Planet Soap

Hayley is 26👀😳. The actress Marquita Goings looks great but definitely looks mid to late 30s. The age vs actor contrast on this show is really off for alot of characters (Martin being Nicole's son for one).

Ed was great! As for JFP she needs to be nowhere near Y&R in any capacity.

Y&R is the worst on the air right now. We need over the top melodramatic storylines and compelling dialogue at this point because virtually nothing happens.

What exactly is going on with Maurice Bernard. Is it cognitive decline, does he just not care anymore?

GH A-, Loved the action with Gio, Michael, Willow & Drew and Kristina BTG B-, nothing new was happening Y&R F -, all around boring B&B F+, stale and repetitive but more interesting than Y&R. Literally who cares about Brooke, Ridge and Taylor triangle anymore? And how many times does Finn have to tell Luna he doesn't want a relationship.

Circling back to the custody scenes, the Willow actress was working for her check that day! This is the most interesting the character has ever been. It was irritating to keep hearing Willow say "my children" when one of them isn't even hers. That should be a cautionary tale in allowing step parents to adopt children should a divorce occur. It was also refreshing to see justice be served. If only it could've been Carly screaming "don't take my kids away" to AJ, 25 years ago. This was also a repeat of history in that Michael and Willow were in a custody battle against Nell for Wiley---which should have made him even more cautious about granting someone else custodial rights. maybe I haven't been watching Maxi's scenes but she seemingly slimmed down seemingly overnight. She looks fantastic.

Can you elaborate more on Amanda's restrictions? I agree that actors should have limited say in writing and character direction because actors don't always have the ability to write/produce well. Larry Hagman and Tony Geary are examples. I remember when Vanessa Marcille was on the reality show Queens of Drama where soap stars were trying to create their own soap and the actors involved had no idea how to write one. Likewise, from interviews it's said that Bill Bell took limited input from actors (and for good reason) because his near singular vision kept Y&R's quality high. However, I do feel for actors. No one wants to be a slave to what someone in a back room is writing. When it comes to issues like hairstyles I do think sometimes actors should have a say as it could become a cultural issue. Suppose there was an African-American actress had perfectly good natural hair but was always being asked to wear Eurocentric wigs or straight hairstyles. With wardrobe suppose you're always given the worst clothes and look terrible with no relation to the storyline? I would complain. Suppose writers were completely assassinating a character's character, then I think the actor should speak up. Again, I believe in writer supremacy but I don't think actors should just go for anything.

Wow the GH thread is marked "hot" instead of Beyond the Gates! The WillHOE custody battle & Gio paternity reveal has made the show a good watch on top of some other surrounding stories!

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.