Faulkner

Yeah, I think YouTube curation from dedicated fans is our best bet, and we’ve gotten to see a lot of gems that I never thought I would see. Yeah, the quality of the clips are mostly sh!t but it’s better than nothing. (Maybe eventually AI will be good enough to marginally improve some of the clips. Right now, clips have to be basically good quality for Topaz to enhance them. A horrible staticky VHS rip would look a mess.) It’s just a shame that certain soap clips are subject to takedowns (especially the Sony shows and Santa Barbara) when the corporations aren’t making any efforts to extract value from them.

Soaps are tricky. The types of people who adore soaps to the level that we all do, that would watch episodes and episodes of random characters we’ve only read about in some cases, are VERY few and far between. I would think curated, DVD-collection-style series focusing on the history of one character or couple (say, Sami Brady or Carly/Sonny) would be more viable but even those would require digging deep into archives that are probably collecting dust in a lot of cases, especially with the cancelled shows we’d all want to see. My guess is that even the minuscule window that classic soaps had to go to SVOD streaming is closing more and more each day with all of the belt-tightening that’s happening at the major streamers. Even the FAST channels over on Pluto won’t go that far back into classic Y&R and B&B. Hopefully some union deals will give writers and actors more residual money, but the result will be that it might become more expensive to host series.

Coco is American, young, charismatic, historically significant, and has become a massive worldwide star in the making. Just look at how packed her crowds are at events. Novak (whom I remain a fan of due to his tenacity and work ethic—and the breadth of his fan base is underrated) was and always has been most marketable as a spoiler/villain to Federer and Nadal, although his brewing rivalry with Carlos Alcaraz seems to drive a lot of interest.

Where you at, @j swift?

Jessica Pegula’s dad, yikes: https://x.com/NFL_DovKleiman/status/1701626842732437616?s=20

TSJ on Maurice Benard’s State of Mind:

TSJ is on Maurice Benard’s YouTube series:

Looks like a hostage video.

People are coming for their necks:

An update on the status of the Daytime Emmy ceremony buried in a Variety article on how the Primetime Emmy ceremony will move forward if strikes persist:

LOL!

AOC has added her tribute to Ruschell, who was interviewing her when she learned she’d won her first election:

OMG. I’m just heartbroken about this. She was so ebullient (plus she had young kids). And she was doing so well, but pancreatic cancer is such a brutal disease. The NYC news market has suffered so many losses this year.

Country is really dominating. I do love Kacey.

Yeah I have a great fondness for “Dream Weaver” alongside ELO’s “Strange Magic” and “Telephone Line,” which we used to play all summer long during a college job I had (sorting files at a hospital). The video I shared mislabels the song as 1972 (it came out in late ‘75), but there’s something about that era of Beatles/prog rock/R&B-inflected pop that hits right in the sweet spot.

We’ve often talked about “Winters Wednesdays” on Y&R, those episodes where it seemed the Black characters and their glorified C-list stories were most prominently featured. If I recall correctly, during the soap shutdown of the pandemic, when CBS aired a week of classic Winters-themed episodes, most of them were indeed from Wednesdays. Wednesday episodes don’t provide the thrill of Friday cliffhangers or the satisfaction of Monday resolutions. Meanwhile, soaps have often used Tuesdays as a weekly reset button, while others use them to delve deeper into the aftermath of Monday’s drama (personally, I can’t stand it when soaps leave us hanging after Mondays). Thursdays often serve as the ramp-up to the big Friday moments. But Wednesdays have often been labeled as the “throwaway” episodes, even though they offer valuable opportunities for character development or exploring parts of the canvas that deepen the world of the show. Some soaps have used Wednesdays for experimentation. GL, for instance, created its “Into the Light” episodes, most notably Harley’s famous superhero escapade. Y&R has adopted this single-character-focused format from time to time (often to give its actors like Jason Thompson and Michelle Stafford their Emmy reels). I don’t particularly like that format, as it stops the forward momentum of story dead in its tracks and many times feels indulgent (usually featuring writer-propped favorites I can’t stand). Of course, there are a lot of variables involved with keeping a soap moving through a week. Actor episode guarantees being one of them. Soaps can’t usually afford to play people everyday (unless you’re Bradley Bell with a tiny cast of favorites), so choices have to be made and stories need to be rotated. There needs to be some passing of the baton between episodes, of course, with each day’s minor cliffhanger getting some resolution the next day (some soaps just don’t do that, preferring to give some “catharsis” from the day’s episode that doesn’t necessarily make you want to tune in tomorrow—like a big romantic montage). So, what are your thoughts on how daily soaps have structured their weeks? Which soaps do you feel best paced you through the week without dropping the ball mid-week, keeping the tension and momentum going? Are there days of the week you have traditionally most skipped when you were slammed with work or life stuff? Do you recall any soap writers or producers offering their insights or philosophies on how the day of the week dictates content?

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