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I don't know if I told you guys, but I bought the first two seasons on DVD. I haven't watched them yet because I have so many other shows to catch up with right now, but I'm thinking of alternating discs between Shameless, Dynasty, and PLL. I'm really eager to start this again, because I really did love it when I saw it a few months ago.

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I finally started, and I pretty much blasted through the first two discs of season 1 immediately. If I could, I'd still be watching right now. I've seen #1-#8 so far, so here are some thoughts:

~ I basically love every single character on the show, except for

~ FRANK. I hate him. Of course, he's needed for the rest of the show to work, and he's a necessary evil, basically, but I still can't stand his freaking guts. And I get that he's SUPPOSED to make me feel this way, but still...ugh. I hate him. Some times I do chuckle at some of the things he says, but he's truly scum.

~ Fiona annoys me as well sometimes. She's so consumed with a pride that I really don't understand, and it boggles my mind that she just enables Frank's behavior by picking up his slack constantly. It's sad.

~ I'm so disappointed in Steve for being a lying sack of sh!t, but we've only just figured this out, so I'm willing to see where this thing with his secret family goes.

~ Kev and Veronica are PERFECT. Perfect chemistry, and I've loved all of their stories so far.

~ Lip and Ian are probably my favorite characters on the whole show, though I guess they and Kev/Veronica are collectively my faves. I love their sibling relationship, and I like both as individual characters. I'm interested in seeing where Lip's story goes now that it's picking up, and of course, Ian needs to dump Kash's sad ass. Mickey's gross, so I'm not shipping that, but it's the better alternative. The writing for the teens on this show is great.

~ Sheila is PHENOMENAL! Joan Cusack deserves her Emmy noms and should have won at some point. The episode where she babysits Liam and finally goes outside almost made me cry. Really nothing else to say other than I didn't originally think she'd be such an important part of the show.

~ The kids. I love that the kids are being developed instead of just being there to add to the background. Debbie is such a great character, and she's provided a lot of LOL moments for me. In the last ep I watched, where Frank tries to be sober to get paid $3,000, Lip tries to explain to her how Frank being sober is only a temporary thing, and the writers almost made it seem like Debbie was just as naive as Carl about it, and I was like "She's not that naive, though..." and then BOOM, she very calmly and maturely expressed that she knew exactly what was going on but was choosing to just enjoy it while it lasted. I love this character.

I really like that they're emphasizing the episodic nature of these episodes. There are continuing storylines, but it's sorta early Knots/Dallas in that we're really taking time out to learn the characters in these episode plots before we're expected to care in more long-term stories. I don't know how long this lasts, but it works.

I'm heading out to buy the 3rd season today because I really think I can get through all of it in time to find a way to illegally stream the 4th season.

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I love how none of you told me that season 3 hasn't been released on DVD yet lol I'm getting it ASAP on Tuesday, I will even pay full-price if I have to. I'm halfway through the second season, and I'm seriously about to binge 3 episodes now and probably the rest tomorrow. I CAN NOT DEAL WITH A WAIT.

I'm starting to see some subtle changes in the show that I'm not too crazy about. The first season was very much about the whole family and the little relationships between various Gallaghers and how their storylines intersected. A lot of that is still there (Lip/Ian is still amazing, as is Debbie/Fiona), but with the summer setting, there's more space between the Gallaghers. I guess that's to be expected because it is indeed summer, but I miss the dynamics of the whole family together. The stories are very segmented now, and it's more of a traditional soap in that we just jump from story to story back to story etc.

Nevertheless, I am still obsessed!

The Monica two-parter in S1 was riveting from beginning to end. Loved EVERYTHING about it, even though I so, so hated how the kids were so horrible to Monica but so often give Frank a pass. Monica may have deserted them, but Frank constantly uses them and puts them in danger. It's sick how loyal they are to him and his antics. Everyone is his enabler, and I hate the sack of sh!t like there's no tomorrow. WHM is an incredible actor, though, and he makes it work. Hated Frank taking advantage of Dottie.

Louise Fletcher is KILLING IT as Grammy, even though I hate her hood rat ass too. I dislike how Grammy is meant to make us feel sorry for Frank.

I take back my brief blurb about Mickey! I'm ALL about dat Ian/Mickey life now! I'm starting to see changes in Mickey via his sexual relationship with Ian, and he's getting to be just a tiny smidge vulnerable. Their before/after sex banter is hilarious, and very real. Mickey's violence towards Ian has turned into more of an ambivalence, like he's okay with Ian clearly caring about him. I've fallen completely in love with Noel Fisher, too. He does a lot with the character. I SO loved the early S2 Lip/Mandy/Ian scenes. SO realistic, and very British soapish. I didn't notice Mandy was recast, to be honest, until I noticed Emma Greenwell's name in the credits and looked up to see who she played. Mandy has been so tertiary, it really hasn't made a difference to me.

Karen's gone to some weird places. I like her S2 (she went overboard at the end of the first season), and I like the thing with Jody. The scene where she beats the [!@#$%^&*] out of Lip and reveals her pregnancy was one of this show's signatures, IMO. LSW is fantastic when they give her good stuff to play. Jody is so weird but HOT.

Fiona...eh. She continues to annoy me at times, but I generally like her and root for her. So glad she got her ass checked for stealing from the woman's purse AND sexing Craig. I still can't get over the fact that she went to high school and still didn't know what PowerPoint was (and neither did Veronica, the Chaturbate queen?). I couldn't really care less about Fi's various men, but Steve's absence was felt in the early eps of S2. I still like Steve, even though he's an ass, and I want it to work out.

The Ethel storyline is another one of those things that I didn't think would be a big thing but became so very significant to my enjoyment of the show! LOL at Kev and V being all nice and proper with the adoption agency woman who ended up being ghetto as hell. Ethel and Debbie's friendship is one of my fave parts of the show, as is the whole Kev/V/Ethel set-up. I feel bad for thinking two 14-year-olds raising their kids together is cute, but Ethel and Malik are :wub: Debbie running the day care is EVERYTHING. She was merely the precocious (but not sickeningly so) girl in S1, but they grew her out of that in the second season to be more independent and self-sufficient. Loving the development of this one-of-a-kind character.

Lip...sigh. He's still my #1 character on the show, but he's f!cking up too much. When he peed on Frank, I was SO HAPPY! But now he's being a creeper behind Karen and has gone back to enabling Frank. He's gotten so cynical and bitter, and it's not a good look for him.

The show's cinematic beauty is such an unexpected surprise. The difference between those harsh winter episodes and these bright and sunny summer eps is so spectacular, and it totally changes the feel of the show in so many ways.

