Vee

They're scared of it because she is Black, not Eden McCoy, and because Frank Valentini and perhaps the network are still operating on an outmoded mentality of coddling Midwestern grandmas from over a decade ago. Frank learned the lessons of the "Kish" backlash on OLTL, where he wiped the canvas clean of minorities and gays after a significant demo drop in that area, too well. They think a shrinking, rural white senior demographic is their primary remaining audience, their meat and potatoes (and they may or may not be right after years of minority marginalization), and they are afraid of how it will react to a frontburner interracial teen couple. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until something changes.

Spencer and Trina still ain't kissed yet? A year plus and counting? Just checking!

And now, the conclusion: Episode 8 of Season 6, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is famous for reasons I don't think I need to elaborate on for most people here. I knew vaguely of some of the events coming but not the hows, whys or specifics, which made it all very compelling for me. This ep is also the first fateful mention of the mysterious Paul Galveston, where we get a warning about him very early on: "No one works with him, you only work for him." Like Wolfbridge in S5, the writers very slowly start to weave first offhand references to Galveston and his empire into the show. First, like Wolfbridge, there's connections without a name attached then more direct references; Laura looking for water sources for Lotus Point and getting wind of a bigger power player in the region. Once again the show draws disparate and seemingly unconnected threads together slowly, and of course we're about to discover just how deep Galveston's involvement in the core of the show really goes - all I knew was he was a major business player who made trouble for several characters and is apparently Sumner's father or something, but I did not expect him to be tied into Val's babies. I do suspect the deeply strange "Who Killed Loder?"/Tidal Basin subplot with Mack and his ex-con right hand Tom Jezik (amazingly still on the show and a regular recurring player, which I did not expect a year ago), all about a dirty cop and some dead women, is also connected to Galveston but I have no idea at present. That whole weird story is fascinating so far though in that it seems so random. Ep 8 also gives us Cathy singing "Time After Time"! It's no Cyndi but Lisa Hartman does a great job and then moves directly into an old Ciji track. They've transformed the character a lot very quickly, but I'm not too fussed about it. I can buy her trying to move on from the kind of person she was with Ray and Gary real quick. Alas, Mack is finally moving out of Ben's. Their comic and occasionally homoerotic relationship will hopefully live on. That's the end of the funny little loose ends for this episode as it's time for the main event: The creepy lullaby music as Val goes into labor is terrifying, and it's so unsettling as she tries to call around the neighborhood with no one home and phones ringing in empty houses - except for the Fairgate boys, who are partying with sub-Friday the 13th Part III disco music while Eric is happily fed pizza by a young lady while also wearing a rather well-fitting red striped top. The boys rush Val to the hospital and are clearly very worried for her, which is touching to watch. The birth sequence is incredibly disturbing in spite of dated camera effects - the close-ups on Val's face and Ackerman in almost direct close-ups to the camera, howling away in either direction, the mix of triumphal orchestral music with the creepy discordant synths. Anyway, Ackerman gives Val the bad news as the biggest story in Knots history begins, and all Val can say is "but I saw them. I heard them cry." And so did the audience! This must have been the most insane mindfuck of a twist for a live viewing public without spoilers or streaming BITD. And it's very hard to watch JVA like this as she takes the news, having radiated joy about these new children after the struggles of her desperate youth for well, a few too many months for a TV pregnancy, but never mind that. There's also an intriguing cut during these events directly to Abby soothing a crying Olivia following another of her (prophetic?) nightmares just before or after Val gives birth - an almost mystical, supernatural element is almost intuited with this connection between the two, not unlike the townsfolk of Twin Peaks reacting psychically to evil acts in the night on that show a few short years later. Gary has a great, cryptic line to Abby as he goes to Val upon hearing she's gone into labor: "You have nothing to worry about. You never have." When you look at that statement through the lens of how the Ewings came back together against impossible odds at the end of last season and the start of this one, and how Gary ran headlong after Abby when he saw her taken hostage while leaving Val behind, it has a new and unique impact. That doesn't mean I don't think Gary loves Val, or that she's not in his blood, because she is, the same as Abby. But it's different, and I think Gary knows at least part of that. That's why he tells Abby she has nothing to worry about - because he believes it. At this juncture in their lives anyway, when push comes to shove I suspect he'd always be the man chasing after her because of how she excites and inspires him. Abby seems genuinely sad for Val when Gary breaks the news about the twins, and it's well played by Donna Mills. It’s not camp or bitchery, and the slightly guilty sigh of relief she lets out after hanging up their call is real and conflicted too. then comes the final call in the dark from a brusque mystery man in the dark asking for "the father’s blood type," which is creepy as fùck. Abby's mounting dread as she begins to put the pieces together about what the man calls "the children in question" must have mirrored the audience's. This was the absolute right way to do this story vs. what they'd originally planned for Abby, but I'll get to that more in a bit. Julie Harris' performance as Lilimae reacts to the news about the twins in Ep 9 is possibly harder to watch than JVA's. It feels like the weight of all her own sins coming down on her, like something she feels punished for far more than Joshua. There's a lot more film noir lighting in Abby's drawing room, and Ben's office, in the hospital corridors with the camera prowling down through the shadows as Gary and Ben discuss events, then as Gary comes home to Abby, who listens in horror as Gary muses that Val thinks she saw the twins. Off-kilter camerawork persists in the fallout from the 'miscarriage' even in the sunlit cul-de-sac. Everyone's staggered reactions are played out carefully, including Karen and Mack returning from their seaside trip happy in love and getting the bad news from the boys - there's a great moment where Karen wordlessly bolts into the house. They also do a beautiful job with a key scene with Lilimae sadly dismantling the nursery with the help of Gary, of all people. When he quietly confessed he wanted the twins to be his, they gave Lilimae the admittedly portentous but graceful line "in a way they were." "You are the continuous thread that runs through her life," she acknowledges. "And you," Gary counters. They hold hands as he helps her take the cribs apart, and finally seem to have found some degree of common ground after years. Shackelford and Harris don't vie for power, they're just very giving to each other onscreen. We all know it's not always that way on other soaps in