FrenchBug82
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Posts posted by FrenchBug82
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4 minutes ago, Franko said:
1. I'm not sure Alexis was really capable of love between two people. I think she was too damaged. Whether it was by nature or nurture is debatable.
Yeah. That's where I am at too.
Her true love was herself. She enjoyed the company of men and their attention/adoration and even the games Dex and her played with each other but I doubt it ever resembled anything we would recognize as "love".33 minutes ago, j swift said:Furthermore, I would argue that Blake was far more into Alexis than she was into him.
The one thing that I think was missing for the entire run of the show IMO was a proper look at what really united those two in the past. At no point whatsoever did it seem plausible for me that Blake could have been in love with her - even if she was softer when she was younger - and it struck me that Forsythe chose never to play even a hint of lost affection or regret - probably because he was so committed to K/B that he didn't want to open a door there.
The amnesia story was an attempt to go around that but even then it never quite made sense as it seemed more based on nostalgia than feelings.
All in all it was a pretty massive question mark considering how much revolved around their defunct marriage.0 -
13 minutes ago, Ben said:
Olivia on Sunset Beach attempted suicide twice. After believing her baby had died, and learning that she had his remains cremated but couldn’t remember doing it, she blamed herself for his death, convinced by Gregory that she must have been drinking at the time. Gregory made it clear that he believed Olivia had killed their baby, so she took a bottle of champagne and some pills to the Grotto intent on ending her life as the grief and guilt was too much. But Cole showed up in time and talked her out of it.
Olivia took some time out on a cruise to regroup (in real life this covered Lesley-Anne Down’s maternity leave), and when we saw her next, she was on the boat, contemplating jumping overboard. This time AJ (Cole’s estranged father) stopped her, pulling her back from the railings. He got her to open up, giving her hope that they would figure out what really happened to her son. As for her baby: Annie had stolen him and given him to Olivia’s daughter to raise as her own; she planted the seed in Gregory’s mind that Olivia was drinking on the night she gave birth.
Didn't Annie also try to fake a suicide attempt to get attention (from Ben?)?
That's something she would do and I have a vague memory of it0 -
1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:
As a Black woman, I am not going to speak to the supposed skittishness of white viewers. I'm merely stating the ridiculousness of this assumption. By that assumption, Bridgerton should be racking up the threats. Only in daytime do people assume that nothing changes. Except ratings, of course.
OK I hate to be placed in a position to contest this because 1) I agree with you; things can change AND soaps are a good place to force the change even by being a bit ahead of the viewership 2) It shouldn't matter. The bigots can go to Hell. I don't think it should matter that there are some vocal racists when producers create stories and I think there would be MORE to gain in viewers watching than to lose. As often, black women are very underestimated as a powerful audience. Catering to them could give a powerful boost to ratings that more than balances out the white Karens who would decide to go pout.BUT the comparison with Bridgerton is very misplaced because the audience for a Netflix or primetime show is not the same audience as for a daytime soap.
Soap producers are targeting the very narrow demographic slice that is still watching soap and it is a very different audience, more conservative on average.
Yes, I agree that they are being TOO cautious by being overly scared of losing even part of that audience because they feel they can't afford to lose any at this stage BUT while it is callous, it is not ridiculous. It is a penny-pinching overly cautious short-sighted logic but it is not an absurd one.It is just tht soap producers are not known to have a great record thinking beyond the next couple of months when it comes to the interest of their show. And sometimes protecting the next couple of months hurts long-term - like, and we go back to agreeing, in this case.
55 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:Reid was an amazing character. A strong unapologetic gay man. Along the lines of Gale Harold's Queer As Folk Brian Kinney. The off the charts chemistry. Shared between Princess Luke and Reid was a sight to behold. Luke grew much more as a person with Reid. Then he ever did with bland Noah. Reid was the best thing to happened to ATWT. In it's last days. He was a fluke. That was foolishly killed off at the end.
I wasn't obsessed with Reid but one thing you said that rings very true to me is that Reid was the rare gay character who entered the scene - gay.
For narrative purposes, especially when a character is a legacy character, I understand why soaps are fond of coming out stories but it does feel having LGBT characters who are not troubled, struggled, guilty or rejected is a nice change of pace.0 -
5 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:
IMO, Will/Sonny and Will/Paul were actually pretty similar to Luke/Noah and Luke/Reid. Will/Paul was the better, stronger pairing similar to the way that Luke/Reid were, but in both cases it was the ship (Wilson, Nuke) that ultimately did them in. That fanbase that wanted their first supercouples back together.
