Vee

Scott and Laura hasn't worked in aeons. And the show made her way too indulgent of him in recent years when he would do insane shít and she'd just cluck "oh, Scotty!" I love Kin Shriner and I want him on the show, but putting them together post-LNL is always a one-way train to humiliation and Cuckville. There's a slim chance you could've tried it when he first came back to the show around 1999, with serious, full-on commitment from the writing team for him as an older lead. They never had that or gave him that. It's been dead for almost 50 years and the 2013 revisit was just humiliating and insane for both of them and completely unnecessary. It was one of Ron's many forgettable plot widgets. You barely even noticed they were briefly 'remarried', because there was almost zero physical affection and everything had happened offscreen. It was done to try to goose story for Luke and Laura, and this was happening even while a) Tony refused to play Luke and Laura and b) Frank was nickel and diming Genie off the show again.

I think it's all of a piece with what we've all discussed before: The fact that they never really invested in Roman as a lead again outside of Drake, and that's what led to just hiring Corday's golf buddy to play foil to Dee and Drake for what feels like centuries.

Oh God that's right, I thought I'd dreamed that. This is why I can't with Nicole, even now! I actually loved Josh Taylor on 90210 and his other primetime work. A long time ago. I'm sure he's a very nice man but the whole thing has never worked, with the very narrow carveout for him and Lauren Koslow.

It's increasingly painful to see HQ episodes of ATWT inadvertently updated by randos alongside B&B getting put up more and more via official channels.

The Roman/Billie thing with Krista Allen and JT has never left my dark thoughts. I always thought that was so gross. WN and Lisa is another story, somehow.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, IIRC Carly left and Dee/Drake returned within days of each other.

We might as well loop @Khanin on this, since I know how much he loves WN - I actually think they could've sold Wayne Northrop's Roman with Lisa's Billie at one point, a la Hal and Emily on ATWT. The world weary cop with the troubled younger woman. I was under the impression Lisa's Billie only came back under McPherson/Thomas. I remember they were the ones who finished writing Carly out when they came on (along with a brief appearance by a, for once, age-appropriate and adorable Nicholas when she was in rehab). I wasn't aware that LR and CC's time ever intersected in that period. I thought Carly had already been gone maybe 3-6 months when Lisa's Billie turned up. At this point Billie being ISA is baked into the character, but I don't have a problem with her doing both that and CW fashion/cosmetic stuff, which is how they've seemed to handle it in both recent returns that I know of. John ran Basic Black for years too while also doing the usual John things. He was excellent on QS, but I think so much of what has been done with him on DAYS has come down to every creative that gets involved having bigger priorities than him. For Dena Higley, Gary Tomlin, etc. it was Shawn Christian or Galen Gering, for Ron it's many other men. I think you can never discount the Corday of it all too in terms of creative interference.

Jensen made reference to DAYS not long ago on IG. I think Jared Padalecki or someone trolled him with pix or a clip of Eric or something. I despised Ari's first run as Nicole, and I've never gotten over it. I thought she sparkled with E.J. in the late 2000s/early 2010s, but I think she looks so tired and worn down now, not unlike the Billie recasts. I think it's long since over and they should've just kept her with GV's Eric and let them be happy. But they've never fully utilized him either, though that is in part due to Greg's recurring run on the excellent Queen Sugar. I would add about Lisa - I didn't see much of her 2011-2012 run, but I heard it was another bust. I know they got her involved with Countess Wilhemina again which was wise. I am one of the very few boosters of that brief era under McPherson/Thomas which I think started out very good, but I know it apparently went off the rails fast and I was unable to keep up with it for long at the time; DAYS is extremely hard to find online at least for me (if anyone knows an archive I can watch stuff at, PM me lol), so I can't speak to that progression. I was very pleased with McPherson's AMC 2.0 a year later, but that's beside the point. Anyway, that's a longwinded way of saying I'd be interested in hearing details on Billie in 2011/2012. Since I've been rewatching a binge of OLTL 1993 today, it's worth noting that Peter Reckell's Bo is a prime example of a character who got to take off and spread his wings where John Loprieno as Cord on OLTL - a similar performer and character type - couldn't or wasn't allowed to. Loprieno could've easily had just as many hot pairings and stories, and was at least as good an actor as Reckell (better IMO, for anyone who's seen him on Star Trek) I did not finish Beyond Salem, lol. I will try again.

She has never really not been a loser since Lisa first left, minus a few shining moments here and there. I've made no secret how I felt about Krista Allen's unrecognizable take on the character, and Pinson's Billie carried the energy around like a weight and just felt like a joke to me. And most of Lisa's brief returns just feel like novelty bits for me that either go camp or are rough for other reasons. If she was willing to commit to 6-12 months, or some sort of Alison Sweeney situation, I'd say go for it with Lisa. But otherwise, don't bother.

