Vee

I don't know - this is mid-May and Duncan just told Barbara he came across some amazing castle on an island while roaming the town(!!). Barbara reacted poorly and at first I thought it was some sort of Gunnar St. Clair/Dobsons connection bc I associate that sort of excess in ATWT with them, but she said it belonged to Brian McColl. I have no idea what it is but I assumed this is the land Duncan would eventually move his infamous castle onto. I didn't know one was already there, in Oakdale! I actually think the slow dissolution of Steve and Betsy is fascinating to watch (especially when Steve finds common cause drinking alone with the even more chauvinistic Tonio, enabling his behavior - that's the kind of stuff that would happen on double dates with supposed happy couples). I do wonder when exactly he leaves. Bios online say Craig 'died' the following spring or summer heading to Greece for Steve, but wasn't Steve already jailed and divorced from Betsy by then? I wonder how they handle the exit and I hope I get to see a lot of it. I have been hearing about the infamous Rod/Josh and William Fichtner for years. Opinions are clearly quite mixed about that story and about pairing him with anyone, but I admit I'm very curious to see how he is with a cool customer like Lindsay Frost, though that is a long way off. Holden and Meg are much more predatory and dark at this point, though still human and with their own desires and needs and throughlines; there is a really visceral sexual energy to it and some amorality and drive you don't get from most non-antagonists on soaps today. They're very compelling considering the Snyders were simultaneously being built up as a core family. I don't know when they decided Holden was going to be it for Lily and not a spoiler, but they clearly were building him up into a person with his own needs and wants three-dimensionally by now (May '86). You would not see new leads allowed to be quite this morally gray with good people very often in later years, at least not characters that didn't used to be serial killers or rapists. Jon Hensley is more interesting here than he ever was to me in the late '90s or 2000s. He seems dangerous and the relationship with Lily is semi-overtly sadomasochistic.

How exactly did Brian McColl have a castle in Oakdale? Not Duncan, Brian! On some island?!

I always assumed it was him, but I remember rumblings at the time that some sort of split-personality story for Kate was in the works even before them. So who knows.

I don't know if the Kate/Connie DID arc was something planned before Ron Carlivati came in (it did not show up onscreen until his writing was onscreen). I did think Kelly Sullivan made a pretty decent Kate recast in the fall of 2011, even if I felt the storyline was pointless - I remember seeing them reintroduce Kate and thinking it was a shame, because I'd always liked the character with Megan Ward, but as caroline and I have discussed many times, the finale of the Sonny/Brenda arc in 2011 contained one very crucial scene which explained in detail why there was no purpose to pairing Sonny with anyone else, ever, because it was all futile because of who he is and what he chooses to do with his life. Rolling back the clock to Kate Howard, one of Sonny's only pairings I've ever enjoyed, wasn't going to undo the clarity Sonny had found about himself with Brenda in their break-up, where he'd told her he could never commit to love (with maybe the woman he'd loved most of all) because power was all he truly trusted and the only thing that lasts in his life. Once you have a scene like that one, what is the point of trying to pair Sonny with more women? The story is always the same until he changes. I thought Sullivan was much better as Kate with halfway-mature dialogue than she was Connie under Ron. That's when she got unbelievably embarrassing to watch, though I know a lot of people loved it.

IIRC, Ron and Frank said flat-out they would never allow Robin Scorpio to die on their watch and that was absolutely the right thing to do. Bear in mind that when they came in, everyone thought GH had maybe a year to live at best; I believe the original plan was for the kidnapped Robin to come across various other not so dead folks imprisoned with her, namely Alan Quartermaine and Victor Lord Jr./Todd #2 from OLTL, who was shown to be alive and captive in the OLTL finale in early 2012, and all of this would've been part of a grand finale or at least a Hail Mary arc to try and save the show. Didn't quite happen that way, but the Robin arc stayed (and then went on way, way too long when she was kidnapped a second time). I think the day to day writing wasn't too bad under Wolf bc a lot of the past writing staff was still in place, but his storylines - mysterious Ewen Keenan who was supposed to be a Cassadine or something, the Woman in White, Tracy and Anthony Zacchara - were pretty dumb. IIRC the past GH staff like MVJ, etc. seem to have no love for Wolf in commentary online, but maybe that has to do with extreme loyalty to Guza.

Yes, I believe so. I would never have forgiven GH for that.

Matt Smith takes what looks like another goofy, thankless role to me in the new unnecessary GOT spinoff:

I don't know where you got that from, but I do know that she allegedly had been willing to do at least a few more mins onscreen until allegedly a certain someone then wrote her into multiple shows and her management freaked.

As I was saying: And to be clear, sivad, I told you you'd dog any reconciliation bill that wasn't six trillion dollars. I was being clear on my statement, and I 100% stand by it. I'm proven right above about Biden's topline above and you'll ignore it, too.

I think they must mean Thanksgiving 2009 or something. But I'm pretty sure Frannie and Sabrina would've made it to Haiti and back by the following summer lol.

Why on Earth do the Wikipedia/SOC entries for Frannie and Sabrina say they went to Haiti together in 2010? I don't recall a single mention of either Haiti or Sabrina in Frannie's very brief appearance at the end of the show and I'm pretty sure someone's just writing fanfic again.

Oh, wow.

So the Craig/Lucinda hook-up in May of '86 has several parts deleted online, including what appears to be the actual hook-up. It seems Lily saw them together but most folks seem remarkably blase about it. Does anyone have the background on what exactly happened between them and how? It was obvious from the jump when I first began watching eps from late '85 long, long ago that Lucinda was deeply sexually obsessed with Craig, but I didn't realize they'd ever consummated it. I do wonder if Marland had ever intended anything serious with Craig/Iva or Steve/Iva, or the Tad Channing/Betsy connection for that matter. I think the latter must've just been intended as passing relationship drama. I really, really like Lindsay Frost but it is hard to imagine what this casting shift must've been like from perky elfen early '80s Meg Ryan. You can't imagine Frost being steamrolled by Craig or Steve.

If he's not another sockpuppet (which I am 50/50 on), he will end up blocked by many just like he is by me. One way or another it'll be sorted out.

I do. She's feeling the heat and is clearly rattled based on her behavior in the last week. As I said:

DF is a lot more attractive than they make him look in his current hairstyle.

Sami was understood and at times sympathized with, but the audience was invited to love to hate her in the '90s. They rooted for her getting her just desserts from Carrie. This has never happened with the allegedly rehabilitated Ben. That's the difference. It is extremely easy to redeem Ben, even now, by blaming a frame-up job in the world of DAYS. Ron Carlivati doesn't do it because he bullishly believes he was right to do similar stories like the rapemance at OLTL, NuFranco at GH, etc. and that it doesn't matter what a character does so long as they or the actor are edgy and fun to write for. But characters and stories do have limits - many soap scribes have learned that the hard way. Even Ron did, which led us to the Two Todds. tbh I've never disliked Drake. He sold the hell out of his story in the '80s and '90s and he has a certain skill and charm that is often underestimated. He's not Olivier but people have rarely given him enough credit. He is a singular personality, yes, but he's DAYS.

The Beltway reveres the Chamber too, so it's a big deal.

I'm perfectly fine, lol. I'm just pointing out this is not some binary either/or, because it wasn't at the time.

It was bad as soon as the OLTL 3 returned in summer '13. And there were definite bad stories before then. Ron didn't exactly skimp on writing Sonny and Carly in the later years.

These are some of the pieces that seem to cover a lot of it: NYT, Bloomberg, CNN

The Ozy scandal is insane and he comes off like a narcissist con man in every major piece on it, tbh. He was clearly focused on branding himself as (a direct quote from their fake PR mailers) 'Anderson Cooper meets Oprah' and burnishing his personal brand as a media personality from quotes written by his own people and attributed to major outlets, while building this scam company. He doesn't appear 'indirectly involved' based on the NYT piece or others.