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The smart way to do it would be to not leave her hand so obvious on it. She should've found another way to record Natalia in the first place, or another venue. If they'd met in public it could be blamed on an enterprising muckraker like DeWitt targeting Natalia because of Blaze. And again: What does this do to affect Sonny's bottom line in a dangerous way? Nothing. It inconveniences a woman he's barely even dating. If Ava wants to cut Sonny where it hurts she needs bigger guns and better ammo, and she doesn't have it. Because Korte took her out of the catbird seat in Sonny's home once she clearly began assuming more control over the writing again. I am pleased to finally see Sonny and Nina both openly adversarial again with a woman they should genuinely despise given their separate histories with her, but I love Ava as a villain and unfortunately she just seems like a petty nuisance atm.

Exactly. FV would cut half this show before dumping that fucking kid. He has a long history of spoiling the little rascals he cultivates on his shows. (Until, like Kristen Alderson, they grow up and ask for a standard pay bump at contract renewal time.) He held the Spencer role open for years praying Nicolas Bechtel would somehow grow into a gigachad twunk.

Chase and BLQ are not that popular let alone interesting. It's not about them. It's about freeing up money for a male star. Offloading the kid onto whoever is around is just a side issue.

There are absolutely still closeted pop stars.

Considering the show has never really dug into Lois' own sea change about the Quartermaines (I rewatched her exit scenes from 1996, and they were very good but brutal in her autopsy of the family right down to Monica and Lila - a precursor of the harsher writing re: the family that came in '99) to where she's now lovey-dovey about them and Tracy, I don't expect this nuance to appear in any future writing but I do wish they'd address that for many years Lucky was a very devoted parent and father to those boys. As he once told Luke, Cam and Jake were his sons, period. For years they bore his family name. I hate that that has fallen by the wayside and he's been supplanted by Franco or Drew or whoever, and I hope some of it can be repaired. Jake won't really have many memories of Lucky and Aiden none, but Cameron would.

For me, the primary issue with Natalia is not Eva LaRue's performance. Frankly ELR is very good at playing a very specific type of type-A, hypercontrolling bigoted modern woman of a certain age. She is playing it to the hilt and I credit her for it. That's what makes people so uncomfortable with Natalia and why they're so irritated with her, me included. The other issue though is systemic and story-wise - she is so obnoxious, unctuous and overbearing as well as bigoted, but Natalia doesn't actually do anything but chemistry test with Sonny. If Natalia was actively scheming and doing stuff, not just mean mugging with Deception and Kristina, that would be good soap for awhile and then she gets her comeuppance, leaves the show and that's all fine, good drama. But GH wants it both ways. Mark Teschner told us Frank Valentini explicitly sought out ELR for this role. That to me indicates he just wants yet another feather in his cap for the show, another soap or primetime name that does very little but who he can say is in the cast - something he's done over and over. Which has led to the ensemble becoming so bloated and tired between names and nobodies. But it also means the show and FV want Natalia to be 'good' enough to remain on canvas vs. being a villain or a full-out bigot. Except a bigot is what they have written. So now we're going to see them try to blame Ava for Natalia's own toxic beliefs, and I expect them to try to keep ELR around for at least another six months so Frank can keep playing Soap Star Beanie Babies. Were this a couple years ago we might see her last a contract term or more. I hope we don't have to deal with that here.

Compared to 90% of the current cast?

Maybe 20 years ago. And never on GH. I included Caleb because he played that character on this show. He played four characters on GH. Silas was unpopular and was killed. Finn was unpopular and was written out. Our personal takes on these characters can vary and that's fair and valid, but that's the reality for the majority of the general audience at GH. These characters did not move the needle. ME (like many other unpopular stars still on GH atm in fairness, and like Roger Howarth in the past) was only kept on this show for over a decade due to institutional inertia, network disinterest in GH's quality for the majority of those years, and an EP in charge who has kept favored status for him on this show owing to their personal and professional relationship from another soap opera (a show I loved my whole life, for the record) for 20+ years. That's a failure, but it's failing up. It happens all the time, especially on soaps. We all know about that kind of preferential treatment. I don't think Michael Easton is a bad guy or untalented. I've never heard an unkind word about the man. I thought as McBain, he actually worked on GH. But Finn stopped having the minor amount of juice he had years ago. Silas never worked. The OLTL employment office should've closed in 2014. But it took a network act of God to get Roger fired twice, and it took Jonathan Jackson (and probably some renewed network oversight) to make ME go. That's just the way it is. As for Finn's arc: Yes, it was rushed as Easton rightly says, but they clearly wanted to broom the character out and move on and it was past time. So I was fine with that. I thought he did some good work and some of the scenes were very good surrounding his downward spiral. Though if it was me I'd have started it earlier and made it much darker. Finn's paranoid rants about the Quartermaines to Scott were like something out of GH 1999, and his irrational aggression with Liz, Portia, etc. and the nasty intellectual crossing swords with Alexis were all scenes visceral and compelling to watch. He could've had a longer, darker disintegration for a couple months if the show had played things out earlier overall, the kind of material this show has done before (including with Lucky, and it is so stupid that anyone let multiple scenes with Liz suddenly being newly educated about addiction go to air given her past with Lucky among others), and frankly I would've ended it in Finn drunkenly crashing his car into GH or something with Violet in the passenger's seat. Say what you will about Guza but that's how this would've ended vs. just a whimper. I wouldn't need to kill Finn, but any kind of action and high drama that gets this moribund show's heart rate up is desperately needed right now.

