Vee

It was the Cassadines! It made sense. Plus for years they all thought she was adopted. It is what it is!

I think that talk of breaking the filibuster has gotten this far is an indication of something else. If it happens once, it will happen again. It won't end here. That's why I'm pleased. McConnell is foolish to force this, but he has only one trick - obstruct, and hope they never touch the filibuster.

Yep! And all the talk of horses being broken and lightning and storms. I wonder how quickly they changed their minds, because a lot of this stuff with Holden and Lily is pretty hardcore by May, before the pre-Smith Emily turns up (though she is being talked about a lot). You're also given a window into Holden's mind and emotions by this point. But the stuff where he and Meg are both basically throbbing for Lily and Dusty and he murmurs "summer's coming" and indicates the other two will not be able to resist the siblings in the hotter weather, it just drips with sex. I'm surprised they got away with some of this stuff. You don't see the youth set doing this stuff today (except for my beloved OLTL 2.0!). It is fascinating to me that Marland gave Jennifer Ashe the Meg role after being denied the full extent of the story he wanted for her on Loving, where the character there was night and day. She's amazing. It's sad to remember what a milquetoast Meg became with Marie Wilson years and years later. The gaps are coming up in the '86 playlists online, but there is still a lot of material floating around through the year thankfully. I wonder how lucky I'll be in 1987. The information on Steve may be another issue of the Wikipedia fog of war - everything says Runyeon left the show in '86 which I'm sure he did, but I wonder when Steve was indicated to have been imprisoned vs. simply having left Betsy in the lurch. It's all lumped together in online data as '86, but I am not sure that's true.

I've been waiting for this.

Ryan and some real Cassadine supervillain business, not the weak [!@#$%^&*] they've served up for many years. And yes, an actual Jason/Carly affair behind Sonny's back (however implausible for them after so many years) might work to at least get buzz for the reveal, which they utterly failed to do so far.

Yep. They aired in February, early February IIRC. Their first days - I think - included the hit and run of Starr and Cole from OLTL en route from Llanview, Robin's 'death' and the very, very swift and abrupt conclusion of the Woman in White story and her murder by Helena. I think 2003-2004 were largely awful.

People are sleeping on the greatest Alexis scene and the one that is at the core of her character and has informed all of her relationships with destructive men since, IMO. The key moment is around 13:35-13:40. "It was wrong of me to compare you to my mother." Alexis was in love with Stefan all her life, and she never got over him and has looked for him - the dark prince - in every man after. This is just after Guza returned.

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.