Asp Burger
-
Posts
2.2k -
Joined
Content Type
Blogs
Gallery
Downloads
Discussion
Posts posted by Asp Burger
-
-
I'm gladder to have the show back than I thought I would be. It's just something that always was there, and then it wasn't. When I take a break from it, I want it to be my idea!
One thing hasn't changed. When Rebecca Herbst is on, I pay more attention. I never feel that her scenes are a waste of time. Of course, Liz is my avatar on here (and I never want to change it, because that picture is hilarious to me), so that says something about character loyalty, but I thought she was great in her scenes with MB. It made me think about the whole Liz/Sonny history, even though, honestly, the character was just being used to facilitate someone else's story, as she often is. And I have to give credit -- I think MB is doing pretty well in this last lap of the Mike story too.
I like Temp Sam, and I think Duell looks good with the longer hair.
I do have a hard time seeing Carly letting a comatose Jason die. She'd be able to stare at him and talk at him with even less interruption, and it's not as though he ever says much anyway.
-
3
-
3
-
-
On 7/9/2020 at 5:35 PM, dubbel zout said:
I really hated Lucky lashing out at Luke and, especially, Laura. How his parents dealt with what happened between them years before he was born was none of his business. I get that this was a way to have the scales fall from Lucky's eyes and have him realize Luke and Laura were flawed human beings like everyone else, but Laura really got the brunt of his anger in the most horrible way. I know, Luke was the one Lucky idolized, so his fall from grace was higher and more painful for Lucky, but that shouldn't have had to come at Laura's expense.
I recall him getting in some brutal digs at Luke's expense, though. I think the different ways Geary and Francis played the reactions made his treatment of Laura seem more lopsided.
I thought it was good writing because we were seeing the flaws of Lucky himself as he moved into adulthood. He could be very cold and superior, and downright vicious when someone he had put on a pedestal tumbled off. It linked up well with the 2010 scenes with Liz when he found out about her affair with Nikolas, which I know some people were cheering on, but I found really ugly and cruel. Yet...in character, and undeniably well acted.
The problem is, we had those two interim Luckys who seemed to have little to do with Jonathan's. They weren't cerebral. They weren't especially tech-savvy. I guess they were "emotional," but only in the sense that every character on a soap is emotional. It's hard to picture the JJ version doing and saying the same things.
@racked, I'm right there with you in loving late-'90s GH. It started to slide about halfway through 1999, when we had an influx of meh new characters (Juan, Chloe, Hannah), returns that few people had been panting for (Roy DiLucca), exoduses of popular actors/characters, bad recasts (Coltin Scott Martines's Nik), and Sonny and Carly started to devour the show. But it was a great run for the few years leading up.
-
1
-
4
-
-
This may be old (my not remembering seeing it here means nothing), but I was reading some news and saw that the actress Alicia Arden, who has made assault allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, had a GH stint among her credits. I remember her character, Theresa Carter. She only appeared in flashbacks as Rick Webber's mistress, accidentally killed by teen Laura, in GF's woeful 2002 exit story.
-
2 hours ago, dubbel zout said:
Do they ever dig into the fact that Sonny doesn't seem to think there's verbal abuse as well as physical? Or does he know he's a verbal abuser and doesn't want to admit it? Probably both, given how Sonny has to be placated.
This is as close as he got, when Carly said yes, he was abusive, and produced the receipts with "faithless whore," "worthless," etc.:
"I want you to hear my side. I have a temper, a bad temper, and you've seen the worst of it, and I have yelled at you, screamed at you, called you names. I'll even take it a step further--I might have grabbed you at some point, but you by no means were innocent. You lied to me, you cheated on me, right? And you even set me up with the Feds. [...] I'm just saying, it takes two to tango. We were equals, and you weren't the helpless type. How many times did you deliberately do something, knowing it was going to hurt me and set me off? [...] You deliberately provoked me, and then you gave as good as you got. [...] I never saw you cowering on the floor, sobbing, beaten. Because that's what I see as abuse. That's what my mother and I went through for years."
