Vee

I could swear the aforementioned interview with SBH (was it for We Love Soaps?) dealt extensively with her time at ATWT in detail, and her early years with P&G at large.

I am not seeing anyone saying that because Kanye West said that. Again, the widespread public reaction to him right now is ridicule. His rhetoric is dangerous regardless, yes, but you're always going to find gullible idiots if you go looking. Random outliers do not a trend make, and Kanye is largely regarded as a clown.

Kanye just gave one of the most demented and incoherent interviews to Forbes that I've read next to when Randy Quaid lost his mind. I'm not going to link to it, all I'm going to say is that if anyone thinks that interview and its content is going to move any serious numbers on the left we live in very different worlds. He's a laughingstock online and he needs to be put away.

Wasn't it Horgan who actually reunited Bob and Kim? She teed up a lot of what I think Marland was able to use to fly. I remember her giving a very in-depth interview about her long and storied career some years ago, maybe just before or after OLTL 2.0. She's been all over daytime and worn many hats. To me she's always come off as a capable steward of talented visions; maybe not the most inspired on her own, but smart and very experienced. She took on the thankless role of following Linda Gottlieb (after years on staff as a writer) and having to keep the ship Gottlieb/Malone/Griffith had built steady in '94; it definitely wasn't perfect or as measured, but the show stayed on the same brand/style and full of popular couples and stories for most of the rest of the decade. Her 2.0 was not perfect, but solid and mature again. I appreciate her wealth of knowledge and experience.

I understand people's issues with the LM or the trajectory of the show overall. I can stipulate some of it. As to one point though, I personally think the Gwyneth reveal is consistent. I don't believe she had DID or didn't really know; it's clear on some level she consciously does while trying to delude herself. She can't keep herself and "Trisha" straight while talking to Steffi, and her first bonechilling line when she's found out and Steffi asks her if she's "Trisha" is "sometimes I am." That's not DID, where Viki on OLTL had no conscious agency or awareness of what Niki, etc. did. They were not intertwined in that same way. Gwyneth knows she is Gwyneth, and Trisha is just some sort of cognitive device. To me, moments like when Gwyn tells Clay outright "Curtis didn't kill Stacey," with a very dark look on her face, or the fascinating scene near the climax where she visits Neal in prison and begins to disassociate, saying she sent "Trisha" away but she's also decided to go away and 'get some help, make some sense of all this' are quite pointed. Or when she tells the real Trisha herself not to use the candles that killed Cabot and Isabelle (a huge tell to the audience - how does she know?). Or when she keeps insisting people read her psych evaluation of the killer, or demanding the killer kill her next. On some level she knows and wants people to know her pain. I think her lucidity and understanding comes and goes, but I don't think it was DID and I think she often knew. I wish we could hear Tudor's thoughts on it, but I don't feel it was a copout in the writing - I feel it was keenly pitched, but ambiguous without being lazy. YMMV.

Same.

I have no problem believing Dee threw her weight around, but Crystal ended up having issues at every single show she ever worked on.

He checked out well before that, lol.

I would still make Duplaix's Rachel and Dan Gauthier's Kevin a tentpole couple at OLTL. But that's enough OLTL bullshit from me.

At the same time, it's absolutely inescapable that dozens of minority actors are dumped off to the corner with each other on soaps every year while chemistry with white leads and Black characters is avoided like the plague. So that can't be discounted especially when discussing the unique situation at OLTL in the 2000s. And plenty of people just liked Evangeline more with John and Todd/Victor, period. (Fun fact: Before TSJ came along, I'd wanted to pair Roger Howarth and Ellen Bethea's Rachel, but admittedly that would've been a betrayal of her character on some levels.)

Is it just me, or does the way Martha Byrne keeps discussing the Goutman conflict in such vague but dark terms lately suggest something real relevant these days?

You could make the same case for DOOL with the Hernandii vs. the Black characters as you can for Y&R, or all the other examples you mention. The Santos and their holding up Mateo as the exemplar for years - give me a break. At OLTL: David Fumero was a gorgeous, talented man and frankly I thought he and REG had the most chemistry out of all her prospective pairings (I think she did too, based on her own discreet commentary to press at the time), but he was consistently devalued, not just by the show but by the warring fanbases. And why? Not just because of racism, because the audience was diverse. I'm sure many folks just preferred her with Easton or St. John and that's fine, but the way Fumero was dismissed always got me - I felt it was a reflection of the same calculation we all saw. And I'm all for as many black/white romances as possible, lol! I'm sure others felt Fumero/REG was just the option that would've relegated her to the sidelines, though it never got that far. It's a messy topic. But I just think it's awful when we can all see the game being run by asking people to choose between different representation of different characters of color as an either/or, and then see people's prospects being railroaded or limited around it.

Over a decade ago, my master plan as an unemployed writer with too much time on my hands was for ABC to try to snake Y&R's audience by hiring Rowell onto OLTL to play the daughter Carla gave up for adoption, possibly with kids of her own in tow. She would come to town with an agenda on behalf of her family with a big town secret, mirroring the real-life issue of the show disinheriting its original Black cast. Ideally it would've lured Holly back too, of course. Of course, this was hugely naive as ABC didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about Black characters. But it'd still work!

I remember being appalled when Nora's Jewish heritage on OLTL began to disappear, and Hillary B. Smith made note of her celebrating too many Christmases. IIRC the pendulum swung back a bit later, but still. Mulcahey is of course correct and we've all noticed it - the default is to make any non-white character as milquetoast or not tied to their cultural heritage as possible. Also at OLTL was something Tim Stickney (R.J. Gannon) discussed in the oral history book, which was again quite evident at the time and is a tricky topic: ABCD had done studies in the mid-90s which determined that the white audience was more comfortable with Hispanic/Latinx leads and pairing them with white characters. Therefore Hispanic characters were prioritized, which allowed the network to claim they were all about diversity while disenfranchising the Black characters. You see it at other shows too. I don't need to mention how omnipresent the Vega family become in the 2000s at OLTL. That's not to say it's an either/or - these characters are important too, and I absolutely loved Kamar de los Reyes' first run, loved Antonio and Andy in the 90s, etc. Loved David and Melissa Fumero even in bad stories. But what became of Antonio later on, with Jessica, the Santi mess, etc., and the fact that they could seemingly keep adding more Vega-adjacent characters while relegating the Black cast to talk-tos and BFFs, it was obvious even before anyone openly discussed it what the calculation was. At Y&R today, too. It doesn't have to be like that.

A travesty. I'm glad I finished them when I did. That story was propulsive, dark yet full of soap and it got me through much of the early months of the hell that is this year. I never thought I'd get to see that story again as an adult and it holds up. If Disney/ABCD ever wises up and monetizes the old archives, I'd pay for it.

Thank you so much, kalbir.

I get that; what I mean is, is there a list of which has aired when in the last few months?

Is there an ordered list of the classics and what has aired when in the last few months? I am trying to follow the thread from like a month back and catch up, lol

Finally.

I'll let someone else cover the coterie of clueless white mainstream journalists mourning racist right wing stalker Betsy Rothstein, with alt right-loving debutante Olivia Nuzzi leading the pack. She and the rapidly dissembling Matt Taibbi will share a similar career trajectory with Rothstein.