That has been the biggest issue, and yes, they should've invested in someone else for Rinna (or Pinson, in a pinch). But they never have, they just treated the recasts like her mother: The town mattress. Absolutely. I like Julie Pinson a lot, I loved her on PC where she had the same energy as Lisa. But Julie Pinson got plugged into too many forced roles on too many shows, most especially ATWT, and that includes using her as a sort of shadowpuppet version of Rinna on DOOL. Billie had no agency as a character after LR's original run and that really hurt Pinson too. These days when people bring JP up I just roll my eyes, sadly, because she's had enough ill-conceived runs on enough shows. It's not her fault. But no, no one has ever compared to Rinna for me or ever had the same stature in the role.

I never got over Bo and Billie's breakup, and I never will!

I don't remember Kanan ever publicly trashing the writing while he was on the show. I've always assumed his personality simply rubbed Frank and Ron the wrong way, and they responded accordingly by dragging him onscreen. I've certainly heard things about some folks finding SK obnoxious as hell, but that has nothing to do with whether he or any other actor delivers onscreen and is popular with the audience, and they shouldn't have made it personal. The way they treated him and A.J. was low.

The larger bulk of the Russian people have no interest in toppling Putin, IMO. They've been dealing with autocrats and maniacs for centuries. It is a cultural and historical thing that will take god knows how long to change in that part of the world. AFAIC the best we can hope for in the short term is a more malleable, less deranged oligarch in power in that country, who does not believe Ukraine is his manifest destiny. And I'll take it. As for Putin, I think whatever of Ukraine he 'takes' will increasingly be its ashes. Those people are not going to give up. And if he can't make them give up, he will level the country. In other news:

The soap press are too cowed bc they're on life support even more than the shows, so they don't care. And no one else cares about the soaps, so no one cares. It's unconscionable. But it's typical CBS at this point, too, where these things keep happening.

Victor Miller (AMC) famously wrote the original Friday the 13th, and his ongoing litigation against series producer/sometimes director Sean S. Cunningham (who refuses to credit Miller with royalties for the creation of Jason Voorhees, the hockey-masked killer) continues to this day, freezing all production of anything related to the franchise. Incumbent co-HW Chris Van Etten (GH) has a background in YA literature. I've always liked those two guys at GH and I feel they could do better work out from under Frank, but who knows. Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who, It's a Sin) also got his start submitting scripts to Crossroads. I've often wondered what became of some of Eastenders' most famous or visible writers, but I haven't looked into it.

I'm not dogging on Phil Carey, I loved watching him. But he was a handful and a character, and also a dear friend to Michael Storm and others IIRC. It was Clint Ritchie who was a known alcoholic. I'm simply pointing out that Montgomery has told this story before.

She talked a fair bit about the same issues with PC in the oral history (and IIRC, him taking a lot of Percodan or Percocet). They did not get along.

She is especially active in the arthouse horror scene these days, not just direct to video schlock.

Bob Guza worked on a couple of classic slashers in the early '80s - both Prom Night with Jamie Lee Curtis and Curtains with Samantha Eggar, which is a favorite of mine. I know he supposedly was working on a Broadway musical following GH (with Nick Offerman!) but who knows what became of that beyond a few stagings or readings.

Axios, a.k.a. Politico with fillers, screws up letting the mask slip:

Arnold nails it once again:

The NYT has finally managed to top the Tom Cotton fiasco. A thread: The kicker is later, and 100% the truth IMO:

If Barbara Crampton turned up again I'd have to tune in. She is everywhere back in the horror genre these days and she is still incredible.

How much of a slow burn does it qualify as when the main focus and story drive seems to continue to be the white teens? Esme executes a scheme against Joss and Cam to drive plot, even though her stated objective is supposedly about Nikolas and Spencer. These two kids have been on almost a year and haven't kissed, while Cam and Joss (who do not have a serious fanbase together as far as I can tell) get a tender love scene. And I happen to think William Lipton is the best actor of the four, but go where the attention is and weave him in with Spencer and Trina, while doing something different with Joss's character as she potentially begins to morph into the rich bitch when Esme is done. Instead the focus is still on Frank's priority, IMO - Joss and her man. The Spencer/Trina stuff increasingly functions as a B-plot to me even though it's supposed to be a central story, which is exactly how Frank treated the 'ethnic' teens on OLTL: Sidekicks to the whites. Even when the story is supposed to be about them, the focus is not on them.