Vee

They're right. But this show is obsessed with generic baby stories and has been afraid to discuss abortion since well before Dobbs last year, and I have no faith in them ever maturely or openly discussing COVID or abortion rights on a show uniquely suited to take these issues on.

Burke's death is absolutely a classic fake soap death that seemed primed for him to turn up alive (and maybe was intended to leave the door open). I fully expected to see him return when I was a kid watching on Sci-Fi, as I was already very familiar with the old plane crash chestnut from soaps. For whatever reason they never pulled the trigger though and just moved on to pairing Vicki with Roger Davis. Maybe they felt the Anthony George recast was not working and that the character was too uniquely paired with Mitch Ryan (who'd made himself unemployable due to his alcoholism). I also always loved the very dark note of ambiguity to Burke's presumed death: The possibility raised in the scripts, I believe, that Barnabas could have had something to do with his plane going down, perhaps by appearing on it.

The problem is it never lasts. They try it out for a few weeks or months at a time and then she's back to mooning over Billy or the latest spare dude and wearing pashmina or making her own granola. And after almost two decades of this I just don't see why we should keep hoping they get it right the next time they flirt with not writing Victoria like an ABC Daytime heroine. She is simply not strong or consistent enough to warrant keeping her around for that possibility. But they're never going to recast Heinle so it doesn't matter.

I will always love Tasha Yar but it is obvious they have no investment in this character with Denise in the role lol. She is not suited for heavy material. If they wanted to invest seriously in these two characters (which they could and should do) they'd have cast daytime heavyweights like Robert Newman or Colleen Zenk to raise hell at GH. They aren't invested in any real story for them or for Liz, that's why the entire Webber storyline wrapped in literally 3 days after dragging on for like a year.

Heinle has never been very good as Victoria. What's really trippy though is when she first came on, some eps from which they showed on CBS during the COVID lockdown in 2020, they were clearly testing pairing her up with Jack.

I still don't know!

It is absolutely not true that soaps only started bringing characters back from the dead in the '90s.

Another proud moment where when Donna states a BTS fact I need a minimum of three other primary sources to back it up.

That's dumb. I'd thought the drugging fucked with her memory up til very shortly after she returned. It seemed clear to me the Brenda who first turned up in Rome? Milan? in like 2000 was not in her right mind to be living it up in secrecy away from her loved ones.

I thought Brenda had no idea who she was until not long after she returned in '02 and that Luis had told her she was definitely ill.

I'm curious about this - how so? I'm not challenging you, I'm just curious. I know they'd introduced Vicky, Marley, Jake, Donna, Michael, etc. in the mid-80s before his return.

Today in utterly predictable yet still welcome outcomes:

Bringing back OG Tony was Hogan Sheffer's baby. Higley took over and didn't give a fùck.

No chance they kill Nikolas permanently.

Thaao is just pure queeny camp period lol. I have shrugged off him playing them pretty much the same. I do think he still adds some more pathos and genuine earnestness to Tony though - he's always seemed to appreciate that they brought the real, mostly heroic character back after so long (twice). I am happy Tony is around, I never liked how Higley immediately wasted his resurrection when she took over.

Don't watch 2001 except for morbid curiosity. I mean, I might again. It was that bad.

I still think the iron is hot enough for Disney/ABC to revamp their soap properties with great self-congratulatory fanfare on something like this - but if they did it they'd probably do it via Hulu. Unless they're considered too declasse for the current Hulu brand atm, and anything F.A.S.T.-oriented ends up being a tier below Hulu somehow.

This one's for you, @DramatistDreamer: I increasingly suspect F.A.S.T./FreeVee-type platforming is a future for American soaps if the networks choose to actually invest in them, much as it seems it may be for Neighbours in Australia.

The really weird thing about Andre is the period when they seemed to legitimately be trying to play him like Tony in the late 2010s, just having him in a normal romantic role with Kate, etc. This is a deranged undead serial killer but the show would not distinguish between them and was like 'they're basically the same! you guys don't mind, right?' Finally someone wised up, killed him and brought Tony (the good one, who Andre posed as for most of the 90s and 2000s) back properly. For now.

Nope, too much!

Smart move:

Woof, Adam Huss is not gonna cut it permanently.

More people everywhere know The Addams Family and Wednesday than anything else she ever did. I had no idea she was ever on ATWT, let alone talk show fodder.

Billy Miller was much later. They should've capitalized on how they very smoothly and deliberately brought A.J. in days after Jason's 'death' - a stroke of genius narratively, IMO - but instead they were more focused on prioritizing the OLTL 3 again. They were the issue, not Miller. I love Billy Warlock but he's too old for the part now and looks it, and was never as popular or charismatic in the role as Kanan, who has buzz again from Cobra Kai. I'd bring him back in an instant (say Michael and Monica have kept his survival a secret), but Michael needs a long, long break from the canvas, same as Maxie.

They dropped it all because they were brainstorming how to bring Roger Howarth and co. back, and pair Carly with the serial killer who got her son raped. Such a waste.