Asp Burger
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Posts posted by Asp Burger
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I was taking a GH break when Abby the stripper exited the show, and I kept seeing comments here about how she was "killed by a crane." I knew intellectually it was probably the mechanical kind, but I so badly wanted it to be the long-necked bird kind. There would have been a vapor trail behind me as I headed to YouTube for that.
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On 4/9/2021 at 5:59 PM, lala2 said:
I couldn't pay attention to the show today, but I did see Carly's scene w/Liz at the end, and I was left so confused. What does Carly want from Liz? Does Carly think her precious Jason is solely in jail b/c Liz THINKS he killed Franco? If Liz suddenly doesn't think that, does Carly think the PCPD will let Jason go? Is that what Carly thinks?
She thinks it will be like that Madonna video, where, after some soul-searching, the woman just goes to the police and says, "He didn't really do it! Also, he's Jesus!" and they let him out of the cell.
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Well, we differ there. I don't think cheating should be punished by death, and I thought what Helena did was horrific.
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39 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:
I know Mikkos was a monster and megalomaniac (Hello! He wanted to freeze the World!) and I'm not trying to dismiss that or say he was a good person at all. But, was this reveal about him abusing Alexis' mother a...retcon? I don't recall that being part of Alexis' history.
I think this was new information. In the little we've ever seen and heard about Mikkos and Kristin Bergman, they had a loving relationship, which the jealous Helena put an end to. I don't remember even a hint of him being violent with her.
There was something else in their argument that I thought sounded like a retcon: an implication that he had played some role in her success, or he "gave" her things. I had been under the impression (from the McTavish era, when Big Kristina was brought on) that she was already a big star and he was an admirer of her singing, and that's how they got together. If I were just coming to the story with yesterday's episode, I'd think they had a Charles Foster Kane/Susan Alexander dynamic (with the difference that the mistress really had a good voice).
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Alexis was listening to "When I Am Laid in Earth" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. I don't know which real singer was standing in for her mother, but it's a popular number and there's a wide range of past and present greats from whom to choose. Here's a 2003 version by Susan Graham.
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On 4/5/2021 at 8:04 PM, Asp Burger said:
Is anyone thinking Nikolas isn't long for the show? He's connected to a lot of people, but he's never on. And they're bringing boring Shawn back, so that could be a "reckoning" story.
I really called that one wrong. Within a day, they started integrating him better, and he's had a great week so far. He was really in the all-about-Ava bubble for a while.
On 4/6/2021 at 4:54 PM, ffwbe said:I’m guessing IR is out soon. Jax has been really isolated, he and Nina seem done for good, and they don’t seem to be doing anything with him and Carly.
Jax has been stripped of everything that made him interesting, so I'd be fine with them giving the character another rest. This has been the worst of all IR's returns. Admittedly, that will leave only Carly and the other teen characters to support Josslyn and let her know how remarkable she is, and she'll need even more support when Dad isn't living close by anymore (much worse than anything Trina and Cameron have had to deal with). But I think they can pull together and get the job done.
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Howarth bids farewell to Franco and Friz. “I think Becky makes magic. She can always get Elizabeth to a place where the audience can’t help but feel the things that Elizabeth is feeling, and I think it’s no wonder that she’s so beloved by her fans. I’m sure that she is going to continue to delight and bring sparkle to whatever is next for Elizabeth. I’m sure of that. I’m grateful that I got to dance with her for as long as I did."
He claims not to know whom he will be playing next.
https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/icymi-roger-howarth-interview-1701613/-
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When Sasha was talking to Michael and said, "Chase told me that you [dramatic pause] slept together," I briefly thought that I had missed a day with a much more interesting development in that quadrangle. Then I realized "you" meant Michael and Willow. Nope. Still boring.
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I stopped watching AMC long before everyone had to stop watching AMC, but I do not have good memories of Mathison at all. I remember when Chevy Chase's love interest from Fletch killed Ryan's wife Gillian while gunning for Anna Devane. There were endless scenes of Ryan as the grieving husband, and this heavy drama was so far beyond CM's comfort zone. His big default move was putting both hands behind his head and running his fingers through the back of his hair while making an ugly-cry face. It was just on the border of funny.
He just always struck me as one of those hunky white guys who aren't good actors but get work because they're "castable," and then they don't even try to improve because it's all going their way already. Maybe I was projecting; I don't know anything about his personality. I'll give him a blank slate when he shows up on GH. I'll hope his performance is not a blank slate.