I think in both cases it is what the writers/producers THOUGHT the audience wanted rather than what the fanbase wanted.
And my ickiness with the Paul couplings is even stupider than this: it is not the "Uncle" part; it is the fact he slept with both Will and Sonny. I know it doesn't make it incestuous but I am thinking of how I would feel sleeping with two ex-husbands and it feels... weird.But OF COURSE I have that issue with the fact everybody has slept with everybody else in those towns. It is just that back-to-back made it weird for me because as a gay man I guess I identify with their choices more.
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If I was a soap producer in charge of reviving a daytime soap, one of my first steps is to can all next-episode previews, cut day-by-day spoilers and strictly limit what is leaked as spoiler to magazines.
The audience knows nothing before it happens and I make sure things happen they do not see coming (a daytime soap would have dropped a gazillion hints Kimberly was alive before the reveal, thereby spoiling the shock value) and that they want to talk about once the episode is over.
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2 hours ago, Bill Bauer said:
Just a year later, Robin Fletcher committed suicide. That was a pretty big deal because she was a MAJOR character and had been born and grew up on the show.
That was way too old for me to have even heard about it and it is fascinating. I wonder what made soaps more comfortable "suiciding" two majors characters in the 60s vs the more current skittinishness.
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I actually think we were including Reid in our conversations about Luke because his ultimate fate was because of what we discuss which is TPTB's assumption that people were rooting for Luke-Noah instead.
I will be blunt about Paul: I didn't see it but I know he was popular. However the whole dating Sonny and then Will in such proximity felt very incestuous to me. It was inevitable in a cast with few gay characters but I didn't enjoy it.
But I agree: they tried. And the fact they landed back on Will/Sonny and didn't even have anything for them to do once they got back together also highlights what we are talking about. That producers' assumption about "supercoupling" gay characters limits their ability to fly their wings as full-fledged character.
It is not a LGBT specific thing (see Days Hope) but the truth is when you have two, at most three openly LGBT characters on a soap, producers can't break that paradigm and are not willing to invest enough in the characters to expand their universe.0 -
18 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:
I'm all out of kudos to give to a genre that, in 2021 still can't bring itself to push past the idea that the mythical Midwestern house will catch the vapors if she sees anything that wouldn't get past a 1940 censor.
I mean, soaps are still afraid to have a black man in bed with a white woman onscreen?
You would be surprised.
Y&R was long traumatized by the vicious reaction to the Victoria/Neil pairing in the late 1990s. Kristoff St John (RIP) has talked quite a bit of the impact it had on making the show very skittish about trying anything similar (which rejoins what I was saying about producers being easily spooked by audience reaction, even when they misunderstand the reason for it).
And lo and behold the trial balloon they had with Ashley/Neil in 2018, while it yielded a less intense reaction, STILL got YR a lot of hate mail.So. Yeah. Watch the news if you don't think there is still not a LOT more of that around. Enough to spook producers who don't feel like they can afford to lose any further part of their fanbase.
That said, I am surprised that of all the things producers tried to revive soaps, most have tried superficial changes like changing sets or pacing of stories and not one has thought to become unabashedly "progressive" on the kind of stories they tell. I bet that would secure a really strong audience, even if it doesn't completely overlap with the current one.
"Generations" was a smart idea and while it failed for various reasons, in a landscape that has fewer of those kinds of shows - and knowing how popular the Tyler Perry crappy soaps are - I think the hunger of a show with bolder tone and representation could definitely sustain at least one soap full-time.0 -
2 hours ago, carolineg said:
Once that dynamic was removed Alison suffered a lot as a character. Amanda was bitchy to others, but Alison was her best rival by far.
Inversely characters like Taylor and Lexi were *more* interesting when they were not used asAmanda's foil because by that point writers were writing Amanda as the center of the show and not only would she inevitably get the upper hand but the characters going up against her had to be as unlikeable as possible on the way to it.
