FrenchBug82

There are no definitive comparison between soaps that I can find but looking at legendary long-time characters, Victor's 14 so far is the male record (Adam Chandler was 13), at least among the long-running characters I could think of as candidates. Record-holder so far, to noone's surprise, is B&B's Brooke who has been married 15 times but only to 7 men (she has married Ridge eight times which IS the record I can find of repeats). Erica Kane was "only" 11 times to 9 men

Reminds me of this beautiful moment (2:26)

If you don't know how to write characters, you have to resort to plot points to, as you said, raise the stakes. If you don't know how to write a compelling organic love story, all you can do is have the characters repeat they are in love every day and get married and, surely, that will send the message more effectively rather than just SHOW us them falling in love through dialogue and acting. I fully agree with your diagnosis.

Yes. This is why I mentioned the Lauren number because Lord knows she has not suffered from a lack of men in her life and yet her marriage history is pretty reasonable and makes sense. That should be the model. Let the characters just date!

Seven times to six men (technically she married Victor twice). I wonder what the record on the show is. Victor has been married 14 times to 9 women. Nikki has been married 11 times to 7 different men. Jill had nine marriages to seven men. Ashley had seven marriages to six men. Jack also had seven marriages to six women. Victoria had seven marriages to five men. Phyllis has seven marriages to only three men. Katherine had six marriage to five men. Paul was married five times to four women. Same for Neil: five times to four women. John was married four times to three women. Lauren has only been married three times to three men (which surprised me in hindsight considering how many men she dated). Nick has had many weddings to Sharon but most were interrupted so he was actually only married to her once vs three times to Phyllis which also surprised me. That makes for five marriages to three women. Which other long-time character am I forgetting that could be a potential record-breaker? Looks like Victor (of course) is the heaviest marrier and Nikki the heaviest female marrier unless I am forgetting someone. But compared with the length of existence of the character Sharon certainly seems to have the highest rate of marriages per year on the show - again not even counting her multiple failed trips to the altar with Nick.

JG being the one to sniff out the Carter liaison would be fun. Of all the mismatched relationships Eric has had in his twilight years, the Donna marriage was the one I started to buy. JG was selling the hell out of it.

Indeed. That's the major plot hole. But it still doesn't come out of nowhere that she is drawn to him in a self-destructive manner. I suppose they could have addressed it by pointing out that when she didn't interact with him, she was able to move on and make that an argument for Rey to ask her to cut ties completely. But instead they are playing it as a passionate attractive they can't resist which we know doesn't work with what happened since their first relationship. Also, I like Grossman fine as Adam but the chemistry between him and SC is adequate, not off-the-charts, which makes it a lot harder to swallow the stupid destructive behavior of the characters than when the chemistry is undeniable, like it was with MM. In any case I agree the writing is off and the story tedious. But I think ranger is right that this doesn't "ruin" Sharon in any significant way. If you are mad at her for getting with Adam, then she would have been ruined on their first go-around. And bad relationship decisions is certainly a long-held pattern of Sharon.

I hesitate to go there but I look at Simon and... I don't see it.

Yeah, everyone knows *adultery* is a character-killer on the Bold and the Beautiful *rolleyes*

Also, may I say that I groaned when I realized that once again, it would be Victor who unlocked the situation? I am so over this Victor-knows-everything-can-do-anything-always-wins stuff. It is just no fun; there are no stakes.

I want to state for the record that - and I can't believe I am defending Porscha just a tad - the "news" certainly go against the image she tries to portray, completely undermines her attacks on the other ladies during this season and dating ex of a friend is a generally "uncool" thing to do. It is also extremely weird and very gurl-what-are-you-thinking to get engaged a MONTH after you start dating someone. BUT I am not entirely comfortable with the "slut" angle I am reading a lot of. I am all for her getting as much strange as she wants with as many men she wants. She just can't do it while preaching herself as a role model and attacking other castmates for even less innocuous behavior. But we can criticize a Housewife's awful personal choices without resorting to cheap moral condescension. Sure but on the other hand the juiciness of this piece of news entirely comes from the reaction of the others, Falynn in particular. If she is alone in a spin-off, what's the angle other than "Porscha got herself a new man" and we have been down that road before. Her carefully built image last season - as irritating and fake as it was - read like an attempt to get a spinoff. This messiness on the other hand is only "fun" if she has a peach. Otherwise it is just Porscha being messy

I like her but considering how she doesn't have story and hasn't in ages, having her on contract doesn't make much financial sense. She is a recurring character in practice so I am actually surprised she wasn't legally-speaking.

