Michael

I thought the Bope arc was terrible for a variety of reasons, but anyone who thinks the actors weren't largely responsible for it -- at least in terms of logistical stuff -- should go back and read every interview KA has given since 2020. I know Jamey backtracked in his tweets, buuuuuuut...

Yikes, I just assumed they were moving under the banner of Peacock PR and this was an outgrowth of shifting away from NBC. More belt-tightening by Ken & co.! I also never thought there was going to be "Peacock money" (why would there be?) aside from whatever was going to be Beyond Salem 3 being folded into the main show.

Nothing will ever be as hilarious to me as the time they went to... Bosnia? Germany?... for something involving Jeff Branson's Shayne and they literally just put the flag of whatever country it was supposed to be in the middle of Peapack's lawn. Guten Tag! Sorry to get off-topic in the GH thread, but uh... Frank can take Steve Burton back now, because I have no idea why he's in Salem.

It was very "90s sitcom coming to an end." I guess I was just glad they bothered wrapping up threads and didn't try too hard to do something daring. Jesus. I just remembered Reva -- REVA! -- even had a baby near the end. Not to defend the explosion of baby and pregnancy stories in the last two decades, but I do think they automatically add stakes, which too often are paper-thin on these shows. So even your most inept executive or half-assed viewer can understand what a character wants if they're trying to save their child or get custody from a nasty ex or whatever. The actual children are just weird Macguffins for the lame drama that surrounds them.

That GL finale was crazy. And also somehow an okay finale?!

SCREAMING.

Yes!

It's insane. I know @Vee has referenced it before, but it reminds me of late-stage Guiding Light where Harley had a kid with Philip and Rick, and Rick had a kid with Mel and Beth, and Beth had a kid with Philip and Alan, and everyone was just half-siblings or half-cousins or whatever commune fantasy Ellen Wheeler was living when she wasn't weeping in her office that had been turned into a 7-11 set or whatever.

Any time I turn on GH and they show or bring up one of the kids, I go down some horrible Wikipedia vortex of trying to figure which f*cking child belongs to which character. Doesn't Maxie have like three children now?

Is that why that kid is named Donna? Now I feel like an a*shole for snarking on the name. The child still should not exist, though!

I'm actually not minding the Abe kidnapping thing as much as I've minded... 75% of what we've had to watch over the last year, but I do agree that I'd like to understand Whitley's motivation and plan better. I'm a little nervous that "lonely cat lady but they're all stuffed cats" is supposed to be shorthand for "she's crazy and that's your explanation!" I liked a lot of today's episode, though. It wasn't incredible or groundbreaking, but there was a heart to it that was nice to see.

I had somehow completely missed that side agreement before this week. Interesting.

It's so weird. As much as I don't care for Harris, her trying to hire him to kill Megan felt like a Kate Roberts move, which I greatly prefer to "Katie Brady" or whoever this has been.

Christopher Sean isn't available to be on contract. I don't know why they've basically tethered Andrew to him, since they've known that for years.

Chad works at "SJPR" with Stephanie still, right? He and the kids do still live at the Horton house, as far as we know.

Good for LVP. This model seems like a better fit for her brand and business model, and it'll also minimize her tacky tourist traps for straight girls in the heart of WeHo. Pump cannot close soon enough.

I found the reunion almost unbearable by the third part, too. Ariana has every right to be pissed at Sandoval and Raquel, of course. (I know there's some amount of hypocrisy considering how she and Tom got together, but she wasn't professing to be Kristen's close friend, so it's also a very different situation.) And this was the first time she'd seen Raquel since it all came out, I think, so it makes sense she'd go in on her. But it got to the point where Andy would ask Tom or Raquel something, and immediately Ariana, James, and Lala would be all screaming over them the second they opened their mouths. It was exhausting and monotonous. I don't even want to sound like I'm defending Raquel, but she came on that stage to do her job and answer questions, so at least shut up long enough to let her do that -- it isn't like she showed up at Ariana's front door in the dead of night insisting on telling her side of the story.

That story was in 2011 (around the time of the MarDar "reboot"). Abe first ran for and became mayor in 2008, though. It was around the time that Theo was diagnosed with autism, and there was some half-assed story about Lexie not liking the attention that his campaign brought upon the family because of Theo's diagnosis or something.

It's Blake.

This is just so sad. I, too, really thought he'd turned a corner. I know recovery isn't always linear, but to have another public incident just when he seemed to be piecing his reputation back together... I hope he's able to find the resources to receive treatment and that he's able to commit to it fully.

I'm with you, @carolineg. She's not even a good mother! I like what they're doing with Rachel, but Kristen is basically manipulating this kid into being a little psycho. And this started when ED first returned -- and got worse with Haiduk -- but they keep doing this sex kitten thing with her that feels like her one note now. She's always preening and moaning and vamping. If they're going to do it, they could at least explain that it's because she found a reason to use her sexuality as a weapon or... I dunno.

Probably! Maybe they could've told us that, LOL. She also didn't really owe them the orchid -- she had it, they wanted it, and she didn't demand actual money for it, so... who the hell knows!

I hear you re: Kristen's sentence (whatever it was, because as you point out, she just went from being in police custody to being back in jail), but there was a whole bunch of hand-wringing around the time the women "died" and how their deaths were on Kristen. She was arrested for their deaths, and once they turned up alive and Megan's involvement was revealed, it also became known that Megan, not Kristen, had stolen/taken the orchid. They all knew she had it prior to that -- she was holding it as collateral and then it vanished and she was accused of making it disappear, right? So Kristen wasn't responsible for any of what happened, or the part that she was responsible for happened way before she was taken into custody. I guess the real answer is that the writers don't understand it any better than we do.

Kristen just seems so deranged that I can't take her seriously as a character at this point. She runs around mugging and sneering like she's Heather Webber, and she's in and out of prison three times a year. And she seems like an idiot, which is not how Kristen ever was. Why did she just sit around in jail waiting for Megan's help getting out once she learned that the three women didn't actually die? Kristen Blake -- or someone with an even functional IQ -- would've hired a lawyer to get her out of there the minute she found out that Marlena, Kayla, and Kate hadn't died as a result of her actions.

Yes! I knew there was something I was forgetting, the bit with Simone's brother. Thanks.