FrenchBug82

Yep. That's where I started and as I said above (that's the Swajelski era I was talking right a couple of days) I thought everything was gelling great.

Always found hilarious the TV show trope of finding someone in distress... STOPPING in your tracks to take the time to scream their name and THEN rush to their side.

I think this is right but I guess they can introduce Pocket one day with a one-day cameo from FF and then Mimi can go back to playing poker. I loved it when B&B borrowed Lauren Koslow for a day to introduce her SORASed son Marc (another character that then went nowhere). I think soaps should do that more often; just give a tiny bone with a one-day visit from a past character when there is a decent reason. Few people would turn down a one-day paycheck for a fun visit.

Yep. That's why I mention the cast; it is a big part of why the chemistry was right for me but it really was.

In all fairness, this is how I feel about 95% of soap supercouples who cheat on each other with abandon, don't believe each other in certain situations and treat each other like garbage when they are together. Soaps are telling us that on and off and on and off again is fate and destiny and romantic. It is not. It is a toxic mutually abusive relationship and people would be better off accepting it and moving on to partners they are a better fit for, passion or not.

I'd accept the fact they didn't talk about it and his "lie" if the show had portrayed it as what it is: rape. Shawn was raped by deception, which is raped. Portray him as feeling deeply ashamed and violated behind the tough exterior and it can be explained why they just decided to play ostrich about it. That makes sense and that is compelling. But that would involve a serious story and topic and not high comedy with ridiculous Devil hijinks and camp plots about crazy Jan which, you know, too much to ask.

I obviously didn't know AW in its heyday but most of Swajeski 88-92 AW stint is in my top five of best soap runs ever. Not the most spectacular but so much of it clicked for me - including cast-wise.

The shouderpads still crack me up. For those who enjoy that stuff

I agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed here. Look at what happened with the Don't Say Gay bill. A rare example of activist success in establishing a negative narrative for one of the avalanche of awful bills Republicans are pushing through around the country... and Republicans fired bazookas, turned their propaganda machine up to 1000 and now all we are talking about is Democrats being pedophiles and teachers groomers and the conversation is them making these insane awful accusations freely and Democrats being outraged. And we are not talking about the bill anymore, even though it will be around ruining kids' lives long after the current news cycles. It is an exhausting cycle because the media buys into it and Democrats are torn: calling them out is allowing to switch the discussion to their choice and having the conversation being "of course we are not pedophile" is not... great or ignoring them and letting really ugly narrative or vague impressions settle among low-information communities. See what happened to Biden being communist, absurd as it is to us, among some Latino communities. Republicans repeated the BS over and over and over, Democrats thought that was so transparently absurd they didn't push back and enough of it filtered through voters with very little attention to politics to cost significant amount of votes. Most voters don't care about politics and only a few things make it though their memory. That's why Republicans repeated all kinds of tales about Hillary because by the time she did run, a lot of voters had a vague impression she was corrupt despite not really knowing anything specific about it (because there wasn't!) That's why Republicans are constantly pushing dumb edited videos and misleading memes about Kamala Harris being stupid. They are planting a seed that might reach voters here and there, especially low-income white voters always culturally inclined to assume a successful black man or woman has to have been "given favors" (affirmative action and all), enough that by the time she runs that image will have been very firmly planted and it will be considerably easy to turn that narrative into an open weapon. Inversely, they didn't believe Obama would run and would be the nominee in 2008 and they actually spent most of 2007 complimenting him because they wanted to undermine Hillary. So by the time they switched to TERRORIST FIST JAB in the summer of 2008 it was too late. They still managed to dig the hatred deep over subsequent years but they hadn't done the long work. Anyhow, this is what is going on here. Republicans repeat things that are awful and mendacious. But they repeat them so much that, well, people start to think there is no smoke without fire Meanwhile Democrats have a cornocupia of things that are TRUE and would hurt GOPers badly but they are constantly changing messaging and letting themselves be distracted by fake outrage machine enabled by media. And as soon as a Democrat tries to be more outspoken and aggressive, there somehow always is another Democrat to tsk tsk him about civility and immediately story becomes intra-Dem fighting rather than the legit criticism of Republicans. Exhausting cycle.

Characters driving stories for a few years and then simply fading away without being acknowledged is a tragic staple of B&B.

I will say it even though it makes sound nuts: I think the show PR has to do with the way Diane is talked about in comments and social med ia. As I said, I spotted immediately from the interviews and the teaser that the show was portraying her as a big bad villain which she wasn't (to repeat myself, an antagonist, not a villain). But then YouTube comments were full of fans talking about her as if she was scary and like Sheila and all that and sorry but it doesn't pass the sniff test. It may make me sound conspiracionist but I think the comm team has sock puppets that are leading the conversation that way. I remember suspecting the same thing when the YouTube comments for B&B re" Taylor/Ridge were soooo skewed towards cheering Steffy and talking about Taylor like a saint - which they were doing on a show but that any viewed would know better about. NO ONE who watched when Diane was on would ever think of her that way - particularly not since the most "violent" things Diane did like the fire were not in her most recent MW appearance where she was semi-scheming semi-pathetic. And young viewers would not get excited over a character they know so little as to be skewed by the misleading way the show is presenting her. So I don't believe it to be organic. There, I said it.

Now, this is what I am interested in. Do we *think* that is what they were going for? It just always puzzled me because I think FC is the primetime soap that got the technical fundamentals right - the castings, the visual look, etc - and even the dated outfits for most characters felt real enough. Angela being a dowdy dresser felt appropriate enough but that wig is such a mystery to me. I imagine JW had something to do with it since they barely changed it. But what the thought process was, I can't tell. It is funny how in my memory Emma was so stupid as to be irritating that I didn't notice what I now notice on reviewing: Margarett Ladd was a very radiant beauty.

