Asp Burger

Also, that line "Think about how great Violet is! Wouldn't you want to have a daughter like her?" was weird. I guess I get what he meant, although it pushes to the side poor Rebecca Budig's role in Violet's greatness, but it sounded almost as if they were talking about what kind of puppy to get. "Our friends have a blue heeler, and he's great!" In other news, these scenes with Josslyn and NuBrennan are making me wonder if Josslyn is now as bad as Courtney at her worst. And there's far less chance of Josslyn getting demoted to B/C-plots and then getting written out. A point for Laura Wright: that delivery of "Wake up!" to Willow was savage. I've heard Carly yell a lot over the years, but I don't think I've ever heard her voice sound like that.

The SAG Awards felt almost like the SOD Awards for a bit there tonight. Several soap stars in the Memoriam segment (Leslie, Johnny Wactor, Drake, Wayne), and then a whole segment called "Soap Starts" with big stars who did soaps early. They included Tom Selleck, Angela Bassett, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Ryan Philippe, Michael B. Jordan, John Stamos. Demi got the plum spot at the end, smoldering at Geary.

Ha. I was thinking, "'80s Scott Glenn."

The frequent hostile scenes between Carly and Drew just make the show's attempt to make them a supercouple a few years ago funnier in retrospect. Even at the time, it was like a hypnotist was desperately trying to put me in a trance, and it wasn't working because all I could focus on was the hypnotist's profuse sweating. Who could forget those romantic scenes in "Florida"? I know that any soap couple can become bitter enemies in time, and sometimes that won't last forever either; that's the genre. But with Carly and Drew, even though the scripts acknowledge/call back to their past (like "I can't believe I ever had a relationship with him!" or "Even when we were together, you never thought I measured up to Jason"), it's like the writers are acknowledging their own bad idea or their predecessors' bad idea.

Carly Roberts Benson Quartermaine Corinthos Alcazar Jacks Spencer never sits still for long, even for Michael. So much business back home just crying out for meddling! I've been spared that one, but Keanu Reeves's English accent in the Coppola Dracula movie is probably always going to be my yardstick for "How was this allowed to happen?" There's imperfect and then there's MAKE IT STOP. Other topic: I thought the actors made the Lucky/Liz scenes must-watch stuff, and I'm going to enjoy these characters' reconnection for as long as the show allows me to. But—getting one more movie reference in—when Lucky said that he was down on the ground and he saw Liz telling him to get up and keep fighting, I couldn't help imagining Liz as Ghost of Mickey in that one bad Rocky sequel. "I didn't hear no bell ring!"

I was just thinking Monica fans shouldn't get their hopes up for a great funeral scene, given the present composition of the cast. Tracy will surely be the highlight. Characters like Ned and Liz will get a little time to flesh out the personal and professional sides. But we'll also get a man-of-few-words eulogy from Jason, a smug and insincere-sounding one from Drew, and Carly will have a prime spot to talk at length about how she and Monica didn't always get along, but they loved some of the same people (meaning Jason and Michael) and came to respect each other. And there will be shots of Sonny looking thoughtful.

Daytime doesn't know how to daytime anymore. As late as the 2000s (the "Salem serial killer" etc. ), it still did. Now it stays down on the ground, covering itself to ward off blows. For example, in 2022, when Carly was holding back the information that Nina was Willow's biological mother, and in an unrelated story was guilty of insider trading, it should have been huge. If I had had anything to do with it, I'd have promoted the hell out of that, thrown as much at it as I could get out of the network, made it a big umbrella story called "The Fall of Carly Corinthos." (Or whatever Carly's preferred last name was at the time.) Constant commercials with clips of the Laura Wright version of Carly at her worst over the years: slapping people, screaming at people, being snide. Dramatic narration and music. The story you never thought you would see! Have her slowly lose more and more over about a year, even her good relationships with her kids, and have to climb back equally slowly. I'll bet that would have given GH its highest ratings in at least a decade. Even the enraged would have been engaged. (That sounds like "Johnnie Cochran, soap journalist," doesn't it?) Carly fans might have been scratching their heads—"We're supposed to tune in to see her 'fall'? Isn't she the heroine who's always justified?"—but lapsed viewers would remember the character and be intrigued. Even people who never watched soaps would be aware that something called "The Fall of Carly Corinthos" was going on.

