Vee

To be clear, as for the killers, I'm sighing at the show - they had Haver, the KCK and Colson all over the course of a year-plus, and the last two ran almost simultaneously. Awful.

The OPP (yeah you know me! I could never take them using the acronym onscreen seriously, and they did it constantly) was 2007. I guess it's actually pretty timely now, but was very poorly written.

No, Stephen Haver was a year earlier (sigh) - the Music Box Killer in 2003-04 under Malone. Literary agent Hayes Barber was the Killing Club culprit; he was actually Marcie's demented former classmate Ivan Potter. Naturally, Daniel Colson's slew of murders had been running at the same time as this story because why not have two murder sprees at once, right? I always liked Viki shutting down Marcie - it was one of the few shining Viki moments from 2003 to 2007, a dark, lonely time for the character.

Probably? I dunno. It was in early July '05, I believe. ETA: Yep! (not embeddable)

And the irony is all that only came about because he took off with the audience despite being a bit player for Flash's band originally. He was used to give her something to do before she exited because fans preferred him to her and Joey (her cousin!), then clicked with Jessica Morris. He was still wasted on her extremely minimal talents - I always liked him and regretted his exit, as he'd become like a son to Nora and a brother to Matthew. No - Flash was gone by then. The Love Crew debacle was summer 2004: Marcie, Jen, Riley, Julie Tanaka, jock Nick Messina, Shannon McBain (who I'd forgotten existed until just now and who was played by Mrs. Jensen Ackles, Danneel Harris!), and yes, Matt Cavenaugh as token gay non-core character Mark Solomon. Rex and Adriana also orbited it. The Love Crew mess was so bad: Retrofitted youths thrown together overnight, most of them new, all of them struggling in this incredibly earnest, embarrassing ploy for teen viewers. There was even a bizarre ghost story/past lovers angle with Lord and McBain ancestors thrown in that Malone mercifully was forced to ditch before it went anywhere, and which was rewritten as R.J.(!!) faking a haunting so he could claim the land. But somehow Higley's story the following year was worse - the Killing Club murders, based on Malone's lame IRL book(!!), in which Marcie whined and howled her way through a storyline featuring all her Love Crew pals being brutally murdered until finally the show realized fans were pissed enough at Marcie that they actually trotted Viki out to sit her down and say (and I quote) "please stop it" and told her it was her fault. God, those were some rough years.

They gave Flash a lot of scenes with Asa because her initial intro storyline as a runaway was a complete botch - lusting for her cousin because Brian Frons micromanaged the storyline with Joey, Jen and Flash and wanted it frontburnered and over-promoted when none of them were capable. The show pushed very hard to retrofit Jessica Morris' Jen into Marty Saybrooke, which was insulting, and Bruce Michael Hall's Joey was good at some things and terrible at others - he couldn't carry a major story on his own, certainly not with weak regular partners. Afterwards, they thought tying Flash/Sarah more closely to the Buchanans and Asa would help. It did, but they didn't give her any other stories beyond a backburner romance with recurring player Riley, who became increasingly popular and stuck around without her (I think Jay Wilkison went on to do Broadway). I liked Shanelle Workman at the time, but today her weaknesses are extremely apparent and the whole Hot Topic goth thing is now super-dated. It was clear at the time they intended to bring on her brother C.J. (long rumored to be OLTL's mythical gay unicorn) and bring back Tina, who they were actively trying to recast, but none of it manifested onscreen.

Listen, I won't hear slander of UB40. I loved them when I was 11!

Tremble with fear, perpetrators - the FBI have found the infamous "Squi":

Yeah, it's all her.

Forget it, Khan. It's Chinatown.

Yep, that's her. I recall A Daytime to Remember with Reba McEntire, but I don't remember a specific anniversary celebration. I kind of suspect JFP may have folded it into the primetime episodes with Todd holding everyone hostage at the Buchanan lodge - that would be like her. From the very weird 35th in Malone and Griffith's very weird 2003 - I honestly can't remember much beyond (yet another) OTT gothic fantasy episode in which Natalie and Cristian face hallucinatory fears and doubts about their upcoming wedding, including goofy clip montages of 'those who have loved and lost in Llanview.' Natalie and Cris had been super popular in 2001-2, but were severely backburnered most of the year in favor of Bree's Jessica, Antonio, Mitch, Jen, Flash/Sarah, Walker/Todd, etc. (Flash is already getting backburnered by this episode due to her disastrous intro story with Joey - she went on to spend most of her time with Riley and Asa before exiting the following January.) Natalie and Cris didn't get major airtime again until the fall, with the arrival of John McBain and David Fumero's exit. Malone and Griffith's answer to everything in 2003-2004 seemed to be another OTT gothic fantasy episode. There's even a few I've probably forgotten. There were too many, even for a kid who had grown up watching Dark Shadows. (And frankly the budget strained worse than DS at times.)

Good for him. He was always so cute. Since we've been discussing our early days in Eric's thread, AMC's slew of exotic mansions and estates belonging to royalty and aristocrats in an alleged small town always baffled and annoyed me as a kid, at least at first when I started watching. Later I just went with it - I loved Dimitri and Erica, and Edmund and Maria.

Witness tampering? Good luck, Brett.

Cross-posted: Black avant-garde writer-director Bill Gunn's direct-to-public television soap opera Personal Problems (written with playwright Ishmael Reed), which I first wrote about long ago, now has been fully restored (albeit still in rough video quality) and is available to watch in two parts for free on streaming courtesy of Kanopy. You can obtain a free Kanopy subscription and watch ten films or programs per month from their very impressive collection by simply giving it your local library card information (I got a digital library card online from my local one in ten minutes) and watching it on your computer or TV/device via the Kanopy app.

Black avant-garde writer-director Bill Gunn's direct-to-public television soap opera Personal Problems (written with playwright Ishmael Reed), which I first wrote about long ago, now has been fully restored (albeit still in rough video quality) and is available to watch in two parts for free on streaming courtesy of Kanopy. You can obtain a free Kanopy subscription and watch ten films or programs per month from their very impressive collection by simply giving it your local library card information (I got a digital library card online from my local one in ten minutes) and watching it on your computer or TV/device via the Kanopy app.

I love this pic - and I love the old and new casts constantly intermingling these days:

The full sketch, even funnier. Rachel Dratch!! Kate McKinnon's Lindsey Graham is wild.

This is hilarious and is going to leave a mark:

I'm sure Jill Phelps would've been willing to give her an audition! I actually think Bransford was talented - she had the same physicality of Carly that Sarah Brown had, which Tamara hadn't. But JB was simply not suited to be playing that kind of heavy lead on a top soap like GH. JFP clearly got her the gig because she was a pal from OLTL, and it was a mistake from the jump. She could not compete with the GH stars in terms of presence. Further, according to Kelly Monaco, Bransford actually went full method and hit her in their epic catfight scene (probably her one crowning achievement as Carly, and very evocative of Brown). Kelly was not pleased.

In hindsight I wish I'd chosen RATT or Cinderella.

The latest development ain't much, but it's all we got. This week has had more twists and turns than I can take. I also had to get in a fight with a woke white leftist bitching about "Democrats loving the FBI" over this this morning, so there's that. Meanwhile: If this keeps on for another week there's a fair chance Kav shows up at his next press availability trashed and blaring Winger.

Rage-inducing? Yes. Surprising in that they're still trying to whip votes? Yes.