Asp Burger
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Posts posted by Asp Burger
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3 hours ago, CeChase said:
But so is most of the cast. Jason is a killer who belongs in jail. Ava is a killer who belongs in jail. Sonny is a killer who belongs in jail. That's the whole point. People are up in arms over Shawn, why?
This might be tangential, but a point worth making about crime and (such as it is) punishment on GH is that characters -- of any race -- only really get the book thrown at them when the characters/actors aren't going to be around anymore.
I don't know whether Blakemore's 2015 departure was his own idea or production's. All the old articles I find just mention his "last day" and his "exit." But he was in several television movies and other series in that time range, so it's possible he just got busy with other, possibly better gigs. Other felonious characters you mention, Ava, Sonny, Jason, and you could add Franco and others, were played by actors who were/are locked in for a while, and their characters were part of the show's long-range plans. So, yeah, they will always get away with stuff. No matter how strong the case seems against them, there will be Reasons nothing sticks. Same with Alexis. She's doing time right now, but she'll keep rising from the ashes until Nancy Lee Grahn retires or the lights go out, whichever comes first. It won't surprise me a bit if Alexis is back arguing in court in a year.
But criminal white characters such as Steven Lars Webber, Matt Hunter, and Melissa Bedford didn't skate by, because the characters were done and the actors who played them were leaving. I'd put Shawn in that category. His run was over for the time being. If it was Blakemore who decided to go do something else, the character wasn't one they'd bother with recasting.
14 minutes ago, ffwbe said:He spent most of his time as Sonny’s lackey and being the worst hitman ever. The only stories I recall for him outside of that was his history with PTSD, revealing that he killed TJ’s father and finding out he was TJ’s biological father right as he was about to exit.
There was an affair with Alexis, although I was on the barge for most of that period.
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In 2016, there was a minor character named Baxter (played by Hey! It's That Guy!-type Tom Parker). He was the one who ran into Nikolas and Hayden in Vegas and called her Rachel, and she was all "You must have me confused with someone else" to cover in front of Nikolas. But she obviously knew him and was shaken up. She met Baxter privately and gave him a bunch of cash to forget he ever saw her, but he double-crossed her. He immediately called someone (we didn't know) and said, "You'll never guess who I ran into."
Nikolas hired Sam to find out who this Baxter was, and that led to the revelations about Hayden being the daughter of disgraced financier Raymond Berlin, and later a second wave of revelations about her drunk-driving mishap and the husband who took the fall for her. (However, with the complexity of everything that came out about Hayden, I'm still not sure whom Baxter was calling in that first episode.)
What's weird is that out of all the possible last names they could have given Baxter, they picked "Corbin." He only made a few appearances. In the last one, Sam had drinks with him, pretending to have a lot of money to invest, as that was his occupation, and Hayden walked in on their meeting and freaked out. I wonder if there were plans to connect him, which got scrapped. It was a couple years before the Corbin family came roaring back with recast Mike, then Gladys and Brando.
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14 hours ago, ffwbe said:
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like they have anything for Laura to do other than being a talk-to for others. I already hated that she was friendly with Sonny but Carly, really show?
But I think this is what GF negotiated for: being a "nexus" character. When she returned this last time around, she said she only agreed to come back if Show met certain requests she had for her character. Right out of the gate, she was much more connected than she had been in her last couple runs. She's the mayor; she's friends with everyone, and there's a possibility of her appearing in pretty much any story, even if the story isn't really about her. GF knows which way the wind has blown. Sonny and Carly are, regrettably, the center of the show.
Just imagine if most of her screen time were dependent on her marriage to Kevin and her relationships with her kids and extended family. They'd just give her some older-person medical problem that Chris and Dan Googled up. Bobbie got diabetes, Alexis got osteoporosis, Mike got dementia, and Anna got polycythemia vera, so...stroke? Parkinson's? Glaucoma?
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A laugh from a recent Benard interview with Fairman: "The thing about Sonny is that it's what Sonny does best, or what I do playing him best, is betrayal."
In context, what he means is that the best of Sonny is when he's raging about other people's betraaaaaayals, so when he finds out about Jason and Carly getting together, we're all going to be able to sit back and watch the "fireworks." I assume that means stutter-barking on the topic of "faithless whore!" and "my best [epic pause] friend!"