On all the small ways soaps are out-of-touch, youngsters feeling the urge to marry and marry usually young and fast is one of the most obvious. It is longstanding - I remember being completely unimpressed by Victoria's obsession with marrying Ryan when she was 17! - but it is one of these ways soaps show their age and lack of modernity. Makes no sense. It'd be more believable that Kyle wouldn't want to marry *at all* (that could even be a plot point and an organic source of tension with Summer instead of plopping a insta-baby on him).

I am going to be honest and say that I personally don't think it is possible to "ruin" Rey's character inasmuch there really was very very little to him in the first place. I don't think he had been built up, developed, layered enough so far for anything they write now to be "ruining" him. At best we are talking potential but he is a pretty generic unremarkable character. Likeable enough as a romantic interest, I suppose, but it is not like there are years of careful plotting and character development to sacrifice here. And I agree with ranger: while Sharon's sudden obsession with Adam again has been very poorly plotted and resurfaced too randomly, it is not a new thing. The people who resent Shadam will have been upset when she fell in love with him not too long after finding out about the baby switch. That's the point where you might consider the character "ruined" (I don't agree but I hear the argument). Reviving it now doesn't add any extra layer of "ruining". It is just the same plot point, just told less well. I don't think anyone cares enough about Rey himself to decide to hate Sharon because she is breaking his heart or something. It had been a middling romance at best. All in all, the story does not feel like it has enough stakes anywhere for me to be as angry about it as many of you seem to be. It is NOT a good story and it is NOT well-written at all. But it is also more blah-meh-groan than an outrage as far as I am concerned.

I see she also borrowed Nene's Instagram Photoshop tools.

Can't deny Porscha that she doesn't know how to hustle. Someone want to keep her peach and she is willing to give them what they need.

A vague one. Angela's relationships to her children was quite different from Stephanie's. Sure, there was meddling but, again, such a soap cliche. But there was nothing equivalent to Stephanie's almost incestuous affection for Ridge with Angela. The one plot that somewhat resembles would be Stephanie's Angela to what Emma initially was - the hiding the slightly "off" daughter etc. But not enough to think one came from the other - especially since Emma had since become a full-fledged character by the time BB started. Also, Stephanie having Eric makes all the difference as it was a focal point of a lot of her run. Angela didn't have a man for most of her run and didn't seem to care very much. Eric drove a lot of story for Stephanie and was a thoroughline. Falcon Crest WAS Angela's life, more than her children or anything else. Stephanie's interest in Forrester's was mainly a function of her defending her family. I never read it as "business-oriented"; indeed her meddling in the business was more about protecting it from outsiders while her family worked there than actually working at it herself. Angela ran Falcon Crest directly herself. I just don't agree with that comparison beyond the obvious: fierce scheming matriarch but that's not THAT original that it would require "being inspired by".

In all fairness, the first year budget of a soap involves a lot of upfront costs - building sets, etc. Now as discussed in the SB thread, the Dobsons completely miscalculated and invested WAY too much but still, it is not an exact apples-to-apples comparison since the $26 million technically only has to involve the day-to-day running of the show (of course they redid the DiMera set on that budget so clearly they feel they have money leftover). I would love, too, to compare the actor pay from now to then. Do we think actors are paid more or less - comparatively speaking and excluding inflation - than they were in the 80s?

