FrenchBug82

And when he finally does something that will help rejigger her memory and she loves him again, we will ignore things like "Injecting her with a product without her consent"

PS: (I couldn't resist meme-quoting but hope you do get your answer)

I have bitched since the beginning that my problem with that story is that the show TOLD us Summer/Phyllis disliked Sally intensely but we were never given a proper reason other than "on first sight" which is hardly the spark of historic feuds. That being said, lame as that was, NOW Sally has a reason to be pissed off so I might be more invested in the next twists of the back-and-forth. And may I suggest Y&R casts Sally's mom (who I don't think we have heard anything about) with Sarah Buxton? A wonderful actress who I have been saying looks like she would be Courtney Hope's mom and would be a more age-appropriate match for PB's Jack. Then put Sally and her mom against Phyllis and this is the war of the fiesty redheads and I am into it.

The problem is that they are NOT playing this as him having remnants of his psychological problems and control issues with women. That would actually be interesting in a "Can someone be truly reformed" kind of way - like they once did with Janet on AMC where she was genuinely becoming a better person but her psychological health had shaky moments. That's where his weird friendship with Marlena could play in because she is a psychologist and could work this out with him while worrying he might still be dangerous if it gets worse and worry if she could warn Ciara or Hope or whoever. Dilemna! Conflict! Character layers! Grey shadings! That could work. But that's not what they seem to be going for. For them this is supposed to be a man desperately in love longing for his Juliet or something and we are supposed to be frustrated along with him that it is one more obstacle for our star-crossed lovers Well: no.

Ultimately it sounds like we have the same take. And I mean, being professional and respectful and focused is not mutually exclusive from being gracious and friendly and funny. There are times and places for shenanigans. But you are right that she was probably even less tolerant of shenanigans like his if she didn't like him. And as I said, I get a strong whiff of overgrown frat boy in his stories so I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't. But it is always worth remembering when people tell stories about costars or people they have worked with: one person's experience is down to their own personality as much as the person they are talking about. It is all subjective so unless we have specific documented anecdotes to base our judgement on or a pattern of anecdotes from various people, we should rarely take one person's judgement at face value. Case in point: Bev and Michael Zaslow were both giants of acting and of soaps and both have/had an excellent reputation with plenty of people singing their praises as human beings and as professionals and, yet, by all accounts, they really didn't like working with each other on GL. Goes to show...

It is undeniably true that soap directors nowadays are probably so pressed by time that they are more focused on blocking. But they are still directors - and that's the job they chose and love - so I don't also believe there is no room for giving notes when needed. No time to micro-manage like film directors would: sure. Telling an actor he is making a bad acting choice that is ruining the scene: your job as director.

OK I understand the explanation. I guess someone who is focused, professional and blindering out the outside world when trying to be in character is more my jam so his line of thinking didn't really occur to me. I am not a big fan of pranksters at work either and I don't think it makes us stick in the mud or rote. Just there is a time and place for everything. But those are the wonders of different personalities... As mentioned above I agree with this. And I also suspect there was a frat boy aspect to their antics that might have felt particularly uncomfortable for a woman to be around. So not only must it have been annoying, but from the descriptions above, I am pretty sure they must have crossed a line or two here and there that wasn't just about clashing personalities. You read this and you know who that guy is; and the fact all these years later he doesn't seem to have reflected on it at all tells me that, yep, I know *exactly* the type, I have met him and every woman on this board will have too.

Maybe I am slow-witted but how does this show her up? I am confused how him showing up without pants is supposed to be embarassing her?

We have seen bad acting in soaps before of course but I think this is the first time I see in the wild acting that looks like the parody of bad acting that actors do when they want to mock bad actors but done seriously. It is wild.

I mean I understand why the poor girl would prefer she be forgotten forever but yeah that YT video was gold and I miss it.

The preview for tomorrow looks like the cringe level is going at its max. Forget Frank: why are the DIRECTORS who are ON-SET while he does this stuff not saying something. That. Is. Their. Job. To direct.

We are not yet in Charity Roehmer towards John territory but it is an odd dynamic. I wish this was brilliant acting to hint they were not actually father/daughter but alas...

That, I can co-sign And your recollection of his reaction to Angie/Cliff matches with mine. The few times I have read him mention it, it was positive and his statement that the audience rejected it because each of them were in a supercouple was absolutely correct and a well-known phenomenon. That in this case the racial element made the backlash more pronounced is also obvious but him describing the backlash matter-of-factly does not equate endorsing it.

