Faulkner

8 pm curfew in NYC tomorrow night. Wow.

I wish soaps were still viable. This moment could allow for so much diversity, but daytime is playing it safe to hold on to a dying audience. We briefly had the Voliens/Keemo on Y&R and the Chin family on AMC. Haley and Trask on DAYS were just a stunt. The problem is that these shows see themselves as essentially white and always have. They don’t want to give up too many spots to POCs, and they rarely allow the ones they do have to build a legacy.

Good point. In a lot of those cases, the “hood” sibling wound up eclipsing the “uppity” one, who was seen as either boring (Neil/Hank/Ben) or sanctimonious.

Disgusting.

I had posted this in the Y&R thread but it might be appropriate here: For a while, it seemed like almost every show with a black family did the goody-two-shoes striver with the “hood” sibling they were responsible for keeping in line. Y&R: Olivia/Dru, Neil/Malcolm OLTL: Hank/RJ GL: Gilly/David ATWT: Ben/Isaac I guess they could argue they were undoing an ugly stereotypical story? It certainly didn’t feel that way at the time.

I was involved in that debate (actually defending “Mamie”). My feelings on that have shifted.

Oh dear. I remember how pathetic both of them looked. (Not gonna deny D.J. Lockhart-Johnson was attractive but still...) Oh here’s the clip of Margo salivating over him: Saw you covered “Kong” in the Y&R thread...

Couldn’t he have just listened to Dan for once?

A full Spotify playlist of Drag Race lip sync songs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0JOiknngUoGssGYWVH2pPT?si=1do5z-T4Tg6XVuFJVjbQng

Like a lot of Western culture, soaps have often had problematic relationships with race and depictions of people of color. We’ve spoken about this many times in different contexts on different soaps over the years, but what are the moments that leap to mind as particularly egregious? We talked a bit about Mamie as “mammy” in the classic Y&R thread. Recasting biracial Asian-American Mia Korf with white, Kentucky-born Kassie Wesley (later DePaiva) as Blair on OLTL, essentially erasing a key part of her history, ranks up there for me.

A lot of people did, I’m sure, but I rarely saw any criticism of Mamie in the soap media over the years.

Lady Gaga’s collaboration with Ariana Grande debuts at No. 1. It’s Gaga’s 5th and Ariana’s 4th.

From Atlanta 🇺🇸

As potentially problematic as the “mammy” relationship could be perceived through a 2020 lens, Mamie really should still be a presence in the lives of the Abbotts. She really did adore those kids.

Never realized how much Scarlett Johansson’s voice is similar to Brenda Epperson’s. I literally thought I was hearing ScarJo with Y&R in the background.

I think the weird arts-and-crafty thing was what Crystal was going for, but I do feel it needed something else. Like a big full-costume reveal at the end as mentioned. Ru seemed like she loved Jaida (in addition to how her win speaks to the moment). But if Gigi did indeed attempt to cheat, I can imagine that sealing Ru’s decision.

I think Jaida’s edit this season laid her out as the favorite, although they provided arcs for Crystal (finding her quirky voice) and Gigi (early front runner rediscovering her confidence after several shaky weeks) to try to make them seem competitive. (To be honest: The mostly white Drag Race fan community have often diminished the black queens, so I’m not surprised if there’s controversy beyond the usual “my favorite didn’t win,” but I see a good bit of support for Jaida.)

Flo added so much dimension to Nina, as Doris did for Sharon. Part of it is budgetary, I know, but I miss when recurring family members were integral and constant influences on characters who weren’t part of core families.

From Delhi 🇮🇳