead of its time, or the 1968 time travel arc which was fun and above all short). But there has to be roots in character, and in rootable couples and their human motivations before the wilder storyline. That train left the station for Ron with most stories and characters years ago. These days he often just leans on the same bag of tricks, throws up his hands and waits for his longest-running stans to say 'it's just for fun, don't take it so seriously, it's a soap opera'. I say that a lot too! But not when everything is wall-to-wall masks or poorly handled rape or the Devil hopping 3 bodies in a week, or whatever else. That devalues the show and the genre. The key to doing weirder stories on soaps, be it sci-fi or horror or fantasy or whatever, is to ground it in character and stuff the audience already loves, believes and can buy into. DAYS doesn't do that much anymore.

Oh God.

Pretty bonkers that Portia's family leaves before the wedding reception is over. I assume that when more than 3 non-white folks are on for multiple consecutive episodes Frank worries someone in the audience will call 911. The awkward reaction shots of everyone trying to react to Marshall's much-hyped, tinny-sounding barely-there flute playing like he's Will Ferrell in Anchorman made me wish it had turned out that he is in fact a terrible musician after the 40-year wait.

It actually makes sense as an organic character beat that Stella's intense faith and busybody nature would drive her to drop a dime on Portia - I love it. Why, if they want people to buy him as Drew, did they have TV host Cameron Mathison hosting the wedding just like he hosts way too much basic cable?? Laura was not feeling it when he took the mic.