Asp Burger

It was telling that the second or third thing out of Carly's mouth was "I know you blame me" (to Elizabeth, re: Drew's beating). That's what she would do in Elizabeth's position. She always has to find someone to make into a convenient punching bag (verbal or otherwise) in situations like this one, even if their responsibility is indirect by two or three levels. Recall how she went off on Britt a while back, because if Jason hadn't gone overseas to help Britt, he'd still be alive, etc. She should know by now that Elizabeth, for all her own faults, is a better person than that. That was apparent as far back as their conversation when the Dylan Cash Michael was shot. With regard to the whole Drew/insider trading story, I salute the show for delving into the underexplored topic of excessive punishment of wealthy white-collar criminals who plead guilty. What social-justice warriors.

If Quentin Tarantino is a GH fan, he must be kicking himself that he never thought of a mobster who deals in fake designer footwear. With his well-documented fetishes, that scenario practically writes (and shoots) itself!

Same. I'm not sure if the two kids' ages have been kept consistent, but even in our world, it was almost five years ago. Soap opera little-kid (mis)behavior is only a strike against them to me if it carries over and tells us something about the character when older. Plus, I think 9-year-old Charlotte thought she had good intentions, didn't she? I remember her saying something like she tries to get Aiden to act the "right" way. I'm not disputing that it was bullying, but I don't think she really was trying to hurt him. Now, her behavior toward Ava (planting the snake and all that) was malicious...but, again, soap little-kid stuff.

Did Trina say "exspecially" when she was talking to Joss about Spencer and Esme? Okay, I was on the bubble before, but I'm done with her now.

The problem, I think, is that Duelly can't play more than one thing at a time, which sapped interest in the whole "Michael's vendetta against Dad" plot. When Michael is angry, he's just angry. A stronger actor could have done the anger as the top layer and other tones underneath it, so we would see he really still loved Sonny deep down, et cetera. Then what's going on presently would work better. CD was similarly one-note when he turned on both Sonny and Carly after AJ's death, but that was a more entertaining story. Carly in the world of sports has so much comedy potential. She'd probably cheat, get penalized, and try to turn the whole situation into a manhunt for the person who alerted the umpire/referee that she had cheated. Or else claim the umpire/referee was out to get her, and she wants to play the game over again with a different one. "I didn't benefit from that cheating! We lost the game anyway!"

And Coltin Scott/Stephen Martines definitely didn't have it. Nor did Nick Stabile, who finished out TC's final storyline. However, even with Tyler in the role, the actor needs guidance from the writing. The various regimes often haven't written Nikolas as well bred, sophisticated, and of an aristocratic background. It's as though they only remember this occasionally. Sometimes even his grammar has been substandard ("If I would've known..." instead of "If I had known..." or "Had I known..."). Mileage will vary on this part, but getting an actor who strongly conveys being descended from old-world aristocracy is not the all-important factor to me. Nikolas has spent more years in Port Charles than not since he was 15 years old (though played by a 23-year-old), and so it makes sense for him to seem more modern and assimilated than his relatives of earlier generations such as Stefan, Victor, and Helena. Certainly, we don't need to look far in the real world to find princes who are not exactly dignified and aloof in the way they carry themselves. So, if I like the actor otherwise, I'll give some ground on that. I just wish Nikolas were written with more consistency and as a valued character. I've said it before, but the last time it seemed he was on a writing regime's favored list was the Nem era (with Natalia Livingston's Emily). Since then, he's mostly schemed ineffectually and had things blow up in his face.

Yeah, I hate to be unkind, but Huss's fill-in Nikolas didn't make it shocking to me that he had failed to get both Shiloh and Nikolas when he auditioned for them. I think TPTB made the right call in both cases, and I hope "fill-in Nikolas" is what's still going on. But I accept that others see something I don't see. I saw a lot of whooping and celebrating in various soap-talk places yesterday from the "Hussies."

That sounds to me like a good guess. They'll probably have Spencer and Esme scheme up a marriage of convenience to strengthen his position. "My baby brother" will become "my baby brother and stepson!" Trina will be heartbroken. Stella and Curtis will hate Spencer. Portia will hate Spencer even more. Josslyn will hate Spencer even more. Sonny will approve, because Spencer stepped up and did a difficult thing for the good of his fambly. Laura will make her concerned eyes and repeatedly say, "Oh, honey," in couch scenes with Spencer. Trina and Spencer will still get the occasional scene to remind viewers that she's the one he would prefer to be with, but he'll continue to have increasingly pro-Esme feelings too. Then, with his contract up, NAC will hand off the role to a twentysomething equivalent of Adam Huss. I'm not a disgruntled Sprina rooter (I lost interest in them post recast), just trying to think like the trend. And the trend has been "obstacles, obstacles, everywhere."

