Khan

I'm saying PASSIONS and NBCD wanted us, the viewing public, to believe that what they were producing everyday was legitimately good soap opera and not anything else until they realized that they were fooling no one. Then, rather than admit that the show was horrible, that no one other than small children thought it was any good, that NBCD had made a mistake in giving JER his own show and full creative control, and that maybe they should replace him as HW (if not as EP and show owner, too) with someone who knew what the [!@#$%^&*] they were doing, TPTB decided that they would Jedi Mind Trick everyone instead into thinking it always was meant to be camp/satire/spoof and that we were just missing the point.

That's almost exactly like what's going right now over at GH: "How dare that Nina report Drew and Carly to the SEC for something that they did that was totally illegal and stupid?" I guess the pandemic and widespread budget cuts also affected these shows' ability to prop their shittiest characters?

Compared to the other P&G soaps' openings from that same period, I'd say "Ritournelle" was the weakest. ATWT's was the best, of course, followed by EON's and AW's. SFT's also was good, if a little too simple, but GL's was too muddied (IMO, anyway) and SOMERSET's was just too vague.

Again, I have to go back to PASSIONS as being the absolute nadir of this genre. There were bad soaps before PASSIONS, but no soap, IMO, was as bad - not just dull, like pre-Barnabas DS; or generic, like most of LOVING; but flat-out, funky-ass bad - from day damn one as PASSIONS was. I mean, bad writing, bad acting, bad directing, bad music and sets - that piece of [!@#$%^&*] never should have seen the light of day. But the truly funny/sad part is how PASSIONS tried to re-brand itself as tongue-in-cheek satire after they realized how much of a thud they had landed within the general soap watching community. "It's campy, because it's supposed to be campy!" Bitch, please! Your show reeks and you know it! Anyways. Y'all were saying?

I'm surprised we didn't get: "Up Next, the stars of ABC's newest hit comedy, 'Abbott Elementary,' share their favorite GENERAL HOSPITAL memories!". And I love Sheryl Lee Ralph, but I really don't care whether she was a Bryan/Claudia fan BITD.

Jo Koy hosting your awards show is a good sign that your awards show has ceased being relevant to most everyone.

The fact is the soaps, and the people who work in the soaps, always have been ashamed of themselves. They don't see what they do for their most loyal fans as being as "legitimate" as what primetime shows and movies do for their audiences. IOW, daytime has suffered for a long time from a massive inferiority complex; and it's that complex, IMO, that has been the primary cause of its' downfall.

I guess anything was better than this:

He has what scientists call "rotten luck," lol. Here's my problem with Daniel Cosgrove: several of his past co-stars have talked in the past about how funny and charming he is IRL, but you never see any of that on-screen! It's as if the moment the director yells "Action!" or says "and in 5...4...3...2...1," all the humor and charm leave his person completely.

Another anti-heroine who fits that bill (IMO)? EON's Raven. Especially in the beginning, before Sky Whitney gave her what she wanted most: someone who loved her and understood her needs, but never wanted to tie her down. (That brief monologue she gives about how she came to re-naming herself is just so good, lol).

LD was fortunate to have two great pairings on SaBa: one, with Harley Jane Kozak's Mary; the other, with NLG's Julia. Sweet Mary was such a delicious contrast to tortured Mason, while Julia stimulated him intellectually and sexually through 1930's-style wit while keeping his ego in check. I agree! The thing is, if SaBa had been more consistent - if the writers had taken more care to craft solid storylines and not just great episodes (that could help them win more Emmys) - would the show have been as special? I think you could glimpse some of what I mean in the final year with Pamela K. Long as HW. For the first time in I-didn't-know-when, SaBa was making a concerted effort to be more traditional and tell long-term stories with impact - B.J.'s sexual abuse tale comes to mind - but in the process, a lot of the quirks and eccentricities that had come to define SaBa were evaporating. Even Mason and Julia weren't as delightfully screwball as they had been before. It does, and you are absolutely correct, @All My Shadows! Man! Now I'm wishing (again!) for someone to reboot/revive/re-whatever PP for a streaming outlet! As iconic as the original series was, I think it's the kind of property - locale, characters, overall themes, etc. - that would play just as well today with modern audiences as it did back in the '50's and '60's.

Not B&B!

Only Beverlee McKinsey could shred another woman to pieces verbally and make it sound as sweet as sugar. She was too good for soaps.

I know NLG can be exasperating sometimes, too, but she's another actor who never bores me. IMO, she was BORN to play Julia.

I think GL blundered in domesticating Buzz and Jenna. You don't take someone as vixenish as Fiona Hutchinson and tie her down with a husband and kids and a business that she runs with another soccer mom.

AMC: Erica vs. Brooke. (Other folks may love Bianca as the Patron Saint of Lesbian Rape Victims, but I think AMC's writers missed a big opportunity in not pairing Binks with Jamie, thereby making Erica and Brooke mothers-in-law).

Exactly!

If Tyler Perry fired him, then that could mean one of two things: either he's really bad, or he's really good, lol.

With you as HW? My team: Victor Miller, Patrick Mulcahey, Frank Salisbury and Wisner Washam

I guess she snuck into his hospital room one night when the nurses were off-duty, lol?

Jamey isn't working for Tylerco anymore?

Ironically, I think a major reason why SaBa told their rape story was to take a swipe at Laura's rape on GH. But the twist of having her rapist turn out to be her gynecologist was just so tasteless that it ruined the rest of the story for me. Only a man (Chuck Pratt?) would think that would be an okay way to wrap up a rape story.

I agree. I also thought the inherent class conflicts in the beginning (between the Perkinses and Andrades and the Capwells and Lockridges) were a smart way to build a new soap, but I probably would have concentrated just on two: the blue-collar, Hispanic Andrades and the rich, eccentric Lockridges. Rita Stapleton Bauer is so fascinating to me. As I said years ago, Rita basically was a decent person, but with one major flaw: the truth just wasn't in her, lol. Like with OLTL's Tina, though, I never thought she lied with the intent of hurting people. Rather, she lied, but she lied for the right reasons. I'd love to read that novel someday.

The premise is pretty straightforward: pretend you are a head-writing a soap opera. (It can be one that is still on the air, it can be one that is no longer on the air, it even can be one you've made up). If you could choose your staff writers, who would you choose? And yes, they can be dead or alive. (I'm sure even a dead person could do a better job writing some of these shows than the live ones who are writing them!)

To this day, I don't exactly know who bumped off Mary Robeson, or whether she really was Laura's long-lost mother.