Faulkner

Interesting considering how many long-running No. 1s we’ve had recently. Meanwhile “Don’t Start Now” keeps hanging around.

Stassi has been dropped by her PR firm: More on the story: https://pagesix.com/2020/06/08/stassi-schroeder-and-kristen-doute-apologize-for-past-actions/

Talk about having a bad year... My God, this poor woman.

Oh yes. Vail Bloom had that too!

From Serra, Brazil 🇧🇷

I’m obsessed with Scarlett Johansson’s voice obviously, but I love a woman with a sexy, throaty rasp, and Juliet had that. In another era, she would have developed into a great villainess.

Did KMK get an opportunity for a scene like that in any of her daytime roles?

Yeah, B&B was not a community soap, usually focusing on the Forresters and another family (the Logans, Spectras, Spencers), but I agree. An employee of Forrester Creations could easily have been gay. Before Rome Flynn left, they toyed with a story of Zende Forrester presenting his sketches to Steffy and Thomas, only to be met with condescending rejection. It could have been an interesting story of Zende being the black outsider in the Forrester family, possibly with him absconding to Spectra. But they dropped the story.

Yep, let’s see: Kristoff St. John (1992) Monti Sharp (1993) Kevin Mambo (1996-97) Bryton James (2007) Rome Flynn (2018) Kyler Pettis (2019) Only the Y&R actors stuck around their show (with KSJ winning again as Supporting in 2008 - not that it helped his story prospects). Monti Sharp’s subsequent daytime roles were lackluster. Let’s not talk about the only black female winners being Debbi Morgan (in a tie for Supporting with Nancy Lee Grahn in 1989), Christel Khalil (Younger, 2012), and Vernee Watson (Supporting in 2019, for what—correct me if I’m wrong—isn’t even a contract role).

I’d been watching some Carla/Ed clips from the ‘80s, long after their heyday. Even throwaway clips show their chemistry. Al Freeman, Jr. just has this laidback Humphrey Bogart energy with his deep voice, and Ellen Holly has this classic Hollywood elegance and sparkle. Horrible that they were so carelessly discarded. (Their scenes start at 3:12 and 5:52 in the first two videos.) A clip with them and Phylicia Rashad:

Re: LML’s Y&R: Ji Min, mentioned earlier, was quite groundbreaking in a way. An Asian man allowed to be sexy and powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with the Alphas of Genoa City. (Y&R certainly eroticized Philip Moon’s Keemo back in the mid-‘90s, but ultimately made him a pathetic joke with the whole Mary Jo Mason story.) The writing for Ji Min was mostly AWFUL, though, and most people didn’t even notice when he was killed off.

From Los Angeles 🇺🇸

I didn’t watch much of S8. So Derrick Barry is part of a throuple?! He’s definitely the least attractive of the trio. Ongina. Oof. I expect more from an OG queen. India Ferrah did turn it. Her weather report back in S3 was one of my favorite Drag Race trainwrecks.

Global K-pop sensation BTS and their Korean record label have donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter. https://variety.com/2020/music/news/bts-big-hit-1-million-black-lives-matter-donation-1234627049/

I’m curious if that was the intention, and it died when Sussman departed. Or if it was pitched and nixed, as Patrick Mulcahey suggested a lot of these things are. Soaps have largely resisted acknowledging a growing U.S. beyond white and black/Latinx. Karen in Middle America ain’t ready for that (admittedly my mother sees Asian people of all cultural identities as “foreigners” due to lack of exposure), and a South Asian family would be a political statement and not a story in their minds. Plus they might have to justify it from a market perspective. Are South Asian viewers numerous enough for them to see as an untapped market (and that’s not taking into account the variety of South Asian identities)? To be fair, shows like Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Doctor, which have been praised for their inclusiveness, should have had far more Asian representation (primarily SE Asian and South Asian) than they’ve had over the years. It’s sad that I’ve seen more South Asian actors get roles as terrorists on Homeland than elsewhere on American TV.

From Bangkok 🇹🇭

By the way Nia Long is trending on Twitter, with Black Twitter singing her praises.

I agree, largely. LML was *very* interested in Dru. The other members of the Winters family? Not so much. I know a lot of people hated how Dru behaved during that era with the Carmen Mesta mess. But that story was absolutely told from her perspective, came organically out of Neil learning Lily was Malcolm’s daughter, led to a whodunit that affected the entire canvas, and gave VR some of her most memorable performances.

“It’s as though the mere presentation of such lives, *our* lives, is ‘political’ and will stir a debate.” Again, all of this is obvious to anyone who has been a lifetime viewer of soaps, but I’m glad Mulcahey is articulating all of this publicly. Too bad it’s only being discussed when daytime drama has been relegated to the dustbin of TV history, with zero cultural influence and no hope of change.

From Hong Kong 🇭🇰

I thought she was a fabulous actress. OMG those wigs on Nicole.

Camille was Ben’s love interest who had breast cancer and a mastectomy and fell in love with Brad Snyder.

All true. I think, even beyond race, Mulcahey speaks to ideas of what networks feel like daytime’s “conservative” viewers will accept, which has stifled the growth of the medium. They’ve dumbed down soaps with the stereotype of some white, older, poorly educated, bible-thumping viewer in mind. And some point, a lot of holdout viewers who didn’t fit that mold just said, y’all can have this sh!t because it’s not doing it for me anymore. I know we all love soaps, but even at their best, they failed us consistently in terms of showcasing America in all of its exciting variety. The soaps stayed stuck or even regressed to cater to a dwindling, dying audience; hundreds of other options are available to people who want more; and perhaps it was all inevitable given how the world has changed so dramatically. But it’s just sad that we never saw the Harding Lemays of daytime portray the world as we know it to be, with the same depth of character they were known for.