To answer the Sharon Gabet question, yes. Her book is on Amazon and the bio from it talks about her interest and studies in various alternative healing methods after one of her kids was diagnosed with autism. She's been an astrologer, yoga instructor and nurse.

astrologer??? interesting,,

Honestly after the shows stopped being four days a week my viewing kinda drifted off. If the shows were to put out a whole season I'd probably binge watch in a weekend and be satisfied.

astrologer??? interesting,,

I always found that subject fascinating. 99.9 percent of the time it is spot on. The ones that are usually the right the most are the ones that require your exact date and time of birth.

I think the transition from radio to TV went a lot smoother since everyone wanted a TV and it was new and therefore people would watch anything just to have something to watch. There was no competition that was similar except movies, and TV dramatically cut into moviegoing.

With the internet all we have here is a different way to watch very similar or the exact same type of product, so there isn't this great yearning for product or this giant audience waiting for explode onto the scene.

Excellently said.

Meh. I don't buy that. AMC introduced a whole new cast of characters and anchored that with very few vets or tent pole pairings. Jessie and Angie have had tons of story and David has been a cornerstone. I think OLTL attempted to execute the same kind of strategy, but weren't so effective. AMC (as has been pointed out) had none of the key pairings that they ended the show on abc with. OLTL banked on having Todd and Blair an John and Natalie. They could have easily and quickly discarded those "hangovers".

AMC had a whole separate set of issues. They introduced the new characters by creating a time jump which brought us the hilarity of Dixie/JR/AJ but had the benefit of letting them dispense with off-screen stuff like Tad, Maya/Lucy, Kendall with a little bit of conversation and a cameo or two. Zach isn't shackled to Kendall the way Natalie is to John because there's no second narrative to resolve the way GH was. OLTL chose to continue in real time and try to address the GH stuff. When half the cast of your stories are off screen that leads to a lot of telling and not much showing. That's a lousy situation for all involved.

As an aside, I'd give anything for a "What if?" style video with Blair, Dixie and all of their kids. It would border on science fiction. Dixie is younger than Blair yet JR is almost twice the age of Starr and AJ is Jack's age. It's like an algebra problem.

Edited July 25, 201312 yr by marceline

Poor Cady looks like a million bucks, too. Which is why I've been aching for Griffin, Anders, anyone to get Dixie laid. If she and Pete weren't related I'd even be all over that.

As for OLTL, I think they had a lot to deal with - they had the online perception, however true or false, that were the show 'on the rise' when going off the air, they had the GH spin-off stuff, they had the huge cliffhanger and several popular unresolved storylines. Those things were assets PR-wise but they were also albatrosses. It depends on how you handle them - and the prior HW team at the new show (Horgan and Racina) has been only fitfully accomplished at handling those dangling threads. Since they couldn't really manage that impossible situation, AMC and its relative clean slate quickly overtook them in terms of overall excitement IMO. OLTL is a good show, a lot smarter overall than it's been in years, but it's either dealing with one of a couple quite good stories or it's decent but all over the place.

On another note I am semi-enjoying the AMC reruns on SN, which I am watching out of vague nostalgia and the interesting sense of texture and history for both AMC and OLTL on ABC vs. PP that is now in motion again that can be reexamined without some of the old rancor. I wasn't really watching until the last month or so back then - these reruns were unstoppably boring up until about a week ago - and by boring I mean David Kreizman - but upon re-appraisal I still kind of hope we one day discover that Asher is now a rent boy in Center City.

Edited July 25, 201312 yr by Vee

Well except for Angie/Jesse which is a pretty key pairing

I'd already mentioned them as a cornerstone couple, so yeah, I contradicted myself on that. Sort of.

However, my main disagreement with Marceline was that OLTL was handicapped by the GH crossovers. That is true only in so much as PP CHOSE to allow it to be a handicap and pin so much of their planned stories on any of those characters. AMC had almost no "tent pole" pairings when they rebooted, and it hasn't seemed to hinder them in the least.

AMC was also a smoking wreck in a lot of ways when it went off the air, IMO.

Broderick, Agnes, etc. did triage in the last couple months and there were some good stories and couples, but there was only so much you could do for that show in that short window of time. I certainly never thought it could rebound so well so soon today, but it needed the break and the time-jump.

By comparison OLTL - regardless of, shall we say, the spotty quality of the writing - had a much stronger foundation and forward motion still, and a lot of buzz and hype going into it both when it went off-air and then carried over to GH over the last year. People knew Ron and Frank planned to resolve the OLTL storylines on GH - they kept stuff simmering, and made it very clear they intended to use Natalie, etc. at their first opportunity. (As shark bait for John and Sam until GH got canned a la Blair and Carly, but still, a lot of casual offliners do not care about those plot mechanics - they care about seeing their favorites.) They also intended to finish the Two Todds story by tying it into GH and the Cassadines, Robin, etc.

