Operation Sonny and Brenda are getting married!

As most of you know, we have been working on a scrapbooking project for some time for VM and MB and also a basket full of strawberry items.

We NEED to finish this ASAP!!!

This is my idea….

I’d like us to have everything in to me/Chels BY FRIDAY, FEB. 4. Yes, THIS FRIDAY.

What I need:

Letters to both MB and VM. You can write one to each or one to both. Tell them how you love them and how finally after 13 years+ our babies are getting married and we are beyond thrilled. Tell them how certain scenes made you feel… Like the proposal, the first time they made love after all these years, how you felt on Ring Day.

Tell them how much both of them mean to you without it being stalkerish.

I would like this to be a WEDDING GIFT for Sonny and Brenda.

If any of you see anything STRAWBERRY THEMED/VALENTINE-ish please purchase it and send it to Chels. I will give you her address. It doesn’t need to be expensive, you don’t have to spend a ton of money. I’d say $10 or less. Let’s fill the basket, let’s fill the scrapbook. Let’s show our babies how we love them and how much this wedding means to us after all this time.

This may be our last chance so lets work together and make this good and amazing. 

Leave me your note/letter or artwork here or PM on the board. I will get it to Chels.

Sunday Share

Yesterday, Lisa and I updated the board and this site… New gorgeous skin, banner and video and pics down the side. It looks so pretty and shows how we feel right now. www.sonnyandbrenda.com

Rumors and spoilers abound and I read them at every turn BUT no matter what, they can never overshadow my happiness with our Sonny and Brenda actually saying “I do.” We will have such beautiful pictures, amazing opportunities for new mvids and stories. It is so much more than I ever could have hoped for in all the years we had hope. It is an incredible feeling and I am really trying to soak up every bit of happiness I can… Mostly because we know Guza and we know him pretty well.

I want to remind everyone to go to Oprah and GUSH about our Sonny and Brenda, as well as their portrayers, Vanessa Marcil and Maurice Benard. Maybe we can get a last minute add on with a Skype interview between Oprah and our babies. It’s worth a shot! https://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=6985480

Also, check out this FANTASTIC video made my Mary. Yes, it’s on the Forum, but I want the gorgeousness here, too.

As most of you know, we have been working on a scrapbooking project for some time for VM and MB and also a basket full of strawberry items.

We NEED to finish this ASAP!!!

This is my idea….

I’d like us to have everything in to me/Chels BY FRIDAY, FEB. 4. Yes, THIS FRIDAY.

What I need:

Letters to both MB and VM. You can write one to each or one to both. Tell them how you love them and how finally after 13 years+ our babies are getting married and we are beyond thrilled. Tell them how certain scenes made you feel… Like the proposal, the first time they made love after all these years, how you felt on Ring Day.

Tell them how much both of them mean to you without it being stalkerish.

I would like this to be a WEDDING GIFT for Sonny and Brenda.

If any of you see anything STRAWBERRY THEMED/VALENTINE-ish please purchase it and send it to Chels. I will give you her address. It doesn’t need to be expensive, you don’t have to spend a ton of money. I’d say $10 or less. Let’s fill the basket, let’s fill the scrapbook. Let’s show our babies how we love them and how much this wedding means to us after all this time.

This may be our last chance so lets work together and make this good and amazing. 

Leave me your note/letter or artwork here or PM on the board. I will get it to Chels.

Have a glorious Sunday and this week we have plenty of Sonny and Brenda on GH!

TTFN xo

Oprah FLOOD!

https://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=6985480

Are You the World’s Biggest Soap Opera Fan?

Are you a devoted soap opera viewer? Do you plan your day around watching soap operas? Do you record the soaps while you are at work and rush home to see what your favorite characters did that day? Do your favorite stars feel like members of the family? Do you live vicariously through their triumphs and struggles? Do you remember where you were when Luke and Laura got married or when Erika Kane walked down the aisle for the tenth time? Who are your favorite characters? Which couples did you desperately want to see together again? Which storylines made you laugh, cry or changed your life? Which soap that is no longer on the air do you miss the most? If you are a fan of the soaps and are willing to share your love of daytime dramas on The Oprah Winfrey Show, we want to hear from you!

Write for your love of our couple, write again for Maurice and Vanessa. Write about how you fell in love with them. Write about why Vanessa and Maurice are special.

Let’s get our couple on Oprah! Or maybe one of us could get on and represent the SnBers!! We don’t have much time but let’s see if together we can make some magic happen!

Tell Oprah about our babies, have your friends tell Oprah about SnB!!

Hop to it and spread your Sonny and Brenda, Vanessa and Maurice LOVE!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Get to work!!

