FrenchBug82

If Days was a soap that did some actual character-based drama on top of the OTT plot twists, there would be tons of actually interesting stuff to write around Kate, her relationship with her children and why they are who they are. The kind of stuff they did pretty well with Billie back in the day - first in the antagonism when LR was playing her and then Billie questioning who she was and her mother's influence when she turned "bad" under KA. And going there would actually make both the Philip story and the stupid Lucas twist worth it if they were used as a starting point to explore the psychology of these characters and it might help the stories make a little more sense than they do in a vacuum. Alas they are just plot-driven twists. I have said it before but Lucas has got to be in the Top 10 of soap characters where the gap between his potential and how much fans like him on one hand and how horribly written or underused the character consistently is on the other has got to be the widest.

"I was gone for ten years" lol

OK This is why, however mad Locher makes me, those interviews are such a good idea. Learning that the reason ED suggested *she* play Susan too (even though the initial plan was to hire a lookalike actress) was because she was dating Jon Lindstrom at the time and got the idea from Ryan/Kevin blows my mind. I had never heard that and it is such a fun tidbit.

It is very interesting. I don't know if it is unpopular or not; I imagine quite a few people would feel similarly. I know I do enjoy it but more as an appreciation of the art form than the stories. Meaning: I definitely agree that stories or special moments I want to rewatch definitely work best when selectively edited (although the comps I find are generally edited in too short snippets for my taste). But I also love to watch actors act, if you know what I mean. Sometimes even mundane scenes are just enjoyable when it involves performers I like and admire because it is like watching a painting. I am just sucking up the artistry and creativity. Is it corny? A tad. But there are definitely lots of soap actresses I could watch read the phonebook, to use the old cliche, so old episodes even when nothing of note was happening entertain me in that way. But I totally see why rewatching stories when you know where it is going could be tedious at face value.

I take it whoever is in charge of wig costuming was hired from the same pool of applicants as whoever is in charge of proofreading.

I wonder what happened there. I seem to have gotten the impression it was Ryan C.'s choice to walk. Wonder what p***ed him off.

I think this is the rationale here. It is not that Taylor cannot have a shorter hairdo; it is that they figured that to make viewers comfortable with the recast, it was better to first made her look as close as possible with the overall look we mostly associate with Taylor in order to build familiarity. I mean we all can remember recasts who initially at least were made to look like the previous actor*ress before adapting to their own new style once they were accepted in the role. I am sure later it won't matter as much but they wanted her to look like Taylor for the first impressions. The rationale isn't absurd; what's absurd is that they couldn't find a better wig

In all fairness, he probably assumes the viewership numbers are down because the thing that prompted this series in the first place and made it a good viewing for people bored at home was the pandemic and stay-at-home measures. So he figures now that people are more active, fewer people wasting time on YT but for the hardcore fans like us. That being said, it is insane he hasnt noticed the dissastisfaction with his interviewing style and tried to adapt.

It is very simple: as a Christian there is no *religious* doctrinal reason to refuse a vaccine. That's what a religious exemption is: when you HAVE to refuse a vaccine because of something their religion teaches. So a Christian scientist can ask a religious exemption. Because refusing modern medicine is something they believe in. But there is no strand of mainstream Christianity whose teachings require its followers to refuse a vaccine. They may not mandate it either but a religious exemption is not a free get-out-of-jail card to not do what you don't want to do. Even anti-vaccine pastors do not claim it is Biblically-mandate to refuse vaccines - since they have been taking other vaccines without issue. They simply say you should not want it because reason A, B or C. That's not religious; that's opinion and there is no political opinion exemption.

I still can't get over " "Worst Use of History"? There is no history there. The longest the characters involved have been on the show is like a couple of years and most of them were hired a few MONTHS before the story unfolded. In what way is this using History - poorly or not - at all? I mean the overall list has fewer eyebrow-raisers than in years past but it is still hard to understand the rationale for some of those.

Yeah she clearly was not happy and we can't invalidate her experience - I mean not everything is for everyone - but it is clearly the host and show who are pushing a narrative around what she says. Her actual telling of the story is not nearly as dramatic or negative as the framing of the video or the host's reactions would have you. Not to be unkind but if a grocery store employs a 14yo as a clerk, they are not going to let your mom seat in a corner watching you work either. It is a show, not theater with an audience. I understand why she might have wanted it but I don't think it warrants the host's cries of horror. If she felt she needed her mom there, sounds like she actually wasn't ready to have a proper acting job yet which in turn explains why it might have been a bad memory. I think it was down to her as much as the show and them being a bad fit for each other.

Exactly right. Lots of actors*resses I would casually watch if I didn't know his constant interruptions and lack of incisive questions are going to piss me off. I only make the effort with people I *really* am dying to hear from and even then I have to do it by bits and pieces because I get so irritated. It is a wonderful concept and I'd hate for it to go away - Lisa B's passing proves we really ought to make sure we hear from all kinds of legends while we still have them - but boy is he diminishing the potential of this idea.

