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OLTL: Discussion for the week of January 10


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Then they'll fall in love for real, only he will still sleep with Aubrey just to show us what a real man he is. Everything about him is the boilerplate Ford/Todd/Rex/etc. crap.

I hate Ford and Langston but I think all of the Fords are scene-killers in their own special ways. James is so weak and unable to play anything other than Starr's lackey, which is fine, if it means less stories about her love life, but otherwise get rid of him. Nathesulah just epitomizes everything I hate about soap "teens", and what has been done to the show's legacy characters.

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It's a silly, thin story and the characters seem islanded a lot. But I think juicy stuff can potentially be done with Cutter and even Aubrey, however long or short term - everyone wants to see a scheming interloper (meta: ...from ATWT) get his/hers. The larger problem is that Tom Degnan or rather Joey is too naive and dim, so a recast is likely needed to make him stand up on his own. The least they could do is involve him in other stories, perhaps as Natalie's confidant. And you can go places with Cutter, but I fear the most boring option is putting him with Jessica. I'd much rather see Brody hang around and get better stories. If there's a place for Cutter, let it happen on its own. He might work with Kelly, but I fear that a) it will be derivative of Tognoni's quasi-cougar pairings on GL, and B) this is all really just pointless busy work without Dan Gauthier around.

The real meat of this story, what little there is, stems from Joey's petulant denial and insistence that he and Kelly are cool and platonic. Clearly he doesn't actually feel that way about her, and it comes off in waves in scene after scene. He wants her and he's angry at her and he wants to prove he doesn't want her anymore. I'm sure he's been holding all that [!@#$%^&*] inside for years, given Kevin and Kelly's saga. But without Kevin around you can only begin to tap into that. The most fascinating moment those brothers had together in years, for me, was in 2003 when Kevin first returned, and he shared scenes with his brother the priest and seemed to very subtly dominate the space as they discussed Kevin and Kelly's marital woes. Joey was being supportive and cool, and Kevin was being nonchalant, but the tension was there and Joey was basically showing Kevin his throat and rolling over to "progress."

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If Joey stands up on his own the story is over. I wouldn't mind seeing a recast and Joey maturing, but I also can't help thinking of something like what JFP did with Kevin.

It's tough to tell how they want us to feel about schemers. For instance, I never knew whether I was supposed to hate Stacey or feel sorry for her. Kim did reprehensible things but we were supposed to root for her. Usually comeuppance, if you're a bad person, means you take someone hostage. Otherwise you get redemption.

If it were me I would write Aubrey out quickly, as I don't think Terri Conn clicks in the role and the role is just pointless. I would have some friend from Europe expose her as a fraud, and this woman seems like a savior, only for her to be a very manipulative and damaged person. Put her in some type of very bizarre psychological relationship with Clint where she slowly but surely takes over his life and Viki is the only one who really has doubts about her.

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I think you could ride Aubrey out for at another several months of scheming and cover-ups and God knows what. She's disliked but I think Conn plays the part reasonably well and there could be a fair amount of scandal and drama which the audience will eat up, waiting to see her exposed, preferably at the altar, honestly. There's a way to do these sort of stories without running out the clock and then going way beyond, as was done with Stacy Morasco, who made Aubrey look like a perfectly reasonable antagonist.

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Vee I do agree with a lot of that--while maybe a bit too obvious it's far from the worst story on OLTL's canvas. I can't blame Tom Degnan though or see a recast helping (he's not great but he's light years above Bruce Michael Hall's "acting" who would make the current Joey seem like even more of a wimp) unless they change the writing and give him a bit more spine. And why is the show so keen on NOT bringing Kevin back permanently? I don't get it...

Carl I think RC thought we would have some sympathy for Stcaey (her family favoured Gigi, she was apparently an ugly duckling, boohoo) and RC indeed seemed repeatedly shocked at how hated she was. To me that just shows what a disconnect sometimes goes on at OLTL.

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Well, Conn is on contract, she's already in the credits and she tested with poor improperly-used David Fumero, which is usually the last Howard Johnson's before the city limits for any actress on the show. In this case I think they plan to "redeem" her and toss her to Cris as his latest "spoiled heiress makes good," which will bore us all to tears in third-tier storylines for months before someone is finally fired. It's very A-B-C plotting we can all figure out right now, before they've shared a single scene. And I'd rather see Cristian avoid another round and the audience avoid being bored by Aubrey's "redemption" in addition to the lame redemption of Ford the date rapist or Inez, the woman not a soul cared for. The show can't afford to screw around with the same old predictable shilly-shallying for such useless people. Tell a strong short-term story with Aubrey and her schemes, and get her out in six months or less.