"Screw-scorch." It's the new "clink-boom." People can now wish it on their least favorite characters. "They can screw-scorch him any time as far as I'm concerned." If this had been the height of the Jill Farren Phelps era, there would have been a pretentious musical montage. We'd be hearing something like the slow movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony while they cut back and forth between locations: naked Drew and Willow gazing at each other, the flames igniting; Willow's fingernails on Drew's back, Michael's silent scream, etc.

I'm not even sure about the marginally better writing and plots. I just looked it up for my curiosity, and Miller was on GH for almost two years following Burton's return as "Patient Six" in the clinic where Ava went for The Treatment®. September 2017 through August 2019. Drew's stories were so forgettable and inconsequential that it seems like six to eight months, tops. Once the "I'm Jason"/"No, I'm Jason!" part was over, which was still late 2017, they wrote Drew like surplus. He was mostly in Oscar/Kim's orbit, plus had brotherly stuff with Franco, and he was involved in the Shiloh story like almost everyone. And there was a lot of flash-drive nonsense. I think that's the reason I cannot get upset over, as some have put it, the destruction of Drew with Mathison in the role. He didn't seem like a fully drawn character to me in 2017-19. But I would agree with those fans that BM's Drew (with terrible, contract-burner material) was not annoying, and CM's Drew (with terrible material on a higher tier of story prominence) often is.

PCPD characters rarely, if ever, get good stories. Things just are not set up to favor them on GH, and that's been the case since Guza I in the '90s. Dante is one of the luckier ones. He's a Sonny offspring and they can trot out the "torn between family and duty" thing from time to time, and his signature coupling is with the princess of the Spencer dynasty. But Taggert, Mac, Cooper, Jordan, Valerie, Nathan, Rory, Dex, and Chase all have been low figures on the totem pole for longer and shorter durations. I guess you could say Chase is a pretty heavily featured character, but it's easy to forget he is a cop. Most of his story has been about his family and his romantic relationships. Lucky spent most of his time on the B-list, if not lower, when he was a police officer played by Greg Vaughan. Dex's story prominence plummeted the second he was estranged from Sonny. The Hofer era looked to me as if Frank and Co. wanted to make a good-looking young guy with a good attitude happen as a fan favorite, despite his not being so hot at the acting (at least, at this point). It didn't happen to the degree they were hoping, they eventually gave up, and "cop" was the terminal phase of the giving-up. Best to Hofer on whatever comes next.

This. I've never been a Felicia fan in any of her iterations, even the current patient-advocate one, but I don't want to see her die. There's been too much death within GH itself, besides recent deaths of actors who used to be on the show. The chapel set with the casket is getting to be as familiar a sight as the hospital set with the nurses' station. I'm always a day behind, and I was disappointed when this was explained as a misplaced post. I thought the digitalis mystery was getting much more layered! Spinelli has claimed the keyboard-banging part of the operation all for himself. Lucky's role would be to wear disguises and talk in silly accents. Jason's would be beating people up and/or getting in shootouts with them, of course. With our luck, it will turn into a "careful what you wish for" situation when Anna's new setting is #justicefordex.

Who will escort prisoners in and out of rooms now?! The world no longer makes sense!

Me neither, and I don't think it's a matter of my being past an age where I can care about characters who are concerned with those things. Just these characters. The college-aged set is a major weakness right now. Both Josslyn and Trina are victims of classic "informed attribute" writing. Other characters are constantly remarking on how remarkable, special and promising they are. Then we see scenes with them and they're never all that interesting, because no one at GH right now has the touch for writing characters in that age group. As for the guys (Dex, Gio, Kai), they're just what one would expect for male characters created to orbit around female characters the show cannot or will not make compelling. But I did love Liz and Lucky on the Monday show. I envy Becky and Jonathan for being able to so seamlessly fade in and out of flashbacks of their faces close up from 25 years ago!

