Vee

"Dear friends" indeed! Good for Eure and Marx. I too remembered Wesley Eure talking about losing Patty Weaver in his life, and it's lovely to know they've reconnected.

Still true though. I'm quite calm. The issue here is the false equivalence you're drawing re: "plot armor", which I find ironic considering you're a fan of characters who actually did and had all these things on AMC. Erica was made the butt of the joke a lot of times in the last decade or so on the network. Her abortion was overturned. Her history was razed solely to service others. That would never happen to Sonny; it would never happen to Ryan. And other characters were often the specific beneficiaries of Erica being floated off into a rarefied orbit. Yet somehow Erica is the problem in your mind. Didn't really happen that way, though. Erica was diminished and sidelined in a way those characters you're drawing a parallel to never were.

If that's what he's looking for, he shouldn't be hosting some of these. Based on past reactions we've seen from some guests when discussing BTS stuff, one of these days Locher may regret doing it up with some of these folks and ignoring the elephants in the room and that's all I'll say about that.

Locher's first loyalty is to the parent companies, even after all these years, which I can comprehend but don't accept. He did PR for these soaps in their dying days, and many diehard fans recognize that. I don't think his former employment should preclude letting these actors and creatives be candid.

I think for a lot of older folks it's habit plain and simple.

On a side note, speaking of dirt and unceremonious exits - Robin Strasser indicated on Twitter recently that she was outright let go and not invited back in the final months of OLTL on ABC in 2011. She's talked about it before, but here's the latest iteration. According to her version of the story, part of which we already knew: She left to have back surgery and was concerned about pain management and becoming dependent on medication (as she had from a prior procedure) in order to cope should she go back to work too soon. She claims she wanted to return in October of '11, but OLTL informed her they wouldn't be needing her back before the end of taping. She put on a happy face about it for PR, but was crushed. With Robin's POV you need a bit of a grain of salt at times, but I absolutely believe her on this one. I think Frank Valentini was looking to cut costs and drama by any means necessary in the final months and just didn't want to deal with her. I understand Robin could be high-maintenance, but it's a disgrace - especially re: Robin, who IMO never got over being fired by JFP.

We've talked about this in the past, but Bob Woods has vacillated over the years when talking about Jacquie Courtney as have a number of castmembers. (I've always found Erika Slezak's quiet asides re: her and Stuart especially interesting - "once Joe Stuart was gone, I knew I had job security.") He's sometimes been very complimentary and kind about her, particularly when she passed. The impression I got is that some of the OLTL cast - or perhaps just the more rough and tumble Buchanan actors, who were known to not always be big on discipline back in the day - found Courtney high-maintenance. I imagine the truth is somewhere in-between for all parties. When exactly did Rauch arrive? Fall of '84 or earlier? Because depending on when Courtney exited in '83 (allegedly December), he might've already been in the mix. That happens at these shows often BTS before the credits catch up. I always assumed Rauch was the answer to why she was cut, but that may well be untrue.

Erica was beloved by virtually the entire audience, good stories or bad. She never dismantled the show. Sonny, not so much. You don't have to like her, but that's the way it was. The reaction to Babe. the Careys, Ryan, etc. in those years was far more negative and tethered to what Brian Frons and Megan McTavish did to the show.

They're entitled to their opinion. Call a cop or leave people alone.

I just wish she had a better character to do this work with.

I still remember the AW finale which IIRC ended (minus the last scene) with a long, lazy sort of hangout scene in the summer evening with the characters all relaxing either at the various homes or I think at the wedding? with their families, children, loved ones, etc. I always remembered that and loved the mood and vibe and I felt it was the essence of good long-running soap - instilling a sense of a familiar place, feel and moment in time, something Nancy Curlee famously also described about GL. The ending of AW I'm sure had many issues but I thought a lot of its final few hours were a quality finale, and for my money superior to GL or ATWT.

The ATWT finale was [!@#$%^&*] just like its last more than several years, and I still remember the guy who all but wrote a doctoral thesis in the DC comments sections explaining to us plebs why these finales were actually excellent.

He doesn't actually like Freddie Smith, folks. He just knows you don't. Keep it moving.

I felt Trevor St. John's Todd was in need of waterboarding, what can I say. He would go to Afghanistan in search of whoever had been quietly siphoning the family funds for over 30 years and he would discover the truth as painfully as possible. Also, Selby's career was at an ebb at the time (it's been hotter in the last decade or so).

I remember thinking they should've brought Tony back in the 2000s - I believe he vanished in the Middle East on assignment? Presumed dead? I thought it would be interesting if he emerged played by someone like David Selby (who was almost a dead ringer for Reinholt) and had gone native out in the Middle East a la Apocalypse Now, and was back to terrorize people like Todd. The only clue the audience would have about who this mystery unseen figure out in the wilderness was at first would be a crumpled, torn picture of little Brian.

It would cut down on more of the same bandwidth-eating stupid [!@#$%^&*] we all had to endure the first 30 times when everybody thought they were playing Dunk Queen.

Just block and ignore the latest attempt at the same troll.

I see we've switched it up. Next account pls

They pulled the eyes off!

Like Will before him, little Johnny has bigger tits than half the female leads. I still think it would be weak to have Marlena get it again. Let ol' Scratch bounce around town.

Agreed.

Hoo! Okay, I'll watch next week. Marlena's reaction was pretty weak from Dee, lol. Doc looked like someone just keyed her car.

I think "we" can make up our own minds as individuals of whether we want to keep propping up bad shows with our continued support and daily viewership vs. being contented with the better years and advocating for better soaps and reinvention of the genre. You can do whatever you want.