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The problem I have with Terri Conn is that I think she's very artificial as an actress and she doesn't click that well with most scene partners. I think in Terri's ATWT run I saw her have chemistry with about two or three people. It's tough for me to see this as a character. It's just Terri Conn. I mean, the Echo story is a mess, if you can even call it a story, but I don't see Kim Zimmer, or Reva, I see Echo.

This could work but it doesn't seem like these types of stakes are enough now. Everything has to be about death and abuse and insanity.

They could always have her become like Billy's teacher in Soap, who showed up again every few months for some mass murder attempt on the Tate family that was invariably foiled.

1. Todd 2. John 3. Rex

If it were me I would just paid Kelly and Joey up and give them stories that are about everything but their love life. A TV studio, producing a show, working at the Sun, solving mysteries, I don't really care, just no romance for Kelly. Otherwise I would write Joey out now and not bring him back again, ever, unless OLTL was still on post-Brian Frons and post the whole pity the rapists stuff.

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We were obviously supposed to feel sorry for Hannah, yet she took Starr and her innocent little daughter hostage. I'm pretty sure we were supposed to believe that Hannah was "mentally ill". I might have been almost able to if Meghann Fahy did anything other than smirk, sneer, and laugh obnoxiously. And Ron Carlivati kept saying that she was an ideal "bad girl" for the show. During the summer, he said he wanted to redeem her. Then, maybe he and the higher ups realized that, in this role at least, she can do cartoonish villainy and nothing else. I'm actually wondering if that's why they had Hannah take Starr and an innocent little baby hostage, and hold them at gunpoint. And they still desperately tried to write her as "mentally ill".

We were also supposed to laugh at everything that Allison Perkins did. She was a psychopath, yet the writers wrote it as "camp".

As for Kim, we were supposed to love to hate her and be entertained by her. That's not the same thing as wanting us to root for her. And Rex and Gigi both despised Kim and Stacy, so we obviously weren't supposed to root for the strippers. We were supposed to be entertained by them, but that's not the same thing as wanting us to root for them. There's a big difference between "love to hate" and love. At least, there was sometimes consistency with them. The writers wanted Stacy to come across as a psychopath because they thought viewers would be entertained by it. It's only because we weren't entertained by it that they eventually tried to redeem Stacy.

As for Terri Conn/Aubrey, at first I thought they wrote this cipher in to make Kelly look good by comparison. But at least Kelly has some heart. And they even brought in Cutter to make us like Aubrey. It really feels like we're supposed to be turned on by this couple, who are really just a pair of inept gold diggers who are lucky that Joey is such an idiot. I find it interesting that Aubrey has a past with Ford, since she's starting to look like the female version of him. Terri Conn is a pleasant person in real life, but she manages to suck the life out of the vast majority of her scene partners, though it would certainly help if her character wasn't so vapid and had some kind of purpose. I don't think she's a very good actress, but I think her lack of charisma is her biggest problem, along with what a plot device her character is. Was she more interesting on "As the World Turns"?

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I agree with you about Bruce Michael Hall. I still wish we could have Nathan Fillion back, but Tom Degnan is much better than Bruce Michael Hall. As for Kevin, I still remember how the focus groups described him as a "verbablly abusive alcoholic", which led to Dan Gauthier being fired. The character happens to be a real gentleman, although I'm biased, but we can't have that. The Fords have eaten the show, along with Todd, Rex, and John (although I actually kind of like John lately...)

As for Stacy, I disagree. I think they wanted her to be an insane psychopath. They didn't make any attempts to make us feel sorry for her until Ron, and the higher ups, realized that cartoonish, insane psychopaths aren't entertaining. I can buy that Stacy was mentally ill, especially since we saw hard evidence of her delusions. Even after Gigi helped her give birth, the delusions were coming fast and hard. With Kim, she was a do or die friend, as well as her enabler.

And in my opinion, Hannah was an even bigger problem. Like the "backstory" about how her parents neglected her. At least Stacy's backstory was acknowledged as ridiculous and it was supposed to be wacky comedy, and I have a much easier time believing she was mentally ill than Hannah. Yet, Hannah wasn't hated as much, and RC loved her. It was impossible to tell if he wanted to keep her as the "awesome" bad girl, or if he wanted to redeem her.

Aubrey isn't as ridiculous as them, but she's very boring. In many ways, one could say she's like Lola. I don't think Terri Conn is a very good actress, but the real problem is her lack of charisma. To me, that's a big part of why it feels like she sucks the life out of scene partners, though it doesn't help that the character Aubrey is pointless and redundant.

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I agree. Hannah was ridiculous and not very well thought out at all. I gonna assume MF didn't want a long term contract and that's why the character wasn't fleshed out properly. Stacy was a thousand times better and I don't think they should have caved so easily with her. There was so much potential there.

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