ranger1rg

39 minutes ago, Darn said:

I think the optics are pretty terrible to fire their only black breakdown writer, even if she has no say in story direction. We'll see I suppose. I'm sure this means Mulcahey is bringing on writers with a similar sensibility to his, I just hope they have some melanin. Blah, blah, blah race shouldn't matter but guess what? It does. You don't see the world through the same lens I do and that should be a factor in the writers room.

I agree. The optics are AWFUL.

It matters, PERIOD.

This show really needs a break from Kristen.

Even when she's gone for a couple weeks, if she returns for a few days in a row, I want to pull my hair out.

Today's show was as bad as usual, and might have been even worse.

NoT one thing new was said, and nothing new happened. We got a repeat of every show from the past 2 weeks as Hope and Thomas avoided each other and talked to other people about their relationship.

Godawful.

5 hours ago, teplin said:

Conversely, I've enjoyed the respite from constant plot-driven storytelling. There's been more insight into character motivations, greater interaction between previously siloed characters and scenes that last longer than 30 seconds. It's still not a great show by any means but I've found a fair amount to like about it.

Then again, I was weaned on Bill Bell's DAYS, when plot progression could take years. (Looking at you, Mike Horton.)

I have to laugh every time I read here that things at DAYS are in slow motion and going nowhere until Ron gets back.

If that's true, what a plan LOLOL   BTW, I don't believe it's true. I cannot believe you'd tell interim writers to "Stall all the plots" until the HW returns.

6 hours ago, Aragorn said:

I heard two things online and wonder if anyone here can confirm or deny them.

1. I heard that NAC gave an interview in which he trashed GH.

2. I heard that Roger Howarth was fired by ABC executives and that it was over Frank Valentini's head.

As others have pointed out, any NAC interview trashing GH would have been plastered here and everywhere else. Why do people believe this kind of crap?

Roger Howarth's firing? I don't know how anyone would know the truth about why he was let go. This story about his being "fired" over Frank's head is also a load of crap.

Sounds like a wise move to avoid justifying that Y&R keep a terrible child actor.

18 hours ago, Liberty City said:

I just think he's one of those child actors who hasn't had that much experience, and they're trying to push him beyond what he's capable of which is a shame. And the bullying he, as a kid, got online was horrible.

He was not pushed beyond the very minimum. You can't get a role as a child actor and expect to utter one-word answers forever. Sooner or later you need to repeat full sentences, and you also need to be aware of camera placement and have a general awareness that you're filming for television.

The kid is NOT an actor, and I doubt he'll EVER be an actor. That's ok -- it's not for everyone, and not everyone can do it. Maybe his parents can move him into print/digital work.

Bullying online? His parents can protect him from ALL of that. Yes, it's wrong to bully the kid, but I'm not doing that when I say he cannot act. There's no reason he has to see ANY of these comments.

1 hour ago, Liberty City said:

Dang. The OG Harrison was a cutie pie. Damn. But if the role must be recast, then so be it. Nü Harrison looks a lot like Kyle & Tara, so that's a plus!

Yeah, the kid was cute, but he was also an awful, awful actor. He had a few lines This past week, and almost every word was unintelligible. I think they knew then that they had to replace him.

Sloan's baby is wrapped -- suffocated -- in so much blanket that it's laughable. Why does it look like the baby weighs under 3 lbs.? And why do the baby's cries sound like they're coming from the next room?

It's unbelievable how poorly this reads on the screen, and it has nothing to do with DAYS' budget.

2 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

There's a huge problem with the younger actors on this show - the actors playing Danny, Jake, and Aiden can't carry large story, and barely look like they can remember their lines. They've been awful IMO over the last two weeks. Eden McCoy is never going to mature into a great actress, and Tabyana Ali is also very green. 

While I agree with you that the actors playing Danny, Jake, and Aiden haven't been good these past 2 weeks, I blame it on giving them too much to do too quickly and too soon. I don't think they're bad casting.

Eden McCoy gets a lot of criticism around here, but I think a lot of that stems from the writing for Joss. She'll never mature into a "great actress"? Well, honestly, few do. She can definitely be a solid actress, which is good enough.

I do not agree that Tabyana Ali is "very green." Honestly, I don't even know what that mean when applied to her.

16 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

The whole scene felt unnatural, and the premise is ridiculous that Natalia would have a conversation like that with people who she literally just met. 

The scenes with Natalia talking to Sonny and Kristina didn't work for me, either. I fully agree it was way too soon for Natalia to open up like that with a stranger like Sonny. Just not believable at all and not even on the radar screen of being organic.

Look, I know we're all in this "Patrick Mulhaney is a HERO!" phase and expect him to work miracles. Maybe that will happen, but in the meantime, I'm sticking with my "clunky" description of a lot that's going on.

And no, I'm not signing on to the belief that none of this is on PM and that it's all Frank Valentini's fault.

I understand that new writers set new directions. I get it. Still, some of this is so awkward, so clunky, that I cannot get on board. I think today's show was awful.

-- Laura and Heather: I am so sick of watching Laura be kind and understanding to Heather. Now we're getting literal exposition that Heather is not responsible for her crimes and craziness. Redemption is possible with some characters, but I am not OK with the ridiculous redemption of someone like Heather Webber. She should be off the show.

Alley Mills is really feeling her Emmy. Every scene is an exercise in weird faces and acting tics.

-- I have never seen a photoshoot like the one at Deception. Why do it at all if it can't look realistic? Lucy screaming at Sasha was so absurd -- but the scene only got worse when Maxie started flailing her arms around. WTH was Kirsten Storms doing?

There had to be a better way to get Cody to quit Deception and to get Sasha to rethink her role there. All of it was awful.

If Mulcahey and Korte can't change directions in a better way, why should I have hope for the future?
 

23 minutes ago, 1974mdp said:

I still think Brooke should have an fling with Hollis...and then, she finds out he's Ridge's long-lost son from an ex-model at Forrester!

I would LOVE that.

Sorry if I'm repeating what others have said (was offline for 4 days and don't have time right now to catch up on all I've missed here), but it's ridiculous that Joss is this naive.

I'm not buying it unless she's as dumb as a box of rocks or she's been drugged. This is clearly a character reset, but it's really awkward in execution -- meaning it's bad. It's just not believable.

Joss has grown up around all these people. She wasn't away in some boarding school for 20 years. She KNOWS that Port Charles is Crime Central. And now she's shocked -- SHOCKED -- with this Dex news? She's appalled and destroyed?

GTFOH.

3 hours ago, TEdgeofNight said:

Difference of opinion. She’s looking more like her age. The bags under her eyes onscreen are new. The lighting must be different. 

Dierdre Hall did not age in a week.

I blame all of this on production. DH's hair looks different/undone, the lighting is off, and they're shooting her from different and awkward angles.

On 3/18/2024 at 8:50 PM, SamandWillowFan said:

Why is B&B so marriage obsessed compared to the other soaps 

I'd like to know the same thing. Why can't these couples ever be happy just being together instead of this complete OBSESSION to have a wedding?

Even worse, most of the conversations aren't between the couple -- instead they're with other family members. Who the eff lives this way?

3 hours ago, Althea Davis said:

I disagree completely. It was IN character. This was a person that slept with a father and his two sons before that. She is clearly perverted and sick. And this storyline was the most fun in the show's history. Complete binge-worthy guilty pleasure. Haha.

Fully agree. Deacon and Bridge was in character, so much so that I'd be fine with them having another go-round starting today.

Sorry, just one look at Brooke's life tells you that NOTHING is too messy or out of character for her. She's not exactly some paragon of rationality.

On 3/19/2024 at 5:03 AM, Vee said:

I'll say what I said when we first learned Y&R had dispensed with all breakdown writers so Josh could do it himself: It's a recipe for a psychological meltdown. I'll never forget Harding Lemay casually mentioning in his book how he fired most/all of the staff or breakdown writers at AW after finding their work inferior and began simply writing the whole (90 minute!!) show essentially himself 5 days a week, 365 days a year. That is psychotic. As this continued on he began casually littering the pages with more and more oblique mentions of his wife and children's mental breakdowns, addictions, institutionalizations, etc. as he and his family began falling apart. Whether he fully understood the link between these things was never quite clear to me.