So picking up the baton from RC/FV on all of that very immediate (and popular) stuff, it's also admittedly difficult to work a show where they had, what, two, three months tops to write up maybe eight to twelve to, I don't know, sixteen? weeks of scripts, and up til the last month or so of that process they thought they were going to have one key actor (Michael Easton) for the duration of that length of time. Then, oops, rewrite it all. Not that I'm missing ME at all in Llanview, but that has to be an impossible situation. And the contortions to work around Roger's schedule - in that hotel room forever for several weeks now, as his taped segments begin to run out - and Trevor's very limited initial engagement were difficult as well.

Edited July 25, 201312 yr by Vee

Marty's rape which was a huge success for OLTL in ratings and recognition totally made Todd Manning and RH an albatross to the show. RH became "God" in the soap world. Everyone wanted him even ATWT got so low that they hired him to play a character he wasn't suited for a la Susan Batten. His acting during the Marty story were good but his acting went off the rails shortly after it. His acting continues to suffocate the other actors he works with on the show(OLTL). His acting on GH is laughable and a complete travesty.

Exactly and I feel personally responsible for help to make the bolded happen, to my everlasting embarrassment. I've checked out a few OLTL clips mainly of the younger set and I made a point of finding the clip where Victor punched Todd in the neck. I'm now to the point where I have a visceral hatred of Todd which admittedly is just a form of anger at myself for having once been a stan. I simply can't watch him. And this isn't an RH vs TSJ thing, I'm referring to the character. I'd hate Todd now even if he were played by Hugh Jackman. He's become that toxic to me.

As for RH's acting on GH, I'm still holding off on watching the crying clip that I bookmarked because I know once I do I shall be forever changed but in all fairness is there any actor who could make the Franco/Jason stuff work? I know a lot of people believe that a good actor can rise above bad material but I'm not one of them. For instance, I love George Clooney but even he couldn't make Batman & Robin into a decent movie. With all due respect to The Supremes, sometimes there IS a mountain high enough.

I'm not trying to get into this because we get along now but to be honest, the Todd I most wanted to see punched in the throat in the last ten years was Victor's (though Victor had every right to want to throat-punch Todd).

The Todd character was as unsalvageable for me as it is for you in the last few years until they made two of them and gave Victor a clean slate via the retcon, as well as making Todd not responsible for what Victor did. We can differ on that and that's fine, but we both have or had a visceral revulsion to the character at different times for different reasons. Is all I'm saying.

I'm not trying to get into this because we get along now but to be honest, the Todd I most wanted to see punched in the throat in the last ten years was Victor's (though Victor had every right to want to throat-punch Todd).

The Todd character was as unsalvageable for me as it is for you in the last few years until they made two of them and gave Victor a clean slate via the retcon, as well as making Todd not responsible for what Victor did. We can differ on that and that's fine, but we both have or had a visceral revulsion to the character at different times for different reasons. Is all I'm saying.

Feel free to get into it because, believe it or not, I'm not arguing with you. Not at all. I completely understand where you're coming from. Your comment actually ties into my feelings that the character is toxic no matter who's playing him.

A lot of my issues with Todd have come about because of how misogynistic I think the genre as a whole became and specifically because of the RC's insane fixation with sexy rape and the rapemance. His stories finally showed me just how detrimental it was to turn Todd into a sexy hero but I can't hate how we got to that point without owning my part in helping to get us there. Somewhere over the last few years, it's like someone shut off my "Todd Manning is the greatest" IV and I finally woke up to realize that he's disgusting. I truly want nothing to do with him or any of his women, kids, or relatives and since the entire show is made up of Todd's women, kids and relatives there's nothing there for me. Whether he's on the show or not, Todd Manning has basically become the Victor Newmann of OLTL.

That said, I'd come back in a second for RJ. He's worth it.

Edited July 25, 201312 yr by marceline

No, I believe you. I just think it's a matter of degrees overall.

I think the only thing they could do with Todd after the rapemance was what they did with the two actors, as ridiculous as it was. It was that or kill him. I think the use of him - of both of them - remains somewhat problematic, but they're not played as true-blue heroes anymore, and that's what matters to me at the moment. My issue was when they were playing one or the other of them as though they were Ryan Lavery.

So Ginger Smith has a little favoritism in her. And selective memory and tunnel mindset. The show during the 2000's up until cancellation which Ginger Smith cannot ignore or fake pretend never existed. Her vision stopped at a certain point and got lost. She needs to remember that the show DID last for over 40 years. There really was the 2000's. And I think fans are going to keep reminding her of that whether she likes it or not. AMC reboot should encompasse all 40 years in storylines. Is Ginger Smith even willing to listen to those fan bases out there?

Ginger has been with AMC since 1988. She knows its history. She is making a show for all its fans not just you Linda. So get over yourself.

Ginger has been with AMC since 1988. She knows its history. She is making a show for all its fans not just you Linda. So get over yourself.

Well said!!

Ginger has been with AMC since 1988. She knows its history. She is making a show for all its fans not just you Linda. So get over yourself.

Remember all the fans do include those rabid Rylee and Zendall fans of the 2000's too. All the fans include both you and me. Get over yourself and know that fans have their wants and wishes too, including you and me.