either daytime or primetime. The gaslighting aspect of Val's story, and the veil falling behind her eyes as she tries to put on a genial face, hits very different in today's world. Other reactions also get space to play out: Karen wanting to cancel Thanksgiving dinner (Val says no), and an equally naive and damaged Joshua earnestly asking his new favorite TV preacher if Val's miscarriage is retribution for her sins. He's still shot through with dogmatic puritanism and dysfunction despite his earnest and unworldly innocence, and that's what makes him potentially dangerous. So of course, the pastor suggests Joshua try writing a sermon of his own. I'm pretty sure I know where this is going and it's quite topical for the time. The atmospheric direction from the early sequences post-tragedy kicks into high gear at the close of Ep 9 as a dazed Val wanders through her now-empty nursery, with the roving camera from above following her as she shrinks into herself in a light-shafted corner of the blank space. They have Gary go fetch her, where Val confesses, "we should never have gotten married again." (She might be right, despite how killer they've been together since early Season 5.) But as Gary says, "I've never regretted it." Both statements of note. Mack’s Thanksgiving speech for the ensemble at the MacKenzie house is very classy stuff, owning his mistakes and being humble and thankful for having his new family back. Abby being back in the cul-de-sac for a community event for the first time in several years is something I made note of about this ep a couple pages ago, and it's trippy to see her there; you can tell she's uncomfortable, having previously tried to beg off IIRC, but it's fitting that she is there and we get to see her and the others having to adjust to who she is now vs. the rest of them. Even Tom Jezik is there! The dinner is pretty wholesome and comforting in the face of a monstrous tragedy; everyone in turn gets to give thanks and give their own perspective on the various storylines of the moment, and that feels very of a piece with something daytime would do at its best. Of course there's a twist in the tail at the end, when Gary and Val return and Val cheerily chirps, "Gary and I were late again as usual." Just ambiguous enough to be unsettling for the freeze frame. A brief interlude: Greg Sumner spends his Turkey Day alone in his suite, with even more atmospheric lighting, lonely angles and shadows on him and his perfectly plated hotel food. There's very little said between him and the help. A little artistry on this show says more than most dialogue. By Ep 10 ("Message in a Bottle") Val is flying a kite in her hallucinatory erotic dreams of her, Gary and a cheerful Abby on the beach. A lot to unpack there, and obviously Val is not well. This is another very well-shot episode from newcomer(?) Nick Havinga who also did Ep 8. "I had no business raising an Ewing, let alone being one," Val calmly tells Ben, while also seeming to quietly blame J.R. for what happened to the twins. I was wondering if they'd hit that beat, and I'm glad they did. It makes sense her mind would go there. All the stuff with Abby from this point on is straight out of '70s conspiracy thrillers, all Alan J. Pakula or Sidney Lumet's greatest hits, stuff like Klute or The Parallax View - creepy phone calls, tinkling music, disappeared people. Abby races out to the Galveston Industries plane on its airstrip accompanied by amazing Harry Manfredini-esque strings, only to find no Scott Easton waiting for her - just a strange Easton doppelgänger. Abby rapidly turns into an '80s TV version of a Hitchcock Blonde with all the fashion, trappings and music to match as she scrambles to hunt down Easton, play phone tag and unravel the scheme that is turning her world upside down. This is compounded further after (in another smart plotting move) Olivia goes to see Val, who lets Olivia in on the secret of her very much alive babies; Olivia tells Abby, who acts on her own concern by going straight to Val's doctor: Ackerman. She knows something is up, and she tells him she knows he knows - on another show a character like Abby wouldn't necessarily do that, trying to undo a horrible crime against someone she's supposed to hate and fear. Instead of Abby as the direct conspirator as was originally planned (and vetoed by Donna Mills), her role is repositioned so that her culpability is mitigated. Instead the story becomes a conspiracy thriller starring Donna Mills, where we know she has done mischief in the past and gotten in over her head, but here she becomes almost the audience identification figure in the storyline - the only person who knows something is up, trying to learn the truth about something she never intended to happen but feels guilt for. They go so far with this as to have Abby storm Galveston Industries, security be damned, with the viewer cheering her on; here, she find Easton's weird doppelgänger who essentially says Easton is dead and watch your step. Her growing paranoia and fear is so well played, so carefully built up, and by the end of the ep Abby is literally rocking in her chair out of sheer nerves. She's tried to do her due diligence, which is a smart move by the writers by way of Mills. She becomes the protagonist, or at least the antiheroine. It's brilliantly nuanced character and plot work and you'd never know they didn't originally plan it this way as opposed to something that Mills is right about - the original idea would've left Abby irredeemable. Paul Galveston finally appears in the flesh in Ep 10, where he and Gary bond over horses and ranches. The surrogate father/son angle here, with Galveston appearing to be a superficially kinder sketch of Jock Ewing to Gary, is not lost on me and is a fascinating idea if they lean into it. Which is notable given I know whose father he apparently really is. The whole weird Loder/Tidal Basin storyline continues in this ep with a focus on Jezik, still the most unlikely surprise recurring player. There's a super-cinematic suspense sequence of Jezik meeting a contact at a foggy abandoned warehouse with a drip-drip-dripping water faucet, followed by silhouetted men grabbing him and working him over for snooping in the wrong places. It's very well done, but this whole side story is still baffling yet spellbinding to me because unlike Wolfbridge it feels beamed in from another show, with most of the events (murders) and key players (a dead cop named Loder) taking place offscreen. I assume it must go back to Galveston too - this team loves giant umbrellas on this show - but the jury is out for me on how well it will play in the final analysis. There's a nice sequence in this ep too as Karen listens to Val tell her origin story about falling for Gary, calling him 'this blond god' who helped her in the diner back in Texas. But most of Ep 10's stuff with Val is given over to her collapsing psyche, with a terrifying, brilliantly shot sequence with Joshua walking in on Val talking to herself in the dark about the babies, and then a campier but equally spooky dream sequence of her in a blazing white hospital room with creepy Ackerman, her family and her men all looking on in scrubs, chiding her, gaslighting her. Val's rightful paranoia gives way to paranoid delusions against her loved ones, and that leads to her finally making her getaway. JVA is genuinely frightening in this stuff so far, and with the first third of an already epic season down (maybe my favorite for now, and not just for the baby story but for the evolutions in Abby, Gary and Sumner so far) I'm very excited to finally continue on with the show.

