Vee

Exactly! And that's not even getting to the stories that Geary and others allegedly went commando for some bedroom scenes back then. If we really want to open another can of worms, we should also discuss the letter Luke left Laura when he left the show in 2015. I don't think they ever said what was it in it. I suspect that was an easter egg Ron Carlivati left before getting fired, hoping to re-affirm L&L even though Geary had refused to play it. I could swear the episode where Luke reads (or maybe Laura herself, re-reading what she wrote) that letter is currently on YT - there are a lot of beautiful direct-to-tape from the studio dubs on there right now from '79, '80 and probably later. I think I've seen it myself in the last few months.

Lol that's how they rolled back then, cocaine and too many crazy actor stunts.

That clip has some pretty strong DAYS "John and Brady fight the entire town at Maggie's restaurant" energy. The part where they're like 'no no, don't bring in the baby!' makes it even more hilarious.

That's a good way to ruin Chloe even more than she already is!

Poor Lucas has been a joke for a long time for the same reasons as Chloe, Phillip, Rafe, Shawn, Belle, etc. Corday can't let them go yet refused to invest in them when they actually worked (not that Rafe ever did IMO). Lucas escaped this fate for a long time and was frontburner until E.J. become fully ascendant, but he's been the goat for years despite the brief recent resurgence. That will end now. And yet they keep them on because Corday can't accept letting things go.

I don't think the Dante angle was a great idea, but I do think they were forced to re-jigger the entire story around a son from a family we'd never met and tie it all back to an all-new backstory, and that made things even worse for something that was already poorly executed.

This was deliberate for both Agnes Nixon (at every show she reused the archetype, from AMC to LOV) and Lemay. Lemay points it out in his book when he singles out the audience for rooting for Rachel, even before he took over, for going after what he wants - specifically the Black audience.

I do not believe any son of Brenda Barrett's would turn out to be rugged hetero and nothing else, let alone hot for the deeply boring Eden McCoy, but that's another story! I feel like they were waiting for a strong primetime actor and they got one. I have my doubts there was a rewrite on his ID except for some of the baby/Dante stuff, I think it was just a poorly constructed story with parts of it slapped together when Vanessa made them can the Dante angle.

I enjoyed most of Tina's return which I think was much better than her 2008 stint. Those scenes with her, ES and RH in the Llanfair kitchen, and then when she left the inheritance to Todd, were gold. I didn't like that they wrote her and Cord out before the finale with no mention whatsoever after their re-marriage (at least, no mention I can recall). I didn't mind them slowly re-pairing Viki and Clint, even though I was a huge fan of her and Charlie, because I think ES and JVD had very strong chemistry even if it was more intellectual and combative than it had been with Clint Ritchie. He was a different man and she was a different woman than they used to be, and I think it clicked even better on OLTL 2.0 in 2013 when Clint's recent sins came to the fore in the plot again. But I didn't recall her doing much in those last months besides hanging out with him in the house and having Kim's too-brief visit; it all runs together for me, I guess. I would've been very happy with Viki/Charlie and Clint/Kim staying together bc I loved both couples, but ES/JVD really worked for me so I was okay. It was very evident (and discussed at the time on the rumor mill) that Florencia had no story with TSJ gone, and allegedly they had considered writing her and a few others out early, which did happen with other characters. Ron didn't do that bc he loved her, so in the meantime the story went in circles with her, Todd, Blair and Tomas. Blair got short shrift and while I'm glad she didn't exit Téa was made to look stupid unnecessarily. They pretty much ruined the Tomas character by making him responsible for Todd's imprisonment and the triangle didn't work anymore but it kept going. And faking out the audience by first claiming Todd hadn't done it and having Téa defend him, then reveal that he had, then finally revealing Victor was alive was stupid. It was a retread of old Todd stuff when they should've been moving all the characters forward, even when it was obvious Victor was not really dead.

I have never heard of a soap erasing a child from existence and pretending it just didn't happen at all when it was a central plot point for a core character. Even AMC's Bobby Martin wasn't exactly key to the plot. So yeah, no, AFAIC she's stuck with uh... what was his name? Alec! That's it, I literally just had to check. But really, he can grow into a fine character I think on paper the Balkan story - some of it, anyway - could've worked: A big bad crime family with a few prestige TV/movie actors (Benzali, the legendary Adrienne Barbeau). It was the execution and details with the son, etc. I found silly.

Will we be checking the report section in addition to the ratings?

I think the kid has plenty of possibilities. I think you could toy with it actually being Jax's. I don't get why Vanessa tries to pretend it doesn't exist. They're not retconning her son off the show, lol.

This doesn't illustrate what you think it does, teeheehee! That's because Kyle Lowder always looked ridiculous. Chloe has had every possible demeaning story in the last 20 years short of being abducted by aliens or sold into slavery. I love Nadia but the potential there is burnt AFAIC. She should be gone 5-10 years but Ken Corday can't stop rehiring her (or a lot of other folks).

That's awful. Kanopy is great. Meanwhile:

I thought DZ and VM had chemistry. I understood playing with the story. But VM was right to put her foot down.

