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I was just about to make the comparison to bad community theatre Shakespeare too! Wasn't there a director around to tell Wes Ramsey to tone his performance down? The scene actually might have been effectively creepy if he wasn't shouting all his lines. Those scenes were probably shot during the Biden adminstration, so there's nothing stopping him from appearing long-term on GH as well.

I thought Monday's episode was dropping some pretty heavy hints that Willow would be cheating on Drew with Chase sooner rather than later. And if she gets to humiliate Drew in the process, all the better!

While I'm listing sex scenes I'd like to see on this show... I hope that they continue to go full femme fatale with Willow and we'll get a February sweeps scene where she and Chase bone at Drew's house as a paralyzed Drew helplessly watches in horror.

I'd still love to see him have hate sex with Nina, though I doubt that would work as a long-time pairing. I thought Rory and Cynthia Watros had a lot of chemistry together in their Aurora scenes.

I loved Monday's episode, and today was a great follow-up. I thought Cam Mathison did a wonderful job of playing Drew's barely-masked frustration and disappointment when Willow wanted to celebrate her acquittal with Nina, Chase, anyone but him. And of course the twist with Willow and the syringe was very well played. I loved how today she fooled Elizabeth and everyone else with her story about Drew's stroke symptoms, then smugly threw away the syringe when she got a moment alone. I also have to praise the show for finally finding a good role for Kai. I enjoyed his reaction shots as he realized that Drew's "stroke" was no coincidence.

I don't think the writers need to "redeem" Drew. They just need to keep him three-dimensional by reminding us how, in Drew's head, he's the hero, the white knight who's protecting his lady love from the corrupt and powerful Quartermaine family. But it might be a good idea for them to pull back from the scenes of Drew being hurtful towards children, like his vendetta against Danny or treatment of Scout, which aren't quite as well-motivated and do seem to tip him over into Snidely Whiplash territory, where he only exists to antagonize the show's "heroes."

He'd be about the right age to play a recast Dillon, and he might be a decent fit for that role.

Both the character and actor are lousy. I can't believe he's been on and off the show for over 12 years now.

As I said, intellectually, I know all of this. I just don't care very much. I don't especially like Britt, but the character is at least sometimes entertaining. Which is more than I can say for Lulu these days.

So I understand intellectually why Lulu doesn't want her teenage daughter to have any contact with her father or her teenage son to have any contact with his surrogate mother. But watching both stories play out at the same time is exhausting. I used to feel like she was just smothering her kids, but now as she keeps playing the same scenes over and over again 2-3 times a week, I feel like she's smothering me.

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!