Darn

The number of kids who have aged almost in real time is nice. There aren't any 5 year olds who are suddenly 20. Cameron has aged completely in real time, mostly because Becky looks so young and Liz had him so early. The SORAs-ing on the show hasn't been so bad thankfully. I always think soaps can get away with aging kids a bit more when the parents are older. So Kristina going from 8 to 16 or Josslyn going from 4 to 9 was nothing to me. The other soaps have much messier timelines. My powers of deduction prove me right once more!

Yes, the show has gone out of it's way to pretend her pre-Amelie life didn't matter. Her stories and characterization were essentially erased.

Ryan died, Victoria grieved and then the show didn't mention him for years. I'd be surprised if the show has mentioned him more than 3 times in the last 20 years. In fact Victoria's life in the 90s doesn't seem to exist at all. Cole is never mentioned, her baby is never mentioned. She just started existing once she got with Billy.

Man, soap fans have long memories lol the first nail in a show's coffin happened 30 years before its cancellation. Only in daytime! *This was not a dig at you, I'm still mad at stuff that happened 20 years ago

I think this is what Hayley and Mateo would have become if Ripa hadn't become a star. Whenever they returned it felt more like "Kelly's visiting!", they were even written differently.

That's exactly what I mean. They wish they could mine more story out of it but it's very well established. There is no more there there.

You can tell that the show wishes Carly’s backstory was more of a mystery.

Nina only lasted as long as she did because of Michelle Stafford (not her talent or the story but her being Michelle Stafford) and they're only investing in her now because Watros is better than the material. And Sonny needs some woman in his life. All four are very hot and very boring. And Sasha info dumping her life tragedies on a man she just met is so bizarre. Especially if they're an intended potential couple. Now you know everything about this stranger. Where do you go from here? I don't know why Brook Lynn is written to be so tepid. She needs some of her mother or grandmother's fire.

Nina was pretty monstrous to immediately after finding out Willow has cancer to go the home of a woman with stage 4 cancer to yell at her and her husband with the idea that they hid her cancer because their baby is more important than her grandson. Cancer. She's psychotic.

Brook Lynn and Michael technically but you're right...I'm mad I didn't notice.

CBS/Sony could if they wanted to. There's no reason why Y&R's cast and crew wasn't at the Television Critic's Association event.

I meant to comment that, it's really stupid and shows a lot of hubris to write these stories without securing the actor.

Killing Luke offscreen was just plain weird. It didn't generate story at all. It just...happened. One of the most famous television characters of all time dies (even in 2022 this got major media coverage 5 whole years after his exit) and it's a nothing plot? They could have given Genie a lot to play with Luke dead. Maybe it could have made Laura spiral (not in a Laura's crazy again way but a "The love of my life is dead, who am I anymore?" way), fractured her marriage to Kevin, something, anything.

Thank you @All My Shadows @SFK and @j swift Erica was ahead of her time!

Was Erica ever consistently referred to as "Mrs. Husband Last Name" during any of her marriages? I notice on soaps that no matter how many times a woman is married she immediately starts being referred to by her latest husband's last name.

Been watching a TON of GH clips over the past few weeks and Tony's death did it for me. It's the most realistic death I've seen on a soap. Brad Maule and Tony were disrespected and discarded by this show so heartlessly but his death scene was treated with gravitas. Tony was a good, honorable man that was punished by life and lured into making bad decisions, I think these scenes conveyed that.

It's very odd because usually by this point they would have brought on a love interest for Spencer. And kept Trina in a go-nowhere relationship with Rory. Spencer is their hot young male lead and Nicholas Chavez is an Emmy winner and future star, I'd expect them to have him with some pretty young (white) thing or Joss god forbid (she hated him for a while, that could have lead to an enemies to lovers thing easily) by now but they're still pushing Sprina.

Pairings tend to stay together when they have no story. Molly and TJ on GH have been dating for a decade and they're in their 20s! Michael and Lauren should be heavy in story with their adult son. But the children of legacy characters mean nothing on this show anymore if they were born after 1996.

There's been more press about her 40th than the 50th.

That's funny, I thought of her was much more smug. Don't misunderstand me, it was a stronger characterization. Even with understanding her motivations I hated so much of how she was. The way she would speak to Bobbie and about Tony and AJ made me rage. Now Carly is mostly a very loud plot device. I can tolerate that somehow. SJB's Carly just made my skin crawl after a certain point. @titan1978 100% it's what he deserves. Spencer and Trina take me back to the early 2000s when I cared about couples. Anyway, look at their engagement versus official couples we have to suffer through.

Sonny is both the lead of the show and feels shoehorned into the show (which is why he's doing things like reading Willow's medical records, @carolineg, like an aging gossip). They're grasping at straws to give him something to do. He's certainly not leading story (thank god). MB is unwatchable. Those between Sonny and Victor were interminable. Two men past their prime posturing at each other. Enough! It's funny, I think SJB is the superior Carly but I came to hate watching her Carly. She sold the deeply selfish and insecure and cruel version of the character so well, she felt like a real person I'd want nothing to do with. Laura's Carly is all of those things but I don't mind watching her. I can laugh off or find entertainment in Carly's self-centeredness and self-sabotage that I couldn't find in SJB (or Tamara's for that matter). Maybe it's the shifted focus of the show, where it's not just the same 4 characters trials and tribulations. All that to say I like enjoy watching Laura work, I do not like the character but seeing someone use their craft so well is a pleasure. She made those scenes with Drew, we've seen all of this a billion times, sing. When I watch Michael and Willow scenes I think about how much better they'd be if they were people I liked. I'd find all of this heartbreaking if I were invested in the couple. They don't seem to have any fans but there they are with heavy story yet Sprina can't kiss.

Those were very good. I just wanted to harp on how he uses callbacks as a crutch.

Oh that's so sad, dementia and Covid. He was one of the few highlights on Passions. He played the hell out of some awful material.

I don't care for the light gray walls of the redesigned Quartermaine house (or Carly's kitchen) but ABC seems very invested in the legacy of the show. As they should be. It's a cultural touchstone and the longest running drama on American TV. Characters have HOMES. There are multiple restaurants and businesses. There's varied camera work. It's treated like an actual program broadcast to millions of homes and not a shameful afterthought.