TTFN xoxo

Mad Money

Last evening on Twitter I read an article by Jamey Giddons from Daytime Confidential. http://daytimeconfidential.zap2it.com/2011/01/21/poll-position-how-magazine-polls-prove-general-hospital-is-run-by-idiots-re-becky-herbst#new

Bob Guza

Now, I am just as upset as the next person about the recent firings and from what I am understanding, the bloodbath will continue for some time as TPTB cut several people from all 3 shows free. BUT, there was something more in that article that disturbed me even more than the firing of Becky.

Yes, my sources told me Frons was the person who wanted the Liason pairing axed, but it was Guza who couldn’t manage to come up with a decent story for Liz post the breakup with Jason, yet he gets paid in the neighborhood of $30,000 a week, reportedly. 

WHAT?!?!!!! The GUZE makes what most normal, everyday people make in a year but in ONE WEEK and he can’t write a decent show? What is that? He makes a million and a half a year to do nothing but write plot points, cater to his favorites while shitting on the others. He hasn’t written a decent storyline in years. Sure, a few “Events that will Change the Face of Port Charles!” were entertaining, but everything is always hyped up considerably more than what it actually plays out to be.  He writes good montages, and for those I pull from the past: Clink/Boom! & Amazing Grace.

Honestly, there may be more but, since I am a fixated Sonny and Brenda fan, these stick out in my mind.

Ok, here is Vent Day and not because it is a montage like those perse, but because I stumbled upon it and just loved, loved this scene.

Anyway, I do not believe in my heart that Bob Guza is deserving of his salary. Not for the damage he has done to the show, the integrity of the characters, the dismissal of actors and fans or for the turning a deaf ear on what the fans want. Focus groups are something of the past at this point, like the Nielsen rating system.

If TPTB were really and I mean REALLY interested in what we, the fans wanted and were looking for on our shows, they would keep a keen eye on the internet, read emails, see the letters in the soap mags and looks at the comments on the comment lines. It is such a simple task. Honestly, everything is spelled out in black and white everywhere! It shouldn’t be hard, not at all. But, yet, it seems as if TPTB reside in a different world than we do. They do not care about what we think. They pay a panel of about 12 people and ask THEM if they like certain characters, storylines or couples. Excuse me? Seriously? You’re gonna PAY people for their opinions, like 12 of them, when you can get THOUSANDS for free on Twitter and in emails… Not to mention the comment line? WHAT?! I’m talking FREE OPINIONS, PEOPLE!!

Sure, a lot of us are fanbased opinions, character, couple based opinion… BUT, in all of that mess there is a common theme. Unfortunately for our boatload paid friend, Guza, we want him gone. JFP needs to follow him as do and I hate to say it but the writing team under Guza. They need fresh blood. These peeps have no ideas left and if they do, no one is listening to them. Maybe they should.

BTW, Frons needs to go to. He tanked SN and now it looks like ABCD is his next pet project to throw away. I hope once he tanks daytime tv he moves to Siberia never to be heard from again. He deserves worse but I am an adult and I need to conduct myself better when it comes to these peeps.

Some people who are being let go from GH, OLTL and AMC are being cut loose due to budget constraints. I hear that one ABC soap has to cut back by 50% and it isn’t OLTL from what I’ve heard. I hear it’s GH. I hear more heavy hitters will be out or done by May. Maybe, just maybe the big wigs took a pay cut—- I’m looking at you Bob Guza and Brian Frons—— Maybe that would at least help GH.

I don’t know, maybe I am just bitching to bitch but this bothers me. I am extremely disturbed by knowing about how much our Guze makes a week. Especially when I go to pay my bills and don’t have enough and when I know about so many families who have nothing…. Guza makes a ton and ruins a show for millions of people. Nice reward for nothing, shithead!

Sure, like I said, he has a couple of montages I like and he had the best triangle ever in daytime tv, Sonny, Brenda, Jax. But, not, it’s not enough. That was the ’90’s early 2000’s, it’s time. Time for him to move on and let someone else come in, fresh blood…. My vote is for Frons to get Sri Rao in to fix this. Sri LOVES the history and would build upon the past, family, friends, love, drama, intrigue and adventure. Sri has attention to detail down to a science. His last effort with Night Shift was amazing and I wish SN had continued with it and taken things further.

There’s a ton to think about with all of this. There’s a lot to worry about for ABC soap fans over the next few weeks. There are quite a few actors who make around $3 million a year (maybe 3 or 4 from my understanding one or two on each show)… They should be worried, and may be asked to take a pay cut or leave.

This genre doesn’t have to die, it can be saved but what needs to change first, before the character/actor changes, is a change of TPTB. All of them. Get people in who know and understand the history of the shows, people who are willing to be paid less and put out a much better quality of work. Then they need to write their way out of this paper bag the others got them into. Then we will see change and a change for the better.

TTFN xo

Screen Caps 1/20

Thanks to GH HD!! 🙂

WTF is going on with ABCD?

