Faulkner

I think Y&R would be better off letting the audience in on the schemes of characters like Tara earlier on instead of doing it as a reveal. (Not that Y&R hasn’t hinted that Tara had claws previously, but most of her scenes just completely flatlined and didn’t have enough real subtext.) The show’s not engaging enough in the day-to-day for viewers to sit around to see if the story’s going somewhere. At this point, I’m too annoyed to care that Tara’s openly threatening and manipulating Summer. It’s not like Lucy Coe the mousy librarian being revealed as the vamp. With Y&R’s best villains, we were given their points of view (true to Bill Bell’s obsession with psychology), which made them all the more impactful and disturbing. Even if, say, Cricket knew Phyllis was a bit off, she had no clue about the depth of Phyllis’s evil. But we did. In the past, the audience knew how bad the baddies were long before the other characters did, which added a lot of tension and suspense.

From Nigeria 🇳🇬

Baby-making music.

From the United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Esta barely looks different.

I typically don’t love medical crises/near-death stories on soaps because the writers go to that well too often, you know there will be a miraculous recovery, and they’ll be walking around like normal three episodes later (like Curtis and Jason after being shot). The stakes just don’t feel there. But Josh Swickard has really elevated and grounded this in ways that I haven’t seen in years on these shows. I can’t give him enough praise. I liked him before and thought he had more talent and star quality than your bog-standard soap hunks, but he has really impressed me with this illness story. (He’s made me emotional multiple times, without straining for effect.) I hope GH knows how lucky they are to have him, considering he has had some mainstream success. Gotta say, we dunk on him a lot, but Michael Easton has stepped up big time for this story. His breakup scenes with Finola a few weeks ago were just *bad*, and FH basically had to do all the work. But he’s been really good the past couple of weeks.

Annie Ilonzeh (Maya, GH) has been cast as the lead in an NBC drama pilot. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/annie-ilonzeh-nbc-getaway-1234970539/

The dialogue on this show is so clunky and labored. It’s as if someone told them to write the show like a stiff Victorian costume drama. It’s clear they’re setting up the Lockes to be snakes in the grass, with eyes potentially both on Jabot and NE. They could not have laid the groundwork more poorly for this, though.

He really was an underrated lyricist, even when the suggestive stuff felt on the nose. “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” was a great storytelling song.

The opening lyric, “I guess I should’ve known by the way you parked your car sideways that it wouldn’t last,” has been in my head ALL week for some reason.

From Italy 🇮🇹

From Los Angeles 🇺🇸

For some reason, I thought that was already announced, and I guess it was just assumed.

Loren Lott (Ana, Y&R) has her next role lined up: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/olunike-adeliyi-loren-lott-join-cbc-bet-civil-rights-drama-the-porter-1234969204/

Ugh…

OK, Meghan decided to get buck with Whoopi just now, and I can’t imagine that’s going over well during commercial break. I have a feeling Meghan is gonna be gone soon. They just apologized to each other after they returned from break.

From the Czech Republic 🇨🇿

Michael Mealor has great hair. That’s about as nice as I’ll be about what I’m seeing.

Good for Felix! People are saying, oh Roger needs more time. Time isn’t exactly a friend when you’re an athlete pushing 40 (who just underwent two knee surgeries). But we shall see! I never count him out.

Wow, Kiki Bertens is retiring.

From Indonesia 🇮🇩

Lol. The gasp from the audience… He should have been immediately defaulted and suspended for that.

Yeah, it felt strange actually. Not even because of residual COVID fears… just not used to it! Pretty much. Even black folks on Twitter are like, “Eboni, chill.”