I know they did. What I said was that they shared no solo scenes and very little screen time together.

Well, Lucky Spencer is one of the most beloved characters on GH in the last 30 years. Hamilton Finn was Michael Easton Character #4. But YMMV.

I think it's probable it happens, myself. JJ was very set on reuniting Lucky and Liz last time he was on contract only for Guza and co. to deny him because Becky and Liz were not a priority for them at all. That and other issues were why he left again so I think it happens this time. I was never a huge fan of theirs back in the day but I'm fine with it. Elizabeth took a long time to grow on me and I've had ups and downs with the character but Becky always delivers, and I think she deserves her time in the sun again after carrying a lot of this show and so many failed male leads on her back for years and years. I do think the characters need to have a real talk about their issues. It's ridiculous how Korte of all people forgot that Liz spent years married to an addict during this Finn SL, and Liz repeatedly behaved as though she was discovering how to cope for the first time. Most of all I am excited for Jonathan and Genie. She got next to no time with him in 2015, and no solo scenes at all; it was all Tony (though those scenes were very good, in large part bc JJ and TG rewrote them themselves). As I think JJ noted, he has not had major one on one scenes with Genie since 1999. This is very important to me and to the show.

JJ has been a fundie for decades. So is half of daytime and probably half of GH. That's just reality. Unlike someone like Melissa Reeves, he's never raised a public ruckus about gay rights, religious stuff, politics etc. Most soap stars who trend that way at least keep their mouths shut or keep it lowkey in any way that might affect the job. So I see zero evidence JJ would interfere in any way with Aiden's storyline or any other, given his relationship with Geary but also just his general career history not just on GH but elsewhere. If that changes then I'll have something to say about it just like Ingo, Steve, etc., but thus far he hasn't. So it's not a concern for me. I think Aiden scenes being scrapped months ago is much more symptomatic with GH being extremely gunshy re: gay content (let alone Black story) as well as disinterested in character material for years running than it is anything to do with Jonathan who probably wasn't even signed when those scenes were both scripted and cut.

Nah. I think Lucky said some vile things to Elizabeth when the affair with Nikolas came out. I also think he was a real shitty husband at times, particularly in the GV years when he was fucking Maxie for a fix. Do I think he was ever some controlling abuser? No. I think that's a minority viewpoint at best and it's not one I subscribe to. They're both deeply flawed people. And I say that as someone who was not especially into Lucky and Liz together in their heyday.

The thing is I had never bought Lucky becoming a cop with the recasts, and I also felt it was OOC. But to my surprise Jonathan made it work tremendously well when he came back, or so I thought; he and Dominic Zamprogna fit together like a glove. Lucky and Dante were the second coming of Luke and Scorpio, they could've run the show for years to come as roguish hero cops. But the show squandered that opportunity. I'm not sure Lucky will still be in law enforcement when he returns - I think there was some talk of him in the WSB at one point - but I wouldn't mind it. He can still walk on the wild side with the undercover stuff, like Jonathan did in his last stint, but be a decent man doing better for his community and his family than his father. Which is who Lucky is. Or was. Lucky used to be a devoted father to all of Liz's kids and unfortunately that's been very damaged by his absence. But I'd still defend his parenting over Jason's anyday. Ron Carlivati's band-aid on this in 2015 when JJ returned for Luke's exit was to drop one of his typical little random plot lures into the show for use at a later date that never happened - he had it implied in story and scripts that Lucky was staying away from his family because of trauma related to his Cassadine brainwashing, that he was afraid for them and was wrestling with that 'darkness', etc. JJ and Tony Geary reworked all his bad scripts and rewrote them themselves to make those scenes much better, but that was what it amounted to. I wonder if they'll touch on that at all to explain some of Lucky's absences since.

