Faulkner

From Thailand 🇹🇭

I love Dorit standing up to Kyle. And Sutton has Teddi’s number so bang on.

That is vile lol. Oh, no, a gay love story is too far for our audience, but they’ll go there? Glad it was stopped.

The mix of really good actors with terrible ones has happened on a lot of soaps but never was it more pronounced than on Passions.

Drew could be one-note, but I thought she was talented, and I did enjoy her with PdA. I actually thought she’d become even more famous after the raves she got from playing Judy Garland. But she’s had a wonderful career on stage and screen. Respected and able to star in big projects but not having to deal with the irritations of being a huge celebrity.

Can’t watch Cassie die *again*, but Eileen Davidson’s intro shot during this era was sooo bad. (I know Ashley had been battling cancer but her facial expression was so goofy.)

!!!!

From Texas 🇺🇸

Oh wow. I was in Yerevan last year for a work trip in Armenia and Georgia. Loved it there. Nicest people ever. It’s interesting traveling certain places as a black man. I was surrounded by crowds as if I was a celebrity.

YES! The farmhouse episode. And Sharon/Nikki in the sewers is fun.

Longer clip:

No Tom Pelphrey nomination for Ozark but, as an aside, black folks cleaned up today:

LOL at Meghan picking a fight with Whoopi and Sunny smirking and sipping her tea. Whoopi seemed like she wanted to jump through the TV and choke the hell out of Meghan, pregnant and all.

From Manizales, Colombia 🇨🇴

Lots of vintage hair in this ep: Victoria, Drucilla. Even Ryan’s do seemed to have a bit of ‘50s grease to it.

I disagree with that comparison certainly. We’ll have to wait and see on the reboot (although Lee Daniels’s involvement gives me pause). But a big yes to her skepticism about the networks’ commitment.

Amen to Anne-Marie Johnson’s comments. And again, will these commitments apply to their daytime lineups, or are the soap writing teams simply flying under the radar due to apathy?

Grain of salt given what we’ve already spoken about (comparing artists from different eras, as Billboard and technology move the goalposts), but... And they come with “features” on other people’s records:

I thought those pectorals were Shemar’s for a second in the intro, but they were Kristoff’s. He didn’t get enough credit for being sexy. Heather Tom’s hair in this episode! She looked like a 1940s bombshell with her victory rolls.

Pretentious is the key word because they saw themselves as the “thinking person’s music site.” In the early 2000s, they were known for mostly reviewing indie rock music, with a glancing acknowledgment of hip hop. Once they realized that niche alone wasn’t going to pay the bills, as guitar-based music had increasingly fallen out of favor throughout the 2000s, they started trying to take pop more seriously. But you’re right: even as late as TS’s 1989, they didn’t deem her work worth exploring until Ryan Adams came along and validated it. Slate nailed it a few years ago: their mostly male staff dismissed pop and mainstream country because their audiences were strongly female. And Taylor wasn’t seen as “edgy” enough for them.