Khan

Frank was clearly throwing a bone to all those who complain that Rebecca Herbst never gets enough airtime.

I'm almost scared to see the rest of Spinelli's digs. You know that's a child protective services call waiting to happen. Let's put it this way: if it weren't bland, unappealing Josh Kelly playing Cody, I'd be more into him and Tracy as a pairing. Well, we know she ain't sleepin' in his gaming chair. That's off limits to everyone who comes to Spinelli's.

Remember, this is the same GH that said Nina was wrong for turning Drew and Carly into the SEC, even though Drew and Carly were the actual criminals. Meanwhile, it would have taken me a lot to buy Cody and Tracy as a romantic or sexual pairing. And I mean a lot.

She wanted it that way!

[!@#$%^&*] it, I'll take Y&R.

Obviously, lol! I think "Back to You" suffered from two issues: 1) the fact that it was on a network (FOX) that was totally incompatible with the creator/EP's styles; and 2) the needless backstory that made Kelsey's character the illegitimate father to Patricia's daughter.

Which makes her a hypocrite AND a dumbfuck. Like I said, just have Blaze tell her to go away and let that be the end of it.

I can't even buy the argument that Natalia is concerned about Blaze being in a relationship with someone who possesses Kristina's family history. Are you kidding me? If anything, everyone involved in Blaze's musical career would exploit the hell out of her relationship with the daughter of a well-known mobster, lol! They literally would be pitching those two as a reality series to every network and streamer out there! The thing is, I don't blame Patrick Mulcahey (not even for attempting to pair up Natalia and Sonny), because Natalia and Blaze's relationship was something that was handed to him. I think he and Korte did the best they could with it, all things considered. If I were to blame anyone, it would be Chris Van Etten and Dan O'Connor, who had a knack for coming up with some of the stupidest ideas I'd ever heard. Honestly, I don't know what I would do at this point to salvage that particular storyline. It's idiotic and it's doing Blaze and Kristina no favors. In fact, I think it's making them even less likable, lol. Just have Blaze tell Natalia to go to hell and then have Natalia return to wherever she came from. The end.

Here's the thing: there are plenty of candidates I could name for each soap, but why would I want them subjected to such stifling network interference?

Because the last two times they worked together were so successful, lol! Couldn't they just bring back Jennifer Tilly as Candy and fulfill what was supposed to be the original plan for Frasier after his breakup with Diane?

I dunno, I kinda give her props for refusing to allow age to slow her down, lol? I also think she was smart to hold onto her flight attendant job even after Esther, um, took off (sorry, lol). Just as Marla Gibbs was smart to hold onto her gig taking reservations for another airline until she was sure "The Jeffersons" wasn't in danger of getting yanked off the air too quickly. The industry is so damn fickle. You never know how long your job will last, or whether another one is coming, so if you have a steady gig (like flight attendant) that doesn't interfere with the acting or writing jobs, by all means, hold onto it for as long as you can! I've always said that if I ever broke into the biz, I'd still keep a side gig, just in case.

Even if I were to agree that homophobia remains prevalent within the Hispanic and Latinx communities, I still think the premise of anyone, even a parent, being concerned at all with how a musical artist's sexuality will affect their career in 2024 is absurd and clearly the work of a writing team who 1) have not read a newspaper or magazine, watched or listened to a news broadcast, followed anyone on social media or even so much as stepped outside their own homes since 2007; and 2) are desperate to generate some conflict for an otherwise dull and inconsequential pairing. I also think (although, I have no evidence or insider information) that Frank Valentini sold ELR a bill of goods there, promising her role would be written one way, when, in fact, what she's been receiving and playing is not at all what she signed on for. (Hence, her apparent disconnect between what she's been saying about her role and what we're actually seeing on-screen). So, AFAIC, the sooner they can write Natalia into a corner with her homophobia and off the show for good, the better.

I agree! Or even the original "Forsyte Saga," for that matter! I think those two miniseries, along with our own "Adams Chronicles," should have become the template for all soaps.

It's just so fascinating to me to see how wildly soaps' ratings fluctuated throughout the '70's. One week, a soap could be in the middle or bottom of the pack; the next, they're practically rivalling ATWT at number one, lol!

Me, too!

By the way, @JAS0N47, do you know what happened to longtime DAYS scribe Michael Robert David? I seem to recall reading he was a playwright before joining the show's writing staff, but it seems like he never wrote anything else after leaving the show. Thanks!

BITD, I wished that someone like Venza would have come to daytime and elevated soaps to the same level as all those great programs he ushered in for PBS. Someone who would get soaps as far away from all the gimmickry as possible and put the focus back on where it belonged: great writing, great acting, great directing and producing.

In the past, I've heard/read rumors suggesting as much. Regardless, RR always felt like someone the show (and we) had to settle for, since filling Chris Bernau's shoes was just impossible. I agree! The CBS soaps, including those produced by P&G, always appealed to my intellect and sense of good theater/drama, while DAYS and SaBa appealed to my heart, with the ABC soaps falling somewhere in between. For sure, I've always thought that ABCD had the more colorful characters while the CBS/P&G shows had the better storylines.

I'll always remember her most as the waitress who infamously tempted Archie Bunker to stray from Edith on "All in the Family." May she RIP.

Did the person or persons who broke into his car steal his shirt, too?

And if we can't have that, then at least give us Vivica A. Fox and Jonelle Allen beating the hell out of each other every week.

It's been my experience that Josh/Reva fans were savvier whenever it came to issues such as airtime. They understood that it wasn't "The Josh and Reva Show" and that RN and KZ weren't going to be together always, or in every scene of every episode. IDK how other, longtime GL fans felt, but I thought it was so strange and disheartening to see TPTB at GL kowtow to rabid, entitled fan bases after basically remaining above the fray for most of the '80s and '90s. Like a fellow GL fan and FB friend once told me, GL (and ATWT) were the soaps for "thinking people." Their fans tended to be more educated and well-read than fans of other soaps. And even if you had a favorite character or couple, you didn't watch the shows just for them. You watched them for the writing and acting more than for anything else.

Say what you want about Paul Rauch, but for once, he was right.

I'm actually of two minds on Bryton/Devon. On the one hand, it's obvious that no one post-Bill Bell has made any real investment in Y&R's African-American characters, so the statement (however inadvertent) that Devon isn't a real character is not entirely off the mark, because no one who's of color and on Y&R is playing a real character anymore and hasn't for many, many years. On the other hand, I think the argument could be made that one of the OTHER things that holds Bryton back on this show is Bryton himself. Even if you had a HW or EP who halfway cared about POC on Y&R, what could they really do with an actor who doesn't possess Kristoff's acting abilities or Shemar's sex appeal and charisma? (And don't tell me Bryton has sex appeal and charisma, because we both know you're lying, lol!) To me, it's telling how they've basically stuck Devon with Abby, a character who might as well be retconned out of existence, for all the impact she has made on Y&R.