Vee

Hello again! It's because the soap mags have engaged Howarth about this topic several times over the decades in very candid interviews, and because it was for ages one of the few known media facts about him in the many years he explicitly never gave interviews after leaving OLTL for the first time in '95. This only began to change when he moved to ATWT in 2003 and played Paul Ryan, and only really took hold when he went to GH and only after he took on the role of Franco in 2013. It's part of the package where Howarth is concerned. This is not a confrontational, accusatory, verboten or uncouth topic, it's one that has followed Howarth through almost his entire daytime career. And it's a point of curiosity. He gave an outside media (non-soap) interview about it around a decade ago and was clearly still uncomfortable with having popularized a rapist. Any soap journalist left worth the salt would at least say 'your history with playing Todd Manning is well-documented. What made you comfortable taking on a role like this one again?' But there are no decent soap journalists left.

I think Megan is pretty vibrant from the jump, including in the '80s and earlier in '91. Watching her decline is very difficult as she's such a kinetic, witty character.

Exactly.

Man. That gave me a moment of the OLTL revival I always wanted with Chris as Joey, the local community activist and heir to Andrew Carpenter yet again. Worth it. (Sorry, GH fans)

That whole insane period felt like a massive attempt at a bad course correction micromanaged by many people BTS. It was certainly the polar opposite of a lot of what Sheffer had come in saying he wanted to do, starting with their re-pairing Max and Chelsea who he enthusiastically had broken up, citing the 'cousinfúcking.' That was about when I checked out again.

Howarth was very vocal and conflicted about it for many years onscreen and off and it at times led to him lampooning the material and shutting down, phoning it in. (Which is another reason the Trevor St. John recast was accepted, as TSJ initially was very committed and intense - until he began phoning it in and fúcking around with his performance worse than Roger ever did, IMO.) But RH seemed to find peace with the character when he returned in 2011 and gave it his all, recommitting to the work from then on. He openly said at that time he learned to take the dark emotions associated with his characters less seriously, which I think was healthy for him. But Howarth also said in a non-soap media podcast interview maybe ten years ago, which revisited the rape trial saga, that he had been looking for any way out of OLTL as late as 2003, and jumped at the chance when a colleague gave him Chris Goutman's number at ATWT. Which he did famously defect to. I am surprised he'd take on this kind of role given how the issues with Todd still seemed real for him post-OLTL, but it is a paycheck and he has said he tries to bring less baggage to his work in recent years. (How else could you play Franco?) I don't think he's phoned it in since his return to ABC in the 2010s, however limited he is and however lousy his post-Todd characters were. I think he just compartmentalizes.

I agree with all of that. I'll always say the scene with Heather she had not long after first coming back in 2012, where Robin Mattson's Heather attempts to negotiate with her for Robin's whereabouts and Anna calmly says no, she's spent her career killing people and will close Heather out unless she complies, is one of her best. "You don't know anything about me." Heather folded immediately too. I understand Finola wanting to show range but she has nothing to prove, and it's made Anna look far too weak. Which the writing does enough for her.

They did, but I'd long since given up on ATWT by that time. I think it was Noah's dad. I have been meaning to watch some of the key Ryan episodes (like him attacking the Hardys). What little I've seen of the prior saga in '92, with Felicia's return, etc. is strong. Riche hit on something gold there in difficult times, bringing Kristina back In force with a lot of spark, and putting her with Mac (and of course hiring JL). The Nola Madison/Mansion of the Damned stuff on EON is still so creepy. How she internalized the legend of the 'real' witch from the movie she was making, the layers of reality and fiction, etc. But Edge often seemed to dabble in supernatural touches, like with April's visions, etc. Some phenomena were later explained as being man-made (like the truly creepy image of seeing a ghost or witch on Margo Dorn's balcony at the movie party), others like the visions I think were not. The Loving Murders still holds up and I am delighted I got to rewatch it in full for the first time since childhood. I'd pay for it on home video or streaming. I think it's still around in full on various spots.

Anna is smart, but the show requires her to be ineffectual and stupid much of the time to make a lot of story work. Finola too often opting to weep through scenes in the last decade-plus for fear of coming off too one-note doesn't help. She's still very good, but they could be handling Anna much better.

