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I think you're making a good point, in that female rivalry is kind of the low-hanging fruit of soap writing. It's easy to write, and it gives opportunity for the kinds of catty dialogue and catfights that many soap viewers enjoy. (And not just soap viewers--Bravo has built a whole reality show empire on these kinds of scenes). I think it's harder to write good female friendships, which are also essential to a good soap. GH tries, with friendships like Nina/Ava, but they all feel a little forced. I will say, however, that as female rivalries go, Emma vs. Joss is one of the better ones. It makes perfect sense given the characters' histories, and I can also see the characters teaming up to take down Professor Dalton in a few months and eventually becoming more like frenemies than out-and-out rivals.

Is it wrong that I'm kind of loving Joss and Vaughn? Although I still don't totally buy her as a WSB agent, he sells the amoral spy very well. I loved the scene where he was telling Joss the story of his childhood pet, then leaving her to decide whether it was all BS or not.

Agreed. I don't even watch Y&R any more, and I'm offended by this. I will say though that in the hands of a talented writer, you could get a good front-burner story out of Cole's death. For instance, you could do a slow-building story where Victoria and Cole have started to rekindle their love, and Claire is starting to bond with the parents she never knew, and then suddenly at a routine check-up Cole learns that he has a terminal disease, then keeps the information from Victoria and Claire because he wants them all to enjoy the little time they have left together as a family. But then various people start to find out Cole's secret--maybe Victoria's ex, Nate, sees the pills Cole is taking to deal with his symptoms and recognizes what they're for--and then they have to decide whether to keep his secret or tell Victoria and/or Claire. And all of this could go on for months before Cole finally dramatically kicks the bucket. But of course to tell that story you'd need a writer who isn't allergic to drama in the way Josh Griffith is. And you'd need Cole actually on screen, which apparently he's only been 8 times this whole year.

Part of me hopes that they do--at least set up a situation where they have a drunken ONS they have to cover up for months.

I thought Reva and Josh were very toxic together, although some of that is the result of Kim and Robert each being on about 150 episodes a year, so the writers kept having to come up with front-burner stories for them and inevitably came up with "Josh and Reva break up AGAIN". The same thing happened with Jack and Carly on ATWT, and it had the same result on me: I eventually came to the conclusion that this couple was better off apart than together. I think some of the problem was that their breakup scenes were a little too brutally realistic, with Josh in particular saying some hurtful things about Reva that lingered in my mind. It's hard to root for "Always" once you've seen those 1996 Masquerade Ball scenes where Josh weaponizes Reva's childhood sexual trauma against her. I just got the sense that while Josh had powerful feelings toward Reva, he never respected her or even liked her that much. Men who were meeting her for the first time in middle age could see an accomplished and witty woman, but Josh always saw her as the oversexualized white trash girl he grew up with. So at the end, I was definitely rooting for Reva to stay with Jeffrey, who didn't always agree with her but who looked at her with admiration and seemed to be having fun with her.

So am I. That is a twist I never saw coming! I'd been worried that the show might run out of steam now that we've had some big reveals in the two frontburner storylines: Gio's paternity and the Willow/Michael custody battle. But I feel like they're doing a pretty good job of laying the groundwork for future storylines. I'm even now a bit more invested in the Curtis/Portia portion of the show now that Jordan had that conversation to Anna about contemplating if she wants Curtis back.

If they do want to keep Swickard, then I think he could probably pull off a storyline where Chase gets shot in the line of duty and goes blind (or is otherwise seriously disabled). I could see that shaking up the Chase/Brook Lynn relationship in an interesting way, since he's usually supporting her and not vice versa. Would their relationship survive him having to lean on her for help? Or would he just push her away and get closer to someone like Nurse Willow?

I cheered too, even though I thought Katelyn MacMullen did a great job with her breakdown scene. I do have to give the GH writers some credit for writing the Willow/Drew dynamic in a way that's so believably repellent that probably about 95% of viewers were happy to see the judge give Willow the smackdown and to see her lose custody of her kids. I mean, having a mother crying in court about losing her children is very soapy, but having the main emotion of the scene be schadenfreude is something new. And yeah, I thought Sonny had his "you're a dead woman" face on today.

So is Sonny going to flat out murder Natalia? That little look on his face when she was saying "You are such a godsend" suggests that, at very least, he'll find a way to shut her up so she can't incriminate him. I can't say that I'd miss her, but that would be an interesting dark turn. I know he's killed before, but it's usually been his mob rivals or crooked cops like Jagger, not a mostly-harmless accountant whose daughter used to date his daughter.

I agree that the show seems at a loss on how to use Cody, but I don't think that Josh Kelly should be on recurring. In fact, I see him as one of the show's MVPs, since he's one of the very few men on the show who has chemistry with a bunch of female scene partners. If they move a Josh to recurring, it should be Josh Swickard (Chase) whose only purpose on the show these days seems to be telling Brook Lynn how great she is. Yeah, she's not a very fun character, but I will say those PCPD drunk scenes are the first time I've actually enjoyed watching ELR onscreen since she got to GH. Maybe they should just have Natalia fall off the wagon completely so she can play "chaotic entitled drunk lady" for the rest of her time on the show.

