Vee

I'm not gonna go apeshit over this or and make a bunch of wild assumptions about network changes til I see how the situation evolves. (Though I do think the show does need creative changes.) It is a bizarre move on the network's part, if that's what happened. But the show isn't exactly bombing out in the ratings. By the same token I also think it's an weird and inappropriate double standard to apply the same ruthless lens people only seem to selectively apply to B&B, DAYS or Y&R with much more vigor to a show that's been on less than six months.

I left my brief thoughts in the Memoriam thread. Just shocking and sad. He was wonderful on nip/tuck, often better than the material.

This one is a shock. He was far too young, and so good in nip/tuck - too good for the show, frankly.

I think a couple years ago, around the time of the 60th and not just in that one sweeps period, Laura was pretty central. Virtually everything in town was run through "Mayor Collins" for a couple years, the most active town mayor in story since Luke himself lol. Spencer, Kevin/Ryan, etc. gave her a ton of story. I was happy with that, even if I don't care for the boring marriage to Kevin. But Laura has been sidelined since NAC left, and the kowtowing to Esme before that followed by the quick 180 on Sonny after the first half-serious attempt at holding him accountable in decades fell apart (last year) as well as the Heather mess have all made her look like a fool. (As the Sonny quick change also did with Anna.) And frankly I think that is all the way FV likes it. I think either he or someone at the network always resented being strongarmed into a contract for Genie, and it's often showed. I don't think he's shedding tremendous tears about the focus moving away from the Spencers with TG gone seemingly for good. I think all this could easily change for Laura again, as quickly as it did a few years back. But the show has to want it, and it clearly doesn't. I do though. And I think when she was the heart of the show again, Genie played it to the hilt.

Frankly people need to do this for the now quite extensive GH and OLTL archives before it's too late.

Thank you, Emma, for keeping it 💯. I have always hated Britt and I always will! It's not that I don't like soap bitches, because I clearly do. It's that she and Sabrina came on (on the same day) as very two-dimensional foils of each other the show invented from literal nowhere, and Thiebaud proved she couldn't play much else. Her attempts at vulnerability or depth have always come off as weak whining and vague confusion to me, and the show's sweaty attempts to put her over as a manufactured 'gay icon' while not actually doing LGBT story gross me out.

Nor did I. People suddenly acting like oh, she's so indispensable, she can't leave now apparently don't remember most of the last 13 years. Molly was doing nothing and she's still not really relevant, only with an even less unique actress than the last one. Do I think there is a unique character there to bring back someday? Absolutely. But not with this actress, maybe not with Pullos either and not until she's been gone at least a few years. You don't hang around the show as human furniture for over a decade and not get played out.

I wasn't! Nice girl, but she was sickeningly sweet and not a great actress. I was counting the days til they recast. Bruner was perfect to me because her Emma was dry, spiky and the anti-Robin - you are not going to succeed with a clone of an iconic heroine like that, what would be the point or interest? The child would have to be different. People got pissed about it initially but it was always the move in my mind. And she is great with Finola. Van Hansis is good with LW and Becky so I let him ride. I think he does well with the new romance. Any high drama scenes, uh, we'll see if he improves lol. And yes, any kind of individuality or quirk is gone with KV. But Molly should've been retired and sent offscreen long before Pullos' DUI - the character was an afterthought and worn out from so many years on canvas doing nothing. Still is. I think it was in print at one point that Gio was going to take an interest in Trina, before or right after he first appeared. That bore out with a few very brief hints onscreen before they scuttled it.

I think they were purely winging it, in part because of such BTS chaos. IIRC Gio was explicitly announced at one point as being for Trina, but there was only a hint or two of that onscreen before they just had him meandering around with both girls doing nothing for months. My suspicion is Korte, FV, etc. tried to reposition Joss since Dex had lost his very brief luster and thought anything and anyone was game. Then they moved on. My further suspicion is that with the recent success of both Emma and Gio (and them together), Frank may have lost his all-consuming interest in Joss. It happens with him. I could see the vision with Mansi a little earlier than this time last year when Kristina was basically the only smart person in several stories, seeing through Ava and standing up to Natalia while still delusional about her father. I thought that I finally found Kristina credible as a major lead at that moment, even if the surrogacy thing was still going (and about to get much worse). But it faded as soon as, well, everything happened. I think the character and recast could recover, but it's gonna take either a lot of work or a long break. Or both. Vaganos is a passable watch for a character who has been played out for over a decade. I would just let Molly go for a number of years. KV or Pullos or whoever can show up for visits from time to time but I wouldn't bring her back on contract any time soon.

They got these folks in "Nice" lost in the hedge maze from The Shining. Uncle Frank on GH would at least put up a town street with some little flags and baguettes and a mime or something.

Honestly Joss feels like the afterthought on the show now, and has for some time even before Dex died. Emma and Gio are where the money and rooting value is at. I knew Braedyn Bruner had it on Day 1 and GM has always appealed to me but has fully impressed this year. Trina is the only character the show clearly wants to be the real afterthought, but if it was me it would be about Emma, Gio, Trina and then someone like Justus and Faith's imaginary scheming son lol. You could mix and match them together and play a quad or all sorts of combinations, since Trina and Gio were the original intent last summer (an idea almost immediately dropped). You can add other people in as well, maybe some kids from the Asian Quarter, Cam at some point, etc. If we were in the UK you could let Gio go bi too, but that's never happening here.

Sheila has been haunting Y&R and B&B since at least the George W. Bush administration. Leslie has been onscreen for less than six months. I think it's a bit early to make that kind of comparison. She hasn't bombed anybody like an ABCD villain yet.

