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THIS IS US: Randall Dismantled As Sterling K. Brown Delivers Masterful Performance

January 22, 2020

Courtesy/NBC

In yet another riveting performance by Sterling K. Brown, the highly-touted episode that aired on Tuesday’s night’s This Is Us, had his character of Randall in the spotlight again, as the first of the Big Three trilogy this season.  Next week, look for the installment to center on Justin Hartley’s Kevin.However, last night on the episode aptly titled, “Hello of a Week: Part One”, viewers followed what happened next to Randall following his return home after the stress of flying across the country to get a diagnosis for his ailing mother’s memory lapses (while keeping it from his siblings), and then winding up facing an intruder in the Pearson family home.After Randall offers the intruder money, the guy runs out of the home.

Next, the police come, and Randall installs surveillance cameras and security alarms throughout the house, which ends up being a continued tipping point in his mental state as he obsesses over keeping his family and his home safe, especially when the cops tells him that it is common for a thief to return,. It appears later in the episode he did when Beth’s earrings and Randall’s cufflinks are MIA.

Photo by: NBC

Throughout the episode, flashbacks to Randall’s childhood showed little Randall, unable to sleep and afraid of monsters, who then asks his dad, Jack to stay with him through the night.  Jack sleeps on the floor, but when Jack eventually gets up to go to his own bed, he tells Randall who comes running after him, “to be brave: and that he needs him to be the easiest child to care for since Kate and Kevin are handfuls.

This laid the foundation for how Randall deals with others, by not letting them know his inner most feelings.   The writers juxtapose Randall’s dreams throughout where he feels he can’t get out whether it be screaming through a locked window at his mother to get out of the storm, or watching some creepy guy touch Beth and he screams so loud, but you can’t hear him,

In addition, in flashbacks, we see how a college-aged Randall needing college-aged Beth to spend countless nights with him. At one point he tells her, “I just feel so helpless, like I have no control over anything,” especially following the death of his father Jack.  Beth says she can understand. She had bad dreams after her father passed away, but after she talked to a therapist she began to feel better.  In a key moment, Randall agrees to attend an grief group with her, but that plan goes awry when on the day they were heading to the grief counseling group, Randall’s family has an emergency and he could not go.

The theme of Randall seeking counseling surfaced later in the episode after Randall was struggling to hold it together as City Councilman at the Town Hall, which did not go unnoticed by Beth or by Malik’s dad, Darnell.

The next day, he tells Randall that he himself needed therapy and suggest he do that to.  Randall says all he needs is his runs around the city to help him clear his head.  But that takes another drastic turn when Randall comes upon a woman being beaten and proceeds to pounce on the aggressor.  Next, Randall with messed up arm from landing punches on the guy, ends up being touted as a hero for saving the woman’s life.  He is not comfortable with that and he begins to lose his grip.

In the culmination of the episode, locking himself in the bathroom in his home, Randall begins to cry and phones Kevin.  Thank God his brother answered, as he seems to be the only person Randall feels he can talk to, and has, through his life.  At the time of the call, Kevin is in bed with what looks to potentially be Sophie, because he was heading back to Pittsburgh for a funeral of one of her parents.  But is it Sophie, or another woman?

During their call, Randall begs Kevin just to talk, and to please  distract him. Kevin promises his brother, “I’m the guy that’s gonna get you through this,”   Will Kevin ultimately help Randall, or will what happens next become the huge rift that we know exists between the brothers in the flash-forward viewers learned about episodes ago?

This Is Us executive producers, Issac Aptaker, and Elizabeth Berger weighed-in on revisiting Randall’s anxiety and panic attacks with Entertaintment Weekly. “This is something that was hot on all of our minds, because over the past year, a couple of the writers in our room had had people break into their homes when they were home,” shared Issac Aptaker.  “People would come in and we would see the impact that it has on you when someone invades your space like that — the aftermath and the fallout. So, as we were looking at what Randall’s season would look like, and what would be potentially the breaking point for him with all that’s been brewing this year, it was at the front of all of our minds at how upsetting something like that can be.”

“We’ve seen that Randall is someone that is so in touch with his feelings emotionally, and he is so willing to talk about everything, but there does seem to be this block with him when it comes to therapy, where he just does not want to engage,” says Elizabeth Berger. “That really fascinated all of us and got us thinking, “What’s that about? And how do we get him to a point where he has his back against the wall and has to move past coping mechanisms and keeping things just below the surface and finally deal with them?” And this felt like a really compelling way to go about that.”

