Vee

It may, yes. But I think as always the media is going all in on a potential Democratic loss which may not happen. As soon as they don't, they're never referred to again.

Eileen doesn't want to commit to a long-term contract. Which is fine because Kristen should not be on a long-term contract, IMO. She is a character who should come in and do controlled stints. When Kristen is on year-round it looks like what you have now.

Nobody should be playing the role but Eileen, and on her terms and her schedule. I'm glad she agreed to appear, but I can't believe they let Haiduk and Davidson both appear as Kristen in relative close proximity on two different outlets of the show. That's just handicapping the recast they expect people to watch. Just work something out with ED.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Stacy Haiduk was unrecognizable and brilliant in a surprise cameo in Gillian Flynn and Jean-Marc Vallee's Sharp Objects on HBO. That showed me what she can really do. Daytime never has. I think Haiduk is stuck in a thankless recast she initially made mostly work, which has been made more difficult by Carlivati pushing a redemption arc for Kristen with her in the role which is probably unsellable for the larger history of the character, tbh. He also doesn't commit to long-term changes with many edgy characters, gets bored and backtracks or regresses them often. He's done that at every other show he's worked on. It doesn't matter who plays Kristen with some of this writing, IMO. I think if Eileen was here full time you'd see her struggling against the heroine arc Carlivati gave Stacy Haiduk, and probably playing against it onscreen. I don't consider it the fault of the actress. It's like if they turned around and said Marlena was behind Stefano all along. On a side note, the undead villains look exactly like Dark Shadows' zombie jamboree from the 1970 Gerard Stiles/Destruction of Collinwood storyline. @DRW50

Mandates get results:

You're wrong, but hey, this is America.

Today in Manchin Mondays: Manchin holds a 'press conference' in which he whines about the infrastructure bill being 'held hostage' and takes no questions. The House appears ready to call his latest bluff (wisely, IMO): A rather pointed response from the WH as well: Republican McConnell booster Jake Sherman was creaming his jeans at the thought of the House being over a barrel because of this, but I think he's wrong and other reporters are right - the House is daring Manchin to vote against the package. And I don't think he will. I think he hoped to pull another stunt to blow up the bill passage, and the House appears to be signaling it won't stop.

It was obvious Carlivati had intended to tie Brad into the old Asian Quarter crime families and incorporate mob ties there. But like so many things, he fucked around and never got around to it.

Prinz has never suffered any fools, including barely having any patience for the fearsome Irna Phillips. It didn't surprise me that she steamrolled Locher. It's unfortunately what most of them need to do to get a good interview out of his shows, because Locher regardless of current employment status still reps for P&G and particularly ATWT in its worst years.

About 20 years too young.

Happy post-Halloween, everyone. (My horror movie hangover binge lasts a few days beyond.) I did catch last night's new episode, though the current licensing mess in the US makes it ridiculous to catch the series while current without resorting to torrents. For the record, the modern series is archived on HBO Max while any new/ongoing series/season of DW airs first on.... the separate streaming service of AMC+. Complete with commercial breaks. Why?! One hopes RTD taking over the entire shop with his Bad Wolf Productions outfit (just bought up by Sony) will allow this all to be consolidated via HBO Max in the future. Anyway: It was reasonably entertaining and more diverting than most of the last two series with Chibnall/Whittaker. It wasn't anything amazing, but consistently engaging and not deathly boring are a high bar for the Chibnall era IMO. Whittaker's Doctor still isn't much of a character. Yaz is a little more engaging without another two companions around (do not get me started on the Revolution of the Daleks special, where Bradley Walsh had maybe 10 lines tops). John Bishop wasn't bad at all. The mysterious new villains look a bit like rock candy people to me and are very campy (my friend called them "Party City Cenobites" from Hellraiser) yet also reasonably menacing so far, which very few of Chibnall's attempts at scary, serious new villains ever are, so there's that. At the other end of the spectrum, the concept of "the Division" (the secret Gallifreyan intelligence group masterminding all of Time Lord society) is once again something we're expected to pay attention to. I am so over Chibnall’s endless attempt at menacing names and ideas that just sound adolescent. Yes, behind all of Gallifreyan intelligence there is this thing which sounds like a bad spy procedural or video game. It just sounds so banal and tryhard. Who can forget "Tzim Sha" or "the Stenza" either? Or have you already, like me? Let's hope the Party City Cenobites end a bit better. Their introduction was decent. The Weeping Angel sequence was very effective, seeing them on a normal street on Halloween night. I have often thought their manner of killing needs to be changed though - Moffat did it himself when he had them just killing people physically in his run (due to 'low power') because it was scarier. They should simply kill people more often vs. sending them back in time, but they seem to be back to their old tricks here with that poor woman who we'll clearly get to know later in the story. The Sontaran bit was funny, but full episodes devoted to them often bore me. We'll see how next week goes. If nothing else, it was not an abject bore and failure of imagination, so that's some progress. I doubt it will singlehandedly salvage Whittaker's era though. I'm just ready to move along to RTD2. Now to watch the Special Edition of The Curse of Fenric to cleanse my palate. Along with perhaps The Seeds of Doom and Listen...