I am getting a sense you are not a fan of the guy. LOL Listen, the subtext of what happened with VR is why I clarified. I am pretty open to the notion he may suffer from the blinders many white folks, particularly of that generation, suffer when it comes to race and wanting to control the conversation. I don't doubt that was part of the dynamic with VR. But I genuinely do not believe for a second his admittedly weird fixation with hating the Keemo story has to do with race. It is a weird hill for him to die on but I really think it is stuck in his mind as something he resented at the time and is comfortable hating on it now since there doesn't seem to be any appetite to bring them over anyway. I do think some of your ideas would not work. Keemo was established as liking a simple lifestyle and it would ring weird for him to engage in big business. I'd rather see his children be the ones to grow up with us and the show keep Keemo as this weirdly stubborn principled man - which can be an interesting source of conflict with his highly grey-area father and the influence that might have on his children. I knew the Angie/Cliff story had been sabotaged and poorly received but I had never heard Bergman wasn't fond of it. I actually always heard him speak fondly of DM. What were these objections? What did I miss?

Reminds me when Days was making fans vote on whether John or Stefano should be the father of Hope's baby (so many things wrong with that, not least of which excluding the option most fans would vote for and that they ended up going with later anyway) and the promos had three randoms with a sign in a studio parking lot. I hope the one who had to pretend they were rooting enough for Stefano as Hope's babydaddy that they showed up at the studio with a sign were at least paid a stipend.

During ED's first return as Kristen, when it was short-term and something of a ploy on her part, I liked Brady and Kristen. They had good chemistry; it was weird but it worked because it straddled a fine line between a scheme and some real passion and you could just enjoy a ride you knew was short-term. When they started to want us to buy into it as a legitimate couple who is trying to make it for real and play them in stories over time is when they lost me. A fling? I was into it. A love story? no way.

I didn't mean to suggest as much. His misgivings with the storyline were actually absolutely justified and had nothing to do with race. But I don't think it was the way it was written (he has endured way worse stories without cursing them decades later the way he still does this one), albeit you are right it wasn't even a interesting story: he objected quite rightfully that it was a complete 180 from what Jack had been established until now. In his youth he had been established to have been an irresponsible spoiled-brat cad so the idea he went to Vietnam (no way: Terry Lester's Jack would have bought a way out!) and had a passionate romance with Luann there that he had never forgotten just rang like a completely different character from what we had been told he was in his youth until then. Terry Lester's Jack absolutely did not have a hole in his heart regarding a woman he left behind in Vietnam. That was an absurd retcon. That's the objection PB had: it was a boring story, sure, but above all it didn't fit the character AND as you said, I think he, along with many of us, suspected this was an attempt to change the character to fit his existing public image rather than trying to continue what Terry Lester had established and it must have been a little bit insulting for his ego (I mean, that didn't sound like a vote of confidence he was managing to play the character the way TL had, which, well, he wasn't even though he was doing fine). So he continues to trash this storyline today as one of his least favorites - and that is undoubtedly why it has been largely memory-holed on-screen - but the fact is this was twenty five years ago. The retcon is now cannon so his dislike of this storyline should not prevent the characters from being reintroduced and used positively, no matter what we think of the original character. And since this is a thread on racial representation in soaps, I would remiss not to point out how much Luann's passive almost submissive nature responded to ugly stereotypes about Asian women. I actually liked her, dull as she was, and she and Jack were kind of sweet but she was not well thought-out. Keemo, on the other hand, suffered from bad writing - nothing for him to do - and not stellar acting but, in the spirit of this thread, I did like that they chose a hunk and gave him original character traits - his strong moral principles, to the point of anger, while a bit of a storyline dead end, still stick out to me as a very original take on a soap character. Y&R has an iffy track record on race but it is worth noting that the two Asian male characters they introduced, while misused, at least didn't fit the usual narrative about Asian men in show business so that's a positive. Luann on the other hand was a bad stereotype. Anyhow Keemo is probably married now and has several children in Vietnam who would probably be happy to come study at university in the USA and stay with Grampa Jack. I don't think they can use Keemo himself because his initial reason for leaving was his discovery the woman he was infatuated with (Mary Jo) had had a fling with his father which went against his principles. An admirable realistic stance but one that means he probably would be useless in Genoa City since Jack has shtooped almost every female characters that would be a good match for a recast Keemo (always though Sharon would be right in the right age range but alas the misguided Jack/Sharon marriage makes that out of character).

