Vee

I expect it to be a rough ride but can we maybe hold these posts til Wednesday morning lol

Ohhh, I think we know.

I don't believe there was ever any serious affair/temptation towards it portrayed between Monica and Rick on GH in 2002. At least I don't remember one. Yes, Alan chafed at his presence and it was awkward but that was about it IIRC. Which is why it galled me to discover that 5 or 6 years later they abruptly wrote in that Rick and Monica had resumed their affair offscreen shortly before his death, and Alan and Monica were written discussing it as though we were supposed to know.

Very sad but very unsurprising. His life had gone to dark places, then gone even deeper then did it again. I hope he's finally at peace.

Great to see this. I've always been intrigued by how this potential pairing came into the mix - I think dc has said Guza and Taggert(?) brought it up but Agnes dropped it for Trucker and Dinah Lee? Tyler and Collins were very hot together, but this was very bold for the time with the show's leading supercouple male and a Black woman (even if she was a longtime AMC star), and probably even bolder today sadly.

There's been a ton of big stories about it in the last couple months I encourage you to check out. David Zaslav and the new Discovery management have plopped a ton of Discovery 'flip this house', etc. reality content onto HBO Max and have been torching a number of original series that have no physical releases or alternate sources whatsoever, potentially rendering them lost media. All just to try to get tax writeoffs and untangle the massive debt they inherited from this merger. I don't see this union lasting.

It wouldn't shock me. Which is why I still think their much-hailed new Friday the 13th series from Bryan Fuller will end up vaporware, though it sounds very promising. (It always does when Fuller talks up a project he then either quits or watches get cancelled in pre-production, not that that's always his fault.) I can't see them throwing that kind of huge weight behind anything on Peacock if this downward slide continues for them. It's Discovery that is ripping HBO Max apart, having just bought up WB. It's a fire sale and they're callously pillaging both the film and TV libraries - dumping original streaming series without warning, etc. - just to keep the company together after inheriting a ton of debt. Discovery is reality TV/home improvement guys who don't see the value in Max. So Degrassi (among other prospective TV/film projects that pre-dated their merger) getting caught up in that purge doesn't shock me. But Degrassi as a property will outlive this messy Discovery merger, somewhere on some platform.

As always, apply salt where needed.

It's a shame, but Degrassi is immortal. It'll be back sooner or later.

That much-posted clip of her and Cowles together on AMC is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen on a soap. Just batshit.

I haven't, no. But that would jibe with Gollance's discussion of how much he trusted in her ability in his interviews.

Oh yeah, I've seen it. (I can't listen to longer than maybe a minute of the death tape from the following day) There was going to be either a HBO TV treatment of Tim Reiterman's excellent Jonestown expose Raven (a must-read for anyone interested in the case) a few years ago from Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad - Reiterman was one of the journalists who covered the Peoples Temple heavily in SF before heading to Guyana with the rest of Ryan's group and taking several bullets for his trouble. Amazingly he survived. The Raven project seems to have been derailed, but last I heard Leonardo DiCaprio had snapped up a Jim Jones feature script last year and planned to play Jones himself. We'll see what happens. But we're way off-track, lol.

It's the same old troll who likes to do those. Block and report.

I was a far too intrigued student of the Jonestown case for a few years. There were definitely press stories in the mix about Jones and the Peoples [sic] Temple for a large portion of the '70s - mostly in local press in San Francisco, CA, etc. and at one point they even had Rosalynn Carter's ear. It was a cause célèbre, Jim Jones was a flamboyant public figure so I would not be shocked by Slesar knowing of him. The Peoples Temple had a sophisticated PR apparatus and propaganda machine, and had garnered positive coverage and very public relationships with major California politicians for most of their existence despite IIRC clashing with other government agencies over their tax status and the growing suspicions re: ex-members, families, etc. In the later years the repeated rumors, whispers, and so on from concerned families, outcasts and various agencies finally began to drag them down with some more incisive press coverage, and that's when Jones moved the bulk of the Temple to Guyana in '77 (the settlement existed years before then, but the mass migration came late). A little over a year later, the massacre followed. This came close to happening at OLTL, where they had to very hastily scrap and reshoot what I presume was already-filmed material with Todd and Blair's plane crashing in Mexico the week of 9/11. They did it again in 2007 because of Dena Higley's planned school shooter storyline with Jonathan Groff following the Virginia Tech shootings. Sadly, in '07 those kind of shooters still seemed like a relative novelty.