I'm 100% sure I'll be all caught up by S4's premiere, which is so unusual for me because I'm still at the beginning of season 2 of PLL after like a year and a half of watching, same with Walking Dead. This show is just so different, though! It's literally everything I've been looking for.

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I started S3 last night! Watched the first two episodes so far. Yall, this will be the FIRST time I've ever started a show and caught up completely in time for the newest season. I can't help it, Shameless is the type of show I could watch all day, even though later season 2 and season 3 aren't as good as the first season and a half. Still an awesome show.

I love Sheila, but now that Karen's gone (for now, at least) and Frank isn't with her anymore, I don't see why she and Jody are still a part of the show and why Jody's in the opening credits now. Their scenes are just so out of place, which is sad, because I loved Sheila and Karen's dynamics with the family early on.

Debbie ANNOYED THE SH!T OUT OF ME in the first episode. I don't understand where this extreme loyalty to Frank randomly came from. The only connection I can make is that she was traumatized by Monica cutting herself on Thanksgiving and so she's afraid of something happening to Frank. But yeah, she should know better. She's been shown to be so much wiser than that.

The Marco murder scene was brutal, and I really don't understand why we had to see that or why this storyline is even running. Mob stories are so rarely necessary, period, but even less so on this show.

Frank is still sh!t, I totally agree.

Ian got fine.

Bruh, Frank calling CPS on the kids was such a sheisty ass move, I can't! But that's the kind of thing I like to see on this show.

Mickey/Ian are my SH!T!!! "Dafuqa'ulookinat?" needs to be Mickey's catchphrase. Ian must be packin' for him to constantly be the top in all of these sexual relations.

Debbie beating the crap out of Frank with the soap was AMAZING. I loved the whole family banding together to fight against him, but I kept waiting for someone to just hit him, and I'm so glad it was Debbie! Loved her wanting to be left alone. That whole scene was awesome, but damn, the way they portray the kids with Frank is so inconsistent. Sometimes they just laugh him off because they're used to it, and they let him get his way, but then other times, they intensely hate him. I kinda get the fluctuation because sometimes his antics are easier to ignore than at other times, but still, they need to stand up to him once and for all. Ian is really the only one who consistently calls Frank on his sh!t.

I really don't mind Mandy. Now that I've gone and rewatched some early episodes, I do prefer the first Mandy, but I like Mandy's role in Lip's story right now. He's being a total !@#$%^&*]. Used to be my #1 fave character on the show, but he's gotten so obnoxious and desperate to be a hood rat. The guidance counselor (or was it the university guy?) who told him that his future would suck if he continues on his current path was totally right. Even worse, he'll become Frank. I'm glad that Mandy is trying to get him to continue his education.

I HATE the Steve/Jimmy story. I love Steve/Jimmy, and I love the dynamics of him as househusband at the Gallagher home, taking care of the kids, baking, and what-not, but the mob story needs to go. I'd much rather see his family come into the show and interact with the various characters. They really can't just waste Julia Duffy.

I'm probably gonna just go back and reply to yall's comments on the end of S2 lol I just have to add all my thoughts. Can't wait for the fourth season! I'm gonna miss seeing Steve/Jimmy's ass in the opening credits, though sad.png

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The Sheila/Grammy showdown was EPIC. Louise Fletcher, once again, killed it. "I will f!ck you up!!" The pure chaos of that scene was perfect.

Yeah, I need more Veronica/Kevin. Season 3 seems like it will have more of them now that that random Jasmine ho is out of the picture, so that's good. Veronica is Fiona's only real friend who hasn't let her down.

I really didn't care about Kash and Linda. I thought the whole story was kinda gross, and not really because he was clearly in his 30s and having sex with a 16-year-old. Just the whole concept of the whimpy grown man who's scared of his wife...just ew. The worst was when Kash tried to get it from Ian at home, and even Ian was like "Yeah...no. How about we not." I was worried that Ian was going to "fall" for Lloyd, but now that Mickey's back, I don't think he will. If he just sees it as sex, then that's all right. I'm not as disgusted by him and Lloyd as I was by him and Kash because at least Lloyd has some kind of confidence. Kash was just an immature idiot.

What, you didn't like Lil Hank? LOL!

Jody's hilarious as a character, but he's such a moron. I love how his sex theme is Kiss from a Rose.

Karen was just a disgusting bitch by the end of the season. I can't believe they really went there with her and really didn't stop at all from painting her to be completely and totally selfish. They didn't care at all to give her any layers anymore.

Estefania is flawless! I would have loved her and Marco having little scenes here and there where they talk sh!t about the Gallaghers and Steve in Portuguese. But Marco :(

They gave her a throwaway line about how she was just fine with being out of the house. They made a big deal out of her getting out of the house a few times in the first season, so I guess they didn't want to spend any time on that this time, though it wouldn't have hurt to show her pause before leaving the house.

And WHAT THE HELL with ALLLLL of the Gallaghers, including Liam, being allowed in the delivery room. I love this show, I really do, but they certainly ask us to believe a LOT.

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One more thing. FIONA! I'm so glad she got her GED! I now LOVE the character, after just being "meh" to her for so long. She makes mistakes, but she's really stepping up in new, mature ways, and I'm so proud of her. The club promoting thing is a setback for right now, but if she sticks with it, she can make it work. I love that she's not giving into Lip's childish behavior and sticking to her guns about being legit.

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I'm just gonna keep talking to myself as I make my way through the season kthxbye

The pedophile ep was so BIZARRE. All of a sudden Lip is on this crusade to rid the neighborhood of sex offenders? I understand that he was pissed about his sister having to see some guy jack off on the train, but why was no one concerned when Debbie was entertaining naked homeless men in the pool a few episodes ago? Oh, I understand, that was supposed to be "comical" and this is supposed to be "dramatic." This show is just so inconsistent! And THEN, he goes off on Ian for having sex with Kash and says he wanted to call the police multiple times, but didn't he get all snuggled up with Estefania at the very end of season 2? How old is she supposed to be? And THEENNNN the whole bizarre thing with the teacher. Isn't Lip 18 now? At the very least, he's 17, and even if he lied to her and told her he was 16, wouldn't the police know his real age (considering he's been recently arrested twice) and not care? He also showed himself to be extremely hypocritical, because he clearly enjoyed having sex with the older woman. And one last thing. WHY did he recruit the Milkovich pa to help round up the pedophiles when we know that he molests and has sex with his daughter?