One reason the Allison/Amanda dynamic worked is that while Allison was weaker, she was a character we were supposed to root for (even though, frankly, she didn't always deserve it) so while Amanda would win the professional bouts, things usually balanced themselves out for her in some way.0 -
1 hour ago, DaytimeFan said:
It is a very different portrayal as compared to Robin Strasser who appeared to be trying to usurp or outshine Louise Sorel by playing the biggest parts of Vivian, with none of the subtlety. As a result, she was ghastly and very awkward.
Robin S. is a great actress but she is not great at comedy. She may have gotten confused that she could do it well because her OLTL banter with Tuc Watkins' David was brilliant and funny but the writing and TW were carrying her and balancing her out.
She clearly mistook Vivian to be a camp villain, almost "comic relief" (maybe due to the image DOOL has among the other soaps and her own Passions stint), so she did Hecuba again and Lord Knows she was dreadful as Hecuba.
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6 minutes ago, Titus Andronicus said:
Off-camera, but short-term character Hart Bennett killed himself out of shame during Marlena's murder trial in 1985. It was key for the trial and also for Kimberly's psyche as she was trying to get close to Shane (she'd been the only one who actually liked Hart). Hart really wasn't explored in detail, but had been portrayed as a tragic figure during his run.
OK While it was off-screen, that's more what I had in mind. Had never heard of him; thanks for sharing!
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2 hours ago, Vee said:
The Kyle/Fish story was poorly received by bigots in middle America, which is why it was curtailed. Not the same thing. A lot of the audience loved it, but it was divisive. I don't think you can call it not adventurous when it culminated in the first gay love scene on daytime TV and a mass LGBT wedding in Angel Square years before gay marriage was legalized. Meanwhile, Luke and Noah consummated their relationship by jumping on a bed.
We are not going to agree at all, it seems, on OLTL gay characters because the Luke/Fish was poorly received pretty widely because of how extremely preachy it was. I am gay and even I felt talked down to. It had the subtlety of a hammer on a nail.
And to be clear we are discussing the characters themselves - the mere fact of featuring them was 1) good 2) daring, I suppose, although a gay wedding in the late 2000s was not as gutsy or adventurous as it would have been in the 80s or 90s.But let's not redefine as adventurous just writing in a gay character, at least not in the context of this discussion. We are trying to determine what makes a character type and storylines for a LGBT character conservative in nature vs "adventurous".
We all agree a show writing a LGBT character deserves credit and was usually a pretty adventurous endeavor in itself.The fact OLTL gave it several go over its history is to its credit.
53 minutes ago, titan1978 said:And when they do go there, with a trans character, they sideline them pretty quickly after telling the initial story. And Y&R blinked on making Adam bi or fluid, which could have lead to many years of actually interesting storylines and twists.
B&B never having featured a gay character is certainly ridiculous.
However I will defend them on the transgender character by pointing out that they sideline EVERY character not from the core six after a heavy storyline or two so it wasn't specific to her. They actually used her and kept her and Rick married pretty long by the show's standard. But the fact Bell brings in new characters and actors to make a splash and then quickly loses interest is a pattern that has happened three dozen times in the past twenty years, regardless of gender or sexuality.As for Y&R, yes. Absolutely. Adam's bi- or pan-sexuality has been dropped altogether - despite the fact Muhney was eager to go there (even if it was probably because he would have liked the attention). It made sort of sense at first because they wanted Sharon to be the endgame but it has been a lost opportunity not to nod at it further since.
Where YR deserves credit is that Greg Rikaart is still the only openly gay actor to have come out during his run and continued to be featured (both on YR and DOOL). And they brought back Thom Bierdz as an openly gay man as well (story was horrible and so is he as an actor but still credit where credit is due).
In the end AMC's Bianca is still the only LGBT soap character that I consider to have been well-rounded enough with several girlfriends/wives, non-lesbian related storylines, well-woven into the cast, sympathetic but also real. And even she had to endure some atrocious writing (the rape is still a sore point for all of us I think).
Will and Luke got saddled with "soulmates" almost right away and never had a chance to spread their wings into full realized characters.
53 minutes ago, titan1978 said:For me, Luke and Noah had exactly one hot moment, the early scene with the towel and almost kiss while shirtless and wet. And they lived on that one moment for me while I waited and hoped that something else close to that would happen again, then finally gave up.
Will's first kiss (not with Sonny) was also strangely aggressive and there was a weird tiptoeing around Will suggesting a threesome with Paul one time.
