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Jason and Sasha are two of the most boring motherfuckers alive.

The brazen behavior with Willow and Drew is wild, but fun. It's actual drama at least, not just cueball jewel thieves from outside the world of Port Charles. Patrick Mulcahey had re-crafted Drew into being kind of the political/business-minded Quartermaine operator and a rakish, somewhat gray rogue character, but not a full-on heel as he's rapidly become now under the returning writing team. Both iterations worked for me and I think Cameron Mathison plays them well, but I do think Drew's likely to join Sam in the hereafter very soon. Which is too bad IMO, but unsurprising. This show always knows how to squander good opportunities and you could still get more mileage out of Willow and Drew and their scandal throwing it in everyone's face.

I was a fan of Setton's BLQ until she turned into Sister Maria and became chaste with Chase. If that can't change I'd recast with an actress for whom it can. I think the character had lots of promise with many people, including Dante. Not with a secret fully grown love child that ages them all up even more.

Arrr, his jewels! Cannot believe they repeated the same gag with Cyrus in the church from last year. This is what I mean about these boring crime characters being interchangeable. Get fucked, hacks.

New Year's Eve shocker: Little Aiden benchpresses Cam after a fiery sibling argument!

A rock is extremely appropriate for him. He gets Gregory's.

Why did I read this as Evil Homer smdh

A-list is uh, doing a lot.

Adieu Dex, or as too many actors onscreen regularly said his name this year, "Dax". I do think the Patrick Mulcahey era tried to make Dex and Joss more palatable to the writer's own tastes by moving him to a cop role, which IMO was the right thing for that character and he came off sincere and good-hearted in that arena with Anna, etc. But ultimately I never cared a whit about Dex and won't miss him. It's time to do what OLTL 1991 did: Purge! Start throwing up an opening sequence where 50-70% of the actors in it have already been fired! Here's what you do when you don't find the rainbow's end! Don't cry! 🪓🪓

We'll see! Sooner or later this will come back to Cueball and his jewels!

Nice to see you again! We'll miss you! A lot of that stuff floating around (or the show in general) about this feels like rumors spun up into overly confident narrative that doesn't necessarily hold for me, considering one of the sources is a true crackpot. I do believe the network wanted more cuts. I don't believe anyone mandated it was Kelly Monaco, but I think she put herself into a position to be vulnerable both in the past and maybe very recently. I also think Frank had been tired of her behavior for awhile. Not that I really care, Sam has been superfluous for over a decade.

She was probably already popping out one of like what, 3-4 kids at that point (and I believe had just done the unfortunate Torchwood S4 as one of her last major non-soap career moves) so I doubt she was even interested. As I said, it's just GH's insane luck she by her own admission in interviews all but came out of retirement for this. Because that's all it is. A very basic and cliched soap C-story so they can plausibly claim the Black heroine still has story and airtime. They were deeply skittish of frontlining her with Spencer but couldn't get away from it entirely due to the fanbase and the optics, and now they don't have that problem.

I think Mansi is capable but like so many talents on this show (including Jonathan Jackson and hopefully less so Alexa Havins next) is often wasted by the storytelling, scripts and pacing. For months when KM first came on she was near invisible or seemed like it, saddled to a boring background timewaster story with the surrogacy and a dayplayer for a love interest. I wasn't the only one wondering why she was hired to do nothing. Then I actually thought she came into her own very strong during the Patrick Mulcahey months in the spring and began actively carrying a meandering show where she was the heroine starting to square off in a reasonably intelligent and forthright way against Natalia, Joss and the manipulative Ava in Sonny's home, only to (once again) have her own illusions about her father crushed at the Chase wedding. It was when PM had clearly left the building that the worm turned and she became just unbearable for me re: the baby, etc. and that's continued. If they want to move her into a more overt spoiled villain or schemer direction now that's fair, I believe Mansi can play it and I think she deserves better from the show. But you have to have enough viewers still willing to follow her there after what she's already done and how the show has seemingly coddled her as much as her mother and father, where it has clearly not seen her as the bad guy or someone to root against. That approach to how the show treats her has to change in order for the shift to work enough for the audience. I'm open to it, but I have little faith in this creative team. I don't blame Mansi, who I think is far more ready for primetime than Lexi. I would've been fine with Lexi staying but Kristina had been a C or D-character for years and that wasn't changing anytime soon. Could it have? Maybe. Could Lexi have handled it? Not sure. We're here now.

Such a hard few years for soaps. What to say? Thom is another one of the greats. I was just watching him again as I finally got to explore the fall creative transition at OLTL in 1991. He could do just about anything with verve, style, menace or yes, comedy and ham. He's also immortalized not just in soaps but in his several appearances in classic MST3K episodes over the course of 30+ years. I was pleased when he turned up there again for the first time since the '90s in a favored episode of the new Netflix seasons. I always wanted one more good Carlo Hesser story on OLTL to finish him off, something with Fiona Hutchison that was more distinguished than the silly caper they left him with. But Carlo never really dies.

Yeah, I looked up the Emme scenes after that flashback. It was dark with ash/soot but clearly still blonde. They just put Alexa in the nearest Addams Family Party City wig.

My favorite current nickname on this board.