Finally caught up to date on the largely forgettable Whittaker era in time for tonight's premiere, which I'm not terribly enthused about beyond it being short and sweet and finally exiling Chibnall from our lives (minus the specials next year). The most exciting thing about the entire last year or two of Who was when Captain Jack told the Doctor he'd be staying on Earth to catch up with Gwen from Torchwood, who he says 'used her son's boxing gloves' to fend off a Dalek. Good old Gwen.

The way to do it, then and now IMO, would be to pump out between 30-50 half hour episodes per 'season' - whatever constitutes a typical quadrant of arc storytelling on a classic old school soap, or perhaps not unlike the Port Charles arc format. Package them, then drop them daily or bi-daily or whatever and then take breaks. Like any streaming show. I love the Choose Your Own Adventure media experiments with interactive streaming shows like Black Mirror's Bandersnatch or the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt film (and before them, Steven Soderbergh's semi-interactive Mosaic series with Sharon Stone, Garrett Hedlund and ATWT's Jennifer Ferrin on HBO, an uneven but fascinating experience), but I think that would be so cost-intensive for soaps and impossible to do.

Ironically, Kelly Rutherford went on to a primetime career of often playing serene, at times remote beauties, first as the ethereal hooker-turned-snow white heroine Megan on Melrose Place, then as the ice queen socialite on Gossip Girl. But I do agree she had plenty of fire and would've done well. MP rarely utilized her properly.

A seasonal format is definitely necessary.

I've heard and read Erika talk about the PP soaps a number of times since they went under, not just the Fairman interview, and she's always been very candid. But she hasn't completely dismissed them in terms of quality either; I've never gotten the sense she wrote them off as worthless or unworthy. There were tonal and aesthetic issues with the shows at times, but I think a medium is capable of being found between modernizing the show and trying too hard to be edgy, and the shows evolved as they went. I still think they're the best soaps we've had for most of the last decade, especially AMC 2.0.

I don't regret a thing about the PP soaps, beyond the higher-up administration debacle. I've watched what Erika has said about it, and she has often been both complimentary and critical; I've heard her be much harsher about, say, Linda Gottlieb. I agree with a lot of her complaints but I also think those shows, in their final form, were the future of the genre denied despite many, many BTS hiccups and obvious growing pains. It wasn't an issue at the in-show creative level, it was the administrative above them and I'll always stand by that.

Eric would've soared as an elder Cassadine when Guza was still around. It would be a major coup. But I'd have no faith in the 21st century GH serving him well for very long; he's wise to stay where he is.

Alternately, there isn't a need for a both sides approach on an issue where one obnoxious actor turned out to be an (alleged) sexual harasser who is now blacklisted from daytime.

For better or worse, OLTL took huge risks with both the Marty gang rape story and the DID revisit of the 1990s and both, in their own ways, paid off tremendously. For good or ill they became singular achievements and forever redefined swaths of characters and parts of the canvas - people may despise Todd Manning, or find him a relic of the past now (as I do despite once finding him a favorite), but he was tremendously galvanizing and popular for the show. Later years, of course, took all the wrong lessons from both of these stories. OLTL should never have touched DID again, at least not with Viki's family. And Todd, don't get me started.

That's what it must be if it was Marland, because Bobbie was on in late '77, I think.

The Bobbie question came up recently in a thread, actually; we were all wondering if the Hollands(?) created her or Marland. Jackie has always maintained it was Marland I believe, but the dates are suspect. I can certainly believe he was writing there before he was credited though.

For now I feel confident the Fox News poll is an outlier.