Vee

It's something Ducksworth talked about recently re: having to juggle the older viewership's familiarity with daytime pacing and the 18-29s' desire for something faster. I get the issue and I think it's a real one, but this isn't the way to thread that needle. Still, growing pains.

This show is barely six months old, and all this stuff was filmed long ago. I suspect the Barbara/Leslie twist in the tale was planned from the beginning of the show. The quality of the execution is a whole other issue.

The Vanessa arc with Joey is where Guza's influence seemed to show through clearest to me. She made that switch-up to mob moll fast and LB sold it well, and her chemistry with Lindstrom leveled up as a result (as did his menace a bit, finally).

LMAO!

I would not waste SB on a villain (and I think he's too young to be Dante Green). I would however bring him on for DD or someone else.

Ric will always have it bad for Liz but there is no serious pairing there. Ric and Ava could have a lot of fun together for a long time as scheming equals, as could Cody and Ava as her stud for a certain period. You can easily play both, or a Cody/Liz fling or all of the above. (Though my endgame with Cody would remain Tracy) I do think Willow/Drew and their !@#$%^&*]ed-up madness remains where the money is at.

I would keep Cody mixing it up with Ava and Ric (are they still a thing, what even happened there) and Tracy. Maybe a fling with Liz. I'm good.

I've just never bought into temp infomercial Molly and never will. Nice girl, but not ready for major story. Again, Molly is a character who needed a long break well before the many recasts.

I just assume the character is related to Luna. Again, I'd put her and Morgan Fairchild to work in the Deception outlet store inside the MC from time to time if they need to keep their insurance and call it a day.

Like I said before, I would be a little surprised if Ted is on canvas this time next year. But I don't think that necessarily has anything to do with the recast so much as I suspected that perfect husband Ted might not last long on the show when I saw the early casting notices even before BTG first aired. I think he may always have had an expiration date. I don't need Ted gone immediately but I do think he is a secondary character atm.

The Duprees are the central power family on the show - in fact, they're the only one. I don't know what that's getting at.

Given Arianna turning up a feisty teen and knowing the current soaps I suspect Will will become a grandfather and Sami a great-grandma soon enough. Another reason they should never have done the same old tired 'give the gays a baby to avoid sex scenes' trick.

I don't think writing for the couple would change much. Robinson's Ted is kind of a weenie (though he's good with Eva) and MJ had his issues. I frankly suspect Ted was always meant to be a character who won't last forever. He is a delivery system for Leslie and Eva.

Leslie can do better than Ted.

Nicole and Ted on BTG are definitely in the running for the Ellen Stewart Tribute Award.

I don't think the current Ted is long for the show tbh. I'd be surprised if the character is here in a year. But then I suspected that may have been the case with Ted from the jump when I saw the early casting notices.

I know

It makes me wonder if the alleged new hire - possibly is for Nicole. They'd be hot. But I also have my doubts they'd immediately jump to pairing one of the central female leads with

OLTL will always be my favorite soap, but the constant, embarrassing favoritism for past OLTL stars and the endless attempts to re-thread OLTL or other ABC soap stuff into the current show (as part of Frank and Ron's alleged failed dream for an "ABC supersoap" in the early '10s) have poisoned the well for a lot of what could be worthwhile crossovers. I loved little Sam on OLTL, but seeing whole stories tilted around Roger's third character and poor Patrick Gibbons struggling to act as that Boy Scout character they had him play - it was just pathetic on FV's part. Move on. In isolation I don't have an issue with characters from other ABC soaps popping up or even potentially doing stints. This stuff goes back to Marco Dane scheming with Tracy; there are places Blair could mix it up with Lucy and Deception, or Skye and her daughter could come back and make trouble (with Skye quickly leaving!). The problem is that Frank's preoccupation with this stuff has too often come at the expense of GH story and characters. So while I can see places where some visiting characters would work for appearances or short arcs, I wouldn't do any more of it for a long time. GH fans are long since over it, and they have a right to be. (As for Corinth, what I had dreamed up once was to see a hypothetical OLTL revival have its youth set make a Halloween visit there to the 'cursed town' on a teenage dare, maybe unknowingly running into the ghost of Gwyneth Alden. But you could easily do the same thing with the kids on GH - if again, the fans weren't already so sick of crossovers. At least send me my royalty check, Frank.)

I like Cady's weird character but I know she's a very acquired taste lol, especially in this bizarre role. I think they need to bring on her family/kids, I'd much rather be watching them than Derek and Ashley. I think Vanessa is a star and should be hooked to a Dupree or Dupree-adjacent male quickly.

I think since the beginning people in the BTG threads have spent way more time talking about criticism, what is appropriate criticism vs. what isn't, or how their criticism is being censored or please scroll down if you don't want criticism, etc. as opposed to any censorship actually happening here. We are here on page 81 of August, and it's not exactly a nonstop lovefest. I happen to agree with a great many criticisms of the show. With the exception of a few obvious tr0lls (yes, that is still a word on Al Gore's Internet, and we can't pretend they don't exist on Soap Opera Network and haven't for 2 decades) I think this criticism is largely because most people here are so engaged that they are so intense about those critiques or back and forth. But I think if folks in these threads stopped talking so much about what criticism is alright or whether it's going to be allowed, we'd find there is very little being suppressed. The same as people who genuinely enjoy the show or disagree about X, Y or Z on BTG are not just lying to other posters or themselves. It's just not that serious.

They clearly wanted to - I assume it was a network thing, as Frons was obviously never happy with Spixie and wanted Kirsten with a hunk - but I suspect it got pushback from the show, so it got slow-walked for years by Guza II. Someone at ABC wanted Kirsten and JC re-paired for Days magic, but the show didn't care that much and seemed to just tolerate him. Which was fine by me tbh, but Cook did do a good job with very little.

Oh God, don't remind me.

While they worked early on, I did find Spinelli and Maxie pretty toxic at times back then as things progressed. A lot of shaming her and tearful speeches by Spinelli. I was very happy when Spinelli moved on to what seemed like a healthier, more mature relationship with Ellie. I thought Spinelli made a big mistake letting her go because Bradford was tired of driving Lyft lol. But I do think the modern Spixie (especially over the last year-plus starting with Mulcahey) is sweet, witty and charming, and I think they deserve a big wedding. The terminally boring BLQ and Chase got the kind of celebration they deserved instead last spring. I wouldn't keep Spixie together forever, but I would run it for a few years. Nathan was never anything more than the apex of the desperate attempts by the show and mostly the network to put Maxie over with some hunk, any hunk to match Kirsten Storms - ABC/Frons clearly did not want her with Bradford Anderson and it showed for a lot of those years. They tried her with a score of bland hardbodies, they even brought on Jason Cook for her and all of them tanked. Nathan was the only one who stuck (ironically post-Frons) because BA had left the show, and because Frank and Ron were infatuated with his body. But he never had any personality to speak of, and Paevey couldn't act. Acting like that lug was her great love is silly because even I know it was Spinelli, and I was someone very sick of them a decade ago.