Rancide

Wow, Finola Hughes is gorgeous. I barely recognize Detective Wood with his shirt on. He's not really face-attractive, is he? I read the Michael Easton interview. I usually try to avoid actor interviews (and Twitter, instagram, Facebook, etc.) because I feel like there's a good chance it will not end well (e.g., Steve Monavie Burton, Bry-dog), but he actually came off really well. Silas sucked a lot, but I wish him well and hope he lands on his feet.

Jones Day was going to take it on contingency, but they were demanding $400k upfront for out-of-pocket expenses (court fees, transcript fees, mail, data hosting, etc.). PP couldn't come up with the $400k, which is how they ended up with no lawyer. The fact that they can't get a lawyer tells you A LOT about the value of the case. Law firms are experts at valuing litigation. The fact that Jones Day wanted $400k upfront BEFORE they'd take it on contingency says to me that a) they think it's going to be an expensive litigation ($400k in upfront costs is quite high), and b) they are doubtful enough about recovery that they are not willing to put their own $400k at risk. If Jones Day really believed in the litigation, they could have negotiated a contingency contract that said they got out-of-pocket expenses off the top and then a percent of whatever was left. They didn't. This says to me that Jones Day has doubts about the ability to recover even $400k. I could of course be wrong, but my assessment is that if they're this far along and don't have counsel, stick a fork in it. It's done. Note that "done" doesn't mean "ready to be dismissed by the court." It means "has been evaluated by a number of knowledgeable firms, none of whom consider it a good investment." My guess is that it will limp along to a paltry settlement possibly in the relatively near future (which in lawsuit terms means within, like, the next 6 months). I actually have no opinion on whether the lawsuit has any merit, so don't take my comment as a quibble or criticism, but having merit is not necessarily the same thing as being a good investment. The real question, assuming all facts alleged are true, is how much compensable damage was done. To provide an absurd and extreme example, if I take your favorite pencil and break it in half in a fit of rage, and you sue me over it, your lawsuit unquestionably has merit. I'm not allowed to intentionally damage your property, period. But the fact that your suit has merit doesn't mean you can expect to recover more than $0.50 from me. I understand PP has some speculative theory of damages that claims the entire endeavor was sunk because of ABC's violations of the contract and that ABC should therefore be liable for literally the entire cost of the failed project to the tune of millions of dollars, but claims like that are a) wildly improbable, b) highly speculative, c) difficult to prove. Was ABC really the sole and direct cause of the failure of the entire PP venture? Doubtful. Actual recovery would likely boil down to more a question of how much damage individual violative actions caused and the value of that damage. For example, if ABC did actually violate a contract with PP by killing off baby Hope, someone is going to have to put a number to how much damage PP suffered as a result of the loss of baby Hope. That's a hard thing to do. And yes, any fees paid to lawyers for the litigation would have to be approved in advance by the bankruptcy court now that PP is in receivership.

I'll take Starr and Todd over Kiki and Franco any day. And McBain is welcome any time. Especially if he promises to snark hard on Detective Plywood.

I did some googling, and here's a more legally technical take one what's going on with the PP lawsuit for those who have the stomach for it: http://www.law360.com/articles/682487/one-life-to-live-producer-blames-abc-suit-for-ch-7-bid I think this quote is particularly telling: "Give the numerous continuances already granted by the Los Angeles court, the debtor is gravely concerned that negative results may come to pass if the debtor does not have counsel in place by the next case management conference," the motion said. "Any further delay in the appointment of a trustee might prejudice the debtor's prospects in the ABC litigation." The litigation is on the ropes.

I did not personally hate the OLTL characters (though I did not watch that show), but since their appearance also coincided with actual good writing, it's hard to say whether it was the characters or the writing that worked for me. And I affirmatively liked McBain. Generally, I'd prefer the show focus on actual core GH characters and families, but if we must poach from folded soaps, I'd for sure rather see a character who already succeeded on another show (Todd, Starr, McBain, etc.) than I would an actor who succeeded on a another show playing an entirely new character (Neener, Madeline, Kiki, Silas, Greenlee's character, etc.) But like I said, since there is 0 incentive for ABC to act in any way other than that it doesn't care at all about OLTL (because all acting like they care would accomplish would be to tip their hand that they're willing to pay more to get them back), I don't think we'll know for sure whether the OLTL phase of GH is well and truly gone until after the litigation settles.

