Michael

I think you're misreading the way that played out. Gabi was verbally seducing EJ in the living room. Then they cut away to other stories and picked up with them in the bedroom. EJ had gone upstairs with her. She was the aggressor, but she didn't "nearly rape him." He made an offscreen decision to go up to the bedroom with her. They made it a "reveal" instead of showing the decision-making moment play out in order to end the week on a shocking cliffhanger rather than a scene that simply showed the culmination of an already-made decision.

Oh, totally. I just remember that when they cast Mansi, they made a big point of announcing her as playing ABIGAIL and everyone was calling her ABIGAIL very pointedly for a while, and they'd all called her Abby 95% of the time a few years prior.

Not really. What happened was that she was always "Abby" as a child and during her time as a teen in the mid-00s, but when they cast Kate Mansi in 2011, they rebranded her as "Abigail" because we already had Gabi in the teen set. That loosened up over the years and really tailed off once Gabi went to prison in 2014, and after that, they just used Abigail/Abby pretty interchangeably.

Jennifer Landon did take that weird short arc on Days in 2017, so maybe her taking this isn't as insane as her primetime credits would suggest...

I really, really like Cherie. I liked Camila, too, but this casting has invigorated Gabi for me. It feels like it's aged her up (or maybe matured her?) in a way that works for the canvas.

Chad/Julie has been one of the bright spots of this absolutely dreadful last few years.

No joke, I had the same thought. It's weird in light of the Krista Allen casting AND the history with the Melrose lawsuit, but I could totally see Rinna as an age-appropriate Taylor. I also always thought they'd go after Kristian Alfonso for the part (which is also weird in light of the Hope/Billie connection).

This is... certainly not news I expected to come home and find today! What in the world.

Never seen these! Thanks for sharing. Alice refers to Tommy as "Danny" in that second scene, I think! I didn't realize that name ever made it to air.

Kristen, Bonnie, Xander, Eric, Lucas, Gabi, and Hope would all like a word.

💀 I genuinely do not understand why Theresa is SO CLEARLY NEVER COMING BACK.

I didn't realize they'd both been in so few episodes! Thanks for the update.

I don't see Felicity, either.

I'm at least interested to see AnnaLynne McCord in action. I'm curious to know if this is supposed to be a familiar Abigail face or if they think she was given plastic surgery.

I would love to see a trial just to see a judge be like, "...and none of you got a DNA test? You just... took this handwritten letter at its word??"

Yeah, they rushed through that "story" real fast. Craig was so mean and evil, and poor Marlena lost her job at the hospital for two days before being reinstated. They could've made an actual interesting arc of that! @j swift -- They addressed that the conspiracy was committed in Greece rather than on U.S. soil, and since nothing actually happened, they didn't even think Greece would extradite Theresa. So at least they paid lip service to it!

Theresa also didn't change the will. She forged a letter, which wasn't a legal or legally notarized document, by changing the signature on it. It's stupid that the interpretation of Victor's will was left non-specific and up to the contents of that letter, also...

I would imagine it's just a hard pivot away from the strike stories.

But no one knows that. Especially not Kristen, who was just a complete b*tch to her because she... brought a latte for the boss who hired her?

Yeah, I'd love to know how the streaming numbers look. I do wonder if some of the viewership has simply shifted to Peacock. We finally cancelled our (horrific) Spectrum service and now just watch the RH shows on Peacock. I also wonder if the positive buzz around OC this season might inspire them to try and revive some of the HW shows through returns and careful rebuilding, as opposed to reboots. It's a crime they aren't filming the OG RHONY girls right now!

I can't believe this Body & Soul crap is supposed to be a legitimate story. What are even the stakes? Maybe if Abe had, I dunno, leveraged his retirement money against this, or someone had real personal investment in it -- like it was Johnny's one last shot to make it as a writer/director. But what are we even supposed to care about here?

Humor is great! Especially when it reveals something about the characters. But it stops being effective when it points out issues in the writing or production, or mocks the stakes of a story, or takes the audience completely out of the situation at hand.

They've tried to revisit Marlena/Roman a good 2-3 times since Josh Taylor took over the role, and it's always been a dud. And they do interact with warmth and familiarity these days. But it's really tough to buy these two as ever having been some grand, passionate love story.

It's crazy to me that they never gave Tony (or even Andre) a kid. Hell, the Stefan/Jake characters could've been Tony's. Not that I want more random DiMeras now, but they have drained the Stefano-has-another-kid well bone-dry. Tony/Kim and Tony/Sandy are such interesting alternate timelines. I always wonder what would've happened if Marlena had been paired with one of the Horton sons (Mickey, Bill, or Tommy) instead of with Don and then Roman, too. It's unlikely you would've gotten that lightning-in-a-bottle thing that happened with her and Roman in the early 80s, but her being tied to the Hortons would've provided a whole new path for that family to flourish.

Kim/Tony is an interesting idea. I also noticed what felt like a Tony/Sandy chem test in an episode (I think from '83) I watched a while back. One has to wonder what the show could've been like if they'd gone either of those directions...