But it is true that soaps have been reluctant to show gay intimacy. We are above "Matt only hugs his boyfriends" on MP but there are ways to go.0 -
1 hour ago, Huntress said:
I'd love to know which scenes resulted in Heather Locklear being nominated for a Golden Globe. I mean, she was nominated 4 times in a row between 94 and 97... Of course she was (and has always been) a talented actress, but I never thought she was great enough to be nominated for any award - especially for working on Melrose Place which wasn't critically acclaimed at all.
In all fairness, and that's a big issue for me with TV awards, I do think the system that makes people win based on single scenes/episodes is fundamentally flawed.
It is ESPECIALLY true of daytime soaps but it applies here. Someone creating a well-rounded layered character over time is doing just as hard a job - if not harder - than someone acting well in a single emotional scene. Acting is not just expressing feelings and emotions but creating a character in full and I wish there was more recognition of that aspect of acting.
I don't think Heather had many award-friendly big emotional scenes on MP but she did manage to construct a character that was complicated, layered and that the audience took to despite her being not outwardly very sympathetic. That's a LOT harder to do than crying over a dead husband or whatever "big scenes" people like to get for their reels because it is subtle and takes a lot of skill to create an entire persona.
And yes the female ensemble was clearly superior to the male cast - and the female characters were, barring Michael, collectively a lot more interesting and driving story a lot more than the male cast. Which is generally true for a lot of soaps tbh.0 -
1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:
At the risk of belaboring this topic, I wonder how much the daytime execs considered their viewers who were gay men vs. their fans who were women?
That's actually a very interesting angle.
As anyone who has watched RPDR, has heard of the funü phenomenon in China or been to a gay bar in the past ten years, knows, there is a huge market for women-who-are-into-gay-men.
We can debate the merits, drawbacks and psychology of that but come to think of it based on your comment, it does seem to me that the dynamic between Luke/Noah or Will/Sonny on Days seem more directed at the image a female audience has of a gay relationship and that gay characters on soaps seem to fit the expectation of women rather than what gays would recognize as each other.
1 hour ago, titan1978 said:As a gay person, I don’t mind a villainous portrayal. I think one of these shows would benefit with a gay vixen character to shake up old fashioned triangle tropes, and the idea of a closeted, powerful gay man killing people to keep his secrets has good bones. Just not the way OLTL did it.
I think it is important to note I am NOT endorsing the Daniel story whatsoever. But placing yourself from the perspective of writers and producers, it is not hard to see how they could read the audience's reaction, justified or not, as being partly about blowback from creating an unsympathetic gay storyline.
We will disagree on the extent to which that was grounded in reality but it seems pretty clear it wouldn't have helped writers feel adventurous about how to write such characters going forward. And the best proof of that for me is that they ended up overcompensation wildly in the other direction with how preachy the early times of Fish as a character, not too long after, were. And to be fair, *that* was about as poorly-received by fans.
Perception of what they can get away with is often a huge factor and if they misunderstand the audience's reaction one time, overcoming the bad memory can take a long long time, even if the reaction was simply to the quality of the underlying story or the actor.Soap execs are pretty temperamentally conservative: not risk takers by nature. "Once bitten, twice shy". Or as we say in French, "A scalded cat won't get anywhere near even cold water"
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3 hours ago, titan1978 said:
According to her, she also wrote her contracts by the time she quit GL. I wonder how many other daytime stars did that?
Of course the way she had her contract written is how she managed to screw the producers over and unexpectedly announce on her last day before a scheduled eight-week vacation that it would actually be her last day on the show altogether and she wouldn't be back.
So I don't know how many other daytime stars had written their contract before her but I am pretty certain none were allowed to afterwards.From an interview with SOD:
Weekly: When you took that out in your contract, were you worried about leaving them high and dry, or hurt feelings?
McKinsey: No, I wasn’t. I gave them eight weeks’ notice. I had warned Jill (Farren Phelps) — although I don’t think she paid attention to me — that I was not happy. I was not happy with the storyline. I don’t believe she’d read my contract, and she was not aware that I could quit every six months. I said to her at the time that I discussed that I was unhappy, “I may just have to quit.” And she said, “You have a contract.” And I said, “You better read it.” I don’t think she ever did. So she was really stunned when it happened. I didn’t tell anybody in advance because I didn’t want a big fuss made. I didn’t want a party and all that stuff. So I just did my last scene and left. Plus, I was leaving for this long eight-week vacation, and the last scenes were difficult scenes, and I wanted to be able to concentrate on that and not have to worry about anything else.