Martsolf looked amazing then and now. Brady is never going to be de-aged no matter who plays him, neither are most characters. It's not a question of de-aging Shawn and Belle at this point. They have an adult child, and just like E.J. it is what it is; you can never roll it back. (Just like when Patricia Bruder ended up with grandchildren on ATWT like a decade after being a teen heroine, but that was in the really extreme days) The problem with Belle is the actor and the writing for decades, and Shawn is an afterthought no matter who is in the role.

If they don't have a contract they can't keep them, whether they say they are "working with them" or not. It may work right now but if Lipton or SM get another offer from primetime, streaming, etc. they will be gone. Whenever that happens soaps always say they will "work with" hot young stars who get other jobs. It always ends the same way, this is a very old story.

Poor JKJ looks skeletal. Jason Cook looked great a few years ago, but anyone who watches GH knows Kirsten has needed to be off television and taking care of herself for most of the last ten years. I think this ship sailed long ago though, starting with them hyper-aging Shawn and Belle for JC/KS to begin with. I never got over how they were toddlers when John and Marlena left on their honeymoon and teens when they came back.

Yes, EM being some of the longtime posters' actual median age should never prevent him from being lusted after. The flashbacks have done neither Nadia nor JKJ favors!

I knew Ron would do this. The way he and FV over-rotated characters and stories plays well for DAYS' micro-budget and guarantees so it's natural he brought that structure of storytelling over from GH. But as has been said so often at both shows and eras, the problem is there is rarely consistency; people will go for weeks without being seen and events happen offscreen. You can't do that with something as big as the Possession. If it's back next week great, but I don't hold out hope for Ron to learn how to re-structure his show. He also gets various characters into story ruts and leaves them there forever (most of the rest of the canvas lol). JKJ looks like a lizard and poor Nadia Bjorlin has had some especially glaring work done since last I saw her. Oof. Eric Martsolf is still hot and unappreciated AFAIC.

I think that was their way of trying to graduate NL/Emily to A-list lead status. Putting her with MB was supposed to be the big leagues. They made over Emily a bit too; tried to present her as more adult, had her do various things to make her seem more like she could flow in Sonny's world and less like a whitebread heiress. I thought it was laughable at the time. It didn't work, but that didn't mean they should have ever murdered Emily. It was a huge mistake. Hell, if she were alive I'd recast her and put her with Dante right now.

I loved, loved, loved Gigi early on and them as a supporting B-couple. Frontburner leads, it didn't work. But Farah Fath's dry, bitchy energy was always brilliant opposite people like Erika Slezak, etc. who she clearly had a lot of reverence for (no small feat in FF's world). I am glad they didn't kill her, if only because Jack could never have been redeemed from that. Not in the way it was written and not using Andrew Trischitta as Jack, who was terrible. And yet that was apparently the original plan had they not been cancelled - Gigi would've stayed dead at his hands. The only thing that worked re: Stacy was Kim. Crystal Hunt's last few days on-air with Clint in "Hell" at the end of the show in 2012 were fun, but I could not stand her alive. I think there's some terrible [!@#$%^&*] in the last few months tbh - John stuff, Austin Peck and the "Jailbait" video, the Todd story spinning its wheels as they waited to see if they were going to go online. I think the Gigi resurrection story was very, very bad though I was happy with the end result. A lot of the show was bad IMO. The final weeks were great. I think there was a lot of very, very good stuff in '09 despite huge glaring problems, and I think 2010 is a real mess in many ways with some bright spots.

I think that had to do with RC and FV more than anything. In their world, especially Ron's, all normal male leads are simps and dupes for schemers with no real depth. The 'edgy' male characters get ahead if any do. Guza and co. though didn't fully realize what they had in DZ and JJ together. They could've run the show, period. It was the future and they let it walk. This was before the rumors. I don't remember the rumor mill getting onto them until later in the summer, and IIRC Sonny and Emily did not become overt onscreen until early fall. But it was a long time ago, so I can't be sure. I think that was their idea of a graceful exit from the whole debacle - dovetail it into a social issue story. The fact that Sonny had a torrid romance with a young woman at least half his age who he'd known since she was a child was of course not mentioned as part of that illness story as being symptomatic, but it probably should've been.

I remember seeing Sonny and Emily coming miles away. When they started the Nikolas/Courtney affair storyline in spring or summer '05, they kept having Emily stay at Greystone (Sonny's place) to sit for the boys and get close to the family; Nik was more and more unsympathetic re: her rape and they weren't communicating. He kept having run-ins with Courtney while Emily kept spending time with Sonny. I remember folks at TWOP thought I was crazy but I knew where that [!@#$%^&*] was going! And it was nauseating when it happened. I still can't watch their first kiss. Same thing happened with Liz and the serial killer a few years back. Folks didn't believe it bc he was still with Nina at the time and they just kept having run-ins at the hospital. I knew! Doubt me and court your doom!

And it worked, tbh. Not Jason so much for me, but Dante/Lucky becoming the new Luke/Scorpio of their day (they should've been the stars, period) with Sonny being pushed into a senior/elder lead role was natural, IMO. He still had story and still got into things, but he was clearly being shifted and it worked. Even with Brenda again that role was there a bit. It stayed that way til around sometime in 2013, I think. It's still where he's most viable IMO, but we've discussed that before. Guza also seemed to sour on Sonny personally and was more willing to harangue him for his flaws. That didn't last with Guza and the mob because it never did, but the tone definitely shifted and the attitude re: what they'd wrought for Michael, etc.