So he makes it all about the specifics of his relationship with a woman, instead of identifying his own pattern, and everything's in the shadow of his idealized mother figure who suffered "real" abuse. If he can tell himself he's better than Deke, he can live with himself. It was an interesting story, psychologically, but they were only going to go so far with it.
-
5
-
-
2 hours ago, perkie1968 said:
I remember him getting on the elevator and that was the last we saw of him, though I thought he had briefly come back, recently, and had a scene with LIz (around the time she started dating Franco???) and he had gone gray and people were drooling that RH was now a silver fox.
I skimmed some recaps. Not as recent as it may seem. His last day was in July 2016.
He was around fairly regularly through April 2016. He was on Sonny's good side by now, and Sonny was putting him on things like investigating Josslyn's kidney donor. Carly still hated him and told Sonny not to trust him. Then he just disappeared. He was still mentioned (for example, by Molly and TJ re: the two of them moving in together and whether her dad would have a problem with it), but not seen.
Then he made a one-day appearance in July 2016. Liz/Franco was just getting started, and Ric didn't like that she was showing interest in a former serial killer. They had a predictable argument at the hospital in which she alluded to all the things Ric himself had done. She made it unambiguous that she didn't want him in her life, even as a friend. Then he left.
Hearst has said (in 2019) that he would be open to coming back, and that he considers Ric a legacy character with important ties.
-
One thing I'll say about Nem: Tyler and Natalia always put on a show. I remember one love scene in particular that surprised me, that it got on daytime television without cuts. They always seemed very into it and convincing in the physical side of that relationship.
I can take or leave steamy sex scenes.
-
49 minutes ago, statsgirl said:
I wasn't watching much at the time but I remember Maxie having a lot of problems in her teen years and more likely to be the girl that the mean girls were mean to rather than being one of the bullies. So it felt like the whole 'Maxie was mean to Amy and Amy taking Ryan away is sweet revenge' was a retcon to justify Amy/Nathan and I resented it.
Specifically, it seemed like a character retcon that suited the Kirsten Storms version of Maxie. She really is believable as a former "mean girl." (Not Storms herself, but Maxie as played by Storms.) I don't remember the Robyn Richards Maxie projecting snobbishness or being all "You don't know all about the latest trends? You are so hopeless!" She was kind of insecure. She had that crush on Lucky, and her attitude was that he would never even look at her when he had a perfect girlfriend (Liz). That's not how it played when they actually did Maxie/Lucky years later with Storms and GV.
Also, the RR version had the infamous "Maximum Maxie" story, when Kyle put the sex video of their first time on the internet and made her an object of ridicule.
Even the interim, short-lived, little-remembered Maxie -- the one who said "exspecially" -- wasn't haughty at all. Just kind of a bimbo.
But Richards was good at fragility, and Storms is good at something else.
On Man Landers: I didn't hate it as much as some did. It was just eating up a lot of air time for a story about some new characters plus Nathan, who only had a trace of a personality and had mostly been Someone's Husband/Brother/Son. And it was built on a questionable premise, given that the successful advice columnists anyone can actually name are women. What it had going for it was Risa Dorken's energy and sweetness and the general likability of the characters in it (Amy, Nathan, Chet). I hope RD is doing better and will be back on GH eventually. She opened up about serious mental health struggles earlier this year.
-
2
-
1
-
3
-
-
As soon as I found out that Coloma is musical (he's not bad), I was thinking we were doomed to a corny "sworn enemies make music for a good cause" number with Nikolas and Valentin duetting at the ball. Valentin on the keys and Nikolas on guitar.
I'd make a crack about feeling we dodged a bullet, but honestly, I do miss the show and wish it were still airing. However, I'm not short of other things to fill the time...more than I'd have had 20 years ago.
-
1
-
-
19 hours ago, ByaNose said:
Also, Kirsten Storms look beautiful today. With her long hair and thin build. She just looked healthier. I’m not sure what the time line is here. Was this way before she took a leave when kept covering her face with her hair? I have no memory of Ryan Paevy being there when she went though that. Maybe, he had left by then and that’s when it happened.
