Vee

IIRC, what Ehlers said was she couldn't exactly do Shakespeare with an untrained actor, or that she was trying to work at a higher level than he was capable of. I don't think she said she was actually doing Shakespeare, but I haven't listened to it or seen the transcript in a long time. Nonetheless, it was a tactless, stupid thing to say while still on the show with a performer who the audience liked while it wasn't exactly feeling her. As for Jensen Buchanan, let's not kid ourselves. Her character sucked, period. She was forced onto the show by JFP (who even invited a lawsuit from CBS to get her on as quickly as possible from ATWT), she was used to try to run down Bobbie's character and pushed into a frontburner pairing with A Martinez no one liked, only Tony Geary was able to save Jackie Zeman's job and Bobbie from being sent to the asylum or something, and she was loathed by the audience. Melissa was DOA. But if it hadn't been GH, the flagship soap of the network, we would've had at least another year of frontburner Melissa and Roy while Bobbie got sent off to Ferncliff. That's how JFP was allowed to run wild at OLTL. Not so much at 3 PM.

I'm slow, which pic is super spoilery?

People roasted KLG's performance even at the time. She was awful, unfortunately, and the Grandma Moses look they gave her to try to make the Kelsey SORAS work didn't help.

Yeah, but Sam was boring as hell.

It's not like there are no genre or horror fans who watch soaps up til now, lol. I am a massive horror buff. I like plenty of dark shít. That doesn't mean I think attempting to reconceive AMC as an edgy Riverdale clone mired in murder mysteries and artificially forced, pre-packaged camp - and that could very easily be what this show is, if they're not careful - is worthwhile. When I think gothic horror, I think of other soaps first, I don't think "All My Children." It had many stories with that stuff because Agnes loved gothic, but the foundation was not built around it. That stuff was used by Agnes Nixon, etc. as a contrast to the rest of the fabric of the show. I am willing to give Pine Valley a chance if it ends up existing, which I seriously doubt. But the state of network TV dramas today that aren't on streaming, their poor pacing, tonal issues, etc. make me very hesitant. I think AMC's best shot at revival is on a streaming service in a more dense serialized format, not trying to chase fading primetime sweeps periods that only hobble any intelligent and well-paced storytelling on many network dramas these days. So many of them are written and plotted seemingly on fast-forward at twice the speed, with scenes spun around the next moment that can be a GIF on Twitter vs. trying to build out. Riverdale is shít, even for a horror fan, and I'm just not interested in seeing AMC go out like that.

On paper, Rafe was a very viable, strange character. In execution the writing was terrible and the actor was possibly worse.

Pratt as a HW on daytime was a complete hack AFAIC. Any good idea he occasionally lucked in was a fluke and then mangled by him. And the cast was miserable.

Don Stewart was still doing D-grade movies like recent new MST3K classic Carnival Magic in the early '80s filmed well before his axing, running around with his shirt off playing the super-virile psychic medium to a talking chimp (it's worse than it sounds, and the new MST had a ball with it). I suspect it's absolutely true he felt he was too much of a stud to be relegated to 'old' leads like McKinsey or Tina Sloan who were actually age-appropriate.

I mean, I've never heard that Shannen is not a team player most of the time, just the opposite, same as SMG. But when she went off the rails she clearly went off for a bit. How much is hard to say because so much of that info came from the Spelling, etc. side of things back then. As for SMG: I do believe she and/or her mother went sideways at AMC trying to come at Lucci, who I've never heard an unkind word about. I have no doubt she can be prickly for certain people or in certain situations. But I've always credited her for being a fierce advocate for soap operas and daytime, at least as much as Julianne Moore; if an interviewer tries to talk down about the soaps to Sarah, even today, she comes at them, and she didn't hesitate to return for the end. And as for her time at BTVS, that is again something that historically was always filtered through the Whedon sympathizer POV until very recently. The only person you could potentially count against her for sketchy behavior who isn't in the Whedon camp was the ex-stunt coordinator, Jeff Pruitt, who famously penned a deranged open letter/roman a clef on Usenet about the evils of 'the actress' or whatever it was conspiring against his work and supposedly getting him kicked off the show around the third or fourth season. And I can't recall what he's said since, as that was close to 25 years ago. Anyway, that's OT.

I remember the pilot for Charmed, lol. I thought that show sucked from the jump but that's me. I was very disappointed, because a witchcraft show from the network that was doing BTVS, with that cast, had huge potential.