Per TV Line, ME's final airdate is tomorrow (the 27th). I'm pretty embittered about Jonathan returning just in time for Patrick Mulcahey, who wrote wonderful material for him BITD, to get pushed out and quit. I also think PM wrote a fair amount of the pretty solid Gregory/Tracy, Gregory's death and Finn downward spiral material earlier on, as Finn's catalyzing event (accidentally taking a drink at a social function) is right out of something Mulcahey did at GL. But oh well. I think GV worked very hard at the show, and he portrayed a very sincere young person. I thought he was much better than Jacob Young. I understand why people grew fond of him; I did too to a point, and he had chemistry with Becky and Kelly Monaco. But I never really bought him as the same Lucky. It was a profoundly different character. Lucky was a C-player without Jonathan in the role, one Guza had no respect for or interest in. That wasn't GV's fault, but it was the difference between a star and just another male lead. And when JJ returned that was put into stark relief once more, and that was when I decided there would be no point in recasting the character ever again (though I was prepared to bend on that recently had Jonathan not agreed to return).

He could get beamed up by Casey the Alien for all I care. Still, this is Frank's House so I'll only believe he's really gone when it's been a year.

Excellent news. Unfortunately the show is still a creative mess. But as someone who suspected FV would never bend on bringing back stars he did not create or have a past with, I'm very pleased. It was shameful how Jonathan's last stint went, and it was the opposite of what he wanted yet he still turned in amazing work. And yes, I'm sure it keeps Becky Herbst in play (one thing he's always been adamant about is Lucky/Liz, which he didn't get last time). GV was a nice guy who worked hard, but he was never much of an actor in those days. He's improved a lot since GH but he's still not the same character. When Jonathan came back there was no contest - he made it look like he'd never left. I saw no point in recasting Lucky again after that and I still don't. I just wish we had Jonathan and Patrick Mulcahey.

You don't have to handwring about this. Confirmation is rarely immediate, and the sources are good. If Ryan Murphy hires a twink/twunk there is a 85% chance that dude is gonna be plastered all over his next 3-5 productions unless the actor tanks himself or Murphy tires of him quickly. Chavez's career is on the rise, despite my distaste for Murphy's work. It is extremely likely he is in that show and will be in others, and extremely unlikely he is returning to GH any time remotely soon unless he does them a favor for one day or something which I doubt.

He ain't.

Any actor on B&B who isn't Ridge or Brooke is always 10 mins away from potentially being put on recurring and fired. Ask Rena (or Sarah Brown). I promise you he has not. Do not tempt fate.

Johnny Wactor (Brando Corbin) has been killed in a robbery gone wrong.

I knew it would happen. Passanante's AMC was if not the worst then at least the most consistently bad/boring soap I've ever watched, and her ATWT was equally bad. JP was renowned in the industry as a brilliant breakdown or even possibly scriptwriter - I remember Rebecca Budig crediting her for a great deal of the material for Leo and Greenlee on AMC - but HW was not her bag. I knew when she came to GH exactly what would happen, and it did so I stopped watching very, very quickly.

Try "Hamburglar Fergus Byrne".

I think LD is only appearing for 3 days at present, so I wouldn't expect a lot. But I have yet to render a verdict on his return. I think Gio is very cute but may still look/present a bit too young for Trina. I haven't decided yet. The real issue is that too many young people on this show, especially the younger males, have very little personality beyond cheery apple-polisher (especially Dex) or random bad boy. It would be easier to get a sense of how he can play with women if he had a little more Cerullo spark onscreen.

Again, seems like treading water and possibly BTS weirdness. The force and a lot of the daily writing behind the change in the town's attitude towards Sonny has been strong for me, if awkward in places (Kristina's selective amnesia/denial I can handwave to a point as she has always been a spoiled Daddy's girl, but Laura making it about poor Cyrus who put her daughter in a coma is silly - she should be rid of both of them). But every time they have great scenes with Anna or Laura speechifying about it there comes another scene where Anna turns around and says well, no, maybe let's not file this today. Anna's not Commissioner Hamlet, let's put it together. It feels schizoid and I wonder if it is partly due to whatever has gone down at the show. That being said the entire assault sequence on marine/SEAL? Dex from a 60 year old man was laughably shot and put together - if he'd ambushed him more clearly you might've been able to put it over - and a black mark on what I thought were otherwise a series of very strong character episodes last week, minus the unspeakable Violet song experience in which I lapsed into Nikolas Cassadine's rage epilepsy and blacked out. So I also would just as soon find a better thing to charge him with. Anything!