To add to that (I agree with every word), Ingo/Jax's best run by far was the first one, 1996-2000. In 2000, still in his late twenties, he went directly from GH to a starring role on what may have looked like a sure prime-time hit with Aaron Spelling's Titans. Remember the Titans? Few do, and when it failed, he couldn't find another pilot. He wasn't the first or last soap sensation to find limited prospects beyond daytime. He was back for the first time in 2001, and every time he's left and come back, the character has been a little more watered down and irrelevant. I never had anything against Jax, the character. I was even predisposed to side with him in a lot of his rivalries. But whatever magic or favored status was there in the Sonny/Brenda/Jax days was gone a long time before Rademacher started posturing like some kind of brave political dissident.

Dominic Zamprogna plays Dante like someone who's lived through a lot of terrible things and is always a bit subdued and stoic, a low-burning flame. I don't know if it's a choice he's arrived at after thought and discussion or it's just his comfort zone now, but IMO, it usually works for the character and his stories. The "biggest" emotional acting I remember ever seeing from DZ wasn't even on this show. It was on BSG, when Jammer's deception is uncovered and he's pleading for his life. In any case, I'd rather DZ do what he's good at than risk embarrassment with something like we were getting from the TJ actor in those wheezy/weepy scenes with Molly. Those were the only parts of the episode I wasn't enjoying.

I knew that was coming when Kristina was written as so smug in the scenes (with Alexis and others) leading up to the hearing. No siree, she wasn't going to let Ric rattle her. He could do his worst, but she was going to get on that stand and tell the truth. Then she could watch in satisfaction as Ava finally went down for the pain and misery she has caused all of Port Charles for years. When people talk about soaps being written in a way that makes it no big deal if you miss a day, they usually mean characters will talk about previous events in dialogue, or there will be flashbacks when something really big happened. But this is an example of setup that makes it possible to miss the next day. When one soap character (mostly Alexis here) is warning another (Kristina) about something, and the character being warned doesn't seem sufficiently concerned, the thing is gonna happen.

Mentions on the show of "The Facility That Jax Found" were drinking-game material for a while there in the late 2000s. One of my favorite TWoP memories. On Friday's show: I was skipping through a lot of it, and I would not have expected Michael/Curtis scenes would be a highlight, but those scenes were not bad at all. I liked the way Curtis pieced it out, with his comments about revenge being the wrong place from which to make business decisions. The way he took what Michael said seriously while having just enough loyalty to Drew, given his history with Drew, felt right. And I liked that Michael respected Curtis's position instead of getting pissy and flouncing out with a Corinthos "If you're not with me, you're against me" attitude. Also, look at Dante and Jason, adulting. The characters at the Q mansion were the other part of the show I somewhat enjoyed. Lowlight: Whatever Trina and Gio were doing. I didn't listen to enough to pass a quiz. I got the gist that Gio let himself in, frightened her, and Trina was troubled about something, and Gio said things to encourage her. Then they danced goofily at the end, so he had been successful. You can always depend on the kindness of fiddlers to buck up your spirits and shield you from dangers, or something.

Well, that's it. I'm out. Without Kelly Monaco and Chad Duell, GH simply makes no sense. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Kidding/parody of reactions I've seen in other places. I wish Duell well. He had his moments, and I thought he was a good-looking guy who did bring a certain cool strength to the character in Michael's less boring stretches. But with his mother and adoptive father sucking up all the oxygen, as if time had stood still since Michael was engrossed in Africa books in 1998, the character in CD's time became a straitjacket a Tony-award-winning young stage great wouldn't have been able to wriggle out of. Also, Duell's "coolness," an asset for some things, had the effect of dulling interest in romantic pairing after pairing. I suspect Michael will have a disappearance of contrivance (please, soap gods, nothing that will necessitate a show funeral/mourning) and we'll see him back eventually, played by...someone. As others have said, he's just too connected to be gone long term, especially with Morgan still out of the picture. I am moderately interested to see how this plays out.

