Molly and T.J. were rarely seen much from 2014-15 until the surrogacy story began in mid-late '23. They were nobodies. The reason being that when Frank and Ron first arrived in 2012 they tried very hard initially to find a new teen Starr Manning type fitting her mold from OLTL for youth stories, to chase that youth demo. That's where Molly came in.
Frank pushed hard to showcase Haley Pullos' teen Molly and turn her into Starr II with his chosen new guy for her, Silas Clay's twink nephew Rafe Kovich Jr., the son of Caleb and Alison from Port Charles. The kid playing Rafe couldn't really act and nobody cared about him so the hard sell with them flopped, but at the same time FV and RC were trying to smear Tequan Richmond's T.J. to kill that relationship - he was acting out, getting drunk with Felix's mischievous niece or sister or whatever and being a wild teen. It was bad optics for a young Black boy to be made to look unruly and out of control while the two white kids were being shined up in 2013, let alone today but Frank and Ron were not exactly racially sensitive.
Anyway, it didn't work. Rafe was killed off and with his attempt to make Molly and Rafe into Starr and Cole 2.0 having flopped FV pretty much exiled Molly and T.J. to the eternal backburner for the better part of another decade. (That's when he discovered Eden McCoy and began trying to make Joss into Starr instead.) After that they very rarely had any story. And I lost interest in T.J. entirely once Tequan Richmond was gone to better things. Tahj Bellow was okay but it was always a character that had very little grounding to me vs. other young men of color you could bring on with less tedious history. And Molly needs a long break from the canvas - Kristen Vaganos is bland and boring to me. So that's why none of it registers to me. But I do think it's pretty tacky that they never gave T.J. a proper goodbye while subjecting us to more of Molly and Cody's Hallmark slop.
By
Vee ·
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