And then the Frank plot with Hymie. The bartender who heard him call CPS just stood there and did nothing while he poked the baby with a thumb tack and then sat there and demanded he be served more alcohol that he won't ever pay for. Stupid.

The Fiona plot with the supermarket guy. I knew he was going to be a creep right away because he was fat, and sure enough, he was. Instead of trying to get her co-workers to "vote" on what they should do to him, why didn't she just use the recording of the guy and Veronica? I did love the scenes of the ladies hashing the whole thing over, though.

Really, the only two plots that made a substantial amount of sense in these two eps were Ian and Mickey dealing with Ned/Lloyd and Veronica and Kevin dealing with Cheryl. Veronica is such an awesome, unique character, and SH never fails to get to the core of who she is, no matter what. Both she and Fi being totally dismissive of Cheryl was hilarious and usually that groupthink stuff annoys me, but that Cheryl bitch had it coming 100%. LOL at Veronica telling her to just get in the car and go, because you know she was gonna try to get in the last word. Noel Fisher is just as great an actor. He adds so much to Mickey that's beyond the actual lines he's given. I LOL'd at the whole "Yeah, I f!cked Angie. Everybody f!cks Angie. *beat* You don't f!ck Angie?" Even in that funny exchange, you could see something just below his surface that shows how his feelings towards Ian are changing and strengthening. He's probably scared to death by the fact that Ian is STILL trying to be a part of his life -- he's simply not used to that.

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I think that the whole point of Lip's posse was to show how hypocritical people are on the sex offender front. The second they saw she was a hot woman, they all went on their way. Mandy was the only one who stood up to her and sent her packing like the pervert that she is. To me, the teacher was even worse than Kash because she was clearly getting off mostly on the fact that he was young and that she was in control. The sick humor of it was Lip using this to manipulate her and get some.

I agree that this show is incredibly inconsistent. There are more plot holes and inconsistencies than I can count, but it's still entertaining to me and I like the actors so, I try not to over think the glaring issues with tone and plot.

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Yay, someone's finally rejoining the conversation lol The show comes back in less than two weeks now, so you all might as well read my posts to recap season three!

That's pretty much the way I decided to read the pedophile ep, that it was mainly about showing hypocrisy. Lip and Kev are selling drugs and alcohol to underage teens, but Lip wants to be a bastion of morality? It was just a weird, weird episode, but I'm glad we got the Lip/Ian scenes out of it.

As far as the inconsistency, I'm really just beginning to view any Frank plotlines as cartoons. The last ep I watched ended with Fiona finding out that Frank called CPS, but even still, up until this point, there is really no reason why any of those kids should want Frank anywhere near them at all. They treat Monica with such disdain, but Frank goes back and forth from being scum of the earth to wacky drunk dad. Really can't take any of that serious anymore, and I really don't see a point to Frank even being around anymore. He was an integral part of setting the show up in the beginning, but it's really about the kids and their friends/lovers now.

Fiona really ticked me off with how insensitive she was towards Jimmy. He was completely right when he called her out on always trying to compare tragedies. Chatwin and Emmy were both great in that scene, but I sided with Jimmy all the way. The main difference between Jimmy's problem with Lloyd sleeping with Ian and the various problems Fiona brought up were that many of the Fiona problems were problems that could have been avoided if she simply took better care of the kids and cut Frank completely out of their lives. Ever since Monica came to stay last season, she's been way more lax in running the household, and it's no wonder CPS came and took the kids. I was mad at her again for acting as if it was so horrible for them to take the kids!

Carl and Liam really ended up in a nice place, but of course, the Gallaghers don't know how to have nice things, so of course Fiona was all approving when she realized Carl was trying to sabotage his stay with them. I don't understand why Lip is in the group home. Did he ever graduate from high school? Aren't they officially in summer now? He should be 18 or pretty close to it. Also, is it really common for kids like Lip and Ian to end up in a "group home" that is more akin to a Sally Jessy Raphael boot camp?

Mickey and Ian wub.pngwub.png The kiss was so quick, but so, so necessary and sweet! Their little rendezvous at the Milkovich house was also nice, but WTF at Mickey randomly having those balls to stick in his ass! I'm scared of what's gonna happen now with them sad.png Mickey finally seemed ready to open up and be more emotionally attached, but now what?

The Veronica/Kev/Mama stuff. JESUS. I thought it was funny in the beginning, but once again, the show bordered on bizarre with them constantly trying to have sex with each other and then Veronica and Mama sitting on either end of Kevin. Just gross. A lot of it was hilarious, though, so I will definitely give them that.

Sheila and Jody...still love Sheila, and loved her going off on Frank, but I'm still finding it hard to care about them now that they're so disconnected from the rest of the show. I hate to say it, but Karen needs to return soon for them to gain some relevance. Her absence has been felt more than Jimmy/Steve's at the beginning of season two, to be honest.

LOL at this bitch Mama Kamala.

Oh, and the Molly stuff. If she's really gone after this episode, WHAT was the point of having her there besides "Harharhar girlpenis ladysack harharharharhar"??? They sorta used her to create friction between Lip and Mandy (JAW did fantastic with all of those scenes) and Mandy and Fiona, but if her mom was just gonna return and pick her up, what was the whole point? The mom was hilarious too, and I'd love it if she stuck around, but I guess since her scenes were cut, she won't be back.

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I think children have a very strong bond even with abusive parents. It's the only kind of life they know. That's why Debbie is the one who loves Frank the most, she hasn't learned how to create emotional distance yet. I doubt Liam even knows who Frank is and Carl is, well, Carl. I'd say Fiona remembers a time when he was a half decent father and that's why she gives him the time of day, even though she's guarded with him.

I agree with you that Frank is mostly a cartoon, but it's really too bad. WHM is excellent, but they rarely give him real moments. One of the few was when he was falling into the gutter after Monica slit her wrists. Also, when he let Lip piss all over him. Still, I wouldn't like the show as much without Frank. He is the glue that holds the show together imo. The obstacle these kids have to overcome. Some of his rants are hilarious, if you listen closely to what he's saying. The rationalizations and twists in logic are pretty insane, but great writing and delivery.

I do think they should put Frank and Sheila back together, so Sheila is more connected to the main action. I don't miss Karen in the least. She's not quite as bad as Frank, but he has 30 years on her. She's well on the way to being a soul less monster. I find her more actively malicious than Frank with the exception of Frank headbutting Ian in episode 2.

Yeah, that was a little too much for me.