I think they would, theoretically...but definitely not with Curtis, because he and Donnell are on the favored/protected list. The present kind of narcissistic "suffering" is as bad as it will get for Curtis. A sexual problem would be writing they'd only give a male character who's in the AJ Quartermaine Memorial Wing of Losers. (To enter that wing, you have to walk around a really fat statue.) They'd give that to the kind of male character who comes out as the loser in romantic triangles and gets punched out when there's a fight. A Chase impotence story wouldn't shock me a bit. Especially if it were part of the groundwork for turning him into a jerk to drive his love interest into the arms of some guy they like more.

Seriously. Those three aren't even a Glass Tiger reunion with Stacey Q as the opening act.

Dante came back to Port Charles after being held captive and tortured in Turkey, and he was having episodes where he was, for example, approaching a sleeping Lulu with a gun and repeating "I will complete the mission" (sounding not unlike Reggie Jackson trying to assassinate the queen in The Naked Gun). Anna arranged for him to go to some WSB center to be de-brainwashed. When Peter and Maxie found out where he was and went there for some reason, Dante somehow got a gun and shot Peter. (At this point in the story, we were supposed to think that was bad. Now, I just think about what everyone would have been spared if Dante's aim had been better.) A few episodes later, Dante filed for divorce from afar. In show, this was because he didn't know when or if he would be better and he didn't want Lulu to wait for him. In our world, it was because DZ was still trying his luck outside daytime, and Frank preferred to see how that worked out before giving us a NuDante, and he didn't want to strand Lulu. I guess all of that is why that Lulu/Dante divorce has never felt "real" to me. It wasn't because of problems between them or one of them falling out of love, or in love with someone else. They had weathered his affair with Valerie. And the version of Dante that came back to Port Charles when DZ signed a new contract was just absurdly "all better." It was as if the Turkey trauma (which will be the name of my dark-comedic novel about a dysfunctional family's Thanksgiving) had never happened. Even the heavily, deeply scarred back he had when he was PTSDante had been fixed, although no one ever commented on that onscreen.

I have a feeling Che would respond to that with a lecture ("woke moment" sound effect!) about how there isn't any type they're attracted to; they're "pan-attracted," and limiting oneself to particular types propagates a regressive binary. I would totally have kept that kitten. I'm a soft touch.

I don't like some of the things Brady has been written to do—mostly season 1 Brady, having sex with Luisa all over his parents' place and leaving a trail of condoms—but I actually enjoy his dynamic with Miranda. I don't see him as Superbrat, although he's had a very comfortable and secure life and takes that for granted, as well-off young people do. I think the idea they're going for is that he's a lot like Miranda, with less ambition and drive, so the two of them often have this verbal cribbage game going on. He feels she's nagging him; he brings up that she only recently found her own "path"; she immediately pivots to "Look how fast you did that! Math was always your best subject," using flattery and keeping the focus on academic pursuits. They're both always looking for loopholes and weak spots to make their points. I'll admit that I thought the young man playing Brady was a casting miss in season 1, but he's grown on me a little as we've seen him in other contexts. Nice casting of Rosemarie DeWitt as Aidan's ex, and nice performance too. Still not into Carrie/Aidan 3.0, or whichever release this is.

It is puzzling that they have trouble dressing Michael. Chad Duell doesn't look to me as if he would be at all challenging to dress in a flattering way, but when they have him in dress shirts (which is often), the shirts usually look as though they shrank in the laundry or else they fit the character well at an earlier point in his life and he's in denial about that point having passed. I don't think that's the intent, because GH dresses some other people badly on the regular too. Michael/Duell is just a stranger example than some. So, the scuttlebutt I'm seeing in various places on the internet is that the replacement writers are doing a better job than the official crew, but it sounds here as though the insufferable characters are no easier to suffer.

Yes. That was a good example of my problem with this episode and with AJLT at its baseline level: it's lazy to a degree that it's not believable even for a quasi-comedy. The scene needs Anthony to discover that his employees are using HGH, so one of them just whips out a syringe while Anthony is addressing him and three other employees. I doubt even disgraced baseball player José Canseco was ever that brazen with it.

