GH: March 2025 Discussion Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

I totally loved Kimberly MCullough. No doubt! But, Robin, well, she could be a problem. Frankly, she could be a judgmental prig. And I think everyone knew it. 

Cool. Okay. He's done a GREAT job as a recast who stepped in, in unusual circumstances!

[Vee]

Brennan is worthless to me no matter who plays him.

[Antoyne]

The previous actor had more of a charming personality to me and a sort of twinkle in his eye in scenes with Laura Wright. The accent helped as well.

[MontyB]

His story is convoluted. I thought he was the bad guy, but at this point who knows. 

[Vee]

He was. They like to pretend it didn't happen because they desperately felt Carly needed a man and this vaguely amiable dayplayer was available. Patrick Mulcahey had him enmeshed with Valentin as the central heads of Pikeman, but once he was on his way out/gone (and they gave up on Jason/Carly 3.0) they began pushing hard to divest Brennan from Pikeman through magical thinking.

Now that Chris is here and likely short-term from the start, I expect they will magically remember Brennan is bad shortly just as they magically remembered that Austin was murdered or that Nikolas let a Black guy take the fall for his crimes, years later.

Edited 8 hours ago by Vee

[Antoyne]

They really dropped all of that Pikeman stuff like it never even happened, similar to Jaggers murder. 

[MontyB]

Thanks for recapping because I remember him being in on the Pikeman mess with Valentin. 

That whole thing was a waste. 

[Antoyne]

It’s one of my least favorite lame writer tropes. Bring back an old character, make them nothing like they were before, and then kill them off.

[MontyB]

Don't get me started on that. I will never forgive Ron Carlivati for what he did to Marty Saybrooke on OLTL. Although, she wasn't killed, that was a terrible way to treat that character. 

On that note, I was seriously disgusted to see he's a writer on BTG. 

 

[Contessa Donatella]

To me one of the most notable things about Charles Mesure & Jack Brennan was that the Casting Director, MarkT, mentioned in an interview that he had been watching for FOUR YEARS for the right part for him. That's how important his hiring & his casting & the part of Jack Brennan actually was. And, given how strongly & substantially he developed an immediate fan following, that totally tracks!

I love the bad guy part of him. It's all WSB related & GH (and DAYS, too) has this long history with these 3-initial dark organizations. 

[Planet Soap]

So is Brennan not European anymore? It's always odd when accents get dropped or added with recasting.

Biggest example, acting like Ridge on B&B doesn't have a European accent, after the recast.

Joan Collins having a British accent taking over his Alexandra Spalding kind of works because she's supposed to be a grande character.

Recasts aside, there is Victor Newman. He clearly has a German accent but we're acting like he was born in America lol. Anyway, back to GH

[Contessa Donatella]

Brennan was either an Aussie or a Kiwi. So, not European. 

 

[DRW50]

Pikeman is one of those stories which seemed like it was used to answer all questions on the show while not answering any. They can't make these types of stories work in an era where they have no budget for remotes and action sequences. 

As soon as Sonny was heavily involved in the story, I moved on, because Sonny stories are going to end the same way. The whole poor Sonny med switching stuff just made the handful of characters who were critical of him seem like they were being set up to later repent. 

I don't know why the show oversold Valentin the way they did, as even when this all started (around the late '00s or early '10s), the Cassadines were not a very frightening family. They only ever were when they were barely shown and just used to bring menace for Luke and Laura. I guess you could count Stavros, in his brief stint under RKK. Helena was also very ruthless, but I never found her frightening.

[Vee]

I think Guza infused the Cassadines with real menace and atmosphere in the mid-late '90s. But when it got to the point of Helena hanging around on contract for years into '99, 2000, etc. and the townsfolk dunking on her, Stefan and Laura having boring picnics, and then especially in the late 2000s lingering on when Helena got involved with nonsense like Liz supposedly having Nik's baby (Aiden) or the stuff with them being broke, having silly capers with Summer the hooker and Lydia, that demystified them a lot (to say nothing of the Endgame disaster under JFP and McTavish). Still, Helena was always able to be menacing again with the right writing or script.

I would welcome making them scary again and know how I'd do it, but it would start with offing Valentin. A lot of Helena's nonsense in the 2000s would be written off as her deliberately feinting with trifles vs. her actual plans, beyond death.

Edited 4 hours ago by Vee

[DRW50]

I did love watching Constance, even though she was given odd choices like slinking into Chloe's boudoir to kill her.

I agree the best way to go would be killing Valentin. The new Cassadine could be the one responsible. He or she would also be a short-term character who might actually off some regular characters and severely, maybe even permanently injure others, causing a lot of fear and unease over the canvas.