Vee

Grant Aleksander is also too old AFAIC. Michael Park is on the edge. You can scale down a bit on the age from Ashford and no one's gonna care. Tom was a little boy in the early '80s and his son can be in his 20s or early 30s. Back on topic, I still don't know how Katherine lasted so many years after her intro story with Scott was, AFAIK, a flop before 1994 even rolled around. I always liked Mary Beth Evans, though. She always played the role to the hilt even in inconsequential or bad storylines - she was not doing Kayla.

The "isn't it obvious? I have a penis" moment the Soup used has stuck with me and my ex for years, including the dramatic and mournful reaction shots of Jacob Young, Alexa Havins, etc. It was just too much and I thought Carlson was often the wrong side of hysterical camp. I think on paper, the story was ahead of its time. In execution it was a mess on many levels.

You need a hunkier guy to play Tom, IMO. He's not that old, lol. There's a zillion soap stars out there who could do it, but you are absolutely not in the Robert Newman, Doug Davidson zone. (And I think Robert Newman is still very hot.) Think 10-15 years younger IMO. Jeff Webber OTOH, you could get any number of older guys. I feel like the show has always held out hope Richard Dean Anderson will return someday - it's never gonna happen IMO.

They had plenty of chemistry. My issue was with how they played it back then - sappy Ava talking about her childhood dreams of being a princess. That's not who Ava is and depicting her in a normal relationship as a quasi-good person doesn't work. But the chemistry is there with both Niks.

Woof.

From the article at the bottom tweet: It's telling how many comments in the article from reporters saying that Biden is a boring and fragile old man who must be kept coddled. Olivia Nuzzi, the white supremacist stan, is particularly galling.

Tom could easily be the elder hunky doctor these days. That's a role they intended for Scott Reeves as Steve/Stephen Lars, but that didn't go very far because he was a C-player in Guza's world. You could also very easily bring on Tommy/Tom III, his son with Simone. (I personally would make Gina Tognoni play the dreaded Dr. Sarah Webber, but that's me.)

Vivica Fox (Generations, Y&R) nods to her soap history in this Independence Day oral history:

Didn't Gail only come on just before Marland and Monty? One thing I do feel upon looking at a lot of the late 70s and early 80s is that they kept weaving Steve, Audrey and the Hardys into story, even if it was only community crisis stuff like the later big disaster storylines. They were a comforting constant presence, even without story; maybe that did change later. Steve and Audrey were very rarely around when I started watching. But I don't know how much more heavy story you could've pushed for them or for Lee in the 80s and 90s.

I've never been able to get over seeing Brooke Bundy as the bitchy starlet mom of Patricia Arquette's character from Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and 4 (in one of them she is a decapitated head, still yapping away at her daughter). That's all I see when I see her on GH, I can't get past it lol. The story with Heather and the Taylors seems great in '78/'79, but I am amazed at how mercenary Monty was in wiping them out. Still, it worked. I do wonder how it'd have gone if Starrett had stayed. I do like what I've seen of her.

WTF?!

It's never going to happen.

The writing on this show has largely sucked for years despite any one person on staff's best efforts. The entire setup of the show is rigged for at best mediocrity and that comes from Frank and the network. So no, while Joss does definitely need to be recast I do not think it would matter that much.

Joss is white, blonde and allows Frank to squint and pretend she's Starr Manning. That's all he cares about. Eden McCoy was a mediocre temp who lucked into a full time gig. He believes his old OLTL formula is demo gold. Cam and Trina are where it's at IMO, but Joss will remain central. Spencer and Trina will be merely the ethnic sidekicks just like Nik and Gia in the 2000s (who had considerably more story and attention), even though Spencer should be at least bi. (Which, as Carl already pointed out, won't happen)

For the GH and Twin Peaks fans - Glass Candy is a subsidiary group of Johnny Jewel/Chromatics. @DRW50

Anybody else do a spit-take at this [!@#$%^&*]?! 2007: Dillon is investigating the murder of Rick Webber, probably on some Lulu mess. Alan rather comically assumes Monica killed him, but Monica and Alan casually start discussing how Monica had resumed her affair with Rick in the summer of '02. Say what?! I've never seen this before but I was watching in '02 and I am 99.9% certain this resumed affair never actually happened.

Amazing stuff from Clint Ritchie when he finally gets into it with Viki about Sloan and the dissolution of their marriage, from the Labine era.

There are a couple funky flashback bits in the '78 episodes, but of course that wasn't them. I don't know what they did on The Doctors but I wonder if it was similar to Dark Shadows.

Depending on who you ask Jackie was there in '77, so I don't know what to think. I have no problem believing Marland created her, but it's all very foggy these days.

There's a lot of stories about her leave.

They should've sent the message to Kelly last summer with Lindsay and replaced her then.

They clearly planned to go there with Nik and Ava when Tyler was still around. His issues led to his exit.

IMO most of Becky Herbst's fanbase is into anyone who keeps her on 3 days a week. Girl's almost been fired what, twice? They don't want to go back to the 2000s, so they'll ride for anyone who is FV's favorite. And I think Frank knows that, which is why he parked/parks Howarth and Easton with her - then he can tell the network 'they have a fanbase.' It's a symbiotic relationship at this point.

And this is from a 2013 interview, but again it's apocryphal. I had thought it was the Elmans or Donovan the EP or the Hollands or someone who did the hurricane in fall '77 but I am inclined to believe Kin Shriner, though it could easily be faulty memory. This is what I mean by fog of war. That one has a few whoppers, despite being a great text. For example, both Tonja Walker and Thom Christopher seem convinced Paul Rauch is a genius for putting them together onscreen on OLTL. Rauch was fired and long gone by the time Gottlieb, Malone and Griffith paired them up.

Good lord!