FrenchBug82

41 minutes ago, cassistan said:

I was asking was beverlee the original Lucci? Being the highest paid, wanting to do a TV movie every year. 

I don't think their careers quite track.With all due respect to Lucci who was great in her own way, McKinsey was a spectacular  - read: better - actress. But while she had some mainstream fame on Another World, I don't think many people would ever know her name - unlike Lucci who had the drive and smarts to make herself known in many ways. 
McK was huge within the industry - probably proportionally bigger in her time than Lucci ever was, if only because the industry was different when she peaked - but Lucci is more traditionally famous.

7 hours ago, carolineg said:

But even Marcil couldn't rise above 2010 GH writing, but I think she still had some charm.  She just looked very lost in her performance.

I will be the one to say it because it is not meant in an aggressive way and I actually like her (although I dislike Brenda). But I think the plastic surgery kind of hurt her performance - the way it does another recent favorite of mine (Cynthia W.).
You lose a lot when your face is frozen and VM was always good at playing with her face to say more than her lines. 
And I did like Gina and Dylan but her role was Diet Valerie who was in turn Diet Brenda. It is not easy to be filling "a space" in the cast.

2 minutes ago, StepBack said:

Diane (despite Maura West awful portrayal)

I want to take a stand and say that of all the huge number of problems with her stint as Diane, Maura West herself was not the problem.
She was woefully miscast in that role but through no fault of her own and then the writing was just garbage and whatever the writers wrote for Diane was not Diane but instead a completely different character - the one they should have created for Maura in the first place instead.
 

1 hour ago, cassistan said:

I definitely felt the same way and agree with you, but guess what, I still would have recast him LBVS. The endless killings of popular characters contributed to the wheels falling off AMC, going far back as to Jenny’s death. If I was the EP of this show Leo and Gillian would have new faces, you guys said it yourself Greenlee and Ryan wasn’t the same after these huge losses. These characters wasn’t day player’s  they were being groomed to lead! 

I wish more Writers were like Bill Bell, he wasn’t afraid to recast or get rid of entire families regardless of the circumstances and their popularity. He recast both Terry Lester and Brenda Dickson at the height of their popularity. The audience eventually accepted the new actors in the roles, and today can’t think of anyone else playing them. 
 

In situations like this one, story and the health of the show should come first. Eden Rigel is another I would’ve had to recast but that’s a different thread.

 

There is a major difference here. Jack Abbott and Bianca were legacy characters (and I wouldn't have recast Bianca personally but I get why they did and it worked out fine). Not recasting them would leave a huge hole in the canvas. Jill Abbott was a slightly different case: she could have technically been written out but Brenda Dickson was fired pretty abruptly and since it then worked out with Jess Walton it was fine that she stayed on.
 

But Leo and Gillian were isolated islands, not necessary to the fabric of the show.
Look at what happened when they recast Greenlee. Despite the fact the character had lots of ties on the canvas, the recast still didn't work and was ultimately unnecessary. Was it worth doing considering how much trouble it turned out to be? No. I am not a fan of Greenlee but let's be blunt: the only reason the character had staying power was because of RB. 

I can understand taking that recast chance with legacy characters.
I understand less taking that chance with characters with simply "lots of ties" (the Liza or Babe recasts) but sometimes writers roll the dice for better or for worse. It works once in a blue moon like it did with Y&R Jill or Janet.
But it is absolutely unnecessary (and almost always doomed to failure) to take that chance when 90% of the character is about who is playing them rather than anything fundamental to the show like family ties.

1 minute ago, Vee said:

If it's the thing I saw where I said she was young a few weeks ago, I didn't consider any of that 'cross the line horrible'.

I am not going to turn this into a bash-Wright post because I really don't have a personal investment in it, but the last interview I posted of her a few days ago did shock me in terms of open hatred for the show and disrespect for the fans.

To get back to ATWT though, Moore has always shown appreciation. When she was "big", Meg Ryan used to ban questions about it altogether although I don't know if that's still the case.

Emily is another character I agree shouldnt have been killed, rationally speaking, but I hated everything they had written for her so much that it is not as triggering for me.
I suppose reworking Georgie in would be easier for GH that resurrects characters often more than for others but the longer we go on... How few of current GH viewers would even relate to Georgie being alive.