I’m smelling something fishy at ABCD.

It really is stinking up the joint and it’s disgusting! In the past 4 days, count ’em FOUR days, 4 actresses are OUT from their ABCD show.

First, we heard the unfortunate news about Becky Herbst. Then before we could even settle in on wrapping our minds about that one, we find out Annie Ilonzeh (Maya Ward) got cast in the new Charlie’s Angels pilot. Then it continued…. Brittney Underwood, Langston from OLTL was fired, as with Becky, there are certain words used in different places, fired, storyline dictated.. WTF? So, this morning, I wake up to read that Melissa Claire Egan has “decided to move on from AMC.” Ok, so maybe she made the decision? Hmmmmmm… After the others, I think not. Especially considering she stopped taping January 11!

There is a bloodbath brewing over at ABC studios. It isn’t pretty and I notice so far, it’s only WOMEN getting pink slipped. WTF?

Instead of cutting out talent, saying they wrote them into a corner, write them out of the corner and instead… CUT OUT SOME OF THE BACKSTAGE SUITS/HIGHER UPS!!!

Cut the fat backstage, get fresh blood in who cost less! There are plenty of writers out there, new producers, new everything who WANT TO WORK and put out a good product!

I am finding this week to be quite disturbing and sad. Some of these women are not my favorites, not by a long shot but you know what? I accept them on my shows, they have purpose and ties to characters and families I love. I am hearing about newbies left and right being hired, some getting contracts and honestly, I am happy for them BUT they have NO TIES TO THE HISTORY OF THESE SHOWS!!

I started really watching these shows in the late ’70’s with my mom and my grandma. What really sucked me in from the beginning was the tale that was told, the family dynamics, the fresh, new loves, the middle people having crazy affairs, and the older people with their sage advice for all the younger ones. I used to run home from the bus stop DAILY in order to catch the last few minutes of OLTL and see all of GH… Luke and Laura, baby! I used to try to (hehe) and loved to stay home sick (hey! sometimes I was really sick!) so I could catch AMC and OLTL. I LOVED Erica Kane and was sucked in to her many marriages… OLTL.. LOVED Tina Lord and loved so much from both shows. I used to write in High School, had many notebooks. What I was writing was my own soap opera. I just loved the genre, loved how the characters seemed to stay on the show forever. I loved how each year there was at least one HUGE wedding and an amazing birth.

We just don’t have much of this anymore. We have (talking GH here) violence, less family, no adventure or intrigue, very little friendships and hardly any love. Now characters who make sense, add some diversity and who are women are gone from the fabric of these daytime staples. It is quite upsetting and very sad.

It’s kind of like the government, if you want to cut back on some costs, look at what is going on behind the scenes and cut out some of that. These daytime dramas revolve around the characters, not around the suits behind the scenes that never get changed. It’s time for fresh ideas, new blood and creative people to step in and save what is left of our shows.

But, maybe, it’s too late and TPTB let Brian Frons and Co. go on too long. They ruined Soap Net and now ABCD is following suit.

I’m afraid to see who else is leaving today, next week or the weeks following that. Things are changing, and I’ve been hearing some disturbing rumors about the upcoming year for all three shows. It is NOT PRETTY!

My advice for all fans of ABCD….. Watch your shows, try to watch in real time, not just clips. Support all the casts on your various shows… Whether you like that character/actor/actress or not, these people have left an impression and imprint on our shows, they are needed— Where as newbies are NOT.. These people have a purpose on these shows and you never know right now IF YOUR personal favorite is the nest to get the ax.

Send snail mail, email TPTB, call hotlines and email the mags… Do it often and be positive about your favorites and about the show itself. No matter what, I will be devastated if any one of my shows is canceled… No matter how much I bitch about GH, I’ve watched it forever with my mom and I can remember seeing my grandma, sitting on her stool, in front of the tv, with her cold cup of coffee, a cigarette and glasses on. She loved GH and needed to be home each day at 3pm, no matter what.. She hated to miss a show and you know what? I hate to miss a show, too.

TTFN xo

Weaving the Fabric of a Show

A couple of days ago there was breaking news that Becky Herbst was fired or let go/ storyline dictates.

How unfortunate how over the last 10 years or so, Bob Guza has found a way to remove all vets, all characters who have history from the show.  How many have been “let go” or we see them once a year over the years… Let’s see.. (I am thinking back to 2000 to now)

Audrey, Tony, Amy, Bobbie, Monica, Laura, Scotty, Felicia, Anna, Robert, Emily, Georgie, The Alcazar’s (Luis, Lorenzo, Diego, Sage), Courtney, Holly, Alan, Lila, John Durant, Noah Drake, Sarah, Cooper, Claudia, Logan, Ric, Trevor, Lesley, Leyla, Helena, Mike, Ned, Lois, Dillon, Skye, Lady Jane and now, Elizabeth.