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1 hour ago, ByaNose said:
It looks like GH finally shelled out money for cushions for those wood lounge chairs at the Metro Court Swim Club. I’m guessing the actors started complaining that their asses were hurting sitting on them all day while taping. LOL!!!!
I have no doubt. Taping or filming can be extremely tedious and time-consuming, so if something is uncomfortable, it's going to be uncomfortable for a long time. I was reading about how Bradley Cooper was in a movie in which he had to be in a hospital bed. In the movie, the hospital scenes come and go within about 15 minutes of screen time, but in real life, he was staying in one position in the thing for so long that he started developing bedsores.
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You just know the Josslyn/Cameron unplanned pregnancy is on the horizon. They won't be able to resist Elizabeth and Carly as grandmothers at each other's throats over their different opinions about what Josslyn should do.
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45 minutes ago, driver18 said:
I thought this was an awesome episode... yeah, *sigh* I'm about outta here. Sorry ya'll don't enjoy the show. 😥 I really am. I just think GH is fabulous soap right now and has been for months.
You shouldn't leave over that. Unless you just really don't like the commentary here, keep voicing the other side.
In the era in which the internet has really been a thing, from the mid-'90s, I've followed at various times All My Children, Another World, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, and General Hospital, with GH being the one I've seen the most of. No matter who was writing, producing, or starring on any of those shows at a given time, much if not most of the internet commentary (everywhere) was negative. All that really varies is the ratio. Sometimes it's 70/30; sometimes it's 95/5.
I never even dipped a toe into OLTL, Y&R, ATWT, Port Charles, Sunset Beach, or Passions, but I'm sure it was the same there.
I think kvetching is just a big part of internet soap fandom. Some of it is serious criticism the shows would do well to note and heed, but some of it is just in fun. I certainly contribute my share. But if I like something, I'll say that too. I'd put present-day GH about in the middle for my time with GH. It's better than it was in the Jean/Shelly years, and it's never as toxic as the worst of Guza.
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3 hours ago, Sheggy50G said:
What if - hear me out - what if Cameron Mathison is joining GH to play a not-so-sincerely-dead Peter?
2 hours ago, ciarra said:Isn't he kind of too old?
Wes Ramsey is two years older than Billy Miller, so he'd be taking over a role from someone closer to his age. But I highly doubt it. The smart money is on NuDrew.
1 hour ago, Gam2 said:Today when Portia and Trina come home and the front door squeaks, Portia says the carpenter is supposed to come fix it. HUH? Buy some 3in1 oil and fix it yourself. Good luck getting a “carpenter” to fix a squeaky door, girl.
Curtis will fix it for them, making the writing point that a house of women can't cope with such things.
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2 minutes ago, Blackie said:
I just don't get the mom/daughter jibe with Portia and Trina like I do with Carly/Joss and Alexis/Molly et al.
Do you think it's because they were both just put there with Trina most of the way to grown? "Here's a high-school-aged girl, here's her mother, and oh, by the way, they're the daughter and ex-wife of a guy who was around in the '90s and early '00s."
With those others, we saw the relationships that led to the daughters, we saw the births, and the same actors have played the mothers the whole time, even when the daughters were played by infants or little girls.
I think Sydney Mikayla and Brook Kerr do their best with it and are both fine, but it's just different without the history, which was all offscreen. (Similarly, when Kim and Oscar were around, and Tamara Braun would emote about everything Kim and Oscar had been through together, it had to be all tell. And Garren Stitt was one-dimensional, besides.)
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The teens are all versions of the parent characters we know best. Joss is "brave and strong" but expects the people close to her to put her problems first, which they usually do. Spencer is devious, entitled, and charming. (Mileage varies, of course, but "charming" is what they're writing and it's how people around him react to him.) Cameron is basically a good kid but gets bad ideas sometimes, acts on emotion and is prone to wallowing in regret when he screws up. Trina is hotheaded, kind of self-righteous, holds a grudge for a good long time, has very fixed ideas about right and wrong, but is loyal to someone she believes in.
