Vee

Well, Andrew Shue (Melrose Place) is about to be back in the news because of this trending scandal featuring his wife, GMA anchor Amy Robach:

Yes, he does that. Sometimes it works for the characters, sometimes it's random but it suited his often-psychotic character on OLTL. But my problem is more when he is just literally sending up all his scenes and mocking them. An issue that plagued both Todds at different times.

I watched him chuckle his way through a ton of rape stories on OLTL. My patience is limited.

He's still handsome but he really has aged fast. He is giving his same typical performance though. He doesn't try unless a soap challenges him, and instead starts doing weird shít and smirking through any and all serious material. He better watch that with Eileen because if he tries to throw a scene to the left she doesn't play.

I'm just happy to see Felicia. They really have turned the Q mansion into a suburban house. The kitchen area looks like the Fresh Prince set from almost 30 years ago. But Alley Mills is having a ball as Heather, it's still nice to see Finola, Tristan and Kristina, and the little dude playing Leo is adorable and wonderful representation. He reminds me a lot of my nephew on the spectrum except not super spoiled.

I really don't know what to say. My mother was a devoted fan of Fleetwood Mac. My first memory of their music is Christine McVie and her songs on Rumours and the self-titled album prior. I was very small and asked my mother one day who was singing one of the other Stevie songs on the album - she answered 'Stevie Nicks', and I assumed that was the group's only singer, and spent another few years amazed at how one woman could throw her voice. Once I discovered the truth I was fascinated by Christine's soothing voice and deceptively simple lyrics. Some of her songs are both the most touching and the most haunting. I remember when, in early adolescence, I discovered a new FM album I didn't know about - Tusk, a very experimental, edgy piece of work - I was instantly transported by her opening track (Over and Over, which @Faulknerposted above) and by this one as well, which still haunts me. (Especially the very, very faint voice saying 'don't touch me' in one of the early choruses.) Christine made a strong return doing a duo album with Lindsey Buckingham - clearly a swipe by him at Stevie, who allegedly had dragged her feet on recording new music for the group. I always held out hope that FM would mend fences with Lindsey again so I could see them all together live. Christine wasn't just the glue, she was the soul of the group and its serene central nexus. Her music could do anything and was much more complex than it was sometimes given credit for. With Christine gone, Fleetwood Mac can never quite be what it was. Her voice and the ghosts in her sound are undying.

Ben Smith's new venture Semafor has gleefully stepped in it again after an attempt to 'un-cancel' Junot Diaz:

Ke Huy Quan richly deserves this. What a Hollywood story after starting out in so many of our childhoods, when he was a kid himself, then walking away and coming back again.

57?? Damn, she looks good.

The immortal Marcia Cross (MP, DH, OLTL, EON) is appearing on FOX's primetime country soap Monarch. No, I don't watch it.

Does Dawson's Creek count as a primetime soap? I think so. Anyway, this was classy:

A shot I haven't seen of Gatwa and Gibson:

Two recent losses - - both have surprise cameos playing Among Us over Zoom with Daniel Craig in Glass Onion.

Noah Segan (ex-Connor Lockhart, DAYS), a regular collaborator of director Rian Johnson, appears in Glass Onion just as he's done in all of Johnson's films.

Not an actual lost film (or real at all), but a hilarious social media phenomenon that even its alleged director, Martin Scorsese, has gotten in on the joke for: Goncharov And yes, this part is real:

I thought Carl had improved a lot in recent years, and he was a foundational part of the show who was always intended by the creators to go on. I thought it stripped a key piece of the core out of the show. I also had zero interest in Negan's 'redemption.'

Imagine showing up to troll people about 40 year old magazine articles on Falcon Crest on Thanksgiving.

She'll be fine, she's just staying for a little more physical therapy, but thanks. Watch Andor!

Agreed. Scott Bryce was more than capable of playing the cold, scheming Craig he returned to deal with in the late 2000s. He was effective at that onscreen. The problem is the show was utter hackwork by then and gave him nothing else to flesh out, so when he attempted to at least layer the character again within the performance beyond the poor writing Chris Goutman would not tolerate it. Hunt Block was very good within a specific range, but Bryce was a chameleon.

Still the best show of the year, and so relevant for now. With a parent in the hospital over the holiday, the finale was especially resonant for me.

Meanwhile:

I need to review this for details on whatever the hell happened with Jared and Natalie's storyline in 2009. John Brotherton does have a great anecdote about how a major primetime casting director told him that any time they need to recast for a TV show or pilot quickly, their first call is 'my soap opera rolodex,' because daytime vets can execute quickly.

The thing about Heather Tom as Kelly on OLTL is both she and Dan Gauthier as Kevin did end up being popular with the audience. Fans were not pleased when Brian Frons cut them both. Kelly as a character hadn't really been popular since the late '90s, after Nathan Fillion left as Joey and once Kelly did the hit and run that killed Blair's baby. Her pairing with Timothy Gibbs' Kevin under JFP was also extremely unpopular and turned the audience off of both characters. When they were reintroduced in 2003 it was a departure, but Michael Malone and Josh Griffith made a bold move: They leaned into the problematic nature of the characters' changes instead of trying to whitewash it all. Kevin and Kelly under JFP in 1999-2001 had been, put simply, pious hypocrites who had left Joey out in the cold to have an affair and present their romance as a great love story. (They were so widely disliked that when JFP left and Gary Tomlin took over the show didn't bother giving Tim Gibbs, playing a core character, an onscreen exit.) When they returned as played by first Gauthier and Tracy Melchior (almost certainly a placeholder for someone) then Tom, they were the same: Pious hypocrites who had parlayed their social standing into political prominence. The difference between the two creative regimes was the writing treating them much more honestly. Kevin and Kelly in the post-JFP 2000s were treated as a dysfunctional, messy relationship from the jump. I enjoyed Heather Tom immensely in the role because of who Kelly was and because she and the writing leaned into it; Kelly was a self-pitying hypocrite, running from a troubled family and childhood, who hid behind her social standing to get what she wanted or what she thought she wanted (Ace). Fans also loved Gauthier as Kevin because he sold the truth about who Kevin had become; a smarmy political scion who deep down was going to be broken apart by events both of his own making and beyond his control and be rebuilt as a character. It was only when Kevin and Kelly were taken apart and deconstructed by the events of the baby switch storyline that they became sympathetic and viable again. They became OLTL's answer to Alan and Monica Quartermaine and, before their ignoble exit, were a popular pairing together with the audience, who decried the actors' firings. The complete antithesis of where they'd started under JFP with Tim Gibbs and a perhaps less enthused Gina Tognoni. OLTL tried to bring Gina back later and simplify the character bringing Kelly back to 'her roots' as a carefree screwball comedienne. It didn't work over a decade later, with Gina having since played a much more complex, nuanced dramatic role on GL as Dinah Marler. Nobody bought it and the return failed. But the one moment she really worked when she came back in 2010? The few days they gave her with Dan Gauthier.