Paevey left/Nathan died in January 2018. It was 2016 when Storms announced she was taking time off to recover from skin problems, and they recast Maxie with Molly Burnett. In 2017, Storms took a longer break, and someone at the show or the network too-revealingly blurted out that she would be gone for 90 days. That time, they just wrote Maxie off temporarily. Nathan was very much around then; they filled his time with Nurse Amy and the Man Landers saga. Storms/Maxie was back for the end of that story.
Post Nathan's death, later in 2018, Burnett again did a short-term replacement of Storms. But I think that that time, it was only for a couple of air days.
So, the 2015 NB show just repeated was before all of the above.
-
On 5/28/2020 at 8:22 PM, ByaNose said:
Just watched Michael E. Knight on Steve Burtons podcast. I had forgotten what MEK sounded like. For the love of god he needs to loose that stupid accent on GH. It does nothing for him. Maybe, they can do a reveal where we find out that’s it’s fake and he can use his real voice.
Accents for TV characters who are going to be ongoing are always something to think long and hard about. For a movie, it's different. You know when it's going to be shooting, you do your work in advance, it's great or passable or not so great (even someone as good with accents as Cate Blanchett had her Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull misfortune), and it's in the can. But an actor in a TV show might have to maintain it for years, no end in sight.
I remember when Peter Reckell of DOOL had a regular role on Knots Landing, and the show unwisely made his character Irish. That brogue was sliding all over the place. Sometimes really heavy, sometimes light to nonexistent. They finally did exactly what you want GH to do with MEK -- they had another character say, "Hey, what happened to your accent?" and he revealed that it had always been fake.
-
I remember Patrika Darbo (formerly Nancy on DOOL and Shirley on B&B; ultimately a Primetime Emmy winner) talking up Becky in an interview about the Daytime Emmys. This was a year in the early aughts that the nominations had come out and Becky had not received one. Darbo said Becky and another then-young actress (I can't recall) were two she had been encouraging people to look at.
It is a little odd that she's only had three nominations in 20+ years. She doesn't always have material that's unquestionably "about" Liz, but she's frequently outstanding in other people's stories, and it would be hard to define "supporting" better.
8 hours ago, UYI said:I do think an honorary Juvenile Award would be a fair compromise, and I think the Oscars should probably have kept it too: look how awkward it is the few times kids are up against seasoned adults!
I don't know; I think movies are a little different. You're more likely to get a well-written role that's really at the center of a movie, with the guidance of a top director, as was the case when Anna Paquin won at 11 under Jane Campion's direction. I actually thought it was kind of cool in 2013 when the youngest Best Actress nominee ever (Quvenzhané Wallis, 9) competed with the oldest Best Actress nominee ever (Emmanuelle Riva, 85), and either of them would have been a defensible winner. But it went to Jennifer Lawrence, 21...who was playing older than her own age, and would have been in the "Younger" category had she been on a soap.
-
1
-
-
Some of Benard's fans are saying in various places -- where outrage is high that he was snubbed -- that he "didn't submit." I don't know anything either way, but I'm surprised, if that's true. Whatever anyone thinks of what he did with it, and I don't think much, the Mike story has looked like awards bait.
-
2
-
-
9 hours ago, Ambrosefolly said:
My issue with the category is the age cap is way too high. What is it, 25? If that category is to exist, it should be for people 22 years and under. Theoretically, people who don't have much formal acting training. By 25, you could have 4 years of college focusing on theatre and a couple years taking acting classes when you aren't working and auditioning. Kids on the other hand have to take the school requirements, can't work past a certain number of hours and have to have a guardian present at all times. Plus the kids themselves more likely not to engage the politics of getting Emmys. Wasn't there a story where Adrienne Frantz who was in her early twenties was openly pissed that Camryn Grimes, who was around 10 years old, bested her for the award?
I've always thought this was a problem. I remember when Sarah Brown won it a couple of years in a row, and while she did qualify on a purely numerical level, it just didn't seem right to have her competing against small children, when Carly was in front-burner adult stories, having sex on pool tables and all that.
In that same era, we had to watch little 7-year-old Bryant Jones crying (and being consoled by his 25-year-old Y/R costar and fellow nominee Joshua Morrow) while Jonathan Jackson collected another trophy.
