Schemers for the win!!!

 

It's done wonders...for better or worse...for Drew's relevance.

11 minutes ago, carolineg said:

If they redeem them and call them a great love in 6 months-I'd ditch them quick.

I highly doubt that's happening. But I would leave them in the dirt and have fun with it, and eventually let Willow branch out into other men and schemes, possibly after both a) shooting Drew and b) blackmailing him into marriage while getting away with it all.

And yeah, the Mike timeline/character choice makes zero sense. I almost never watched in that period either. I just remember Margaux, ugh.

Edited July 9Jul 9 by Vee

1 hour ago, Vee said:

Nina is a nutjob. I enjoy Watros' version up to a point but I don't care about her family lasting beyond these characters and their (IMO) finite potential.

 

Nina is a nutjob I root for. Willow should be somewhat of the normal one. Looks like that's not gonna happen. 

7 minutes ago, MontyB said:

Nina is a nutjob I root for. Willow should be somewhat of the normal one. Looks like that's not gonna happen. 

We had what feels like ten years of Willow being 'normal' and it was one of the most boring characters this show ever had. Only the affair with Drew made her interesting.

Also, Nina's family is not a core group on this show. It never has been, because most of them were either boring or two-dimensional and placed there to give Nina more grounding. Nina herself was just an excuse for another surprise stunt hire (Michelle Stafford) in the Cartini epoch which didn't pan out as they hoped before descending into another years-long sunk cost fallacy for FV. While Cynthia Watros has done a heroic job with a mess of a character and I thought Mulcahey was on track to make her and Drew really work last year, that's done. And even if that couple had flown, it still wouldn't have made her larger family some robust tree. Dead Wooden Nathan, Dead Nelle, Michael Easton #3 and guest star Donna Mills don't make a worthwhile bloodline. Those characters were worthless. I enjoy watching Watros, but at some point soon I would probably get rid of Nina. Because her one good option last year is now closed to her and she does nothing but weep over Willow, and the character was otherwise played out years before the recast.

Soap Twitter these days acts like any character that has a few fans suddenly is 'core' or part of a core family whenever they get maybe a hundred RTs. But the potential merits of these characters are individual. I'm not interested in Nina's family being built out, because Nina's family largely sucks. The drama here is in further Mildred Pierce-esque mother/daughter mutual destruction.

Edited July 9Jul 9 by Vee

6 minutes ago, Vee said:

We had what feels like ten years of Willow being 'normal' and it was one of the most boring characters this show ever had. Only the affair with Drew made her interesting.

 

I see it from a different perspective since I only started watching GH again during the pandemic when it was in repeats, so I missed everything prior. 

On another note, I must have missed something. Where is Charlotte? The last episode I saw her in she was going up the stairs at Laura's. Did she leave again?

 

Edited July 9Jul 9 by MontyB

I get it. But the thing is Nina has been around since (I can't believe this) 2014, and even her debut years were a bomb lol. It wasn't til the Sonny/Nina thing that she really caught on with a certain group of fans, and that was over seven years into the character's run on the show! Willow has been on for almost seven years herself, and most of those years were blindingly boring.

It's only FV that keeps dud characters around this long, because he is so wedded to his version of the show or his hires. Am I glad they have found something new and interesting for Willow that makes her worth keeping awhile longer? Certainly, I would never have expected it (and it came from a HW that in their minds they couldn't have dumped fast enough). Do I think the problem the show has with sunk cost characters has changed? Not at all.

Edited July 9Jul 9 by Vee

23 minutes ago, Vee said:

Nina is a nutjob. I enjoy Watros' version up to a point but I don't care about her family lasting beyond these characters and their (IMO) finite potential.

I think it'd be a mistake to burn her or Drew too soon, but knowing GH they will. Of course I'd expected them to kill Drew at New Year's and here we are. I think they could both drive drama for at least a couple years to come.

I can see where fans might be tired of villainous characters who always win, but I'd agree there is still room for Drew and Willow at the present time and with some tweaking they could go on for a while.

You've mentioned before about some fans just not wanting conflict for characters, and I do think that's true in a number of cases. 

Don't forget Britt and Dr. O!!!

 

5 minutes ago, MontyB said:

Where is Charlotte? The last episode I saw her in she was going up the stairs at Laura's. Did she leave again?

I'm sure she will pop up soon enough. Papa and all.

Just now, DRW50 said:

I can see where fans might be tired of villainous characters who always win, but I'd agree there is still room for Drew and Willow at the present time and with some tweaking they could go on for a while.

I think the difference here is that Drew and Willow are kind of in a Susan Moore, Heather Webber, etc. position. They're not Sonny and Jason being venerated and getting away with everything. People know them, hate them and they do take hits, like Drew losing his fight over the crypt or Willow losing her kids. But they also keep making moves. So in that sense it's not fully like Billy Warlock's A.J. either - it might feel that way if the mob was stronger on the show today, but the mob element of the show feels considerably weakened and like an afterthought vs. the Q intrigue, even when it's being played onscreen.

4 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

You've mentioned before about some fans just not wanting conflict for characters, and I do think that's true in a number of cases. 

Ava being a case in point. 

