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Oh god. Many of us predicted Brad's return, but I never guessed it was coming so soon!

Elizabeth's big "eyelid mites" storyline, which was set up and resolved in under 5 minutes, was completely baffling to me. Who was this for? Was it some kind of bizarre product placement? Probably not, since the eyelid mite medication she received at the end was never named. I'd love for a show to post a BTS video about this, like they did recently for those scenes with Emma and Gio's rescue dogs.

So Anna the police commisioner is being held in a secret room somewhere within or underneath Wyndemere, and when Chase and his band of PCPD cops scoured the premises for Valentin earlier in the week, they just completely missed it? That... sounds about right actually.

In which case, Marco will have my eternal gratitude!

You're absolutely right. They've suddenly written Marco as his dad's enforcer (as in today's scene with Britt) and active co-conspirator, even treating creepy Pascal as a friend of the family. It's a shame because Marco and Lucas still have great chemistry, and from the little we've seen with Van Hansis in the role, Lucas/Brad do not. (It doesn't help that the Brad actor still can't really act). My only hope is that the success of Heated Rivalry shows TPTB that there's a huge audience for hot gay romances with more conventionally masc characters like Marco--and that they pull back from their plans to tank the Lucas/Marco romance.

JPS's Valentin has always seemed more like a "comfy blanket" kind of guy than a "dangerous escaped fugitive who just jumped out of a plane" kind of guy. So I've been finding the hysteria around Valentin's escape kind of ridiculous, but honestly the Valentin scenes have been a highlight of this week for me. His banter with Carly has generally been well-written and well-acted. Laura Wright has been stuck in chemistry-free scenes with Chris McKenna for so long, I'd almost forgotten what a magnetic actress she can be when she really sparks with her scene partner. And I appreciate that when Carly snarls at him, Valentin just snarls right back.

I had to reread that last sentence to see who you meant by "Today she's a schoolmarm," because I think at this point it could apply to both BLQ and Lulu. They really need to give Lulu something better to do than fretting over the safety of her kids, because it's making her look hysterical. Have her fall into bed with robot cop Nathan or something, because anything would be more interesting than fretting housefrau Lulu.

I think if Michael has hate sex with anyone, it needs to be Nina. Not just because it will make Willow's head explode once she finds out, but also because Rory Gibson and Cynthia Watros had some hot antagonistic chemistry in their most recent scenes together.

I feel like, for whatever BTS reasons, the show doesn't want to use Kin Shriner anymore, and so Martin has basically taken Scotty's place. Pretty much every scene Martin has had in the past few months would have had more emotional resonance if it had been played by Scotty (well, assuming the directors could have reined in some of Kin's hammier acting tics). I was really thinking that during the various scenes where Martin pops up to be supportive of his insta-sister Laura--if these had been Laura/Scotty scenes, they might have been actually poignant, not just time filler.

Great scene! The direction it took totally took me by surprise, because to my eyes Meg seemed to be acting like a pretty typical early 70s soap character, gossiping and meddling in other characters' love lives. So the last thing I expected to hear was Lee's eminently reasonable suggestion that she go see a psychotherapist because she's overinvested in these other people's lives.

I can't believe I actually enjoyed today's Sonny scenes. Ric Hearst really does bring out the best in all his scene partners!

Oh yeah, I think it's a huge fake-out. I'd guess Curtis spent a million dollars on nothing, as I'm betting that Drew got shot by somebody else before Selina Wu got a chance to send her assassin over.

Agreed. It's a story that makes sense on paper, but doesn't work well with this actress, who doesn't have much chemistry with Rory Gibson and isn't especially believable in the role of a sex worker. You remember that famous 1980s scene where Lucy changes out of her mousy librarian clothes and into her sultry sexpot look? Well, I keep waiting for a scene where Jacinda changes out of her hooker dress and into her real mousy librarian clothes.

Speaking of Curtis, I did not see that twist with Mrs. Wu coming at all!