ETA: The cast is getting way overpopulated. Is anyone thinking Nikolas isn't long for the show? He's connected to a lot of people, but he's never on. And they're bringing boring Shawn back, so that could be a "reckoning" story.
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6 hours ago, nilyank said:
Franco had kidnapped Peter and brought him over to his studio (another thing that he took that was Liz)
It's not the same studio where Liz painted in the late '90s/early '00s and where she cared for Jason after he was shot. That set is long gone. I remember Liz fans on SoapZone being upset when it was obviously repurposed for something else during the McTavish/Phelps era.
Then I don't recall hearing a word about a studio during Liz's adult years, after she started having husbands and kids.
Although both studios have the door on stage left, windows on stage right, and brick inner walls, the place where Franco painted was much larger (shots below). Liz's teen-years art studio was realistically cramped.
The biggest clue that it isn't supposed to be the same studio "in-universe": the first time Franco and Liz were shown there together, on an early date, she asked him "So where exactly are we?" and he said "This is my studio."
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I wasn't as strongly anti-Franco as some were, but in all the years of GH selling him as a sympathetic character, I always felt as if I were seeing a too-heavy boulder being pushed up a hill. The character's past was so dark, and the tumor excuse wasn't enough to erase it. The character was still hanging around Port Charles among people he'd victimized, going by the same name. Sympathetic characters like Elizabeth were reduced to telling people just to get over it.
I had one other problem with it, which I seem to be unusual in having: I thought the character and Howarth himself as an actor were hamstrung by the setup. This character couldn't be written with the normal emotional range available to every other character, because any display of, say, rage or jealousy -- human emotions and certainly soapy ones -- would ignite viewer fears that he was going to start serial-killing again, and the show was constantly megaphoning at us that Franco was a nice guy now. So, for most of the time, he was stuck being "gentle farmer" Franco, and it was boring.
It was a bad experiment. I know Howarth was under contract, but he should have balked hard and sent them back to the drawing board for a second character for him. He did work well with Becky Herbst, with the actors who played the sons, and with Maura West, Kathleen Gati, Kin Shriner, and others. I had no complaints there. But no matter how much I enjoyed the Franco scenes on a particular day, the shadow of the character's ugly and malignant history was always there. Franco was created to be ugly and malignant. Not every villain should be redeemed.
BTW, I know that James Franco is a controversial topic on several levels, but I do think he's a great actor and I found him magnetic in his first run as Franco in '09. He should have been short term, though. Giving even that version of Franco complicating family ties was mistake number one.
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Except Carly, because Britt won't be "good enough" for him. And if they do form a relationship, she will educate Britt very quickly that Britt isn't Jason's first priority.
Earlier this week, when Ava and Carly had their bitch-off at the Metro Court, the line of Ava's that everyone was high-fiving over was something like "Come on, Carly. We both know you're the one who pulls the strings," when Carly said Michael and Willow decide who sees Wiley. That was good, yes, but the line I loved even more came a little later, when Carly said that Nina had upset Willow. Ava replied, "And you just love doling out the punishments, don't you?" She really does. Laura Wright expertly plays a shrew who's gotten a taste of privilege and gets off on being in the power seat.
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7 hours ago, dubbel zout said:
Fashion magazines do have articles on things not related to fashion.
5 hours ago, Daisy said:they do... but out of a way local bar?
Hey, I'm never going to get over the "Real Women" issue, with its profiles of Bobbie, Epiphany, Maxie, Olivia, etc. Honestly, the only one in the bunch with a life I can imagine anyone outside Port Charles caring to read about is Anna, and I doubt she'd have been cleared to talk about the most exciting parts of her international spy history. Yet that issue was said to be flying off the shelves, solidifying Nina's position as a genius editor.
Crimson is weirdly handled. It's supposed to be a major fashion magazine with a large readership, but on the rare occasions we hear about content, it sounds like the local paper. So a piece on the Tan-O sounds about right.
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8 hours ago, Lobsel Vith said:
Juan reminds me that there was also this tendency from Guza to have the younger men wanting to join a mob or being part of the mob, like with Juan, Zander, Dillion, and Ethan. Which has thankfully not carried over to the same extent.
