Vee

Which is what the PP soaps did with their sets, plus some changes to set dressing, and it worked. 30 minutes worked well for the shows after many years at an hour, but yes, 15 could for certain things as well. Quibi tried something like that with prestige projects (in 10-minute bites) and flopped miserably, but it's doable IMO for certain serialized formats - including soaps.

Back on the domestic beat:

That's a lot smarter. But the show is so remedial atm.

Mitchell Ryan was a stalwart presence in TV and film, often in the most thankless roles, for generations. I first knew of him from a ton of genre film, but later when I became more acquainted with the first, more intelligent and atmospheric year of Dark Shadows, his force of presence and magnetism was irresistible. OLTL's Anthony George, who replaced him on DS due to Ryan's issues with alcohol, was a decent, resolute man, but Ryan's Burke Devlin had danger, passion and untold depths. It might have been inevitable that he left the show, because the Burke that Ryan created and the writers built could not have been bowled over by an immortal vampire or any other villain so easily. I knew him better for his tons of other roles, but he's a legend no matter where you find him. RIP.

I'd forgotten about Surnow - that doesn't surprise me. I knew a 24 guy was in there somewhere on the final season of FC, I just couldn't find the name readily available (and I know 24 well). Surnow, Nowrasteh and Manny Coto clustered together in the post-9/11 2000s. All of them right wingers. Coto in particular is actually talented, but all of them have gone far to the fringe or in Nowrasteh's case started there. Anyway, OT. But yes, these guys brought in to amp up the action, etc. elements of a show is no coincidence.

I think financially he is the only reason the show is still running. Frank has always been good at that (and the show looks better now, it must be said, than it did for much of the 2010s where everything was steel-gray). That doesn't mean I think creatively it's very good.

If Kristen married "Tony" in the '90s, then she married Andre. Andre impersonated Tony from the '90s through to the mid-2000s. I can't fault people for still having issues with Jamey. He made a fool of himself many times. I think he's matured a fair amount since the DC years though, so I was willing to wish him well at DAYS and with his own show. He worked hard for that. It's not to my taste but I can't deny he loves soaps. (I have no real aspirations to work in soaps, because I do other things professionally and because I think in their current form they're a dying cell.) It is true that Jamey has a particular and profound love for glossy '80s primetime soaps (or classic Y&R) which color many of his beliefs and his taste. He called himself on it once long ago, on a podcast, and admitted he had to acknowledge 'the '80s are over' and things weren't working when Carlivati's GH began to fall apart. But I also agreed with him sometimes even when I didn't want to; specifically, when he raged about Genie Francis never receiving enough credit for saving GH when she was a mere child. (This was part of a tantrum about Geary shivving Ron Carlivati, but still, he was right.) I am both surprised and unsurprised the Renee story was his idea - it sounded exactly like Teen Jessica from OLTL, and I seem to recall Jamey knowing that story was a bomb at the time. If he was the same obnoxious guy as always I'd be a bit harder on him. But woof, the Renee thing - forget it.

Why was she so disliked? She's beloved by anime fans for her voice work, strangely enough.

Mikkos was Russian IIRC, according to the actual retcon GH did with the Cassadines years later, making them Russians who'd emigrated to Greece. They have largely been depicted as of Russian ancestry since the '90s.

Lord she's not good so far. And tbh the character has never worked.

The vast majority of the public is still 100% with Ukraine here. Tankie and lowercase far left Twitter isn't really representative at all, and it's a hole that looks bigger than it is, and most of their positions don't end up as the default public position at all (if that were true, Bernie would be in office and Greenwald wouldn't be stuck on Fox News). That's also why you get polls asking for no-fly zones, because of that vast support for Ukraine; the problem is the media isn't always educating the public as to why no-fly zones are an extremely dangerous option.

Ex-Politico and GOP shill Blake Hounshell loses it with James Fallows, and lets the mask slip when he reminds us all that we should be focusing on Republicans 'sharpening their message': Meanwhile:

They slow-rolled them at least in part because it's not Joss, and Spencer/Trina are intended by FV ultimately as a B-couple and sidekicks like what Starr and Cole had on OLTL. We'll see how the new girl works out. I agree SM was also green, but like Chavez she had charisma and spark.

It's very obvious where their priorities are.

War aside, we have personally killed much better men than Putin for much less. The difference between me and Lindsey Graham saying that is I am not a high-ranking government official. But if it ever got traced back to the States (and it likely would) it would be catastrophe and things would tip over.

I'll take my apologies from everyone who said I was being 'too negative' on this point last year on engraved or embossed parchment. Scented optional!

As an admitted outsider to this show I do know they hired Cyrus Nowrasteh to work on the final season, an infamous right wing propagandist who later did the Path to 9/11 right wing hitjob miniseries in the 2000s. Like most right wing dudes in Hollywood, Nowrasteh was clearly an action junkie, trying to turn a glossy old fashioned primetime soap into something atmospheric like Miami Vice. The show was obviously very different and that is very evident in even just the opening credits sequence - I liked the new theme music, but as I am no FC fan I am in the overwhelming minority, and it's obvious they were doing something very tonally jarring with what came before (you can't sell a show with Rod Taylor and Jane Wyman in the credits as Crockett and Tubbs), and infatuated with Gregory Harrison. I doubt any of their audience cared about that and it screams tryhard. I do like the music though, and that opening with the omen of the dead falcon.

Yeah, the RBMK reactor is discussed at length in HBO's excellent Chernobyl miniseries. There is a significant difference.

A thread is that is either wise or soon to be bleakly humorous:

The clip from a few days ago of the propaganda anchor checking his watch and asking 'is Trump back yet?' after reporting on the loss of his Italian villa due to sanctions was hilarious.