Vee

@marceline we're waiting for you on Rampgate!

LM 67-68: The reactions to Jeremy’s death are gutting, particularly Ava and Angie, who knew him best. Randolph Mantooth is heartbreaking as he struggles to bridge the gap with Ava - you can see why this might be her final straw. They’re such a good couple, I wish we could see them together again once more. Jeremy was always a lovely presence for me even when forced, so dashing and gentle. The deep callbacks to his AMC history with Angie don’t end there - Gwyneth says at the end of the episode that she got a call from Erica Kane about it! The convo between Jocelyn and Ally about her rape accusation is very good and very educational even for today, but unfortunately it illustrates the mistake of doing this unseemly subplot at all. The Charles/Lorraine stuff, with him so vulnerable and broken and her strong instead, is lovely. Her passion makes Geoffrey Ewing soulful. I liked her humming their song as he slept. Jesse as the spectral hitchhiker counseling Jacob sounds like an Agnes thing to me, but who knows. (She had to be behind Williams’ return.) I wish we could see it. Did Jacob arrive in February or March? Charles says Angie made him wait three months for her to marry him, and by July they were newlyweds. I still don’t know how to read some of the killer’s reactions in recent episodes prior to Jeremy. And I’m still surprised they left Trisha like this unless they intended to lure her to TC.

LM: The cave in with Ally’s kid and Danny is a full on Event that def feels like Linda Gottlieb who was apparently involved in '95. It is redolent of her Al/CJ down a well anniversary episode on OLTL in 1993, it has most of the cast on the scene just like OLTL, and there is a whole show-y film element with Frankie’s microphone picking up Danny's voice blasted to the entire town. An excellent setpiece which leads into the pretty racy Jacob/Angie lovemaking, and Jeremy's epiphany.

I don't, but I'd heard a bit recently. Awful.

Malone was on by end of August, I know that much. Jason Webb turned up then. This is Joey Thrower as Kevin. Malone and Gottlieb kept the Larry/Viki relationship and his closeness to the family; Viki calls him "Uncle Larry" to Joey. Michael Storm's last appearance, a recurring stint in 2004 during Malone's heart transplant story for Viki, kept that. I always appreciated that.

Richard Cox is incredibly hot as Giff Bowman; I know him best as one of the killer's terrifying avatars in the infamous Cruising, so seeing him on a soap and having to place the face and voice was something else. Was he brought in by Munisteri? He should've hung around vs. Jeremy, though Jean LeClerc was always charming.

It scared the [!@#$%^&*] out of me when I was a kid. I knew something was very wrong with the Victor Lord myth way before they started doing those disturbing, Twin Peaks-esque dreams of Viki's with Victor and Sloan, and I had a feeling I knew what it was (I was right, but at that age I didn't really articulate it). But when Viki turned into Tommy, went apeshit, called Dorian an ugly bitch and threw her down the stairs I was terrified. I didn't know she'd had DID so I just assumed Viki, who I liked a lot, had gone completely insane. Like the LM, I haven't seen the full DID story since '95. A ton of it is on YT now but I'm not sure there's any organized playlist.

Dorian did try to use it for leverage against Viki at the very end, when Viki was haranguing her about Joey, etc. This led to Viki's split into Tommy and attack on Dorian in that same scene. I can buy Dorian holding it back beyond her usual instincts til the bitter end, especially given her own family background, working any other angle to get free or even perhaps hoping Viki would remember on her own. I think that makes her all the more complex.

Amelia Heinle, of all people, has one of the great one-liners of all time in Loving Murders #49. Tony: So how's the breathing coming? Steffi (dryly): Well, I'm breathing, which makes me kind of unique in this town.

Notice, too, they don't just bring Hillary back on Y&R. I know she died onscreen but come on. So did Jesse Hubbard and Mitch Laurence (twice). Keeping Mishael Morgan as the less-popular doppelgänger is, to me, at least partly strategic if not also possibly thoughtless. Whether it was by design or not, no twin will have the same fire and built-in fanbase. (And when Loving did it, Darnell Williams was swiftly re-paired with Debbi Morgan)

I remember this entire damn forum going through the stages of grief on the Loren Lott mess and that was not that long ago. Another waste. Just goes to show how systemic the issue is.

I haven't always thought everything Holly said was fair. But that doesn't really matter in the scheme here because on one level or another, literal or figurative, it's all true, most of it absolutely factually so. You don't have to watch her or read her book for longer than two minutes. It's what she lived and she'd been suffering with it for decades. We didn't have as clear a light shone on it in years past but we do now. Just because we as a removed audience can now see her onscreen wedding with Arthur Burghardt as described shot for shot in her book years ago, or hear corroboration of many of Vicky Rowell or Kristoff St. John's experiences at CBS from other performers of color, doesn't mean they haven't had to live with those wounds for decades before we could know it for ourselves. On a side note: I am still deep in the Loving Murders of 1995, which I hadn't seen since childhood, and it's still unbelievable that a frontburner black canvas of six people is more active, vibrant and central than any show's black cast twenty five years later.

Dorian knew and never told, and I always thought that was the most brilliant part of the story. She could've exonerated herself any day for decades but lived with the hatred and scorn from the town for years out of a higher sense of honor. She does rail at Viki about it in the final reveal scenes in early '95. I knew people who loved Helen Gallagher from RH as Mel's mom, and that whole era. I knew many who did not. I loved Labine's GH but I found her OLTL sleepy at best. She didn't want to be there anyway; she was running out her contract after ABC passed her over for the Heart & Soul spinoff with Ned and Lois.

I'd forgotten that in #8 in the LM playlist - the great episode with Clay's twisted Leave it to Beaver VR(!!) interlude and the wonderful scenes with Gwyneth and Jeremy - that the biggest clue is right there from the very start.

I don't know how anyone can watch some of that '86 stuff with Holden and Lily, the stables, the horses and the storm and not know this is a gay man enraptured with one of several very specific types of men and ingenues he revisited again and again.

Marland's work always reads very queer to me onscreen. From what I've seen over the years it's consistently populated by imperious and/or neurotic, layered women struggling with secrets or deeper passionate needs, and gorgeous yet very vulnerable or tempestuous young men. (And Doug Cummings, played by his longtme favorite JWS, is basically a deranged theater queen) If you go by the scuttlebutt you can project that Marland was infatuated with the men and embodied in many of the women, like Iva or Lily. But I suppose that's reductive stereotyping too.

What!!

@DRW50

Jordan Peele did say he appreciated the gesture, actually. He was just amused by the meme.