Vee

That reminds me: Liz Vassey (Emily Ann) has a show in dev at NBC.

This is ridiculous. The man should know when he's beat and also not parade on like it's still the glory days for him or the show. It reminds me of when they were supposedly paying to fill seats in the throes of 2020, which was unconscionable.

Not sure how much Derwin and JVD discuss GL here but Zaslow does come up - with Erika Slezak from OLTL:

The Variety story sounds grim. I can't imagine what the more detailed facts are like. Why risk making the old joke "Saturday Night Dead" literal? I know Lorne prides himself on never stopping but it's not like they're in the Phil Hartman/Jan Hooks/Mike Myers/Dana Carvey, etc. second golden era here. Granted, I haven't given a [!@#$%^&*] about SNL in decades but...

Joe Bob Briggs and The Last Drive-In come through again for the soaps on Shudder: As part of tonight's Christmas charity telethon/horror movie marathon, they are showing the absolutely godawful "Ice Cream Man" from 1995, which features Clint Howard as a homicidal ice cream man, Olivia Hussey in a role she'd like to forget, the late Jan-Michael Vincent drunker than ever - and yes, OLTL/B&B/Y&R's immortal Andrea Evans as the vixen horny for the ice cream man's "hard pack". The last person I expected to see tonight by far.

Here's a little bit of her in the awkwardly-scripted Screech tribute, though this isn't what I was referring to. I haven't seen much of the season overall, but it's a cute show in portions. I mostly watch for the originals.

Saw some of the new season - Lark is out in a fair bit of material with Tiffani and Elizabeth Berkeley (with a hilarious Showgirls riff) and doesn't miss a beat back with the gang doing gags. I'm really, really happy for her getting well.

There are a lot of Senate Dems who are still very committed to norms and not violating them which replacing or ignoring the parliamentarian would require, believing that eventually things will go back to normal if they just appeal to their colleagues' better nature. The Senate is too cozy an environment for a lot of these people who make friends with the opposition inside that cloistered circle and fail to fully accept or acknowledge what the modern GOP really stands for today - and the same goes for a ton of Beltway media. But I don't believe there are enough Democratic Senators left to blockade real change if Manchin or Sinema bent on key issues; assuming that would be futile because there is always another recalcitrant Senator is IMO wrong. The handful of Dem Senators who are dragging ass on these issues prefer to have Sinemanchin do the work because they don't want to be exposed and forced to vote their conscience; if left vulnerable, they will buckle to the majority will and do what the people want. Which is another reason Manchin hollered like a hit dog when it was reported he wanted to cut the Child Tax Credit - I suspect he'll do anything to avoid being stuck with that blame, which may be leverage going forward.

Eric Martsolf has always been stunning. Sure, he may not resemble a sketchy twink photoshoot in a crinkled issue of XY Magazine from 1998, but who among us does these days?

Not ever to my knowledge. Malone was brought in from his novels outside of soaps in 1991. I can understand why a DAYS fan would love some of that, but for people who watched the more socially conscious Malone of the 90s (who definitely had flights of fancy, but they were balanced with gritty social stories as well) it was like living in Bizarro World. It went south almost immediately. I have a pretty high tolerance for camp and fantasy on soaps myself, but so much of Malone's 2003-2004 was very, very poorly executed. When you're spending a week in the never-before-mentioned 'secret tunnels' of Llanfair and watching as Blair and Dorian get trapped in a secret room full of Indiana Jones spike traps while searching for an all-powerful Indian diamond, all of this supposedly happening in Viki's basement, and the other A-plots are Jennifer Rappaport and Antonio Vega, my patience wanes fast. That being said, I've never forgotten any of it and it was a truly imaginative, demented time with some highlights and pluses amidst the chaos, far preferable to the nihilistic morass of Dena Higley.