-
8
-
-
I was just watching some clips of Sonia Braga as Mrs. Westlake from that episode when she comes over for dinner. What a great supporting character/performance. Braga's delivery is perfect in the monologue about the kind of teacher she tries to be. It actually sounds like something a person might say, and of course she spoke beautifully accented English.
Eventually, the show got over the top with its lectures on Cosby's personal passions and preoccupations, with "responsibility" sometimes taking precedence over humor, as in the notorious commencement episode. But in the first couple seasons, the balance was just right.
-
1
-
2
-
-
Shortly after the Wiley parentage reveal, they did show Lucas acting irritable and moody at work, rebuffing the concern of Felix and Liz. (That was after Brad's sentencing, wasn't it?) But then he vanished. He could be working endless shifts at GH, he could be stealing from the drug lock-up to self-medicate, he could be drunkenly over-tipping strippers in the gay bars of Branford...anyone's guess.
I just don't think the show cares that much about Lucas, and I don't think he's popular enough for fan outcry to force something. He's a character who can be part of stories, but can't have stories of his own.
-
3
-
-
7 hours ago, Sake614 said:
The problem IMO is brook. If anything, the writers don’t have any idea what to do with HER. And AS just isn’t doing a thing for me. She should be an integral part of the Qs but is barely scene with them. Instead they have her throwing temper tantrums and engaging in fights with other women, be it punching Sasha or pulling Lulu’s hair like she’s 5. Just let her go off and become a successful singer or slink away in shame because her family lost control of ELQ because she was too self absorbed and petulant to care.
Agreed. It's a fierce competition, but I'd give Brook Lynn "worst character" right now, because she has less reason to be around than the other candidates. She's been one obnoxious, badly dressed flail from the start. She goes around with a pissy expression getting into people's faces, or she reiterates what others have said ("Yeah, Willow is great!" "Nelle is a psycho!"). Once in a while, we have it reemphasized for us that she's (1) a Quartermaine through and through or (2) the second coming of Tracy. She's been back since November, and we're still being told rather than shown why we're supposed to care.
-
11
-
-
16 hours ago, dubbel zout said:
To think we called Dillon a jar of mayonnaise. Michael is an undercooked chicken breast.
Maybe it's only absence making the heart grow fonder, but at least RPW's Dillon attacked a love scene with reasonable enthusiasm. I just looked, and there are actually some GH clips with him that have the YouTube viewer discretion warning. Michael's romances mostly consist of conversations in restaurants and coffee shops. A big break in routine for him is wearing exercise clothes.
-
5
-
1
-
-
3 hours ago, statsgirl said:
Why did they have Alexis be disbarred? They just did that a few years ago and it doesn't promise to be any more entertaining now than it was then.
A few years ago, she just got suspended and could apply for reinstatement in a year, like Slippin' Jimmy McGill. If these writers really are committing to disbarment, that will be more of a game changer for the character. I'll believe it when I see it.
-
1
-
-
16 minutes ago, perkie1968 said:
Michael was gone by then. BL punched Sasha then after the commercial she and Chase are the only ones in the gym.
No. The whole foursome was there. Michael got a "stunned" reaction shot and all.
I do agree it was contrived for him to be the one to take Sasha to the hospital.
-
1
-
-
On 5/5/2020 at 6:06 PM, Cheyanne11 said:
Also, again I have to ask: how does lightning not strike Carly dead? "I never used my kids as collateral." Holy fuckballs, Michael's first years of existence were nothing but her using him to try and get Jason back into her bed.
I thought the same. Carly was still blatantly using Michael in the Tamara Braun years, when Sonny separated from her over her scheme to get him out of organized crime. There was a period in '01 when he was really giving her the cold shoulder, Michael was the one bargaining chip she had, and she took full advantage. She would claim Michael was asking for Sonny, or contrive Michael-related reasons he had to come right away, and she was clearly loving that it worked. (Even if Michael had been making all these requests for Sonny that we weren't seeing, a good mother would have been establishing with him that they had to look toward a reality where Sonny wasn't going to be around as much. We saw in the Dylan Cash era how Michael's personality responded to his constantly being indulged.)
I don't see Carly as a better person at all. Just an older, more up-market version. The present story with Nelle and Wiley works best for me if the subtext is that Carly does see how much she's like Nelle...still.
