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I am barely watching atm til Lucky and Laura, etc. reunite but damn, JJ and Becky still got it. And I was not one of their stans back in the day. As I've said before, their romance was too saccharine for me when they were young. Not anymore. GH is once again doing one of my pet peeves though, something that has plagued Frank Valentini's soaps since OLTL. They too often have characters talk shit out in dreams or hallucinations or whatever and then never get around to the actual discussion IRL because Frank needs another handful of 90 second scenes for Violet, Carly or Jason. The attitude becomes 'you got those fantasy scenes, right?' (This is the same lazy attitude that governs stuff like only focusing on Lucky's biological child vs. the other two sons he actually raised.) No! So whenever LL2 do link up again for real they better get to business.

I do have a bit of a problem with Sam potentially dying in some random local mishap in safe nearby waters - I thought her death would be something action-oriented or crime-related given her history. Plus Sam is a very accomplished diver and treasure hunter, something they never utilized enough for my liking after her introduction vs. just chaining her to Jason and the mob.

Daphnee Duplaix Samuel (Rachel Gannon #4) is joining Michele Val Jean's new Black-centric CBS soap Beyond the Gates. She'll be the daughter of matriarch Tamara Tunie (ATWT). Her IG post with the news.

I also blame FV for that, who is known to be thin-skinned about criticism (and multiple soap journalists have spilled that tea in recent years). I don't chalk that up to LW.

I've never cared about Wagger and never will but it's clear his big speech about Sonny right after Mulcahey arrived (and the overall push against the character in those months) really pissed the surviving creatives at the show off. Wagger was a useful means to an end for me, nothing more. Now with PM gone they're all acting like he was Pol Pot with CMT hair. Not looking fwd to Laura's inevitable 180 on Sonny (which Anna has already done, sadly). Anyway Sonny will never be allowed to be guilty for killing a fed, so it's inevitable it turns out to be Kristina or some other operative or Wagger faked it then died, or something. That and the shift in how they handle Tracy (who PM clearly adored) back to all the 'nice' characters taking cheap shots at her is tiresome. And now of course because the numbers are up again Frank and his team will never leave. Sigh.

I need you to go to Africa, Jason! This will eat up valuable screen time to distract from the fact that we have no idea what to do with you! We'd get you pregnant if we could, that always works!

That's what makes me certain this has to be a temp thing. It sounds ridiculous, like Sasha's slow-talking nonsense.

I liked the relationship until it became about putting down Laura vs. Tracy in Luke and the kids' lives, which a lot of latter 2000s material became IMO. But I have no problem with it being reestablished now that Laura is firmly entrenched again. I sometimes wonder if Tracy and Laura have ever had any substantive scenes about their respective places in Luke's life in recent years since both returned, beyond Tracy slinging Guza-era fanfic about how she was Luke's much more ride or die spouse back in 2008 (and getting quietly crushed by Laura with just a few words, which was great). I'm not sure they have given the superficiality of this writing team. Maybe I missed them. They're so chummy now, which is great but I would like to see more of the change and how they perceive the past.

That was when he came back under Carlivati in 2015. The heavy implication Ron was going with was that Lucky was dealing with the side effects of Helena's brainwashing and that's why he was staying away, clearly another plot thread he intended to dangle and revisit at some later date which of course never happened. Jonathan and Tony Geary rewrote almost all of their material together dealing with this in a more adroit way in some very good scenes once they returned to Port Charles, but the implication remained.

They made a lot of mentions of Lucky skyping or video chatting with the kids over the years, but it's still not enough. I would lean heavily on the psychological damage/trauma stuff RC hinted at in order to deal with some of this tbh, and make it clear Lucky was terrified of hurting his family. That's something you can work with at least. I would also want them to remember that he was a loving and devoted father to Cameron and Jake for a number of years, but that requires post-2012 GH to juggle too many balls re: parental relationships - they only ever seem to be able to handle dealing with the bio-parent being the 'real' parent, provided of course Roger Howarth is not on the show. They prefer heavily simplifying this stuff most of the time. So I fully expect them to boil it down to just Aiden, who he barely raised at all.

