Vee

Yes, that was the year with Michael the murderer and Jennifer Bransford, which was almost certainly a JFP power move IMO - she had been fairly marginalized once Guza returned, and most creative control was given to him. From what I understand she influenced stories and casting where she could, generally with lesser players. Tamara Braun quit because she was sick of Sonny, Jason and the mob. The Bransford casting imploded fast. Kari Wuhrer was embarrassingly bad as Reese. The Michael story met huge backlash and they hastily did a rewrite involving Michael's doctor, old footage of Billy Warlock from years past, and the outrageous claim that the doctor had been hired by A.J. to kill Jason in his coma in the '90s. This was also the summer of the terrible dancing doppleganger story (because Kelly Monaco had just joined DWTS) with Sam and Meg Bennett and her Sam-lookalike daughter, and Michael hallucinating an imaginary friend, "Jodie" who he talked to in front of other people. TPTB claimed this was their reward to Dylan Cash for being an "amazing" young actor. It did not go well. The Alexis/Sam/Ric stuff was the following year. I believe the Ric thing began as KM began making noise about leaving - so they turned Sam into a villainess for a year or two (her most compelling period, IMO). Emily was raped by Nik's doppleganger in late 04-early 05. Emily had difficulty being with Nikolas after that because of the rape, and gravitated towards spending time with Michael and Morgan at Sonny's house. Nikolas and Courtney was the summer of 2005, and wow was it bad. Guza obviously did not give a [!@#$%^&*] about either of them, that much was clear, but the actors had allegedly been pushing for it. They were B/C characters to him at that point without Frons' continued attention to Alicia Leigh Willis. Guza could be vindictive and the story seemed designed to make them hurt, because the writing drove the characters into the ground. Guza had never had much use for Courtney and iced her the following winter after she spent months offscreen. The affair also ushered in Sonny and Emily; Emily had been caring for the boys with Carly ill - she was basically the nanny - and went to stay with them at Sonny's when she learned of Nik's affair. I saw Sonny/Emily coming very early, like a train wreck. People called me crazy, yet I still could not believe my eyes as it progressed. It was (mercifully) over by the fall of '06, IIRC. They did change some things for the better with the revamp: Laura Wright came in strong and nabbed a surprisingly good (if very sudden) pairing with Jax on the B-list, Robin and Patrick ushered in a considerable new re-focus on the hospital and characters in it, and Robert and Anna began to recur in '06. Robin also became central again despite continued attempts to demean her. I would never call it a great show in those years and mostly ceased regularly watching for years on end around that point until 2012, but Guza's awful second reign was never worse than 2005 for me. On a side note, during the writer's strike a few years later, JFP re-masterminded Claudia's introduction (which Guza had planned separately but was not present to execute) and botched it as well - some sort of color-coded thematic thing similar to the failed rollout of Angel in 2001, and to some work I believe she did at GL, maybe with Tangie Hill. With Guza out of the building she also tried to launch a massive story with Ric and his newbie immigrant wife, all of which fans hated.

2005 was a nadir year, even for that regime. Everything was bad. They had to retool the show dramatically in the fall, which started with asking Kimberly McCullough to come back.

If it's not a legit revival they can keep it. It'd be such a waste to squander the opportunity.

Today in NY Times angst:

This is a wonderful piece on the show overall (and a bunch of quotes from OLTL's own Melissa Fumero):

FH gets a fifth and final season:

Bernie is a cop:

As long as Criterion's device platfoms actually work this time around I'm all for it. Netflix did finish Orson Welles' final film and put many of his works on their platform, which means a lot to me.

Gordon Thomson pinged from space.

Meanwhile, back at CBS:

This needs to be in here as well:

Kim's autobiography is pretty candid, if sanitized in a few places. I recommend it. The thing about GL is creatively it felt dead to me long before it was cancelled. The budget was basically nil and they were shooting outside in horrible conditions. Search the word "Peapack" on this forum and you'll learn plenty. It was a mercy killing to me. And it is sad, because yes, it was a legendary television institution and it didn't have to be that way. But no one in television had regarded it as anything but a forgotten relic for many years. You could revive GL well, much as All My Children got revived on Hulu, with a fairly similar return to its classic tone. It probably will never happen, but it's a shame what became of it. I felt it was almost completely irrelevant by the time it died, and that to me was very sad.

I haven't been a huge fan of most SNL political sketches in many years for reasons I know Carl shares and can enumerate for all of us (with a few exceptions, like the Matt Damon Kavanaugh sketch which largely just traded on actual quotes and his performance), but Steve Martin and co. do a solid job with this: Not sure they needed yet another Kate McKinnon impression, hilarious though she is. I honestly haven't seen much of Wilbur Ross so on its face it just seemed like another excuse for her to be there

"#TrumpCaved" is trending.

Singer is persona non grata outside Millennium, which is a junk company. I don't think he'll come back from this in larger circles. But we'll see. I frankly doubt Red Sonja will get made. I think Michael Jackson is one of the greatest musicians and entertainers in our history. His impact is incalculable and his work will live forever, and should. I think his life is a very tragic story, and that what became of him started when he was a very young victim. I also have never wavered that he raped children and was a sexual predator. And I am not exactly looking forward to the high-minded thinkpieces that try to pretend there is any difference between him and R. Kelly.