Vee

There are definite similarities, but Esme is considerably better conceived than Nelle, whose origin and evolution make absolutely no sense.

I'm glad this has a thread. He was incredibly important to Susan and very visible with her and their daughter. Susan has had such struggle in recent years; I hope her own health holds up.

I think it was a mistake openly tying her to the town supervillain so soon. Because then it immediately becomes, 'oh, we have to bring in the adults to deal with this existential threat in this story!' And we know she's not going anywhere for a good while. No one in PC knows Esme has any connection to Ryan at this moment in time; in the eyes of the public, she is a spoiled teenaged socialite up to chicanery with kids her own age. Every major GH player having to get involved and then struggle to deal with her doesn't make sense. Narratively, they should at least have the backdrop of a powerful family lurking in the shadows that supposedly can smack some of these people down, so they think they can't touch her in some way. Or better yet, not involve Sonny, Carly, etc. at all yet to stand around looking impotent at this juncture. Fans get all in their feelings about scenes where Sonny drags Esme into his office - we know he's not gonna do shít to her! So mob king Sonny drags an 18(?) yo into his place of business, and lets her go with 'watch it!' Come on! If and when Esme sleeps with Nikolas, becomes his sidepiece and/or is believed to carry the Cassadine heir, then she has a seat at the table where she moves up into the adult sphere of trouble. But all this public mess over some teenage stuff is unnecessary at this point. And it makes the lead adults look weak.

In fairness, Bret Stephens' bad hot takes are generally not the NYT editorial stance. (Except about 'woke culture') I have many issues with the Times but I def do not think they are pushing Putin propaganda.

Esme is a fine villain and Avery Pohl is pretty good. But it is sheer clownery that every adult on this show is already preoccupied with and bamboozled by the machinations of a teenage girl. Sonny, Carly, etc. should not be regularly involving themselves with Esme at this point. Sonny is gonna throw his weight around and have her abducted while Esme is continuing on this show? How is that gonna make Sonny look? If Esme had already secured the bag by landing Nikolas as his mistress or something that would be one thing, because then she has a public place at the grown-ups' table. This all just makes the older folks look stupid. This isn't the first time GH has done this with a character who should not be on every adult bigwig's radar right now.

This should be in both threads.

CBS is imploding (again). This doesn't leak for no reason. @DRW50

Hot take (but what I suspected from Day 1): This girl's better than SM, at least technically. And she and Chavez do have chemistry. We'll see if they end up actually getting them together or if Frank spins Spencer off to Joss, lol.

Jordi never worked here.

Oh, that's very sad. RIP.

IMO they don't take risks because for the most part, ABCD is simply marking time keeping this show on the air and keeping it functional. They have no investment in it beyond basic sustenance, and so they choose to simply cater to a shrinking, aging FB audience - keep it middle of the road, keep it running until they can cultivate a replacement. It's the same thing with Y&R at CBS IMO. Frank, who simply wants to keep the show on the air at any cost (while also playing his favorites), will go along with that because he knows they can't afford to lose any numbers, ergo why take risks or jeopardize the things on the show he is invested in? So instead we get things they know the network will greenlight and FB won't complain about: Tame teen stories, and more and more babies. (Supposedly the #1 thing the network will always rubber-stamp storyline-wise) Even Ava, Carly, Nina, Liz and Sam are all civil or even friendly to each other now. Why?? It's sad because there is potential here on GH, more than a few years ago.

It reminds me of the PP soap casts' exulting about having rehearsal time again. It certainly made a huge difference with the OLTL youth set.

I think Lipton was the breakout star (and is the best actor) until he got chained to EM as her new accessory sans Oscar, and for a time he picked up bad habits from Roger Howarth, etc. He's circled back around again for me and is good now. I think he is still the most technically capable of the youth set and I suspect he'd have chemistry with TA just as he did SM. But his role today is simply to be Joss' white boyfriend. FV will never give up on building the teen scene around a young white blonde who superficially resembles Kristen Alderson, based on youth demos from over a decade ago. Eden is passable but could do more as a rich bitch than a central heroine, if you had to keep her which you don't. Then there's other kids they could bring on - Emma (NOT with the kid who's been playing her), Alec Barrett, Lila Rae Alcazar, etc. Hudson West (Jake) could also easily come up from the background like Kimberly McCullough once did as a junior character and I think he's at least as good as she was back in '92-'93, and technically better than most of the older teens, but it's more likely Frank will foolishly fail to secure him and lock him down and he'll be recast. I think the extremely bland and generic at best writing for the kids is a huge factor. If you had Karen Harris, MVJ and Labine or Guza's crew writing for these kids we'd potentially be in a very different place with how we talk about all of them and the raw talent therein. Frank doesn't take those risks, and neither does the network anymore.

He has improved a lot, definitely.

I think she's pretty good so far. But yes, none of these kids are Jonathan Jackson level talent lol. I said that about Chavez when he started and it was the Wicker Man for me!

She was solid and charismatic, but neither Chavez nor SM were without their green issues onscreen. People on Twitter especially (which I don't use) get high on hype quick.

She seems to have chemistry with Chavez at first glance. They'll have to make sure she doesn't become the little woman/sidekick though. With SM Spencer was more the ingenue than Trina, the less conventionally strong or dominating partner. I think TA may be capable of that fire but we haven't been given the chance to see it yet. We don't know what she can or can't do, but she definitely can sell emotion.

I don't think there's enough evidence suggesting anything like that.

I enjoyed a lot about OLTL 2.0 and thought it was aesthetically cutting-edge and more serious in tone than it had been, as opposed to simply leaning into the tonal issues that eventually sank the Valentini/Carlivati brand at GH and later DAYS. It certainly had any number of pacing and structure issues of its own making re: the holdover storylines from ABC, but those were solvable and I thought the youth set was very strong (if overexposed). The overarching suspense plot only began to actually coalesce into something cohesive and compelling at the very end, and the way they handled Roger Howarth and Trevor St. John's limited availability (confining Todd to a hotel room for weeks) was very goofy. You can fault them for lots of things, but I think a lot of what that show did on Hulu would be the blueprint if it ever returned somehow. That being said, I think AMC 2.0 was very easily the best soap of that year, or that decade frankly. I understand they could have more easily survived launching just one, but honestly the whole operation struck me as a grift from day one. I knew what the PP guys were, but I chose to enjoy the shows for the shows for as long as they lasted. And I thought the duality of AMC and OLTL, light and dark, again was very well-redefined by pairing them up together. It's how it should still be, IMO.

I believe they also never paid a lot of the actors.

Don't hold your breath, champ.

This is what Janet said to Phylicia: