Vee

Yeah, they had Johnny get out on parole or something or escape several times in short stints in the following couple years. They always played him as a remorseful antihero with a heart, had him try to make Dante jealous with Lulu, etc.

We know you've only watched one of these shows for like 20 minutes but do you know how often that's the case for soap opera stars? Especially now? Where is Michelle Stafford's non-daytime career in the last 20 years outside of her webseries no one watched and tiny indies that literally every soap star does? We'll wait.

No, Johnny left in March of 2013. The timeline is a little off. Garin Wolf was the one who brought the Soleito connection back in 2011 and played with bringing on Carla. He had Tracy marry Anthony. Frank and Ron Carlivati took over in February of 2012 and dumped the Anthony marriage and had Johnny kill him. They inherited the Claudia reveal literally a week or less before they fully took over, IIRC. Johnny was played heavy with them all year, and paired with Carly (abandoning the prior two teams' tease with Carly and Shawn). Johnny was used as an obstacle for pairing Carly and Todd, and it turned out he had accidentally gotten Starr Manning's boyfriend and daughter killed on their way through town by trying to shoot up Sonny's car on the road. Johnny was outed and sent to jail in March of '13. But he was played frontburner til then all year long. They kept bringing him back after on and off, because they clearly still loved Barash.

They do not do that for primetime dramas on network television.

@DRW50

He gives one of the all-time insane performances in Stephen King's Graveyard Shift, and also was one of the top choices (along with Yaphet Kotto!) for Captain Picard on Star Trek: TNG.

Oh, Stephen Macht (Trevor Lansing) is an absolutely brilliant character actor in film and TV. GH should've kept him around for years and years to come. He could be on a dozen soaps.

I think the mistake was the character, period. There were some powerful moments but I think it was a fundamental mistake to bring Sarah Brown back as anyone but Carly. I'd still hire her today.

In lighter news: #FreeMajor

I actually thought what was done with Claudia's exit was pretty true to mob life, and a daring thing to show on a soap. The problem, as always, was that the entire show angled around the mob and misogyny at that point and treating Sonny and Jason as the heroes at all costs - what they did, what they'd raised and driven Michael to do and forced him to cover up, was all good drama but it retained them as the stars of the show with a moral compass largely absolving them. Until Guza got bored with her there was an attempt to make Claudia a tragic, flawed hero too, after getting a kid shot in the head. Yes, supposedly they'd planned to reintroduce a few Soleitos and maybe Carla. It never happened.

He was the single worst young actor I've ever seen on GH, but if you're white, look twelve and have rock hard abs Frank will frontburner you for 3-5 years. Also, kid has like 5K views tops on his latest video. He is not exactly a viral superstar and GH doesn't give a damn about his nothing 'music' career (all videos released after he was fired).

Trump is a fading icon. Rudy is in deep shít and I'm pretty sure Gaetz now is too.

Johnny's dad turned out to be a rival mob boss who raped her, I believe. Anthony let a business partner turn her out. But when she was alive I frankly suspected Anthony had raped Claudia himself and that Johnny was their son. The quasi-incestuous vibe was very strong with Sarah Brown and Brandon Barash, yes, but it was also clear to me she took a profound maternal interest in him. I remember hearing spec about all of the above in those days.

Meanwhile:

I'd always suspected Claudia was Johnny's mother (as I think many fans had), so the retcon didn't come out of nowhere for me. Was it necessary to do years later? No.

Noel Clarke has become a considerable star in the UK since his Doctor Who days. I was always very happy for him though I never got around to watching much of his other projects. Now, well, I wish I could say I was completely shocked by this given what I'd heard of some of the content in some (not all) of them. Awful.

Let's check in on Will Stancil!