To be entirely fair, spending that much money on decor without budgeting for said large cast and the potential that ratings may be slow to come would make them "short-sighted, despite years in the business". So technically both versions of the story are perfectly compatible. Obviously individual actors are going to see the story at their level, which is individual, even when larger factors must be taken into account. But firing *them* over others certainly was a choice that had to come down to something, even if the fact they had to make a choice in the first place was about larger issues. So they explain what that something was from their interpretation/experience. I will put it out there that based on my current re-viewing of the early months, Santana would emphatically not been who I would have fired/written out. The irony of course being that the Capwell mansion set changed later on anyway so it wasn't even necessary - although it was beautiful and what I will definitely give them kudos for is that it felt very Santa Barbara. The sense of place was spot-on throughout the sets but it shouldn't have been at the expense of writing and keeping a good cast.

Gotta give credit to a woman whose first introduction to folks is going to be that she is the best at being phony!

I have always thought - and granted that seems to be more thought than successive writers put into the character, sadly - that his trajectory to good guy made a LOT more sense than Sami's (others have discussed above how much Sami does not work as a heroine and I agree) Lucas was raised almost as an only child and he was very close to his mother so he had spoiled brat syndrom. Add to that the "shameful" story of how he came to be and it made sense for him to be as a teenager/youngster a bit of a brat throwing tantrums and going along Sami's schemes to get what they want just because they want it. But both of them found a genuine friendship in each other which, even if it wasn't overtly written at the time, gave each of them a first taste of having someone actually like you for who you are, even if at that time who they were were selfish schemers. From there you can see the growth, in particular with his remorse when Sami was convincted of Franco's murder and from there his alcoolism and his tough breaks and it makes sense that he would have now matured into a good normal guy. He experienced stuff that Kate's overprotectiveness had not shown him when he was growing up and he learned. Otoh Sami's trajectory never could be properly explained. AS was popular so they made her central and simply started writing her as a more classic lead. But there was nothing story-wise, to me at least, that explained why she suddenly dropped her usual ways for lengthy periods of time other than it was convenient to the writers. And it keeps going back and forth which does not quite trend with something like "she is more mature now". It was never consistent. Lucas had less writer attention so ironically that gave BD more liberty to finesse the character into something more linear and coherent than AS who was hemmed in by all the stuff that was written for her.

Carly as a character and LW as an actress are more interesting away from MB/Sonny and SB/Jason. Even if the genesis of it is her ties to both of them, that story is about HER and that's why it works. She has also played the character for fifteen years - more than the three previous actresses combined. Like it or not, she is Carly.

He was told that *several times* and still hung in there and stayed a true team player whenever they offered to have him back for a while. It is testament that Lucas is a likeable character, BD not a diva and that the audience has stayed faithful that he is still around despite the fact he has almost never been given a proper story that made sense and was compelling. But goddamnit I like him and I am glad he is around. Outside of Sami, the only woman he has ever had awesome chemistry with was Kate, which you know, not romance. But hey you can build a LOT from chemistry with those two core characters so I am not mad at it. But that's why I am irritated that That is so unneeded and the current dynamic is so enjoyable.

LOL I had the same thought. But then again let's let her savor it. Was probably the last time she ever recorded a tagline.

I just want to say for the record that I cannot fathom for the life of me why everyone is always like "Bring back Phaedra, Bring back Phaedra, Bring back Phaedra". Hum, that's a very firm no for me. Phaedra was detestable and worse yet she has been exposed as a complete and utter phony. Setting aside the moral judgement of what she did, she has crossed the line of her on-screen persona being exposed as BS (I mean after doing that trashy couples counselling show with a guy she dated for like two weeks, good luck trying to reclaim that Southern Lady image) and I don't think that is good for the franchise AT ALL. We know the women play a role and the show molds narratives that are not quite true. But after the current season where one of their key problems was how much material they edited out to fit their pre-established plan for Porscha, re-hiring a woman who has already shown herself to be nothing like the image they presented on the show would be just giving up on pretending this is not a fictional show. There are plenty of women out there who are funny in confessionals and interesting and could be an addition to the show. Do a lot of work on casting and find those. But Phaedra: absolutely not. I don't understand the fascination or nostalgia for that woman.