So, they're next-gen Carly, Nikolas, Liz, and Taggert. It's slightly complicated in that there's some Jax influence on Joss and some Portia influence on Trina, but the basic connecting lines are there. I can understand a viewer hoping they'd gone another way with it, and made at least one of them completely the opposite of what we'd expect (like making Joss the antithesis of Carly and always at odds with her), but it's not an inherently bad plan.
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1 hour ago, FilmTVGeek80 said:
My only issue with the Biz nickname is it's a stupid nickname and the reasoning behind it was kind of lame. Other than that, I have no problem with that kind of lazy shorthand. When people have known each other for ages sometimes they have those kind of nicknames for each other. Same reason I have no issue with Jackie calling Chase "Harry." The only problem IMO is if it's the only thing used to establish that connection.
Also, they were children when the nickname came into existence, and how good a nickname does a kid ever come up with? I remember Liz and Steven reminiscing about how they would tease Sarah by calling her "Sairy Fairy." That's even dumber than "Biz," but it did sound like the kind of dumb name kids would make up.
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3 hours ago, mason86 said:
does anyone think think they'll bring back nicolas bechel when he's older? he won't look like a teen forever
I don't think so. I think he'll just be the new Dylan Cash: a child actor who got more screen time and storyline than most and is remembered by fans (fondly by some, not fondly by others). It remains to be seen whether he'll even make a career of acting as an adult. The Jodie Fosters of the world are really the exceptions that prove the rule.
But I did like NB more than I ever liked Dylan Cash. I thought he was cute and at least an energetic actor. They encouraged him to ham it up too much, but that's TV. They're making the same mistake with Violet now.
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On 7/20/2021 at 5:14 PM, YaddaYadda said:
I thought that today was the Spencer actor's best day in terms of acting. I thought he came off more natural in his scenes with Trina when they were sitting down, than when he was trying to impress her and trying to be all aristocratic, both with her and his father. Maybe he should try to make Spencer his own rather than falling into the trap of being the same Spencer the other actor was portraying.
Recast actors usually don't think in those terms, unless they're taking over from someone who is capital-I iconic. Like, Roger Moore probably was well acquainted with how Sean Connery had played James Bond. But I'd bet this kid Chavez knows less about how Nicolas Bechtel played Spencer than anyone here knows, unless he or some relative happened to be a GH viewer. I guess he could have scoured YouTube, but more likely he's been given a precis and he's taking direction. So if his Spencer is coming off like a smug and superior young adult of privilege, it's because they said "Act smug and superior" and there's all the stuff in the dialogue about boarding school, mansions, and royalty.
When someone eventually does transform a character into a very different person from what the previous actor played, it's gradual and it's half the writers and half the actor. Yes, two actors can be very different even with the same kind of scene, but writers start writing to the strengths of the person they have, which may take a while to identify.
On a cancelled soap I used to watch, one of the main female characters just became a different person from one actress to the other. Actress #1 was very serious, someone you could imagine doing well in classical tragedy on the stage. Actress #2 was a natural comedienne...and she also had more glamorous looks. They were both good, but each was given things to play that the other would not have been as effective in. The character was an alcoholic struggling (sometimes failing) to stay sober, and the same writers took a completely different approach to that aspect of her. Actress #2 got scenes where she wore beautiful dresses to parties and told people off just before collapsing into the punch bowl, etc. Never would have happened pre-recast. Actress #1 would have been, you know, having seizures in a detox unit while hearing the voice of her son echoing in her head, saying he never wanted to see her again.
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Excellent Joey Tribbiani soap acting from JPS here (reacting to Anna's question about how Peter could have "escaped"). Unfortunately, a still picture deprives us of the classic head swivel.
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22 hours ago, dubbel zout said:
I am sorry for Rif Hutton and Joyce Guy. They deserved so much more than to be appendages to MB's stupid stories.
Agreed, but I think Joyce Guy has a good chance of hanging in there on at least recurring status, even when Nixon Falls has fallen its last. I could see Phyllis deciding to sell the Tan-O and relocate, blah blah blah nothing for me here anymore/too many memories, and be a Port Charles-based Nina booster and another nurse at the hospital. She can make friends with Stella and Epiphany and they can all trade meddling tips.