I saw Fiona's side. He's whining about his father being bi when she's trying to dig up a dead body, for pity's sake! He was hiding the real trouble in his life from her all season long, also the fact that he was planning to bail. When you think about it, Fiona's very lucky that Estephania's father didn't decide to kill her. Meanwhile, she had no idea there was a thug outside her house for weeks. When that guy handed her the money and said Jimmy wasn't worthy, I mostly agreed. He had his foot halfway out the door to Michigan, after letting her trust him. What an ass!

Sure, Fiona should take better care of the kids, but she has limited resources and no good parenting role models. I don't know many adults who could handle five children, never mind someone who is barely grown up herself and mostly on her own, living in poverty. There's only so much she can do and it's mostly about survival.

I didn't mind that Fiona was upset that the kids were taken. The only think these people have or know is each other. They've survived by sticking together. Of course, Carl doesn't want to be with strangers, no matter how well meaning or well off they are. Plus they've been taken before and they know how bad the system can be. Liam being adopted would probably be the best thing for him, but I don't expect his siblings to see that. The others are too old and would always try to get back to Fiona.

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I could understand the kids' attachment to Frank if not for the crappy way they treat Monica, someone who is obviously clinically ill and is now trying to make herself better. Frank is just content to be a freeloading piece of sh!t who ignores his kids until he needs them for his own selfish needs, and they all mostly just laugh it off in that "Oh, dad!" way. I do agree that Macy is a fantastic actor and really brings the character to life in those monologues. Even when he's doing horrible things, Macy's able to infuse something in him that makes it hard to look away.

I have to disagree about Karen in comparison to Frank, though. The fundamental thing about Karen is that she doesn't ask for people to be bothered with her. In the first season, yes, she did some evil things towards the end, but throughout most of the second season, she just wanted people to leave her alone. She may have been vile in regards to the baby, but she'd made it extremely clear from the beginning that she had no plans to keep the baby. When we found out she was pregnant, it was via her yelling at Lip to stay away from her and the baby -- and he proceeded to get involved with her and the baby. She wanted to leave the baby at the hospital so that it could be adopted -- but then Sheila and Jody decided to kidnap the kid. She finally decided to just leave, and still, Lip is constantly trying to get in contact with her. She's not actively manipulating the people around her for her own benefit the way Frank constantly does. Frank is truly scum, worse than Monica, worse than Karen, worse than Jody, worse than anyone else, IMO. Terry Milkovich might be the only one who can rival him.

I disagree on Fiona's problems, too. She's digging up a body why? That's not just some circumstance that was out of her hands the way Jimmy finding out his father has been living a secret life is. If she called him out on his hypocrisy regarding secret lives, then I'd totally back her up, but I don't agree with the way she hung herself on the cross in that scene. She's made immense sacrifices, but it was not necessary for her to do so. Yeah, that's her family and she wants to take care of them, but she never had the means to properly see to them. CPS should have been called on Frank years ago. The family would have been split up, but is that so bad compared to all of the trouble they've had to deal with over three seasons? Fiona's problem is that she gripes about what she's gone through, but no one ever asked her or expected her to go through any of it. She made the choice to ignore her deadbeat dad, and she's constantly chosen to protect him from the law in order to preserve I have absolutely no idea what.

