Article about Michael Malone and Josh Griffith

[soapfan770]

I've never been an OLTL watcher but since so many here on SON frequently discuss the workings of Michael Malone on OLTL here is a lengthy column written on Malone and Josh Griffith work in 2003:

[R Sinclair]

Thanks for gesture!

But I didn't couldn't make it through the rest of that heinous nonsense. I never understood OLTL. I remember when all of this was going on, but even reading it all summed up years later, it still doesn't make sense.

[DRW50]

It is more complicated to read. Onscreen it was so stupid you just gave up paying attention very quickly.

To this day I still don't know why anyone thought pairing "Flash" and Joey was a good idea. Then they stuck him with Jen. They painted Joey into a horrible corner and he never recovered. He is now MIA for nearly a decade, aside from a brief cameo that was about Nathan Fillion being a nice guy and being one of their more famous recent alumni. If Nathan had said no, then we probably would have just heard, "Joey broke his leg."

[MoTheGreat]

That whole Antonio & Jessica storyline was so wrong in so many ways. & that's including them not having chemistry.

[DRW50]

From their very first scene -- Jessica is kicking a soda machine, she's tough!! -- they were awful. In hindsight, the attempt to make Bree's Jessica seem tougher is hilarious, considering she's spent 7 years being tortured.

[You're Soaking in it]

Ditto.

[R Sinclair]

:lol: :lol:

OMG! Carl, I LOVE IT! I totally remember that and that was exactly the first impression I had: "Oh, boy. NuJessica is supposed to be kick ass now!"

[EricMontreal22]

Not to mention Bruce Michael Hall was such a bad actor, had ZERO presence, and any he had was as a waxed 80s gay porn style beefcake, that making him a member of the church, into "bad girls" or anything else was a complete joke.

[DRW50]

I didn't think he was that bad. I mean they could have been more subtle about this whole hot guy tempted to break his vows story, but he had chemistry with his family and he had some presence early on. They just lost interest very quickly. I think if they had tried he would have been fine, especially since the last decade has not been an acting haven for OLTL.

[EricMontreal22]

Wow,I didn't think we'd disagree on this. I really think he was one of the least talented male actors OLTL has had on contract in the past 10 years--which is saying something. If he had played younger, oddly I would have bought the way he actedmore, he just tended to say every line with this kinda light teen surfer lilt (well or gay--take your pick) so that nothing could be taken seriously.

[DRW50]

I guess at the time I was just happy to have Joey back and I thought he was a nice presence in the family, and I liked the idea of Joey working with Andrew. The actor wasn't great but he wasn't the worst I'd seen, OLTL had, and still has, a whole lot of bad actors with blank faces and blank chests passed off as the ideal. But certainly a lot of fans felt the way you did, and I'm sure they still do.

[Vee]

Bruce Michael Hall will always be, to paraphrase my own words at TWOP in accordance with this screen name, Vee's Blind Spot. I loved him as Joey and I thought despite his weaknesses he presented the thoughtful, sensitive young man perfectly. He was unique. But the pairing with Jen was awful. He had a lot of chemistry with Marcie, but they dropped that.

[EricMontreal22]

HAHAA fair enough, I certainly have blind spots when it comes to soap hunks too. And I admit that's part of it, for some reason his "look" (and that of his twin ) really has no appeal to me. Which I know always sounds bitter--when a gay guy says someone who everyone finds super hot, isn't hot to him, but there you are

[SFK]

I felt that BMH was mentally and emotionally a couple of steps back from Fillion's AND McKenna's Joeys. He would have worked perfectly fine as another one of Viki's sons, the knee baby between Joey and Jessica, but just like the Joey from Wild and Crazy Kids, you just can't regress like that with the character after all of that Dorian era growth. He just didn't feel like the same person to me.

[DRW50]

The problem with Joey was that even with Fillion in the role, the Dorian-era growth was over quickly. He was soon shackled to boring, frigid Kelly, and spent his last year on the show as her prop, with his main "story" being dull Cameron/Olivia and the Drew who rarely seemed to make a facial expression. 1996-1997 was all about draining the life out of seemingly every man -- I guess Kevin was the "quirky" one at that time, so the others paid the price. Since this was never a properly utilized area for his character, I didn't have a problem with them moving Joey on. It's just that Jeffcoat was so wet, and obviously loathed by JFP, and Bruce Michael Hall was stuck in bad pairings and then backburnered.

The thing about Joey was his earnestness and his humor. Jeffcoat, early on, had some of the humor, although that stopped. BMH had the earnestness. To me those are what defined Joey the most, and what I would want to see again if he ever returned. As much as I loved Dorian and Nathan's Joey, that is never going to be acknowledged or used again. Probably the only reason they let it through the last time was they knew Nathan was making a brief return and it was about the great story Robin and Nathan shared, not actually about Joey himself.