Remarkable how BLQ shows up down at the stables in what a friend accurately describes as Scrooge McDuck pajamas. Ready to dive into that big pile of gold! These folks remain real casual all the time about eating right next to piles of horse dung. But if this was Y&R the horses would be kept in a) the ranch drawing room and b) drawn by the crew's children. Deeply annoyed the Gio thing appears to be legit - fInally they'd hired a cute young dude who isn’t needlessly related to everyone or giving attractive, viable younger adults under 50 more adult children that age them unnecessarily. Psych! Whether he turns out to be Dante or Cody's (something my pal posited, and I could see it) it is a huge mistake. I actually had thought Dante and BLQ was a solid screwball/straight man pairing at some point but thanks to this, no way. They're all gonna come off even more middle-aged. Chase looks practically young enough to be Gio's fraternal twin if you shave the beard. Why do Anna and popstar Skye Riley in Smile 2 have the same extra-ass jungle wallpaper? Sonny’s old island girls are looking at it like ‘a bit much’. I think Anna even got this prefurbished from Sasha IIRC. Frank was like fuck it, not changing a thing! Anna's ready to take Jason on safari in the other room, crying all the way. I have said this a million times, but once more: Anna spent half the Cold War taking down the worst kind of people. She has killed God knows how many terrorists yet she comes back on this show in 2012 with Finola clearly worried she isn’t showing enough range and suddenly it’s tears over capping Carlos Rivera, tears over Sonny, Jason, Billy Joel, now this Maniac Mansion mutant child he's created with Lulu's eggs. Ron Carlivati got her right the first time in 2012 in those great scenes with RM’s Heather in the interrogation box where Heather was trying to do a deal to give up where Robin was and Anna very calmly said there’s no deal, I’ve spent my career closing people out, talk or die. And Heather did it too! That's the character. I love Anna but I hate that this goes on and has become such a part of the latter-day characterization. IMO Finola too often plays against harder material (as she did often this year under Mulcahey re: Sonny, constantly getting choked up over her dilemma with this mobster) to prove she's got more range than being an '80s superwoman, but she has absolutely nothing to prove at this stage of her career. She's one of the greats, and she still does a lot of great work on the show - she just doesn't always do it in the right place. This will never get changed about Anna again but it still drives me nuts practically everyday. I'm out!

You know Chase was in that bed sweating like “for the baby’s sake I hope these robes aren’t super absorbent 😓”

Uncle Frank says T.J. is on Week 12.5 of his contract cycle and LW is not going to waste a nickel of his guarantee money! She'll be at Deception at 3 AM next!

I never wanted her back either, because I never fully warmed to her in the first place. She was undoubtedly talented but there's a reason her romances didn't fully work, though Lante Mark I was popular. But I put a lot of that down to the longtime writing team dating back to the '90s, to Dominic and to their innate chemistry. They spun things well despite her often being very cold IMO. I do live in fear though that FV will cut the excellent Finn Carr (Rocco) for a hunk or marginalize him while favoring the greener Danny (who is improving, but needs the counterbalance). Frank did much the same with fellow normal teenager Eddie Alderson on OLTL, giving away his pairing, story and basically cutting him to coma patient recurring when he couldn't gain 15 minute abs and compete physically with the hardbodied Ford twentysomethings. I was very impressed with how well the kid kept pace with Alexa just as he had with Genie a few weeks ago, neither a mean feat. Like Hudson West (who I will continue to defend against allegations of laziness!) he is the real deal. Here I'm much more into Lulu and Dante than I ever have been before, though I suspect FV will push her hard with Cody for awhile as a spoiler. Which is okay with me as I like JK and Cody, so long as DZ gets his spotlight pairing back eventually. Alexa and Dominic were quite good together. She is nailing the spunk that was always written into the Lulu character without being hardened and smug like Berman too often was for me, which made it impossible for me to invest. Here it's the right tone and temperature.

I always found the rumors that Jennifer Landon (Gwen on ATWT but best known today for Yellowstone) was the Lulu frontrunner suspect - I thought she would be an amazing choice who has become an even better actress, but she is starring in the biggest show on streaming and has built a considerable career outside daytime. I couldn't see why she'd choose to do GH. I also frankly think that while I would've loved JL she is more of an out of the box choice than Alexa in terms of physicality and attitude. While Alexa still has loads of grit, heart and warmth she's less edgy than Landon, and I think the other option might've alienated people who aren't used to that in a soap heroine. It's apples and oranges, they're both very good. But Alexa seems just right.

I'll get to talking about these eps more later but I will say Alexa has always been rock solid, which is why she stayed an in-demand performer in soaps despite playing a deeply controversial character in a very messy storyline opposite one of the most beloved soap opera legacy heroines in the last 30+ years, and then basically just walking away from the business. She always conveyed heart and layers onscreen no matter the dreck she was often made to spin. Given her still strong talent it's wild she's been out of the game so long raising her many children with Justin Bruening and by her own admission in recent interviews was all but retired from the industry, but that kind of return from nowhere happens a lot in daytime. I'm just glad the role was available. She gives Lulu a warmth I frankly never got from Julie Berman, which is why I wasn't as harsh on Emme (a mediocre talent, but at least personable) as some people. But unlike either of them Alexa is the whole package. It's a coup and if anything demands a major creative overhaul at this show it's the revitalization of the Spencers. They deserve a much, much better show.

Alexa is far less hard and cold than Julie could read. That goes a long way IMO.

The woman Dante was going to marry just died, and now his long-lost wife is back. I don't fault his muted reaction. He's processing.

Never happened.