Lawyer here. With respect to the PP lawsuit news, I second (or third) the previous statements that civil lawsuits take a long time. That said, this was from the beginning a lawsuit with strong incentive to settle quickly since the value of the what was being fought over (chiefly, the intellectual property rights to OLTL and its characters) was deteriorating by the day. 90+% of civil suits settle. They just do. A trial would take years, by which point even if PP (or ABC) "won," it's unclear what good it would do them. My best guess regarding what went down--regardless of the actual merits of the breach of contract claim, about which I have no opinion--is that PP realized it was in financial trouble long before the filing of the lawsuit or the launch of the online shows. My guess is that they reached out to lawyers to examine their options once they knew they were in a tough spot and together the litigation strategy, possibly as a last-ditch effort at avoiding bankruptcy. The lawsuit did not look like a bad idea in its initial inception. At the time the lawsuit was filed, GH ratings were on the upswing, 3 OLTL characters were well integrated into the GH canvas (with obvious plans for more), and there was a head writer obviously vested in continuing to use the OLTL characters. My guess is that PP saw the lawsuit as an opportunity to twist ABC's arm to get money and/or contract concessions from ABC since I think it was probably already pretty obvious at that PP was in trouble, and the perception was probably that ABC valued these characters much, much more than PP did (and would therefore be willing to pay out to PP to keep them). Except ABC called their bluff. Rather than pay whatever was being demanded to regain/retain the rights to the OLTL characters, they just let them go. Whether because PP's settlement demands were unreasonable or because ABC didn't care enough about its daytime line-up to fork over any money at all to help RC keep his plans going, I don't know. So, enter Kiki, Franco, Silas. And with each passing day, the original OLTL characters become less and less valuable, both because the original storyline momentum is well and truly dead, and because there are fewer and fewer viewers left to care. I really do not think that anyone is going to want to "buy" this lawsuit off the estate. It's pretty telling that they can't seem to find a firm to take it unless the firm gets out-of-pocket costs upfront. The claim that ABC drove PP out of business and is therefore liable to PP for millions of dollars in damages owing to the general failure of the PP venture is the kind of highly speculative and fact-intensive claim that is not appealing to bankruptcy vultures looking to make a quick buck. It's also the kind of claim that is extremely difficult to succeed on, especially given that I'm relatively sure PP was in financial trouble long before ABC ever touched those characters. The "better" (i.e. more easily provable, though not necessarily more valuable) of the lawsuit's claims--damage to the intellectual property rights to OLTL done by ABC's "borrowing" of those three characters and then changing their storylines without permission--is... well... what exactly was the value to PP of Starr's baby? Especially on a soap, where dead is never really dead? These do not strike me as high dollar-value claims, even if PP were able to establish that ABC was in the wrong. As I said at the outset, this was a case ripe for quick settlement. ABC/GH wanted and had plans for the characters. The characters were already worthless or nearly worthless to PP at that point. If you own something that is worth 0 to you but is worth [x] million to your neighbor, it ought not to be too hard to reach an agreement to transfer that thing from you to your neighbor for some number between 0 and [x] million. I do not know why that didn't happen. But now? These characters have got to be, if not actually worthless to ABC, at least significantly less valuable than they were two years ago. Is Todd Manning really going to blow back into Port Charles next week? Would anyone care if he did? The fact that the lawsuit didn't settle at the moment when the best incentives on all sides existed for it to do so may mean that one or more of the negotiating parties was not a rational actor, i.e. was significantly over/undervaluing the claim and was being a settlement obstructionist. My money would be on PP, but that's obviously just speculation. It's more common for small companies or individuals to act nuts in litigation than big corporations if only because in big corporations litigation decisions are usually made by enormous legal departments with lots of experience valuing claims and little to no personal investment, whereas with people or small companies you're more often dealing with just 1-2 individual decision-makers who may or may not know what they're doing. But it's obviously impossible to say for sure. The transition to Chapter 7 may be a good thing for anyone left who actually cares about seeing this lawsuit resolved. Management of the lawsuit will be put in the hands of a trustee whose goal will probably be to get this thing done. As an aside, this announcement does sort of make me curious with respect to the firing of RC and the (apparent?) death of Silas. Maybe it's just a coincidence. The absolute worst thing ABC could do from a negotiating standpoint would be to tip its hand that it cares at all about anything OLTL-related. But when the Starr girl was fired, wasn't it announced way in advance? I wouldn't be surprised if ABC wasn't 100% finished with Todd/Starr/McBain, though they'd never, ever admit it. I may be interesting to see what happens next. Or not.