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Later she did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, taking courses in speech, drama, and psychology. She then taught for five years in Dayton, Ohio.(7)     How Irna Phillips got back to Chicago is open to debate. Some sources say she returned to visit a newly born niece; others say that a tiff with a boyfriend sent her packing.(8) Others say she was only on vacation.(9) What *is*  known is that she returned to the Windy City in 1930 and that she seldom left it again.(10) Exactly how Phillips got her first radio job is not known either. Two stories survive. In the first she was on a tour of WGN studios when someone mistook her for a radio actress applying for a job and handed her a script. Though they considered her voice too low for a woman, they were impressed enough with her reading of a poem by Eugene Field, "The Bowleg Boy," that they hired her.(11) The second story of Phillips's entrance into radio is that she walked into the station and asked point-blank for an audition. Either way, she ended up with a nonpaying job on WGN, broadcasting a daily trifle called THOUGHT FOR THE DAY, which consisted of Phillips reading poetry and adlibbing insprational commentary.(12)      After two weeks Phillips was promptly let go only to be almost immediately rehired in a different capacity after she allegedly protested to her ex-boss. In her new job she was asked to write an act daily (six days a week) "radio strip," or serialized story. WGN had already been running the continuing story of GASOLINE ALLEY, based on Frank King's comic strip about small-town America, and  now wanted another daily show; this one "about a family."(13)       Irna Phillips responded with what many consider the first "soap opera." It was titled PAINTED DREAMS and began on October 20, 1930, running in short, ten-minute installments.(14)     The show had six characters but only two actors. Phillips played the main character, Mother Monahan (a role based on Phillips's own mother), and the "mystery character," Kay. Actress Ireene Wicker (later "Kellogg'sSinging Lady") played all the other parts - including the family's barking dog, Mikey. The two women got by without male voices by only referring to the men in their lives, never by having them present.(15)     PAINTED DREAMS had run for two years o n WGN when Phillips tried to create radio network interest in it. WGN refused the idea, saying that it owned the show outright and that it could not be moved to another broadcaster. Phillips quit the station and began what was to become a long, bitter court battle with the station over ownership of the series. The case dragged on in the courts for ten years, finally being decided against Phillips. By then, though, she had moved on to other things. She had also learned a lesson: All future shows and scripts she worked on would be copyrighted in her name alone.(16)     In 1932 Phillips bounced back with her second soap, title TODAY'S CHILDREN. It ran on WGN's chief rival WMAQ (at first unsponsored and with Phillips footing all costs in order to retain ownership). It was a thinly disguised version of DREAMS: Mother Monahan was now Mother Moran, and the other characters of the show were similarly redesigned. For a time Phillips acted in the serial but eventually found the dual work of acting and writing too taxing. She resigned herself to writing only.(17) Soon after, "the Phillips impulse" for creating new sows began. She created a short-lived soap, MASQUERADE - the story of a painter involved with different glamorous women. Devised as a way to sell the sponsor's cosmetics, it lasted three months.(18)     TODAY'S CHILDREN ended in 1938, partly because the death of Phillips's mother made work on a mother-centered show too difficult for her emotionally, and partly because, as Phillips said, "I had exhausted all the problems of these people."(19)     These two failures and the demise of CHILDREN were balanced by two other Phillips creations that survived and prospered: THE GUIDING LIGHT (debuting in 1937) and THE ROAD OF LIFE (debuting in 1938).(20)     ROAD OF LIFE centered on the life of noble surgeon Dr. Jim Brent, who "mends broken legs and broken hearts with equal ease."(21) GUIDING LIGHT was the story of Dr. John Ruthledge, a small-town minister. The character was based on a friend of Phillips. Sometimes during the early years an entire fifteen-minute episode was devoted to a Ruthledge sermon. Collected into book form, the character's many sermons sold 290,000 copies nationwide.(22)      Irna Phillips also created another hospital-based drama around this time, WOMAN IN WHITE. And when a group of characters from GUIDING LIGHT, the Kransky family, developed enough, she spun them off into their own show, THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS, in 1939. It ran until 1960.(23)     Along the way, creating, writing, and controlling her series, Phillips pioneered many of the staples of soap operas today. She was the first to incorporate professional people into her stories: lawyers, ministers, and doctors replaced minimum-wage, blue-collar workers as heroes.(24) Phillips was the first to use such soap devices as organ music (provided by Bernice Yanocek) for dramatic effect, and cliff-hanger endings to keep audiences coming back.(25)      Phillips was the first to bring a higher social consciousness to the world of soaps. In 1945, after using THE GUIDING LIGHT to help sell war bonds and after realizing she had been "subconsciously" educating her listeners in various areas for years, Phillips decided to take a more uniform approach to the idea of "social significance." Phillips and staff sent letters to a variety of agencies around the country (the Red Cross, the American Legion), asking a simple question: "What is your problem and what can we do to help you with it on one of our programs?" From their responses, Phillips devised soap story lines intended to further those agencies' causes.(26)     Quite ingeniously, Irna Phillips also tailored her shows to her predominantly housewife audience. She slowed the pace so that women doing housework could answer the door, vacuum, or see to the baby and still not miss anything. She rationed ideas and story lines by doing the same thing.(27)     Phillips, herself, was a highly eccentric woman, possibly more than any of the thousands of characters she created during her career.She consulted fortune tellers from time to ti me and changed the spelling of her name from the original Erna to Irna when a numerologist said it would ease her life.(28)     She was also a hypochondriac. She visited doctors nearly every day of her life. A physician who lived in her apartment building in Chicago stopped by several times a day to listen to her complaints and take her temperature.(29) Her trips to New York City were often mixed in with trips to different hospitals and specialists in Manhattan. Once, while staying in her suite at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, she insisted that storm windows be installed to end the drafts. The windows are still there.(30) Frequently, she asked to be pushed around in a wheelchair.(31)      Not surprisingly, Phillips's preoccupation with illness and disease became evident in her work. Doctors and nurse as characters, hospitals as settings, and illnesses as subjects for drama were vintage Phillips characteristics.(32) Phillips's treatment of actors who worked on her shows was rather odd as well. She seldom bothered to learn the names of the performers, knowing them only as the characters they portrayed.(33) Actress Helen Wagner, who has played Nancy Hughes (now McClowsky) on AS THE WORLD TURNS since it premiered in 1956, was a friend of Irna's and remembers just how typical that was, "I was always Nancy to her. Any reference to my husband always meant Chris, my on-screen husband, not my real-life husband. I never became 'Helen' until very late in her career, after knowing her many, many years."(34)     Similarly, Phillips did not like the off-screen lives of her actors to interfere with the on-screen lives of their characters. Helen Wagner, whose character of Nancy was in the early days something of a homebody, was for many years denied a vacation from the show because it would mean writing the character out for a few weeks. Phillips told Ms. Wagner, "Nancy is a housewife, Nancy does not travel." It was several years before Nancy was allowed to go visit a sister out of state so that actress Helen Wagner could have a few days off.(35)     Like her characters' lives and her plots, Phillips rigidly controlled her home life and went to great lengths to keep it simple. She lived far away from the network TV industry in her Chicago apartment. Until she was in her late thirties, Phillips shared a bedroom with her mother, and she never learned how to drive. Though her sponsor once gave her a 1940 Plymouth to celebrate ten years in radio (and Phillips named it Sheila), it is doubtful she ever drove it.(36) Even her weekly menus were preset: on Sunday there was leg of lamb; Monday, chicken; Tuesday, steak; Wednesday, meatloaf; Thursday, lamb chops; Friday, spaghetti; and Saturday, stew.(37)     Phillips seldom had anything to do with the press, which she believed (perhaps rightly) dismissed soap operas as second-class subculture, snickering at her success and her fans' loyalty. She permitted few interviews during her entire career.(38)     Also not surprising was Phillips's flair for melodrama. In 1960 interviewer Peter Wyden related the story of the day Phillips's son Tom arrived late to meet her: "She does not just become vaguely uneasy. Her concern is translated into imaginary but stark disaster - he's been run over, his body is lying at the curb, he is bleeding badly."(39) Irna Phillips labeled herself a compulsive worrier and believed she would never get an ulcer because she turned all her worries into scripts.(40) "I do quite a bit of projecting," ahe told an interviewer.(41)     To oversee her programs, Phillips moved in 1940 to New York City. After seeing the toll the war was influcting on the country in 1941, she fashioned the serial WOMEN ALONE to dramatize the plight of women left on the home front. Her experiences in New York also served as the model for yet another new drama, LONELY WOMEN, which had a short on-air lifespan beginning in 1942 before Phillips recycled an old title and the show became known as TODAY'S CHILDREN in 1943. After six  months, though, New York was not to Phillips's liking, and she soon returned to Chicago. A similar move to California in 1943 did not work out either, and she returned to Chicago after only nine months.