Yeah, her fans get real mad if you remind them Ava is not just Carly Snyder on a permanent bad day. Whenever Ava starts actually being Ava it's time for loads of tweets about how her character has 'evolved' and is being 'character assassinated'. She came on this show murdering innocent people! She helped get ol' skinhead Morgan blown up!

Ava fortunately has not gone back to being a total milksop again since last year, but I was much more into Ava the scheming Iago in Sonny's lair under Mulcahey, where I would not have been shocked if it had ended up in some con marriage as she dragged his drugged ass to the altar for power. The Ric thing is good, the flirtation with Cody is interesting, but at the same time her current situation also feels like a B/C-tier holding pattern because Korte or whoever just doesn't like her but knows they can't get rid of her. (I say Korte because the instant Mulcahey was out the door, everyone on the show turned full guns on Ava again - while CVE, I assume, restored her relationships with Nina and Trina.)

Edited July 9Jul 9 by Vee

Just now, Taoboi said:

Ava being a case in point. 

I always wonder if I missed the good years with Ava because I often hear her fans talk about how her stories and pairings are beneath her (even this Cody story which isn't really a big deal) - I love Maura West and I can't claim I sat around watching all of Ava's material over the years, but so much of what I have seen with the character just seems like a mess, maybe aside from moments like when Kukla or Kiki or whoever was murdered. 

3 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I always wonder if I missed the good years with Ava because I often hear her fans talk about how her stories and pairings are beneath her (even this Cody story which isn't really a big deal) - I love Maura West and I can't claim I sat around watching all of Ava's material over the years, but so much of what I have seen with the character just seems like a mess, maybe aside from moments like when Kukla or Kiki or whoever was murdered. 

I don't really get the Ava hype nor have I ever.  I just don't know what pairings she had on this show that were great and why Ric or even Cody would be beneath her.  Maybe some early Ava/Nik was decent?  Sure, some of the stories she's had have been questionable but, IMO, Ava could have been killed off years ago.  I know, I know Maura West and all that.

2 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I always wonder if I missed the good years with Ava because I often hear her fans talk about how her stories and pairings are beneath her (even this Cody story which isn't really a big deal) - I love Maura West and I can't claim I sat around watching all of Ava's material over the years, but so much of what I have seen with the character just seems like a mess, maybe aside from moments like when Kukla or Kiki or whoever was murdered. 

I still remember to this day how Sonny described her and Julian when he was still alive...apart they were their own brand of dangerous, but together...watch out! And Ava was when she was introduced. I'm with Vee that it was great to see Ava back in the femme fatale mode she was always meant to be when she was Iago (and perhaps something more if FV hadn't been Frank about putting Natalia in with Sonny...and I still feel as written by PM...Ava went after her as payback for getting in-between her and Sonny) to Sonny's off-med self. But I guess fans didn't like her. She was driving so much story. She was so cunning. She was not at all stupid. And Maura played her villianess to the hilt. 

 

This watered down version of her. Not my cup of tea. Though I do love her with Ric and hope they go there with Liz/Ric/Ava. 

7 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I always wonder if I missed the good years with Ava because I often hear her fans talk about how her stories and pairings are beneath her (even this Cody story which isn't really a big deal) - I love Maura West and I can't claim I sat around watching all of Ava's material over the years, but so much of what I have seen with the character just seems like a mess, maybe aside from moments like when Kukla or Kiki or whoever was murdered. 

I alluded to this in a post above but I think the truth is a lot of fans do not know what they want re: Ava. This is not new for soap fans obviously, but what they want is more of the character. They want the character to do well or be well. They want them to not be endangered. Those are common soap fan wants for any beloved character, good or bad, since the beginning of the genre, but there's a limit to what you should coddle. And I think often certain folks at the show's love for Maura has made Ava too soft to try to keep her viable, while other times you get the extreme opposite.

Supposedly when Maura was first hired Ava, incredibly, was only supposed to be on for a week or so to intro Kiki and Roger Howarth's Franco. She was dynamite in that first week (including with Howarth, something they unfortunately could never really capitalize on given his toxic character) and RC and FV immediately hooked into keeping her. But as Ron often did (and continued at DAYS) he went full bore with the character murdering people, framing people, etc. with little thought to the long-term future. I have no problem with that because Ava's turned out to be one of the few enduring rivals Sonny has ever had. The difference between someone like her and feral Faith Rosco is Ava could move in multiple spheres, while Cynthia Preston's Faith never lost her edge. Ava has lost hers a number of times (and gained it again), but for all her inconsistencies she still has more dimension as a character than Faith. While Faith, for all her memorable villainy, too often was used as a blow-up doll and fetish object by Pratt and Guza. Ava's stories are not always great (or good). But Maura is excellent and is what has made Ava last.

The Alex Olanov from OLTL model remains the way forward with Ava. You can play her harder while still giving her wins and some dimension. But IMO the issue is it seems like one writer at the show wants to write Ava like a slightly harder-edged Carly Snyder, and the other just hates her and wants her gone as Carly's enemy. So she's kind of a weird in-between zone. I guess it's good she has Rick Hearst atm.

Edited July 9Jul 9 by Vee