FrenchBug82

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.

I didn't know RM was a Trumper although it makes SO much sense. And God knows that rabbit hole of looking that up has broken my heart. Two of the three Thornes. Macy. Deacon. Jesus. Oh and since we are talking about TK looks I will take scruffy over whatever this is.

As a huge RC fan I am going to leave this unrespondedd so not to derail the conversation lol but let me just say the comparison doesn't work for me. I understand the coldness argument but the acting levels are completely different. But otherwise I agree - both on her lack of maternal warmth and Zack's death which is probably her best moment on the show.

It is probably a weird thing to say since Georgie was killed so long ago and had not that much time to establish what kind of character she would have grown up to be. But I sometimes feel Maxie's place on the canvas now is alone occupying the space that should have been Maxie and Georgie's and it would have all made much more sense if all those stories has been spread over two sisters rather than pile them all on Maxie and losing her character traits in the process.

I don't think KA is a bad actress. I want to clarify that wasn't my point. I think Sweeney is better than the other three but yeah they are absolutely on par with each other. It is just that she isn't that good of an actress that she manages to give something to her character that isn't on the page. And that's hard to do for any actor! But that's why the excuse of "They write her as a goody goody" doesn't wash with me entirely. It is absolutely true that they write her poorly - and that when they give her things that are better fits, she does give more interesting, if uneven, performances. But it is also true that when they don't, she doesn't manage - or seek to - to transcend the material. She just plays what's on the page which makes her an adequate professional but not enough to overcome an iconic supercouple like Bo and Hope. And incredibly talented performers have failed too to escape that curse! So it wouldn't be the *only* reason. But I don't think it is unfair to say that an actress who plays a role for thirty years can be judged on whether the character ever managed to shine on her own. And Hope was ever only as interesting as her relationship with Bo. As a side note, while I certainly would not have wanted a romance there, I liked KA's chemistry with Stefano better than his chemistry with Marlena.

Beemer was actually fun on B&B. He still wasn't Laurence Olivier or even particularly steal-the-show charismatic but given something other than the tedious Shawn/Belle material, he had some life to him and sold an unexpected pairing very well. I blame it more on Belle (not just MM but the writing) that there isn't more spark to this couple

TK is a beautiful man even when he looks like a boat captain who just returned from two weeks at sea - as in most days. Ironically he could have played a Nick recast that way. Joking aside, Ronn Moss didn't really look like a fashion designer to me either. A fashion model for sure (he never got me hot and bothered but he is certainly a classically good-looking man) but not anything that requires work.

While I am a Lumi guy, Rafe and Sami worked at the beginning indeed. But otherwise I don't care for Rafe. I don't have any rage towards him because I never felt him being oversold to me, so in that way I disagree, but I also never really saw anything interesting coming out of him nor did any of his multiple pairings work for me. I wouldn't have qualified myself as a fan but I was pleasantly surprised that they managed to give her a love interest that was likeable, with whom she has some chemistry and that worked. That was so unexpected to me that I would have wanted them to nurture this. And I like Cosgrove even though all his multiple soap stints have sucked - mostly because they always cast him in the blandest recasts possible. If the story of what happened with Jude behind-the-scenes is true, I'd like to think maybe her inability to get another steady love interest but Bo might have been karmic retribution. Chemistry is something that is hard to find so there is a part of it that will never be explained by anything other than bad luck but I will say, and I say that as someone who wishes she was still on the show and firmly recognizes her as important to the show, I think a part of it was Kristian A. herself. She is not that strong of an actor that she managed to give Hope enough layers that she could survive without the hook of the Bo supercouple IMO. Many actors and actresses have suffered from and bemoaned the curse of being in a supercouple because it hems in the writing. But you could at least see them struggle away from that and give it their all acting-wise so that there'd be more to their character. KA was exciting at the beginning but I really think she got comfortable with the Bo thing until it was too late. She wasn't trying to sell any alternative when he was there and she never tried to make Hope a real full-fledged character.

Yeah I will never understand why they decided to go that route with Aiden. It was already a miracle they had found a character that most people were OK having Hope paired with. Why ruin it? But fundamentally j swift IDs part of the problem: leaving Bo out there was leaving a huge Damocles sword over whatever pairing they could try for her. They should have unplugged that cord a lot sooner.

I agree with your other names but I feel about Leo the same I feel about Y&R's Drucilla as mentioned above. Josh Duhamel wanted to leave and was always extremely unlikely to return full-time as he was always pegged as "one to watch" in primetime or movies. And this is not a role that could be recast. Having him just go would have done a disservice to what was a great love story with Greenlee - couldn't simply end it like that and leave; it needed to be dramatic - and having him be just out there would have sabotaged any future relationship Greenlee may have on the show before it even began. Killing him off was probably the best option but even if one disagrees with that, it wasn't gratuituous. It made sense from the show's POV. Most of your other picks are good because there was zero reason to choose to kill them off rather than simply write them off so it was really a waste.

That's where I am at too. It is definitely a different character (and the fact he looks and acts more fatherly definitely a part of it) but he is a good actor so I will take it because, as Fevuh cheekingly points out, it is not like Ronn Moss was bringing much more than being there and physically embodying the writing.