Oh, I told the head of wardrobe (David Loveless), because he was already planning what he was going to buy for me for fall. He and I were good friends, and one night at dinner I said,”Don’t buy anything, because this is what’s happening.” So everybody was expecting me to leave that day — they just weren’t expecting me to never come back (laughs).On 2/4/2021 at 9:51 AM, pdm1974 said:It's obvious that DAYS actors don't work over their guarantee now which is why stories/characters are dropped for periods of time. It's also why big events such as weddings, holidays leave out certain characters who should be there.
It is also true for at least some GH actors (there might be some favoritism over there as to who gets to work over and who doesn't). You will recall Liz and Franco dropped out of sight for a weird period of time considering they were in story sometimes last year because they had gone over their yearly guarantee.
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On 11/26/2019 at 9:21 AM, Cat said:
There was a lot about MAB's tenure which was watchable. After the damage wrought by LML, MAB's first year in charge was IMO pretty solid. She brought back the background music and signature Y&R style that LML phased out. She also tried to write some exciting SLs after LML's borefest. You could tell the character of Phyllis interested her. I will always remember one scene where Phyllis found out about Sharon and Nick's affair. She broke into Sharon's hotel room, scrawled "I hate you" on Sharon's mirror, then looked at herself in the mirror and saying aloud "I hate you too."
However, [!@#$%^&*] went haywire. MAB started running out of ideas, and she panicked and started looking to TV and film for ideas. Her pastiches were very obvious and not well done. She relied too heavily on shocking deaths (Diane, Colleen's HEART!!!!!!), doppelgangers and stunt Primetime casting. One of the worst messes (besides killing off Colleen to provide Victor Newman with a heart transplant) was bringing back Philip III alive -- and writing such a horrendous mess of nothingness that they hastily bundled Philip offscreen, never to be seen again. For me, a longtime viewer of Y&R, this was sacrilege. Philip III was a *HUGE* part of Y&R back in the mid-80s. Amazingly flawed, vulnerable, soft-hearted and shy, this was a male legacy character unlike any I had ever seen on soaps. The decision to kill him off impacted the canvas dramatically back in the day. To make the decision to bring him back without a really good story in place was torture to watch.
People cheered when she got fired, I did too, but now I look back on her Y&R with a little nostalgia. It was rarely boring!
There is not much I can add to this. 100% agree.
Saying her first year was decent is not much to say. Most headwriters start off OK when they are fresh and we are relieved they are cleaning up the mess that got the previous team fired.
What is particularly galling about her tenure is how much long-term damage was done. Killing a legacy character like Colleen is appalling.
And how it is not just the writing that was bad: it is how many behind-the-scenes decision were mishandled from start to finish,
The way she messed up bringing in a giant of soaps like Maura West and f***ed it up from beginning to end from miscasting her as Diane rather than creating a character to writing weird non-sustaining stuff for her to the insulting way she was written out. And that's the most glaring example: Genie Francis, Debbi Morgan, Darnell Williams. The number of great actors she mishandled and miscast is long.
Bringing Ricky in... Casting a good actor (I will grant her the casting team did a lot of good in her years)... And then turning him into a cheap psycho that was quickly written out.
On the other hand, we got MANY rounds of Daisy. Hum, what?
Goddard being fired... then rehired.
And Phillip... Unwriting Phillip's death was bad enough. Making him gay just because Thom B. is gay (I am gay for the record) was just such an insult to the intelligence of viewers. I will give OP that, yes, bringing back Tricia Cast even for this dreck of a story was a highlight and boy did she knock those scenes out of the park but this was still unforgivable lazy and insulting writing.
Putting Sharon and Victor together was just horrendous and the overall treatment of the Sharon character just reeked of behind-the-scenes shenanigans.
PS: Oh and it is a small thing and I am sure few remember it but it still sticks in my craw all these years later: writing Victor pushing Diane out of a moving vehicle - domestic abuse AND attempted murder - and playing it for *laughs* should never ever have made it past the draft stage. That was a huge low for the show because it went beyond bad writing to an actually offensive and morally bankrupt plot point that, for all its flaws, Y&R had been better at avoiding than other shows.
