Vee

We've talked about it a lot in the years since the wave of cancellations at the end of the 2000s-early 2010s in just that same way. The OLTL oral history has the actors discussing it at length. It all goes back to that lack of time and budget, which in turns leads to a lack of passion and energy. I think the network clamping down on what stories they approve, or what a show thinks they can sell to a shrinking, aging audience and in an increasingly polarized time also is an issue - everything is babies these days or pablum. GH and DAYS occasionally have sparks of life, but for the most part these shows are simply about subsistence at this point, going through the motions and keeping the lights on, and that's sad.

Jeff Webber was always kind of a dick and often volatile, but if they really go for some sort of repressed abuse thing with Liz here that'll be way too far. I do hope they bring on the parents, but I expect GH to do it in the most boring or muted way possible when those characters could be powerhouses (I've been thinking of Liz's mysterious mom, who we now after decades know to be named 'Carolyn,' to be a brilliant surgeon and queen bitch in the mold of Colleen Zenk or something, and Robert Newman could easily be an equally dickish Jeff since Ashland Locke is not long for the world). Is that the Q mansion kitchen Michael and one of the anonymous white chicks are in? It looks like a playset of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air set!

I think the ghost [!@#$%^&*] was really goofy - there were better ways to use each of the returnees, especially the confusing stuff with Rick (where Rick mumbles 'that's not what happened' re: the attic story, similar to how Ron Carlivati sort of just tried to fluff off the Viki-killed-Victor retcon on OLTL with zero explanation). But I loved the Audrey stuff and the Nurses Ball, minus Sabrina. I'll never forget the Audrey sequence, because I could swear the applause for Rachel Ames was not scripted or was hidden from her. She looked genuinely shocked and touched. (Timestamped below)

She behaved nothing like Erin's Jessica, but that's a whole other thing.

Oh, I am all for calling Carlivati out on his misbehavior or calling for him to be fired. I just don't think making threads devoted entirely to firing the one staff writer who used to be just a fan and acting like he has magically taken over the entire writing staff are productive or seem sane, it just seems like crazy grudge stuff. It demeans the actual substantive arguments against RC and co.'s work as a larger team, and makes people sound like Charlie Day with the conspiracy board on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Welcome back to a day by day reenactment of every day's online discussion of the OLTL Teen Jessica story, lol. What amazes me is how Jamey went for this, since I could swear even he had to admit that one was a dog.

Exactly. I have plenty of issues with the writing on DAYS, but when folks do threads like these they make sure these people are going to be laughing to the bank. The only reason this thread exists is because people know who Jamey is and because Jamey credited himself with the very stupid Renee twist. But it's only because of our shared familiarity with him as a fan and a blogger that he is singled out for an OP that people have suddenly decided he is rewriting everyone else and running the show. That's about a grudge match with someone who isn't even here and doesn't know you. Listen, I have all day for people critiquing the hell out of Jamey's work on this show! Go for it! Roast him! It's shallow and stupid, even if I think he's matured a bit as a person since the old days. But it takes a village of writers to make a show this bad, not just the latest, and it's not like Ron doesn't have a history of wrecking his own shows. You don't have to make any one person the Wicker Man and burn them in effigy because they used to be just like you, and if you make it personal they're the ones who win, because they're getting paid and you're not. It also blunts and marginalizes any valid criticism when we invent conspiracy theories about them being behind it all like the cigarette-smoking man on The X-Files. Back to the HW, even when Ron starts beefing on Twitter and acting a fool (a time-honored tradition for him at this point) he's the one who wins if you go at it this way too. The only way to come out of this kind of mess with dignity is to either shrug his behavior off, or simply keep laughing when he gets mad and not take it this seriously. I've known how he behaves online for a long time, and I watched Jamey show his ass in real time too. Why would I want to meet him where he lives? This just is not worth it in the 2020s to me, we've got real problems.