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On 7/15/2021 at 2:37 AM, Asp Burger said:
It's like Dawson's Creek divided by Northern Exposure (which I read in an interview is one of Berlanti's favorite shows).
I'm further into it now (Madison just arrived), and I have to amend that: Dawson's Creek + Party of Five / Northern Exposure. I don't know if Berlanti was consciously influenced by PoF, but it does have a lot in common with that show, and it reminds me of the early, best seasons of it. Dead parent. Musical prodigy kid. Adorable little girl who gets lighter plots. (Only this time, those last two are separate kids.) Bearded authority figure struggling to figure out parenting. Attractive babysitter who becomes a love interest for one of the kids. "Issue"-type episodes. And, eventually, Scott Wolf in the cast. (Tamara Taylor, who played Charlie's social-worker/politician girlfriend in an early season, was also in briefly. She was Amy's school counselor who advised putting her on antidepressants.)
Still really liking it.
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I really wish they'd change that wallpaper (?) in the Maxie pad. It reminds me of a screensaver I had in the '90s, and it worked better for that purpose. If I had to look at this all the time, I'd be making this face too.
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4 minutes ago, Winston Wolfe said:
Thing is, it seems the writers were trying to grant the actor's wish of making Curtis "the Black Luke Spencer," meaning the cool one circa 1979-1985. Everything was lining up, the PI-business, then the Club (still don't see why he can't do both) and now, what exactly??? Wondering around, pining after Portia and having redundant, daily conversations? Really disappointing.
Yeah. It was heading for Black Luke Spencer and it took a wrong turn at Black Mac Scorpio. Pretty nice guy, everybody likes him, a little on the bland side, law-enforcement background, transitioned to running a local business, and just wanders aimlessly through C-plot land. I hope Curtis gets some of his edge back.
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I'm a day behind, and I could let the Thursday show pass without comment because it wasn't very eventful, but:
Unintentional laugh at batshit Maxie offering to "talk sense into" Ellie. If there were a Port Charles sense graph, you'd have to zoom in to see the Maxie bar.
I don't know what to make of that scene with Joey Novak, Brando, and Carly. Gladys was all "Good thing Brando was here. See, he is valuable! He kept you from having a mob kerfuffle at your fancy new pool." Frankly, Brando is less intimidating than Carly herself. What are we supposed to think, that Joey thought better of causing trouble because a guy who looks like a swimsuit model got in front of Carly and introduced himself as a relative of Sonny's? "I better not push the issue. There's a man with her."
I know there's probably some real-world reason for it, with Max Gail not being on contract or recurring anymore, but it's perfect that when triggered by a hat that looked like his dad's, Sonny heard his own words in his head. And he was saying something that made him look good and noble. Even when he doesn't have many memories, the selective ones are flattering.
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7 hours ago, ByaNose said:
I guess I’m more saying that MC looked too young to play Nikolas to begin with and then you hire an actor to play his son who looks too old and is taller than him.
I think it's all just about what we're acclimated to. MC looks great for a man in his forties, which is a good thing in his line of work, and he's taken over a role most associated with an actor who isn't much older but hasn't taken the best care of himself. I hate to go there, but it's certainly well documented.
If Liz had been played for a long time by a woman who was in her forties and looked every bit of it, and then one day the presently 44-year-old Becky Herbst were the recast, people would be saying this new Liz was not believable as the mother of teenagers (BH actually being one in real life wouldn't cut any ice), and that she could be Cam's older sister. But different people do show aging more or less, in Hollywood and in the wider world.
I like MC's Nik, and so far I'm still okay with NuSpencer. It's always a preliminary judgment until someone has a month or two under his belt.
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This is a show that I was always sorry I had not got in on the ground floor for. I had never seen a whole episode, and it was harder to catch up back then, and then it was gone. I was so glad to find it on HBO Max. I'm only about six episodes into season 1, but I'm really enjoying it. It has the best things about other Greg Berlanti shows I know, and fewer of the annoyances. It's like Dawson's Creek divided by Northern Exposure (which I read in an interview is one of Berlanti's favorite shows).