When you think that one of the main characters of one of the main families has an Asian son and presumably by now unknown number (read: as many as writers need) of Asian grandchildren, it is particularly ironic for Y&R of all shows since it would be such an easy lay-up for them to introduce Asian characters that'd be right off the bat part of the core family. That said, in their defense, it doesn't mean their sentiment on anti-Asian racism isn't sincere and that it wasn't worth expressing. But I do hope they introduce Keemo's family sometime, regardless of Bergman's misgivings about the initial retcon.

That line says so much about how America treated the AIDS epidemic. If it is just the gays, what's the big deal? She is paraphrasing the sentiment obviously, not endorsing it. But this dovetails with what I suspected in my question. That it would be hard for America to care if it happened to a gay character. Very interesting interview. Thanks for digging it out. I am not sure her idea was such a good idea, personally. Considering there weren't any gay character, I am not sure the first introduction of anything LGBTQ related to the show being a drunken (no-consent) unremembered college-party-related (see the trope about experimenting but he will change his mind) potentially leading to AIDS orgy would have sent the right message. In so many ways. The fact soaps are written conservatively to appeal to the remaining conservative audience and the fact the remaining audience for conservatively-written soap is conservative would seem to be a pretty chicken-and-egg vicious circle. We don't know if there would be an audience for stories about gays and minorities and progressive tone because they haven't tried and anytime they dabble they freak out and back down. My personal theory is that there is a huge dormant audience for that stuff out but they don't take the risk to try and appeal to it. There is no reason soaps abroad can be thriving while dying here. The structural issues like streaming and stuff are the same in Europe than they are here. Something these producers should ponder.

Well on the other hand, if the logic is the community is very broad and diverse so you can't represent it in its diversity, the notion that all that is needed is that there would be *some* representation takes precedence hence the logic here. We also have, frustrated as we may be, to understand the tough spot they are in. If they have budget for thirty contract players and the number of pairings LGBTQ character can have is necessarily limited, LGBT character have a lower return-on-investment in terms of story for a producer. So expecting every strand of LGBT being represented is setting the bar unrealistically high.

Complete randomness. How hilarious is that.

Is that Ty Treadway at 3:06:25???????

I suppose this is a question whose answer is probably going to be in the question but has there ever been any discussion for why all the AIDS stories soaps did impacted straight women (AW's Dawn, AMC's Cindy, Y&R's Jessica, GH's Robin) rather than gay men? Did they think this would be more sympathetic to their audience than gay men who "might have deserved it" or something? What I mean is: I assume that's the case but has there ever been anybody who discussed this oddity openly?

I know people use "convoluted" as an insult but I would actually almost be interested in the story if it was pulling on several storyline threads that had been established WAY in advance. Here it is just dumped on our doorstep out of nowhere. If you are going to have your characters' lives be entangled in unlikely ways, set. it. up. That's the magic of soaps: you have the time and the long-term to weave a story like that. Here it is just plot just served up already piping out out of nowhere presumably to tee up an upcoming storyline. But HOW WE GET THERE is part of the fun. This is bad writing as a plot but particularly bad writing for a soap where you could find ways to spruce up a bad plot with some interesting beats. Here we get the over-the-top unrealistic soap nonsense but without at least the satisfaction of having the story told soap-style which is the saving grace of some of those dumb plots. To compare with something that was done better, while the Ashley/Abby twist was kind of last minute and out-of-character for Ash (btw how does the story of Abby's conception not figure more in this current story. Come on!), the entire Diane/Victor/Nikki sperm donor saga was ridiculous to the extreme, incredibly unlikely and yet they played every beat out of it and we understood how these convenient coincidences dovetailed with character motivations.

I remember Caitlin. It is so odd to think back of that version of Thomas with what he is now though. I had forgotten LL was on the show for a while. It is so weird how many characters invade the canvas for a while and then are completely forgotten. How is Nick never mentioned? Anyway... The Liam story is clearly intended to make him more sympathetic after the latest retread into the tired Hope/Steffy triangle pissed fans off. I am fine with him having a story that doesn't involve these two women so I will take it.