I've actually enjoyed Lucky's return for the most part, but his "farewell tour" scenes this week are just so weird, and they keep pointing out all the opportunities the show has missed to make him more vital to the canvas. Like I think his scenes with Isaiah today--where he gave Isaiah the deed to a cabin Luke built--were the first time we've seen the two of them together all year. Why go to all the trouble to build up this friendship when Isaiah was introduced, when they basically abandoned it as soon as Lucky moved back to Port Charles?

Darn. And I'd been doing so well forgetting this character had ever existed.

All this behind-the-scenes drama, and no one has yet commented on those gloriously soapy scenes of Sasha suddenly going into premature labor in the courtroom and then Willow delivering Michael and Sasha's baby. Willow's been so odious the past few months, it's nice to have them show us (rather than simply tell us) that she's also capable of being a compassionate nurse.

That's a shame! Unlike most of you, I've been really enjoying the Liz and Lucky scenes, but they did seem like they came from a different show. They were on their own little island, especially once Liz broke her leg and was only seen in the home set. Even their lowkey naturalistic acting styles seemed like it was on a different show. I actually thought Liz's calm-but-frustrated response to the Kristina revelation was in character for her, but it did feel weird on an episode that was otherwise all about characters shouting at each other about Gio's parentage. I'll just try to be grateful that we got 9 months of JJ (sporadically) back on screen, and they did a bit to repair the crappy state of the Lucky/Liz relationship.

Or, I suspect, so we can be surprised a few days from now when we learn that it was actually Ava who told Ric. I'm betting that those scenes last week where Nina told Ava about Michael and Sasha's hookup served a dual purpose.

Admittedly, I was a latecomer to ATWT (first becoming a regular viewer in 2000). But I really liked KMH's Emily. I thought she was a very specific kind of neurotic professional character, and I loved her prickly relationship with MM's Susan. I will say I don't think the show did her any favors after Hal died, stranding her in storylines with several of the show's dullest characters: nu-Paul, nu-Meg, and nu-Dusty. I actually quite liked one of her last major storylines, when she discovered she had a grown-up biological son with Larry named Hunter. But then Hunter just sort of disappeared, and the story fizzled out, which was pretty typical of the late Goutman years.

Wow, you have the patience of a saint watching through this period. I think the show does get better but it takes a while. I won't give any spoilers about Zachary, but I will drop a slight hint: GL was probably trying to get a ratings boost by doing a story inspired by one of CBS's few primetime hits in the mid-1990s. And no, Zachary does not turn out to be a Texas ranger.

I agree. I liked the episode but it felt jarring to suddenly return to a bunch of plots that had been put on pause since the Nurses' Ball started. Although I did like Laura popping in at the end to tell Alexis that millions of dollars have suddenly disappeared from Ace's trust fund. One set of scenes that made me feel optimistic for the next few months were between Sofia Mattsson and Rory Gibson. While Rory has been good as a darker, colder Michael this week, I was worried that he might not have much range. But he really warmed up with Mattsson, and I thought that (for the first time) Michael and Sasha had some genuine chemistry.

Sneak peek from Monday's episode. I like the realistic touch that the teen characters would be finding out about Gio's paternity from the violin smashing clip going viral on social media.

I can understand the concern, because GH has been bad at playing the aftermath with some of its stories. For instance, in the past 9 months, Sonny killed Jagger in cold blood, and then later in a totally unrelated storyline his penthouse was firebombed, and then more recently someone tried to assassinate him after he was recovering from open-heart surgery. And none of those stories have seen any meaningful follow-up, and not even the characters who are close to Sonny seem remotely curious about figuring them out. By contrast, the Gio umbrella storyline already seems to be impacting characters in a way that could lead to a lot of long-term story. Today, we see how it's bringing Gio and Emma closer, while also putting a big wedge in Lulu and Dante's relationship (potentially sending Lulu in different directions, like possibly pairing her with Cody). I don't know if this storyline will change everything for all of these characters long-term, but it's generating a lot of good story right now, and I can see that story having a lot of ripple effects over the upcoming weeks.

Wow, he must have gone to a really good school for the blind if they taught him how to see again. 🤣

I'm trying to remember the Brian Gaskell-as-Dylan years, and I don't recall him ever playing the character as blind. Am I right? Did Dylan's blindness get cured at some point off-screen? And did the show ever acknowledge this, or did they just hope that the viewers had forgotten about Dylan's life-changing disability (ala DOOL's Phillip, who used to have only one leg back when he was played by Kyle Brandt, but hasn't mentioned that he's an amputee war veteran in years now)?

Still loving all the Gio fallout, but the scenes that really surprised me this episode were the ones with Nina and Maxie. I was not expecting Nina to be the one to put together all the pieces about Sasha's baby daddy. This custody hearing is about to get explosive!

Agreed! I normally don't rate Amanda Setton that highly as an actress, but she knocked those scenes out of the park. Between this and the Michael storyline, I think we're in for a week of juicy drama. I heard everyone talking about how dull Rory Gibson was on Y&R, but I thought he was pretty good today playing a steelier version of Michael. And I loved Wiley's little "Bye mommy!" moment. The writers clearly know how much most of us hate Willow if they're tossing out little nuggets of schadenfreude like that one.

Agree that this was a great week that brought some much-needed payoff to storylines that have been building for months. I'm just not sure about the comparison with Guza. I think if he were writing the show right now, the big sweeps event would be probably something like Daniel Goddard's Environmental Physics professor setting off a bomb at the Nurses' Ball and the rest of the cast getting caught in the carnage.