I had plenty of issues with Babe but as a performer Alexa Havins never gave less than 110%, and I always enjoyed her work even when I disliked the character. I've watched Genie have to carry people before so seeing the show invest in serious A-game performers for Laura's children again makes me very happy. Sure, Jen Landon might've been my dream choice but I never bought that would happen given her career trajectory. Alexa is very strong and is no shrinking violet onscreen, and she also has a vulnerability I feel JMB frankly lacked. So I'm pretty pleased.

I'm not surprised. JL was too good to be true IMO and has too big a career. Alexa is very talented, so I'm okay with it.

I love Rick Hearst, always have. I think Ric is a deranged slimeball but a fascinating character you can always use for something fun and I'm glad RC didn't get to kill him off in 2015 like he'd planned (Easton got the knife instead). I think Hearst also has chemistry with just about everyone, unfortunately his otherwise great pairing with NLG was written in the most chauvinistic and offensive way possible in the 2000s. But the Ric/Liz thing was always a C-pairing they tossed at them because they didn't care about Liz at that time. Elizabeth was a plot widget in the panic room story, she was someone for him to be with, marry and play house with so he could hide Carly from her. Ric has also done so much insane and mortifying shit at this point that I have no idea how Liz could seriously consider getting back with him, and this is all while discounting a) the fact that she married a serial killer and b) Ric's horrific beta male autotune song and dance spectacle at the Nurses Ball in 2014(?) where he begged for her love to no avail. I was never a huge LNL2 fan in the 90s, so it's not about that. I thought she was so saccharine in those days. It took me a long time to appreciate Becky, or her work in the rape story which I only saw so much of as a kid due to sometimes missing it afterschool. She grabbed me as an older woman, the working mother who had to give up her dreams. I think her chemistry with guys like JJ or Burton (who I don't want her back with) has also only intensified and become much more powerful than it already was, so yeah, all this is to say I have no interest in her lowering herself to Ric again like Franco. But if she wants to hit it and quit it with Ric to get laid for old times' sake, I am all for that! She deserves that. And frankly he deserves to get used by a woman. RH would play that hilariously.

Yeah, Lucky never physically abused Liz.

Original Drew really never got to build much of a personality period beyond Billy Miller's charisma and relationships with Jason's loved ones. The advantage of the character was a blank slate. I actually like schmoozing, caddish politician Drew Q juggling mother and daughter, that is a classic soap archetype. But I don't trust this team to do the right things with it.

Lois' most defining characteristic is that accent. Stripping it away would be very stupid and hopefully this dumb little story is just about reinforcing that and not just turning her into Nice Quinn from B&B or Eve from Melrose Place.

Judging by this trailer Nicholas Chavez is going to break out and never come back, so it's time to recast.

What they do now really doesn't matter. They are absolutely going to have Wagger's death blamed on someone else (or be a frame-up by Wagger!) at the end of this. Unless they're dying to repeat the A.J. gambit of 2014, which I doubt, it has to happen. This is standard policy at the show since the Guza years. Anything that could mortally contaminate Sonny's standing gets equivocated or erased (unless it's Fat A.J., where the logic was simply "c'monnnn!"). Even Dante's offscreen childhood idol, a local cop in Brooklyn who inspired him to take down Sonny, got smeared as a crook lol. I agree. Which is why I think under PM at least, Nina (who he claims to hate) was the endgame. The affair is plenty hot, but it is/was the journey, not the destination. Which would be the inverse of Mulcahey's own mother-daughter political triangle on GL with Ross, Blake and Holly.

I would agree to a point because I do think it has been hit as a note for hr over and over, but at the same time this is easily the harshest loss Alexis has had since her sister. I don't think it's realistic (or good drama) not for it to really be a hard road, even if she doesn't fully succumb. They could do the story Finn sort of got (which I think was well told, but very rushed), except she doesn't totally crash out and spiral like he did.

idk if Sonny's liver is such a good idea lol.