(42)     With so many shows on the air at the same time, and wielding as much power as she did, Irna Phillips put forth a revolutionary idea for soap opera broadcasting in 1943. THE GENERAL MILLS HOUR, as she foresaw it, would consist of three ofher shows running back-to-back - each in different lengths, from fifteen to twenty minutes depending on the plot - with characters from each occasionally overlapping and interacting. A narrating voice-over would navigate proceedings. It endured for a few months until Phillips abandoned the concept.(43)     By 1943, only a little over ten years after she began, Phillips was single-handedly responsible for five different daily dramas. Her total income from them was $250,000, and her literary output was estimated at two million words per year, the equivalent of forty novels.(44) She had established such a factory by this time that she found it necessary to have a lawyer and two doctors on retainer just to act as consultants.(45)     It was only later that Phillips reached the need for support writers, or "dialoguers," who filled out the basic story lines she devised. Many young writers who began with Phillips went on to successes of their own. In 1946 she hired a young recently graduated writer named Agnes Eckhardt, who later married and changed her name to Agnes Nixon.(46) Nixon would go on to create ALL MY CHILDREN and LOVING. Phillips also had a longtime collaborator in writer William Bell. After cocreating ANOTHER WORLD with Phillips, he went on to found with his wife Lee Phillip Bell two of the most successful soaps of recent years, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and, later, THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.     Also in 1943, at near the same age her mother was when she herself was born, Phillips, unmarried and a career woman, adopted a child, Thomas Dirk. A year and a half later, Phillips adopted Katherine Louise.(47)     Throughout the 1940s Irna Phillips reigned as the undisputed queen of the radio soap opera. By the end of the decade a new medium was on the horizon and it would be that medium that Phillips (somewhat reluctantly) would conquer next.      By all accounts Irna Phillips was not anxious to move her shows from radio to television. With television, a fog horn could no longer substitute for the deck of a ship, and actors could no longer be brought in and replaced so easily. So reluctant was she to give up radio that after THE GUIDING LIGHT debuted on television on July 30, 1952, the scripts were rebroadcast that same day on radio. The two GUIDING LIGHTS ran concurrently on the two media for several years until finally the incredible success of the television version made the radio outlet obsolete.(48)     Around this time Proctor and Gamble [sic: My Note: This book spelled Procter and Gamble wrong over & over.], the soap manufacturer and a longtime force in soap opera broadcasting, began its long association with Phillips. Phillips sold the ownership of her current TV dramas to Proctor and Gamble Productions. Between the two of them (Phillips and P&G) they formed the biggest, toughest alliance daytime television had ever seen.(49)     In 1956 Phillips, in association with Proctor and Gamble, stormed onto television with what was to become her most popular (and some say, personal favorite) creation, AS THE WORLD TURNS. The continuing story of the Hughes and Lowell clans of Oakdale, Illinois, began on April 2, 1956, as TV's first half-hour soap. It was produced live until 1975 when it was lengthened to a hour. The show revolutionized daytime drama by gaining more viewers than ever before in the history of the genre (sometimes as high as a fifty percent share of the audience), and it launched soapdom's first all-out lying, scheming villainess, Lisa Miller (later, after marriage/s, Lisa Hughes, then Coleman, then Mitchell, then others). She was played by actress Eileen Fulton, who continues on the show to this day. Fulton's and the show's fame were so intense in the mid-1960s that CBS created a nighttime spin-off titled OUR PRIVATE WORLD. It, however, would only last a few  months.(50)     Irna Phillips's actual writing for her series, radio and television, was rather unusual. Every day at  nine in the morning Phillips sat down at a rickety, brown card table - the same one she had used for years - and began to devise that day's scripts from projected story lines often set down months in advance. From there she would dictate dialogue to her secretary and close friend, Rose Cooperman. "I really don't think I write," she said "I act."(51) Occasionally sitting still and occasionally moving around the room, moving as the character would, Phillips assumed all the characters in the scene - male, female, adult, child - changing her voice to indicate a change in speaker.(52) This process worked so well for Phillips it was later adopted by many of her proteges, including William Bell.(53)     As Phillips would talk, "Rosie," her secretary, would take down every word, following the various characters by following changes in Irna's voice and gestures. Rosie filled in the punctuation along the way. Both women became so involved with the story line they were creating that they found themselves in tears.(54)     The average time for Irna Phillips to dictate a half-hour script was about an hour and forty-five minutes. It usually took longer to type the finished manuscript than it did for Phillips to dream it up.(55) During Phillips's "writing" she seldom lost her place or became confused.  If she did, she could always consult one of her various genealogical charts she created for each show. They consisted of squares containing characters' names with solid lines connecting relatives, dotted lines connecting in-laws, and "X"'s over names of dead or missing family members.(56)     After the writing was finished Phillips would sit down and watch not only her shows but those of her competitors as well. While viewing her own shows, if she found something she did not like in script, performance, or production, it was switched immediately. This often meant a phone call to New York and a list of demands. A few times actors found themselves jobless after a phone call from Phillips. Not surprisingly, many actors, writers, and crew members feared Phillips's wrath. Once, when an actor playing what many thought an indispensable character asked for a raise in salary, Phillips refused and solved the whole problem by simply killing off the character. The show went on without him.(57) Don Hastings, who has played Dr. Bob Hughes on AS THE WORLD TURNS since 1960 (and wrote for the show for many years under the name J.J. Mathews), remembers Phillips as a tough but fair mother lion, ferocious in protecting her creation: "She was very tough on her writers but would protect them if the network or the producers criticized them. She always said that if she okayed a script it was as good as her writing it herself."(58)     Though Irna Phillips could be difficult, and a great many lived in constant fear of her, nobody would deny her skill. Don Hastings remembers a time when AS THE WORLD TURNS ratings had slipped. Owners Proctor and Gamble asked Phillips - then at work on another Proctor and Gamble show - to return and help WORLD. "Can you bring us up to a thirty share by the end of the year?" they asked. Phillips delivered the thirty share in thirteen weeks.(59)     Additionally, Phillips was not as difficult on a personal level as she might first appear. Throughout her career she was instrumental in starting other writers in their careers. Agnes Nixon, Bill Bell, and many other names benefitted from her support and guidance. Phillips was also known to take many young actors under her wing, sheltering and encouraging them.     In her life in Chicago, Phillips had a small but tight-knit group of friends and a fiercely devoted household staff. They admired and respected her enough to overlook her dramatic nature and her many pseudo-illnesses. Producer Lee Bell, who with her husband Bill created THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, was a friend and coworker of Irna's for many years; she remembers an eccentric but likable person. "She was a genius," Bell said, "A brilliant, intelligent woman. You wanted to be around her. Whatever eccentricities [she had] didn't matter."(60)      In 1964 Phillips formulated a new series for NBC titled ANOTHER WORLD. The title referred to the separate "psychological worlds" of its characters and the two separate economic worlds of the show's two major families. Not accidently, it also drew comparison with the previous Phillips creation AS THE WORLD TURNS.(61)     ANOTHER WORLD was the first daytime soap to run one hour. It was also the first daytime show to address the topic of abortion.(62) Phillips invited controversy again in 1967 when she attempted to introduce an interracial story line into LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING, a show she was also writing at the time. When the network bosses balked at the idea, Phillips walked out. She abandoned the show, and it was canceled in 1973.(63)     Despite Phillips forward thinking, however, she did not always approve of the direction daytime shows were taking. She said in 1972: "The daytime serial is destroying itself, eating itself up with rape, abortion, illegitimacy, men falling in love with other men's wives, all of which is often topped by a murder, followed by a long, drawn-out murder trial.(64)     In 1964 ABC-TV put Irna Phillips, at age 63, on the payroll as a special consultant for its primetime soaper PEYTON PLACE, the serialized twice-weekly program based on the book by Grace Metalious. By taking the PEYTON PLACE job, Phillips achieved a rare triple play: she now had her hand in, and was receiving paychecks from, shows running on all three major networks.(65)     In 1965 Phillips cocreated DAYS OF OUR LIVES and composed what has since become arguably the most famous opening line for any show in television's history: "Like sands through the hour glass ..."