FrenchBug82

It is funny how you don't come here for half a day and everyone has said the things you were coming in to say already. lol It hadn't occurred to me that the Nina/Carly feud would end up going in the Sonny direction; I do like it. I will add that the story underlines how NOT necessary to the canvas Sonny is. He is in his parallel storyline and would the show miss him if those scenes weren't in? I am in the camp that WL's ugly cry was compelling rather than fake. On the other hand, WR's whispery overenunciated scene with Maxie is so cringey. I really want to feel bad for WR because people are unduly harsh on him but I am not feeling his acting choices during this whole reveal. And I did too notice Maxie's weird contour and overwhite face for her wedding look. Not sure what the choice was there.

I didn't particularly care for Hilary actually. But I really like MM and I thought that role was hers/ She owned her and that was a great fit of actress/role. Amanda just doesn't gel the same way but that's emphatically not down to her performance. As I repeated before, she is a great actress. It happens all the time that fantastic actresses shine in some roles and not in others. Maura West is my favorite of all time and it really didn't work when she was on Y&R as a recast Diane. There is a bit of a je-ne-sais-quoi that's lacking. But 100% agree that nothing on the show is right anyway. I also like Sally and her performer and it is not working for me at all because it is written as a bunch of nothing. It can very well be that Amanda written by someone else will become exciting or that Hillary written by the current team would have been a dud too. I am just not feeling the way things are unfolding now and both MM and the show deserve better.

None of us were there. None of us knows. I believe that, as everything in life, a various number of factors played a part and came together to lead to the bad situation we are in. That was my point. I am not, again, going to belabor a debate where neither I nor you knows where the truth is. No reason to believe what was said then was any more or less spin than what is said now. Point was simply: she shouldn't have left, the show shouldn't have killed her off and Amanda isn't working. And her new version is in the press now. Point is: could have been spin then, could be spin now. We don't know. There is no amount of "research" any of us can do to know the truth besides what we instinctively believe. Enough.

I second what everyone is saying about Jackee. I expected the energy and humor from her but I am genuinely surprised they seem to be setting her up in two if not three different stories (the business, the potential Abe pairing, maybe a family secret). And I am LOVING the way they are using her to be blunt about certain things, not least of which the place of race on the show. That's very bold and very welcome and intriguing.

Remember a few days ago when there was that hair shaving scene and I said this was more about setting Cameron than setting Franco. This is what I meant. MW is obviously everything and a bag of chips but that's also a reminder why it is so good when writers establish female friendships better. It allows for moments like this. Maxie definitely could use Lulu right now - not just the character in GH but the character on paper needing someone to talk to to advance the story of her reaction

Spinning? A contract dispute is a perfectly legit reason to leave. "I was tired of playing the character" makes her look worse, not better. Don't be silly. I don't doubt she would have stayed had they offered her millions. But that wasn't on the table. She left to do other things, didn't get those other things. YR had killed Hilary off and she didn't want to play her again so offering her a new role worked for both of them. It is not black and white and all on her, obviously not. But she made choices. Don't make me sound like I am attacking her! I like MM a lot. I just think Amanda is not working and I wish she hadn't left. That's all. They didn't kill Hilary out of spite. They should not have killed her, I agree with that but they killed her because it was the easy lazy way to write her out, like they did so many times before.

Turning on her is a bit exagerated. She is still a great actress. It is just that Amanda doesn't do it for us and it was her choice to leave in the first place. The fact one of the major executives can't be bothered to comb her hair before going to work would not inspire confidence to me either. The fact all those executives are related to each other and there is no outside blood would also be concerning if this was a real business situation.

She said it in interviews when she came back that she left because she wanted to feel challenged and playing the same character for five years was enough and that her interest in coming back came only because they offered her to play someone different. https://www.soapsindepth.com/posts/cbs/the-young-and-the-restless-mishael-morgan-reveals-why-return-173764

Having Thomas be the one to call out Vinny was a bit paint-by-the-numbers but considering the corner Bell had written Thomas in, I will accept it as a necessary step to make the character redeemable and keep him on the canvas. Based on past soap experience, it was either that, him falling ill or giving an organ to someone. I will take this any day because it felt somewhat organic.

