Vee

I don't remember the week of repeats hurting them last time, either. It's clearly just how the network or some other part of the production manages the show's budget. I don't bother with worrying about Canada. It's still going to be on a major streamer there.

The last break didn't seem to hurt BTG (IIRC) and frankly as someone still a little behind I'm good with it lol.

I agree. I do think Mo still sometimes leverages his feelings or behavior to get a certain result, but I don't feel he has anywhere that level of power or influence that he used to. Steve either.

LOL.

I had forgotten too! Amazing. Rick Hearst did a bit of classic genre work BITD, like so many soap vets. They showed his film Brain Damage on Joe Bob Briggs' The Last Drive-In a few years back and I hoped they'd bring him on as a guest as they so often do with soap-to-horror vets, but no such luck. Maybe someday they'll get stuck showing the Warlock sequels and he'll get another shot.

I actually think Joey/JL has come up a ton in menace and stature since Vanessa threw in with him and turned into Carly from GH 2000 - not that Jon was ever a bad actor, but he seemed pretty creaky initially trying to step outside the backburner talk-to comfort zone from GH. Is he a dude who seems like a stone psycho like Ryan Chamberlain or Manny Ruiz from GH, no, but Joey does project presence and authority more now than he did early on. I'd be fine with doing more with him, but he definitely has got to get out of the Golden Corral. It looks like the crime scene from The Accused.

Rick Hearst talks the reverse panic room Ric and Ava can still get back together after this tbqh. This is just another Wednesday for those unique individuals.

I am all for more WSB stories and capers, but doing it with Joss and a series of randos (and Britt) just doesn't work for me. I just feel there's better avenues, starting with Jason being shackled to a lifetime plea deal working for the WSB which should've happened years ago. I can't get with Vaughn either - it is just a network in-joke re: Alias (where Jennifer Garner's secret agent handler was also named Vaughn) that has gone too far lol. I'd bring in more interesting characters, and find some other unlikely young recruits. I wouldn't make Emma WSB but I would def let her and Gio get involved in those capers (or Trina and a new male, a scheming aide to Drew who turns out to be Justus and Faith's kid), same as Dillon, Georgie, Robin, Lulu, etc. did back in the 2000s or Frisco and Felicia in the old days. I might bring back Annie Donely, though I suspect you'd have to recast (Caitlin Reilly is a prominent influencer). I completely agree about Willow and Drew and how they harken back to classic Q drama, which is why it frustrates me when the show seems to angle away from fully utilizing them and instead drifts back to stuff that just doesn't work for me. (Sonny and the latest blow-up doll DA are the latest) And ITA about the horrible waste of Laura and Liz. Willow's spiral and Drew's villainy need to be maximized. Even though I don't think this was his intent for the story to be nearly so black and white, they really do owe PM so much for this. I've talked several times recently about why I've never liked Britt/KT and why I doubt her and Jason will last; she has never been strong enough. I would bring back a lot of the Wards to shore up the Black canvas (none of those characters but Trina, Portia and poor Stella cut it for me; Isaiah can stay if he grows his beard back out) and I'd probably try to deliberately tr0ll the Jason fanbases by bringing back yes, Keesha Ward. All the other options for Jason have failed so why not go wild? Agreed about the surprise Michael success. Now is the time to play him with someone like socialite Serena or Zoe Richardson/Ward and branch out with the new hot lead, and keep Willow in the mix as well. Maybe trying to sucker him back into marriage or tormenting him with Drew, or both.

Tamara is about 25-30 years too young to play Patty, but we're dealing with Billy Flynn as Cane Ashby.

