Michael

Dario! (I knew what you meant, lol.) I knew there was another quick exit that I couldn't figure out. McPherson & Taylor brought Jack back, though. He arrived as their run began. In retrospect, and not having seen Anna's intro, it's tough for me to imagine Roman having been with Anna at all!

Thanks! I've been seeing buzz about it on boards and Twitter but couldn't find anything substantial. Ha! "Stephanie returns, played by a man, since Susan Flannery didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about appearing feminine for the last decade of her run" or some sh*t. I do wonder if it involves Phoebe...

Chappell/Carly left in September 2011, I'm pretty sure. The big reboot with the launch of Horton Town Square was late September, like the week of the 25th or so, and they spent the weeks leading up to that ushering out a lot of people. Carly went into rehab at some point during the summer, and she left for Europe with Nicholas (played briefly by Cody Longo) -- this was right around the time that Tamara Braun's Taylor improbably left for Dubai or something with Vivian and her forgotten pimp son, Quinn (who then returned a few months later), and they put a quick stop to Chloe's prostitution storyline and shored up her character as best they could before quickly sending her packing, too. It was one of those very clear transition periods. I think Chloe was the only departing character who overlapped with the "reboot" at all -- I remember her final scenes being in the Town Square with Brady and Nicole. Then John, Marlena, Carrie, Austin, and Jack all showed up during the HTS opening. Ha! I think John is a P.I. now, technically, which suits him more than the ISA stuff. I'm shocked Ron hasn't tried to be clever and pull some Chris Kositchek redux with JT...

I've come to kinda-sorta like JT's Roman as the mumbling barkeep who's always like, "What da hell are these morons up to now?" And he does decently in Dad Mode with Ali Sweeney and Christie Clark and Greg Vaughan. This just... isn't the Roman Brady of 1982 or 1992. The further away from RealRoman the portrayal gets, the more it works for me, which ain't right but it's okay (to bastardize Whitney's words). I'm trying to think of another once-iconic daytime character who lasted decades but just sort of became this third-tier dude hanging around.

I always kinda wondered about that. Carly was GONE the week before the DHs waltzed back into that Town Square.

Absolutely chilling. They half-assedly threw JT's Roman at a lot of women. In addition to Billie, he had that bizarre one-night fling with AZ's Nicole in 2006 (after which she vanished for two years), and they even teased him with Bonnie when she'd mellowed out a bit once Sheffer took over.

I could 100% see Wayne Northrup's Roman and Lisa Rinna's Billie having been a cool pairing circa the late 90s. Love that idea. Josh Taylor and Krista Allen dressed up as cowboys on an ISA mission, however...

Carly and Billie didn't overlap in that era. Carly went out with the big "reboot" that McPherson & Thomas ushered in, and Billie came back the following spring (2012). I think they were more excited to get Lisa Rinna and to be using the Countess Wilhelmina name than anything -- there was never much plan for her.

Do we have ANY hints what this "twist" might be? I'm intrigued even though I find the show unwatchable.

I've made peace with the idea that Billie Reed is now basically Lisa Rinna. They've saddled her with the improbable law enforcement career for two decades now, and while it's never felt "right" for the character to me -- the suggestion upthread that she would own a nightclub/restaurant sounds so much more like who Billie Reed should be -- it's what we've got. They might as well go for the camp of "glam superspy Billie Rinna" or whatever that we got with her 2017 run and Beyond Salem. I wouldn't want it all the time, but it's cute for what it is. Rinna's 2012-13 run was... something. They brought her back with a lot of energy, and I think people appreciated that she was back in the mix with "Countess W," as they were calling it, but like everything under McPherson & Thomas's pen, it just kind of fell apart into nothingness. She wound up still being ISA (I think this was secret at first?) looking into EJ for some BS, and of course they limply toyed with throwing her at Bo AGAIN, and they had her give Daniel [!@#$%^&*] over being with both Chelsea and Kate -- which was fun for a minute but then started to look like they'd pair them. Then she just sorta hung around town for another six months. Her exit, which was all about her basically telling Kate, "You're a shitty mom and I'm accepting that, and I guess I love you anyway but I can't be around you this much," was surprisingly nuanced. I can totally see the comparisons between Reckell/Bo and Loprieno/Cord, btw!

Frankie/Billie was RIGHT THERE. There was definitely chemistry between Ackles and Allen, too. It did seem like they never quite knew what to do with Eric. The initial story with Nicole tanked -- it was too focused on (very green) Arianne Zucker. Throwing her at Lucas and then Victor was really smart, but it left Eric out in the cold. His pairing with Greta was cute but always felt like D-story consolation prize material. And I'm with you on Bo/Billie. When LR's Billie left, it was a great conclusion to that triangle. Bringing in Krista Allen and making her pathetic and borderline-insane over Bo really boxed the character in, and then Pinson's Billie showed up years later STILL fixated on him. But there was definitely a point where Bo winding up with Billie felt like as viable a resolution to the triangle as him winding with Hope, which is pretty impressive. We were posting at the same time, but I'm with you. They had the opportunity to restore Billie a bit to her pre-Allen character -- Pinson brought a bit of grounded earthiness, and you could buy that her Billie was a former addict who'd been raised by Curtis Reed and had scraped together a life for herself. But they just made her such a LOSER all the time.