(66)     All did not always flow smoothly, however. The early years of ANOTHER WORLD were filled with complications: major characters were thrown out with little explanation, and actors were replacedal,ost weekly. Frustrated, Phillips left ANOTHER WORLD to concentrate on a show for ABC that she was cocreating with her daughter (and was based on Irna's own life). That show would only air for a few months when it premiered. Agnes Nixon was later brought into ANOTHER WORLD as head writer to whip the show into shape.(67)     Since Irna Phillips had almost single-handedly created soap operas as a dramatic form years ago in radio, they had begun to change. The incedible success of her own AS THE WORLD TURNS made daytime soap operas an important, highly profitable part of the network schedule. To gain viewers and therefore money, soaps became more and more sensational. Gradually they became more scandalous, sexual, and action-oriented; Irna Phillips's stories of women sitting around the breakfast table were becoming passe. Phillips found herself being left behind by the genre she had created. Allen Potter, who worked on ANOTHER WORLD with Phillips during its difficult years, summed up the problem: "She was from a different era. [She was] still writing kids going down to the malt shop."(68)     Phillips was asked to rejoin AS THE WORLD TURNS in 1972.(69) She simplified some of the plots but failed to turn the recent ratings dip around. Proctor and Gamble, the show's producer, fired Phillips in 1973. Back in Chicago she began work on an autobiography, but nothing was ever published.(70)     On December 23, 1973, Irna Phillips died in her sleep at her home in Chicago. She was seventy-two. In accordance with her wishes news of her death was kept from the press for several weeks.(71)     What made Phillips a success - the Queen of the Soaps, as she was often called - is somewhat difficult to answer. Helen Wagner recently explained it this way: "We [AS THE WORLD TURNS] premiered the same day as EDGE OF NIGHT [a now defunct mystery-based soap on ABC]. What was important on that show was the story. For AS THE WORLD TURNS what was important was the character.(72) Phillips realized early in her career that the success of serialized stories depended on her audience becoming involved and knowledgeable about the characters on the show. She told BROADCASTING in 1972: "Characters have to be multidimensional. The story has to come from the characters, to the point where your viewers will get to know a character so well they can predict his or her behavior in a given dramatic situation."(73)     Phillips believes there were several reasons for her success, not the least of which was her self-described limited vocabulary ("my greatest asset"), which, she believed, made her programs universal. She also attempted in her writing to appeal to the basic instincts of self-preservation, sex, and family.(74)     Perhaps Phillips's greatest personal achievement, however, was creating a world. fully and believably, that she did not really know herself. Though she never married; nor did she give birth; nor did she ever own a  home. But somehow Irna Phillips knew enough about all those qualities to entertain millions for generations - to spin endlessly involving tales of day-to-day life; tales about the simple joys and daily dramas of paying the bills, raising children, belonging to a family, and falling in love.      Irna Phillips wrote in McCALL'S magazine in 1965, "None of us is different, except in degree. None of us is a stranger to success and failure, life and death, the need to be lovedthe struggle to communicate..."(75)     Four of the programs Irna Phillips created - AS THE WORLD TURNS, GUIDING LIGHT, DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and ANOTHER WORLD - are still on the air today.  IRNA PHILLIPS July 1, 1901        Born in Chicago, Illinois 1922             Graduated with bachelor's degree in education. 1924             Graduated with master's degree in speech; began career teaching school in Missouri and, later, Ohio. May 1930        Returned to Chicago; joined WGN as actress and ad hoc writer.  October 20, 1930    PAINTED DREAMS, radio's first "soap opera" debuted;created by Irna Phillips.  June 16, 1932        TODAY'S CHILDREN, second Phillips creation, premiered; departed WGN. 1934            MASQUERADE premiered.  1935            MASQUERADE aired last broadcast. January 25, 1937     THE GUIDING LIGHT premiered.  1938            TODAY'S CHILDREN aired final broadcast; ROAD OF LIFE and WOMAN IN WHITE premiered. October 16, 1939    THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS premiered.  1940            Phillips moved briefly to New York City; would return to Chicago after six months.  1941            WOMEN ALONE premiered; settled court suit with WGN.  June 29, 1942        LONELY WOMEN (title later changed to TODAY'S CHILDREN) premiered.  1943            Resided briefly in Los Angeles; adopted son, Thomas Dirk. 1944            Adopted daughter, Katherine.  Summer 1948        WOMAN IN WHITE aired last broadcast. October 11, 1948    THE BRIGHTER DAY premiered on radio.  January 31, 1949    THESE ARE MY CHILDREN premiered. March 4, 1949        THESE ARE MY CHILDREN ended. 1950            Second incarnation of TODAY'S CHILDREN ended on radio. June 30, 1952        THE GUIDING LIGHT debuted on television. 1956            BRIGHTER DAY ended  on radio. January 4, 1954        THE BRIGHTER DAY premiered on television.  December 13, 1954    ROAD OF LIFE premiered on television; show ended broadcasts on radio. July 1, 1955        ROAD OF LIFE aired last broadcast on television. April 2, 1956        AS THE WORLD TURNS premiered. November 25, 1960    THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS ended on radio. May 4, 1964        ANOTHER WORLD premiered.  1964            Worked as consultant on primetime's PEYTON PLACE. May 5, 1965        OUR PRIVATE WORLD, AS THE WORLD TURNS spin-off, premiered in primetime. September 10, 1965    OUR PRIVATE WORLD aired last episode. September 28, 1965    THE BRIGHTER DAY aired last broadcast on TV. November 8, 1965    DAYS OF OUR LIVES premiered. September 18, 1967    LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING, soap opera, premiered.  March 23, 1973        LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING aired last broadcast. Late 1973        Fired by Proctor and Gamble.  December 23, 1974    Passed away at home in Chicago.  NOTES 1.    "The Creators," TV GUIDE (Commemorative Edition) (July 1991), p.59. 2.    Dan Wakefield, ALL HER CHILDDREN (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p.27.  3.    CURRENT BIOGRAPHY (1943), p.590. 4.    Irna Phillips, "Every Woman's Life Is a Soap Opera," Mccall's (March 1965), p.116 5.    Ibid. 6.    Peter Wyden, "Madam Soap Opera," SATURDAY EVENING POST (25 June 1960), p.129. 7.    Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN: THE MODERN PERIOD (Cambridge: Belknap, 1980), p.542. 8.     "Script Queen," TIME (10 June 1940), p.66. 9.    Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, p.542. 10.    "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends With Tradition," BROADCASTING (6 November 1972), p.75 11.     Madeline Edmundson and David Rounds, THE SOAPS (New York: Stein & Day, 1973), p.43.     12.     CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.590 13.    Sicherman and Green, p.542. 14.    Robert C. Allen, SPEAKING OF SOAPS (CHapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1985), p.111.  15.     "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends With Tradition," p.75. 16.     Edmundson and Rounds, p.44. 17.     Allen, p.112. 18.     Wyden, p.130. 19.     Ibid. 20.     CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.590. 21.     "Queen of the Soaps," NEWSWEEK (11 May 1964), p.66. 22.    Sicherman and Green, p.543. 23.     Wyden, p.130. 24.    Sicherman and Green, p.259. 25.    CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.519. 26.     "With Significance," TIME (11 June 1945), p.46. 27.     CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.590. 28.    Wyden, p.129. 29.    Interview with Lee Bell (4 September 1991). All other information and quotes from Mrs. Bell in this chapter were taken from this interview. 30.    Interview with Don Hastings (5 December 1991). All other information and quotes from Mr. Hastings in this chapter were taken from this interview.  31.    Wyden, p.129. 32.    Robert LaGuardia, SOAP WORLD (New York: Arbor House, 1983), p.20. 33.    Wyden, p.129 34.    Interview with Helen Wagner (10 October 1991). All other information and quotes from Ms. Wagner in this chapter were taken from this interview. 35.     Ibid., p.130. 36.    "Script Queen," p.66. 37.    Wyden, p.127. 38.     Wagner interview. 39.    Wyden, p.127. 40.    Phillips, p.117. 41.    Wyden, p.127. 42.    Ibid., p.130. 43.    Ibid. 44.    CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, P.591. 45.    "Script Queen,"p.68. 46.    Wakefield, p.28. 47.    Sicherman and Green, p.543. 48.    Wyden, p.130.  49.    Ibid. 50.    Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, THE COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO PRIME TIME NETWORK TV SHOWS(New York: Ballantine, 1981), p.571. 51.    Wyden, p.129. 52.    Phillips, p.168. 53.    Bell interview. 54.    Wyden, p.30. 55.    Ibid. 56.    Phillips, p.168. 57.    CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.591. 58.    Hastings interview. 59.    Ibid. 60.    Bell interview. 61.    LaGuardia, p.81. 62.    Ibid. 63.     Jean Rouverol, WRITING FOR THE SOAPS (Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books,1984), p.11. 64.    "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends with Tradition," p.75. 65.    "Queen of the Soaps," NEWSWEEK (11 May 1964), p.66. 66.    Rouverol, p.11. 67.     La Guardia, p.81. 68.     Ibid. 69.    "Week's Headliners," BROADCASTING (17 January 1972), p.9. 70.    LaGuardia, p.81. 71.    Landry, p.71. 72.    Wagner interview. 73.    "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends with Tradition," p.75. 74.    Sicherman and Green, p.542. 75.    Phillips, p.116.
    • So, Roman admitted that everything he did was to protect Johnny. I like that. It adds another dynamic to this storyline. And it’s also a much better use of the character of Roman. He’s been stuck in the Pub for too long lol I’m also really liking the way that Roman and Kate’s relationship has been written lately. As for Josh Taylor’s voice… no comment