And not to be cynical but "that GH would never be the place for her to break out.". Shouldn't that be what producers want for a younger actress? One how is talented enough - and she was doing fine - but probably not someone with a brilliant primetime/movie career waiting outside which means she will be around for decades if you keep her happy and write compelling stories for her?
I always say the fact producers can't keep their younger actor/legacy characters in the USA the way British soaps do hurt the soaps. There is so much more invested when one has seen someone grow up on-screen and follow into adulthood like we did with Robin

1 hour ago, Soap-princess said:

They always bring him back and said Brad never died, but obviously it would screw up continuity on B&B.

Not really. Bringing Bill on Y&R is the thing that weirds out the Y&R continuity.

But they could write Bill out and revive Brad and it wouldn't make a difference to B&B's logic. Brad exists in a parallel irrelevant world.

Of course Don D. would NEVER go for that; Bill S. is 10 times more fun for him to play than Brad was.

1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

An attractive, charismatic newbie (especially a male, these are soaps) can forgive a lot of sins.

 

Also, he was a bright spot when the show was becoming wildly uneven, and he got out before it fell off the rails.  He has a more special place in my heart than some others of the same type because the show was better then.

That's the beauty of movies, TV, soaps. The meeting between an actor that has "it" or some form of "it" in the right role at the right time.
Other more talented folks never found the right role for them to shine or didn't have that little extra or were sunk by bad writing. It is not always fair or rationally explainable but generally when we see it, we know it and that was the case here. That's why it was obvious he wasn't recastable.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

I think Robin Wright is the same way, and she's been more charitable in recent years on SB. There are certainly stuck-up, dismissive stars re: their time on soaps. But I think people are way too knee-jerk with Wright (who had a tough time and was young) and some others.

Well to be fair, some of the things, as documented recently on the SB thread, Wright said about her time on SB were pretty cross-the-line horrible. Moore never spoke of it that way. 

Softening with time is good and I take it but there is a reason for which the bar is higher for Wright.

2 hours ago, Skin said:

 

I could understand critiquing the libodozone story, but honestly the returns from the dead were needed because AMC shouldn't have killed off all of those characters in the first place. I just look at it as Broderick righting the ever wrong that was unleashing Pratt on All My Children. 

 100% agree with that.
Don't misunderstand my point: I was critiquing the overall AMC take on more fantastic stories but I fully agree that I am perfectly comfortable with the show taking a lot of story license to repair that kind of damage so I was fine with it in isolation.
Suspending disbelief for the sake of the show is our eternal fate as soap fans

2 hours ago, Gray Bunny said:

If he looked down expecting a nicely trimmed landing strip, he'd be shocked to find the amazon rainforest! 

On the other hand, it is probably easier to explain to your husband why you decided suddenly to go "au naturel" than to explain to your wife why your manhood suddenly shrunk by several inches.
 

3 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

Years ago, some ATWT fans criticized her when she appeared to cringe at a clip of her work from the show. They took this to mean that she was somehow ashamed of her time on the soap, which I didn't interpret it that way at all. This little snippet proves my theory that JM is just very critical of her performance, especially since she was still very inexperienced and "green" on camera.

 

Yeah I never took her discomfort with her own work at having anything to do with the show. She speaks openly and warmly of her time on ATWT - get Meg Ryan to talk about hers and see what she says in comparison. But she is, like so many actors/resses, self-conscious, tough on herself. And even if we liked her work then, she has obviously grown as a woman and actress.

Meryl Streep once said in an interview that she cringes when watching herself in "French Lieutenant's Woman". I mean even the most talented of performers are tough on themselves!

2 hours ago, Forever8 said:

If the show didn't want to write for Georgie they could've had her just go off to somewhere like Johns Hopkins for medical school. 

One of the most infuriatingly bone-headed and short-sighted choices by a HW of the past twenty years. And quite the mystery *why*

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

I thought they mostly just brought Taylor Miller back long enough to send Cliff out of town.

It is my understanding. And they didn't tell her so she was pissed because she thought they had a proper story for her AND she didn't think putting Cliff/Nina back together was fair to the character evolution they had tried to play.
I don't know if she feels that way but while I can understand that logic at the time, giving fans closure that way was probably the right thing to do even if it wasn't great writing.

The host is a "huge daytime fan" but she doesn't know there are still four on the air every day?

Urgh. This is why daytime soaps can't win. 

