B&B: Katherine Kelly Lang Slams Brad Bell - OMFG

[YRBB]

Amen to you, Katherine Kelly Lang, amen to you!

[Sylph]

She's a little late, don't you think?

[Mitch]

No offense Mark but is your TV somehow showing GL episodes from 15 years ago????? GL is [!@#$%^&*] right now and none of the characters on the show act like real people (i.e. Cassie falling for her daughter's killer's brother) Mallet dating a much younger woman who is his *god*daugther (but hey, they are dating in real life so thats good enough for this high school prodcution of GL_ A killer running around town getting his nasty on with a just of age girl. Olivia, a beutifull successfull woman trying to pay this scummy looking killer for sex. Maglabillionare Alan seeing his dead son...witty, once powerfull Alex not lifiting a finger to kick Dinah and Bill;s ass...a company takeover which was laughable for all the holes in the plots, and finally, people walking down dirt roads in the middle of the day when they should be at work (does anyone work in SF??)

Sorry, GL is bottom of the barrel, so no matter how low B & B is, GL is far worse.

[MarkH]

No offense taken. I admit I am a casual viewer.

But when I stop, and I hear the dialogue and the acting, I do not roll my eyes. Maybe that is because I am not emotionally invested.

On B&B, my eyes roll so much, I feel I need a neurological consult.

[tanyia2]

You must have been watching the twilight zone version of GL because the current version of the show is unwatchable.

Jeffrey a rapist is being painted as a hero,Grady the killer is being portrayed as a bad boy with a heart of gold while other characters are being used to prop up these two losers.

[Sindacco]

What is that supposed to mean? You americans seem to be way more religious then us europeans.

[MarkH]

Well, I wondered that!

Because in my mind, thanks to To Kill a Mockingbird, I always thought it was "foot washing Baptists". Thus, that would be a more American tradition.

But I cannot imagine Brad's motivation for doing this. He is either trying to appeal to American baptists, or he thinks this will play with his more global audience (which--just because of the countries where B&B is big--tends to be more Catholic).

Do you think he did this for Catholics? I mean, why did he do this????

[Cat]

KKL has always been quiet when it came to criticizing the show outright. Sure, she has laughed with SF about the show's, uh, quirks (for lack of a better word) but I am stunned that she has come out and said this.

And said it in a fair, direct way. I liked the way she gave LK and others props for their work. I also liked what she said about Brooke putting her children first. I always felt Brooke was somebody who loved her children a lot but once they SORASed Rick and Bridget, they were quick to do this 180 degree turnaround and make Brooke the "bad" mom.

I hope B&B take note of this and retain it for the constructive criticism that it is.

[Cat]

Actually, I think he did this for his US audience. I've been to some of those "Catholic" countries you mention -- Italy, Spain, Greece (which is Greek Orthodox). B&B was also big in Israel and Turkey, I believe (where Judaism and Islam, respectively, predominate). These countries import a TON of other soaps, including a lot of Telenovelas from Spanish-speaking Latin America and Brazil. In fact, one of the biggest TNs in Italy was the Brazilian "Terra Nostra." Brazilian soaps are a glossy super-industry in of themselves -- and certainly do not hold back when it comes to SLs depicting sex (including gay love affairs), incest and other contentious soapy themes. Religious impetus or no, all these countries are pretty much secular (in the sense that church and state are separate) and the TV networks function like ours do. In other words, ratings are king. And sex sells.

[Sylph]

And no matter how awfully written, more often than not, they look better than US daytime soaps. And so do Televisa's telenovelas. Especially when you have those gorgeous haciendas!

[Cat]

Yes! They seem to use the exteriors of real haciendas when they do their outside filming. Maybe it is because they are limited-run shows and more often than not, the entire story arc has been decided on, from beginning to end. Allowing the producers to scout for locations and decide when and where they are going to do some outdoor filming.

Still, UK and German soaps manage to incorporate outside, real-looking locales in their shows. These are 5 days a week production models.

One final thing on some Brazilian soaps. I have only seen a few, but the ones I did see not only looked gorgeous but were actually pretty well written and, for the most part, well acted. These Brazilian soaps have an entire cottage industry built around making sure their beautiful stars can emote properly (I saw a documentary on the acting classes they make the cast of a new show go through! ). They also do invest in rehearsal time, something Daytime over here appears to have left by the wayside.

[Sylph]

1. Which ones did you watch?

2. How do they teach them to emote? I believe Televisa has its own acting school.

[Cat]

The aforementioned Terra Nostra (think Italian immigrants in the early 1900s seeking a better life in... Brazil). And one whose name escaped me but it involved the running of some riding stables... and some hot guys shovelling hay, topless and sweaty, in the Rio sun. That was the one with some guy-on-guy action, too.

Oh, and in the 80s they had one called "Dancing Days" with Sonia Braga in the title role.

And they had another one, set in the mid-19th century (but made in the 80s) about a girl on a plantation who lives in the main house as a gocverness but comes to terms with the family's horrid slave past (and her own antecedants therein). The show was a bit like watching a romance novel featuring Fabio on the cover come to life. Lots of heaving bosoms and impassioned clinches.

I can't remember the name and, uh, location of the acting school! All I know is that it was under the auspices of TeleGlobo's prodigious soap output. They were rehearsing a man and a woman in a very intense scene where the man tried to convince the woman to stay with him despite all the awful things his character (presumably) had done. Instead of screaming and out-shouting each other, the scene was done in extreme close-up with both actors holding each others' faces. The guy was whispering in between kisses. Obviously, the woman character was very torn, but finally extricates herself from him because she cannot accept what he has done. Um, it sounds kind of cheesey but it was almost Shakespearean in that the use of dialogue was judicious and the true "feeling" of the scene was being transmitted without the actors directly "telling" us through words.

[Sylph]

Ooh, I see that one (Terra) featured Ângela Vieira as the villain, she is a very good actress. The one about stables... I'll ask someone in that telenovelas thread. I occasionally check TV Globo's site and Wikipedia, just to see if there are some interesting soaps with nice premisses, but I haven't watched one... Ever since O Clône, I guess.

That sounds like Sinhá Moça.

Than it must have been a Brazillian schoo, Televisa is Mexican.