Vee

Gonna be a real interesting Monday on The Talk!

Not sure if it's been mentioned: The offender in question above, Steven Striegel, is actually DOOL's Steve Wilder (ex-Jack Devereaux #3, ex-Alex Bastian on Melrose Place). I love Shane Black's work - he's a screenwriting god, and I loved his and Fred Dekker's script for The Predator upon reading it a year ago and look forward to the film. That said, while Black has apologized for hiring Wilder/Striegel and claims he was misled, the entire situation has been horribly mishandled by him and Fox. Olivia Munn did the right thing.

RSW has kind of talked out of both sides of his mouth about Courtney. He's alluded to her being high maintenance, etc. a few times, but I believe it was either in Jeff Giles' book or when she passed that he called her welcoming and kind to him as a newcomer to soaps. Either way, he was classy.

I may not know WTF I'm talking about as a later viewer, but based on the information and available episodes I often got the impression Stuart, etc. banked on making Jacquie Courtney and Pat the leading lady of the show for awhile. She got major failed stories post-Reinholt, and was tried with both Buchanan studs before they finally let Clint and Viki make it official, while Viki's time seemed to wax and wane for a year or two there. Erika's own commentary about this period has been respectful but muted. She did once say she knew she had job security once Joe Stuart left - as did the show's major interest in Jacquie Courtney. I have nothing against JC - she's lovely in everything I've seen of her, including her OLTL stuff. But Pat ain't Viki Lord.

The crap they gave Maeve Kinkead in the late '90s was vile.

I think LOV would've potentially been a good safe harbor for the characters - much like how it was for the admittedly much bigger draws of the Hubbards in the 1990s. It kept them in the ABC daytime universe and consciousness, and I think that was Agnes' intent for Carla and Sadie.

Marilyn Chris quit, in fairness.

Great montage work:

It's not a pro-Trump conspiracy. It's a genuine attempt from someone to deflect blame and write their self-serving narrative. What matters most is how unprecedented it is and how it continues to delegitimize Trump.

I guess none of us really know for sure if Agnes planned to add Lillian Hayman to Loving as the future Minnie Madden character or as Sadie from OLTL. The story I remember hearing is that when Rauch canned them Agnes asked both Hayman and Holly to go to Loving as Sadie and Carla and they refused; others have heard different. But I think it would've worked.

One person EH is a big fan of: Susan Lucci. "She deserves every penny she was ever paid." I think Jean Arley's exit was more about her being a part of that strange time in the early-mid 80s pre-Rauch where the whole show seemed creatively adrift overall and constantly rotating writers and producers. Stars like Karen, David, Jenny came and went. Carla, etc. were casualties of that and Rauch as the show changed focus - but I have no doubt he gunned for her personally. EH's book is brutal but essential - and fascinating. She basically says she had no desire to come back in 1993 and sit with the other vets who were now millionaires, while she had become a librarian. Very sad. Around 52 mins she talks about being at the March on Washington, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Very sweet at the end where she thanks the interviewer for reading her book.

I don't agree with everything EH has said in recent years - especially about Erika - but I understand her pain about her history with the show and I think it's all extremely valid. And heartbreaking. I would've moved heaven and earth to try to get that family back on the show one way or another. Whether or not she ever agreed to appear, you needed to honor Carla and Holly. Carla would be the linchpin of the story, holding the family secret onscreen or off (dead if necessary). Though if she could appear, she would be patterned as an older woman after Holly herself - fiery, angry, brilliant and full of inconvenient truth about Llanview. Erika (and Bob Woods) talked about the Jack Scott mess in Jeff Giles' book - they hated the actor (Arthur Burghardt) too and said EH wrote it all and that Burghardt treated her horribly. So did Erika and Tim Stickney. For no fee, IIRC.

That would've been genius. I know EH has spoken with venom about Agnes Nixon in recent years - I don't know if she does here. Agnes, for what it's worth, admitted "Ellen hates me now" in one of her last interviews. But I'll never forget when Agnes retold the Carla/Sadie hallway reveal story on-camera for SoapNet in 2008 for OLTL's anniversary and burst into tears.

She was asked back in '93 and refused. Supposedly she was on Carlivati's wish list near the end and I assume she would've refused again. But if OLTL were still around TPTB ought to have kept asking til the day she passes away. I always wanted Joshua Hall as a spoiler for Kevin and Rachel; you could recast him with someone like T.C. Carson, who was old enough. These days though - in an imaginary world where OLTL was on a major streaming platform - I'd probably bring back Jared Hall in that role, however improbable that character's existence (he was tested with Ellen Bethea's Rachel in 2000), and go so far as to ask Laurence Fishburne to make a guest appearance as Josh instead. I mean, why not? And how else to demonstrate the impact and importance than with a major celebrity? Stranger things have happened - paging Julianne Moore.

Hamp is something else. That is all.

My pet idea was always to tie the Grays/Halls so tightly into the lore of the show that you could never extricate them again. Have Carla's grandson or daughter come to town (with her waiting in the wings, assuming Holly would appear) with the truth - that Victor Lord stole the family's land or money or something. Maybe a bit tame, but I rejected the obvious idea of claiming Victor had, say, slept with Sadie Gray bc I thought it was an old racist trope and not something she'd have done. (It also limits the potential to pair Viki's family with Carla's.) The wildest variation was to claim the Lords were actually an ancient offshoot of the Grays, but I'm pretty sure nobody on this planet's ever gonna buy that Erika Slezak was mixed.

Wow:

Still beautiful. I'd give anything to see OLTL back and honoring her. She can skype in her performance like Warren Frost on Twin Peaks!

Obama is about to go live with an expected 'major address':

I agree. If The Talk practices what it tries to preach - and they have in the past, sometimes at least (I surprisingly found their discussions a refreshing alternative to The View more than once) - I don't see how Sara Gilbert and co. can avoid addressing this.

For me it was less about Janet herself and more about how at the time there seemed to be a ton of raunchy public stunts at the MTV Awards, etc. to keep viewership up and eyes on folks pre-Twitter, and frankly neither Timberlake nor Janet seemed above it around then. It seemed of a piece with a lot of other lame look-at-me stunts of the period. But it turned out to be an honest mistake. Even when I wasn't sure, I never liked how she was treated while JT got off. And that clip of Julie - wow. Not sure how The Talk weathers this.