I'll just be that person: New widow Erika Kirk gushing about Vance and how similar he is to her husband live on TV, amidst the already swirling rumors about the two, is at least some sick entertainment value we can get out of the daily horrors of this decade. If there's one thing Republicans love to do it's crash out publicly with sex scandals in the most damaging way possible.

I don't blame caroline or any GH fans for finding it obnoxious lol, but I was mildly charmed by Erika and Chris McKenna sharing scenes today. @DRW50

I do still think Willow shot Drew and they've been subtly yet not so subtly keeping it under their hat all along. All you have to do is watch her body language and eyes around him. I don't think they went in not knowing, though it's certainly happened with other stories on this show. But yes, I do think the story is spinning its wheels a lot atm.

Chelsea roasting Tomas does get me every time. RhonniRose is still green but she's in rare form when she goes in on him (and again, I think she has good screwball comic timing that suits her better than dead serious story).

I think you're right.

A grudge you surely hold for The Possession of Joel Delaney.

Crazy that he is still moving like this in here after crashing out repeatedly for not getting his fanfic respected for almost two years. You're not gonna work there, bro. Move on.

Nope.

A choice! They haven't worked together in over 20 years (and very briefly the last time) and Griffith is not the writer he once was. I find it crazy SOD made zero mention of Howarth's very public issues with playing a rapist and didn't ask how he feels to be doing it again.

I mean, I hated a lot of those characters in 2000s DAYS and thought the writing for them was wretched but to each their own. They certainly had their fans in that era who are still fond of it.

Eh. It was all lousy for me after 2003 or so lol, and at that time I had never watched the show much before coming in at Sheffer's glory period around 2001 (except for some embarrassing stuff from the Eddie Silva, etc, period) so it had nothing to do with the past. It slid wildly downhill once Passanante got more involved. Any time I tuned in after that it felt off-brand and like it was going through the motions, and then slowly zeroing out on budget and just becoming sad and turgid. Once you got a look at the Marland classics they would run over the holidays in the 2000s or on WOST, and I began to dig deeper into the show, even a layman could see the show deserved much better.

I haven't seen it since it aired I was also very fond of Reilly's Terror Island saga on SuBe, a blatant and successful attempt to rip off the success of Scream. It was typically shoddy/silly script work from JER, but it worked tremendously on a teen viewer who also loved horror. It also managed to have a body count of known characters who added real weight, and a culprit ("Ben") that added stakes. It didn't become total embarrassing farce for me like the Salem Stalker. Of course I haven't since it almost 30 years, so I can't imagine it holds up that well.

I didn't see a topic like this floating around (none recent, anyway) so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I make a point to watch a lot of scary stuff for my favorite holiday, and sometimes that includes the soaps. I grew up on Dark Shadows which I know by heart at this point, and Reilly's DOOL speaks for itself. But I was wondering if anyone else had any particularly special and scary soap eps/storylines that stuck with them for this time of year. I'll probably tuck into an episode or two later of my Edge of Night 1980 backlog with the creepy Nola Madison witch saga, or the recently recovered Somerset ep with the infamous Jingles the Clown (wasn't that also Henry Slesar?). I also found the 1991 Halloween episode of OLTL nicely spooky recently, where little Jessica Buchanan runs afoul of the mystery in newcomer Asian Blair's secret room (her mad mother Addie). Any favorites? IIRC James Stenbeck's big return on ATWT in the mid-'80s was right at or after Halloween.

I actually loved that Portia and didn't find her smug so much as very blunt, professional and bracingly focused vs. a lot of the hospital stuff lol. It became a bit much later when the show clearly didn't and doesn't like her though, preferring to write for animatronic Jordan and Cruisin' Curtis. I am here for this relationship for now though, I'm open to it.

I can't really buy the upright, forthright professional Portia of the past being friends with Ava at all (unlike her daughter, who has a kind of Robin/Sonny thing going with Ava), but I'm here for it for the moment. We can let Portia crash out for awhile, then one-up Curtis and Jordan before the smuggersons either leave town or die and start getting her life back together.

On paper it's not a bad sketch for a new character, but making it the wildly polarizing and overexposed Cane, with Lily and all the other nonsense (including the train) it's terrible. Trevor had actually aged dramatically enough to be semi-plausible as Tucker, but he got bored very quickly (as he often does), played against everything and the story and writing were also quite bad.