That's enough for me! And frankly I don't think almost any pairing on this show in the last ten years has been seriously breakout popular like the '90s or 2000s with the exception of maybe Spencer and Trina. A handful of loud folks on Twitter isn't the second coming of Sonny and Brenda, or else we would be hearing in the mags about how Sonny and Nina, Sam and Dante, Anna and Billy Joel, Michael and Willow, Dex and Joss, etc. are all supercouples on par with Luke and Laura. Some of them might have fans, some of them might be fine or passable but huge for the show? No. A lot of fans in echo chambers on social media just think all these mid or bad couples are huge. I stopped caring about Spixie for the most part back in 2010, so that isn't the issue here. The issue is they kept leaning on Kirsten to carry very weak hardbody hunks they designated as more appropriate leading men, and that dates back to well before BA was hired; I felt the same about Cooper and Jesse. Same as Peter August, Austin, you name it. AFAIC Nathan was a vacant block of wood like many others they've tried and failed to pair Kirsten Storms with. He had an amazing body but the personality of plaster and I couldn't believe they kept them together so long. I have advocated for a number of new pairings for Maxie over the years. The difference is those guys potentially have personalities instead of just pecs. Your feelings are perfectly valid if you liked Nathan and Maxie, but I stand by what I said. He meant nothing to me.

I understand the value of keeping Sam alive, but she's also been on the show over 20 years and has spent a lot of that time burnt out of story. I can't really imagine what to do with her that's new if Kelly were to come back at some point. So for me I think (and thought this some time ago, before the news) the maximum dramatic option would be to kill her and embroil Jason and Alexis in a vicious custody battle, as Alexis' sobriety teeters on the brink.

Frank has done worse to other people, though. SC is far, far from the first soap actor (at any soap) to do an exit interview saying 'I just bought a new house!' right after they get fired. That's an unfortunate turn of events as old as the hills in this industry. My point being, if B&B wasn't such a cushy perch I do think it would be possible. Plenty of soap actors forgive FV's behavior and come back all the time. I'm into the affair/triangle and was super into it a couple months ago but tbh I have lost most of my focus for it (or anything GH) with Patrick Mulcahey gone. I think with him there it was likely Drew and Nina was the endgame after the affair, and I don't trust this team with either character, both of whom inexplicably became tolerable to me when PM was aboard. I think these people have written too long for so many of these bland characters like Willow and will always default to too many characters making nice and staying static. I hope I'm wrong. I was pleasantly surprised they kept it going when Mulcahey quit, so who knows. The way I approach any improvement in this show is the same way I did before Van Etten was fired last time - 'how are they going to fuck it up?'

It's been the better part of a year, he didn't bring up the ratings and they still have no love interest for him because they once again had to admit putting him with LW romantically doesn't work. Steve has claimed he only wants to be back a couple years to shore up his nest egg and then retire. I'm not sure I believe him, but either way he might for once be in a more tenuous position.

Yes, that's what happened and that's why I said Frank's GH was more fickle. Still, soap stars forgive Frank and other EPs many things over time. As for Matt Hunter he was a waste of time to me though Jason Cook worked hard (and it was rather transparently the network's latest attempt to find another 'hot' love interest for Maxie who wasn't Spinelli, which never worked going back to the days of Kid Cop Jesse or vacant Cooper IMO though I know he had his fans, or Nathan West), and Steve Webber had a place on the show but was miscast. I have often wondered about bringing him back recast or Tom Hardy in a senior hospital hunk role, but it's got to be one or the other and I can't decide which is more played out. It is absolutely going to be the next bland mob boss' men, or Kristina's crack sniper alter or something. It's okay audience, these other parties finished Wagger off! Though I wouldn't be surprised at all if we learn Wagger staged the hit to frame Sonny complete with squibs (putting aside the fact that Sonny actually did try to kill him), then got killed himself.