Vee

They're gonna have ol' girl on an oxygen tank running this show with AI Kale Browne as Phillip II before it goes off the air.

Okay then. I guess I'll see it someday.

ngl I am not watching that just yet. I just am hoping Scott Bryce is not on death's door.

Health woes? Oh no.

Yeah, it was pretty brutal and draining at the time. I don't think any of that long-running outsider vibe fully came back until the brief 2013 revival. Which was far from perfect, but the tone was serious again and there was an edge from the '90s that had returned. I really wish we could've seen more of what Susan Horgan brought back to the table despite the endless creative turnover at PP, as I think she has been consistently underrated in her work in daytime. She built a key foundation at ATWT that helped Marland reinvent that show, and her work as a steward post-Linda Gottlieb upholding Gottlieb's vision at OLTL for two more largely very strong years rarely gets credit.

I think from when Carlivati took over in August '07 to the end, really. The bloom definitely fell off the rose very quickly after the strike ended in mid-'08, and there were terrible stories throughout that remaining period (especially in 2010-2011), but there were also still a number of prominent good ones or good couples. I felt on a hit/miss ratio it overall marked a major change from the dismal dregs of JFP, Higley, Malone II and even Tomlin, the last two of whom were well-intentioned but had very few successes. I also think characters like the early material with Brody, Gigi and her son in Paris, TX, or Kish, Schuyler, Langston the orphan and her being linked to Dorian, etc. all convey the same sort of either damaged, outsider or working class status that goes back to the beginning.* But YMMV. It definitely wasn't perfect, but I think of the shows Ron always knew OLTL best. It probably would've gotten far worse had he gotten to stay as long as he did at DAYS or GH, but OLTL is I think Carlivati's best, least ego-tainted work. Which is saying something given all the disgusting rape stories that have already aged terribly and others that are also quite bad. It's just a very mixed bag which also happened to have more hits than the rest. As for Malone and Gottlieb/Horgan I think Angel Square was only part of the reversion to the classic ethos - I think everything with Marty, Andrew, the various social issue stories, etc. really took it back to that too. Even Viki's baroque DID saga was rooted in the same stuff daytime rarely discussed before OLTL. (* - You can even see hints of this lineage in the brief 2013 revival, where Kelley Missal took the show by storm and was another iteration of the same damaged young woman/heroine that IMO went back throughout the show's history from Melissa Archer to Susan Haskell to Judith Light or even Andrea Evans/Fiona Hutchison, etc. But that's just my take.)

I think OLTL transformed itself several times throughout its history - the Buchanan influx post-Dallas obviously being the first time. A lot of soaps did the same in different or similar ways. But one thing I never thought it fully lost, except for during some of the Rauch years, was the sense of having an eye on the outsiders in life or the other side of the street. That's the purpose I think you're talking about. And I feel that even in lowlight periods there were still some characters, families, etc. who articulated that vision of the show that went all the way back. Even the Buchanans became subsumed into some of that ethos, or at least coexisted with it, both in the early '80s and then again for much of the '90s and 2000s. Most soaps, if not all, are a synthesis of the good, the bad and the ugly throughout their era. Often a great year has a lot of all of the above coexisting. OLTL was no exception, especially in its last rocky creative upswing in the late 2000s. (We can debate whether there actually was one, but that was how it's been viewed by a lot of people both in the audience and among the cast.) There was plenty of bad to go along with the good in those years, especially after Carlivati got high on his own supply, and I've certainly become hypercritical of how it fell apart in a lot of ways, but there were still good stories or pairings. But I'm not really here to defend that era so much as I am to say I think it's easy to pick apart, say, '91, '94 or '95 as not being as structurally flawless as the years in between. The reality is no year in the '90s was perfect. Nor were the early '80s, or most likely the '70s. I just don't think we should dismiss outright all but a year or two here or there - I think any year-round soap is much more complex and rich a than that story to story, month to month. Or at least they were 20 years ago. And I don't think OLTL ever fully lost its sense of self. Or when it did, it eventually got it back again, even if the show was worse for wear.

I think that's pretty reductive, but it definitely had plenty of ups and downs. Like any soap.

Just in time to secure him long enough for killing him off.

Brenda is far more plausible. It wasn't great back then, but this current cut is rough.

Hoo boy. Don't get me started. It's giving flowbee. They will fire them both before putting Steve with Becky again lol. I don't know why that crazy fanbase hangs on.

