Vee

100%.

I loved Paul and Rose with Holroyd in the role. I think Roger had it with Martha too tbh despite the totally unnecessary recast, but they were so committed to turning Paul into Todd Manning and never looked back (including almost replicating his "Hell No" wedding from OLTL with Rose in place of Blair) that it wrecked everything. Holden and Lily are hot as hell in the '80s Marland episodes I've been bingeing. The overall sexual and psychological dynamics on the show were way more complex and explicit than what we get on soaps now. But by the 2000s Jon Hensley was a boring, tired suburban dad onscreen.

Well, now they're just trying to get DAYS clout lol

Michelle, Ke, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee would all be well deserved. And Riseborough is brilliant but should win for other things (like her genre work, most of which wouldn't be nominated for the same reason Mia Goth wasn't for her dual role in X/Pearl - Riseborough's performances in TV like the UK show National Treasure and Netflix's Bloodline are also incredible). Ana should've won for Blade Runner. Viola also can do better (and not in a movie with those kind of issues). Michelle will have many more chances, whatever happens; she's great. I have actually already seen most of the films this year, but I do need to see Aftersun, The Whale and Women Talking. For me, TÁR and Nope are my films of the year and Elvis is the greatest Ken Russell musical biopic he never got around to - it is both brilliant and stupid but I loved it. I like EEAAO a lot as well. I am also glad Avatar is being honored by not being part of the comics superstructure, building its own crazy world and for staying with you. It is an old style epic.

Stephanie Hsu should probably win over Jamie Lee (who was fine), but Jamie Lee is getting up there and they love to give it to older people. They'll give it to the well-deserving Yeoh and call it even, that's how the Academy thinks. Not looking fwd to Riseborough spending the next several weeks as a Twitter Hate Figure when more people should know of her work onscreen in general, but not because of this flap. I can understand people having an issue with an actor doing a grassroots campaign and coming out of nowhere; I sure haven't seen her movie lol. But the time to have an issue with that kind of strategy was at least 30 years ago when crazy Sally Kirkland did it, or any time over the last century when many actors have done the same thing. And unlike some of them Riseborough is not an outlier or unworthy. I've seen far worse noms of far worse people. It's just the game. Ana de Armas is great but did not need a nom here. She got it because of popularity and talent from other things and the mimicry angle.

She's a consistently brilliant actress, so I'm for it whatever the role. Deadwyler should probably have gotten a nom over Ana de Armas and her stan army, but I am not going to comment on Woman King lol. Paul Dano was robbed though.

I'm aware of the affair with Ben, if that's what you're referring to. I'm not expecting much from the rest of her run for the character, but I do think the Joshua villain arc itself is quite good so far (and Cathy's TV role in it is even more relevant in the age of the pop-influenced West Coast megachurches like Hillsong today, which I'll discuss soon). It's killing me that I'll almost certainly be out of the Peter Dunne, et al era not long before this show goes to HD along with Dallas on some platform as the material is so good these last few seasons, but it's wonderful to watch just the same.

Additionally, B&B is a spinoff of Y&R. They have shared characters for years. Sheila first appeared on Y&R.

It's just my interpretation of the storyline. I feel it's been carefully paced with Joshua and that the seeds have been there from the start, but others can feel differently. I still enjoy Cathy, but I miss when she was central to story, in the thick of things with Gary and Abby which feels like a lifetime ago. Lisa Hartman is capable of a lot but they've really just had her as a suffering appendage to the Joshua storyline so far this season when she could be doing a lot more. I don't think they had much of a plan for Cathy beyond S5, and I think that's been borne out in some BTS interviews (though the writers seem to not be as fond of her original storyline vs. her later one with Joshua). I don't think she needed to stay paired with Gary; it was right to turn left, surprise the audience and re-unify him and Abby in the refreshing way they have. And I didn't have a problem with Cathy getting a new love interest, but she's just been cargo for Joshua's story since then. It's too bad because she could've had a stronger run on the show overall post-Ciji.

My understanding is writers, not just HWs, still make plenty on the soaps. I can't fault folks like MVJ, Mulcahey, etc. for riding the terrible stories on B&B out til the wheels fall off. For that money and security you'd probably have to pry me out of there with the Jaws of Life.