I think Malone got Witter's Tina well enough, which was in many ways a '90s update of the classic character which he helped really flesh out but where Witter's performance also did a ton of work. I also think it's possible BTS constraints (like JL's exit for a year, and possible issues with the actors) drove the focus on Cain and Tina, though I do like Witter and Cousins together. The show only moved on from this focus because IIRC KW chose to leave. I think after Witter left Tina in Malone's era became a plot-driven character. There is some stuff Krista Tesreau had with Tina's classic friend circle which is genuinely funny upon recent revisits and I think KT does her best with the role, but she's still never given the kind of sympathy or central perspective she had with Evans or Witter again. I do think Tina selling Viki out for a foolish fling with David Vickers was a believable regression and that Krista played her shame and regret well when the truth came out, but I can also see people being jolted by Tina being in an antagonistic role to Viki again for the first time in almost a decade. I suspect OLTL felt Karen's Tina had perhaps become too modern, too evolved, too smart and so they changed it up to differentiate the character, who was now also surplus to requirements with Blair, Marty, etc. on canvas - with those powerhouses in the mix (and Luna now frontburner) Tina was suddenly a B or C-player. The other problem is KT's Tina was just too superficial and foolish, even though I think Tesreau played what they gave her. It was an afterthought, bubblehead character at that point. I'd forgotten Cord and Blair actually apparently got very serious in '94. I barely remembered that angle from when I was a kid.

"I'm not a drunk! I'm the birthday boy!" - Asa Buchanan, stabbing his birthday balloons with an antique sword October '91 remains tumultuous, partly due to certain episodes being mislabeled/dated and half of the month being labeled out of order. I've had to do a bit of an archaeology job to figure out what actually goes where when - from what I can tell, James DePaiva's actual first return date as Max is 10/25 but I can't be 100% certain. Phil Carey has absolutely eaten this material with drunk crashout Asa alive, both he and Pat Elliott have been stellar. I know this and the mysterious key Du Ann left Lee Ann is all setup for the new creative team's latest retcon to Max, Asa and the Holden family's pasts (and I am pretty sure I know how Cain is looped in too which makes it all the weirder), but it works. It is neat to see an actual Daughters of Llanview meeting where the members (Viki, Dorian, Renee, Megan, Tina, Cassie and a few hoity-toity socialites, no sign of Babs Bartlett) welcome Sheila to the fold. I thought that whole racism subplot had just ended with no clear resolution. There's quite a bit of ritual surrounding initiating her - candles and having Sheila 'share her light with her sisters'. Well, okay! The fallout from Sheila's exposing mistreatment of female patients at the hospital is also still playing after a couple weeks off for bigger story; Sheila is still getting heat from the staff, and Larry is also growing outraged by people's treatment of her and Wanda. It feels like it's been going longer but it can only have been a little over a month since Heinrich/Hudson/Cain first cozied up to Megan, and the romantic spoiler angle for her and Jake was played pretty heavy for a couple weeks, with a surprisingly more intense and intimate rapport than "Hudson's" with Tina in the summer - Megan and "Heinrich" make out more than once, and the lonely Megan fantasizes about dancing with both Heinrich and Jake (while Joe Lando's brief appearances have the real Jake fending off the sultry advances of dominatrix Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS in Jaba). Again I wonder if they were still hedging their bets in case JT re-signed re: who to put Christopher Cousins with, maybe followed by John Loprieno quitting and Tuck making her exit final. (Even though the lupus story is already very subtly being hinted at, and has been since Andy and Hunter's wedding in August.) Anyway, having Cain's latest scheme implode when Viki sees a photo of the real Heinrich Kaiser and nails him for not knowing more than 15 words of German - giving Erika Slezak a chance to bust out her fluent German and howl it at him as he flees Megan's house - is a hoot. @EricMontreal22 will be pleased to know that around the 10/21? (often labeled 10/30 in certain places due to mislabeling) episode Malone's wilder streak flare up again and the past life regression saga with Tina and Luna returns, featuring the glorious sight of Karen Witter as La Perdita the swashbuckling Spanish pirate with a vaguely Ricardo Montalban accent. KW absolutely kills this stuff along with prim British soldier John Loprieno who can play anything and was so rarely allowed to on the show. Whether or not KW and JL got along they do have great chemistry; they make this fantasy lark work, unlike when Malone attempted similar flights of fancy in the 2000s with a lesser budget and less winning actors and it usually just came off mortifying. Bree Williamson in petticoats pleading with Mark Dobies' redcoats not to execute noble peasant Antonio in Angel Square didn't quite hit the same way. Clint Ritchie in a fake pirate beard playing an accordion is a lot to take in too, BTW! Luna leaving Tina/Perdita 'swimming' through the sea while she hits the john is hysterical, only for Cord to walk in on the entranced Tina and her accent pawing at 'Lord Cordwright.' La Perdita, on a kleptomaniac spree through town, runs into Cain fleeing Llanview again, only to mistake him for fellow pirate 'Enrique del Rey' and lift his wallet, leaving Cain up a creek (and later furthers the ladies' case against Cain). This is all so deranged but it's one of the only times in recent memory one of these truly zany comic plots has worked for me as an adult, probably because Karen Witter is so very, very good at this. (A slightly similar hypnosis comedy subplot in Malone II involved Nigel and Roxy, went on for weeks as opposed to a day or two and was terrible.) This all ends up concluding not unlike when the Ghostbusters apprehended the possessed Rick Moranis, with Megan collecting Tina/Perdita: It isn't a perfect arc, obviously. Cord has been a real chauvinistic ogre to Tina in this period, really nasty to her suddenly out of nowhere for several weeks, and it does go a bit too far. Yes, Tina needed to stop being hemmed in by the Buchanan alpha male, not unlike several other women on the show per the old Rauch sensibility, but the handling of their marital strife could've been more nuanced before it got to this point. It gets resolved with the past life romp, but now we have Blair entering the picture. (Also amusing: Luna reading Cord's chart and discovering he had a domineering, deceitful mother.) Speaking of, assuming this is Blair's 'theme' they keep playing it's very wholesome and infectious but seems kind of deceptively so. I love all the recent new music cues they've been playing ad nauseam including the Twin Peaks-esque guitar stuff and the harmonica reverie; they're presumably a Gottlieb addition. I'm sure people got sick of them but I haven't! Always dryly hilarious, Bob Woods gets the quote of the week after Cassie reads their wedding engagement item in the Banner, written to goad psycho Alex out of hiding: "You know where we could buy a used Sherman tank?"