She sure did. I understood what she was trying to say from the soundbite I recall and the actual verbiage, and she was in some ways very complimentary to Martinez, but it was not something she should ever have said in public while still on the show. Especially since Martinez was taking off with the audience and she decidedly was not, and seemed discontent that she was unappreciated. On paper I think the concept of a character like Taylor was a great idea for AMC - female military vet, conservative, etc. That's all in keeping with the show's traditions. And Ehlers was right for it IMO. The way they tanked it was in doing what Brian Frons so often did - taking something viable and overpromoting it, forcing it on the audience in lieu of other characters they want to see, and then getting the worst possible slanted writing c/o Pratt for it. (This happened with Jax and Sam on GH, a.k.a. "Jam!" the squish name the network invented for them and tried to push on the audience, a first and last in my experience - Kelly Monaco playing a treasure hunter with Ali McGraw vibes in her early appearances opposite dashing Jax was viable, especially on a show with GH's adventure pedigree. It's just the intense push and lousy rushed story that failed.) AMC also tried to do the same trick that almost never works since the '70s (and with Jacquie Courtney and George Reinholt, the originals, it only worked until he got himself fired again) - re-pairing two actors from another show despite the fact that the current show's audience doesn't care. Ricky Paull Goldin's Jake was with Amanda and fans were into that, they weren't here to have a visibly spent Beth Ehlers from her fading GL days forced on them. There were other places and people for the Taylor character to go to story-wise. But by the time they stuck her with the suicide risk, post-Dixie Tad of that era they'd already given up.

I think the reality is they're actually very similar in a lot of ways - both raised on set, both very, very focused on that and at times alienating to others (and both Republicans, but that's unrelated). Shannen got up to considerably more hellraising IRL during her heyday than SMG as far as we know, so it isn't all just on the cast and crew of 90210; she made mistakes of her own too. (And to this day it's hard to know how much of SMG's rep at BTVS/Mutant Enemy has more to do with her simply not being there for any of Whedon's cultish games) But losing Shannen was a major hit to the show. They recovered well with Tiffani and Valerie, who was a huge success, but Val was very, very different and not one of the emotional hearts of the show. Without Brenda, and with 90210 being unwilling to re-center her place in the spotlight on more focus for Andrea for their own reasons, you lost something integral that Priestley and Jennie Garth, though they were talented despite on or offscreen issues or ego (and Jennie has gained a lot of pathos with age, especially on the CW show which wasted her), could not fill. On a side note, I wouldn't give up Val's place on the show but I'm not sure how they could coexist. Brenda had a grit the rest of the cast didn't have (which Tiffani, surprisingly, did too) and I don't think they could easily share the same space.

It's just the stuff we've all discussed re: how they handled Gabrielle Carteris and the character over the years.

I remember the Dylan/Andrea stuff. Why they never pulled the trigger on her and Brandon or this is beyond me, except I know the real reason.

I just don't think Trevor has any interest in playing functional people. It's not his wheelhouse. He absolutely did, it was incendiary. I just found the character foul.

Like, I don't begrudge soap characters getting media jobs when it suits them. I know Leanna Love was a gossip columnist at one point and had that talk show or whatever. Luna on OLTL did Loveline and it worked for the character, and I championed it when Nora got her kooky podcast/radio show (in honor of Luna, IMO) as a sideline on the online OLTL, because that's a hinge character who's part of an entrenched elder supercouple - at that age characters like that who are that popular together (and had just had several major frontburner years immediately prior on the network show) are not going to break up, and you can find other ways to mix them in. No harm done. But corporate scion Billy Abbott? On Y&R? Doing a wellness podcast? I don't get it!

Billy gets a wellness podcast is a storyline??

I actually loved the Lloyd Bridges/Geraldine Page thing in the Loving pilot. It was such a dark, strange story utilizing two major stars, and Page was amazing. It was ultimately on brand for how that show ended up, years later. But for it to really hit it needed to have deeper ramifications beyond just the pilot episode (minus Johnny Forbes' death) - and it would've been nice to secure those two for, say, a couple weeks or a month.

I just think it would've been ridiculous, lol. Only Guza could've pulled that off, and not late stage Guza.

They hinted at Carlos being related to her, IIRC. I don't recall if it was confirmed. I think that angle was part of a storyline with Lilly Melgar coming back in some role (possibly the doppleganger from the 2000s, Ron Carlivati loved to dig up that obscure shít, but it was rumored she would actually be back as undead crazy Lily) that got scrapped.

Sabrina could've been run out on a rail at any time. Kiki I would've still killed as part of the mob war between Sonny and Ava. But two young woman being brutalized and murdered practically back to back by separate serial killers, woof.

Oh, I really disliked her lol. I just think that killing her, Kiki, etc. was unnecessary. I didn't like either character and was very glad to see them go but it was a bad look to keep slaughtering young women in rapid succession in the #MeToo era.

A lot of fans disliked Sabrina, that's why she got written off. I don't think she needed to be among the multiple young women slaughtered in succession at the time though.

Lorenzo was definitely the most fleshed out with a deep backstory. They did a great deal with him very quickly and it worked out. It was when he became a direct threat to Sonny's primacy with the audience that they began working to emasculate and marginalize him in story and with women. The Jacob thing was also stronger because at the time, audiences pretty much accepted that Jesse's death was permanent and untouchable. It was a big shock when he came back for real in '08. Y&R could bring Hilary back tomorrow and no one would blink - the Amanda thing doesn't work.