When all was said and done, Sterling K. Brown delivered a nuanced and masterful performance as viewers watched Randall slowly but surely, struggling to cope with all the pressure, and horrific events that happened to him one after the other, as Randall’s anxiety and panic attacks were about to reach epic proportions.

So, what did you think of last night’s This Is Us? Sterling’s performance? Comment below.

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To me, Mr. Brown is one of the industry’s most overrated actors. He’s competent and obviously dedicated. But he telegraphs every emotion ahead of time so we know exactly which expression he’ll have (usually either bewilderment or confusion), just as he did in THE PEOPLE VS. O. J. SIMPSON. Whenever an episode focuses entirely on Randall, the show grinds to a very slow trot. It’s best when the adult siblings are interacting. That’s the show’s strength.

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Recaps

Y&R’s Eileen Davidson Delivers the ‘Power Performance of the Week’

April 14, 2024

Taking on a DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) storyline on the soaps can be extraordinarily challenging for the performer who is tasked with making a clear distinction and delineation between the various alters of their character.

However, the other trick to playing this kind of story, is often having the various alters trying to hide the fact from those they know and love of what is truly going on with them, so as not to tip them off, as to what is happening to them as they battle for control of a person’s psyche.

The gold standard is One Life to Live icon Erika Slezak’s (ex-Viki) Emmy-winning and gut-wrenching and riveting DID storyline where we met Tori, Niki (although we met her earlier in the life of the show), Tommy, Princess, Jean and even her father, Victor.

Photo: JPI

Now in 2024, The Young and the Restless’ Eileen Davidson is playing out a new DID storyline for the first time as Ashley Abbott. We knew decades ago that Ashley had a breakdown and has suffered psychological issues, but this has taken it to a new level. And, let’s be real, if you are going to give someone currently on a soap a DID story, who better than Davidson, who is used to playing multiple characters at one time as she did on Days of our Lives. Although on DAYS, each of the characters were their own distinct person, while now on Y&R, Ashley’s alters are fighting for control of her being,

Last week, on the Thursday, April 12th episode of the CBS soap opera, Davidson truly got to shine, as in front of the Abbott family and through what was supposed to be an intervention (they hadn’t figure out what the hell was happening to her), Ashley was flipping from alter to alter. We know there is Ms. Abbott, and Ash thus far, but there is said to be one more alter a-coming.

Photo: JPI

In the key scenes, Davidson’s internal struggle was played pretty masterfully in a scene where she literally is in a tug of war with her alters and flings herself on the couch, while Jack (Peter Bergman), Diane (Susan Walters), Billy (Jason Thompson) and Traci (Beth Maitland) look on. Of course, there are the soap trope scenes of alters in handcuffs while the other is on the loose. And leave it to Billy to figure out Ashley is suffering from DID from his past experience.

Photo: JPI

While this all seemed to spring from Ashley’s messy relationship with Tucker (Trevor St. John) and a throw back to an old car accident where she lost her unborn baby, is there some other underlying issue in Ashley’s past that was even more traumatizing that will be revealed as another trigger for this massive personality split? We shall see.

Photo: JPI

In the meantime, Michael Fairman TV names Eileen Davidson’s work the Power Performance of the Week, and rest assured, come 2025, Davidson will find herself going for the third Daytime Emmy win as Lead Actress for this storyline.

So, let us know, what did you think of Eileen’s performance? Are you enjoying Ashley’s DID storyline? What do you think will happen to her next? Comment below.

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Recaps

THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL: “Sugar Sugar! Oh, Honey Honey”

April 13, 2024

The Bold and the Beautiful revealed at the end of the Friday April 13th episode what many viewers had guessed, that it wasn’t Sheila (Kimberlin Brown) who died when Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) stabbed her, but it had to her doppelgänger, Sugar, or at least it seems that way.

Deacon (Sean Kanan) has been beside himself since seeing what was supposed to be Sheila’s body being cremated, but revealing the body had ten toes and not nine, and we all know Sheila had cut off her toe, so she only had nine.

While explaining his thoughts that she is alive to Finn (Tanner Novlan) and then trying later to explain to Ridge (Thorsten Kaye), Deacon is more convinced that something is wrong here. Meanwhile, Finn went to talk to Steffy about Deacon’s theory, which stuns her, as she believed she killed Sheila in self-defense.

Courtesy/CBS

At Il Giardino, Deacon looks at his phone then slams it down. He flashes back to the body going into the crematorium oven saying to himself, “Maybe I’m not going crazy. Maybe that wasn’t you. And if that wasn’t you, maybe you’re out there. Maybe you need my help.”

