Vee

I think I remember that, but that doesn't make a lick of sense. She intimidated her enough with...whatever...to force her out of town overnight? Matt never went looking? Feh.

Poor Ellen Burgess. I loved her and then they recast her with that horribly boring woman. Then, Rachel Locke killed her or something. I don't know what happened there. Ellen knew Rachel from somewhere, Rachel was desperate to not have her identity discovered - and then the next day Rachel was living in Ellen's apartment or something and Ellen had "transferred out of town". The implication was she'd done something horrible to Ellen. I always wanted to know what that was about.

That is terribly anticlimactic.

I was just rewatching some of the old Loving Murders stuff. WEHT Trisha at the end of all of that? She had amnesia? She left Gwyneth behind? She was there and then gone again? I don't understand what that was all about or what happened when or the context.

Are they rerunning Season 3 thus far? I'm almost caught up.

Spencer Treat Clark (Steven Frame), who was so good in Unbreakable, has gone on to have a long career as an adult - he's done a couple Law and Orders and a lot of film, including the Last House on the Left remake with Garret Dillahunt. But I just spotted him the other day in the trailer for The Last Exorcism II - which I was going to see anyway, since I loved the first, sue me. What's really exciting, though, is that he is also featured in Joss Whedon's upcoming film of Much Ado About Nothing. Generally when an actor enters the Whedon stable they never leave, or lack for interesting work. He also grew up to be uncomfortably hot, but that's beside the point.

His sister, Eliza, I remember from some semi-autobiographical webseries I stumbled across where she was pretty funny. What I didn't realize until much later is that she was actually one of the pre-Erin Torpey Jessica Buchanans on OLTL. Would that she could have taken the role from Bree Williamson.

I think the point of that scene is it doesn't make sense - Rick is trying to abide by Herschel's rules but the situation is just not workable. He doesn't want to hurt anyone but he doesn't have any other way to handle Herschel. Shane then takes the decision out of his hands. Shane was right, but his method was ugly.

It was obvious who killed Syd. And I liked the hook of a murder mystery in the pool. But they could've done that much better, as well as have it revealed at the end that Syd had again faked her death and have her resume her duties at the complex.

With Amanda, I loved her on the show but the stolen art plotline was just so lame. Really? Amanda's hung her whole career and fortune on some stolen art she left with Sydney? Never happen.

IIRC, they explained Syd's resurrection very flimsily by claiming she'd gone into hiding from that cult from Season 3 with Michael's help. I thought it was stupid to kill her again.

I liked the revival, actually. I thought it was a far better show than the new 90210 and had some fun characters. Katie Cassidy/Ella was a massive star, Lauren was a flawed heroine, Michael was still vital, Amanda was still great. Jessica Lucas and Michael Rady were very talented, but their couple was written dull as dishwater. They also made a mistake, IMO, getting rid of Colin Egglesfield as the brooding chef and, yes, Ashlee Simpson as Syd's crazy daughter. They both worked. But the CW was entranced by 90210, which was a disaster from beginning to end, and didn't give MP a chance.

I remember the original finale, and all the rumors at the time - Kimberly coming back to be Eve's shrink, Natalie, etc. I was just happy that Amanda and Peter were happy, along with Kyle and Jane.

I believe Joan Van Ark and Ted Shackleford are doing Dallas this year, yes.

The thing is, I know that once I do that, sooner or later some online service - Hulu, whatever - is just going to stream all these shows like they already should be.

I think Netflix has Melrose now, but I've seen that entire run backwards and forwards.

I feel like this is going to end in me having to torrent [!@#$%^&*], and I don't like it.

I actually prefer Andrea and Lori on the show to the comic versions - not that I'm caught up yet. I think the actresses do great work with complex, layered characters. They pretty much had a single facet each in the comics, IMO; Lori was a shrew and Rick's wife, and Andrea was the supercool babe he ended up with later in life. Kirkman's characterizations are broad and not complex. The women on the show may not always be perfect, but to me they are real.

It would not surprise me if Kirkman is the reason the show keeps being fucked with. The problem is Kirkman has no ear for dialogue and no brain for long-term story. The comic book has been chasing its tail for years. But his ego won't let him step aside on the show.

I wish I'd had SN when it was airing.

Preferably full episodes.

I've always been curious about this show, and the PBS special and some other clips made me more curious. Is there anywhere to watch it online at all?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLQLjjKtG2A

Crossposted, as I thought people would be interested.

