Planet Soap

I feel like he'll be back, if at least for appearances, depending on how much longer GH lasts.

Sucks. Lucky and Liz from 1997-1999 was magical and one of the best young love stories I'd ever seen on soaps. Unfortunately the magic could never be recaptured since Lucky "died" in that fire.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Greg Vaughan was let go from GH so Jonathan Jackson could return, but Jonathan Jackson has been in and out ever since 2009. While I'm always glad to see OG Lucky if he isn't going to stick around long-term Greg should've been kept on. I appreciate that scumbag Drew is a departure from Billy Miller's redundant Jason, but what is the end goal of his brutal character assassination? Redemption or death as others have suggested.

Rick, Monica, Leslie, and Alan all gone now. Sad.

Indeed they did. The Gio paternity reveal and Michael returning from a burn clinic amid his custody dispute with Willow and Drew cliffhangers were solid. Add that to the Ric/Ava/Alexis/Kristina blackmail plot and it's been good soap. It's taken my focus away from Beyond the Gates for the past two weeks.

Rewatching some of 1991 I had to appreciate what a strong week March 5-12 1991 was. Cassandra dies, Nina shoots David, Sheila switces the babies, and drunk Nikki all occurring simultaneously. 1991 and 92 were pretty strong overall.

Yup, i thought it was Adamson. Backtracking...I love that Kristina knows now. Her smug disrespectful attitude toward Alexis was pissing me off. If not for the blackmailing Alexis part I would be rooting for Ric. This a been a decent sweeps period for GH, I'm liking the stories right now. Good thing I can watch third party GH clips online to keep up because Beyond The Gates is keeping attention at 2PM. It's making me miss my days of living in a 3pm GH market.

I suspected the actor who played Noah Newman would become the new Michael, but I didn't expect it was the recasted Noah Newman who would become Michael!

New Ted ain't it. Loved the reference to Tamara Tunie's time on ATWT. hopefully they can make a Law & Order SVU reference. I wonder if ATWT characters will ever cross over because the homeless lady and Nicole acknowledged Jessica and Duncan as soap characters from "As the World Turns". Then again, Marge was watching a soap with B&B's theme on Y&R and Katherine Chancellor crossed over to Guiding Light despite Reva's clone and Cassie acknowledging Y&R as a tv show.

BTG got another SNL reference at 00:50 CONTEXT (so it isn't misconstrued) in this joke swap segment, Michael Che frequently makes his white cohost Colin Jost read racist jokes written by Che.

Yes!!! Mona feels like one of my aunts, love the way she carries herself. Loved seeing Eva pop-up at the gambling place. Monday was all around good soap. Can't remember the last time an entire episode held my interest. Loving the fallout and reverberations from Ted and Shea-Butter Sheila's affair 😉. Tricia Mann Grant is 90s early 2000s quality FINE. As nice as it would've been to see Anita embrace Eva, I'm glad she didn't because we can squeeze a lot more years of conflict out of Eva, Leslie and the Duprees. Lauren & Sheila, Viki & Dorian, Katherine & Jill all gave us good conflict for decades. Hopefully this follows suit. I understand the concern. Right now there's an issue of quality of black representation on shows more so than quantity of black shows. I'd like to see more predominantly black sci-fi, legal, political, supernatural or medical dramas over the typical who is sleeping with who. However, this is a soap, and this is what happens on soaps. White soap characters do these things all the time, but have the luxury of being seen as individuals, not representations of their entire race. Husbands/fathers like Todd Manning, Victor Newman and Asa Buchanan cheat, lie and swindle all the time but aren't seen as a commentary on white men. Black characters like Ted and New Dollar Bill should be able to do the same.

Ahh...so in that case it's more of a gray area. But I still think Lulu has ground to tell Dante as she co-parents with him.

Backtracking because BTG has been distracting me from keeping up with GH. Why is Carly always involved with a paternity lie? Lulu is Dante's (wife? if I'm correct) so she has the right to tell him about his son. If anything, she's in a better place to reveal paternity drama than Robin was. As for Robin...I'm conflicted about whether it was HER place to tell AJ he was Michael's dad. Being with a man who's pretending to be someone else's baby daddy is wild. Dante was blaming everyone but Rocco, however he was right about Jason. A convo isn't enough, neither is trying to be your son's friend. Adolescents need a disciplinarian. At least Lulu made Rocco and Danny scrub the house.

Awww man. All of our legends are going. Leslie Charleson and Leslie Webber are together now. Some of the best of Leslie's work:

Agreed. Ted getting recasted before Martin is crazy work lol.

