Vee

Gross. No. Dante and Lulu are where it's at. Jason is the problem with Jason. But as I keep saying, I'd just bring someone new/old on, like Keesha Ward. Then probably wait Steve out til he can be removed again. As it is, his current support role at the Q mansion is a good one and you can do more there with him as the family protector/counsel as the show is frankly running out of ways to use the mob centrally. If they had the balls they'd remove him from Sonny's organization completely, draft him into working for the local WSB office (minus any of its actual current staff lol) or private security for ELQ, and there you go.

I think on paper Hayley might've made an interesting Erica Kane analog. In reality she's always been a cipher to me, and I don't think MG has elevated the character much. Dani fills that role and has done so well for me. YMMV.

Pine Valley's own Sarah Michelle Gellar looks pretty stunning reprising her Buffy the Vampire Slayer role for this revival I'm still very skeptical about. But this is mostly me posting because she looks amazing:

It really was a very stupid choice on their part. Yes, the history with Rocco, etc. exists but it didn't need to become a huge story arc - if you absolutely have to go back there, maybe cover it in a scene where he meets her and she gives her regrets. Doing all this turns a portion of the general audience against Britt that might never have had major issues with her before. (That's not even getting to her return putting her in the Liason fans' crosshairs, who will never give up.) And then there's me, who has hated Britt for over a decade lol. Don't forget LW's Carly. The whole reason any of these failed options happened, or Britt now, is because someone at the show (likely Korte) tried twice in the last five years to put Jason and Carly over again. That was the intent when he first returned last year, and it fell apart immediately because they just don't work with these actors. It tanked both times, left Jason utterly adrift last year casting about for a new pairing, and now here we are. (Sorry to our latest banned user, but it's never going to happen.)

Honestly Devon crossing over for good would not be the worst idea. I don't want to hear it @Darn!

That's typical of GH and this creative team though, tbh. Like so many of us have said in the past, I don't think that story ever had a huge amount of heft beyond the big reveal - both Dante and BLQ are decent people. I think the performances around the reveal were excellent, I think Mazza is a star as is Braedyn Bruner and they're very good together, and I think they should definitely be featured more in central story, instead of this noxious redemption tour for Britt and Obrecht the Mengele fangurl. But GH and FV's priorities have clearly shifted to saving Jason's role on the show and justifying his presence, and that means going all in on Britt. I don't think it'll last, though. One unintended side effect of all this for them is that while I may have hated Britt for over a decade, viewers who were previously lukewarm on her are turning on her hard over this hard sell and how Dante, Lulu, etc. are being treated.

I would be surprised if Frank is that enamored of Kelly T. at this point tbh given her many BTS antics. From my memory he has a limited tolerance for that, and I don't think she's one of his most treasured friends. He also had no trouble cutting Gati when Obrecht became irrelevant a couple years ago. I think they're just bound and determined to put Jason over again and justify Steve's contract and make him a primary player once more vs. hanging around the Quartermaine mansion supporting the family (where, oddly enough, he fits like a glove and has done his best work this time), and Britt is the Last Chance Saloon to make that happen. As I've said recently though, I think their chemistry and the allure of the path not taken with Jason/Britt a few years ago has a limited shelf life. KT is not strong enough for A-story with Steve, she's not a star player like most of his past love interests, and I think the bloom will come off the rose and she'll go again eventually, possibly under the wheels of some other preferred partner. On a side note: Hearing from Steve's podcast that KT has, once again, left most of her IRL belongings in London after moving there in a huff when she quit last time and still hasn't found a place in L.A. makes me just think 'yikes.'

Thanks for this.

I didn't know you wanted that - do tell. A few years ago, when Setton was relatively new and Lulu was in her coma and the whole Mormon look hadn't fully set in, I definitely wanted to pair up BLQ and Dante for kind of screwball Nick and Nora/Thin Man-style mystery-solving romance (in the vein of stuff like A Simple Favor with Anna Kendrick), with Brook getting into capers and Dante helping her out of it. Then Lulu would wake up and that would be the obvious triangle. Today BLQ is so much more of a matronly wet blanket and Alexa Havins is here, so it's different.

I do think Willow could con Michael into almost going for a reunion, but I would have her fúck with his mental state which has already been indicated to be on edge again since the bombing. Michael is at his most unpredictable and volatile these days since his teen years. Through that torture of Michael (and possibly by leveraging Chase's PCPD connections to do so) she would get a shot at the kids. There's just so many options. Gaslighting Michael and wrecking Chase and BLQ would be just the beginning. But ultimately I would probably have her shotgun marry Drew Q after all for awhile, purely out of convenience/power. And before she finally got her endgame comeuppance at some point, she would absolutely fake her cancer returning lol. I would play the long game and she when she does finally exit for good in a few years she goes out hard like Susan Moore, Heather in the '70s, etc. There's so much to play when the right good girl breaks bad. Probably too far afield and campy, but you could even have her do a turn as a wellness influencer, trading on her tragic cult past and reinventing herself with her 'new beginning' after she claims to have been used and abused by Drew and Michael to become a kind of online/social media cult maven unto herself like the Apple Cider Vinegar, tradmoms, etc. scene to gain fame and fortune lol. Not unlike the cult she came from in a way.