This week's guest is an especially juicy one, GH casting director Mark Teschner. I didn't realize he'd been the show's casting director since 1989 (or that he was brought over to LA from Loving after that show's EP, Joe Hardy, got the EP position at GH). Over the course of the episode, they share a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes info. Apparently Jacinda the escort was only meant to be a three-episode role, but apparently TPTB thought that she had amazing chemistry with Rory Gibson, so they brought her back. And then Rebecca Budig mentioned that her stint as Greenlee was only meant to be short-term, for about two months, but then she clicked with Josh Duhamel so much it became a long-term role. Mark also tells a story of when he was working with Gloria Monty--who he doesn't name, but only refers to as "a producer who was only there for a year"--and casting for a new Jason Quartermaine. He was wowed by Steve Burton's audition, but Gloria only wanted actors who were at least 6 feet tall. Steve was only 5'10", so Mark took him to the bathroom and stuffed newspaper into Steve's boots until he appeared to be 6 feet tall. I will say, though, some of his casting stories reminded me that he doesn't always have the golden touch. He discusses casting Alicia Leigh Willis as Courtney, where Jill Farren Phelps thought she wasn't right for the role, but he fought for her. And Jill maybe should have trusted her gut on that one!

Agreed that finally--after a whole year of Sidwell being on the show--they've figured out how to write for Carlo Rota's strengths. And you're right that we haven't seen a "mirthful" villain on this show in a long time; the last I can think of is maybe Sebastian Roche's Jerry Jacks.

I mean, maybe he's the Black Bill Eckert, but even that's a stretch.

I'm only 15 minutes in, but Kelly Ripa and Rebecca Budig have already shared so many juicy behind-the-scenes stories about AMC, including about the pay gap between male and female actors:

Worst cop ever? He's not even the worst cop in Friday's episode, not when you have Chase risking his entire career to help Willow's case. I do get what you mean though, but I have my suspicions that the odd writing for Nathan in this scene--he arrives out of nowhere and then just as conveniently gets "called away" right as Laura and Sonny are insisting they don't need his help to open the trunk and fix the flat tire--was very deliberate. If I'm right and Nathan actually is the unseen mastermind who hired Dalton and is working with Sidwell, then the show is actually being quite clever in setting up a big shocking reveal. Right now, they're lulling us into a false sense of security, plugging Nathan right back where he was on the mid-2010s canvas: the upstanding boy scout of a cop. And of course his storyline is moving very slowly, to the point that it seems like it's stalled. But again, I think that might be intentional, so that we get used to Nathan's presence in Port Charles and drop our suspicions until the big reveal pulls the rug out from under us.

Yes, I can totally see Willow in this role. Although the show is understandably hesitant to deal with real-world controversial issues, I can also totally see Willow as the kind of mom who refuses to vaccinate her kids (even though she's a nurse and should know better). But I can totally see her as one of those "my baby's immune system is perfect the way it is" kind of mommy bloggers, which would cause all kinds of conflict with her colleagues at GH. (Cue scene of Lucas going off on her).

I just want to cosign all of that. Even though Genie did overact those Laura scenes, it still worked for me to heighten the sense of terror in the scenes. Same with Britt's reactions; KT normally isn't great at conveying genuine emotion, but she surprised me with her scenes on Thursday and Friday. And I also wondered if they were chem-testing Kristina and Jacinda. I wouldn't be against it, especially if they were setting up a triangle with Jacinda in the middle of Corinthos siblings Michael and Kristina. ETA: The Nathan appearance in the middle of Laura's scenes seemed very random to me at first, but I have a feeling that it will turn out to be significant. To me, it's just another clue that Nathan is Sidwell's mysterious collaborator on the cold fusion project/Five Poppies nonsense.

The Suzanne Rogers episode is now up, and it is amazing. Suzanne tells some great stories about her early career as a teenage Rockette and then as a Broadway performer, including a story about standing up to Katherine Hepburn, the star/producer of the musical Coco, who was trying to pay Suzanne less than she was worth. Rebecca and Greg have grown into pretty good interviewers, knowing when to stay out of the way as Suzanne recounts her colorful career history. Near the end, she also talks about her MG and her recent cancer treatments; she says that Linsey Godfrey, one of the very few actors on the show she told about her condition, even drove her to some of her chemo and radiation appointments, so clearly some of the mother/daughter bond we see onscreen comes from some place real.

I thought Daniel Goddard did a great job in those scenes with Joss. He might be the rare villain this show got rid of too soon, because it feels like he had great potential as a character we'd love to hate.

So what you're saying is that, in Trump's America, her record is almost too clean to be elected to public office.

I don't know how reliable the information is, but from what I've read, he joined GH in 1977, and Alan (who started airing in September 1977) was one of his creations. That should have been enough time to get the show in better shape by the January 1978 episode we saw, but then again, shifting from a 30 minute to a 60 minute format is a big transition, one that requires a lot of filler scenes like Monica having a long flashback to a scene that must have only played out a few weeks earlier.