I still think she needs to a) go as nuts as her mom and/or b) get killed off by Sonny's business. Add another of Michael's dead women to the pile and write him out for a while.

Don't touch me, you slime!

I think Robin was great on the show! I always did, but I also always was terrified of Robin's performance and thought Janet was nuts. Her work still holds up as a tour de force like when she read the town to filth. That being said, she and Kiberd 100% sold their romance and chemistry despite my misgivings. Doesn't mean I thought she should kill him off and stuff his body in the freezer! That was too far. I was glad Broderick, Agnes, etc. squared the circle a bit at the end between both versions of Janet with Collins in the final months.

It was always over the top and never made sense, and I enjoyed the show a lot in those years but even then I knew it was nonsense. They went on and on about the evils of the Quartermaines, but all I ever saw were fussy, goofy rich people arguing over pizza and stocks. You were not exactly dealing with Victor Newman in his prime at that point in that household. The only saving grace for that mess was how devoted Emily was to them early on (and later still, when she wasn't bitching about Jason and Michael) and how good Amber was.

I am very concerned about Leslie and I doubt I'm the only one. Real Andrews should be on more, but they seem committed to the most boring characters possible (Curtis). There are way too many kids on GH due to the overuse of baby stories, just like GL and AMC before it. They occasionally show Sam and Dante's teenaged kids and I often forget who they are. They're too old and as for the overall there's too many of them (not to mention the fact that Sam also has a rarely-seen daughter with Drew you didn't mention who I also forgot existed). Aiden can stay small, and the only one I have an investment in Hudson West's Jake; he is more talented than a lot of the cast so of course they don't use him and will prob recast him with a Dex clone.

I seem to recall Erica and Janet getting a lot of airtime together in the last year or two when they did that Erica double storyline or something (the double's name was Jane). I think they were in a hospital together? I may be wrong. I know that part of the aim of Agnes and Lorraine Broderick in the last few months was clearly to re-humanize Janet more. She was still very loopy but she was presented as the daffy mother trying to be there for her daughter with cancer or whatever it was Amanda had. I thought Collins was very good, though it was a world away from the Janet Robin Mattson had played. IIRC they let him go. It may partly have had to do with Eplin's well-known even then sex pest behavior. He was a great, sexy actor whose work I miss but he had a reputation which has only gotten worse since social media.

Afton deserved reparations from the state for what she put up with with Cliff.

It always annoyed me. They resolved this finally in the mid-2000s with Sami and John IIRC, but then regressed it back later. I think they're on better terms again now.

This isn't even getting to the part where post-AW, JFP still considered Jensen a huge enough draw to pull her out of her guest stint as Vicky's ghost on ATWT mid-stream to get her onto GH as quickly as possible once she took over that show, leading to legal action from CBS/P&G when JB was airing on both shows at the same time. Buchanan's brief run on GH was one of the most unpopular forced new leads ever, and led to the downfall of both JFP and McTavish at that show.

I still don't know what period it was when they apparently floated recasting Vicky with Kelly Rutherford (Generations, later of Melrose Place). Cynthia Watros did a temp fill-in for Jensen late in the run, after GL. Anne Heche, who was a movie star at that point, wanted to do it as a favor to the show but her agents vetoed it. Meanwhile they kept rolling out the red carpet for Jensen.

They clearly adored her and it was a ridiculously OTT sendoff. She died because she wanted to, they'd have brought her back any time for more pointless stories.

Agreed. It also would never have worked because she's limited, but that's another discussion.

If the first 20 are just up like that, I'm willing to bet the rest will turn up commercially as well. It wouldn't shock me if Kanopy, the free nationwide public library streaming service, got them (though I haven't looked) as they did with Bill Gunn's wonderful avant-garde soap Personal Problems, which I think only went out to PBS affiliates in the early '80s (and then migrated to local radio).

I was doing some late night digging around about the '80s soaps and stumbled across this. Ralph Senensky is a living legend, one of the Golden Age of Television directors, doing a ton of work on everything from the original Star Trek to Dynasty. He chronicles his extensive experience on the Dynasty pilot and first season in the Dynasty section at the link. He's still going strong at 99, and this blog appears to have been written in the last couple years. You can also find extensive entries on the many, many other shows he worked on.