I think the indicators that Ron seemed to be angling towards pairing Sonny with Leo suggests they were going to do more with him - they like Tinker and know the fans like him, hence trying to latch Leo to him to once again make one of Ron's 'bad guys' into a romantic hero via a series of diminishing returns (Gwen, etc). Not that I'm into that story at all, because it's OOC and also so predictable with Ron and his beloved camp antiheroes/villains at this point. Still, it's typical DAYS if they lost ZT.

I think most of us feel that way here.

I believe most of the polls. I think whatever happens will be tight - I think it's likely we keep the Senate, and possible the House margin of loss is fairly tight. But there's also a question of what you poll for and how many.

Kirsten has looked rough for years and the wardrobe doesn't help. But we've all said both she and the character need a long break from the show.

I'm happy they're cast and I like the actors, but there's no reason to trust in GH to deliver competent story.

William Moses is in a perfectly reasonable age range to play Jeff Webber, lol. Come on.

I didn't know that - I'll have to look closer at some of the interviews posted around about this after the story wraps for me. I think her being gone what, 8 episodes or something like that is enough. I also know there's a lot of chaos around whatever the Empire Valley/conspiracy plotline is that I think begins late this season, and it seems the Peter Dunne team had one plan and the incoming Dallas creative team next season had another? I haven't dug into it much yet because I want to experience the storyline fresh. I do think there are already hints that Joshua has a real darkness to him given his pathological repression re: Cathy, saying maybe Val losing the twins was God's will for her sin, etc. They've said he was always intended to be one year and out.

Tasha?!

James Bennet, fired from the NYT for the infamous Tom Cotton op-ed, is definitely not mad in this far too sympathetic piece from the already cursed Semafor, which is still entertaining given his abject fury:

Jake Sherman and Punchbowl (a.k.a. Politico Max) tried to launder McCarthy's comments somewhat when they did the initial reporting, but the word is out this morning:

Some long-delayed notes on Season 6, Episodes 5-7; I'll post stuff for 8-10 a little later but I wanted to break these messages up as it's too much. I discussed the first four of Season 6 on the last page (along with the tail end of S5). I have been very busy with IRL stuff for the last month, and also wanted to be sure to cycle all this mess out onto the forum before I continued with the remainder of Season 6. Once I clear the decks on the first third of S6 with this annoying spam I defy anyone to read, I will be resuming my KL binge. I was glad for the break, as mainlining a ton of the back and front ends of S5-6 at once was a lot to take on. I will say watching KL alongside House of the Dragon has been an intriguing, and simpatico viewing experience. There's a lot of tonal similarities! The two romantic foils for Ben and Mack during their relationship drama - Ben's Pacific News coworker P.K. Kelly and Mack's old flame for Jane Sumner - have varying responses from me. Millie Perkins is a good actress but is made up very matronly as Jane, and Mack's torch for her seems a bit implausible for a variety of reasons, like they've just kludged it into the Mack/Sumner backstory. Fortunately the show cuts it short quickly. With the so-so Ben/Kelly thing, they at least have Kelly admit that playing with Ben is a diversion from her own past romantic troubles. The actress, Wendel Meldrum(?), is decent and a graceful presence onscreen. So there's that. Where is James Westmont at Lotus Point? What's become of Abby's former right hand? Abby is sure Gary and Karen will tire of the development, and lies in wait to regain control: "I built Lotus Point from the ground up, I went through all the battles, I got my hands dirty. It wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me." I do love Gary and Abby still jousting over the business in the steam room, happily bantering about both their shared and opposing goals while deep in carnal embrace in their sauna now that they're both on something like the same page. The grand opening of LP is a great event for the show too, featuring Karen's incredible hat and outfit as well as a fun mix of the Knots Landing gang with the monied class Gary and co. have merged into. Sumner mounts a strong defense of his opponent, Caulfield, for the press after Abby calls his bluff on their mutually assured destruction pact; it seems he's found the limits of his flexibility vs. his morals post-Wolfbridge. There's an interesting beat at the party where Abby meets Joshua, and then Cathy pointedly stakes her claim. In their romantic scenes Joshua is played as the virginal ingenue with Cathy the aggressor. Joshua is repressed but overcome amidst the teeming, misty wildlife splendor; it's sort of an externalization of their inner tumult and passion. Aaaand the shoe drops at the end of Ep 5 as Abby loads up a fateful floppy disk and discovers Ben's love note to Val, which she can't help but read as it scrolls across the screen. Donna Mills has some hilarious visual reactions mocking the opening text of the letter, then as Ben's voice-over drops the bomb, her shining face and red outfit are murkily half-reflected in the black old school Apple? computer screen. Great finish. This leads to the storyline turning more and more rapidly towards film noir in subsequent episodes, with Scott Easton and Abby plotting in her new eco-paradise office as she watches Gary and Val talking through the curtains, paranoid and unaware they’re talking about the MacKenzies. You don't initially know what exactly Easton is setting in motion or why, and I'm still not sure on the specifics. We also get an early glimpse of the creepy moon-faced Dr. Ackerman shortly after this, without initially knowing who he is - the reveal is set for when Val visits him at his office. The dissolution of Greg and Jane Sumner's marriage is brutal and spread across several episodes. She makes an attempt at reconciliation after the Wolfbridge chaos, but Greg coldly tells Jane she knows nothing about him anymore. Then he goes AWOL days before the election, before turning up drunk at - wait for it - Laura's (who's out of town and over him)! I loved that stab of vulnerability beneath his armor, and I love the overall plot arc so far of the writers deconstructing Greg Sumner, who had been fascinatingly opaque for much of his first year. He's been delving into a long dark night of the soul ever since he killed Mark St. Claire in cold blood and discovered the full weight of the price of his 'flexibility' and colluding with Wolfbridge in the first place. When he finally returns on Election Day, Jane pleads with Greg: "You're coming apart. You want to lose this election, Greg. Can't you see that?" But Greg refuses - there’s a part of him that wants to be punished for his 'compromises,' he admits to her, which is a big admission for him, but it's not big enough. Jane warns him that sooner or later he'll lose it all because he can't take it. When he does win over Caulfield, there's some great handheld camerawork as Sumner rattles on before the press and staff about the family of man. Greg is exhilarated again but Jane's had enough; he's won but she wants a