Faulkner

I’m seeing a lot of sites that posted full nominations that have taken down their articles. This GoldDerby thread has a list that I’m not seeing verified elsewhere (scroll down): https://www.goldderby.com/forum/daytime-tv/2025-daytime-emmy-nominations/page/4/

Yeah, the Bell style is not easily imitated. Even Bill Bell’s own son can’t manage it. We see how anemic Josh Griffith’s feeble attempt at it feels. The only person who has been relatively successful at it was Kay Alden, and she was treated like yesterday’s trash. Bill Bell’s touch made that style feel mythical yet still somehow modern. It’s a balance no one else has come close to achieving. Way too many Duprees introduced all at once, and they are very imbalanced gender-wise. ATWT had a gazillion Snyders crawling out of the woodwork, for sure, but you still had a lot of other characters who were tentpoles because of the Marland-style deep canvas that soaps can no longer afford to maintain. I appreciate the idea of a multigenerational Black family, but the execution leaves much to be desired. We’ve said ad nauseum that Martin should have been Anita and Vernon’s (they’ve basically written him that way in terms of behavior). Kat/Eva are one of the show’s strokes of genius, but we could have done without Naomi and Chelsea for a while, if we needed them at all. Dani being childless while Hayley is “pregnant” could have been an interesting complication, especially if she’s plotting an Annie Dutton-type deception. This is an intriguing experiment of a new soap in 2025, and I hope somehow they continue to defy the odds. But there’s a lot of work to be done.

I think there have been missed opportunities to explore relationships (like how Martin relates with his parents, for example—he was barely in scenes with Nicole/Ted prior to the Leslie/Dana reveal, and it wouldn’t have taken much to establish more layered dynamics there). Nicole’s had her own drama, but she’s a psychiatrist, and her son has been enduring psychological trauma. She’s been much more involved in her sister’s drama than her son’s. Whether that’s a character choice that we’ll learn about later remains to be seen (or if it’s been an issue of lining up actors’ schedules/guarantees), but there’s a weird choppiness to the show that undermines a lot of the good ideas. Soaps require a lot of walking and chewing gum at the same time, so I don’t envy MVJ one bit, especially if budgets aren’t there. BTG doesn’t have the luxury of counting on viewer patience like new soaps in previous eras had. (Passions was 1999, which may as well be the Neolithic era in TV terms. Much less talking about Santa Barbara and B&B’s launches back in the early Stone Age. You can’t do an apples-to-apples comparison to previous soap launches because the viewing environment has changed so drastically. Hell, 2019 seems ancient now.) Fair or not, BTG had to hit the ground running in ways that no soap in history has had to do. Things move much faster these days, which is why launching a soap in 2025 was such a risky (and courageous) prospect. Its very existence is its own triumph, and they’ve done pretty well in holding an audience, all things considered.

Him looking gorgeous in Dannii Minogue’s video for “This Is It” before they got married:

Just meant two Charmed cast members dying of cancer young so close together. But, yes, Julian kept his cancer fight private like Chadwick Boseman did.

Very sad. He was very good in whatever he turned up in. Can’t believe he and Shannen Doherty are both gone in a little over a year.

Folks are peacing out left and right.

Hadn’t seen this. 😥

Wow:

I agree. Setton is bringing it for me right now and she’s never done that much for me in this role.

There was a time I didn’t listen to anything BUT Beach Boys. Insane to lose him AND Sly Stone within a couple of days at the same age (82) given their parallel career trajectories and struggles as bandleaders and artists. My favorite Beach Boys song: And possibly the greatest pop song ever:

This show is so deeply unserious.

LLC can be a lot (lady definitely doesn’t phone it in), but her scenes with Rena made me wish they played actual sisters on a better platform. Aside from JE, who is a legend so it’s no surprise when she’s excellent, Amanda Setton is my MVP of this story and she hasn’t always been great in this role. You see so much happening in her face as she’s navigating the shifts and layers of this story. She’s fully locked in. Glad Rory Gibson is getting his due on GH. I knew he had more to give than what Y&R was giving him. The writing will be a factor here as well because the character of Michael hasn’t been written well in ages (if ever, arguably). GH just can’t sustain the good stuff for more than a few weeks. Alexa Havins is a very good actress and was widely embraced as Lulu initially, but the character’s one-note abrasiveness has a lot of folks wishing she was gone at this point.

This. The 1994 telecast had some of my favorite winners with Zaslow finally getting his due, Melissa Hayden, and all three major players in the Marty rape storyline getting recognized (HBS, Haskell, Howarth).

My girl:

I think Arielle Prepetit is great, but I almost wish Naomi had been Nathan and Jacob were Jacqueline (shades of Tom and Margo). We’d have another Dupree son, and the idea of Bill being a disgraced role model for his male lawyer son would have a different resonance around masculinity and generational trauma, especially since we already have Chelsea for the female Hamilton daughter POV. Just for the balance.

I wish the Black male characters felt more fleshed out (and I’m not talking about gross 2000s-style man pain like with Jonathan Randall or Billy Abbott). I feel like we don’t have as much access to their interior worlds, which—fine—female genre. Right now, the balance on BTG feels off to me gender-wise, mostly because there are a lot of Dupree daughters (Chelsea, Naomi, Dani, Nicole, Kat, possibly Eva) and only one son (Martin). Feel free to disagree. I think Andre, Bill, and Martin feel closest to male “main characters” to me (Jacob had his quick moment), in that they can drive a scene from their POV and not as a supporting character. I’m waiting for the secrets to be fully revealed so that the men can show more layers. But things like having two cheating husbands stand out more in this type of environment.