It did get revived recently with Dev. Dev reminded me a lot of Juan, although I found the actor who played Dev more appealing. Michael Saucedo was really not good, and I hated that Amber Tamblyn was saddled with him for a year and a half...playing his 'gurfren' as Juan pronounced it.
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That Maxie/Britt dialogue at the start of the Monday episode was just crackling, wasn't it? "I lost my phone. I have no idea where it is." (Oh. It's that kind of lost.) The reply: "Have you tried looking?" (Yes, that's something a person who's lost something has to be told to "try.")
Once again, I loved Nina and Phyllis's scenes. It's a little tough to buy that they're this close (they play it as if they've been close for decades), but the actresses are great with it. And I really like Joyce Guy, so I'm glad to be able to enjoy her without having to put up with Mo in the bargain.
That baby bump on Brooke is so bad. It's not only enormous but weirdly shaped...and I don't think it's by design because she's going to have a little hunchback. Not that I rule anything out.
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13 hours ago, Melgaypet said:
Maybe it's my inability to put myself in the headspace of a Sonny fan, but I would think they would also find it boring watching Amnesiac Sonny interacting only with randoms. Where's the stakes, where's the story? If the focus is meant to be how Sonny's loved ones deal with his absence, then he should be off-screen.
I keep tabs on Sonny fans elsewhere, and they hate it too. They're accustomed to seeing Sonny on top. What they want more than anything is for him to get back to Port Charles pronto, know who he is, take Cyrus down, and re-form his usual power bloc with Carly and Jason.
That's the one and only reason I'm fine with the amnesia storyline going on for another six months, with Carly starting something with Jax or Jason along the way. I also wouldn't mind Carly going through a reprise of Liz and Lucky's story from 2000-02 -- Sonny not being able to remember any of his feelings for Carly and having sex with other women. I'm sadistic.
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10 minutes ago, rur said:
You can guess which parts made me want to roll my eyes.
All of it. I'm so glad they managed to find actors who meet his high standards.
I personally think the actors who play Phyllis and Lenny kick his ass, and Ms. Guy's prestigious credits include a regular role on The West Wing.
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Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't MSt's departure abrupt? Normally, when an actor on GH is playing a front-burner role such as Nina Reeves, we're hearing about negotiations or the possibility of a departure months in advance. I remember a lot of talk about whether Tyler Christopher would leave, whether Rebecca Herbst would leave, whether Billy Miller would leave, whether Kelly Monaco would leave. It seemed to me with MSt that one day I just read here out of nowhere that she was leaving and that CW was the new Nina, and that was that. And it was just as GH was beginning a story about a spiritual group that: (1) encouraged members to disconnect from skeptical family and friends, (2) used "touch assists" to cure physical problems such as headaches, (3) extracted secrets from its members and used those secrets as leverage, and (4) made a sacred text of a reportedly "badly written" book by the founder, with an orange cover illustration of mountains. And the story prominently featured a young-adult female character who had been brought in by her mother.
Again, not accusing anyone of anything, but I'm sure I'm not the only one whose eyebrow got raised by the timing.
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That was a rumor in places where one reads such things; no one has publicly commented to back it up. What I'd read was that it was the portrayers of Kiki (#2), Valerie (#1), and others in that approximate age group with whom she'd become friendly.
It would be consistent with the group's practices. They encourage members to spread the word, to put it mildly. Leah Remini has talked about how much pressure she was under to recruit costars on her sitcom. Scientology likes celebrities, and their celebrity contingent is aging. The ones under 50 like Elisabeth Moss are mostly second-generation. Millennials and Zoomers have grown up in the internet era and have read so much, so they're wary. (I know that the ones above wouldn't have been major celebrity acquisitions, but they were also young and beautiful and who knows where they could end up with a good role.)
The current Nikolas has also been a Scientologist, but I don't know if current or former.
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That's correct about Aiden visiting Lucky in Ireland, although it seems to have been the previous Christmas (2019). That's what I found on summary sites. I guess it's possible he did it two years in a row, though.
The first time we heard about it, some people were expecting Lucky to return played by someone or other, as Nikolas just had.
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6 hours ago, Bringonthedrama said:
He wasn't joking. He was irritated that Cam had called him out on his serial killer past and treated him like he didn't trust him, instead of just unconditionally adoring and accepting him and believing he was a terrific partner for Elizabeth like Jake and Aiden did.