That's a fascinating recollection of the cult storyline, thank you. I'd always been curious about it. It was very topical for the time given the ongoing controversy over Jim Jones and other cult movements like the Peoples Temple in that era, but unfortunately it ended up being too topical given what subsequently happened at Jonestown. You can't fault them for dropping it at all, but in another time and place it could've gone far further story-wise.

A few idle thoughts on Ep 11 of Season 6 (Distant Locations), where Val's finally gone AWOL: I love the almost direct-address-to-camera testimonials by the ensemble to the cops re: Val that open the show - more than most primetime soaps, KL always seems willing to experiment with different kinds of filmmaking and narrative technique in any given episode. The voice-over of them with Val wandering further and further is also well cut together. This is another great episode from series director Larry Elikann, who apparently only has a few left after seeming to cover so much of the show for so long. That's gonna be a big blow. I'm not sure when Bill Duke's last ep is but Nick Havinga, a recent addition, has done great work on the childbirth ep and a few other recent ones since. Gary's crypto-paternal relationship with Paul Galveston continues to develop in fascinating ways: Galveston tells Gary 'you'll be the one they remember, not Bobby, not J.R.' and Gary tells Abby, 'he gave me a vision of myself I never had before.' He's also got a lot to do with mysterious satellites, which again makes me wonder about what little I've heard of the Empire Valley plotline, which apparently spun out of control later on - I'd love to know what its original conception was if it indeed was created by this writing team, and what changed. But there'll be time for that when I get to it, I suppose. Karen doesn't stop being Karen even with her failing body, which I was pleased to see; just because she has a terminal illness storyline doesn't mean she is out of the rest of the action, whereas later primetime soaps (Melrose, etc) increasingly islanded characters. Both elements of the character are balanced off of each other, and it's heartbreaking to watch with Michele Lee having Karen soldier through it by simply trying to switch writing hands while searching for Val. There's nothing I can say about JVA's performance in the mirror, etc. throughout this ep that I'm sure many haven't said over 40 years. It's amazing work, and I had to go back and watch her one-take, no-cuts transformation into "Verna Ellers" twice. This episode was written by longtime series scribe Richard Gollance again, who we know was enchanted with JVA and her ability and has said in his interview with Tommy Krasker that he'd often let her do whole scenes in 'reveries,' with silence and minimal to no dialogue. But I was even more amazed by her channeling Val's conception of Abby in the bar as Val's fractured mind slips from madonna to whore and back again, with Val even quoting Abby's famous 'affair' speech from Season 3 back to the married woman she runs afoul of. I hadn't noticed until I did some digging that Val is going by the alias here of the main character from Nashville Junction, her second novel which was a critical/commercial? flop - another recent failure in her life. Her wardrobe and hair also very, very noticeably regress at the end back to that of the Val we met on Dallas and in the first two-three seasons of KL, the '70s country waif in peasant blouses with barrettes in her blonde mane. These are all such specific character and stylistic elements, such attention to detail you just don't get on most primetime soaps where plot comes first. Abby's amazing short bob has taken a turn! I hope it will recover from this unfortunate sidelong path down Mullet Way. I do truly believe Abby when she tells Lilimae and Gary she wants to help find Val with a P.I., but we already know before the reveal that he's her inside man that it's more than that - just as in the past seasons Abby has to control things, has to help in 'her way' to get what she wants first, which is Val not endangering her marriage. I don't necessarily believe the guilt-stricken Abby of the last few eps (who I've discussed a lot here recently) would try to keep Val gone forever, but I do think she wants Val in hand, wants to manage the situation with Val and the babies where she can keep Gary and keep the secret while also seeing Val doesn't come to worse harm. Maybe I'm naive, we'll see soon enough. Joshua's turn towards TV evangelism is slow and well-studied, and very topical for the time. They've done a clever job with Joshua so far in that he seems very benign and kind, but he will always interject some note of severe repression or Old Testament judgment in his attitude that will throw you just slightly no matter how pleasant he seems. He does it here this ep when he casually mentions to his preacher idol that his sister who he's so worried for had 'made mistakes.' Apparently Laura wants to go to D.C. with Greg Sumner after all, because we see them talking about post-coitus at her place as he meanders around her kitchen. This is the first time I think we've seen Greg inside the house, excepting his drunken stumble onto the premises when he showed up looking for her with only Cathy there. I wonder if the Avery boys know about Laura and Greg. Sumner starts prodding her quickly about Scott Easton after his name comes up re: Lotus Point, and Laura wisely seems to twig onto his intrigue, remembering how he used to feel her out about Wolfbridge. It's the tiny hints and intricate connections the Dunne team build slowly that work so well on this show, three seasons running. That is Jerry Lacy from Dark Shadows as Lilimae's surprise shrink!! I hope he returns. "Everything Scott Easton told me about you is true," Galveston tells Abby when they meet. The reveal that those two know each other and that he's clearly deeply involved in whatever the hell is going on with Val, the babies, etc. must've been a shock for the audience back in the day, even if Easton's disappearance had already led Abby back to Galveston Industries. I was slightly clued in, but I don't mind that as I was far too preoccupied a few eps ago trying to figure out why on Earth Easton would go out of his way to traffic Val's babies. I still don't know what this is all about with Galveston, but it's very intriguing. I don't know how many of these I'll produce more individual notes on ep by ep - I don't want to go on forever like before - but we'll see what I can maintain. Happy to be digging back into the show.