KDP's new horror picture, We Are What We Are, has apparently done reasonably well at Sundance, which is more than I could've expected for a cannibal horror picture (and remake) from that rarefied audience. The original was sort of a Latin indie horror film and the remake (which also stars Ambyr Childers, who was okay on AMC but brilliant in The Master) is apparently solid. Indiewire calls it better than the original, which I can believe as I had the dubious honor of working on its American release a few years ago. In the original film, it was a story about a cannibal family picking up with the mother and sons after the father and provider dies; the remake appears to swap the genders, leaving KDP as the mother/matriarch who dies in the first reel and leaves the husband and daughters to fend for themselves. The dad in the original was only in it for a few minutes, and I expect KDP has much the same role. But it's a decent gig.

I've been watching old GL (and other soaps) for years. I just happened to go back to some of the classicGL playlists again in the last week.

Thanks.

It was such a fascinating show, every time I see it - some of the plots, like the Spaulding/Phillip labyrinthine storyline and quadrangle (quintangle?), were so byzantine, but the candor and subtlety of a lot of the performances and writing felt lyrical. The voice-overs, which are old fashioned now, helped - often they were more fevered than the character's outward personalities, and that's the essence of soap. More literally in terms of lyricism, I remember an episode with Amanda at the piano just fantasizing and daydreaming, lost in the music and so on. I remember it being not much more than her face, the music and some wildlife or something.

I'm a bit confused so maybe someone can clear it up - who did the Amanda Spaulding story? The Dobsons or Marland? It seemed to be being set up in some material I saw a long time ago credited to the Dobsons, and then again (re: Brandon Spaulding) in a 1979 episode I watched the other day (thanks Carl). Was it a story he picked up from them, or did they have something else in mind for Amanda and Lucille and all that? What did they do with her other than the triangle with Ben McFarren and Eve?

On the "charming sidenote" front, Wilf is back. Sort of.

This is rather lovely. Bernard Cribbins, who of course you’ll recognise as Donna Noble’s grandad Wilf from Doctor Who, is starring in a new TV show called Old Jack’s Boat, on the BBC children’s channel CBeebies.

The show revolves around a fisherman, his pet Salty Dog, and the stories he tells, and also stars (among other people) fellow-Who graduate Freema Agyeman. Bernard is no stranger to children’s TV, having narrated and appeared in all sorts of children’s shows, from The Wombles (a ’70s animated smash hit, that actually got revived in the late ’90s), to The Railway Children.

But in his latest show, the one thing the production team are always on the lookout for are stories. And having been taken back into the Doctor Who family by Russell T Davies, Bernard knew just the fella to ask.

Speaking of his love of broadcasting to a young audience, Bernard said: “I keep coming back to children’s television and I love writing it. Obviously you can do stuff in children’s that you can’t do anywhere else. But it’s the audience actually. In fact it’s the best audience because they’re so uncritical and they’re so critical at the same time. It’s a very, very, sharp audience. If something is dull or boring or wrong, they’ll just wander off. They’ve got better things to do. And I think if you can get the magic going, create a good children’s show, they will literally remember it for the rest of their lives!

“It’s just one of those things where you can be as real as you like, as simple as you like and if the story is good (and certainly the stories that I’ve had to read on this show have been a smashing lot of stories) you just engage one child through the lens…”

And this wasn’t Russell’s first time creating stuff for a young audience either: “Many years ago I used to be a script editor on a programme that was for very young kids. It was a nice show – it was quite hard work because they sent me a list beforehand of how to write for under fives. There has to be no repetition, there must be no jeopardy. And I was like ‘well that’s my career gone’ I thought ‘that’s all I do is repeat myself, put people in danger… what am I left with?’ So I genuinely found it hard and then I loved it, having gone through it. I was really proud of it actually.”

Viki being molested is canon. That is the retcon, and it's the only thing that made sense. The original explanation was severely dated, pedestrian and ludicrous.

Retcons are a part of soap opera. This one is far from the enemy, and resulted in one of the most famous and celebrated stories in OLTL history which no one should ever try and undo or invalidate. Those are the facts and there's nothing that is ever going to change that.

I'm almost positive it was Amy Levitt in the Odyssey House story.

Catherine Burns, the first Cathy, had minor fame in a breakout role in Frank Perry's eerie teen mood piece/thriller Last Summer, which also had a very young Barbara Hershey, Richard Thomas from The Waltons and Bruce Davison. Burns is really the focal character the film most revolves around and she got a Best Supporting Actress nom for it. She was incredible in the picture and you can see why OLTL cast her as another neurotic teen, Cathy Craig. It was a really courageous choice - she was definitely not the typical soap beauty. I've only seen a few grainy minutes of her as Cathy in the 1969 episode online.

Wikipedia claims Burns was only Cathy from January to August of 1969 at which time Last Summer was released, but obviously take that with a huge grain of salt.