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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.

Speaking of one of those floppy-haired guys, were Lucas and Elizabeth portrayed as such close friends when Ryan Carnes was in the role? Not that I'm complaining, because I think Van and Becky are great scene partners, and I loved their "watching the Nurses' Ball at home" scenes today. It was fun to see them dishing about the people at the Ball, and it was a nice contrast to the heavy drama playing out elsewhere.

I also like how they've set up all the pieces where they could do yet another "shocking Gio parentage reveal" in another year or so if they want to. Because it's not at all implausible that teenage BLQ would have sexually experimented with both Dante and Cody. So if they want another violin-smashing moment next year, just have Gio find out that Cody is his real bio-dad.

What I love about this story is that I can empathize with both Lulu's point of view AND Lois's point of view. I can understand why Lulu thinks it's important for the truth to come out and why she feels a moral obligation to let Dante know he has a son. But these good intentions have gotten all mixed up with her hatred for BLQ, and so she's going about it like a self-righteous bully who hasn't thought through all the consequences of this reveal. And I can understand Lois's thought process keeping this secret. She couldn't bear to give her grandson away to strangers, and so she arranged an adoption that kept him in the family. From her perspective, it's worked out beautifully because as Gio grew up as a "Palmieri cousin", he got to know his father Dante, his mother Brook Lynn, and his grandfather Sonny. She just had the hubris to believe that she could play God and keep the secret forever. Maybe it's just getting to see Cynthia Watros and Laura Wright in full-on catfight mode a few days ago, but the show is starting to remind me of Guiding Light in its heyday, where most of the drama comes from the interactions of long-running characters who are likeable in some ways but have enough fatal flaws that they create their own problems. That's a sharp contrast for the way GH has generally been written since the JFP era, where most of the drama comes from external threats: supervillians, Sweeps month disasters, the mob shootout of the week.

I'd been pretty sure for months that they were going to reveal the big Gio secret during the Nurses' Ball, but the way they did it was pretty spectacular and exceeded my expectations. Good on the writers for not rushing this and instead giving us months worth of scenes that show off Gio's charm and great chemistry with the Qs, which made his devastated reaction today really mean something. Especially on a show with a cast as large as GH, we need time to build an emotional connection with a new character. I just hope they continue playing all the beats of this storyline for the next few weeks, because this reveal has huge repercussions for a whole bunch of characters and should lead to tons of organic conflict between them. I can't wait to see what Tracy will do when she finds out that Lulu was responsible for this reveal.

I like the twist of Drew framing Tracy, but now I'm sad that it deprived us of the sight of Jane Elliot performing "These Boots are Made for Walkin," which is such a perfect Tracy Quartermaine song.

Really enjoyed today's episode the whole way through. Having Drew and Nina as red carpet hosts was a brilliant move. You could really see Cameron Mathison channeling his own experiences as a TV host for shows like Entertainment Tonight, but putting a more sinister spin on the host's glib patter. And Cynthia Watros gave some amazing reaction shots during Drew's interactions with people like Carly, Joss, and Willow. I also really liked the Alexis/Kristina scenes. I know a lot of us find Kristina exasperating, and she is, but Kate Mansi and Nancy Lee Grahn do a great job of portraying a very real dysfunctional mother/daughter dynamic.

It feels like the show suddenly woke up today and remembered it was Sweeps month. Lots of action and forward momentum, including a delicious Nina/Carly fight.

Really good episode today. Even the characters who usually annoy me, like Chase and Brook Lynn, got some sweet scenes. I also appreciate that they're finally giving Lucky more to do, letting him in on Ric & Ava's blackmail scheme. And those Liz and Lucas scenes were fantastic; Van Hansis has been bringing such playfulness to the role of Lucas, he brings out the best in scene partners like Laura Wright and Becky Herbst. It was also nice to get Liz's perspective on why her romantic rapprochment with Lucky is moving so slow; it makes perfect sense that she thinks he's not really capable of settling down, even if he wants to be with her.

As always, really interesting to get your impressions! I was only watching sporadically during this period (whereas I was transfixed during the Marian storyline), but if I remember correctly 1996 was a pretty rough transitional year. It came at a period where P&G was playing musical chairs with its executive producers--ATWT was hit especially hard by this. The current executive producer, Michael Laibson, is out in November 1996, replaced by Paul Rauch, who stays for nearly 6 years. While Rauch has a few really bad ideas that cause long-term damage to the show, those don't really kick in until 1999, and his first couple of years are very strong. So once you get to 1997, you should see the show rebound significantly.