Loved the episode today. looking forward to the fallout. Nubian-Sheila looked fantastic, but I wish the writers would cut back on her overuse of figurative language. I loved the "fix yo mind ministries" line though. The background music during her fantasy confrontation with Nicole was epic.

Respectfully, I stand by my opinion, and it makes sense. Yes ratings don't always directly correlate to quality but let's not pretend they aren't related. In other tv shows, like Greys Anatomy, Riverdale or Empire we have seen ratings drop off after periods of declining writing among other factors. This holds up in soaps too. The decline in the genre is not just do to the shift in viewership habits and less stay at home moms -- many fans simply gave up as writing went to hell. So I think it's a fair question to ask why a soap where nothing happens or another soap that copy and pastes dialogue across episodes are still in the top spots.

Great observation! I liked that Brooke put their feud aside in trying to defend Stephanie's life at a time of crisis. Brooke does have good in her, despite her notorious antics. Cold to say but, I like that Stephanie didn't break and feel sorry for Sheila when she was about to off herself (after years of terrorizing others). It's telling that Stephanie was the only one in the room who didn't discourage Sheila from doing it.

To clarify my post, it was a family member of mine's idea that CBS's should have been coy with marketing BTG as a majority black soap. I don't think that move was a mistake, because it peaked my interest. I even responded to @DRW50 saying: "you cant' win" which is my acknowledgment that even being coy about the cast's race would be picked apart. As for Y&R and B&B's ratings, thats why I said in my original post "that must speak to audience loyalty"---which is my acknowledgment that ratings and quality are mutually exclusive. Believe me I know quality doesn't dictate viewership, otherwise B&B would be dead last The idea wasn't to conceal the cast. It was the opposite. Again my move in that suggested idea would be to show the majority black cast prominently (without labeling it a black soap). If people try to criticize, then point them to towards the majority white casts of Y&R, B&B, GH and DAYS and ask them why they aren't complaining about that 🤷‍♀️. Then the racists are the only ones making the show about race. At the end of the day, both of you are right in saying that racists will not watch the show no matter how it is marketed.

It happened briefly in 1995 when Brooke (and others) stood in front of Stephanie when Sheila held her at gunpoint (at 11:04)

Yup you can't win. In that scenario, I would use the racist's argument against them and say "We never announced the majority black cast because this was never about race. Most of our cast members just happened to be black because they were qualified for the job!"

It's baffling how Y&R and B&B remain in the top spots. Neither of these soaps have been good since 2013. Young is the most boring soap on television, and Bold is the most repeditive. That must really speak to audience loyalty. General Hospital is no prize but it's certainly more creative and a lot more happens than on the tatter two soaps. GH and BTG should be in those top two spots based on quality. Family of mine sguggested CBS shouldn't have announced BTG was an all black soap. They should have put it on the air and let viewers come to that realization themselves. If anyone complained about a "lack of diversity", just say it "wasn't intentional", then compare it to a cast photo of B&B and Y&R and say their majority white cast "isn't intentional" either, LOL.

Go to Facebook soap pages and you will see the barrage of white commenters who will not watch a "racist" "DEI" majority black soap. I truly applaud CBS for taking the risk and putting a new soap on air in 2025 ---a minority majority soap at that. I thought Nicole's husband Ted was pretty good. Sucks that he's being recasted. Same about Tamara Tunie. I expected her to be this Stephanie Forrester level Grand Dame. Instead she's the equivalent of GH's Lila or ATWT's Nancy. A wise loving grandmother who doles out advice but has no story---a talk to character. Anita reminds me of Dominique Devereaux on Dynasty, a black grand dame with so much potential, who turned out to be mild and well liked, with not enough story. I really thought Nicole was going to be her nemesis based on promos, I didn't expect that to be her daughter. BTG has gotten better and flowed smoother since it's premiere date.

Did anyone catch that at Will Trent episode featured the 2003-2004 faces of the heart open, with will in there lol. That was my favorite version of the open. Especially loved the character names. The only think it lacked was 2002's shot of Luke & Laura's face rising at the end. https://tvline.com/features/will-trent-general-hospital-faces-of-the-heart-theme-song-1235436139/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR6pvM37q116Gnm5KWF2wugLhfLohb0x9ySBLzBqmBFShZ3w9iFETYnBW_G-3Q_aem_Grc94CMDFBiz1k-9fPSjCA#

I love that after years of absence, Anna has been a primary player on modern GH for over a decade now. Compared to other veteran cast that we brought back at/around Frank's trnure, she's been on very --- if not the most -- consistently.