I remember Michael Malone's second OLTL stint very, very well and I can assure you it was fit for DAYS, but in all the weirdest ways lol. (I often wondered at the time what would happen if they gave him DAYS) It was very gothic in that 90s way both Malone and Reilly enjoyed and drenched in his personal artistic sensibility and poetry but was also often very bad. Malone has always been very florid at core - it was Josh Griffith and others who tamed Malone's operatic, gothic excesses in the 90s, and Griffith is a burnout case today. Carlivati was the sane alternative when he took over OLTL; unlike Malone II, in his early years Carlivati was able to execute long story. But today, neither of them would modulate the other at this point. I have no idea what happened to Sheri Anderson, who would be my choice but clearly they already tried that.

A fatal flaw he perfected at ABC, sadly.

Meanwhile, from the "Couldn't Happen to Worse People" Department:

Warnock is quite literally doing God's work, cozying up to Manchin to push voting rights.

She did all those things at the behest of Brian Frons. The masculine focus on men like Zach was all part of the Frons mandate, who would never have become that prominent or all-consuming without him. Where a HW was simpatico with Frons (as Megan McTavish at times was), that's all that was needed. JHC was a yeswoman. And Pratt, who Frons enthusiastically hired at GH, helped destroy AMC.

No, the EPs were all powerless figureheads for Brian Frons after he took over in 2002 across the entire network. That's why Gary Tomlin was fired, among other people at various levels. He micromanaged the shows' storylines and couples directly (besides GH, where Guza was given considerable control while JFP was stripped of most of hers after '01) to the HWs, and he did keep a hand in at GH. Ryan/Greenlee was his mandate, as was the focus on the macho leads across the line. Michael Easton, etc. EPs under Frons were there to facilitate his vision for these shows. At OLTL and AMC, what little they got away with of their own was in spite of his whims. Rebecca Budig also quit AMC because of the Ryan/Greenlee push which she was disinterested in, and only came back because she was promised she would be paired with Vincent Irizarry (for about five minutes).

I don't think Brian Frons ever loved soaps, and you have the words of every lifer on daytime who's gone on the record about this since their soaps passed, including Susan Lucci and Erika Slezak. I think at most he loved his idea of what he could mold soaps into. And if they wouldn't be what he wanted them to be they'd be destroyed. Even at its peak I would never credit DC for raising the ratings. Back then, a decade ago, soap social media was even less significant than it is now. They were a popular voice in a very small subset of obscure discussion forums like this one but they could not move the ratings. That's not me dogging DC, that's a reality. I wouldn't say Soapcentral or Daytime Royalty or whatever else could move it either. DC has never had the larger cultural footprint of a popular cultural podcast/site capable of that in the outside world.

I don't believe ABC was ever fully committed to saving AMC at that point, JMHO. She did a fine job, sure, but I think Broderick was the swan song gesture the network gave the show and fans to give it a decent exit, whereas ABCD had always gone out of its way not to re-hire LB permanently despite her being Agnes' heir apparent for years. They wanted control to mold the show into what they wanted it to be, and Broderick and people like her did not fit into that equation long-term. But when the show was done, they could afford to be magnanimous. That's how it certainly read to me at the time, anyway. That being said, the story I always heard about the cancellations was that AMC was def doomed, and that OLTL had to go with it bc of branding considerations despite outperforming both it and GH; OLTL was always the redhead stepchild, and the optics internally of cancelling only AMC and leaving OLTL were seen as unacceptable. Supposedly ABC/Disney also wanted to can GH at the same time, but Frons begged for its life because he worshipped Guza's GH as the flagship. Of course Guza went out with that reprieve, too.

At this point I'm up for anything that works.

The uber-'90s VR interludes return once more during the Murders, where Clay has a dysfunctional Leave it to Beaver-esque VR fantasy world/program with him, Gwyn and the two kids as children in an ideal family tableau. Little Curtis and Trisha make darkly comic nods to their grim adult fates (Trisha talks about how she's always wanting to go to Rome). I'm pretty sure Curtis was played by a very young and uncredited Joseph Cross. Truly weird, wild stuff and definitely of its time but I loved it.