Vee

She's in there.

Sloan roasting the Maureen letter is a hoot. I'd forgotten it was apparently her idea to have the scene of Lillian at Maureen's grave at the end of the series, which I appreciated and which made me like the character again. I don't know if she wrote it.

I wouldn't trust constant testing in this environment and with things in this city (LA) being as they are. There's too many variables. And given the allegations re: why Monaco is out (allegedly, not being willing to properly follow safety protocols on or off-show) I wouldn't be near her either.

Maeve and Tina Sloan have not aged!

Glad to see Parker, and to see Rachel seems to be doing well with her illness. I'd still have her and the Bauer kids anchor that show.

I like Andrea in these episodes, but I've only seen a little bit of Stern. It does make you wonder if they could ever rehabilitate Haiduk's character today, if only as mostly a talk-to personality for people. I also wonder if OLTL's choice to bring back Tina (a hapless teen player in the 70s and early 80s) had to do with this Y&R stint. I know they used two other Tinas in '84 to set up the Tina Lord story before getting Andrea back early in '85, but I also don't know if Andrea was super popular in her first OLTL run - you never hear much about that.

I feel incredibly blessed to see this 70s stuff. An entirely different world. That Jill/beauty shop episode with the wall to wall character voiceovers is textbook classic soap.

The stuff with Lester's Jack casually saying Patty is so naive and it's his main reason for marrying her, that he's going to sleep around anyway because that's who he is - you would never see a male lead talk like this on a soap today. He'd be killed in 13 weeks. Any man on soaps now who sleeps around is drugged or tricked into doing it in some way, or absolved in some weak fashion. Twice so for the women. People aren't really allowed to be conventionally human.

There is no way "editing" can explain a lot of the closeness on GH. I've edited and I promise you, we don't do that. Nor is ABC rolling out money to allow GH to CGI people, lol. They would never give that money to these shows now. These people are in the same close space and IMO it is not safe. Yes, the show looks less embarrassing than B&B. But I think they're taking way too many risks and it's going to go bad. And for what - a rushed return for a show that needs a huge creative reset.

@DRW50

The original ODAAT cast and crew (including Mackenzie Phillips) did an online reunion:

And here's the new cast and crew (with Stacey Abrams?) at the virtual Paley Fest.

If you're like me and enjoy the pain of others, absolutely do read the replies.

My dude, you've been here the better part of 15 years angrily telling us how good these shows are as they each get cancelled and fall into further disrepair. They keep dying but without fail month after month, show after show you're still saying they're all great and we're super unfair. It's literally all you talk about, it's your favorite topic. What's the common denominator?

We all care about these shows, but it's because we care about them that we can acknowledge failures and the fundamentally broken machine of daytime soap opera which has barely been evolved in two decades. Maybe you should ask yourself why the larger American audience doesn't listen to you and keep watching these wonderful underappreciated shows. Because if it was "just us" feeling this way, this genre would not be all but fùcking dead.

This archive is an absolute treasure.

"I am thrilled to be here with you, Ridge, very definitely in the same physical dimensional space."

6 minutes ago, Gray Bunny said:

Yup, I thought that too when I saw that. So freakin' happy about this

Thirded, I suspected the same.

Amusingly, the last remnants of the Bernie splinter left (loud on Twitter, small IRL) are blaming... Warren for today.

The only stories women have besides men are babies and cancer. Prove me wrong!

Ancient ruins?? Why is Phyllis' hotel in Washington? Why does she have a hotel?? She is a digital maven!

2 hours ago, kalbir said:

Y&R hasn't done a very good job of building the next generation. I've been saying for years that an early 1980s style cast purge is needed.

There are people that can be simply retooled, too. You turn Victoria into a matured ice queen riding herd on her son (cute, hairy hippie Reed, remember him?) like Kay/Jill over Phillip. Maybe you thaw her out with the right man later. Whoever plays her that you can get who's not Heinle, bc I have doubts HT would ever agree. You keep whatever Billy you can get and turn him back into a slightly older cad like Jack used to be, or keep him with Lily since those two have seemed to click with many different Billys IMO. If you put Billy and Victoria back together at some point they're both very different people. I don't know, there's a lot of ways to go.

The younger veteran/middle aged people that seem the most spent to me atm include Nick and Sharon. I don't take anything either does seriously anymore, and Phyllis is a total afterthought. I don't know why Stafford bothered coming back because she does nothing worthwhile. If you're not going to put her back with Jack then I'm not interested unless Tognoni returns, and failing that, if you're not going to make her a villain again then what's the point? Same goes with Michael at this point, though tbh the show I'd do with those characters (having both Michael and Kevin come out as gay/bi) would never, ever happen. Anyway, I'm just spitballing.

Feel like you're all forgetting some other shít on that score.

I'd probably pair up Kyle and Mariah and have another woman as a spoiler, along with Summer vixen'ing it up on the other end for Kyle. It helps that Mariah is far from an anodyne, vanilla heroine herself when written well. I don't know much else beyond that for those four just off the top of my head. I would definitely bring back Hilary for Devon. As for other duds, IMO Victoria only survives because of the many years of work Tom put in, and the Billy Miller stay of execution decree that gave her a fanbase ran out long ago. So you have to either beg Tom to return, find another strong actress for the role or write her out. Sure, fans will scream about losing 'their' Victoria or the possibility of her with Billy, but fùck 'em. When was the last time Victoria or Billy/Victoria gave this show a big return? You have to be willing to not accept surviving on crumbs of a dying audience. This show is not going to last another 10-20 years pandering to a handful of idiot fans on Twitter or Facebook. It has to be bold, and that means re-conceiving a lot of existing superficially 'popular' elements or characters.

She's blonde and white, so her job is secure!

And being Ashley and Victor's is not enough anymore. She's had over a decade of bad stories and still has no personality beyond 'stupid'. Give her a rest and recast a few years later but actually think it through beyond her DNA.

I liked Jade and I still am mad about that.

More like 70. And every time I remind people she can't act and Abby shouldn't be on the show anymore someone calls the cops. You write her off, and if you don't kill her (which I would legit consider at this point because the first 20 years of the character are a complete wash) then you re-conceive her in a few years' time with a new actress and with Abby focused not on business, not on screwball [!@#$%^&*] but on some sort of artistic profession, like one of the Brooks sisters. This at least allows you to differentiate her from Victoria, Summer, and any other Young White Woman X.

And while we're on the subject of young leads, since I just said this to Darn I may as well repeat it here: Camryn Grimes has no story because IMO the 'groundbreaking story' of making her bisexual was at least in part a cynical ploy to keep her from being popular with actual male leads they found attractive and desirable while either the network, Sony or someone at the show clearly does not feel the same about Grimes. (This is similar to using the Amanda story as a sop to fans of color asking for Mishael Morgan back - Amanda neutralizes her popularity as Hilary.) Someone feels Grimes is not hot enough. So she gets sectioned off with a boring female love interest in the pat-ourselves-on-the-back social issue backburner story, when she should be in there with Mealor, etc. mixing it up. I'm a gay fan, I am all for Mariah being bisexual. I am not for her being the all-but-lesbian in the corner doing nothing. If you want this show to be the young and the restless, then make King, Mealor, Grimes, Morgan, and yes even poor Bryton get filthy with each other. You look back at what Terry Lester's Jack was doing and saying about himself being a manwhore in those '80s episodes in the vault and my god, what a difference. And I'm supposed to sit here today and pretend old Nick just got out of college, and watch 50 year old Phyllis fight Abby and her 120 failed stories over some hotels? Who cares? That demeans Stafford too. Am I supposed to live in suspense watching to see if Sharon Case finally changes her hair which she's had since before 9/11? Can y'all tell I had some coffee??

Can't wait to see the 30th attempt to "give Abby a new start"

Just now, prefab1 said:

MS was just always so prim, I found it surreal whenever she had to talk about Alison's past as a meth-addicted porn star.

I know!! Of all the actors for that?! To say nothing of the story being gross and unnecessary.