Here's the transcript.
Franco: All right, Pops, talk to me. You've never had a hard time finding companionship. What's the problem?
Scott: Companionship, that's easy, you know? Go to a bar, strike up a conversation, you know... leads to dinner. Sometimes it leads to... breakfast.
Franco: Ooh. Olé. The old man's still got it. Cheers.
Scott: The old man's got nothing. It's all trips to Vegas, smoke and mirrors. It -- it means nothing. I want what you have -- Elizabeth, the kids.
Franco: If you want Cameron, you can have him right now.
Scott: No, forget the kids. I don't like kids. [etc]
Those who saw or didn't see this scene can look at that and decide on a plausible reading. I took it that these two (S and F) were comfortable enough with each other by that point to joke around even while talking about serious things. I didn't take "If you want Cameron, you can have him right now" as evidence that Franco was seething with resentment over being denied Cameron's approval, and really wanted Cameron out of Elizabeth's house. He was patient and tactful in his actual interactions with Cameron.
Similarly, if someone cited Scott's "I don't like kids" as evidence that his grief over the children he'd lost was just for show, I wouldn't buy that either. ("Screw Scott with his hypocritical posturing about his children being dead. He flat-out said that he didn't even like kids.")
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Cameron was in community service for attempting to buy pot to help Oscar, and at that point (2018) he was still cooler to Franco than the other two boys were. So a large portion of his community service period -- which seemed to go on endlessly -- does track with what he said, I guess.
But I think they were just going for emotion, loss, and lashing out, rather than reason. I liked those scenes, but it would have been nice if we'd ever seen a scene between Liz and any of the Cameron actors in which he asks about his father and she talks to him. Especially as the other two sons have biological fathers who were/are bigger presences in Liz's life. They've been around at least some.
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4 minutes ago, Gigi43 said:
Saw yesterday's episode this morning. Zander was before my time but I liked the actor in this episode. Also he's better looking than a number of the guys currently on. If RH is coming back as someone new, get this guy back on the show however way they can.
Chad Brannon has aged really well in the last 17 years. Except for the touch of gray (which looks good on him), it's hardly noticeable. His performance was good too. It reminded me why I liked him way back. Zander often got bad writing that encouraged Brannon to go over the top, and raging wasn't his strong suit. I liked this more mature, subdued Zander. But of course, that's how they always write the "beyond the grave" people. Even Sonny's sister wasn't that annoying in her one-day angelic appearance to counsel Spencer, which was similar to this. (But I'd rather be watching William Lipton and Chad Brannon than watching Nicolas Bechtel and Alicia Leigh Willis.)
I hope he gets a good response and they ask him back.
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9 hours ago, Bringonthedrama said:
Franco made a snide remark about not wanting Cam, in a conversation with Scott.
I thought he was joking.
QuoteCam was "all in" with Franco as of the time Franco saved him from Shiloh's brain experiment. Just about any kid would turn around their attitude after that.
No. The kidnapping/brain experiment was some time after the formal Friz wedding, when he sang a song for them and stood there with the other two boys and called Franco "our dad." He's been over his anti-Franco attitude (which I thought was pretty typical soap teen stuff) for a long time. That doesn't mean every viewer had to go along with him in embracing Franco, but that's the story they told. It wasn't about gratitude for Franco saving him from Shiloh.
Other topic: I wish they'd bring Chad Brannon back for good, even if he were playing a different character. Time has been kind to him.
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Episode Discussion II: The TFGH
in General Hospital
· Edited by Asp Burger
Same. It's hard to compare him to Tyler, because Tyler originated the role and played it off and on for 20 years, and sometimes Tyler was killin' it and other times he was phoning it in or possibly struggling with personal things. But I've loved what MC has done in the last year and a half. I think he brings some of his own sweetness to Nikolas, but there are also intensity and edge when needed, setting Nikolas apart from the "nice guy" types on GH of recent years: Chase, Brando, Griffin, whathisname who was in the half-assed triangle with Lulu and Brook (oh, "Dusty").
And everyone he has scenes with seems to wake up when he's on with them, which is a sign of a good co-star. Some of them don't need outside prodding, like Maura West and JPS, but others can use the boost. Frankly, Ingo's most recent return has been a snooze except for that run when Jax was plotting with Nikolas and Hayden.
Now I wish they'd strike while the iron is hot and do something with Lucky.