Contessa Donatella

From the way that Ron Carlivati talks about their putting together the who - what - where, etc. of BS1 and BS2 I think they count the various locales & the groupings of people as foundational & basic to what they're doing. At the same time when he talks about their process, it seems very organic. Bottom line, though I would guess they are most attentive to what Peacock asks for! (He did a chat with Michael Fairman last week & yesterday he was the guest at the Digest weekly podcast. A lot can be gleaned from listening to him talk about it.)

With Ron talking about how it came about it seems as if they were rolling along & making up the story as they went! They wanted to do something with Peter & they worked that out & next they wanted to have Kristian in it & she wanted to know what the story was, so Ron wrote it! And, they went along like that till they had a limited Edition piece.

At GL he was initially just one of the members of the team but then they made him co-HW with two others, a triumvirate, Nancy Curlee Demorest & Stephen Demorest. They wrote the famous/infamous week of the GL Blackout where among other things Mo Bauer is killed in an accident. JFP was the EP at the time. Nancy & Stephen felt that they were yanking their chains putting them as co-HW, the 3 of them. So, they put their heads together & presented a united front. What Nancy remembers best about Jimmy (they called him Jimmy) was his huge imagination! " I like to say that 'Mo was a Reardon by birth, a Bauer by marriage, Michele's mother by circumstance, seen by many fans as the inheritor of Bert's matriarchy, a tentpole legacy character and Roger's only real friend, … she was lost to the ages. - Donna L. Bridges about JFP killing Ellen Parker's character, Maureen, on GL In a Locher Room chat Nancy Curlee stated that she wished she had been able to use an "alternate" ending for Maureen Bauer. We would have seen the car go over the cliff & then the camera would pan back up to the cliffside where we would see 2 people: Roger & Maureen. Maureen would be wringing her hands & saying she had to get out of here. Roger would take her to a car & then on to a motel where he would stash her until he could work out a plan.

Irna is quite often described as a tyrant and that is coming from people who like and admire her!

That is really the most obvious shocker & yet this thread went on for some time before you came up with it! Nail on the head! Brava.

I've learned quite a lot about the expansion from half hour to hour from Elana Levine's book, HER STORIES (c) 2020 & other sources. It's fascinating to me but I don't know if other people already know it or not. I would be glad to post about it if anyone is interested but I don't want to impose especially since this is not a group where I usually am. I know more than my fair share about the epic fail expansion from an hour to 90 minutes that they did to AW, as well. Let me know if you'd like to hear about it.

Ron Carlivati was a guest at Digest's Podcast & I go sometimes to keep up with Steph & Mara: Talked about Al wanting PR on the mothership which would be a tactical problem because PR lives in Alaska. Ron countered with what about having PR on Beyond Salem. Al jumped up & down. Then they thought they needed KA & asked her if she was interested & she wanted to know what the story was, so, Ron thought up a story & told it to her & she liked it so she was in. They went this whole way rolling like they do & just kept adding people to the roster & writing the story as they went. Referred to Harris as SBurton playing a Jason Bourne character. (I love Jason Bourne & Steve Burton is no Jason Bourne!) That he was reprising his original role, was just a little old thing of not very many appearances. Mara liked this because she considered it as a love letter to veteran fans & she thinks soaps should regularly be presenting their long time fans with love letters like this show. (I think she's right.) Steph thinks she's right. They ask themselves the question, "Who is this story being written for?" In Beyond Salem the show is celebrating & drawing upon its rich history. It behooves the shows to give the fans actors that the fans care about. They made an example about the Chin family. They got to the Emmys. Ron was unusually nervous all day. People kept telling him that he had a 50/50 chance of winning. (Nominated for both the mothership & Beyond Salem.) That just made Ron think, Well, yeah, cupcake, but that is also a 50/50 chance of losing!) So, he wrote two speeches & put them both on his phone. He was sitting in front with Al, Ken & Suzanne. He was on auto-pilot. Time passed. It was great seeing people that he hadn't seen in awhile. That part is always great! GH won many awards & DOOL had won bupkus, nil, zip, nada. Kelly Campbell from Peacock had come to the show to support them. The year before Ron had submitted the same reel/s to WGA & to NATAS & won WGA with it & didn't even get a nod from the Emmys. All of a sudden they called his name. Autopilot again! He's sure people could tell he was very nervous. He was! He was especially happy that Betsy Snyder's work was awarded the win. (She's a long time soap writer who died in 2021.) As soon as Beyond Salem 1 had been streamed Peacock reached out wanting another one & wanting it fast, which DOOL couldn't do. So, they suggested a one-off Christmas special & then later in the calendar year another Beyond. That was as much of the Podcast as I could do. Earlier I tweeted: Hope & Bo were reunited in heaven today so the promise that they would be reunited has now been fulfilled. Hope was told by Bo that he would be with her in spirit always but that when it is her time they will be together forever. Then he sent her back to earth. Not her time. And: This is what DOOL is good at, that it has always been good at, & that it once was known for, not for gimmicks! Bless them for spending the bucks! "Tonight, I celebrate my love for you." #BeyondSalem2 And, look at the great picture of Boom Boom I saw! DOOL is trending, LOTS of pix!