I'd honestly just have her crash out and ruin their marriage spitefully because she could after what the Qs have done to her, lol. It's not that deep. But you make a fair point. Maybe she can work some angle where cop Chase frames up Michael in some way, or she gets access to the mansion in order to drug Michael or something or mess with his PTSD. idk, I'm flexible!

Oh, I wouldn't let her actually have it. I'd just do an affair and maybe a fake or quickly miscarried baby.

The closest that came to sticking IMO was Cady Huffman's Paige, who the show breathlessly touted as 'Broadway star Cady Huffman' while trying to play her heavily as a screwball, fun Blonde Nora as HBS/Nora lingered in a long contract coma that very nearly got her killed off before she intervened via the network. Those were grim times. Alexandra Neil lasted the longest but she was a dishrag and was never going to be a hit.

I've been pushing this for months! It's okay, GH, I don't need a royalty.

What a waste of the last year-plus. I wonder if it's her own choice per this IG post, but I'd still try to get her back as much as humanly possible.

That's a real turn on the gun on myself moment. I would argue Paige by a nose.

She also has a role in the disastrous new Amazon War of the Worlds film with Ice Cube (held back from release for several years), which is rapidly becoming a new midnight movie classic. Good for the kid. I am seeing Weapons this weekend and pretty excited.

Demonic that he is still there for Christmas.

A side note: The switch-up that made Vanessa go full Guza Crime Moll happened so fast onscreen but I swear Lauren Bugliogi has killed it. I think she's even elevated Jon Lindstrom, who at times seems uncomfortable with this kind of role in his older age, but who has real chemistry with LB and can still give good glowering and some menace (depending on the day and material). Joey will not last forever but they need to move Vanessa into a more central role on the show fast. It frankly makes me wish they'd stayed with the original Vanessa/Dani friendship in the very first episodes, but I'm also among the few on here who is also fine with Cady's kooky BFF/talk-to role. OTOH, maybe Vanessa's friendship with saintly Nicole is what will keep her humanized.

I am sure a white heroine is partially a network thing, but I doubt the network denoted that she be so unbelievably boring. Dani has her lovers and haters, but that's largely by design. She drives engagement and is very watchable to me, even when they sometimes have her circle the same tired behaviors. Karla is eating this role IMO, there's no comparison with her vs. JJ.

A random sidenote: It's interesting to flash-forward to August '94 for Jason Webb's exit early in that month, and his very tender exit scenes with Robin's Dorian as he announces he's closing Wanda's Place (a fixture in the earlier '90s) down. Robin was very good with him, at least as good as Princi; I'd forgotten that, as I hadn't revisited a lot of this summer '94 period with the silly virus story and Susan Gibney's evil hospital administrator since it first aired I was a kid. I do wish they'd done a bit more of Robin paired with Mark Brettschneider. In a lot of ways I increasingly feel Jason was this team's first draft of what Todd Manning became, albeit a much more benevolent character at core. Once Todd was ascendant Jason was sadly an also-ran. It is nice to see everyone throw him a Goodbye Jason party.

It was never called The Revival when it first aired. That must be a streaming thing.

"I am not one of your conquests, Gaius Cordius! You will never be able to possess me!" I've finally reached the 'Luna and Tina explore Cord and Tina's past lives' episodes (starting with 10/8/91). Hoo boy. Clint Ritchie and Bob Woods deserve hazard pay for having to dress up as Roman centurions in helmets and togas serving General Cord. John Loprieno playing an effete Roman and making a wild meal of it proves just how versatile he always was - anyone who remembers his guest turn as a time-traveling war criminal on Star Trek: Voyager (the two-parter "Year of Hell") knows he could play so much more than folksy hunk Cord. I wish the show had done better by him, though they did try to lean into much darker, thornier stuff with him when he came back in '93. I wonder what would've really happened if he'd stayed on to do more with Mia Korf's Blair, but I'll get to that. Loprieno was quoted from this period by someone on here as saying he figured it'd be the same old cycle with Cord, Tina and yet another interloper and that's why he left, but with this new regime I'm not so sure. (Especially since they may have intended for Cord and KDP's Blair to be endgame in '94, before Todd became a thing.) Malone II had even more OTT special episodes and fantasy interludes like these, but the budget crunch and tonal whiplash in the early 2000s made them far more cringe than a lot of these ones I remember from the early '90s. This Tina stuff is silly but harmless so far. I was not expecting Joe Lando to have even more block-taped stuff in this period, as he gets several segments being detained and imprisoned by cartoonish Middle Eastern baddies (with turbans and everything) at an international airport after working security for a shady Japanese businessman. He's on for at least several days and gets pawed by a kinky German dominatrix torturer (named "Ilsa"!!) with a riding crop. Hey, why not?

Yeah. I'm lost.

They've been explicit at the level of the Prospect Park soaps or further for some time now. I about lost it when Andre had this monologue to Dani a few months ago about (and I quote) 'being over you, under you, tasting you...' In the CBS daytime hour, no less!