GH50: Week of May 20...

[dragonflies]

Luke Tracy needs a Ferrari not an old clunker

[alexisfan07]

"Don't you dare come in here and kiss me and feed me scraps! I am sick to death of making a meal out of crumbs!"

Awesome quote

[dragonflies]

Jane was freaking amazing!!! She acted circles around TG

[MichaelGL]

The Tracy/Luke scene were the highlight of todays show, mainly because of Jane Elliot.

[Vee]

Watching the end of last week. I love Denise Alexander and I am so glad to have her here, really, but she is dressed and performing like some sort of deranged pirate muppet. Heaving and huffing around. Why are Laura and Lesley wearing matching cheap chain-link jewelry?

[DRW50]

I've seen some spec that she's lying because now Laura and Scott won't be legally married.

[Vee]

Also, I don't understand why Lucy is out looking for a job. Was it entirely necessary to claim that she has lost her entire cosmetics empire in a few months and is trolling Monster? What the hell did she do?

[alexisfan07]

For me, the highlight was AJ making it into the opening I was not feeling today's show at all but I can't think of the last time I was into an episode.

[Vee]

Why is the reaction to Laura and Scott always so muted?

Anytime anyone like Lulu or Nikolas or poor old Dr. Zaius-looking Lesley has brought up obvious [!@#$%^&*] like Rick and the attic, Logan and so on it's shrugged off like "awww, come on, move on..." Give me a break! These should be long, long scenes seriously discussing this [!@#$%^&*], but it feels like they're just waving their finger at the audience and telling us to get the [!@#$%^&*] over it because the insta-plot is more important. It's not. Some of these people have been on this show 20, 30, 40 years. Laura comes off like a mental patient and an idiot, and she's neither, but she's become this genial, bland Stepford Wife telling everyone Scotty has changed. The character was far stronger in 2008. She knows what he did. She knows he came after her in Paris. I have never heard her tell anyone why she loves and wants Scott now, how she got over what he did. And I don't think GF buys it either. And I like Scott as a character but he comes off horrible, he never truly apologizes to anyone - he's just doing his whole grumpy "awww, raspberries!" schtick all day long.

I have watched this team for years on two different shows, and I know what they can do when they care more about the overall journey than just the destination. This is not that. It's forcing people to watch a plot point storyline which could work if you take the time - Laura falls for Scott again in an effort to get over Luke - but they don't tell it. They just pat the audience and all the characters on the head for daring to mention the real issues, and no one seriously talks about it at all for longer than five minutes, and it's insane. It makes Laura look horrible. It makes Scott look worse. It's ridiculous!

[DRW50]

I'd say that it's an example of what happens when you bring a character back because of nostalgia, not because of what they add to the canvas. I don't think he cares very much about either character. You can't write Laura as a child, and that's the only way Ron writes older women.

[Vee]

I think Laura and Scott can add plenty, and when either are just in scenes with family and friends being there they're great. I just think the story is terribly done.

[DRW50]

In an ideal soap world I think they would, but between Kin Shriner's endless blustering and huffing and puffing (he used to act, didn't he? About fifteen years ago?), and the ugly walking death that is the Spencer family, and Ron's inability to write for women or people over 50, it's just a mess.

[Mr. Vixen]

I have to say, Denise Alexander has still got it. She is such a fantastic, gritty actress.

[Vee]

I think Ron can and does write for the older people - particularly women; he loves Tracy - but the problem comes when he is unable to distinguish between what is good drama for the older characters or for people 20-30 years younger. This storyline, at least as it's being written and presented if not in concept, makes no sense for Laura, Scott or Luke. It's done very formulaically, very bland and surface, very much the actions of two kids who are in their 20s or trying to recapture their adolescence in their 30s. I mean, for God's sake, Laura invoked Scott going after her when she ran away as proof of how much he loved her and how he hadn't changed at all (which is ludicrous, as they have both become very, very different people as adults). All Lesley had to do to counter that anecdote about the past was say, "that was in 1977!" But she didn't.

One of Ron's few consistent virtues is that he sees very little difference in how to play major story for both younger characters and old. But that's a double-edged sword. Just because you want to play them both equally in airtime and onscreen - which is perfectly admirable and a good thing to strive for - doesn't mean they can all literally have stories of the same tenor, tone and approach regardless of their age or history. It's like when all he had the seniors on OLTL doing in the summer was playing out a high school jealousy farce with Viki, Charlie, David and Dorian. It was mildly diverting, unlike this, but all I could think about was how all but one of the characters involved was over the age of 55 and a working professional. (You look at what they have Viki, Clint, Dorian and David doing on NuOLTL now and it just makes me so grateful to have that stuff, even if it ends up only airing half-once a week from Russian bootlegs on eDonkey.)

I think Kin Shriner (and to a slightly lesser extent, Genie) is great but he's dependent on good material. His best stuff on the show these days is with Lynn Herring. Everyone else they put him with is a crap shoot because it's the same cartoon writing.

[ChitHappens]

They're both done and can no longer survive off of what made them popular in the first place.