Thank you. I am glad I am not the only one who feels that way. Not only that Amanda is meh but how our opinion on MM changed.

Well you know what they say about when folks have chemistry on-screen or don't (see infamous Friends episodes). Maybe he is using all the, hum, chemistry on real-life activity and there is none left for filming.

I am not far from being there too if this had happened to me BUT it is not absurd for them to be forgiven ultimately. Except that we didn't get to see much of that journey so it felt like it was all shrugged off. I can appreciate a story of good people doing something that is actually bad for "good" reasons and under the delusion they were doing the "right" thing. That's soap stuff; not black and white and people can disagree. But if you are going to write the story and then do nothing with it, then it is a waste of anyone's time and it makes the lack of underlying compelling characters even more glaring. If I were a bit mean, I'd say it is funny that Duell hasn't managed to have any chemistry with any of his female partners on the show considering he seems to be going through soap starlets at a steady pace in real life lol

I think you are being too kind. As I said, I just don't think Bell wants to tell stories over the long-run. He never has. He wants the build-up, the shock of the story and then on to the next one. That's why so many things have been memory-holed - including as mentioned earlier in this or February's threads so many past couples. Things happen and then are never acknowledged or used to build up nice little moments or references or follow-up stories. He just doesn't do consequences. He does build-up and climax but nothing is every followed up on. Even when he has something a bit more interesting than the latest triangle going on, like Steffy's addiction or Brooke's rape, he does them OK while they were going on and then drop the ball despite all the potential in the world for the story to provide really great material to enrich and mature the characters in question. I am not a Bell hater as much as some of ya'll but I think he'd be better off writing and letting someone else headwrite - meaning sowing the storylines together, weaving the larger picture, etc. Left to his own devices he just jumps from story idea to story idea.

I like her toughness but no to her being a villain. Days has enough villains. A complicated but fundamentally decent character who does what she has to do without being a villain is so much more interesting.

I will be the one to put it out there that I have always thought that for a show about fashion, B&B usually doesn't dress its female characters very well. Bell does not like to play beats. Bell's pattern is easy: he gets ideas, gets enthusiastic, plays it to the hilt, gets bored shortly thereafter and doesn't want to take the time to carefully unravel it and transition to the next one. He just abruptly drops it with a throwaway scene. Like a child, when he is bored with his toy, he throws it to the side and moves on the next one. He doesn't take the time to put it away neatly. One of my B&B traumas is how he undid three years worth of Brooke/Thorne in less than a week. But look at all the stories that drove the show for a while and then were dropped abruptly without any clean-up or fallout. Steffy's addiction was cured in a hot minute. Thomas dumps Sally suddenly. Caroline was killed off-screen. Maya and Rick are suddenly divorced. I could go on. He makes no investment in telling what happens AFTER the story and, as you said, he doesn't care about the beats. He gives us tons of repetitive scenes by secondary characters speculating about what might be happening while it is happening but no discussions of the fallout once things have happened, which would be so much more interesting. Even in the 30m format, it is beyond frustrating and lessens our emotional investment.

I really sympathize with the dilemna they have. Neil's passing could have been a jumping point to bring back Malcolm or Drucilla. But Shemar Moore ain't coming back and VR has burned her bridges. I wish TLW would recur to at least fill in the matriarch role for a while but I think she has moved on too. So they are indeed kind of stuck. What needs to happen is for them to have the guts to introduce an entire new clan that can drive stories for decades and use Devon and Lily to get us to care. I liked the way they once turned Leslie who had been a likeable recurring character in a different story into a more full-fledged character with a brother but that fizzled out. Maybe they can try this out again. Introduce secondary AA characters, see who the audience likes and then build something up around them. Maybe one of those can have a pre-teen daughter that can, one day, be tied to Moses whenever they Sorase him. There are ways! But it requires them investing in that part of the audience.