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      And speaking of relationships, I’ve also been seeing improvements in the relationships between Johnny and Paulina as well. I enjoyed their scenes today. They really feel more like an actual mother in law and son in law. I’m cringing a little at the way that Paulina would’ve been written had Ron stayed on a little longer. This type of writing is the exact thing that the character of Paulina needed, especially for a storyline like this.  I am a little intrigued with the idea of EJ and Xander going head to head over buying the hospital too, mostly because of how it could drive other storylines, couples, etc.,like EJ and Belle. Him basically using Belle as his own personal fixer, both with Johnny and the hospital board could lead to something interesting happening in the future. And Philip, doing whatever he can in order to get back in Xander’s good graces is a good addition to this storyline as well.  Btw, I don’t dislike it at all but I still can’t believe that they’re 

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      And yeah, sorry, I know that Days means well but I think they’re making a little too much out of this Xander/Felicity thing. But Xander and Sarah were sweet today. I’m looking forward to seeing everything between them get blown to hell.  Seriously, one of the worst, if not the worst, team in soap history. 
    • Thanks for letting me know! I thought there was a preemption until CBS confused me by uploading Monday's episode on Friday.
    • Lucky Day is an awfully good Doctor-lite episode focused on Millie Gibson and Jemma Redgrave - I am glad the show brought in Varada Sethu who continues to give major Caroline John/Liz Shaw vibes, but Millie was always very good in what felt designed to be a single arc companion and she's very good here too. She deserves a bit more somewhere in the franchise. The depressingly relevant storyline aside, I was most impressed by the showcase for UNIT and Kate Stewart. Jemma is always good but she was amazing here, noting the Doctor would've stopped her from going all the way re: Think Tank if he were there. Yet it's the kind of brute force her father could and did resort to in extreme situations back in the day. I almost hoped she would allow Conrad to be killed right then and there, which is something I think the Brigadier also would've done when backed against a wall over operational control and the safety of the Earth. She came very close, and the steel Redgrave exhibited (as always) was amazing. Whatever spinoffs can still materialize given the current streaming climate and DW's uncertain future (I do think it will continue somewhere, but I would not be shocked if it's back to a run of holiday specials for awhile a la Tennant's and Whittaker's), aside from the upcoming odd Sea Devils miniseries that's in the can, I still hope UNIT and Kate can get a proper one sometime.
    • I think it was just him  And it gave good explanations as to why Alistair was the way that he was. By the time the series ended, he was just evil for evil’s sake 
    • To me, that made no difference. The point stands whether Eva wants to be a Dupree or not. Anita was 110% on top of things. Also it's a logical inference that Eva might be interested in having a place in her supposedly real family. Frankly though I wonder if Eva knows how to feel ... yet. She could really be confused. What I am thinking is if it were me I would be confused.
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