divorce. Meanwhile, Laura's not in the mix right now bc of his bullshít, all the same behaviors Jane lived with for years. When Jane says she can't watch him fall apart, Greg instinctively, brutally reacts in the same violent way Devane often shows us whenever Greg is really impacted beneath his charisma and cool: "Why wait?” he snaps. Then he storms out, telling his aides to give his wife ten minutes to get out, and shuts the door in Jane's face as she cries. The character is absolutely fascinating to watch as he slowly unravels, reassembles himself and unravels again. The cross-cutting couples counseling with Gary/Karen and Val/Mack across the street from each other is a superfun use of the cul-de-sac canvas, as is Gary and Val strategizing together to save the MacKenzie marriage. I like them in these comic, chummy roles together, even as it makes Abby increasingly fearful for the future. There's two more beautiful bits where Val asks Mack to be her Lamaze coach, and when Gary calls Karen on being "caught up in the nobility of it all" re: not telling the truth about her medical diagnosis. When Gary and Val's well-intentioned meddling goes awry they still play the comedy, so the anguish of the Karen medical storyline doesn't become overpowering, and it changes shape right as it threatens to become truly tedious, with Karen and Mack reconciling even as she hasn't quite told him the truth yet. Episode 7 is a Peter Dunne-penned episode, and has some great directorial flourishes by show standby Larry Elikann, opening on a strobing TV monitor of a sermon from a TV evangelist who Joshua is transfixed by, then cross-cutting with Lilimae caught behind the gated bars at Val's, lost in her own musings. Joshua is still begging off Cathy's advances and is slowly being revealed to be a deeply damaged, repressed person while Lisa Hartman's character remains a more wilderness-oriented free spirit. Joshua's dreaded father, Jonathan Rush, turns up as played by Albert Salmi - he's shot like a horror movie monster at first, in looming low angles and extreme close-ups, and shames Lilimae at an awkward family dinner for her out of wedlock children (Val and Mack swiftly fleeing for Lamaze cracked me up). Jonathan mocks Lilimae’s wanderlust and dreams, leading to a great set of dueling philosophical conversations between the ex-lovers as well as their son and his girlfriend. "What good are your dreams in my world?" Jonathan asks Lilimae. "What good have your dreams ever done for you?" "They’re my dreams," Lilimae replies. "They led me far away and they led me into trouble, but they led me home again." "A fool's journey," Jonathan scoffs, but Lilimae feels differently: "In the end they led me to myself." Lilimae doesn't want Jonathan’s pity, and for much of his guest appearance he seems utterly incapable of love and affection. Joshua is still riddled and crippled by his father's puritanical pathology, going so far as to crash at the TV evangelist's office to confide in him and get what seems like decent advice. Elikann stages the confrontation between father and son in a darkened and shadowy Clements/Ewing living room with Lilimae listening in on the stairs, and the writers do give Jonathan some pathos and dimension as he first pleads for Joshua to go with him, then admits to missing Lilimae, leading to a tender, emotional and genuinely touching goodbye between the two. Again, you ain't getting this kind of nuance on Dallas or Falcon Crest. The Fairgate boys are as over the Mack/Karen break-up as we are: Eric (smart in his KL Motors shirt) is throwing a fit over Karen in the driveway, and Michael isn't here for it either. For his part, Mack in still crashing in his bathrobe on Ben's couch, which cracks me up. When Owen Madison from EON turns up with Karen's divorce papers this galvanizes Mack to get Karen to agree to go away with him for the weekend, leading to their oceanside reconciliation. But that dovetails into events most everyone but me knows well, which I will discuss shortly. It's chaos at Sumner HQ in the wake of victory as all the guest players from his crew get their fun little bits, but the coup de grace is from an absent Abby who sends flowers with a note: "Everybody loves a winner. Just remember, I love them best! Love, Abby." Greg is desperate to win Mack back to go with him to D.C., insisting he keeps him honest. But Mack's disillusioned, and their formerly close relationship is homosocial: "You were my hero. [...] Before I can do anything else I gotta love you again." Sumner is undeterred; everything in him, especially now, is in the gritted teeth, the tensed muscles in the grins, the anticipatory reactions. He finally reconnects with Laura (who he has yet to articulate a reason for pursuing so doggedly in recent days) over a bucket of chicken at his HQ after hours, where she reveals she voted for Caulfield lol. He wants her to go to D.C. with him and start fresh but remains vague on the specifics of what and who they are to each other. Laura's concerns are blunt and smart: "I don't wanna end up like Jane." IIRC the show cuts the scene and the storyline for the episode on that line, which is smart. It's a large, unresolved expanse.