Deacon gets on Sheila’s laptop and tries to find something that might help him figure out where Sheila has gone. He looks at her text message communications and sees a section from an unknown number. He opens the messages, and Deacon reads that they’re from someone named “Sugar.”  That person said she was going to find Sheila. In the messages, Sheila made it clear she wanted no part of her. But it could be that Sheila met up with Sugar, or was forced too?

Courtesy/CBS

In a quick history lesson about the character of Sugar: she was originally played by Robin Mattson on B&B, and was a former prison warden who helped Sheila escape and then joined her in kidnapping Ridge Forrester to hold him for ransom. A twisted plot ensued, where flames engulfed the foundry they were at and Ridge was presumed dead. Meanwhile, Sheila and Sugar disappeared with Massimo and Sheila’s baby, Diana.

Photo: JPI

Fast forward to 2006, Sheila returned to Genoa City to go after Lauren Fenmore (Tracey E. Bregman) again and was arrested for attacking Scott Grainger (Peter Barton). In a shocker, when Lauren went to visit Sheila in the slammer, she learned that the woman behind bars was actually Sugar, who had been given plastic surgery and now looks exactly like Sheila.

Now the questions become, did Sheila know that Sugar was going to attack Steffy? Did they have a plan and it went awry, or was Sheila hoping she could get rid of both Sugar and Steffy, by having her daughter-in-law sent to prison for her “murder”? Or, is Sheila out there somewhere in trouble?

Share your theories via the comment section below, and if you knew all along that it would be revealed that Sugar is the person who actually died and not Sheila. But first, check out next week on B&B where Deacon gets a visit from Lauren.

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General Hospital

GENERAL HOSPITAL: Drew and Nina Get Physical; Were You Surprised or Did You Expect it to Happen?

April 9, 2024

On the Tuesday, April 9th episode of General Hospital, Drew (Cameron Mathison) and Nina’s (Cynthia Watros) explosive relationship just turned up the heat another notch.

In story, Nina who was responsible (although she doesn’t see it that way) for Drew being sent to prison for insider trading when she tipped off the SEC, let out her feelings to him about how to get back in the good graces of her daughter, Willow (Katelyn MacMullen) and Michael (Chad Duell). In doing so, she asks him for his help with it.

For months, the two have had nothing short of contentious moments, where Drew has not let Nina off the hook for what he did to him, or to his ex Carly (Laura Wright). Fast-forward and when alone in the Crimson office, Nina brings up wanting to stick it to Carly again.

Photo: ABC

As they banter back and forth, Drew can’t figure out why he should help Nina at all with any of her manipulations. Suddenly, as he tried to exit, his shirt rips and exposes his bare chest and abs, and Nina get quite an eyeful. From there, things become physical and before you know it, Drew and Nina are making out and having their version of hate-sex.

Courtesy/ABC

Cameron Mathison spoke to Soap Opera Digest on the shocking turn events, sharing, “I didn’t see it coming at all. I really didn’t. I think the audience did. Cynthia did some appearances and I guess the audience was ‘You and Drew, there’s some sexy chemistry there.’ I was like, ‘Wait, what? Really?’ I didn’t even get it. So I love it that it was very unexpected. The writers saw it, too. And, I love that it’s not a typical way for two people to be … physical. I was gonna say intimate, but there’s not a lot of intimacy there. And then as soon as it’s over, it’s back to arguing and giving each other crap again. It was really cute and really well done.”

As the fallout for their office room romp will air on the Wednesday April 10th episode, just how will the two deal with the fact that they had this fiery passionate moment in the weeks and months ahead? Will this be Nina’s new plot to get at Carly to be seen with her ex? Will Drew and Nina never speak of this again? (Well, this is a soap opera, after all, that’s pretty doubtful), or is this part of a major reset for some of the characters on the canvas now that Patrick Mulcahey and Elizabeth Korte are co-head writing the show?

Courtesy/ABC

Speaking on the aftermath of the tryst, Mathison added, “The two of them are both like, all right, let’s forget about that and move on. It’s like a weird kind of aggression attraction. There’s obviously attraction there, but I don’t think either of them expected it, and I think they’re both totally shocked and surprised by it. I think Drew gets a kick out of it whereas Nina is a little embarrassed by it.”

Now let us know, did you see this coming? Did you think Drew and Nina would have sex? What do you think of the story turn? Comment below.

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