I mean I can accept the forgiveness because it was well-intentioned but where you are right is that they didn't really play the beat very much. The fallout was immediately dropped in favor of latest-crime-story of the month. Show us the journey from initial anger to understanding why they did what they did. The things the show spends time establishing (Cyrus is bad!) vs the things they rush through is so telling of what TPTB care about. I am fine with some soap characters being fundamentally good people and maybe a bit bland - it makes the complicated character pop and it helps play them off against each other. But we are not even talking boring or mundane here; we are talking about *nothing*.

I like Mishael Morgan but killing off Hilary and the whole lookalike business doesn't work for me. I hate those stories and I resent the whole leaving and coming back soon afterwards. I am not connecting with Amanda. She is a great actress but I sadly stopped to care. At least having her as a new character was an opportunity to build up a new AA family but the whole point of her story so far is that that's not going to happen. You know you are in trouble when Days of Our Lives is doing a better job building up its AA cast family and B&B is giving more interesting stories to its AA actors. One reason YR was #1 for so long was on the strength of its AA audience. While it is not entirely their fault in the first place, the way they are letting this bad situation fester is going to come back and bite them in the behind.

Y&R's handling of its black cast has been mind-boggling for a long time. My current criticism, which to be fair is linked to KsJ's passing which is not their fault, is the complete lack of sense of family. The black cast is already written as an island as a matter of course (even back in the Winters/Barber days) but now it is an island of isolated characters.

I can take decent characters in a rather dull quad for a while if it sets up something interesting. But we are past the stage where something needs to happen. That unsettled nothing that followed the reveal of the "deception" is absurdly limp.

That's why I said for various reasons. I agree for instance that Howarth's problem is not that he can't act - he has proven in the past he can. But whether it is bad characters, bad human beings or bad actors, we end up with most of the male cast I really don't enjoy on my screen.

It still boggles my mind that for a show that has been yearning for a male vibe for so many years (remember that opening where only the guys where in the final cast "photo"?) the male cast is 80% awful for various reasons.

Yeah, I think my theory works both ways. Some writers are better constrained and/or helped. Others are better when left to their own creative devices.

Well we are not comparing current system with old-style soap writers. In the modern era, it is very much team work. Interestingly we have an example of a headwriter who did amazing work when he was writing himself encumbered and who tried to come back ten years later in a more collaborative system and it didn't work: AW's Harding Lemay. Other things are always in play but it comforts my idea that the dynamic with the rest of the team is crucial. I can perfectly accomodate that with your counterpoint of headwriters being great single-handedly doing well. Sure. Maybe some of the current HW would do well if they were left alone. But in the current system they work as a team and that's what determines what works or not. Think of Brad Bell who did fantastic work when he had his parents around - formally at first, informally later - to guide him and rein him in and who has been a disaster since he had been alone at the helm and allowed to give free reins to his worst instincts as a writer and producer.

Yeah I don't want to come off sounding as a blind defender but from the corners of GH Twitter I follow (NLG, MW, WdV) it does seem LW is making a point of being very supportive of all the entire cast and complimenting even people she doesn't work with much/sleep with We don't know how WR got the role: maybe she recommended him but ultimately I doubt she has the kind of pull to get him hired purely based on that connection. And she has been in the industry long enough to know better than to threaten anything if he got fired. She is the fourth Carly and is on her fourth soap. She seems smart enough to know that actors who walk out the show because they are pissed their current bf/gf was fired often end up regretting. She has the role forever if she wants it; I doubt she'd threaten to walk. So that's not much pressure on them to keep WR alone. Whatever reason they are keeping him longer is that he has support in upstairs offices, for reasons that may or may not be understandable, but I wouldn't put that down on LWs feet. I think the reason this feels particularly egregious is because those "pets" feel very similar. Easton is boring and Howarth's character is heinous so the specifics are different but they have the same profile. JFP had pets all over the place: young, old, men, women, rookies, soap vets.