Now, sure not all of them has met with a grizzly demise, and some of them we have down right hated BUT, most of these characters were part of a bigger picture. They wove the fabric of family and in once case in particular, the Alcazar’s, the whole family was killed off. There may be characters I am missing, but this is off the top of my head. Some of these characters would have continued to be a foil for some of our faves, some of them could be the sage older generation that the youngsters run to. Some could be involved in their older children’s stories as could they have romance and love for themselves. Some couldn’t have been redeemed and some passed away in real life.

And, WTF happened to all the Night Shift characters who could have been integrated into the show at the hospital?

The point is, TPTB are too easy with the demise of characters and allowing some to languish in the background. It ruins the continuity of the show, it ruins the exact fabric as to why we watch the show.

With losing the character of Elizabeth, we lose her children and the continuation of the Webber and Hardy families. Why should we care? We should care because the Hardy clan has been a part of the show since day one in 1963. Elizabeth is the granddaughter of Steve Hardy, who was at one time the heart of the show. Elizabeth was written into a corner with her many pregnancies with a few different men. She also lost the edge she arrived in PC with and became a saint, put up on a pedestal. She has 3 babies, all of whom she has to support on one income, with Lucky and Nikolas giving her child support. Jason bought her the house she lives in with her boys because one child is his.

Why in the world would TPTB consider writing her like this? Why not have her still be a nurse (? when she was an artist for many years and suddenly, she’s a nurse.. WTF? ) and have her kids and some hot doctor interested in her OR, maybe TPTB should not have given her all those kids. Or, have her still with Lucky and they could be adventure loving people, like his parents and even her parents.

We can’t turn back time, we can’t solve the problems TPTB seem to have with writing. But what we should do is embrace the characters, the ones we love and let the actors and actresses know how we feel. We will never know when it is our favorite character’s last breath on this show.

I wish Becky the best in her journey. I hope she finds a job right away, especially considering she has her 3 babies at home to support, along with her husband, Michael. (I’m sure he has a job but still…)

Here’s to hoping TPTB get a clue and change the course of the show. In doing so several of TPTB need to be replaced. Instead of trimming the cast, why not trim the fat at the core of what’s wrong? We, the viewers know it’s not the cast, it is those behind the scenes who don’t listen to what the fans watch.

Also, I am sorry to hear about so many viewers who have either stopped watching or will stop watching on Becky’s last day. I understand their pain of losing their favorite. We, here at the SnB Forum have lost our girl twice. VMG may not have been fired or let go, but it doesn make the reality of the loss any less to the viewer. It is devastating for the fanbase. It is devastating to have that ultimate loss of hope for a couple. It is a hard lump as a viewer to swallow. Especially when something as senseless as this happens.

Whether you are a Liz or a Becky fan, she is a person. She just lost her job and livelihood and it is sad. It is sad for the fans, the show and for Becky and her family. Just because she may not be your favorite doesn’t mean that your favorite is safe… It could be our fave next. You never know and this is no time to gloat. Not in this day and age of GH.

Chins up and thank Becky on Twitter for a great 13-14 years. @MichaelSaucedo It’s her hubby’s acct and she has been on tweeting on and off since yesterday. Either way, if she’s on or Michael is on, she will get the message and she will appreciate it. You can also send her some snail mail to the GH Studios.

“General Hospital” Rebecca Herbst
c/o ABC-TV
4151 Prospect Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027

TTFN xo

Tired

I’m tired.

Tired of hearing about how Brenda is a delicate person, not able to handle things, she’s gonna fall apart and yadda, yadda, yadda. I am about to explode at this point!!

Do the writers even KNOW Brenda?

She had friends.

She has a fun, conniving past. She is strong, knows what she wants and goes for it.

Two words: Alley Kiss

Sonny LOVES HER.

They USED to have AMAZING, CONNECTED scenes TOGETHER.

Brenda and Lois meet. Brenda had friends who didn’t BABY HER.

Brenda with Robin.

Brenda was fun, no one complained  about her or just “tolerated” Brenda. People loved her. Lila, Edward loved her and of course, her sister, Julia.

The show was fun. The show, characters, had spark and amazing chemistry.

What happened here? How did the show go from this to the crap I see on screen daily now?

Brenda is far from a damsel in distress, she was and should be a spitfire! She had lots of people who loved her, including Mike, Sonny’s father.

I could go on forever but honestly, I don’t have the time. Guza wastes such amazing opportunities and he is such a douchebag. So is Brian Frons. Way to go with my favorite character of all time assholes. You both need  to leave and let others in who know the characters they write for.

I’m sure when Franco shows up again, all stories happening now will be put on hold for his nonsense.

TTFN <– from a sad Ro