As I said in the AMC thread when it first came up a week or two ago, there's a lot of talk about VI and his family going awhile back. There's also a lot of conservatives or right wingers in daytime and always have been, for decades - among all our favorites. As long as they don't throw it in my face and openly push fascism or threaten public health towards their castmates or audience (c/f: Ingo Rademacher, Steve Burton) I can shrug most of it off. I have little doubt a fair amount of what I've heard about Irizarry or his son is true. That doesn't mean he deserved to die, and it doesn't mean I didn't or can't enjoy his performances onscreen and don't wish him a swift recovery. It is entirely possible he's someone whose politics I find repugnant; unfortunately, in daytime, that's a big club.

I went to school in the damn dark for years in DC. It happens.

Not screenshotting your Firefox....

I feel bad for ol' Alice. Didn't she die a few years later while still on the show and Heather immediately seized on it somehow to make a play for something?

I love Jane Campion's work but she is eccentric, and what she said was dumb at best. I'm glad she apologized, but she's gonna take her turn in the barrel.

Thread: Equally important thread: One more:

Edge of Night was famous for doing one, two, three-handers IIRC. It's a thing I feel soaps here should do more often again, but the problem is whenever they do lately it's often with the most marginal-to-poor choices possible. Jason Thompson is a fine actor, but he cannot anchor solo or near-solo episodes of Y&R, especially when he is miscast. In addition to John C. Reilly, GH has done little tributes to both Peter Hansen and Susan Brown separately (Lee and Gail Baldwin) in recent years. I didn't love the dialogue or plot choices in the latter - I'm not sure why Gail would send everyone envelopes of glitter - but the moment at the end where Kin Shriner's Scott does the long, lonely walk alone past the nurses' hub (as Genie Francis and Denise Alexander watch) to look at Gail's portrait joining Steve, Jessie, Lucille, Amy, etc.'s on the memorial wall was very good (timestamped below). Did this memorial need to coincide with an anniversary show and a budget folk-rock montage of recent couples just after this moment? No. But it was something.

I took "peppy and cheap", of course, from Soapdish, where the network honcho (Garry Marshall) makes it a guiding ethos for the show over the showrunner and stars' heads. I think it applies even more in the last decade than back then.

Yeah, we know.

It was OLTL. She wanted him as Sam Rappaport #2.

Oh God. William Hurt was one of the greats. RIP.

I'm not saying people can't have issues with Jamey Giddens but let's live in reality. He's not HWing the show and I highly doubt he would replace Ron.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a particularly outre or camp gay villain like Leo, but when there is no shading to the character plus when he seems like an avatar for the writer's id, that's another story. When everything is spun around the axis of that character for the LGBT canvas, too, it's a problem. And the reason Chad is a part of this story is because, as I said before, Ron has a long history of using the hot str8 dudes on his soaps as objectification fodder for the audience in the ways he can get away with, almost like Golden Age Hollywood creatives skirting the Hays Production Code - ways he can't get often get away with the actual gay characters in romantic or sexual roles. He can queerbait and use the str8 leading males as eye candy for himself and for the gay and female audience alike and tease the idea that they will cross over into gay behavior at any moment - hence, Chad used as a lure for Leo. But the actual, canonically gay characters are doing what together? On GH they were C-players who just talked about watching gay-coded sitcoms, while the majority of the gay gaze was fixed on the str8 males and homoerotic content for them. And on DAYS, it's all over the map at best even though Will and Sonny are ostensibly leading characters. I have a lot of time for camp and humor, and I've defended a lot of Ron's comic interludes in the past. His treatment of the Black New Orleans-based drag act that helped shelter Marcie Walsh on OLTL in 2007 was fun and goofy but also had an emotional undercurrent due to the backstory in the scripts. Kish worked too. I don't think Leo is the second coming of the Antichrist. But using him as sort of the purging gay id of Carlivati's writing that can say all the things he wants to, do all the things he wants to and potentially molest the str8 hotties while the actual gay leads are sort of ghettoized into this mess - I just don't think it's productive, and at worst it reinforces a lot of toxic, stereotypical shít. And everyone's issues with the Craig story have already been covered.

GH is not good, but it has improved marginally in the recent years after Passanante retired(?) and I think the HWs are decent guys hamstrung in many ways. It occasionally has gripping scenes or good ideas, mostly poorly executed. DAYS often makes GH look like Shakespeare.

Great news.

That's news to me, but I'd love to hear more.