Faulkner

LOL!

Mess. What’s with this guy? They’d been together for years prior to the marriage.

Bryton on Maurice Benard’s YouTube show: The conversation about Kristoff gets pretty heavy.

JG’s show is anti-entertainment for sure, but a lot of these characters have felt burnt out for a larger part of a decade if not more: Billy, Sharon, Phyllis, Victor, Nikki, Nick, Victoria, Adam, Lily, Jack, Abby, Ashley, the list goes on. They all felt very stale even before JG came back. Some of that burnout stems from bad storytelling and characters somewhat written into corners. Most people are sort of apathetic that Nikki has no real role on the show in spite of her longevity and MTS’s stardom. She doesn’t excite people and hasn’t in years. Some of it is casting. Ordway in no way should be a leading lady on any soap. Even though I wasn’t much of a fan of them, I understood why the show relied so heavily on Summer and Kyle, who had *some* potential but were victims of timid, inconsistent, bland writing. Y&R had no interest in investing in Finn and Ana, in spite of the charisma and talent of their actors. They don’t seem to be investing in Nate, Elena, or Imani, even though they’re all played by appealing performers (and we can talk ad nauseum about the show’s longstanding racism). The show stupidly killed off the one new character who had taken off in the past 7-8 years: Hilary. A lot of bad management got us here. And that’s not even going into the ABCifcation/strip mining of the show, which is probably the root of all of it. Y&R’s characters were conceived as mythic, and the show has felt very small for the better part of 20 years. Some of it is budgetary reality; a lot of is a sensibility/corporate vision that’s just a poor fit for the show. At the end of the day, it’s 2021 and none of these soaps are killing it. But if they can’t be good, they can at least be watchable. P.S. One huge problem is that the show doesn’t know how to tell stories outside the Newman vortex. Literally everyone is entangled in this boring family’s drama. If they’re not, they don’t matter.

These lists are harder and harder to justify.

Hehe.

KA’s wig looks so witness protection ugh. Annika Noelle can be good, but lord these faces she’s making during this Ridge/Brooke scene…

Oh that’s sad. Mickey Dolenz is the last Monkee standing.

GT’s Phyllis and Hilary bonded over being outcasts (and their shared connection to Jack) so it made total sense. MS’s Phyllis and Amanda feels like a weak attempt to recreate that without any of those underpinnings, and Amanda is a totally bland, underwritten character. Plus, they use Amanda to try to bring out Phyllis’s cuddly side, when we know Phyllis is more like GH’s Carly. As the ladies on RHONY would say, she’s not a girl’s girl.

I don’t buy MS’s Phyllis and Amanda as friends *at all*.

I could not agree more, but it feels like the remaining mostly older audience is sticking around because they enjoy the familiarity. I feel like Y&R’s cast of characters is beyond played out. The Newman family could not be more boring to me.

Hopefully with two of the three actors recast, the dynamic will be somewhat fresh. B&B has all the subtlety of a stomping Stegosaurus.

They mention that a few times in the Daily Beast piece. She’s gotten away with a lot.

GU was fine, but there’s a fresh-faced innocence and sense of irony that Kim Fields had, and I didn’t think Gabrielle’s more knowing, sardonic take made much of an impression, especially when you had someone like Kathryn Hahn in the cast. I was worried for John Lithgow’s back with all that lifting of Kevin Hart. Dude is 76 years old.