Such a great cast too. I'm glad Gregory Smith is finding success as a television director, but I'm kind of sorry he doesn't act as much now. I've seen his wedding photos, and it obviously isn't a case of a cute teen growing up unattractive. Also, Tom Amandes is so good at making it believable when his character behaves in ways that might seem too much from a lesser actor, and at delivering dialogue that borders on overwritten. He's wonderful. I probably will always think "prostate cancer" when I look at him, because of his memorable performance in an ER episode as a patient of Kerry's. Treat Williams, of course, is always good.
It's so easy to be spoiled for far-ahead stories when a show ran as long ago as this one did, but I don't mind.
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As regards the characters and storylines of TV series and movies (especially franchise movies with intense fan bases), "controversial" is the diplomatic way of saying a lot of people hate it, and the internet makes it appear that everyone hates it.
And it's true in this case. Nixon Falls has very few fans. Different factions hate it for different reasons, but almost everyone is relieved when an episode has no Nixon Falls. So it's been something of a universal unifier.
If there were more of a pro-Nixon Falls contingent, even a modest but hearty one, he'd have said the story was "polarizing." But I'm really not sure who would be enjoying it. Maybe people who started watching when Cynthia Watros joined the cast, and now are taking delight in seeing her in a love story with the show's primo uomo?
I don't follow Benard's social media, but I'm quite sure there are agitated comments under everything he posts now. "When is Nixon Falls going to be over?" "When is Sonny going to get his memory back?" "When are Sonny and Carly going to be together again?" "When is Nina going to get hers?" Probably accompanied by threats to stop watching after [X] years. I've seen my share of that in other places.
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9 hours ago, Cheyanne11 said:
It's a pattern. She'll do something to ~help him, it will backfire, he'll yell at her, she'll whine that she was only trying to help, he'll sigh and forgive her. Pathetically dysfunctional.
"The thing you gotta understand about Carly is that when she helps someone, even when it backfires, she helps with her whole heart. Not just a part of it!"
3 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:"Young man, you were the closest thing I ever had to a son. You brought me so much happiness, young man. As a young man, you have so many years ahead of you. Young man, don't waste them- go after Nina in Port Charles as you belong together!"
I would die laughing, as Rif Hutton is only a year older than MB and it looks that way, even though the "Mike"/Lenny scenes seem designed to make us think there's a 15- or 20-year gap.
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8 hours ago, Daisy said:
again I don't have osteoporosis, I don't know anyone who does - but i find it very hard to believe that someone grabbing your wrist would make it break like that. that sounds more like bone cancer than osteoporosis to me esp according to Alexis it only started flaring up a day ago).
Also, I don't think osteoporosis really "flares up." It's just there, and you're either fracturing things (which hadn't happened yet at the time she said it) or you're not. There are definitely signs you should be checked to see if you have it, like back pain or a more stooped posture. But what she said about her osteoporosis recently "acting up" (to set up the wrist injury) was more like what someone would say about a joint condition such as arthritis or bursitis. Those can be more or less troublesome on a given day.
Not that I ever expect GH to be on the mark when they get into medical issues.
I will defend them on her wrist breaking from being grabbed by the guard. Some people have fractures just from coughing or sneezing or coming down too hard off of a step. I wouldn't think Alexis would be that advanced, since she's youngish, they caught hers early, and she's presumably been getting supplements (edit: I hadn't yet seen the scene in which Portia said she'd make sure Alexis gets her supplements now -- WTF?), but it's not crazy. The scene of the scuffle just wasn't as convincingly directed as it could have been.
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Episode Discussion II: The TFGH
in General Hospital
I'm not saying I find it compelling, but I think Jordan/Curtis/Portia counts as a leading storyline of their own. Every member of the triangle is black, as are the major supporting talk-to characters (Stella, Trina, lately Shawn). It's not in support of anything involving white characters. And it's been consistently featured with a lot of air days. Without counting episodes, I feel as though it's kept pace with such stories as Ava/Nik and their "stalker," the Anna/Valentin thaw, Brando and Sasha's unexpected pregnancy.
What's hurting it, at least with me, is Briana Henry, who isn't bad at acting the on-the-job side of Jordan but hasn't exactly been a bundle of charisma and pathos when it comes to romantic story.