There have been murky stories about Griffith having personal issues BTS that I don't know too much about. What I do know is this kind of pressure is a recipe for anyone to lose it. As I told Darn the other day, so much of Y&R feels like it is plotted just to get Josh through the next week or two so he can stop writing for a few hours. Plots fast-forward (like Zenk's character debuting and almost immediately being exposed, and now doing all these disguises) or simply don't happen onscreen at all. Every week is either about standing in place or hitting a new wall story-wise. It's not sustainable for any writer IMO, and Griffith used to be truly talented long ago at OLTL.

This is really the perfect analysis of Josh Griffith's writing and leadership at Y&R.

As long as the writing team remains this way, there's no way the show improves. We'll get one story after another having a couple riveting episodes followed by a complete thud of nothing.

4 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

Both Harrison and Connor appeared today as quiet, very moody, and reserved kids. It was awkward to watch.

I think Y&R does an awful job of casting children. The kid playing Connor is not all that good and the kid playing Harrison is just awful.

It cannot be that difficult to find a child actor who can act.

1 hour ago, Bright Eyes said:

As a lapsed, but returned viewer, I have to take a moment to [!@#$%^&*] on the current opening. Embarrassing, cheap, lame!

I agree -- that open is really bad.

GH uses far too many headshots every day, for one thing. By the time the open is over, you cannot remember who was in it. Having the photos keep pace with the music does not work here.

The photos themselves are a huge problem. Some look unfiltered, while others look filtered to death. Some look natural, while others look like caricatures or cartoons. Some show the actor looking attractive while others....do not. It looks like 3 separate teams worked on the photos and never spoke to each other.

It all just feels like A LOT of stalling until Ron C returns to write.

6 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

Yesterday's show was horrendous.

The direction and especially the scenes at the ranch were uninspiring and odd.

Seeing Chance's hot chest was nice.

The Jordan/Victor scenes and the out come were predictable and anticlimactic. The Frat Boy coming to the rescue made it more annoying and painful to watch.

Have to fully agree with your comments about yesterday's show. Jesus, another pffffffft climax. And no, Nick showing up to save the day wasn't some OMG moment (as so many on Reddit say it was, and also add that with this episode, "Y&R is BACK!"  I mean WT Actual F???)

Again, horrible and lazy execution in every way of a decent story and plot.

I've come to the conclusion that YR's troubles are not only its long-term or short-term bibles, but with the breakdown and execution by production. Things got so much worse when the breakdown writers were fired.

For example, take the "Jordan pushes Seth into traffic and to his death" scene. Couldn't that have been written more realistically? And produced and directed better? The fault isn't with the plot element, but with the execution.

The OCD story isn't bad in and of itself. It's the execution --  all offscreen until we get one day with Connor visiting the psychiatrist.

Tucker is a bad boy in business. Not a bad plotline. Execution? He goes from the GCAC restaurant to his room, Then back to the restaurant. Then back to his room.

Repeat the above by inserting "Audra" in the place of "Tucker."

Alcoholic Nikki needs to attend an AA meeting. We get a scene with the camera only on her at this meeting -- because there's no set. We get one flat as a backdrop and no extras except the back of a head. Awful production.

Tessa and Mariah worry about Newman security while living at the ranch house. Production? It's all offscreen, until it's time to look for a new place to live -- so they flip through Zillow on their phone.

I can do this with every single plot on this show. None of this excuses Josh Griffith. Yes, he's come up with good plot developments, but he's also responsible for the breakdown and production.

48 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

You just miss seeing him in my avatar

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just put him in a Sean Cody movie where he belongs.

I hope the budget is there to back The Gates.

I'm as excited as everyone else about the project, but I want it to look good and I want to feel good watching it. I do not want to see obvious cheap-outs and clear signs of a limited budget.

Guy Wilson (formerly Will Horton) was on SWAT last night. 

21 hours ago, 1974mdp said:

Also, does anyone at FC actually work? All they do is make out and have sex in the office!

And when they do work, we see someone drawing a design -- unlike the way anyone in the industry does it.

It looks like RJ, Zende, Eric, and Ridge do nothing but play coloring book or draw over lines that are already there.