I personally think we reached overused GIF/personal masturbation pix saturation on the public show threads about ten years ago, but I've pretty much accepted that I'm likely in a minority on that one.

I think a like/dislike button will just result in strange hurt feelings and more of the unsettling mental tailspins we see in other parts of the forum which currently are largely left unattended.

Oh no! Not a 50-50 Senate!

No, I think it's a study of both him and Laurie.

I loved both Kills and Ends, but I don't mind being a minority on movies. They are both very different from other Halloweens and from each other. Ends was much more of a character study, and some of Curtis' best work.

What a talent.

I just can't take the show very seriously. I dip in and out to various seasons and portions depending on their proximity to Knots Landing crossovers. I think I'm still exploring Season 6 atm. I do think it was clear in the opening mini/Season 1 that Victoria Principal was to be a lead and was very strong then; the character is almost immediately neutered after and becomes all about Bobby and babies, as far as I've seen. Miss Ellie just gives a lot of heavy sighs and mournful looks, but I do like her with Clayton Farlow. It's more fluff for me to watch vs. KL.

What does this have to do with me?

@DRW50has mentioned this lately, but I've talked about it a lot as well. As Robin has said more than once, her forced exit by JFP rattled her terribly and made her intent on 'upping her game'. I heard that and it made a lot of sense to me re: what had happened to her work while the show was still on the air. I think the exile hurt her a lot and I personally don't think she ever recovered performance-wise; I think she felt she always had to go to the limit or very big most of the time in order to prove her worth to the show and the network. OTT Robin Strasser is still great, of course. I would never begrudge her coming back. But yes, I think she had less and less quiet moments and stillness once she returned in 2003.

That is quite a ride. Tucker knew even his audience couldn't take the portions alluding to 'kinetic energy' and going on about business colleagues' 'artificial children' a la the upcoming movie/new meme M3GAN.