I know; I was being cheeky. The one they ended up choosing was younger but incredibly weird looking. What a haircut this would be. There were ways to give her a short hair cut with some volume without the weirdness

Maybe Aly is alive and with "the help of a corpse from the morgue" (courtesy Y&R) Thorne spirited her away from the consequences of her actions into a mental health facility out of guilt for how she turned out because of Darla dying etc. I hate back-from-the-dead stories but if I had a get-out-of-jail free card, that's the one I'd take it for on B&B.

You are going to have to be more specific than that lol That's actually a question I have. I understand why women wear a wig - it is a lot faster than be in hair and makeup for three hours every day AND I imagine a woman her age may not have been comfortable with the state of her real hair. But is there a story for how that ... haircut choice for the wig came? It was such an incredibly odd style. Exactly what I meant about not understanding the strategic vision for S7. The idea may have been in the original pilot but it clearly wasn't a thing in the retooling that became canon. I believe they revisited it because upon learning they were losing Chase, they wanted to keep the "family rivalry" angle and they didn't think, for whatever reason, that Angela vs her husband's illegitimate son was enough of intra-familial feud. I however do not understand that. They were family if only through the numerous ties they had and, as you said, it provided Richard with a very clear BETTER motive and Angela a double motive to dislike him. Suddenly Richard lost of his thoroughline in why he was trying so hard to get at FC and with Chase gone and later Melissa killed, that mostly left various criminals as the real threat to the ownership of the land rather than the convoluted familial interests and rivalries that were more interesting. Just like Y&R once tried to do with Katherine and Jill, I feel writers sometimes think making people insta-family is a lazy way to build ties between characters while begrudging respect behind the hatred could have been just as compelling and a lot less forced. In the end they sold it and it worked well enough - and the retcon was not such a stretch - but I didn't think it was necessary.

First if they rebooted the show today (don't: Jane Wyman was this show), Joseph would be gay. And while I understand your point about wine vs oil, as a Frenchman, I can tell you that wineries are a wonderful target for money laundering both because they are so low-key and low-attention on one hand (it is a plus!) and because they provide some level of prestige to criminals who get rich but never get the respect that comes with it because of where their money came from. Associating yourself with an old name and a luxury brand is good for the image. There was a huge rush of Chinese nouveaux-riches buying up French wineyards the past few years (it has apparently died down since covid and many are rushing out after realizing that running a winery is actually harder than it looks). Obviously the whole thing being a retcon they came up in late season 6 rather than a well thought-out plot, there are going to be huge holes. That said, I think the explanation given - and I think it was a line in the show - was that was Jacqueline was being vindictive to Angela some more and, in some way, relishing stealing her child from her once again in adulthood. Plus if Richard had sought to find out more about his real history and parentage, he might have found something regarding Angela, and Jacqueline's own role in stealing the baby all these years ago would have been uncovered. Better to play her cards first and quench his thirst for his roots that way. The truth is obviously they thought that up at the last minute. My main problem with it was it being revealed through a letter. And a exposition-heavy letter at that. They literally used the letter as a device to get the backstory to the twist out of the way in two minutes so they could focus on the fallout in Season 7 but I think something that dramatic should have come up in a more interesting way. The letter was lazy writing.

Why couldn't she simply be carted off to the asylum? Those soap writers and their one-minute-ahead thinking...

I know people mark the decline at S4-5 but honestly I liked S7 well enough. There were duds and I still don't understand some of the strategic choices made here but even then I still thought there was plenty of soapy goodness and had someone known how to take the thread of Melissa as head of FC and Angela scheming to get it back properly, it could have set up another great leading storyline for S8 I thin S7 was decent enough for a show that long in the tooth. And yes I can't imagine that was all that was planned for Leslie Caron. Was it one of these cases where Jane Wyman managed to get someone out that she thought was unprofessional? Was she a diva? I vaguely remember reading something about her having difficulty with lines but don't hold me to that.

As I said before, while I understand that putting it that way is silly, and there is a huge plot hole that the ONE person Sheila might conceivably not want to know she did this (Finn, who she wants to convince she can be a mother to and that she can be trusted) already knew by the time she killed to "protect the secret", I do not think it is out-of-character for her to let a small scheme like this escalate quickly. She was known to fixate and get deviated from the main plot. So I think it is silly that this will be *all* there was to this Sheila visit but the fact she went from a mild scheme to 100 in a hot minute is pretty Sheila-like to me.

Het, at least she says most of them only once so that's progress.

Is it just me or does Michelle Stafford pronounce "Diane" slightly different from everyone else for some reason?

She is indeed very good in *that role*.

That's the problem with dream twists and why I dislike the idea. Because it makes us feel that all that we have spent time investing in emotionally was moot and pointless. So why bother in the future? But that's a pattern of Bell to build up lots of stuff that he abruptly drops so at least the dream thing has the benefit of being honest. I have talked about it many times but breaking up Thorne and Brooke in a week after YEARS of story was a really cruel moment for me in my soap watching history because I realized that the rug could be pulled from under me just like that if I rooted for a soap couple or whatever. I imagine what Steffy/Finn fans will feel if they are not actually mourning but he didn't even exist.

I am not invested in chest hair one way or another but everytime I see a soap hunk shirtless< I cannot help but wonder what their body really looks like au naturel.

He's more the type to do one SeanCody solo scene and done.