I don't mean classic Y&R was solely plot-oriented. But it had (from what I've watched, anyway) a very specific and fascinating tone and language. Character issues, traits, throughlines with a person or their family or neuroses or goals would be stated and restated almost in ritualistic ways again and again or played out through recurring situations, and at times in very florid prose. It was beautiful but it was very different from, say, an ABC soap. You knew when you turned the dial from one to the other on your TV, they did not look, sound or feel the same. Modern B&B has a version of this kind of classic formula, but it's much more repetitious, clunky and tiresome as they mouth the same platitudes and pronouncements over and over. I think a lot of that formula is at play in BTG. And I can understand it, because its arch tone served B&B well for decades with a loyal global audience. The Bell soaps have remained at the top even when they shouldn't in recent years in part because of that house style. But latter-day B&B's bastardization of that formula is not the kind of style I especially love, and I would love to see more ABC naturalism in the dialogue. As it is, BTG remains a fascinating sort of mix to me: Classical soap style or even Irna Phillips-esque recapping in some scenes or stories, mixed with other scenes of very cutting-edge trendy dialogue or subject matter. Both of which can either sing or veer on ugly depending on the moment or scene.

It is deeply bizarre watching silver fox E.J. talk to Stacy Haiduk's Kristen about how she passed him off as her baby recently. They look the same age.

T.J. came in in either very late '11 or early '12, just before Carlivati and FV arrived. They made several attempts to put HP's Molly over as their new Starr Manning-type teen heroine, largely by introducing Felix's sister to tempt T.J. into bad behavior and trying to push Molly with that little twink Rafe Jr. It was an obvious attempt to push the Black kid out and prefabricate a new, all-white Starr and Cole. When all of that flopped they lost all interest in both characters and T.J. and Molly entered shared purgatory for years to come. But no, I don't remember any Morgan/Molly scenes post-2012 either lol. The Natalia thing is just another excuse to do a tried and true plotline: Poor Sonny, framed or put upon by the PCPD or his enemies. I am thrilled she's dead though. I'm pretty sure they decided Michael and Kristina was too much of an weird third rail given the shared family history and sibling-like relationship. I won't lie though, I might've watched it. Garrett and Lexi were cute together. You could never do it now ofc.

The Maggie Vega they went with was painful even in small doses. It's no wonder they dumped it. Saundra could've been interesting back then, though I was surprised she was that hard up so soon after Miami Vice.

Speaking of Death Stranding 2: Another DAYS star, Christopher Sean (Paul), dubs Japanese pop star Gen Hoshino's musician character for the English-language version.

I think that was almost totally dropped after he was SORASed, which is a shame. They were a duo who were inseparable for awhile. As annoying and twee as Molly in particular could get back then, they had very specific personalities and relationships. Carlivati from what I recall couldn't care less. I barely recall them ever sharing scenes once Brydog arrived. The Guza team would not have forgotten that. And yes, Michael and Kristina were also close which is why I still have a soft spot for whenever Michael calls her 'Krissy.' You could tell they were actually dancing around pairing them when Drew Garrett was there, because they were not related by blood.

Neither would I! Cannot tell them apart.

I would kill her so fast but you know they never can because she's named for a beloved dead GH staffer.

I frankly think there is such a focus on the show being 'down to earth' and slowly setting up its stakes, while also following the tried and true modern version of the Bell formula MVJ likely learned at B&B (a lot of grand pronouncements, and stating and restating dynamics and issues - I'm not saying classic Y&R was always like modern B&B, but there is a specific tone you get on those shows that isn't replicated on ABC or ATWT/GL), that a lot more overt and dramatic developments have yet to flourish. Which can be tiresome. It's good that they made Eva pop so quickly, but the show is still finding its way. And I think part of the issue is they seem so dedicated to following the playbook MVJ learned from her years of guaranteed longevity at CBS while building out the family history, when I don't think more of that is needed. I think more action is needed, and less talk. And I frankly think pulling more of MVJ's compatriots from GH out of retirement would be welcome on the dialogue stuff, even if the Guza/Labine GH school of naturalistic dialogue is not fully in sync with the more portentous B&B/Bell style of plotting and recapping. At the same time, other dialogue is so hyper-modern (a la the Prospect Park soaps) that it's sometimes cringe. But audiences are responding to both. I know that classical flavor (mixed with the edgier newspeak) works for a doggedly loyal CBS audience, and BTG gets a ton of healthy engagement on social media - from that alone you'd think the show has been on for 5-10 years. But if you made me choose between the Bell house style and bringing back a GH-style dialogue staff and tone, it would be the latter every time.

We talk about this all the time and it's still valid lol. Morgan is straight dead and people barely acknowledge it.

Easily one of the best things ever posted on this forum.

Knowing how this has worked so far, it'll just be back up w/no warning in 24-48 hours.

Jim Shooter was a controversial figure, but he had Marvel running like a swiss watch BITD and shepherded a lot of great work at the company as well as making many mistakes. And his original creation, Valiant Comics, was a huge staple for me as a child during the early independent boom in the '90s. The Valiant universe and continuity, from past to present and far-flung future, was tight as a drum, disciplined, and told complex and often very mature and daring stories with all sorts of imperfect, fascinating and unique characters. I still miss the original Valiant and books like Harbinger, Solar, etc. Even his brief Valiant also-ran, Defiant (sued out of existence by the majors IIRC), was a unique company with very strange but beautiful body horror sci-fi hero books like Plasm and The Good Guys, a youth team populated entirely by kid contest winners who wrote in. He also left a profound mark on the Legion of Super-Heroes as a young boy that can never be forgotten. It's insane that guys like Peter David, let alone Shooter died struggling. You'd think that with how big these comics have become some reforms would be put in place.