I actually realized that THREE of the four Thornes (instead of two of the three) are very pro-Trump since I had already memory-holed the awful Ingo R. stint and he is too.
The other one is Jeff Trachta who has written a song about how awesome Trump is.
I mean...

1 hour ago, cassistan said:

How come? Yes he was Uber popular but also a uber new to the show aka newbie.

The only reason the character took off like he did was specifically because Duhamel was popular.
The upside/downside of taking that risk would have been absurdly skewed to the negative and it is not like Leo was essential to the canvas. 

 

21 minutes ago, Chatty Cakes said:

Yes, thats why the Jack doppelgänger story on Y and R always irritated me.

 People know their partners scent, feel....etc

That is 100% the story I was thinking of. "Scent, feel" is the nice way to put it. There is one very concrete piece of evidence one man is not the same as another man that no facial plastic surgery can do anything about.

23 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Then again, Brooke had had so many by that point, she probably didn't know the difference anymore 

Well, as someone with a track record myself, I can see how she could get confused between people she had casually. But Ridge? She must have had sex with him a gazillion times. NO WAY would she not know.
 

26 minutes ago, Chatty Cakes said:

Brooke mistaking the young Oliver for a 60 year old man. I could go on!

I don't want to be crass so I am going to put this delicately.
It is not so much the age difference that really ticked me off. It is that, as someone who has had sex with more than one man, there is a trope in soaps that I will never wrap my head around which is "confusing one man in bed for another" - whether it is throught plastic surgery or the kind of Brooke/Oliver confusion.
No man - and no manhood - is the same. It would be really unlikely for someone to confuse a lover for another one, even for a quickie in the dark, especially someone Brooke had had sex with many times over decades.
No way. 
That's the most delicate way I can put it.

51 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

I mean, I laughed but, if that's the kind of material you sent her way, you're sort of making my point.

Regarding MM: I think we would all be wise to refrain from commenting on her personality or what she needs or needs not to until we actually see what the exchange was

I have seen enough well-meaning but overzealous soap fans be absolutely inappropriate to performers on social media without even realizing that they are crossing all kinds of line to refuse to take her supposed bad reaction at face value simply based on hear-say.
Sorry but some fans really need to get their heads chewed out. Not saying it was the case here but commenting on an exchange we haven't seen feels a bit risky to me.

5 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

. I enjoyed most of last year, but now the show is messy again. The stories need to be tighter and more long running. These quick mini stories don't cut it. 

Agree that pacing is all wrong AND often the opposite of what we would like to see. The Gwen story dragged on long after everyone had guessed where it was going and few are enjoying it while the Charlie murder story could have taken some more time to be better set up without complaints from the fans who appreciated the actor's work (with the caveat that the rape story itself actually lasted the right amount of time for me).

14 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Well, he sure is good enough for me 

Yeah that's why "thin" doesn't seem quite accurate to me lol

4 minutes ago, carolineg said:

She looks the same as she did when she played Carly.  Very beautiful woman.  

He's not bad looking but his face definitely looks gaunt.  But to each their own..

Let's be honest though. There are some I "wouldn't" but I can't think of any men on the canvas who is objectively unattractive.  Who we prefer is a matter of taste.

Beemer isn't thin at all. It is just his bone structure that is so defined that makes him look gaunt if you choose to look at him that way.
I mean, tastes will vary but I don't think anyone can plausibly say he is not a good-looking man even if he is not your type.

1 hour ago, mikelyons said:

Before SEARCH FOR TOMORROW premiered, there was a big behind the scenes talk about whether or not to use cue cards or if they should only use actors two days a week to get them to rest. One of the producers from Compton insisted that ANY actor worth their salt could learn dialogue without cue cards because that's what they're trained to do! This producer went on to say that if theatrical actors in repertory companies can memorize three different Shakespearian plays to perform every day, a soap opera actor can memorize a few ten page scripts every week. Needless to say, SEARCH didn't get cue cards.

I am not impressed by that argument. Actors who learn a play learn it over weeks, rehearse it to the hilt and then play the same play every night for months.

A soap actor has a few days to learn many pages of script, no rehearsal or almost any and will only play that dialogue once.
Not quite the same skill set.
I am not defending cue cards; I think soaps should hire people who can do the above over giving them crutches. But the comparison with theater seems unfair to me.