This is pure speculation but couldn't have the plan to kill off the baby been hatched when it looked like the anti-vax actor who played Brando was going to resist like SB did to facilitate his exit? Then he yielded so we "get to" watch the story told instead of a rush job to push him out the door? Personally I don't mind dramatic stories on soaps at any time of the year. It is a soap. I'd rather have real personal drama, even sad, than another round of why-is-noone-killing Peter. And the issue with Sasha/Brando is that they are still here. I like SM well enough but the two characters are a bit extraneous so whatever story that they are going to be given is going to feel a bit extraneous. She was pregnant and they were probably concerned that firing them at that time would open the door to legal complications because of the timing so why not write it in and make a third-tier story out of it? So this is a shrug for me but I am not judging them for it. Of the mistakes made in recent times I sort of understand how they ended up writing this one

Because Victor Newman. Ironically your point is what EB constantly says about men in soaps but in a weird twist his insistance that his views on masculinity and leading men in soaps make a Victor an invincible all-knowing no-weakness virility machine ended up sucking the oxygen of every other man on the show. It started with Jack being slowly castrated to becoming a endless loser but the new generation cannot grow alpha males because Victor is a hurdle they always end up hitting because Victor never loses and EB won't let him lose or even show vulnerability. Add to that the 2000/2010s fad for antiheroes and you get an entire generation where they haven't found the right balance. But I blame EB's dictating the stories for Victor for ricocheting into screwing a lot of story beats for the show. And it is very ironic.

The legality/constitutionality of private employers mandating vaccines has been pretty thoroughly explored for decades and revisited at length since last year. The jurisprudence is pretty clear. This is a publicity stunt, nothing more.

I will completely agree with you that soaps inability to try and find writers outside of the same ol' circle - new fresher more diverse voices - is a pillar of its current problems. That said, I still think RC's faults are specific to him but I'd take self-referential and heavy-handed humor over whatever flatlining dreg Y&R is serving these days.

He did it to her a lot which is why I had to post about it because it was driving me up the wall. She was incredibly gracious indeed and had enough poise to resume her story a couple of times but still. Yes! And the worst is actually when he interrupts to... talk about a completely different point than the one than the actor is making. It happened at least once in the Moniz interview where he misunderstood what she was saying and went on a tangent as if he was agreeing with her.

Same. I would have actually been pissed if they had tried it with the OGs - time to move on. With different actors AND different shades of the characters - Ridge is not RM's Ridge and I suspect KA is trying to embrace modern degenerate Taylor rather than the Saint Taylor of the initial triangle - it could be fun-ish. I will say this though: even plastic surgery that has better results than HT's still is distracting to me.

No. It says something about RC's style of writing. He doesn't know how to do a wink. He has to lay the self-referential gay stuff on THICK. I felt that way during the Kristen/Billie confrontation on Beyond Salem. I know the parallel with that infamous Real Housewives scene was amusing and... yet the more I think about it the more it was too heavy-handed for me. As SS said, this scene was initially amusing with over-the-top lines until RC had to weigh it down by lampshading it. He should trust the audience to get the jokes.

May God grant me the confidence of such a man who wants to speak so much and yet has so little of note or interest to say. It is not just that he interrupts constantly. It is that he interrupts to say *nothing*.

That's where I am at. Rey/Sharon is deadly boring BUT in the scheme of things it is good for the character of Sharon that we are taking her away from a Newman relative or associate. It won't last anyway but it is healthy for the character - just like Nikki's few marriages to random characters were good for the character to stand on her own two feet even if they are forgotten now. MM is wonderful but you can't recapture lightning in a bottle twice. The mistake was to kill Hillary off - if they wanted to write her out for whatever reason, they should have done it in a way that left the door open. I know that because we root for MM, it is hard to accept but Amanda just is not working. It is mostly the writing, sure. But the Phyllis thing shows that it is also that certain things that work with a character don't with a different character even when everything else is the same. Lookalike characters to try and recapture what was lost when an actor left the first time never work. Soaps should stop trying.

It is all the more stupid since HT went through different hairstyles, including a shorter one with no problem. I was more thrown-off when she showed up as a blonde in one of her last returns! But I sort of get that they didn't want it to feel too jarring. They just should have invested in a better wig. That particular line is a weird rewriting of history BUT we have to accept that what Taylor is now is not what she was in the 90s. There is no need to trash the character: the character has been behaving like trash for the past fifteen years. It was a disgrace when it started but by now there is too much baggage that is cannon for us to really complain when other characters point it out. What's good for the Brooke goose is good for the Taylor gander. She did kill Darla when drunk, she did sleep with Rick - meaning she has slept with more Forrester men than Brooke has - and so on. That's not a retcon by a writer with an agenda. That's what happened and that's what the character is now.

I think she has had health troubles, no? Also, Esther was never the most used/interesting of character even in her heyday - she was mostly a foil for Katherine so it is not surprising that for a writer who can't even use his layered interesting characters properly, they wouldn't know what to do with her. Her remaining ties are Jill - who is off the canvas 85% of the year - and Chloe - who is played as supporting of supporting characters and does not have much story of her own. I am all for her popping up from time to time but I can't imagine we will ever see her much more than that, even when (I am an incorrigible optimist) we finally switch to a better writing team.

Trisha is the one I was thinking of for sure! I even Googled Noelle Beck pregnancy last night to see if it was it but I couldn't find the story told. Thanks for reassuring me I am not cray-cray

I very distinctly remember - not distinctly enough to remember who unfortunately - a soap actress who had just given birth to a baby refusing to play a dramatic storyline involving the loss of the baby when she came back or something. Maybe she even quit? Does this ring a bell to anyone? This must feel odd but I imagine it is probably worse the other way around. Imagine your real-life pregnancy being written in and then you lose the baby and you either have to play the entire pregnancy to the end or play yourself losing the baby like you did in real life. Awful. I recall that when Katey Sagal's baby was tragically stillborn, Married with Children just turned all the entire pregnancy storyline episodes into a dream sequence so she wouldn't have to have to deal with anything having to do with it once she came back.