I agree. He still could be more! And he was sort of in the very early teen scene but not really, IIRC. I can't recall if he was still in town when Nik turned up.

In fairness, Sly lasted til like '96 so I don't count him as a casualty, and I'll never forget the beautiful scene Labine gave him and Luke after his father's death, and the supporting role with Lucky was fine. But yes, I think it was a very necessary purge.

I watched some of '92 a while back and found Bill and Holly pretty tryhard in an attempt to recapture Luke/Holly. It seemed like they went hard at it. But I think they were just searching for anything new that could work that year after the Monty II debacle.

I thought Bill and Holly was a big deal for the show in at least a portion of '92 - I seem to remember seeing them hot and heavy and even getting promos in eps from that spring or summer. I don't think they aimed to can Bill til sometime in late '92 or early '93, but I may be way off. I don't think losing either character was a factor when they started it, I think the newly arrived Riche was just throwing anything they could in the mix to see what might catch heat (Bill/Holly, Scott/Dominique, Jason?/Karen/Jagger, A.J. and Nikki, whatever). There was no good reason to bring Holly back at the time period IMO but I'm glad she didn't stay dead.

Me too. Which makes me wonder if he ultimately reconsidered the Bill/Holly thing and was happy to strike it from the show's memory. I can't recall specific quotes on Bill and Holly, I'd have to look it up, assuming the site with those clippings from the time is still up.

I can't see him covering for any writer. Maybe he was just so worn out after his recent medical troubles of the time and the drudgery of his final storyline that he was too checked out to care. But during Bill's run and not long after, Tony could quote every permutation of his story, life, romances and mindset chapter and verse in multiple interviews.

The hysterical shot of Tina's empty chair spinning as the camera cuts back during Dorian's interview has stayed me with for years.