I don't want to attack other commenters but it leaves me godsmacked that people would say things like that. First it is obviously a bit bizarre on the merits since he is still in great shape and probably in better shape than 95% of men out there. But even if he wasn't... what's the deal with saying someone's body "needs work"? You are welcome to not find it/him attractive but he doesn't NEED to do anything. He is healthy and married and talented and he doesn't "need" his body to look a certain way and fit a certain standard of anyone else's taste. What he needs to do is be happy and healthy and do a good job as an actor. Nothing else. None of these actors (or actresses) need to lose weight or have six-packs or shave their chest or whatever else and I'd hate for them to think otherwise because some judgemental anonymes online feel like imposing their own aesthetic preferences on strangers. Lecture: over.

AMC did dip its toes with Diet-Days type science-fiction stories quite a bit on its last decade - from libodozone to the unabortion to the returns from the dead - and while I accepted it for Dixie - and just for Dixie - it just didn't work at all and didn't fit the show

I completely respect your opinion but considering Thorsten Kaye has been on soaps almost non-stop for twenty-five years on four different shows, that's probably not going to be a winning argument against him lol

I would take Trevor in a heartbeat over Dimitri, both as a character and in a shallow physical manner. I never saw what everyone saw in Dimitri, even when he was Dex on Dynasty. To each his own.

It makes me sad that soaps don't know that the best way to preserve a good thing is to make it a once-in-a-while treat and instead insist on running anything good they got going on (a fun gimmick, a couple, etc.) to the ground. The reason the absurd initial run of Kristen and Susan reached legendary status was not just because it was great soap and Eileen D. just rocked it, it was because it didn't overstay its welcome (well, by a few months at the end, but not that long). Which was quite the treat considering how long it dragged on during the storyline but the payoffs were spectacular and everyone was happy. It happened and it stayed a great memory because we moved on. Bringing Kristen back was risky but as a short-term stint it worked because it was a treat. Bringing her back full-time however, setting aside the issue of the recast, hasn't worked because this is not a character that can plausibly work long-term. And the Susan joke wears itself quickly as well. I am starting to feel the same way about Vivian too to be honest: I can take Louise Sorel and bad writing but bad writing AND two recasts and I now wish they had just kept her dead.

Setting aside whether she is "dried up" or just currently bored with the admittedly uninteresting material she is given lately, she was phoning it in big time in today's scenes. And I'd be the first one to tell you the writing around Sally (whom I like) is weird and the dialogue in today's scene was really bad in the script itself. But still she was giving it nothing.

Maybe I am going to be mean, but she screwed them over by leaving abruptly to take another role on another show, didn't do particularly well in that role, they got a really superior actress as a recast that did really good things acting-wise and was well-received by fans, and they STILL abruptly dumped said recast actress to hire back MS back at presumably a lot more money than she used to earn. Even a humble actress would have gotten a bit cocky. Why would she bother to make an effort? TPTB clearly sent the signal they wanted her regardless - without even having any plans to use her.

As I said earlier, she was pissed she wasn't *asked* but that doesn't mean she wanted to do it. I don't think she would have - and certainly not for the long-term tenure that Jill Larson ended up doing.

My argument would be that since KSJ has sadly passed, they should instead invest in slowly building up a new core African-American family that can a pillar of the show rather than aggregate random new individuals around Devon over and over and then drop them and rinse and repeat.

I think soaps underestimate how much shows need some genuinely good characters to balance the crazy, evil and messed up out there. Carrie was annoying but even when being on the verge of doing a "bad" thing (cheating with Mike) she was thoroughly goody-2-shoes about it. And like it or not, it provided a good balance with Sami's energy. I hate that the show has defanged Sami a lot as she became a center of the show. If only for that, I wish Carrie was there as balance although maybe Belle can be the proxy ying to Sami's yang. Austin/Carrie is the end game but honestly I don't miss Austin as much. Lucas is much more interesting and neither of the two Austin actors really fit the role anymore.

Is there anyone who has worked at Y&R from another show and had good things to say about that set? Yeesh. I wonder if the mention that Braeden used cue cards earlier in this thread and Bergman being derisive of it had a part in their feud or was part of their passive-aggressive feud.

Which is why I prefer my version in which Vinny has a crush on Thomas (hence the weird "your buddy Vinny" line). It is over-the-top dumb B&B style but I'd watch that.

Sadly, if I know Bell, this is going to turn into Hope dating Thomas and Vinny blackmailing Thomas by telling him he will tell everyone he did it at Thomas' behest if Thomas doesn't *insert something here* Which in turn would be a way to make Thomas more "sympathetic" to try and redeem him a bit by being unfairly blamed in this situation.

Absolutely agree with most of your list but for Dru. Hear me out: I wish Dru was still here. But clearly Rowell wanted to leave and she had caused enough trouble that they wouldn't want her back. In that context, it made sense to kill Dru off rather than write her off. There would have been no way to justify her not being around all that has happened since if the character was still alive somewhere. So considering the BTS considerations, I'll allow that one. The others had no real reason behind them other than a writer being lazy/