Did anyone else clock Watros' "how ya doin'" improv to the random extras after climbing out of the pool last week? I lost it.

Luna was a success for me, I'm finding now surprisingly even from the beginning. There were definite peaks, valleys and cringeworthy stuff over the years, and she was never not an acquired taste that was always divisive among the audience - people either absolutely loved or hated her even back in the '90s in fandom - but I think she worked more often than not for me. That may change when I get deeper into '92 and am subjected to the whole ghost saga or her battle with Death (Mary Kay Adams!), but it's what I've seen not only in my childhood memory but in revisiting '93-'94 recently, and finally in going back to '91 when she first came on. She just clicks. About half of October '91 is mislabeled in various places online, so it's been a process figuring out where goes where when and playing amateur continuity expert day to day. I will be getting back to discussing it shortly, probably when I get out of the whole disorganized month. It's good stuff though, even if the Ebert domestic abuse story getting bigger becomes a bit much.

I can barely keep my interest regular atm. The problem is that any time this show has hit major gold in the last 5+ years (Sprina, the Michael/Willow/Drew, etc. saga, Gio/Emma, Alexa Havins as Lulu, etc) they quickly pivot and move towards things that are just disasters. Yes, the show's had some good stuff recently but any time momentum builds it drops and the focus shifts. I am not here to watch a fall full of what they have touted as 'the resurgence of the Faison/Obrecht clan' with Britt, Obrecht, and Steve struggling to put romantic hero Jason over as he's pushing 60 with WSB Agent Joss riding shotgun. To say nothing of Sonny's latest sad C-pairing to keep Maurice onscreen, featuring Sidwell's IRL wife who just happened to be on-set. They have so many tools, so much talent and several strong new couples or elements on this show which can be huge if played to full potential. But they consistently prioritize all the wrong things, or play favorites, or are desperate to justify Jason's presence beyond a more natural role he already was filling (at the Quartermaines) and here we end up in the same morass again. With a writing team that has been tired since before the last time half of it got fired, but they do what Frank says. It's just very frustrating. Which is why my interest continues to fluctuate by the week or month. And nothing is going to change because the numbers are strong enough. BITD, even in the 2000s you would've seen them play Gio/Emma or Dante/Lulu or Willow and Drew eight days a week.