-
14
-
-
22 hours ago, driver18 said:
when Carly walked in after Nina hired Nelle, I legit laughed out loud so hard at Lanier's delivery of 'Your girl got herself a job"
I had the same reaction yesterday when she was walking out of the Metro Court, saw Carly, and said, "Carly! Oh God, I heard Michael had his heart broken again. That's so sad. We're gonna have to talk soon." She's become one of my favorite characters, and I wouldn't have predicted that prior to her being sent to prison.
-
5
-
-
So, if you're a new viewer, the important points to cover are that Jason has a lot of black T-shirts, Sam cries really often, and when you hear those piano chords, it's a good time for a fridge trip.
They're definitely writing a "Sonny against the world" story on Mike. When he said that Elizabeth advised him to give Mike a DNR and put him on palliative care, even Carly and Jason were like, "Um, we don't want to say it out loud, but duh." At least, that was my read. Jason pointed out that Elizabeth knows her nursing shit, and Carly resorted to her version of the Socratic method to lead him to the obvious conclusion.
-
4
-
-
1 hour ago, GHScorpiosRule said:
And I thought it was just a dark midnight blue!
I gave it a closer look, and yeah. It's more apparent to me now that it's a really dark blue, against Sonny's authentic black.
Liz is usually in lighter shades, though, unless it's a formal occasion like a funeral. So it stood out to me. I do seem to recall them having her in black for a slimming effect during the pregnancy of 2001 (the one not written into the show, while Stavros/Endgame was going on). There were some hilarious gigantic purses that year too.
-
1
-
-
What crazy upside-down world is this, when I liked the Sonny scenes more than the rest? But it was mainly for Elizabeth and Mike. I agree that her "off-duty nurse" acting was on point. I also liked that the scenes drew on her long relationships with both Sonny and Mike. She worked with Mike at Kelly's way back in the day.
Also, black isn't a color they usually put Rebecca Herbst in, but the outfit worked for her. In fact, color-wise, it was like Liz and Sam did a switch. Sam was wearing a floral top that was right out of the Elizabeth Webber Collection.
Sam served little purpose in the scenes with Diane and Alexis. I know she's Alexis's daughter, so it was justifiable, but it was just making me think about Kelly Monaco's minimums.
I do like Nelle and Nina in scenes together.
Yes, Nelle's expression at overhearing about the Chase/Sasha "affair" was hilarious. Very "They replaced the restaurant's gourmet coffee with Folgers Crystals."
The WIllow/Chase/Sasha/Michael quad drama is falling flat. What Sasha and Chase are doing is (in the universe of GH) so abrupt, and they're so unconvincing at selling it that Willow and Michael look dumb for not suspecting anything. Michael acts as though Sasha mattered very little to him, and Willow is showing some kind of distress, but it isn't worse than her usual. She's acted distressed pretty much every day for the year and a half she's been on. The whole thing is low-stakes and hard to care about.
ETA: Chase calling Michael his best friend was just sad. It's not as though there's any other likely candidate, but friendships on this show need a lot of improvement. The characters are isolated in their little story cells.
-
3
-
Episode Discussion II: The TFGH
in General Hospital
· Edited by Asp Burger
He went on a hunt for Raj, the arms dealer who had nearly killed Lulu years earlier. It seemed contrived to get Zamprogna off the canvas, like "Oh, that forgotten storyline." It's murky what exactly happened to him in all the time he was gone, but he was definitely captured and tortured (because he's no Jason Morgan!). Raj's long-term plan was for Dante to return to Port Charles but under his control. The brainwashing didn't entirely take, because when Sonny showed up in Turkey, Dante assisted him. But when Dante got back to town, his psychological damage became more and more apparent. He had a dream about shooting Lulu, he pulled a knife on Jason at the Metro Court when a loud noise startled him, and he later shot Peter when Peter and Maxie entered his room at the clinic Anna had arranged for him.
I like Dante and hope he's back long term, but it's a dreary story I hope concludes quickly. (Edit: It also seems like a retread of Lucky in the Jacob Young years, and while I didn't enjoy it that time either, brainwashing made more sense with Helena than it does with the likes of Raj.)