And Carrie's waiting and waiting at a restaurant, expecting to reconnect with an ex she hadn't seen in years, was done better in Nocturnal Animals. I'd enjoyed the last couple episodes, but this one was pretty bad. Illogical set-ups, silly dialogue (these AJLT neologisms like "me-evening" are cloying), ancient plot devices, characters making appearances seemingly just so we wouldn't forget they're on the show, and overacting from about three-fourths of the cast to try to sell it all. As an example of "ancient," do people still go up to a maitre'd and yell "Call an ambulance!" in such situations in 2023? Neither Charlotte nor Harry was carrying a phone of their own? I love @greekmom's idea of Berger in a Miranda AA group. It would be an especially good way to work him in because Miranda had been a Berger fan when he and Carrie were dating. Yeah, when Charlotte expressed that she thought she was having a heart attack, I wondered if we were going to get a very well-concealed Kyle MacLachlan cameo. The eventual explanation for Charlotte's distress was a big shrug, because what she was complaining about and how she was acting didn't seem like a plausible effect of THC.

I remember being surprised that when Carly owned or co-owned two nightclubs (consecutively) in the Tamara Braun years, neither was named after her. The first was Club 101; the second was The Cellar. Her fans on certain parts of the internet were calling the first one "Club Carly" before it even existed, when it was just spoilers. I think they were disappointed by the bland name it ended up having. They probably were hoping for "Club Carly" in neon cursive, with Carly's visage over the entrance with pink flashing pupils.

I'm still liking life on the barge, but keeping an eye on this thread to see what I'm being spared missing. Some of you have me tempted to at least watch the Ava/Austin + Nina/Sonny luncheon. So, Curtis is paralyzed? Maybe they can bring crack neurosurgeon Dr. Griffin Munro back for a brief return to save the day, between his crying spells.

It's possible the episode just caught me in an "easy" mood, or maybe after a season and a half it has worn down my expectations, but I think this was my favorite episode of either season. Even Che had a good week. The spontaneous gag about the vibrator not having a lifetime warranty, while not thigh-slapping hilarious, was better than anything from last season's "comedy concert." Che and Carrie have good friendship chemistry (as do Carrie and Seema). Cynthia Nixon is a good director. All of her episodes behind the camera have been above average, and this one had some gorgeous images. The Miranda/Steve argument (the downstairs part, I mean) was very moving to me. I felt that the writing, directing, and both actors caught how people who have loved each other for a long time, and still do, feel and act when they fight and it gets ugly. LTW and husband still seem very "back-door pilot," though. I have nothing against that family; I just get less of the point of them than with any of the other AJLT characters. It's as if we briefly join some other show in progress.

I'd say yes on "lighter tone," @RealHousewife. Carrie's widowhood still comes up in conversation sometimes, but there's more distance from Big's death, because time has passed and life has gone on. We aren't still getting scenes like Carrie screaming "You broke the picture frame that my husband touched!" They also are not dwelling on Samantha severing ties with the other three, as they often were in season 1. It's still a show with problems, but I cannot say one of them is the glumness that weighed down season 1.

From the HuffPost piece that @chitowngirlposted (thank you for that): Ding, ding, ding. It could not have been better expressed. I realize I don't have as much company here as I had a couple of years ago, but I still kind of care about Miranda. She had been my favorite on SATC. For all the discussion of Che's pronouns, it bothers me to see Miranda in a borderline-toxic relationship with someone who behaves like various uncomplimentary nouns. I'm hoping, maybe vainly, that the two of them get these issues out in the open and then part amicably, maybe stay friends if Che is (as I suspect) going to be around for the duration of the series.

She reverted to red at the very end of the first season's finale. She and Brady had a conversation about it. She asked if he was ever going to comment on her hair, and he said he liked it but wondered happened to her "gray pride." She said it's still there; she just liked the idea of changing it up again. Then he said she was just copying his look, and she said she had it first. It stayed in my mind because it was one of the nicer Brady scenes.

I haven't seen an episode since the one that aired on Thursday the 6th. This is the first thing I've read here to make me regret it. Obviously, I picked my spot badly!

Ha ha. And Seinfeld's recurring cast included an unfunny standup comedian too. Che is the new Banya! Now they just need to have Che say, "That's gold, Miranda. Gold!"

I didn't comment on the episode in which we actually saw the sitcom pilot being taped, but the reasons not to pick that up are myriad. It looked terrible, like a really bad show from Tony Danza's actual network sitcom heyday of 30-40 years ago. The AJLT writers were no better at writing an old-fashioned "taped before a studio audience" sitcom than they were at writing a "comedy concert."