Don't forget her status as GH's resident Gay Icon despite being a straight woman with minimal rizz. Remember, she and Brad used to watch the Nurses Ball on the fake TV set and laugh a lot? Remember when drag queens showed up at her goodbye party? It's enough to make her a LGBT icon, right?! Back in the day she was C-list as a purely 2-D foil to Princess Sabrina. They only tried to elevate her a bit later. I still can't believe Carlivati tried to do that back then - introduce them both on the same day with no real setup, as the immediate romantic opponents to each other for Patrick when we'd never seen them before, a little over six months after Robin's death. Insane work. He used to be smarter than that.

Beyond dull. KT has never been good at actual character drama. I said it 12 years ago - she can do bitchy sometimes but if you put her in normal soap situations she just conveys dull wishy-washiness.

B&B has been a joke for decades.

And maybe they should've! It had a forbidden element to it. But you could never today.

A lot of things were in flux in that period, I think. Guza clearly wanted to pull back on Sonny vs. promoting Dante as the ascendent male lead for a time. JJ came back but as ever, they didn't want to do the story he wanted (Lucky/Elizabeth). Matt Borlenghi's Valentin never appeared* (in lieu of the James Franco Experience), nor did several new young Cassadines that were rumored at the time to come with him. I think those could have been worthy additions. And the much-publicized Ward return with Maya, where GH and ABC clearly wanted brownie points for adding more characters of color, almost immediately evaporated. I don't think they were ever terribly committed to Black characters - they hadn't been for over a decade - but I do think some of those plans fell by the wayside due to all sorts of changing plans, the Michael recast, creative priorities, VM coming back, etc. It was clear though they had no real use for Maya other than being a (largely offscreen) spoiler for Ethan and Kristina, a pairing they also weren't sure they could handle pulling the trigger on. Still, the raw creative potential is there for those characters or other Wards. (* - before someone says it, that's not to say I think Borlenghi was a good choice for the Valentin role, but it also would likely have been a more formidable character on the page than Billy Joel and less of a waste of time than Franco's follies)

This is the prime time to bring on a series of potential new romantic options for Michael, like Zoe Richardson/Ward (who Guza almost brought in for Drew Garrett's teen Michael oh so long ago) or Serena Baldwin or whoever else. A bland reunion with him and Willow which restores her to mediocre factory settings is not it. Gibson and KM play quite well together but that interplay should stay volatile, and she should stay crazy. (She can even con him into taking her back for a time, but it shouldn't last.) Another 7(?) years of Katelyn MacMullen on this show being Sunny Homemaker again to make Facebook moms and grandmas happy is not the future, certainly not when she's proven she can do much more. We've already endured too many years of Frank just hanging onto people out of familiarity and personal fondness - Sasha was one example, and Willow was one of many others until this past year when she finally got a chance to break out. They need to keep that energy for her, and start doing new things with Michael too.

What is the tape to air lag time at GH now? A month, two? I can't recall offhand. Not that FV has not pre-taped stuff and then slotted it in sometimes way ahead of when it's expected to air. (He did it with Roger Howarth at OLTL in 2011 as soon as they got him back, among other cases)

I think Cody is full of potential, but they seem to have steadily squandered it. I won't be shocked if nothing comes of him or he vanishes too. I would've been down for them to do more with T.J. back in the TR days, but by the time of the recast he was already a non-entity. Bellow did a good job but there's very rarely been a character there, just an excuse to say they have the couple around. And meanwhile I'd much rather just bring Tom Hardy Jr. lol.

T.J. and Molly both should have been dumped years ago. T.J. was barely a character even when the great Tequan Richmond was in the role.

Pretty much.

I don't think the EGOT thing was necessary and I get the issue, but I also think it's pretty small potatoes to get bent out of shape over given what we routinely put up with on soaps for over 50 years. It's not like this show is aiming to be a gritty kitchen sink drama, let alone Ryan's Hope. Even Labine and MVJ's GH was populated by characters like Luke Spencer, the rapist turned town mayor and American hero who once saved the world from being frozen by a superpowered weather machine. By comparison Anita going EGOT under ropey circumstances is just not that serious.

BTG on its worst day is nowhere near as boring as Y&R.

Britt stole Rocco! Just clarifying again.

Cody and Molly are insanely forced and artificial. The Molly recast has always been mid at best but it literally feels like Slot Introvert Character A into Tab Available Rogue B. It's just a time-filler with two characters who can't sustain a real storyline, and I say that as someone who likes Cody a lot. He needs someone like Tracy or Ava to shine, and Molly needs to leave for at least a few years so we can miss the character beyond years of just being there. Kristina - I got nothing. The character is burnt beyond recognition and needs to either crash out and go full dark for awhile or get gone. Kate Mansi is very talented and could do great on the show but has been put in a terrible position with story after story. It's another instance where they seem to expect us to implicitly rubberstamp her repeat behavior (a la Sonny) because she's a major get from another soap.