I actually enjoy all the medical characters right now, or at least the actors who play them. Poor Brook Kerr has drawn the short straw in the writing, and a combination of "imperious" and "keeping a dangerous secret" does not bring out the best in her as an actor (she tightens up and becomes brittle), but I fundamentally like BK and want to like Portia again. I like the scenes of everyone else in that corner of the show. Yes, including the NuLucas guy, who's had a lot of out-of-bounds stuff thrown at him on other GH forums where anything goes. I wasn't sure how Liz as head nurse was going to play, but Liz/Becky has found her own style. That character has subtly matured overall, just in the last few years. Now she can speak with authority and the weight of experience (for example, when dropping truths on Lucky, or eulogizing Sam) without seeming to be trying too hard for it.

Watching the Tuesday funeral episode now. OMG, we actually got a "loved with her whole heart"? And Carly was the one who said it? If she had taken a slight pause and then added "Not just a part of it!" I really would have been able to convince myself it was 2005.

I'll admit, as I periodically do, to having a soft spot for Bradford Anderson. Spinelli is Spinelli, but what BA does with him doesn't remind me of any other character I've seen, and like everyone who's been watching TV and seeing movies since the '80s, I've seen enough talkative, socially awkward computer geeks to fill several football stadiums. It isn't entirely for bad reasons that BA took hold and made what could have been a short-termer a significant recurring character for...almost 20 years now? (checks dates) Yep. Just had his 18th GH anniversary on November 13. Also, BA seems like a very nice person off the show. I'm not a regular listener of that podcast he has with Burton, but on the few occasions I've listened, he's made a good impression. He's been kind and warm and genuinely interested with the guests.

I had to think about this, and then I thought, oh, of course. Even though Drew wasn't a gleam in any writer's eye in the 2000s, when the Ric/Jason hatred was at its hottest, Drew has many of Jason's memories. Still has them, I guess. At one time, he believed he was the person who had beaten Ric nearly to death in a parking garage in 2006, after Ric said that Sam was only one step above a cheap hooker. And all the rest of their bad encounters before and after. See, this is one reason I wish soaps wouldn't go too sci-fi on us. It isn't only that I like soaps to be grounded and realistic, although my favorite periods usually are that way. It's because it's hard enough to remember who knows about what, with actors leaving and coming back, characters being on and off canvas, recast actors nothing like the earlier ones. When they start adding flash drives that can upload a guy's memories into a previously undisclosed twin brother, and all the different layers of complication that have followed (Franco having all the Drew memories for a while, etc.), it starts to seem far more work than it's worth. I have a hard time remembering what the CM Drew does know. It would be simpler if I could just look at him and think he's a dumbass who's been elected to Congress and is having an affair with his nephew's wife.

Adding to the Ric discussion, for newer viewers: Fundamentally, he's a character no writing or producing regime has cared about "protecting." So, there's no clear level to which he won't stoop. When he stoops to those levels, the characters around him react to it like real people would react. He doesn't get built-in justifications and a small or large army of apologist characters within the show, as some other characters get. I think we're intended to see him as smart, cunning, charming, unable to let go of old resentments, selfish, and willing to be downright cruel. He has some degree of conscience and can care about specific people. He can even have romantic storylines with heroine types like Elizabeth and Alexis, but the writing will be telling you constantly that the woman is too good for him, and you always know it will blow up eventually, "as soon as she finds out about [X]." He doesn't get long-term wins, ever. As dubbel zout said, all that's new this time around is that they're ramping up his hatred of Alexis and his delight in making trouble for her. That part seems a little weird to me. The consistency of Hearst's performances is the best thing Ric has going for him. I don't think I'd have given him as much thought as it took to write this post otherwise.

That scene (the Jason/Ric garage beatdown in 2006) was something else. I do not get misty-eyed with nostalgia for the reign of the Gooze, but everyone involved committed to it that day, and Ric looked afterward as if he really had been pummeled by a mob enforcer. It made most of the "fight" scenes on later GH look even more tepid than they are. Bonus: When I looked up the exact year for that, I found that the Ric Lansing "Health and Vitals" section on the fandom site is almost all about him being beaten up. You scroll and scroll and you're still in 2003. Heh.

Ha ha. He was the Ted McGinley of daytime! (Although I know Cosgrove very early in his career got the ball rolling by being in the past-prime seasons of original 90210, as essentially the Jason Priestley replacement character. I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Brandon.) I like him too.