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Today was full of juicy conflict and confrontation scenes. Of course, I loved the blow-up between Ronnie and Tracy, and the Jordan/Portia rivalry makes each character far more compelling. But my favorite adversarial scene of the day came from Drew and Alexis. If my suspicions are right about who actually shot Drew, it will be very interesting to have Alexis in the mix.

Great episode today! I loved seeing so many of the show's veteran actresses (and Erika Slezak) in a room together for the tea party scenes. Those kinds of big party scenes have mostly disappeared from soaps as budgets have gotten smaller, so I'm glad that Frank was able to work his budgetary magic to give us this one. But I have to say that Dante really sucks, both as a cop and as a brother. (And how does that whole "I'm still working on a murder investigation where you're one of the main suspects, but I'm interrogating you as your brother not as a cop" thing even work?) Michael looked like he was about to punch his sanctimonious big brother, and I wish he had.

Clearly Sonny secretes a pheromone that makes otherwise smart women fall foolishly in love (or lust) with him. Unfortunately, since GH is not in Smell-O-Vision, we can't sense this pheromone and so Sonny's charm is completely lost on us viewers.

DA-Bot was too distracted by the sight of sleeveless Sonny. She was the one who called in "65 Harborview Drive" when we'd been told in several previous scenes that the Quartermaine estate is at "66 Harborview Drive". Just in case we needed any more confirmation that she's terrible at her job...

The Sonny/DA-Bot scenes are terrible as usual, but they only last a minute or two. Otherwise, Sonny is actually used effectively for once, in some cute scenes with Gio (that were paralleled with some equally cute Anna/Emma scenes). In fact, for an episode that featured some of my less-favorite characters, I thought they were used very well. Britt had just the right level of tart bitchiness today, and I liked how she put herself in the middle of the Curtis-Isaiah confrontation. I also liked just how messy that quad (including Jordan) seems to be getting. And Erika Slezak hasn't missed a beat; her scenes reading the search warrant were just a masterclass of subtle soap acting.

It doesn't. So it's probably a forged will. They started planting seeds of this story months ago when Martin got hold of some letters between Monica and Ronnie. And then today he somehow knew that Drew had been cut out of the will--a little suspicious since he's not the lawyer handling it.

Given BTG's, um, creative approach to age-appropriate casting, there's no telling. He could be playing Smitty's little brother or Ashley's grandfather for all we know.

They tried to handwave it away in the dialogue, implying that Alexis's house was so far away from the city and that Ric didn't have his car, so he needed a ride from Elizabeth to get home. But still I was wondering the same thing--why he didn't just run out of that house of horrors while he had the chance.

Can you imagine how they would have handled this on Y&R? We wouldn't see any action, but would just have two characters sitting around at Crimson Lights, one saying, "I was so scared when Ric held that knife against my throat. Good thing you threw scalding water in his eyes then knocked him out with that tea tray!"

That scene just left me thinking that Alexis shouldn't just leave the dagger that killed her mother lying around. What, is she using it as a letter opener or something? I did generally love those Alexis/Ava/Ric scenes though, and I like how Elizabeth is being brought into the storyline. And I thought that all the James/Nathan stuff was exceptionally well-done. They were very sweet scenes, helped by the fact that the boy playing James is the show's best child actor, but they also had a strong undercurrent of tension because we know that something is wrong with Nathan, as well as sadness in the scenes with Spinelli.

Fascinating to compare this to the 2024 list and see how they've been using their black cast members more this year, especially Brooke Kerr and Donnell Turner, presumably in response to BTG. Now if they just gave them more interesting stories and fleshed out their characterization. Like I think Sawandi Wilson has a very engaging onscreen presence--he's the kind of actor who says a lot with his eyes--but Isaiah has been on the show a year now, and we still know almost nothing about his backstory.

Honestly, they should have sent Eleni packing as soon as Melina left. I just saw that Jennifer Roszell was there for 4 straight years--just as long as Melina--and I couldn't believe it, since she seemed like such a non-entity, and I didn't feel the chemistry between her and Frank.

I know you didn't want more Coopers, but I wonder why they never tried pairing Bridget with Frank. He was backburned along with nu-Eleni for most of the late 90s, but I think that Frank and Bridget could have had nice comic chemistry.