If there's anyone out there who still cares about getting this lawsuit resolved, Chapter 7 may be a good thing. (I'm a lawyer). It seems like under Chapter 11, PP was still managing the lawsuit with ABC. Under Chapter 7, a trustee would take over the lawsuit, including the terms of settlement. It's seemed to me for a while that PP, once it realized the web relaunch was a flop, has essentially been playing "stick up" with ABC, betting the shows were worth more to ABC than to PP (which, duh) and trying to coerce a larger settlement out of ABC. A trustee is likely to have little patience for those games and probably has a better idea of what is an actual reasonable settlement amount. It also isn't personal for him. In addition, this is one case in which the value of the thing being fought over continues to decrease over time by virtue of the delay. Back 2 years ago PP had GH over the barrel. GH ratings were on the upswing, GH had a new writer with a lot of plans for the characters, 3 of the characters were already integrated into the case, and their loss was going to be disruptive to planned storylines. Now? Two years have gone by, ratings are at a new low, the show has fired the writer who cared about these characters in the first place, and any momentum that might have existed for these characters and stories is well and truly dead. This case is worth a lot less than it was 2 years ago.

I realize this is an extreme minority position, but I'm not 100% against Niz. My principal objections to it in the first go-round were 1) the extreme betrayal of Lucky, 2) the fact that Nik was going through his engorged tick phase right around that time. With Lucky long-gone and Nik having found a better balance of "vitamins," I think it could work. They're both among the better actors the show has, but neither has done "new" romance particularly well in decades. I'd be okay with seeing them together at this point.

Nik had somebody kidnapped? Also, Nik and Liz are now 100% platonic on both sides?

I'm sorry for the question--and I have read a bunch of pages trying to figure it out, but it seems convoluted--but could someone fill me in on what's going on with Nik and Liz? I've been mostly away from the show for about a year (thanks Franco and Neener!) but am trying to come back to give the new writer a shot and can't figure this one out.

On the topic of this Greenlee person, I'm a "no." I get that when so many soaps folded it left a lot of known talent without jobs, but why are we obligated to employ all of them? I was somewhat tolerant of the OLTL invasion (round 1) because I felt bad for the OLTL fans whose show had folded, GH and OLTL seemed at least sort of related after having been back-to-back for decades, and I hoped much-needed new viewers would follow their favorite OLTL characters over. But since then, the running around to scoop up actors from other shows has gotten to ridiculous proportions. We have the OLTL3v2, Nina, Madeline, nuJason (though at least he's a recast character instead of a rando), and now this Greenlee person. It's too much. And there's no evidence that viewers of other shows are following these actors over to GH! Also, y'all, these people are old. As are most of the Gh vets. I was super-opposed to Guza killing off or marginalizing everyone, especially women, at the sign of the first wrinkle, but this is ridiculous to the other extreme. 75% of the folks getting airtime on this show are over 40 at this point. The 25-35 set, formerly the bread and butter of daytime, is a virtual black hole. Soaps need new talent. The endless shuffling of several dozen aging actors (not to mention half a dozen writers) around among the 4 shows that are left is not helping much with the perception that the genre is dying.

Road to the Runway has started making me more sad than hopeful. You see all these interesting people with interesting ideas and cool designs, and you just know how little that has to do with doing well on this show. I thought the woman from Austin (blonde with mascara) had one of the least interesting portfolios, but I predict she'll do well because she seems to be sewing perfectionist with a pretty basic aesthetic (midrange mall) that can be executed quickly. On the other hand, I liked jellyfish-inspired guy, but he's never going to get enough money/fabric or time to pull any of those tricks off. Of the collections I generally liked, the only one that looked remotely suited to the sad and unfortunate limitations the show forces onto the contestants these days was the one by the guy from New Zealand. Plus-size woman is my prediction for the first auf. I didn't respond positively to those clothes, and she already seems geared up for a meltdown. Bad combo.

I wanted Silas dead (though McBain can still come back if whatever's going on with that litigation ever ends), but sheesh. Why him before, say, Nina, Franco, Kiki, etc.? Silas was kind of sort of okay at first, at least by RC character standards, until the massive nosedive he took when he started yapping about effing (not really dead!) Nina non-stop for months on end. Now Silas is dead but we're still stuck with that boil on the ass of this show? WHAT is she doing here? At least Silas was a doctor.

Looking back, that really does seem to be the dividing point, at least for me. Pre-Franco/Silas/Kiki, I don't have many complaints. I guess Purina was in the works by then, but it hadn't really gotten into full swing. But after those three came back, I can't think of a single thing I liked other than Brad and Lucas. It's like the last two years has been one long temper tantrum over RC losing his OLTL characters.

This is incredibly petty, but I don't think I'll be able to watch this show because the name "Caitlyn" drives me CRAZY. She was born in 1949, not 1989, for pete's sake. A 65 year old running around with the name "Caitlyn" makes about as much sense as a 15 year old named Gertrude.

To tell you the truth, the last couple of years have been so bad, I wouldn't care if the new writer reset the show back to the day before Franco2, Silas, and Kiki rolled into town and pretended it was all some sort of nightmare Robin had while being held captive. ETA: What would we miss? Purina, Rocco, Nina, Donna Mills, Carly in a cave, dead AJ, pickle wars, kiddie quads, Sonny & Olivia, Maxie & Plywood, pregnant Olivia? Really the only thing I'd miss would be Brad and Lucas. That's sad.