I've been writing my own text-based soap, Footprints, for fun/writing practice since 1997 (I was in junior high and it was terrible the first few years!). I also work as a writer in TV -- not daytime. Am I allowed to take issue with the writing on a show I watch?! (For the record, I'm not advocating for Jamey, or anyone, to be fired, but this conversation took quite a turn.) And I get the general spirit behind "if you don't like the entertainment you're being served, create something you love!" in theory, but like... if I go to a restaurant and order filet mignon and it sucks, I should be able to declare that or send it back without being obligated to go butcher a cow and make my own.

Late to the party, but it baffles me that they never tried ANY of the Billies in a legitimate way with any other love interest. Krista Allen got tested with JT's Roman and Ackles' Eric, plus the flirtation with Nicholas... Julie Pinson got teased with Max, Patrick, had the fling with Nick... and then when LR came back in 2012, they played around with her and EJ and her and Daniel. But it's like no one could conceive of a Billie who wasn't an accessory to Bo/Hope. The idea of putting her with a grown Dougie LeClaire in the 90s or 2000s intrigues me. They also could've cast a Mike Horton for her at any point in the last 20 years, and the most obvious pairing in the 2000s would've been to put Pinson's Billie with fellow loser-in-supercouple-love Frankie, whose portrayer was also married to Pinson.

Abigail also already had a faked death in 2016. Around and around we go...

The Cheatin' Heart was used pretty prominently up until 2011. Then it morphed into Sonny's coffee house (Common Grounds???), which was "remodeled" into Club TBD (stupidest name ever, which is saying something), which later became Doug's Place 2.0 and then Julie's Place. They completely swapped out the set when it turned into Club TBD, though.

Craig's one of those characters who I'd believe was bisexual all along. It would be an interesting twist (if this is where they're going) that Nancy has known their entire relationship that Craig was bi and had relationships with men before her, but he's also loved and genuinely been attracted to Nancy this whole time. And they never revealed it to Chloe, who resents being kept in the dark.

They retroactively explained that Rex had joined Doctors Without Borders, too, so I guess it's possible that Kate and Roman didn't really have contact with him until he showed up. But they didn't explain any of this until Sarah had been gone for months and months. It does not feel like it should've taken THIS long for anyone to realize something was amiss.

Totally. I wish they'd actually accounted for WHY people didn't question Sarah's whereabouts sooner. If Maggie couldn't get a hold of her other than the odd text message, why didn't she contact Rex? Why didn't Roman or Kate happen to ask Rex, "Hey, how are things with Sarah?" during the months he was gone?

I guess they're getting story out of it now, but that exit was so weird and abrupt. Why couldn't they just have had her finally object to one of Xander's 12,000 crimes and go off to visit Melissa and clear her head for a while?

But every single pilot script that the big networks order gets published in the trades. Especially when they're based on known properties. It's as much news for the public as it is news for the industry. I'm not even trying to defend... ABC or Kelly Ripa or anyone, but it's the way things tend to work.

They bought a pilot script to see if they would want to move forward with shooting a pilot, after which they would've decided whether to write and produce more episodes or not. That's the traditional way that TV development works. (It's become more common for high-profile projects to get a straight-to-series order, where they start writing the whole season rather than waiting for the pilot to be shot and picked up.) It seems as if they didn't think the pilot script was right for them or prohibitive to shoot or -- well, whatever reason they had, and who knows if they ever gave it a fair shot in the first place. But you'd never have multiple episodes of a primetime revival of a beloved property filmed before word got out to the media.

FYI the Covid compliance costs (extra team members on set, testing, etc) should be coming out of the established budget. Few shows have received a budget increase to account for those additional costs. I'm sure it's being factored in as budgets are being created for new, high-profile shows, but that factor has been a hit to most established/running shows. Y&R still looks cheap as hell, though. And this is coming from a Days fan!

Yeah, I remember them being available, and then there was that huge wipe and everything was gone. So frustrating.

That's my blog! It still irks the hell out of me how many old clips are gone. What I wouldn't give to watch that coronation massacre now and again... They actually had Ciara and Ben reference the Virtual Eden story on Beyond Salem, which got me nervous that Ron would decide to do a redux.

This is so interesting, because I found TB to be a shockingly good recast for SJB precisely because she has kind of a harder, masculine energy, despite being so petite. There's something rough about her physicality and performances that I think really fits Carly. LW has generally done a great job and has obviously endured in the role, but there's always a SLIGHT missing link for me with regards to how Carly came to be so... "polished" is the wrong word, but it feels like she progressed between actresses without me really seeing it onscreen.