Khan

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.

In a way, I don't count VI, because he had been on GL before (in a different role). VI's run as Nick started off well, IMO, because you had a HW'ing team who knew what and how to write for him. Once that team was gone, however...? Unfortunately, Marj Dusay came at a time when the character of Alexandra was falling through the proverbial cracks and a lot of the nuances that Beverlee McKinsey had brought to the role through even the most trying times was gone. If they had written Marj's Alex more like Myrna Clegg on CAPITOL - or, heck, more like Monica Warner on "The Facts of Life", lol! - I think her time there would have been more successful. As I've stated many times in the past, I actually like Justin Deas and thought he was a great addition to the show. Did the writers go overboard writing for his character? Did the directors not do enough to rein in his excesses as an actor? Maybe. Believe it or not, though, JD became one of the very few reasons I stayed as a viewer with GL for as long as I did. Otherwise, I would've been gone by 1996 at the latest. And as for the other two: Mark Derwin is, by no means, a great actor, but he had the advantage of being there at a time when the show had a HW like Nancy Curlee. So, I guess he was smart to leave when he did, before the wheels fell off the wagon, lol. On the other hand, poor Marcy Walker, lol. GL (and JFP) brought her on with nothing to her character except that ridiculous name! Worse, they hoped that she and Robert Newman would spark right away, and when they didn't, it was clear they didn't know what else to do with her. And because Matt/Vanessa were soooooooooo successful, JFP felt compelled to do it all over again with Ben/Viki on OLTL, even though it made no damn sense for Erika Slezak's Viki to hook up with someone like Mark Derwin's Ben after being with men like Lee Patterson/Joe Riley, Bernie Grant/Steve Burke and Clint Ritchie/Clint Buchanan.

JFP hiring Marcy Walker to play Tangie on GL was like DAYS hiring Genie Francis to play Diana Colville. In both cases, you have a producer/show hiring a "name" without giving them a character to play. (GH hiring Denise Alexander away from DAYS to play Lesley might also qualify, except, in that case, GH eventually figured out what to do with her). I'm not kidding, though, when I say watching MW try mightily to make Tangie work was one of the most frustrating things I've ever witnessed in all my years of soaps watching. When they threw Tangie at Ron Raines' Alan, I was pretty much done with her.

Neither can I, lol. And the thing is, if Y&R's writers were smart, other characters on the show, including his own family, would recognize that and call him out on that.

Yep. I think he said he was concerned that little kids watching AMC with their parents would get "Tyrone" confused with "Gordon."

Honestly, the music totally ruins the scene for me.

Lord, what a mess. Thanks, @janea4old, for that recap. You deserve combat pay for doing that, lol.

Unless the show opens with a bunch of black folks sitting around with kinky afros eating fried chicken and watermelon while they "play the dozens" with each other, I don't think I'll be terribly disappointed in the first episode to the point of never tuning in again.

Yeah, it's that time again:

Are we sure that's not the Gorton's fisherman? I'm joking.

Good point!