The blandness of Ryan Paevey's performance actually worked to the show's benefit on Monday's episode, because even though I could tell from Britt's reaction that he's playing the "boss" she fears, I genuinely couldn't tell if he knew it too or whether he has memory loss and has reverted back to Good Nathan. In other episode news, I loved how we got Kristina referencing Abby and suggesting that maybe her brother has a thing for sex workers. I also appreciated how they wrote Molly as smart enough to immediately figure out that Jacinda is Michael's alibi and their run-in with her at the Q mansion was all a set-up. Finally, what a joy to see Ric again! I have no idea where this story will go next, but I'm eager to find out.

It's funny: although I never knew that TPTB had tried to get Maura West to play Cassie, I had just been thinking about how Cassie's backstory seemed more appropriate for an actress like Maura West, Sarah Brown, or Ari Zucker, not Laura Wright. We were constantly being told about Cassie's hardscabble past and her work as a stripper, and even though Wright did her best with the material, I just never found it believable that her Cassie had come from that background. Unlike West or Brown, who excel at playing scrappy underdogs, Wright just has too much head cheerleader energy.

Unfortunately, you've got a long time to wait. I know they have some major conflict in 2002, but I can't recall much conflict between Reva and Cassie before this. Before that, I recall a few "Reva and Cassie Team Up" storylines that I found nearly unwatchable.

I think there's still plenty of good stuff on the show in 1998, but I'd totally agree that Reva's storylines for the next few years are the pits. After Annie pushes her out of the plane, I can't think of a single Reva storyline I liked until the Time Travel by Walking Through Paintings storyline, which is not a popular choice among fans, mainly because it involved time travel by walking through paintings. I should add that I found Cassie pretty annoying even back in 1997, but Cassie and Reva as a sisterly duo just grew insufferable as the decade continued. Cassie was truly the Scrappy Doo of Guiding Light.

I'm usually against giving characters total personality transplants when you bring them back with new actors, but with Dinah I'll make an exception. She hadn't been seen on the show since she was a teenager, she'd been away for 6 whole years, Moniz's Dinah was much closer to what the character should have been in the first place (given her traumatic backstory), and the original conception of the character was extremely boring and bland. There's basically no way you could have driven years of story with Original Recipe Dinah like they did with Self-Pitying Bad Girl Dinah.

Sure, Sonny's a supporting character in terms of how much he actually drives story these days. But when you look at episode counts, only Laura Wright and Cameron Mathison have been onscreen more frequently this year. Sonny has been averaging over 3 episodes a week! Divide that by three, and he'd be a lot more tolerable.

Aw, I loved Hunter! The dweebiness was a plus in my book because the show was so terrible at writing young people with any kinds of distinguishing personality traits. I thought he had great chemistry with Emily, and I enjoyed his little awkward romance with Maddie for as long as it lasted (which wasn't long). But as was typical in those days, the show had no idea what to do with new characters, so just threw him away after a few months.

Honestly, even though I loved the fact they were honoring Monica, I thought the clips they used for today's memorial were a little underwhelming, not really highlighting the aspects viewers most loved about the character, like her tart wit and her steely resolve. But I guess that's in keeping with most real-life memorials, which tend to flatten out even the most complex individuals with bland platitudes like "she loved her family so much."

I can think of one thing they haven't tried for Sonny: demoting him to a supporting character. Seriously, one of the reasons we're all so sick of him is that MB has a contract that demands he's on the screen nearly 3 days a week, whether they have any meaningful story for Sonny or not. And they used up all the viable stories for Sonny years ago. I think we'd all be able to tolerate him so much better if they moved him into the role as talk-to "Grandpa Sonny" and had him on once a week, tops.

Oh yeah, they teased the possibility of Matt/Dinah hate sex for years. There's an early scene (a couple of days after Dinah and Matt first meet) where he's still living in the boarding house, and she barges into the shower room to yell at him, and he walks out naked, basically daring her to look at his body. And then later in Vanessa's near-death It's a Wonderful Life fantasy, she imagines a scenario where Matt and Dinah get married (but still hate each other). I think during the Wheeler era they finally do have sex, but since both Matt and Vanessa are on recurring by that point, the impact is somewhat muted.

This will be a bit spoilery for alwaysAMC, as it comes in mid-1998, but we do get at least one great scene where Dinah finally crosses a line and Vanessa strikes back:

I just realized that she must have cut Decker, who I quite liked, and Colton (who was fine, but had probably run his course). Is there anyone else who got cut by Monty that seemed like a significant loss to you? Or did it seem like she actually was cutting some of the "dead wood" from the cast?