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Yes, assisted suicide is adjacent obviously but it is different from mental health related suicidal iteration. And even Storm's suicide doesn't quite fit the latter since there was a plot reason for him to want to kill himself (so that Katie would get his heart).
So it is striking that straight-up suicide is undercovered in soaps despite its dramatic potential. I suspect it is out of concern for not "inspiring" viewers who may struggle in real-life but boy how powerful a well-told story could be.
To be fair, suicides are pretty rare in primetime as well. I thought of this thread because of Melrose Place's Craig and I was thinking that I didn't know of many other examples.0 -
I stand by my observation.
Back to ATWT matters.
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Oh Right. That's a good call. So I guess that would make George Rawlins also a "suicide" (albeit by hired hands)
But it tracks with my first point which is mental health issues in soaps are generally presented in the frame of a cartoony psychopath and not for their own - serious - sake.
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I have always thought that it was unfortunate that soaps only ever explored mental health issues in characters in the context of cartoony psychopaths.
A case in point was that as far as I can tell, very few if almost any character in soap has ever been written to commit suicide, which seems like a missed opportunity because it would make for a compelling story to see the path of someone getting to a point where they don't want to live anymore and the impact on surviving characters. I imagine they don't write it lest it be triggering for some in the audience but it doesn't stop them for other delicate stories.
Of the top of my head, the only suicide in recent times I am familiar with is B&B's Storm - and while I enjoyed that story, it was not necessarily a story about mental health.
Which other suicide stories am I forgetting if any?0 -
8 hours ago, te. said:
I don't mind characters getting unhappy endings either
I don't either! I just don't think it should have been Billy and Allison's fate though who, as caroline said, were the end game when the show started.
I do agree having Amanda keeping that bond off-screen was a nice little detail but nowhere near the amount of satisfaction fans-from-the-entire-run deserved
I also think they too easily picked death as their unhappy ending of choice - Sydney's exit should have been cleverer considering her track record for instance. They had already used the institutionalized thing with her but something along those lines might have been more twisted and "fun".
The one exit I absolutely loved was Craig's. Didn't care for the character but I got to say suicide was an extremely ballsy to write off a character and it very very very rarely happens on TV. It worked for what the character had been and actually made him more sympathetic in death than he was while he was on the show. So I give them credit for this "unhappy ending".
But otherwise killing them off or seeing them off at an airport were the go-to write-offs and ... meh.0 -
5 hours ago, cassistan said:
I want a incest romance storyline.
B&B has gone there and trust me: no, you don't lol
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4 hours ago, DRW50 said:
The main problem with the Daniel story was that not only was he a generic closet case murderer, but the only other gay character on the show was made to be his piece of ass and then shipped out as soon as the story was over. And there were no other gay characters on the show from that point on for years.
I don't want to belabor this OLTL story on the ATWT board but my point is: those were gay characters that were different from cookie-cutter boring gays and people reacted badly to it like you are here. You can criticize bad writing but that was equally true of straight characters around that time. Sometimes gay men manipulate and are manipulated just like straight men/women are and reacting to this to gay characters, while understanding because of limited representation, is why characters like ATWT's Luke end up being vanilla and boring because soaps didn't dare create more layered characters lest the reaction be this.
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9 hours ago, carolineg said:
I think if I could root for Nina/Jax or even Nina/Valentin I would feel more.
I don't really know how people feel about Julian in these parts (I was a fan) but it would have been worth chemistry-testing Nina and Julian a bit more. Especially if it had pitted JPS and WdV against each other which, based on their off-screen chemistry, could have been great fun.
Oh well.0
As The World Turns Discussion Thread
in DTS: Cancelled Soaps
Posted · Edited by FrenchBug82
Your post was perfectly understandable as it was. And truth be told I initially thought that punctuation was a choice for emphasis so I didn't realize English wasn't your first language.
Ignore whatever that unnecessary response was. Your post was fine
Being victimized is a frequent trope of LGBT characters on soaps but it made sense of the son of *Lily* to have inherited the dude-in-distress genes.
That said, while Van Hansis was never a mind-blowing actor or even charimastic the way Chandler Massey is, I thought he was solid and I never had any issue with his acting.
Considering some of the planks of wood he has to act with, that's high praise.