I'm a "no" on SORASing Emma. It's already happened once. Emma was born about 6 years ago, and the little girl playing her is about 9. Robin is now in her mid 30s, and one thing that is very clear about Emma's birth is that it happened after Robin was an established, professional adult doctor. SORASing Emma to the point where Robin has a nearly adult daughter before she's turned 40 would be weird to me. It's a real shame that today's teen/young adult scene is so lacking, and it comes, in my opinion as a direct result of Guza's decisions in the 10-15 years ago time span to not let anyone who wasn't Sonny or directly related to Sonny have any children. They keep having to import nobodies (Kiki, Rafe, Felix's little sister, TJ, Rosalie) to try to make stuff happen for the 16-24 group because the only organic characters in that age group are Corinthii. And it's not like this wasn't forseeable. I remember lots of us screaming about it back when Sonny started watering the whole town with his sperm. I have more hope for the next generation of teens, if only because of the increased genetic diversity. Spencer, Emma, Cameron, and Joss are mostly not related to each other, and I can see some potential for interesting storytelling there. I would like to see them all age as a group, but I'm still a few years off from being ready for it.

I think he looks like River Phoenix. Only with stupid face tattoos and ugly ear gauges.

Meh. I was always okay with the OLTL characters (and I never watched that show). I felt bad for the fans of the show when it was canceled and was happy for them that they had someplace to see at lease some continuation of the stories and people they cared about. Plus, it wasn't like GH didn't need another infusion of viewers from somewhere--and badly. I assumed the characters they brought over were some of the show's most popular, and frankly I'd much rather have a character that has already succeeded elsewhere, even if it was on a different show, than random new front-burner characters that may turn out to be huge flops (Kiki, Silas, Nina, Nathan, Rafe, etc.)

This is where I am. Have taken GH off my DVR, check in here every couple of weeks to see if there's any point in tuning back in. I don't know these characters, I don't care about them, don't have a single couple I'm rooting for, don't find the dialogue engaging or amusing. I made excuses for RC for a long time after many had given up on him. The show WAS better there--briefly--and he did have a lot to struggle with that was hugely disruptive and beyond his control, like the impending cancelation then non-cancelation, the sudden loss of his OLTL characters, Tony Geary's recovery taking so much longer than expected, etc. But it's been long enough. No more excuses. The show just blows. I'll probably tune back in for the last couple of months before its cancelation just out of sheer nostalgia. But otherwise I have no interest.

Wow, that guest judge was pretty. Almost as pretty is that one contestant with the really stupid face tattoos. I'm face tattoo neutral, but his are ugly, make no sense, and distract from what would otherwise be a mess of pretty.

I have hope for this season. It looks like there are more than just 2-3 contestants with some serious talent, and while the douchebaggery is inevitable, at least it seems like it's spread around a little and somewhat more muted. You've got several minor-league a-holes and drama queens scattered throughout rather than just 1-2 outsized loudmouths sucking up a disproportionate amount of airtime. Good to see there are a couple of female artists this season who seem to have some talent.

I don't mind the showboating. The course is difficult but not SO difficult that a ton of folks don't make it through. If everyone just ran the course straight, it'd be pretty boring. The announcers' verbal orgasms at the showboating bothers me far more than the showboating itself. But then, I don't watch any of the interviews at all and frequently mute the TV during the runs. That cuts down on the annoyances A LOT.

All I heard were the halting intonations of someone only about 60% sure of his lines. I was wondering if there was a last-minute script change or something. The dude who plays Silas definitely has some limitations as an actor, but to his credit, he generally seems well-prepared. I cast a massive eye-roll in Ava/Silas's general direction. Is hate sex the only kind of sex people on this show are allowed to have any more? Yawn.

Yeah, I don't know what's up with Patrick beyond that the writers suck. I thought the show did a hard right turn from Sam/Silas and a rush to Sam/Patrick a) in tacit recognition of the fact that Sam/Silas was a massive flop, b) to capitalize on the unexpected friend chemistry of Patrick/Sam, and c) (most importantly) because Sam had to be rushed into position before an imminent Jason reveal. If the writers intended to take years to deal with the Jason issue, why on earth did Sam and Patrick need to get pushed together at the speed of light? They really did have some nice friend chemistry, and Sam's relationship with Silas sucked a lot (I miss McBain!), but the way the relationship was handled--crammed together a rapid speed with minimal supporting story and then basically ignored thereafter--isn't doing the relationship any favors. Of course, it also doesn't help that actors appear to have approximately 0 sexual chem and seem to have nothing to talk about other than Jason. But, man. This story sucks.