Yes, they looked friendly.

🎶 🤣

Raise Your Glass Kiki does a P!nk number Well, I think I saw her sing in something music OLTL did but she was just good doing a favorite P!nk number! I love P!nk so I would be critical.

Yes, I thought it was a funny line, too.

Did she sing at the Nurses' Ball? I could go look for her YouTube. I love Ava doing Lelsey Gore.

Yes, that tracks! Think how awful it would've been with, for one example: Chris & Savannah!

Who did she play? Kiki?

😆 I thought the show made an excellent point about them when they talked over some of what could be Doug & Julie, finally landing that all this time has gone by & they weren't hurt by not having a portmanteau. People say "Stayla" & I have to think, hard, to figure out who they're talking about.

Thank you!

Okay. So he did not float it. Thnx for the clarification. It was just a wild rumor that would not die out.

Last recap

But, at the DiMera company presentation, Li said Dr. So-and-so's Prisms. It sounded like Torvatt. Why did they have him say a name?! At any rate I am satisfied. Thnx for posting. You give good "catch up". I saw in a promo or picture the new stand-in for Rolf. He looked adequate.

Well, I was in the hospital all day yesterday so I didn't get to begin to catch up till 10 this morning. Now I've made it through E5 of Beyond Salem & I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. It definitely picked up with E2. And, all of the Megan predictors were right about her intention. I would love to know what they plan to do with Hope & with Bo. I still had more Steve Burton than I would've liked. And, I really don't see Heaven as cheesy. I think the pace in the middle being too hectic & there being too much Harris are the only critique I have to make, which is like some kind of wonderful! The prisms could have looked better. I never got a clear listen to the doctor name attached to the prisms. I don't know why Bo was building a boat in a bottle. I am glad I decided to watch this. At one point I was planning to skip it. Yes he did! Just as I thought might be the case. I mean this is the guy who floated a fake decapitation spoiler just so we'd be grateful he did not really do it. This guy is not acquainted with limits, boundaries, etc.

I agree with all of this.

Well, it is interesting for Alt feelings about Cruz & Eden to surface! Me, I loved them but I also loved Lionel/Augusta, Mason/Julia & Keith/Gina. SB had a whole lot of people & a lot going on & I was into the whole canvas, really.

I was talking about when I feel a certain way about a minority position & I'm grumpy. I'm not judging you one way or the other. I don't even strongly disagree with you. I think that there's too much mash-ups in fandom. So, I don't like a lot of it. You dislike all of it. There's a lot of overlap there.

They always kept it unknown for DOOL Salem, right?

Yes, I wondered if it was that long ago with recovery just happening now. Wow, that took a long time to play out! I'm glad you noticed that we'd made it back to synchronicity. Thnx for posting!