bongobong

0% chance they asked him to return, the show clearly brought on Will to replace him because they didn't think he could handle the Luna story.

It took 15 months but Electra finally earned her First Character Trait badge!

Interesting, BTG will air a new episode for the first time following repeats.. I guess it's too much of a headache for the Mountain/Pacific CBS affiliates to air today's B&B episode tomorrow instead of a repeat.

Yeah, there's no putting lipstick on its W18-49 number or the bad retention from B&B. BUT - the positive is that it had its best retention of B&B in the W25-54 demo since August (the week before its second repeat week).

Thank you for the explanation, much appreciated! I thought it was mentioned that Dani was over 50 in the first week (obviously Karla doesn't look it), but I could be mistaken. This is borderline insane. I honestly can't believe they let this happen.

Is it true that the show hasn't yet told a new romance story with 2 Black contract characters under 40?

As good as Sally's scenes with Stephanie & Macy were, DC's best asset to the show was giving life to floundering characters. Clark, Karen & Felicia all powered up being in her orbit. Felicia really suffered in her last original year by barely interacting with her.

So far so good. Refreshing to see Katie & Brooke have conflict rooted in their history & personalities rather than fighting over a man. Haha, at least they finally painted over the 1980s smog background.

Noticed Victor St. Lawrence wrote today's episode. Kudos to him it was well written, probably the best episode in a while. KKL did a great job conveying Brooke's ambivalence towards Katie leaving. Likewise Annika with Hope's unease about her new arrangement. Good to see Remy again too. Did Deacon ever find out that he was dating his son?

How much notice do networks have to give Nielsen to mark something as a special airing if it wasn't because of a news pre-emption? The Wed repeat for BTG was announced here the week before. Feels like another dropped ball by CBS regarding this show, like not alerting the Canadian companies when they planned to air reruns. The show had probably the best debut of any soap since we had access to demo numbers, and they held up well until the end of the summer before collapsing after the second full week of repeats. On linear, it has shed more of its W18-49 numbers from month one to month nine compared to any other soap debut. For what it's worth, this was a good indicator on how long the shows lasted. I didn't include The City as it was a spinoff in the same timeslot as Loving, but it did slightly worse than Sunset Beach - just a few decimals over -25%. Sunset Beach 1997 1.5 (Jan 6- Jan 31) 1.125 (Sep 8-Oct 3) -25% Port Charles 1997/1998 1.75 (Jun 2- Jun 27) 1.633 (Feb 2 -Feb 27) -7% Passions 1999/2000 0.95 (Jul 5- Jul 30) 1.2 (Mar 6 - Mar 31) +26% Beyond The Gates 2025 0.2275 (Feb 28 - Mar 17) 0.1375 (Oct 27 -Nov 21) -40%

Sheila's exclusion is logical but with sloppy execution. Deacon is finally in a good place with Hope but their relationship isn't on firmly solid ground. I can see him not wanting to rock the boat there. However, having Beth being the vetoer was dumb, it should have been Hope. Missed opportunity for a logical story beat there. I don't disagree with anything you said about Luna's reign of terror as the FC intern, but Katie being marginalized works for me. Ridge doesn't consider the feelings of women, especially ones he isn't sleeping with, and Brooke doesn't go against him by default. Likewise, I buy Ridge pushing Eric out but Daphne shouldn't have been the only dissenter. Maybe they'll go there (not holding my breath) but Steffy would/should be pissed that Ridge made a huge decision without consulting her. The biggest problem with the show this fall has been how vanilla the millennials have been. Hope, Steffy & Liam have been entirely too agreeable for months now. With the exception of Brooke, the GenXers are the ones allowed to have a clear POV.

The show is telegraphing Eric & Katie leaving to create a startup fashion house but I don't know if there will be a follow through.

Damn, I should have made the bet!

I'd much rather it went to Paramount. They'd be more likely to keep enough HBO execs & just roll Paramount+ into whatever they called the new service. This is a sad day. Despite its slogan, HBO's shows operate as the best of TV - they have distinguishable episodes that form a larger story. In 95% of Netflix shows you can't distinguish one episode from another and that is very much by design. There's room for that model - heck I'm posting on a soap board. But that's a small portion of my viewing.

Dec 2026 - Eric does something or another to use up John McCook's guarantees for the year again. Good on Daphne for standing her ground against Ridge when everyone else passively went along with his plan.