I suspect Van Etten is the one with genuine affection for MW/Ava. Based on his interviews (and those of his former partner, O'Connor) I think he's the Ava fan of the two remaining HWs. Historically Korte doesn't seem to be a huge booster for too many outside the Jason/Carly/Sonny family sphere. So as long as Ava has her cute little relationships and fun secondary story CVE seems content, but the issue is it's mediocre low-priority material at best. That was the trade-off when the writing changed hands. That's not a reflection on Ric/Ava, it is a reflection on the storytelling. Liz OTOH they all treat terribly. As soon as JJ was out the door she's back to being Nurse Jessie.

The impression I get (based on very little but inference, admittedly) is that Korte merely tolerates Ava on canvas, and CVE is just happy to have her around doing anything. So it results in them keeping her in B or C-story a lot of the time. That was the shift as soon as Mulcahey was fired where Ava was ejected from Sonny's sphere where her schemes were underway and everyone turned on her, but she got her CVE-created friendships (Nina, Trina) back. Meanwhile her material with Ric, etc. since has been strictly B or C-tier. Ric and Ava making waves in town could be much bigger story, but it has very notably not been.

In fairness to her bank account, her last unnecessary run (or two?) at DAYS lingered on for years IIRC so she got paid.

Lord. Good luck girl. And yeah, that name is so fake. Someone just wanted to ref Lauren Bacall.

I feel like if Bryant, Jennifer, Lucy, Chris Hughes, etc. are brought up in the same breath as though they have the same amount of dimension (or lack thereof) as these infant quadruplets no one ever saw much of after the Reagan administration, that's more a problem with the onscreen characters than those four random babies.

This show can't afford Joe Morton.

That was a long time ago, and they did have him appear near the end of his life. This regime wasn't in place when Alan was killed off, unlike most of the other actors they've memorialized.

He just died, and they gave him one final appearance weeks ago as well as a HEA last year, all of which was clearly with his recent illness in mind. They will honor him onscreen but it might take time on account of much of their veteran cast dying off en masse in recent months/years, starting with Leslie Charleson and Denise Alexander. We can critique GH for many things, but this regime has always honored their veterans when they pass away.

There are named housed staff for the Duprees but we almost never see them (if at all yet). I really can't fault them for that at present with the way soap budgets are now. It's not like the lux '80s or '90s for Y&R.

The best thing the show has going for it is the intense, sustained audience engagement. Not just in this thread but all across social media and clearly, in the general audience. It's got a real viewer share, and Sheila Ducksworth's point is well taken when she talks about having to walk the tightrope between the pace classic soap fans are used to and that of the 18-29 demo used to something speedier. I understand that struggle, even if I don't think they have at all figured it out yet onscreen and I think it needs a ton of work. The stuff with Chelsea and Madison in particular is like the pace out of primetime Melrose Place, where within a week they're all but moving in together. Many such examples. The reality, both refreshing and frightening, is that no American daytime soap has had to face or try to hook an all-new audience since 1999. BTG is the first and hopefully not the last, but they have genuinely garnered a new audience that wasn't already bought in, one unused to daytime pacing. It is trying to marry the two kinds of viewers onscreen. That's a trying task and we can see the seams and issues with this all over the show, its pacing, execution, etc. But I think this being six months, it having the intense following it does is still a promising sign. I just hope that in another six months they've learned to use MVJ's lessons from the ABC soaps - not the latter-day Bell ones.

No, I think there's real issues with execution and pacing. Some of it is growing pains, and some may be larger or systemic. The family setup is certainly off AFAIC. Starting with Martin and his kids. But the Leslie reveal I don't have an issue with so much as the speed.